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diff --git a/16338-h/16338-h.htm b/16338-h/16338-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..99e5b62 --- /dev/null +++ b/16338-h/16338-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4273 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Homeric Hymns</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Homeric Hymns, by Andrew Lang</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Homeric Hymns, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Homeric Hymns + A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: July 20, 2005 [eBook #16338] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOMERIC HYMNS*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1899 George Allen edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE HOMERIC HYMNS<br /> +A NEW PROSE TRANSLATION<br /> +AND ESSAYS, LITERARY AND MYTHOLOGICAL,<br /> +by Andrew Lang</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/langib.jpg"> +<img alt="Bust of Athene. Forming a vase; found at Athens now in the British Museum. (Fifth Century B.C.)" src="images/langis.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h2>DEDICATION</h2> +<p>To Henry Butcher<br /> +A Little Token of<br /> +A Long Friendship <!-- page vii--><span class="pagenum">p. vii</span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> +<p>To translate the Hymns usually called “Homeric” had long +been my wish, and, at the Publisher’s suggestion, I undertook +the work. Though not in partnership, on this occasion, with my +friend, Mr. Henry Butcher (Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh), +I have been fortunate in receiving his kind assistance in correcting +the proofs of the longer and most of the minor Hymns. Mr. Burnet, +Professor of Greek in the University of St. Andrews, has also most generously +read the proofs of the translation. It is, of course, to be understood +that these scholars are not responsible for the slips which may have +wandered into my version, <!-- page viii--><span class="pagenum">p. viii</span>the +work of one whose Greek has long “rusted in disuse.” +Indeed I must confess that the rendering “Etin” for πελωρ +is retained in spite of Mr. Butcher, who is also not wholly satisfied +with “gledes of light,” and with “shieling” +for a pastoral summer station in the hills. But I know no word +for it in English south of Tweed.</p> +<p>Mr. A. S. Murray, the Head of the Classical Department in the British +Museum, has also been good enough to read, and suggest corrections in +the preliminary Essays; while Mr. Cecil Smith, of the British Museum, +has obligingly aided in selecting the works of art here reproduced.</p> +<p>The text of the Hymns is well known to be corrupt, in places impossible, +and much mended by conjecture. I have usually followed Gemoll +(<i>Die Homerischen Hymnen</i>, Leipzig, 1886), but have sometimes preferred +a MS. reading, or emendations by Mr. <!-- page ix--><span class="pagenum">p. ix</span>Tyrrell, +by Mr. Verral, or the admirable suggestions of Mr. Allen. My chief +object has been to find, in cases of doubt, the phrases least unworthy +of the poets. Too often it is impossible to be certain as to what +they really wrote.</p> +<p>I have had beside me the excellent prose translation by Mr. John +Edgar (Thin, Edinburgh, 1891). As is inevitable, we do not always +agree in the sense of certain phrases, but I am far from claiming superiority +for my own attempts.</p> +<p>The method employed in the Essays, the anthropological method of +interpreting beliefs and rites, is still, of course, on its trial. +What can best be said as to its infirmities, and the dangers of its +abuse, and of system-making in the present state of the evidence, will +be found in Sir Alfred Lyall’s “Asiatic Studies,” +vol. ii. chaps. iii. and iv. Readers inclined to pursue the subject +should read <!-- page x--><span class="pagenum">p. x</span>Mr. L. R. +Farnell’s “Cults of the Greek States” (Clarendon Press, +1896), Mr. J. G. Frazer’s “Golden Bough,” his “Pausanias,” +and Mr. Hartland’s work on “The Myth of Perseus.” +These books, it must be observed, are by no means always in agreement +with my own provisional theories. <!-- page 3--><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span></p> +<h2>ESSAYS INTRODUCTORY</h2> +<h3>THE SO-CALLED HOMERIC HYMNS</h3> +<p>“The existing collection of the Hymns is of unknown editorship, +unknown date, and unknown purpose,” says Baumeister. Why +any man should have collected the little preludes of five or six lines +in length, and of purely conventional character, while he did not copy +out the longer poems to which they probably served as preludes, is a +mystery. The celebrated Wolf, who opened the path which leads +modern Homerologists to such an extraordinary number of divergent theories, +thought rightly that the great Alexandrian critics before the Christian +Era, did not recognise the Hymns as “Homeric.” They +did not employ the Hymns as illustrations of Homeric problems; though +it is certain that they knew the Hymns, for one collection did <!-- page 4--><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>exist +in the third century B.C. <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> +Diodorus and Pausanias, later, also cite “the poet in the Hymns,” +“Homer in the Hymns”; and the pseudo-Herodotus ascribes +the Hymns to Homer in his Life of that author. Thucydides, in +the Periclean age, regards Homer as the blind Chian minstrel who composed +the Hymn to the Delian Apollo: a good proof of the relative antiquity +of that piece, but not evidence, of course, that our whole collection +was then regarded as Homeric. Baumeister agrees with Wolf that +the brief Hymns were recited by rhapsodists as preludes to the recitation +of Homeric or other cantos. Thus, in Hymn xxxi. 18, the poet says +that he is going on to chant “the renowns of men half divine.” +Other preludes end with a prayer to the God for luck in the competition +of reciters.</p> +<p>This, then, is the plausible explanation of most of the brief Hymns—they +were <!-- page 5--><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>preludes to epic +recitations—but the question as to the long narrative Hymns with +which the collection opens is different. These were themselves +rhapsodies recited at Delphi, at Delos, perhaps in Cyprus (the long +Hymn to Aphrodite), in Athens (as the Hymn to Pan, who was friendly +in the Persian invasion), and so forth. That the Pisistratidæ +organised Homeric recitations at Athens is certain enough, and Baumeister +suspects, in xiv., xxiii., xxx., xxxi., xxxii., the hand of Onomacritus, +the forger of Oracles, that strange accomplice of the Pisistratidæ. +The Hymn to Aphrodite is just such a lay as the Phæacian minstrel +sang at the feast of Alcinous, in the hearing of Odysseus. Finally +Baumeister supposes our collection not to have been made by learned +editors, like Aristarchus and Zenodotus, but committed confusedly from +memory to papyrus by some amateur. The conventional attribution +of the Hymns to Homer, in spite of linguistic objections, and of many +allusions to things unknown or unfamiliar in the <!-- page 6--><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>Epics, +is merely the result of the tendency to set down “masterless” +compositions to a well-known name. Anything of epic characteristics +was allotted to the master of Epic. In the same way an unfathered +joke of Lockhart’s was attributed to Sydney Smith, and the process +is constantly illustrated in daily conversation. The word υμνος, +hymn, had not originally a religious sense: it merely meant a lay. +Nobody calls the Theocritean idylls on Heracles and the Dioscuri “hymns,” +but they are quite as much “hymns” (in our sense) as the +“hymn” on Aphrodite, or on Hermes.</p> +<p>To the English reader familiar with the Iliad and Odyssey the Hymns +must appear disappointing, if he come to them with an expectation of +discovering merits like those of the immortal epics. He will not +find that they stand to the Iliad as Milton’s “Ode to the +Nativity” stands to “Paradise Lost.” There is +in the Hymns, in fact, no scope for the epic knowledge of human nature +in every mood and aspect. We are not so <!-- page 7--><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>much +interested in the Homeric Gods as in the Homeric mortals, yet the Hymns +are chiefly concerned not with men, but with Gods and their mythical +adventures. However, the interest of the Hymn to Demeter is perfectly +human, for the Goddess is in sorrow, and is mingling with men. +The Hymn to Aphrodite, too, is Homeric in its grace, and charm, and +divine sense of human limitations, of old age that comes on the fairest, +as Tithonus and Anchises; of death and disease that wait for all. +The life of the Gods is one long holiday; the end of our holiday is +always near at hand. The Hymn to Dionysus, representing him as +a youth in the fulness of beauty, is of a charm which was not attainable, +while early art represented the God as a mature man; but literary art, +in the Homeric age, was in advance of sculpture and painting. +The chief merit of the Delian Hymn is in the concluding description +of the assembled Ionians, happy seafarers like the Phæacians in +the morning of the world. The <!-- page 8--><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>confusions +of the Pythian Hymn to Apollo make it less agreeable; and the humour +of the Hymn to Hermes is archaic. All those pieces, however, have +delightfully fresh descriptions of sea and land, of shadowy dells, flowering +meadows, dusky, fragrant caves; of the mountain glades where the wild +beasts fawn in the train of the winsome Goddess; and the high still +peaks where Pan wanders among the nymphs, and the glens where Artemis +drives the deer, and the spacious halls and airy palaces of the Immortals. +The Hymns are fragments of the work of a school which had a great Master +and great traditions: they also illustrate many aspects of Greek religion.</p> +<p>In the essays which follow, the religious aspect of the Hymns is +chiefly dwelt upon: I endeavour to bring out what Greek religion had +of human and sacred, while I try to explain its less majestic features +as no less human: as derived from the earliest attempts at speculation +and at mastering the secrets of the world. In these chapters regions +are <!-- page 9--><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>visited which scholars +have usually neglected or ignored. It may seem strange to seek +the origins of Apollo, and of the renowned Eleusinian Mysteries, in +the tales and rites of the Bora and the Nanga; in the beliefs and practices +of Pawnees and Larrakeah, Yao and Khond. But these tribes, too, +are human, and what they now or lately were, the remote ancestors of +the Greeks must once have been. All races have sought explanations +of their own ritual in the adventures of the Dream Time, the <i>Alcheringa</i>, +when beings of a more potent race, Gods or Heroes, were on earth, and +achieved and endured such things as the rites commemorate. And +the things thus endured and achieved, as I try to show, are everywhere +of much the same nature; whether they are now commemorated by painted +savages in the Bora or the Medicine Dance, or whether they were exhibited +and proclaimed by the Eumolpidæ in a splendid hall, to the pious +of Hellas and of Rome. My attempt may seem audacious, and to many +scholars may even be repugnant; but <!-- page 10--><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>it +is on these lines, I venture to think, that the darker problems of Greek +religion and rite must be approached. They are all survivals, +however fairly draped and adorned by the unique genius of the most divinely +gifted race of mankind.</p> +<p>The method of translation is that adopted by Professor Butcher and +myself in the Odyssey, and by me in a version of Theocritus, as well +as by Mr. Ernest Myers, who preceded us, in his Pindar. That method +has lately been censured and, like all methods, is open to objection. +But I confess that neither criticism nor example has converted me to +the use of modern colloquial English, and I trust that my persistence +in using poetical English words in the translation of Greek poetry will +not greatly offend. I cannot render a speech of Anchises thus:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“If you really are merely a mortal, and if a woman +of the normal kind was your mother, while your father (as you lay it +down) was the well-known Otreus, and if you <!-- page 11--><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>come +here all through an undying person, Hermes; and if you are to be known +henceforward as my wife,—why, then nobody, mortal or immortal, +shall interfere with my intention to take instant advantage of the situation.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That kind of speech, though certainly long-winded, may be the manner +in which a contemporary pastoralist would address a Goddess “in +a coming on humour.” But the situation does not occur in +the prose of our existence, and I must prefer to translate the poet +in a manner more congenial, if less up to date. For one rare word +“Etin” (πελωρ) I must apologise: +it seems to me to express the vagueness of the unfamiliar monster, and +is old Scots, as in the tale of “The Red Etin of Ireland.” +<!-- page 12--><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span></p> +<h3>THE HYMN TO APOLLO</h3> +<p>The Hymn to Apollo presents innumerable difficulties, both of text, +which is very corrupt, and as to the whole nature and aim of the composition. +In this version it is divided into two portions, the first dealing with +the birth of Apollo, and the foundation of his shrine in the isle of +Delos; the second concerned with the establishment of his Oracle and +fane at Delphi. The division is made merely to lighten the considerable +strain on the attention of the English reader. I have no pretensions +to decide whether the second portion was by the author of the first, +or is an imitation by another hand, or is contemporary, or a later addition, +or a mere compilation from several sources. The first part seems +to find a natural conclusion, about lines 176-181. The blind singer +(who is <!-- page 13--><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>quoted here +by Thucydides) appears at that point to say farewell to his cherished +Ionian audience. What follows, in our second part, appeals to +hearers interested in the Apollo of Crisa, and of the Delphian temple: +the <i>Pythian</i> Apollo.</p> +<p>According to a highly ingenious, but scarcely persuasive theory of +Mr. Verrall’s, this interest is unfriendly. <a name="citation13"></a><a href="#footnote13">{13}</a> +Our second part is no hymn at all, but a sequel tacked on for political +purposes only: and valuable for these purposes because so tacked on.</p> +<p>From line 207 to the end we have this sequel, the story of Apollo’s +dealings as Delphinian, and as Pythian; all this following on detached +fragments of enigmatic character, and containing also (305-355) the +intercalated myth about the birth of Typhaon from Hera’s anger. +In the politically inspired sequel there is, according to Mr. Verrall, +no living zeal for the honour of Pytho (Delphi). The threat of +the God to his Cretan ministers, <!-- page 14--><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>—“Beware +of arrogance, or . . . ”—must be a prophecy after the event. +Now such an event occurred, early in the sixth century, when the Crisæans +were supplanted by the people of the town that had grown up round the +Oracle at Delphi. In them, and in the Oracle under their management, +the poet shows no interest (Mr. Verrall thinks), none in the many mystic +peculiarities of the shrine. It is quite in contradiction with +Delphian tradition to represent, as the Hymn does, Trophonius and Agamedes +as the <i>original</i> builders.</p> +<p>Many other points are noted—such as the derivation of “Pytho” +from a word meaning <i>rot</i>,—to show that the hymnist was rather +disparaging than celebrating the Delphian sanctuary. Taking the +Hymn as a whole, more is done for Delos in three lines, says Mr. Verrall, +than for Pytho or Delphi in three hundred. As a whole, the spirit +of the piece is much more Delian (Ionian) than Delphic. So Mr. +Verrall regards the <i>Cento</i> as “a religious pasquinade against +the sanctuary on <!-- page 15--><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>Parnassus,” +a pasquinade emanating from Athens, under the Pisistratidæ, who, +being Ionian leaders, had a grudge against “the Dorian Delphi,” +“a comparatively modern, unlucky, and from the first unsatisfactory” +institution. Athenians are interested in the “far-seen” +altar of the seaman’s Dolphin God on the shore, rather than in +his inland Pythian habitation.</p> +<p>All this, with much more, is decidedly ingenious. If accepted +it might lead the way to a general attack on the epics, as <i>tendenz</i> +pieces, works with a political purpose, or doctored for a political +purpose. But how are we to understand the uses of the pasquinade +Hymn? Was it published, so to speak, to amuse and aid the Pisistratidæ? +Does such remote antiquity show us any examples of such handling of +sacred things in poetry? Might we not argue that Apollo’s +threat to the Crisæans was meant by the poet as a friendly warning, +and is prior to the fall of Crisa? One is reminded of the futile +ingenuity with which German critics, following <!-- page 16--><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>their +favourite method, have analysed the fatal Casket Letters of Mary Stuart +into letters to her husband, Darnley; or to Murray; or by Darnley to +Mary, with scraps of her diary, and false interpolations. The +enemies of the Queen, coming into possession of her papers after the +affair of Carberry Hill, falsified the Casket Letters into their present +appearance of unity. Of course historical facts make this ingenuity +unavailing. We regret the circumstance in the interest of the +Queen’s reputation, but welcome these illustrative examples of +what can be done in Germany. <a name="citation16a"></a><a href="#footnote16a">{16a}</a></p> +<p>Fortunately all Teutons are not so ingenious. Baumeister has +fallen on those who, in place of two hymns, Delian and Pythian, to Apollo, +offer us half-a-dozen fragments. By presenting an array of discordant +conjectures as to the number and nature of these scraps, he demonstrates +the purely wilful and arbitrary nature of the critical method employed. +<a name="citation16b"></a><a href="#footnote16b">{16b}</a> Thus +one learned person believes <!-- page 17--><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>in +(1) two perfect little poems; (2) two larger hymns; (3) three lacerated +fragments of hymns, one lacking its beginning, the other wofully deprived +of its end. Another <i>savant</i> detects no less than eight fragments, +with interpolations; though perhaps no biblical critic <i>ejusdem farinæ</i> +has yet detected eight Isaiahs. There are about ten other theories +of similar plausibility and value. Meanwhile Baumeister argues +that the Pythian Hymn (our second part) is an imitation of the Delian; +by a follower, not of Homer, but of Hesiod. Thus, the Hesiodic +school was closely connected with Delphi; the Homeric with Ionia, so +that Delphi rarely occurs in the Epics; in fact only thrice (Ι. +405, θ. 80, λ. 581). The local knowledge is accurate +(Pythian Hymn, 103 <i>sqq</i>.). These are local legends, and +knowledge of the curious chariot ritual of Onchestus. The Muses +are united with the Graces as in a work of art in the Delphian temple. +The poet chooses the Hesiodic and un-Homeric myth of Heaven and Earth, +and their progeny: a myth current also in <!-- page 18--><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>Polynesia, +Australia, and New Zealand. The poet is full of inquiry as to +origins, even etymological, as is Hesiod. Like Hesiod (and Mr. +Max Muller), <i>origines rerum ex nominibus explicat</i>. Finally, +the second poet (and here every one must agree) is a much worse poet +than the first. As for the prophetic word of warning to the Crisæans +and its fulfilment, Baumeister urges that the people of Cirrha, the +seaport, not of Crisa, were punished, in Olympiad 47 (Grote, ii. 374).</p> +<p>Turning to Gemoll, we find him maintaining that the two parts were +in ancient times regarded as one hymn in the age of Aristophanes. <a name="citation18"></a><a href="#footnote18">{18}</a> +If so, we can only reply, if we agree with Baumeister, that in the age +of Aristophanes, or earlier, there was a plentiful lack of critical +discrimination. As to Baumeister’s theory that the second +part is Hesiodic, Gemoll finds a Hesiodic reminiscence in the first +part (line 121), while there are Homeric reminiscences in the second +part. <!-- page 19--><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span></p> +<p>Thus do the learned differ among themselves, and an ordinary reader +feels tempted to rely on his own literary taste.</p> +<p>According to that criterion, I think we probably have in the Hymn +the work of a good poet, in the early part; and in the latter part, +or second Hymn, the work of a bad poet, selecting unmanageable passages +of myth, and handling them pedantically and ill. At all events +we have here work visibly third rate, which cannot be said, in my poor +opinion, about the immense mass of the Iliad and Odyssey. The +great Alexandrian critics did not use the Hymns as illustrative material +in their discussion of Homer. Their instinct was correct, and +we must not start the consideration of the Homeric question from these +much neglected pieces. We must not study <i>obscurum per obscurius</i>. +The genius of the Epic soars high above such myths as those about Pytho, +Typhaon, and the Apollo who is alternately a dolphin and a meteor: soars +high above pedantry and bad etymology. In the Epics we breathe +a purer air. <!-- page 20--><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span></p> +<p>Descending, as it did, from the mythology of savages, the mythic +store of Greece was rich in legends such as we find among the lowest +races. Homer usually ignores them: Hesiod and the authors of the +Hymns are less noble in their selections.</p> +<p>For this reason and for many others, we regard the Hymns, on the +whole, as post-Homeric, while their collector, by inserting the Hymn +to Ares, shows little proof of discrimination. Only the methods +of modern German scholars, such as Wilamowitz Möllendorf, and of +Englishmen like Mr. Walter Leaf, can find in the Epics marks of such +confusion, dislocation, and interpolations as confront us in the Hymn +to Apollo. (I may refer to my work, “Homer and the Epic,” +for a defence of the unity of Iliad and Odyssey.) For example, +Mr. Verrall certainly makes it highly probable that the Pythian Hymn, +at least in its concluding words of the God, is not earlier than the +sixth century. But no proof of anything <!-- page 21--><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>like +this force is brought against the antiquity of the Iliad or Odyssey.</p> +<p>As to the myths in the Hymns, I would naturally study them from the +standpoint of anthropology, and in the light of comparison of the legends +of much more backward peoples than the Greeks. But that light +at present is for me broken and confused.</p> +<p>I have been led to conclusions varying from those of such students +as Mr. Tylor and Mr. Spencer, and these conclusions should be stated, +before they are applied to the Myth of Apollo. I am not inclined, +like them, to accept “Animism,” or “The Ghost Theory,” +as the master-key to the <i>origin</i> of religion, though Animism is +a great tributary stream. To myself it now appears that among +the lowest known races we find present a fluid mass of beliefs both +high and low, from the belief in a moral creative being, a judge of +men, to the pettiest fable which envisages him as a medicine-man, or +even as a beast or bird. In my opinion the higher belief may very +well be <!-- page 22--><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>the earlier. +While I can discern the processes by which the lower myths were evolved, +and were attached to a worthier pre-existing creed, I cannot see how, +if the lower faiths came first, the higher faith was ever evolved out +of <i>them</i> by very backward savages.</p> +<p>On the other side, in the case of Australia, Mr. Tylor writes: “For +a long time after Captain Cook’s visit, the information as to +native religious ideas is of the scantiest.” This was inevitable, +for our information has only been obtained with the utmost difficulty, +and under promises of secrecy, by later inquirers who had entirely won +the confidence of the natives, and had been initiated into their Mysteries. +Mr. Tylor goes on in the same sentence: “But, since the period +of European colonists and missionaries, a crowd of alleged native names +for the Supreme Deity and a great Evil Deity have been recorded, which, +if really of native origin, would show the despised black fellow as +in possession of theological generalisations as to the formation and +conservation of the <!-- page 23--><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>universe, +and the nature of good and evil, comparable with those of his white +supplanter in the land.” <a name="citation23a"></a><a href="#footnote23a">{23a}</a> +Mr. Tylor then proceeds to argue that these ideas have been borrowed +from missionaries. I have tried to reply to this argument by proving, +for example, that the name of Baiame, one of these deities, could not +have been borrowed (as Mr. Tylor seems inclined to hold) from a missionary +tract published sixteen years after we first hear of Baiame, who, again, +was certainly dominant before the arrival of missionaries. I have +adduced other arguments of the same tendency, and I will add that the +earliest English explorers and missionaries in Virginia and New England +(1586-1622) report from America beliefs absolutely parallel in many +ways to the creeds now reported from Australia. Among these notions +are “ideas of moral judgment and retribution after death,” +which in Australia Mr. Tylor marks as “imported.” <a name="citation23b"></a><a href="#footnote23b">{23b}</a> +In my opinion the <!-- page 24--><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>certainty +that the beliefs in America were not imported, is another strong argument +for their native character, when they are found with such striking resemblances +among the very undeveloped savages of Australia.</p> +<p>Savages, Mr. Hartland says in a censure of my theory, are “guiltless” +of Christian teaching. <a name="citation24"></a><a href="#footnote24">{24}</a> +If Mr. Hartland is right, Mr. Tylor is wrong; the ideas, whatever else +they are, are unimported, yet, <i>teste</i> Mr. Tylor, the ideas are +comparable with those of the black man’s white supplanters. +I would scarcely go so far. If we take, however, the best ideas +attributed to the blacks, and hold them disengaged from the accretion +of puerile fables with which they are overrun, then there are discovered +notions of high religious value, undeniably analogous to some Christian +dogmas. But the sanction of the Australian gods is as powerfully +lent to silly, or cruel, or needless ritual, as to some moral ideas +of weight and merit. In brief, as far as I am able <!-- page 25--><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>to +see, all sorts of ideas, the lowest and the highest, are held at once +confusedly by savages, and the same confusion survives in ancient Greek +belief. As far back as we can trace him, man had a wealth of religious +and mythical conceptions to choose from, and different peoples, as they +advanced in civilisation, gave special prominence to different elements +in the primal stock of beliefs. The choice of Israel was unique: +Greece retained far more of the lower ancient ideas, but gave to them +a beauty of grace and form which is found among no other race.</p> +<p>If this view be admitted for the moment, and for the argument’s +sake, we may ask how it applies to the myths of Apollo. Among +the ideas which even now prevail among the backward peoples still in +the neolithic stage of culture, we may select a few conceptions. +There is the conception of a great primal anthropomorphic Being, who +was in the beginning, or, at least, about whose beginning legend is +silent. He made all things, he <!-- page 26--><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>existed +on earth (in some cases), teaching men the arts of life and rules of +conduct, social and moral. In those instances he retired from +earth, and now dwells on high, still concerned with the behaviour of +the tribes.</p> +<p>This is a lofty conception, but it is entangled with a different +set of legends. This primal Being is mixed up with strange persons +of a race earlier than man, half human, half bestial. Many things, +in some cases almost all things, are mythically regarded, not as created, +but as the results of adventures and metamorphoses among the members +of this original race. Now in New Zealand, Polynesia, Greece, +and elsewhere, but not, to my knowledge, in the very most backward peoples, +the place of this original race, “Old, old Ones,” is filled +by great natural objects, Earth, Sky, Sea, Forests, regarded as beings +of human parts and passions.</p> +<p>The present universe is mythically arranged in regard to their early +adventures: the separation of sky and earth, and so forth. <!-- page 27--><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span> +Where this belief prevails we find little or no trace of the primal +maker and master, though we do find strange early metaphysics of curiously +abstract quality (Maoris, Zuñis, Polynesians). As far as +our knowledge goes, Greek mythology springs partly from this stratum +of barbaric as opposed to strictly savage thought. Ouranos and +Gaea, Cronos, and the Titans represent the primal beings who have their +counterpart in Maori and Wintu legend. But these, in the Greece +of the Epics and Hesiod, have long been subordinated to Zeus and the +Olympians, who are envisaged as triumphant gods of a younger generation. +There is no Creator; but Zeus—how, we do not know—has come +to be regarded as a Being relatively Supreme, and as, on occasion, the +guardian of morality. Of course his conduct, in myth, is represented +as a constant violation of the very rules of life which he expects mankind +to observe. I am disposed to look on this essential contradiction +as the result of a series of mythical accretions on an original conception +of Zeus <!-- page 28--><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>in his higher +capacity. We can see how the accretions arose. Man never +lived consistently on the level of his best original ideas: savages +also have endless myths of Baiame or Daramulun, or Bunjil, in which +these personages, though interested in human behaviour, are puerile, +cruel, absurd, lustful, and so on. Man will sport thus with his +noblest intuitions.</p> +<p>In the same way, in Christian Europe, we may contrast Dunbar’s +pious “Ballat of Our Lady” with his “Kynd Kittok,” +in which God has his eye on the soul of an intemperate ale-wife who +has crept into Paradise. “God lukit, and saw her lattin +in, and leugh His heart sair.” Examples of this kind of +sportive irreverence are common enough; their root is in human nature: +and they could not be absent in the mythology of savage or of ancient +peoples. To Zeus the myths of this kind would come to be attached +in several ways.</p> +<p>As a nature-god of the Heaven he marries the Earth. The tendency +of men being to <!-- page 29--><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>claim +descent from a God, for each family with this claim a myth of a separate +divine amour was needed. Where there had existed Totemism, or +belief in kinship with beasts, the myth of the amour of a wolf, bull, +serpent, swan, and so forth, was attached to the legend of Zeus. +Zeus had been that swan, serpent, wolf, or bull. Once more, ritual +arose, in great part, from the rites of sympathetic magic.</p> +<p>This or that mummery was enacted by men for a magical purpose, to +secure success in the chase, agriculture, or war. When the performers +asked, “Why do we do thus and thus?” the answer was, “Zeus +first did so,” or Demeter, or Apollo did so, on a certain occasion. +About that occasion a myth was framed, and finally there was no profligacy, +cruelty, or absurdity of which the God was not guilty. Yet, all +the time, he punished adultery, inhospitality, perjury, incest, cannibalism, +and other excesses, of which, in legend, he was always setting the example. +We know from Xenophanes, Plato, <!-- page 30--><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>and +St. Augustine how men’s consciences were tormented by this unceasing +contradiction: this overgrowth of myth on the stock of an idea originally +noble. It is thus that I would attempt to account for the contradictory +conceptions of Zeus, for example.</p> +<p>As to Apollo, I do not think that mythologists determined to find, +in Apollo, some deified aspect of Nature, have laid stress enough on +his counterparts in savage myth. We constantly find, in America, +in the Andaman Isles, and in Australia, that, subordinate to the primal +Being, there exists another who enters into much closer relations with +mankind. He is often concerned with healing and with prophecy, +or with the inspiration of conjurers or shamans. Sometimes he +is merely an underling, as in the case of the Massachusetts Kiehtan, +and his more familiar subordinate, Hobamoc. <a name="citation30"></a><a href="#footnote30">{30}</a> +But frequently this go-between of God and Man is (like Apollo) the <i>Son</i> +of the primal Being (often an unbegotten Son) or his Messenger <!-- page 31--><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>(Andaman, +Noongaburrah, Kurnai, Kamilaroi, and other Australian tribes). +He reports to the somewhat otiose primal Being about men’s conduct, +and he sometimes superintends the Mysteries. I am disposed to +regard the prophetic and oracular Apollo (who, as the Hymn to Hermes +tells us, alone knows the will of Father Zeus) as the Greek modification +of this personage in savage theology. Where this Son is found +in Australia, I by no means regard him as a savage refraction from Christian +teaching about a mediator, for Christian teaching, in fact, has not +been accepted, least of all by the highly conservative sorcerers, or +shamans, or wirreenuns of the tribes. European observers, of course, +have been struck by (and have probably exaggerated in some instances) +the Christian analogy. But if they had been as well acquainted +with ancient Greek as with Christian theology they would have remarked +that the Andaman, American, and Australian “mediators” are +infinitely more akin to Apollo, in his relations with Zeus <!-- page 32--><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>and +with men, than to any Person about whom missionaries can preach. +But the most devoted believer in borrowing will not say that, when the +Australian mediator, Tundun, son of Mungun-gnaur, turns into a porpoise, +the Kurnai have borrowed from our Hymn of the Dolphin Apollo. +It is absurd to maintain that the Son of the God, the go-between of +God and men, in savage theology, is borrowed from missionaries, while +this being has so much more in common with Apollo (from whom he cannot +conceivably be borrowed) than with Christ. The Tundun-porpoise +story seems to have arisen in gratitude to the porpoise, which drives +fishes inshore, for the natives to catch. Neither Tharamulun nor +Hobamoc (Australian and American Gods of healing and soothsaying), who +appear to men as serpents, are borrowed from Asclepius, or from the +Python of Apollo. The processes have been quite different, and +in Apollo, the oracular son of Zeus, who declares his counsel to men, +I am apt to see a beautiful Greek modification of <!-- page 33--><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>the +type of the mediating Son of the primal Being of savage belief, adorned +with many of the attributes of the Sun God, from whom, however, he is +fundamentally distinct. Apollo, I think, is an adorned survival +of the Son of the God of savage theology. He was not, at first, +a Nature God, solar or not. This opinion, if it seems valid, helps +to account, in part, for the animal metamorphoses of Apollo, a survival +from the mental confusion of savagery. Such a confusion, in Greece, +makes it necessary for the wise son of Zeus to seek information, as +in the Hymn to Hermes, from an old clown. This medley of ideas, +in the mind of a civilised poet, who believes that Apollo is all-knowing +in the counsels of eternity, is as truly mythological as Dunbar’s +God who laughs his heart sore at an ale-house jest. Dunbar, and +the author of the Hymn, and the savage with his tale of Tundun or Daramulun, +have all quite contradictory sets of ideas alternately present to their +minds; the mediæval poet, of course, being conscious of the contradiction, +which <!-- page 34--><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>makes the essence +of his humour, such as it is. To Greece, in its loftier moods, +Apollo was, despite his myth, a noble source of inspiration, of art, +and of conduct. But the contradiction in the low myth and high +doctrine of Apollo, could never be eradicated under any influence less +potent than that of Christianity. <a name="citation34"></a><a href="#footnote34">{34}</a> +If this theory of Apollo’s origin be correct, many pages of learned +works on Mythology need to be rewritten. <!-- page 35--><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span></p> +<h2>THE HYMN TO HERMES</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang35b.jpg"> +<img alt="Hermes with the boy Dionysos. Statue by Praxiteles, found at Olympia" src="images/lang35s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The Hymn to Hermes is remarkable for the corruption of the text, +which appears even to present <i>lacunæ</i>. The English +reader will naturally prefer the lively and charming version of Shelley +to any other. The poet can tell and adorn the story without visibly +floundering in the pitfalls of a dislocated text. If we may judge +by line 51, and if Greek musical tradition be correct, the date of the +Hymn cannot be earlier than the fortieth Olympiad. About that +period Terpander is said to have given the lyre seven strings (as Mercury +does in the poem), in place of the previous four strings. The +date of Terpander is dubious, but probably the seven-stringed lyre had +long been in common use before the poet attributed the invention to +Hermes. The same argument applies to the antiquity <!-- page 36--><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>of +writing, assigned by poets as the invention of various mythical and +prehistoric heroes. But the poets were not careful archæologists, +and regarded anachronisms as genially as did Shakespeare or Scott. +Moreover, the fact that Terpander did invent the seven chords is not +beyond dispute historically, while, mythically, Apollo and Amphion are +credited with the idea. That Hermes invented fire-sticks seems +a fable which robs Prometheus of the honour. We must not look +for any kind of consistency in myth.</p> +<p>The learned differ as to the precise purpose of the Hymn, and some +even exclude the invention of the <i>cithara</i>. To myself it +seems that the poet chiefly revels in a very familiar subject of savage +humour (notably among the Zulus), the extraordinary feats and tricks +of a tiny and apparently feeble and helpless person or animal, such +as Brer Rabbit. The triumph of astuteness over strength (a triumph +here assigned to the infancy of a God) is the theme. Hermes is +here a rustic <i>doublure</i> of Apollo, as he was, in fact, mainly +a rural <!-- page 37--><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>deity, though +he became the Messenger of the Gods, and the Guide of Souls outworn. +In these respects he answers to the Australian Grogoragally, in his +double relation to the Father, Boyma, and to men living and dead. <a name="citation37a"></a><a href="#footnote37a">{37a}</a></p> +<p>As a go-between of Gods and men, Hermes may be a <i>doublure</i> +of Apollo, but, as the Hymn shows, he aspired in vain to Apollo’s +oracular function. In one respect his behaviour has a singular +savage parallel. His shoes woven of twigs, so as not to show the +direction in which he is proceeding, answer to the equally shapeless +feather sandals of the blacks who “go <i>Kurdaitcha</i>,” +that is, as avengers of blood. I have nowhere else found this +practice as to the shoes, which, after all, cannot conceal the direction +of the spoor from a native tracker. <a name="citation37b"></a><a href="#footnote37b">{37b}</a> +The trick of driving the cattle backwards answers to the old legend +that Bruce reversed the shoes of <!-- page 38--><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>his +horse when he fled from the court of Edward I.</p> +<p>The humour of the Hymn is rather rustic: cattle theft is the chief +joke, cattle theft by a baby. The God, divine as he is, feels +his mouth water for roast beef, a primitive conception. In fact, +throughout this Hymn we are far from the solemn regard paid to Apollo, +from the wistful beauty of the Hymn to Demeter, and from the gladness +and melancholy of the Hymn to Aphrodite. Sportive myths are treated +sportively, as in the story of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey. +Myths contained all conceivable elements, among others that of humour, +to which the poet here abandons himself. The statues and symbols +of Hermes were inviolably sacred; as Guide of Souls he played the part +of comforter and friend: he brought men all things lucky and fortunate: +he made the cattle bring forth abundantly: he had the golden wand of +wealth. But he was also tricksy as a Brownie or as Puck; and that +fairy aspect of his character and legend, he <!-- page 39--><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>being +the midnight thief whose maraudings account for the unexplained disappearances +of things, is the chief topic of the gay and reckless hymn. Even +the Gods, even angry Apollo, are moved to laughter, for over sport and +playfulness, too, Greek religion throws her sanction. At the dishonesties +of commerce (clearly regarded as a form of theft) Hermes winks his laughing +eyes (line 516). This is not an early Socialistic protest against +“Commercialism.” The early traders, like the Vikings, +were alternately pirates and hucksters, as opportunity served. +Every occupation must have its heavenly patron, its departmental deity, +and Hermes protects thieves and raiders, “minions of the moon,” +“clerks of St. Nicholas.” His very birth is a stolen +thing, the darkling fruit of a divine amour in a dusky cavern. +<i>Il chasse de race</i>. <a name="citation39"></a><a href="#footnote39">{39}</a> +<!-- page 40--><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span></p> +<h2>THE HYMN TO APHRODITE</h2> +<p>The Hymn to Aphrodite is, in a literary sense, one of the most beautiful +and quite the most Homeric in the collection. By “Homeric” +I mean that if we found the adventure of Anchises occurring at length +in the Iliad, by way of an episode, perhaps in a speech of Æneas, +it would not strike us as inconsistent in tone, though occasionally +in phrase. Indeed the germ of the Hymn occurs in Iliad, B. 820: +“Æneas, whom holy Aphrodite bore to the embraces of Anchises +on the knowes of Ida, a Goddess couching with a mortal.” +Again, in E. 313, Æneas is spoken of as the son of Aphrodite and +the neat-herd, Anchises. The celebrated prophecy of the future +rule of the children of Æneas over the Trojans (Υ. 307), +probably made, like many prophecies, after the <!-- page 41--><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>event, +appears to indicate the claim of a Royal House at Ilios, and is regarded +as of later date than the general context of the epic. The Æneid +is constructed on this hint; the Romans claiming to be of Trojan descent +through Æneas. The date of the composition cannot be fixed +from considerations of the Homeric tone; thus lines 238-239 may be a +reminiscence of Odyssey, λ. 394, and other like suggestions are +offered. <a name="citation41"></a><a href="#footnote41">{41}</a> +The conjectures as to date vary from the time of Homer to that of the +<i>Cypria</i>, of Mimnermus (the references to the bitterness of loveless +old age are in his vein) of Anacreon, or even of Herodotus and the Tragedians. +The words σατινη, πρεσβειρα, +and other indications are relied on for a late date: and there are obvious +coincidences with the Hymn to Demeter, as in line 174, <i>Demeter</i> +109, f. Gemoll, however, takes this hymn to be the earlier.</p> +<p>About the place of composition, Cyprus or Asia Minor, the learned +are no less divided <!-- page 42--><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>than +about the date. Many of the grounds on which their opinions rest +appear unstable. The relations of Aphrodite to the wild beasts +under her wondrous spell, for instance, need not be borrowed from Circe +with her attendant beasts. If not of Homer’s age, the Hymn +is markedly successful as a continuation of the Homeric tone and manner.</p> +<p>Modern Puritanism naturally “condemns” Aphrodite, as +it “condemns” Helen. But Homer is lenient; Helen is +under the spell of the Gods, an unwilling and repentant tool of Destiny; +and Aphrodite, too, is driven by Zeus into the arms of a mortal. +She is αιδοιη, shamefast; and her +adventure is to her a bitter sorrow (199, 200). The dread of Anchises—a +man is not long of life who lies with a Goddess—refers to a belief +found from Glenfinlas to Samoa and New Caledonia, that the embraces +of the spiritual ladies of the woodlands are fatal to men. The +legend has been told to me in the Highlands, and to Mr. Stevenson in +Samoa, while my cousin, <!-- page 43--><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>Mr. +J. J. Atkinson, actually knew a Kaneka who died in three days after +an amour like that of Anchises. The Breton ballad, <i>Le Sieur +Nan</i>, turns on the same opinion. The amour of Thomas the Rhymer +is a mediæval analogue of the Idæan legend.</p> +<p>Aphrodite has better claims than most Greek Gods to Oriental elements. +Herodotus and Pausanias (i. xiv. 6, iii. 23, I) look on her as a being +first worshipped by the Assyrians, then by the Paphians of Cyprus, and +Phœnicians at Askelon, who communicated the cult to the Cythereans. +Cyprus is one of her most ancient sites, and Ishtar and Ashtoreth are +among her Oriental analogues. She springs from the sea—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The wandering waters knew her, the winds and the +viewless ways,<br /> +And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue streams of the bays.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the charm of Aphrodite is Greek. Even without foreign influence, +Greek polytheism would have developed a Goddess of Love, as did the +polytheism of the North (Frigga) and <!-- page 44--><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>of +the Aztecs. The rites of Adonis, the vernal year, are, even in +the name of the hero, Oriental. “The name Adonis is the +Phœnician <i>Adon</i>, ‘Lord.’” <a name="citation44"></a><a href="#footnote44">{44}</a> +“The decay and revival of vegetation” inspires the Adonis +rite, which is un-Homeric; and was superfluous, where the descent and +return of Persephone typified the same class of ideas. To whatever +extent contaminated by Phœnician influence, Aphrodite in Homer +is purely Greek, in grace and happy humanity.</p> +<p>The origins of Aphrodite, unlike the origins of Apollo, cannot be +found in a state of low savagery. She is a departmental Goddess, +and as such, as ruling a province of human passion, she belongs to a +late development of religion. To Christianity she was a scandal, +one of the scandals which are absent from the most primitive of surviving +creeds. Polytheism, as if of set purpose, puts every conceivable +aspect of life, good or bad, under divine sanction. This is much +less the case <!-- page 45--><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>in the +religion of the very backward races. We do not know historically, +what the germs of religion were; if we look at the most archaic examples, +for instance in Australia or the Andaman Islands, we find neither sacrifice +nor departmental deities.</p> +<p>Religion there is mainly a belief in a primal Being, not necessarily +conceived as spiritual, but rather as an undying magnified Man, of indefinitely +extensive powers. He dwells above “the vaulted sky beyond +which lies the mysterious home of that great and powerful Being, who +is Bunjil, Baiame, or Daramulun in different tribal languages, but who +in all is known by a name the equivalent of the only one used by the +Kurnai, which is Mungan-ngaur, or ‘Our Father.’” <a name="citation45"></a><a href="#footnote45">{45}</a> +This Father is conceived of in some places as “a very great old +man with a long beard,” enthroned on, or growing into, a crystal +throne. Often he is served by a son or sons (Apollo, Hermes), +frequently regarded as spiritually begotten; elsewhere, looked on as +the son of the wife <!-- page 46--><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>of +the deity, and as father of the tribe. <a name="citation46a"></a><a href="#footnote46a">{46a}</a> +Scandals connected with fatherhood, amorous intrigues so abundant in +Greek mythology, are usually not reported among the lowest races. +In one known case, the deity, Pundjel or Bunjil, takes the wives of +Karween, who is changed into a crane. <a name="citation46b"></a><a href="#footnote46b">{46b}</a> +This is one of the many savage ætiological myths which account +for the peculiarities of animals as a result of metamorphosis, in the +manner of Ovid. It has been connected with the legend of Bunjil, +who is thus envisaged, not as “Our Father” beyond the vault +of heaven, who still inspires poets, <a name="citation46c"></a><a href="#footnote46c">{46c}</a> +but as a wandering, shape-shifting medicine-man. Zeus, the Heavenly +Father, of course appears times without number in the same contradictory +aspect.</p> +<p>But such anecdotes are either not common, or are not frequently reported, +in the faiths of the most archaic of known races. Much more frequently +we find the totemistic conception. All the kindreds with animal +names <!-- page 47--><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>(why adopted +we do not know) are apt to explain these designations by descent from +the animals selected, or by metamorphosis of the primal beasts into +men. This collides with the other notions of descent from, or +creation or manufacture out of clay, by the primal Being, “Father +Ours.” Such contradictions are nothing to the savage theologian, +who is no reconciler or apologist. But when reconciliation and +apology are later found to be desirable, as in Greece, it is easy to +explain that we are descended <i>both</i> from Our Father, and from +a swan, cow, ant, serpent, dog, wolf, or what you will. That beast +was Our Father, say Father Zeus, in animal disguise. Thus Greek +legends of bestial amours of a God are probably, in origin, not primitive, +but scandals produced in the effort to reconcile contradictory myths. +The result is a worse scandal, an accretion of more low myths about +a conception of the primal Being which was, relatively, lofty and pure.</p> +<p>Again, as aristocracies arose, the chief families desired to be sons +of the Father in a <!-- page 48--><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>special +sense: not as common men are. Her Majesty’s lineage may +thus be traced to Woden! Now each such descent required a separate +divine amour, and a new scandalous story of Zeus or Apollo, though Zeus +may originally have been as celibate as the Australian Baiame or Noorele +are, in some legends. Once more, syncretism came in as a mythopœic +influence. Say that several Australian nations, becoming more +polite, amalgamated into a settled people. Then we should have +several Gods, the chief Beings of various tribes, say Noorele, Bunjil, +Mungan-ngaur, Baiame, Daramulun, Mangarrah, Mulkari, Pinmeheal. +The most imposing God of the dominant tribe might be elevated to the +sovereignty of Zeus. But, in the new administration, places must +be found for the other old tribal Gods. They are, therefore, set +over various departments: Love, War, Agriculture, Medicine, Poetry, +Commerce, while one or more of the sons take the places of Apollo and +Hermes. There appears to be a very early example of syncretism +in <!-- page 49--><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>Australia. +Daramulun (Papang, Our Father) is “Master of All,” on the +coast, near Shoalhaven River. Baiame is “Master of All,” +far north, on the Barwan. But the locally intermediate tribe of +the Wiraijuri, or Wiradthuri, have adopted Baiame, and reduced Daramulun +to an exploded bugbear, a merely nominal superintendent of the Mysteries; +and the southern Coast Murring have rejected Baiame altogether, or never +knew him, while making Daramulun supreme.</p> +<p>One obvious method of reconciling various tribal Gods in a syncretic +Olympus, is the genealogical. All are children of Zeus, for example, +or grandchildren, or brothers and sisters. Fancy then provides +an amour to account for each relationship. Zeus loved Leto, Leda, +Europa, and so forth. Thus a God, originally innocent and even +moral, becomes a perfect pattern of vice; and the eternal contradiction +vexes the souls of Xenophanes, Plato, and St. Augustine. Sacrifices, +even human sacrifices, wholly unknown to the most archaic faiths, were +made to ghosts of <!-- page 50--><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>men: +and especially of kings, in the case of human sacrifice. Thence +they were transferred to Gods, and behold a new scandal, when men began +to reflect under more civilised conditions. Thus all these legends +of divine amours and sins, or most of them, including the wanton legend +of Aphrodite, and all the human sacrifices which survived to the disgrace +of Greek religion, are really degrading accessories to the most archaic +beliefs. They are products, not of the most rudimentary savage +existence, but of the evolution through the lower and higher barbarism. +The worst features of savage ritual are different—taking the lines +of sorcery, of cruel initiations, and, perhaps, of revival of the licence +of promiscuity, or of Group Marriage. Of these things the traces +are not absent from Greek faith, but they are comparatively inconspicuous.</p> +<p>Buffoonery, as we have seen, exists in all grades of civilised or +savage rites, and was not absent from the popular festivals of the mediæval +Church: religion throwing her mantle <!-- page 51--><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>over +every human field of action, as over Folk Medicine. On these lines +I venture to explain what seem to me the strange and repugnant elements +of the religion of a people so refined, and so capable of high moral +ideas, as the Greeks. Aphrodite is personified desire, but religion +did not throw her mantle over desire alone; the cloistered life, the +frank charm of maidenhood, were as dear to the Greek genius, and were +consecrated by the examples of Athene, Artemis, and Hestia. She +presides over the pure element of the fire of the hearth, just as in +the household did the daughter of the king or chief. Hers are +the first libations at feasts (xxviii. 5), though in Homer they are +poured forth to Hermes.</p> +<p>We may explain the Gods of the minor hymns in the same way. +Pan, for instance, as the son of Hermes, inherits the wild, frolicsome, +rural aspect of his character. The Dioscuri answer to the Vedic +Asvins, twin rescuers of men in danger on land or sea: perhaps the Evening +and Morning Star. <!-- page 52--><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span> +Dionysus is another aspect of the joy of life and of the world and the +vintaging. Moon and Sun, Selene and Helios, appear as quite distinct +from Artemis and Apollo; Gæa, the Earth, is equally distinct from +Demeter. The Hymn to Ares is quite un-Homeric in character, and +is oddly conceived in the spirit of the Scottish poltroon, who cries +to his friend, “Haud me, haud me, or I’ll fecht!” +The war-god is implored to moderate the martial eagerness of the poet. +The original collector here showed lack of discrimination. At +no time, however, was Ares a popular God in Greece; in Homer he is a +braggart and coward. <!-- page 53--><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span></p> +<h2>THE HYMN TO DEMETER</h2> +<p>The beautiful Hymn to Demeter, an example of Greek religious faith +in its most pensive and most romantic aspects, was found in the last +century (1780), in Moscow. <i>Inter pullos et porcos latitabat</i>: +the song of the rural deity had found its way into the haunts of the +humble creatures whom she protected. A discovery even more fortunate, +in 1857, led Sir Charles Newton to a little <i>sacellum</i>, or family +chapel, near Cnidos. On a platform of rock, beneath a cliff, and +looking to the Mediterranean, were the ruins of the ancient shrine: +the votive offerings; the lamps long without oil or flame; the Curses, +or Diræ, inscribed on thin sheets of lead, and directed against +thieves or rivals. The head of the statue, itself already known, +was also discovered. Votive offerings, cheap curses, <!-- page 54--><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>objects +of folk-lore rite and of sympathetic magic,—these are connected +with the popular, the peasant aspect of the religion of Demeter. +She it is to whom pigs are sacrificed: who makes the fields fertile +with scattered fragments of their flesh; and her rustic effigy, at Theocritus’s +feast of the harvest home, stands smiling, with corn and poppies in +her hands.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang54b.jpg"> +<img alt="Mourning Demeter. Marble statue from Knidos. In the British Museum" src="images/lang54s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>But the Cnidian shrine had once another treasure, the beautiful melancholy +statue of the seated Demeter of the uplifted eyes; the mourning mother: +the weary seeker for the lost maiden: her child Persephone. Far +from the ruins above the sea, beneath the scorched seaward wall of rock: +far from the aromatic fragrance of the rock-nourished flowers, from +the bees, and the playful lizards, Demeter now occupies her place in +the great halls of the British Museum. Like the Hymn, this melancholy +and tender work of art is imperfect, but the sentiment is thereby rather +increased than impaired. The ancients buried things broken with +the dead, <!-- page 55--><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>that the +shadows of tool, or weapon, or vase might be set free, to serve the +shadows of their masters in the land of the souls. Broken as they, +too, are, the Hymn and the statue are “free among the dead,” +and eloquent of the higher religion that, in Greece, attached itself +to the lost Maiden and the sorrowing Mother. Demeter, in religion, +was more than a fertiliser of the fields: Korê, the Maiden, was +more than the buried pig, or the seed sown to await its resurrection; +or the harvest idol, fashioned of corn-stalks: more even than a symbol +of the winter sleep and vernal awakening of the year and the life of +nature. She became the “dread Persephone” of the Odyssey,</p> +<blockquote><p>“A Queen over death and the dead.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In her winter retreat below the earth she was the bride of the Lord +of Many Guests, and the ruler “of the souls of men outworn.” +In this office Odysseus in Homer knows her, though neither Iliad nor +Odyssey recognises <i>Korê</i> as the maiden Spring, the daughter +and <!-- page 56--><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>companion of Demeter +as Goddess of Grain. Christianity, even, did not quite dethrone +Persephone. She lives in two forms: first, as the harvest effigy +made of corn-stalks bound together, the last gleanings; secondly, as +“the Fairy Queen Proserpina,” who carried Thomas the Rhymer +from beneath the Eildon Tree to that land which lies beyond the stream +of slain men’s blood.</p> +<blockquote><p>“For a’ the bluid that’s shed on earth<br /> +Flows through the streams of that countrie.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang56b.jpg"> +<img alt="Silver denarius of C. Vibius Pansa (about 90 B.C.). Obv. Head of Apollo. Rev. Demeter searching for Persephone" src="images/lang56s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Thus tenacious of life has been the myth of <!-- page 57--><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>Mother +and Maiden, a natural flower of the human heart, found, unborrowed, +by the Spaniards in the maize-fields of Peru. Clearly the myth +is a thing composed of many elements, glad and sad as the waving fields +of yellow grain, or as the Chthonian darkness under earth where the +seed awaits new life in the new year. The creed is practical as +the folk-lore of sympathetic magic, which half expects to bring good +harvest luck by various mummeries; and the creed is mystical as the +hidden things and words unknown which assured Pindar and Sophocles of +secure felicity in this and in the future life.</p> +<p>The creed is beautiful as the exquisite profile of the corn-tressed +head of Persephone on Syracusan coins: and it is grotesque as the custom +which bade the pilgrims to Eleusis bathe in the sea, each with the pig +which he was about to sacrifice. The highest religious hopes, +the meanest magical mummeries are blended in this religion. That +one element is earlier than the other we cannot say with much certainty. +The ritual <!-- page 58--><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>aspect, +as concerned with the happy future of the soul, does not appear in Iliad +or Odyssey, where the Mysteries are not named. But the silence +of Homer is never a safe argument in favour of his ignorance, any more +than the absence of allusion to tobacco in Shakspeare is a proof that +tobacco was, in his age, unknown.</p> +<p>We shall find that a barbaric people, the Pawnees, hold a mystery +precisely parallel to the Demeter legend: a Mystery necessarily unborrowed +from Greece. The Greeks, therefore, may have evolved the legend +long before Homer’s day, and he may have known the story which +he does not find occasion to tell. As to what was said, shown, +and done in the Eleusinia, we only gather that there was a kind of Mystery +Play on the sacred legend; that there were fastings, vigils, sacrifices, +secret objects displayed, sacred words uttered; and that thence such +men as Pindar and Sophocles received the impression that for them, in +this and the future life, all was well, was well for those of pure hearts +and <!-- page 59--><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>hands. The +“purity” may partly have been ritual, but was certainly +understood, also, as relating to excellence of life. Than such +a faith (for faith it is) religion has nothing better to give. +But the extreme diligence of scholars and archæologists can tell +us nothing more definite. The impressions on the souls of the +initiated may have been caused merely by that dim or splendid religious +light of the vigils, and by association with sacred things usually kept +in solemn sanctuaries. Again, mere buffoonery (as is common in +savage Mysteries) brought the pilgrims back to common life when they +crossed the bridge on their return to Athens; just as the buffooneries +of Baubo brought a smile to the sad lips of Demeter. Beyond this +all is conjecture, and the secret may have been so well kept just because, +in fact, there was no secret to keep. <a name="citation59"></a><a href="#footnote59">{59}</a> +<!-- page 60--><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span></p> +<p>Till the end of the present century, mythologists did not usually +employ the method of comparing Greek rites and legends with, first, +the sympathetic magic and the fables of peasant folk-lore; second, with +the Mysteries and myths of contemporary savage races, of which European +folk-lore is mainly a survival. For a study of Demeter from these +sides (a study still too much neglected in Germany) readers may consult +Mannhardt’s works, Mr. Frazer’s “Golden Bough,” +and the present translator’s “Custom and Myth,” and +“Myth, Ritual, and Religion.” Mr. Frazer, especially, +has enabled the English reader to understand the savage and rural element +of sympathetic magic as a factor in the Demeter myth. Meanwhile +Mr. Pater has dealt with the higher sentiment, the more religious aspect, +of the myth and the rites. I am not inclined to go all lengths +with Mr. Frazer’s ingenious and learned system, as will be seen, +while regretting that the new edition of his “Golden Bough” +is not yet accessible. <!-- page 61--><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span></p> +<p>If we accept (which I do not entirely) Mr. Frazer’s theory +of the origin of the Demeter myth, there is no finer example of the +Greek power of transforming into beauty the superstitions of Barbarism. +The explanation to which I refer is contained in Mr. J. G. Frazer’s +learned and ingenious work, “The Golden Bough.” While +mythologists of the schools of Mr. Max Müller and Kuhn have usually +resolved most Gods and heroes into Sun, Sky, Dawn, Twilight; or, again, +into elemental powers of Thunder, Tempest, Lightning, and Night, Mr. +Frazer is apt to see in them the Spirit of Vegetation. Osiris +is a Tree Spirit or a Corn Spirit (Mannhardt, the founder of the system, +however, took Osiris to be the Sun). Balder is the Spirit of the +Oak. The oak, “we may certainly conclude, was one of the +chief, if not the very chief divinity of the Aryans before the dispersion.” +<a name="citation61"></a><a href="#footnote61">{61}</a> If so, +the Aryans before the dispersion were on an infinitely lower religious +level than those Australian tribes, whose chief divinity <!-- page 62--><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>is +not a gum-tree, but a being named “Our Father,” dwelling +beyond the visible heavens. When we remember the vast numbers +of gods of sky or heaven among many scattered races, and the obvious +connection of Zeus with the sky (<i>sub Jove frigido</i>), and the usually +assigned sense of the name of Zeus, it is not easy to suppose that he +was originally an oak. But Mr. Frazer considers the etymological +connection of Zeus with the Sanscrit word for sky, an insufficient reason +for regarding Zeus as, in origin, a sky-god. He prefers, it seems, +to believe that, as being the wood out of which fire was kindled by +some Aryan-speaking peoples, the oak may have come to be called “The +Bright or Shining One” (Zeus, Jove), by the ancient Greeks and +Italians. <a name="citation62"></a><a href="#footnote62">{62}</a> +The Greeks, in fact, used the laurel (<i>daphne</i>) for making fire, +not, as far as I am aware, the oak. Though the oak was the tree +of Zeus, the heavens were certainly his province, and, despite the oak +of Dodona, and the oak on the Capitol, he is much more generally <!-- page 63--><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>connected +with the sky than with the tree. In fact this reduction of Zeus, +in origin, to an oak, rather suggests that the spirit of system is too +powerful with Mr. Frazer.</p> +<p>He makes, perhaps, a more plausible case for his reduction of dread +Persephone to a Pig. The process is curious. Early agricultural +man believed in a Corn Spirit, a spiritual essence animating the grain +(in itself no very unworthy conception). But because, as the field +is mown, animals in the corn are driven into the last unshorn nook, +and then into the open, the beast which rushed out of the last patch +was identified with the Corn Spirit in some animal shape, perhaps that +of a pig; many other animals occur. The pig has a great part in +the ritual of Demeter. Pigs of pottery were found by Sir Charles +Newton on her sacred ground. The initiate in the Mysteries brought +pigs to Eleusis, and bathed with them in the sea. The pig was +sacrificed to her; in fact (though not in our Hymn) she was closely +associated with pigs. “We may now ask . . . may not the +pig be nothing <!-- page 64--><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>but +the Goddess herself in animal form?” <a name="citation64a"></a><a href="#footnote64a">{64a}</a> +She would later become anthropomorphic: a lovely Goddess, whose hair, +as in the Hymn, is “yellow as ripe corn.” But the +prior pig could not be shaken off. At the Attic Thesmophoria the +women celebrated the Descent and Ascent of Persephone,—a “double” +of Demeter. In this rite pigs and other things were thrown into +certain caverns. Later, the cold remains of pig were recovered +and placed on the altar. Fragments were scattered for luck on +the fields with the seed-corn. A myth explained that a flock of +pigs were swallowed by Earth when Persephone was ravished by Hades to +the lower world, of which matter the Hymn says nothing. “In +short, the pigs were Proserpine.” <a name="citation64b"></a><a href="#footnote64b">{64b}</a> +The eating of pigs at the Thesmophoria was “a partaking of the +body of the God,” though the partakers, one thinks, must have +been totally unconscious of the circumstance. We must presume +that (if this theory be correct) a very considerable time was needed +for the <!-- page 65--><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>evolution of +a pig into the Demeter of the Hymn, and the change is quite successfully +complete; a testimony to the transfiguring power of the Greek genius.</p> +<p>We may be inclined to doubt, however, whether the task before the +genius of Greece, the task of making Proserpine out of a porker, was +really so colossal. The primitive mind is notoriously capable +of entertaining, simultaneously, the most contradictory notions. +Thus, in the Australian “Legend of Eerin,” the mourners +implore Byamee to accept the soul of the faithful Eerin into his Paradise, +Bullimah. No doubt Byamee heard, yet Eerin is now a little owl +of plaintive voice, which ratters warning cries in time of peril. <a name="citation65"></a><a href="#footnote65">{65}</a> +No incongruity of this kind is felt to be a difficulty by the childlike +narrators. Now I conceive that, starting with the relatively high +idea of a Spirit of the Grain, early man was quite capable of envisaging +it both spiritually and in zoomorphic form (accidentally <!-- page 66--><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>conditioned +here into horse, there into goat, pig, or what not). But these +views of his need not exclude his simultaneous belief in the Corn Spirit +as a being anthropomorphic, “Mother Earth,” or “Mother +Grain,” as we follow the common etymology; or that of Mannhardt +(ζεια (<i>dæa</i>) μητηρ=“barley-mother”). +If I am right, poetry and the higher religion moved from the first on +the line of the anthropomorphic Lady of the Harvest and the Corn, Mother +Barley: while the popular folk-lore of the Corn Spirit (which found +utterance in the mirth of harvesting, and in the magic ritual for ensuring +fertility), followed on the line of the pig. At some seasons, +and in some ceremonies, the pig represented the genius of the corn: +in general, the Lady of the Corn was—Demeter. We really +need not believe that the two forms of the genius of the corn were ever +<i>consciously</i> identified. Demeter never was a Pig! <a name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66">{66}</a> +<!-- page 67--><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span></p> +<p>“The Peruvians, we are told, believed all useful plants to +be animated by a divine being who causes their growth,” says Mr. +Frazer. <a name="citation67"></a><a href="#footnote67">{67}</a> +The genealogical table, then, in my opinion, is:—</p> +<pre>Divine Being of the Grain. + | + +---------+--------------------------+ + | | +(<i>Anthropomorphized</i>). (<i>Zoomorphised</i>). +Mother of Corn. Pig, Horse, + Demeter. and so on.</pre> +<p>Thus the Greek genius had other and better materials to work on, +in evolving Demeter, than the rather lowly animal which is associated +with her rites. If any one objects that animal gods always precede +anthropomorphic gods in evolution, we reply that, in the most archaic +of known races, the deities are represented in human guise at the Mysteries, +though there are animal Totems, and though, in myth, the deity <!-- page 68--><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>may, +and often does, assume shapes of bird or beast. <a name="citation68"></a><a href="#footnote68">{68}</a></p> +<p>Among rites of the backward races, none, perhaps, so closely resembles +the Eleusinian Mysteries as the tradition of the Pawnees. In Attica, +Hades, Lord of the Dead, ravishes away Persephone, the vernal daughter +of Demeter. Demeter then wanders among men, and is hospitably +received by Celeus, King of Eleusis. Baffled in her endeavour +to make his son immortal, she demands a temple, where she sits in wrath, +blighting the grain. She is reconciled by the restoration of her +daughter, at the command of Zeus. But for a third of the year +Persephone, having tasted a pomegranate seed in Hades, has to reign +as Queen of the Dead, beneath the earth. Scenes from this tale +were, no doubt, enacted at the Mysteries, with interludes of buffoonery, +such as relieved most ancient and all savage Mysteries. The allegory +of the year’s death and renewal probably afforded a text for some +<!-- page 69--><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>discourse, or spectacle, +concerned with the future life.</p> +<p>Among the Pawnees, not a mother and daughter, but two primal beings, +brothers, named Manabozho and Chibiabos, are the chief characters. +The Manitos (spirits or gods) drown Chibiabos. Manabozho mourns +and smears his face with black, as Demeter wears black raiment. +He laments Chibiabos ceaselessly till the Manitos propitiate him with +gifts and ceremonies. They offer to him a cup, like the beverage +prepared for Demeter, in the Hymn, by Iambê. He drinks it, +is glad, washes off the black stain of mourning, and is himself again, +while Earth again is joyous. The Manitos restore Chibiabos to +life; but, having once died, he may not enter the temple, or “Medicine +Lodge.” He is sent to reign over the souls of the departed +as does Persephone. Manabozho makes offerings to Mesukkumikokwi, +the “Earth Mother” of the Pawnees. The story is enacted +in the sacred dances of the Pawnees. <a name="citation69"></a><a href="#footnote69">{69}</a> +<!-- page 70--><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span></p> +<p>The Pawnee ideas have fallen, with singularly accurate coincidence, +into the same lines as those of early Greece. Some moderns, such +as M. Foucart, have revived the opinion of Herodotus, that the Mysteries +were brought from Greece to Egypt. But, as the Pawnee example +shows, similar natural phenomena may anywhere beget similar myths and +rites. In Greece the <i>donnée</i> was a nature myth, and +a ritual in which it was enacted. That ritual was a form of sympathetic +magic, and the myth explained the performances. The refinement +and charm of the legend (on which Homer, as we saw, does not touch) +is due to the unique genius of Greece. Demeter became the deity +most familiar to the people, nearest to their hearts and endowed with +most temples; every farm possessing her rural shrine. But the +Chthonian, or funereal, aspect of Chibiabos, or of Persephone, is due +to a mood very distinct from that which sacrifices pigs as embodiments +of the Corn Spirit, if that be the real origin of the practice. <!-- page 71--><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span></p> +<p>We should much misconceive the religious spirit of the Greek rite +if we undertook to develop it all out an origin in sympathetic magic: +which, of course, I do not understand Mr. Frazer to do. Greek +scholars, again, are apt to view these researches into savage or barbaric +origins with great distaste and disfavour. This is not a scientific +frame of mind. In the absence of such researches other purely +fanciful origins have been invented by scholars, ancient or modern. +It is necessary to return to the pedestrian facts, if merely in order +to demonstrate the futility of the fancies. The result is in no +way discreditable to Greece. Beginning, like other peoples, with +the vague unrealised conception of the Corn Mother (an idea which could +not occur before the agricultural stage of civilisation), the Greeks +refined and elevated the idea into the Demeter of the Hymn, and of the +Cnidian statue. To do this was the result of their unique gifts +as a race. Meanwhile the other notion of a Ruler of Souls, in +Greece attached to Persephone, is found <!-- page 72--><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>among +peoples not yet agricultural: nomads living on grubs, roots, seeds of +wild grasses, and the products of the chase. Almost all men’s +ideas are as old as mankind, so far as we know mankind.</p> +<p>Conceptions originally “half-conscious,” and purely popular, +as of a Spirit of Vegetation, incarnate, as it were, in each year’s +growth, were next handled by conscious poets, like the author of our +Hymn, and then are “realised as abstract symbols, because intensely +characteristic examples of moral, or spiritual conditions.” <a name="citation72"></a><a href="#footnote72">{72}</a> +Thus Demeter and Persephone, no longer pigs or Grain-Mothers, “lend +themselves to the elevation and the correction of the sentiments of +sorrow and awe, by the presentment to the senses and imagination of +an ideal expression of them. Demeter cannot but seem the type +of divine grief. Persephone is the Goddess of Death, yet with +a promise of life to come.”</p> +<p>That the Eleusinia included an ethical <!-- page 73--><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>element +seems undeniable. This one would think probable, <i>a priori</i>, +on the ground that Greek Mysteries are an embellished survival of the +initiatory rites of savages, which do contain elements of morality. +This I have argued at some length in “Myth, Ritual, and Religion.” +Many strange customs in some Greek Mysteries, such as the daubing of +the initiate with clay, the use of the ρομβος +(the Australian <i>Tundun</i>, a small piece of wood whirled noisily +by a string), the general suggestion of <i>a new life</i>, the flogging +of boys at Sparta, their retreat, each with his instructor (Australian +<i>kabbo</i>, Greek εισπνηλος) +to the forests, are precisely analogous to things found in Australia, +America, and Africa. Now savage rites are often associated with +what we think gross cruelty, and, as in Fiji, with abandoned license, +of which the Fathers also accuse the Greeks. But, among the Yao +of Central Africa, the initiator, observes Mr. Macdonald, “is +said to give much good advice. His lectures condemn selfishness, +and a selfish <!-- page 74--><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>person +is called <i>mwisichana</i>, that is, ‘uninitiated.’” +<a name="citation74a"></a><a href="#footnote74a">{74a}</a></p> +<p>Among the Australians, Dampier, in 1688, observed the singular unselfish +generosity of distribution of food to the old, the weak, and the sick. +According to Mr. Howitt, the boys of the Coast Murring tribe are taught +in the Mysteries “to speak the straightforward truth while being +initiated, and are warned to avoid various offences against propriety +and morality.” The method of instruction is bad, a pantomimic +representation of the sin to be avoided, but the intention is excellent. +<a name="citation74b"></a><a href="#footnote74b">{74b}</a> Among +the Kurnai respect for the old, for unprotected women, the duty of unselfishness, +and other ethical ideas are inculcated, <a name="citation74c"></a><a href="#footnote74c">{74c}</a> +while certain food taboos prevail during the rite, as was also the case +in the Eleusinia. That this moral idea of “sharing what +they have with their friends” is not confined merely to the tribe, +is proved by the experience of John Finnegan, a white <!-- page 75--><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>man +lost near Moreton Bay early in this century. “At all times, +whether they had much or little, fish or kangaroo, they always gave +me as much as I could eat.” Even when the whites stole the +fish of the natives, and were detected, “instead of attempting +to repossess themselves of the fish, they instantly set at work to procure +more for us, and one or two fetched us as much <i>dingowa</i> as they +could carry.” <a name="citation75"></a><a href="#footnote75">{75}</a> +The first English settlers in Virginia, on the other hand, when some +native stole a cup, burned down the whole town.</p> +<p>Thus the morality of the savage is not merely tribal (as is often +alleged), and is carried into practice, as well as inculcated, in some +regions, not in all, during the Mysteries.</p> +<p>For these reasons, if the Greek Mysteries be survivals of savage +ceremonies (as there is no reason to doubt that they are), the savage +association of moral instruction with mummeries might survive as easily +as <!-- page 76--><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>anything else. +That it did survive is plain from numerous passages in classical authors. +<a name="citation76a"></a><a href="#footnote76a">{76a}</a> The +initiate “live a pious life in regard to strangers and citizens.” +They are to be “conscious of no evil”: they are to “protect +such as have wrought no unrighteousness.” Such precepts +“have their root in the ethico-religious consciousness.” +<a name="citation76b"></a><a href="#footnote76b">{76b}</a> It +is not mere ritual purity that the Mysteries demand, either among naked +Australians, or Yao, or in Greece. Lobeck did his best to minimise +the testimony to the higher element in the Eleusinia, but without avail. +The study of early, barbaric, savage, classical, Egyptian, or Indian +religions should not be one-sided. Men have always been men, for +good as well as for evil; and religion, almost everywhere, is allied +with ethics no less than it is overrun by the parasite of myth, and +the survival of magic in ritual. The Mother and the Maid were +“Saviours” (Κορη Σωτειρα), +<!-- page 77--><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>“holy” +and “pure,” despite contradictory legends. <a name="citation77"></a><a href="#footnote77">{77}</a> +The tales of incest, as between Zeus and Persephone, are the result +of the genealogical mania. The Gods were grouped in family-relationships, +to account for their companionship in ritual, and each birth postulated +an amour. None the less the same deities offered “salvation,” +of a sort, and were patrons of conduct.</p> +<p>Greek religion was thus not destitute of certain chief elements in +our own. But these were held in solution, with a host of other +warring elements, lustful, cruel, or buffooning. These elements +Greece was powerless to shake off; philosophers, by various expedients, +might explain away the contradictory myths which overgrew the religion, +but ritual, the luck of the State, and popular credulity, were tenacious +of the whole strange mingling of beliefs and practices.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The view taken of the Eleusinia in this <!-- page 78--><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>note +is hardly so exalted as that of Dr. Hatch. “The main underlying +conception of initiation was that there were elements in human life +from which the candidate must purify himself before he could be fit +to approach God.” The need of purification, ritual and moral, +is certain, but one is not aware of anything in the purely popular or +priestly religion of Greece which exactly answers to our word “God” +as used in the passage cited. Individuals, by dint of piety or +of speculation, might approach the conception, and probably many did, +both in and out of the philosophic schools. But traditional ritual +and myth could scarcely rise to this ideal; and it seems exaggerated +to say of the crowded Eleusinian throng of pilgrims that “the +race of mankind was lifted on to a higher plane when it came to be taught +that only the pure in heart can see God.” <a name="citation78"></a><a href="#footnote78">{78}</a> +The black native boys in Australia pass through a <!-- page 79--><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>purgative +ceremony to cure them of selfishness, and afterwards the initiator points +to the blue vault of sky, bidding them behold “Our Father, Mungan-ngaur.” +This is very well meant, and very creditable to untutored savages: and +creditable ideas were not absent from the Eleusinia. But when +we use the quotation, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they +shall see God,” our meaning, though not very definite, is a meaning +which it would be hazardous to attribute to a black boy,—or to +Sophocles. The idea of the New Life appears to occur in Australian +Mysteries: a tribesman is buried, and rises at a given signal. +But here the New Life is rather that of the lad admitted to full tribal +privileges (including moral precepts) than that of a converted character. +Confirmation, rather than conversion, is the analogy. The number +of those analogies of ancient and savage with Christian religion is +remarkable. But even in Greek Mysteries the conceptions are necessarily +not so <!-- page 80--><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>purely spiritual +as in the Christian creed, of which they seem half-conscious and fragmentary +anticipations. Or we may regard them as suggestions, which Christianity +selected, accepted, and purified. <!-- page 81--><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span></p> +<h2>HYMN TO DEMETER</h2> +<h3>THE ALLEGED EGYPTIAN ORIGINS</h3> +<p>In what has been said as to the Greek Mysteries, I have regarded +them as of native origin. I have exhibited rites of analogous +kinds in the germ, as it were, among savage and barbaric communities. +In Peru, under the Incas, we actually find Mama and Cora (Demeter and +Korê) as Goddesses of the maize (Acosta), and for rites of sympathetic +magic connected with the production of fertile harvests (as in the Thesmophoria +at Athens) it is enough to refer to the vast collection in Mr. Frazer’s +“Golden Bough.” I have also indicated the closest +of all known parallels to the Eleusinian in a medicine-dance and legend +of the Pawnees. For other savage Mysteries in which a moral <!-- page 82--><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>element +occurs, I have quoted Australian and African examples. Thence +I have inferred that the early Greeks might, and probably did, evolve +their multiform mystic rites out of germs of such things inherited from +their own prehistoric ancestors. No process, on the other hand, +of borrowing from Greece can conceivably account for the Pawnee and +Peruvian rites, so closely analogous to those of Hellas. Therefore +I see no reason why, if Egypt, for instance, presents parallels to the +Eleusinia, we should suppose that the prehistoric Greeks borrowed the +Eleusinia from Egypt. These things can grow up, autochthonous +and underived, out of the soil of human nature anywhere, granting certain +social conditions. Monsieur Foucart, however, has lately argued +in favour of an Egyptian origin of the Eleusinia. <a name="citation82"></a><a href="#footnote82">{82}</a></p> +<p>The Greeks naturally identified Demeter and Dionysus with Isis and +Osiris. There were analogies in the figures and the legends, <!-- page 83--><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>and +that was enough. So, had the Greeks visited America, they would +have recognised Demeter in the Pawnee Earth Mother, and Persephone or +Eubouleus in Chibiabos. To account for the similarities they would +probably have invented a fable of Pawnee visitors to Greece, or of Greek +missionaries among the Pawnees. So they were apt to form a theory +of an Egyptian origin of Dionysus and Demeter.</p> +<p>M. Foucart, however, argues that agriculture, corn-growing at least, +came into Greece at one stride, barley and wheat not being indigenous +in a wild state. The Greeks, however, may have brought grain in +their original national migration (the Greek words for grain and ploughing +are common to other families of Aryan speech) or obtained it from Phœnician +settlements. Demeter, however, in M. Foucart’s theory, would +be the Goddess of the foreigners who carried the grain first to Hellas. +Now both the Homeric epics and the Egyptian monuments show us Egypt +and Greece in contact in the <!-- page 84--><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>Greek +prehistoric period. But it does not exactly follow that the prehistoric +Greeks would adopt Egyptian gods; or that the Thesmophoria, an Athenian +harvest-rite of Demeter, was founded by colonists from Egypt, answering +to the daughters of Danaus. <a name="citation84"></a><a href="#footnote84">{84}</a> +Egyptians certainly did not introduce the similar rite among the Khonds, +or the Incas. The rites <i>could</i> grow up without importation, +as the result of the similarities of primitive fancy everywhere. +If Isis is Lady of the Grain in Egypt, so is Mama in Peru, and Demeter +need no more have been imported from Egypt than Mama. If Osiris +taught the arts of life and the laws of society in Egypt, so did Daramulun +in Australia, and Yehl in British Columbia. All the gods and culture +heroes everywhere play this <i>rôle</i>—in regions where +importation of the idea from Egypt is utterly out of the question. +Even in minute details, legends recur everywhere; the <i>phallus</i> +of a mutilated Australian being of the fabulous “Alcheringa time,” +is hunted for <!-- page 85--><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>by his +wives; exactly as Isis wanders in search of the <i>phallus</i> of the +mutilated Osiris. <a name="citation85a"></a><a href="#footnote85a">{85a}</a> +Is anything in the Demeter legend so like the Isis legend as this Australian +coincidence? Yet the Arunta did not borrow it from Egypt. <a name="citation85b"></a><a href="#footnote85b">{85b}</a> +The mere fact, again, that there were Mysteries both in Egypt and Greece +proves nothing. There is a river in Monmouth, and a river in Macedon; +there are Mysteries in almost all religions.</p> +<p>Again, it is argued, the Gods of the Mysteries in Egypt and Greece +had secret names, only revealed to the initiated. So, too, in +Australia, women (never initiated) and boys before initiation, know +Daramulun only as Papang (Father). <a name="citation85c"></a><a href="#footnote85c">{85c}</a> +The uninitiated among the Kurnai do not know the sacred name, Mungan-ngaur. +<a name="citation85d"></a><a href="#footnote85d">{85d}</a> The +Australian did not borrow this secrecy from Egypt. Everywhere +a <!-- page 86--><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>mystery is kept up +about proper names. M. Foucart seems to think that what is practically +universal, a taboo on names, can only have reached Greece by transplantation +from Egypt. <a name="citation86a"></a><a href="#footnote86a">{86a}</a> +To the anthropologist it seems that scholars, in ignoring the universal +ideas of the lower races, run the risk of venturing on theories at once +superficial and untenable.</p> +<p>M. Foucart has another argument, which does not seem more convincing, +though it probably lights up the humorous or indecent side of the Eleusinia. +Isocrates speaks of “good offices” rendered to Demeter by +“our ancestors,” which “can only be told to the initiate.” +<a name="citation86b"></a><a href="#footnote86b">{86b}</a> Now +these cannot be the kindly deeds reported in the Hymn, for these were +publicly proclaimed. What, then, were the <i>secret</i> good offices? +In one version of the legend the hosts of Demeter were not Celeus and +Metaneira, but Dusaules and Baubo. The part of Baubo was to relieve +the gloom of <!-- page 87--><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>the Goddess, +not by the harmless pleasantries of Iambê, in the Hymn, but by +obscene gestures. The Christian Fathers, Clemens of Alexandria +at least, make this a part of their attack on the Mysteries; but it +may be said that they were prejudiced or misinformed. <a name="citation87a"></a><a href="#footnote87a">{87a}</a> +But, says M. Foucart, an inscription has been found in Paros, wherein +there is a dedication to Hera, Demeter Thesmophoros, Korê, and +<i>Babo</i>, or Baubo. Again, two authors of the fourth century, +Palæphatus and Asclepiades, cite the Dusaules and Baubo legend. +<a name="citation87b"></a><a href="#footnote87b">{87b}</a></p> +<p>Now the indecent gesture of Baubo was part of the comic or obscene +folk-lore of contempt in Egypt, and so M. Foucart thinks that it was +borrowed from Egypt with the Demeter legend. <a name="citation87c"></a><a href="#footnote87c">{87c}</a> +Can Isocrates have referred to <i>this</i> good office?—the amusing +of Demeter by an obscene gesture? If he did, such gestures as +Baubo’s are as widely diffused as any other piece of folk-lore. +In the centre of <!-- page 88--><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>the +Australian desert Mr. Carnegie saw a native make a derisive gesture +which he thought had only been known to English schoolboys. <a name="citation88a"></a><a href="#footnote88a">{88a}</a> +Again, indecent pantomimic dances, said to be intended to act as “object +lessons” in things <i>not</i> to be done, are common in Australian +Mysteries. Further, we do not know Baubo, or a counterpart of +her, in the ritual of Isis, and the clay figurines of such a figure, +in Egypt, are of the Greek, the Ptolemaic period. Thus the evidence +comes to this: an indecent gesture of contempt, known in Egypt, is, +at Eleusis, attributed to Baubo. This does not prove that Baubo +was originally Egyptian. <a name="citation88b"></a><a href="#footnote88b">{88b}</a> +Certain traditions make Demeter the mistress of Celeus. <a name="citation88c"></a><a href="#footnote88c">{88c}</a> +Traces of a “mystic marriage,” which also occur, are not +necessarily Egyptian: the idea and rite are common.</p> +<p>There remains the question of the sacred objects displayed (possibly +statues, probably very ancient “medicine” things, as among +the Pawnees) and sacred words spoken. <!-- page 89--><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span> +These are said by many authors to confirm the initiate in their security +of hope as to a future life. Now similar instruction, as to the +details of the soul’s voyage, the dangers to avoid, the precautions +to be taken, notoriously occur in the Egyptian “Book of the Dead.” +But very similar fancies are reported from the Ojibbeways (Kohl), the +Polynesians and Maoris (Taylor, Turner, Gill, Thomson), the early peoples +of Virginia, <a name="citation89a"></a><a href="#footnote89a">{89a}</a> +the modern Arapaho and Sioux of the Ghost Dance rite, the Aztecs, and +so forth. In all countries these details are said to have been +revealed by men or women who died, but did not (like Persephone) taste +the food of the dead; and so were enabled to return to earth. +The initiate, at Eleusis, were guided along a theatrically arranged +pathway of the dead, into a theatrical Elysium. <a name="citation89b"></a><a href="#footnote89b">{89b}</a> +Now as such ideas as these occur among races utterly removed from contact +with Egypt, as they are part of the European folk-lore of the visits +of mortals to fairyland (in which it is <!-- page 90--><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>fatal +to taste fairy food), I do not see that Eleusis need have borrowed such +common elements of early belief from the Egyptians in the seventh century +B.C. <a name="citation90"></a><a href="#footnote90">{90}</a> One +might as well attribute to Egypt the Finnish legend of the descent of +Wainamoinen into Tuonela; or the experience of the aunt of Montezuma +just before the arrival of Cortès; or the expedition to fairyland +of Thomas the Rhymer. It is not pretended by M. Foucart that the +<i>details</i> of the “Book of the Dead” were copied in +Greek ritual; and the general idea of a river to cross, of dangerous +monsters to avoid, of perils to encounter, of precautions to be taken +by the wandering soul, is nearly universal, where it must be unborrowed +from Egypt, in Polynesian and Red Indian belief. As at Eleusis, +in these remote tribes formulas of a preservative character are inculcated.</p> +<p>The “Book of the Dead” was a guidebook of the itinerary +of Egyptian souls. Very probably similar instruction was given +to the initiate at Eleusis. But the Fijians also have <!-- page 91--><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>a +regular theory of what is to be done and avoided on “The Path +of the Shades.” The shade is ferried by Ceba (Charon) over +Wainiyalo (Lethe); he reaches the mystic pandanus tree (here occurs +a rite); he meets, and dodges, Drodroyalo and the two devouring Goddesses; +he comes to a spring, and drinks, and forgets sorrow at Wai-na-dula, +the “Water of Solace.” After half-a-dozen other probations +and terrors, he reaches the Gods, “the dancing-ground and the +white quicksand; and then the young Gods dance before them and sing. +. . . ” <a name="citation91a"></a><a href="#footnote91a">{91a}</a></p> +<p>Now turn to Plutarch. <a name="citation91b"></a><a href="#footnote91b">{91b}</a> +Plutarch compares the soul’s mortal experience with that of the +initiate in the Mysteries. “There are wanderings, darkness, +fear, trembling, shuddering, horror, then a marvellous light: pure places +and meadows, dances, songs, and holy apparitions.” Plutarch +might be summarising <!-- page 92--><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>the +Fijian belief. Again, take the mystic golden scroll, found in +a Greek grave at Petilia. It describes in hexameters the Path +of the Shade: the spring and the white cypress on the left: “Do +not approach it. Go to the other stream from the Lake of Memory; +tell the Guardians that you are the child of Earth and of the starry +sky, but that yours is a heavenly lineage; and they will give you to +drink of that water, and you shall reign with the other heroes.”</p> +<p>Tree, and spring, and peaceful place with dance, song, and divine +apparitions, all are Fijian, all are Greek, yet nothing is borrowed +by Fiji from Greece. Many other Greek inscriptions cited by M. +Foucart attest similar beliefs. Very probably such precepts as +those of the Petilia scroll were among the secret instructions of Eleusis. +But they are not so much Egyptian as human. Chibiabos is assuredly +not borrowed from Osiris, nor the Fijian faith from the “Book +of the Dead.” “Sacred things,” not to be shown +to man, still less to woman, date from the “medicine <!-- page 93--><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>bag” +of the Red Indian, the mystic tribal bundles of the Pawnees, and the +<i>churinga</i>, and bark “native portmanteaux,” of which +Mr. Carnegie brought several from the Australian desert.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang92b.jpg"> +<img alt="Demeter and Persephone sending Triptolemos on his mission. Marble relief found at Eleusis—now in Athens" src="images/lang92s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>For all Greek Mysteries a satisfactory savage analogy can be found. +These spring straight from human nature: from the desire to place customs, +and duties, and taboos under divine protection; from the need of strengthening +them, and the influence of the elders, by mystic sanctions; from the +need of fortifying and trying the young by probations of strength, secrecy, +and fortitude; from the magical expulsion of hostile influences; from +the sympathetic magic of early agriculture; from study of the processes +of nature regarded as personal; and from guesses, surmises, visions, +and dreams as to the fortunes of the wandering soul on its way to its +final home. I have shown all these things to be human, universal, +not sprung from one race in one region. Greek Mysteries are based +on all these natural early <!-- page 94--><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>conceptions +of life and death. The early Greeks, like other races, entertained +these primitive, or very archaic ideas. Greece had no need to +borrow from Egypt; and, though Egypt was within reach, Greece probably +developed freely her original stock of ideas in her own fashion, just +as did the Incas, Aztecs, Australians, Ojibbeways, and the other remote +peoples whom I have selected. The argument of M. Foucart, I think, +is only good as long as we are ignorant of the universally diffused +forms of religious belief which correspond to the creeds of Eleusis +or of Egypt. In the Greek Mysteries we have the Greek guise,—solemn, +wistful, hopeful, holy, and pure, yet not uncontaminated with archaic +buffoonery,—of notions and rites, hopes and fears, common to all +mankind. There is no other secret.</p> +<p>The same arguments as I have advanced against Greek borrowing from +Egypt, apply to Greek borrowing from Asia. Mr. Ramsay, following +Mr. Robertson Smith, suggests that Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, +<!-- page 95--><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>may be “the old +Semitic Al-lat.” <a name="citation95a"></a><a href="#footnote95a">{95a}</a> +Then we have Leto and Artemis, as the Mother and the Maid (Korê) +with their mystery play. “Clement describes them” +(the details) as “Eleusinian, for they had spread to Eleusis as +the rites of Demeter and Korê <i>crossing from Asia to Crete, +and from Crete to the European</i> peninsula.” The ritual +“remained everywhere fundamentally the same.” Obviously +if the Eleusinian Mysteries are of Phrygian origin (Ramsay), they cannot +also be of Egyptian origin (Foucart). In truth they are no more +specially of Phrygian or Egyptian than of Pawnee or Peruvian origin. +Mankind can and does evolve such ideas and rites in any region of the +world. <a name="citation95b"></a><a href="#footnote95b">{95b}</a> <!-- page 96--><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span></p> +<h2>CONCLUSION</h2> +<p>“What has all this farrago about savages to do with Dionysus?” +I conceive some scholar, or literary critic asking, if such an one looks +into this book. Certainly it would have been easier for me to +abound in æsthetic criticism of the Hymns, and on the aspect of +Greek literary art which they illustrate. But the Hymns, if read +even through the pale medium of a translation, speak for themselves. +Their beauties and defects as poetry are patent: patent, too, are the +charm and geniality of the national character which they express. +The glad Ionian gatherings; the archaic humour; the delight in life, +and love, and nature; the pious domesticities of the sacred Hearth; +the peopling of woods, hills, and streams with exquisite fairy forms; +all these make the poetic delight of the Hymns. But all these +need no <!-- page 97--><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>pointing out +to any reader. The poets can speak for themselves.</p> +<p>On the other hand the confusions of sacred and profane; the origins +of the Mysteries; the beginnings of the Gods in a mental condition long +left behind by Greece when the Hymns were composed; all these matters +need elucidation. I have tried to elucidate them as results of +evolution from the remote prehistoric past of Greece, which, as it seems, +must in many points have been identical with the historic present of +the lowest contemporary races. In the same way, if dealing with +ornament, I would derive the spirals, volutes, and concentric circles +of Mycenæan gold work, from the identical motives, on the oldest +incised rocks and kists of our Islands, of North and South America, +and of the tribes of Central Australia, recently described by Messrs. +Spencer and Gillen, and Mr. Carnegie. The material of the Mycenæan +artist may be gold, his work may be elegant and firm, but he traces +the selfsame ornament as the naked Arunta, with feebler hand, paints +on sacred rocks or on the bodies <!-- page 98--><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>of +his tribesmen. What is true of ornament is true of myth, rite, +and belief. Greece only offers a gracious modification of the +beliefs, rites, and myths of the races who now are “nearest the +beginning,” however remote from that unknown beginning they may +be. To understand this is to come closer to a true conception +of the evolution of Greek faith and art than we can reach by any other +path. Yet to insist on this is not to ignore the unmeasured advance +of the Greeks in development of society and art. On that head +the Hymns, like all Greek poetry, bear their own free testimony. +But, none the less, Greek religion and myth present features repellent +to us, which derive their origin, not from savagery, but from the more +crude horrors of the lower and higher barbarisms.</p> +<p>Greek religion, Greek myth, are vast conglomerates. We find +a savage origin for Apollo, and savage origins for many of the Mysteries. +But the cruelty of savage initiations has been purified away. +On the <!-- page 99--><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>other hand, +we find a barbaric origin for departmental gods, such as Aphrodite, +and for Greek human sacrifices, unknown to the lowest savagery. +From savagery Zeus is probably derived; from savagery come the germs +of the legends of divine amours in animal forms. But from barbarism +arises the sympathetic magic of agriculture, which the lowest races +do not practise. From the barbaric condition, not from savagery, +comes Greek hero-worship, for the lowest races do not worship ancestral +spirits. Such is the medley of prehistoric ideas in Greece, while +the charm and poetry of the Hymns are due mainly to the unique genius +of the fully developed Hellenic race. The combination of good +and bad, of ancestral rites and ideas, of native taste, of philosophical +refinement on inherited theology, could not last; the elements were +too discordant. And yet it could not pass naturally away. +The Greece of A.D. 300</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wandered between two worlds, one dead,<br /> +The other powerless to be born,” <!-- page 100--><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span></p> +</blockquote> +<p>without external assistance. That help was brought by the Christian +creed, and, officially, Gods, rites, and myths vanished, while, unofficially, +they partially endure, even to this day, in Romaic folk-lore. <!-- page 103--><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span></p> +<h2>HOMERIC HYMNS</h2> +<h3>HYMN TO APOLLO</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang103b.jpg"> +<img alt="Silver stater of Croton (about 400 B.C.). Obv. Hercules, the Founder. Rev. Apollo shooting the Python by the Delphic Tripod" src="images/lang103s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Mindful, ever mindful, will I be of Apollo the Far-darter. +Before him, as he fares through the hall of Zeus, the Gods tremble, +yea, rise up all from their thrones as he draws near with his shining +bended bow. But Leto alone abides by Zeus, the Lord of Lightning, +till Apollo hath slackened his bow and closed his quiver. Then, +taking with her hands from his mighty shoulders <!-- page 104--><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>the +bow and quiver, she hangs them against the pillar beside his father’s +seat from a pin of gold, and leads him to his place and seats him there, +while the father welcomes his dear son, giving him nectar in a golden +cup; then do the other Gods welcome him; then they make him sit, and +Lady Leto rejoices, in that she bore the Lord of the Bow, her mighty +son.</p> +<p>[Hail! O blessed Leto; mother of glorious children, Prince +Apollo and Artemis the Archer; her in Ortygia, him in rocky Delos didst +thou bear, couching against the long sweep of the Cynthian Hill, beside +a palm tree, by the streams of Inopus.]</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang104b.jpg"> +<img alt="Leto. With her infants, Apollo and Artemis. From a Vase in the British Museum. (Sixth Century B.C.)" src="images/lang104s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>How shall I hymn thee aright, howbeit thou art, in sooth, not hard +to hymn? <a name="citation104"></a><a href="#footnote104">{104}</a> +for to thee, Phœbus, everywhere have fallen all the ranges of +song, both on the mainland, nurse of young kine, and among the isles; +to thee all the cliffs are dear, and the steep mountain <!-- page 105--><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>crests +and rivers running onward to the salt sea, and beaches sloping to the +foam, and havens of the deep? Shall I tell how Leto bore thee +first, a delight of men, couched by the Cynthian Hill in the rocky island, +in sea-girt Delos—on either hand the black wave drives landward +at the word of the shrill winds—whence arising thou art Lord over +all mortals?</p> +<p>Among them that dwell in Crete, and the people of Athens, and isle +Ægina, and Eubœa famed for fleets, and Ægæ and +Peiresiæ, and Peparethus by the sea-strand, and Thracian Athos, +and the tall crests of Pelion, and Thracian Samos, and the shadowy mountains +of Ida, Scyros, and Phocæa, and the mountain wall of Aigocane, +and stablished Imbros, and inhospitable Lemnos, and goodly Lesbos, the +seat of Makar son of Æolus, and Chios, brightest of all islands +of the deep, and craggy Mimas, and the steep crests of Mykale, and gleaming +Claros, and the high hills of Æsageê, and watery Samos, +and tall ridges of Mycale, and Miletus, and <!-- page 106--><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>Cos, +a city of Meropian men, and steep Cnidos, and windy Carpathus, Naxos +and Paros, and rocky Rheneia—so far in travail with the Archer +God went Leto, seeking if perchance any land would build a house for +her son.</p> +<p>But the lands trembled sore, and were adread, and none, nay not the +richest, dared to welcome Phœbus, not till Lady Leto set foot +on Delos, and speaking winged words besought her:</p> +<p>“Delos, would that thou wert minded to be the seat of my Son, +Phœbus Apollo, and to let build him therein a rich temple! +No other God will touch thee, nor none will honour thee, for methinks +thou art not to be well seen in cattle or in sheep, in fruit or grain, +nor wilt thou grow plants unnumbered. But wert thou to possess +a temple of Apollo the Far-darter; then would all men bring thee hecatombs, +gathering to thee, and ever wilt thou have savour of sacrifice . . . +from others’ hands, albeit thy soil is poor.”</p> +<p>Thus spoke she, and Delos was glad and answered her saying: <!-- page 107--><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span></p> +<p>“Leto, daughter most renowned of mighty Cœus, right gladly +would I welcome the birth of the Archer Prince, for verily of me there +goes an evil report among men, and thus would I wax mightiest of renown. +But at this Word, Leto, I tremble, nor will I hide it from thee, for +the saying is that Apollo will be mighty of mood, and mightily will +lord it over mortals and immortals far and wide over the earth, the +grain-giver. Therefore, I deeply dread in heart and soul lest, +when first he looks upon the sunlight, he disdain my island, for rocky +of soil am I, and spurn me with his feet and drive me down in the gulfs +of the salt sea. Then should a great sea-wave wash mightily above +my head for ever, but he will fare to another land, which so pleases +him, to fashion him a temple and groves of trees. But in me would +many-footed sea-beasts and black seals make their chambers securely, +no men dwelling by me. Nay, still, if thou hast the heart, Goddess, +to swear a great oath that here first he will build a beautiful temple, +to be the shrine <!-- page 108--><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>oracular +of men—thereafter among all men let him raise him shrines, since +his renown shall be the widest.”</p> +<p>So spake she, but Leto swore the great oath of the Gods:</p> +<p>“Bear witness, Earth, and the wide heaven above, and dropping +water of Styx—the greatest oath and the most dread among the blessed +Gods—that verily here shall ever be the fragrant altar and the +portion of Apollo, and thee will he honour above all.”</p> +<p>When she had sworn and done that oath, then Delos was glad in the +birth of the Archer Prince. But Leto, for nine days and nine nights +continually was pierced with pangs of child-birth beyond all hope. +With her were all the Goddesses, the goodliest, Dione and Rheia, and +Ichnæan Themis, and Amphitrite of the moaning sea, and the other +deathless ones—save white-armed Hera. Alone she wotted not +of it, Eilithyia, the helper in difficult travail. For she sat +on the crest of Olympus beneath the golden clouds, by the wile of white-armed +Hera, <!-- page 109--><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>who held her +afar in jealous grudge, because even then fair-tressed Leto was about +bearing her strong and noble son.</p> +<p>But the Goddesses sent forth Iris from the fair-stablished isle, +to bring Eilithyia, promising her a great necklet, golden with amber +studs, nine cubits long. Iris they bade to call Eilithyia apart +from white-armed Hera, lest even then the words of Hera might turn her +from her going. But wind-footed swift Iris heard, and fleeted +forth, and swiftly she devoured the space between. So soon as +she came to steep Olympus, the dwelling of the Gods, she called forth +Eilithyia from hall to door, and spake winged words, even all that the +Goddesses of Olympian mansions had bidden her. Thereby she won +the heart in Eilithyia’s breast, and forth they fared, like timid +wild doves in their going.</p> +<p>Even when Eilithyia, the helper in sore travailing, set foot in Delos, +then labour took hold on Leto, and a passion to bring to the birth. +Around a palm tree she cast <!-- page 110--><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>her +arms, and set her knees on the soft meadow, while earth beneath smiled, +and forth leaped the babe to light, and all the Goddesses raised a cry. +Then, great Phœbus, the Goddesses washed thee in fair water, holy +and purely, and wound thee in white swaddling bands, delicate, new woven, +with a golden girdle round thee. Nor did his mother suckle Apollo +the golden-sworded, but Themis with immortal hands first touched his +lips with nectar and sweet ambrosia, while Leto rejoiced, in that she +had borne her strong son, the bearer of the bow.</p> +<p>Then Phœbus, as soon as thou hadst tasted the food of Paradise, +the golden bands were not proof against thy pantings, nor bonds could +bind thee, but all their ends were loosened. Straightway among +the Goddesses spoke Phœbus Apollo: “Mine be the dear lyre +and bended bow, and I will utter to men the unerring counsel of Zeus.”</p> +<p>So speaking, he began to fare over the wide ways of earth, Phœbus +of the locks <!-- page 111--><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>unshorn, +Phœbus the Far-darter. Thereon all the Goddesses were in +amaze, and all Delos blossomed with gold, as when a hilltop is heavy +with woodland flowers, beholding the child of Zeus and Leto, and glad +because the God had chosen her wherein to set his home, beyond mainland +and isles, and loved her most at heart.</p> +<p>But thyself, O Prince of the Silver Bow, far-darting Apollo, didst +now pass over rocky Cynthus, now wander among temples and men. +Many are thy fanes and groves, and dear are all the headlands, and high +peaks of lofty hills, and rivers flowing onward to the sea; but with +Delos, Phœbus, art thou most delighted at heart, where the long-robed +Ionians gather in thine honour, with children and shame-fast wives. +Mindful of thee they delight thee with boxing, and dances, and minstrelsy +in their games. Who so then encountered them at the gathering +of the Ionians, would say that they are exempt from eld and death, beholding +them so gracious, and would be glad at heart, looking on the <!-- page 112--><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>men +and fair-girdled women, and their much wealth, and their swift galleys. +Moreover, there is this great marvel of renown imperishable, the Delian +damsels, hand-maidens of the Far-darter. They, when first they +have hymned Apollo, and next Leto and Artemis the Archer, then sing +in memory of the men and women of old time, enchanting the tribes of +mortals. And they are skilled to mimic the notes and dance music +of all men, so that each would say himself were singing, so well woven +is their fair chant.</p> +<p>But now come, be gracious, Apollo, be gracious, Artemis; and ye maidens +all, farewell, but remember me even in time to come, when any of earthly +men, yea, any stranger that much hath seen and much endured, comes hither +and asks:</p> +<p>“Maidens, who is the sweetest to you of singers here conversant, +and in whose song are ye most glad?”</p> +<p>Then do you all with one voice make answer:</p> +<p>“A blind man is he, and he dwells in <!-- page 113--><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>rocky +Chios; his songs will ever have the mastery, ay, in all time to come.”</p> +<p>But I shall bear my renown of you as far as I wander over earth to +the fairest cities of men, and they will believe my report, for my word +is true. But, for me, never shall I cease singing of Apollo of +the Silver Bow, the Far-darter, whom fair-tressed Leto bore.</p> +<p>O Prince, Lycia is thine, and pleasant Mæonia, and Miletus, +a winsome city by the sea, and thou, too, art the mighty lord of sea-washed +Delos.</p> +<h3>THE FOUNDING OF DELPHI</h3> +<p>The son of glorious Leto fares harping on his hollow harp to rocky +Pytho, clad in his fragrant raiment that waxes not old, and beneath +the golden plectrum winsomely sounds his lyre. Thence from earth +to Olympus, fleet as thought, he goes to the House of Zeus, into the +Consistory of the other Gods, and anon the Immortals bethink them of +harp and minstrelsy. And all the <!-- page 114--><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>Muses +together with sweet voice in antiphonal chant replying, sing of the +imperishable gifts of the Gods, and the sufferings of men, all that +they endure from the hands of the undying Gods, lives witless and helpless, +men unavailing to find remede for death or buckler against old age. +Then the fair-tressed Graces and boon Hours, and Harmonia, and Hebe, +and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, dance, holding each by the wrist the +other’s hand, while among them sings one neither unlovely, nor +of body contemptible, but divinely tall and fair, Artemis the Archer, +nurtured with Apollo. Among them sport Ares, and the keen-eyed +Bane of Argos, while Phœbus Apollo steps high and disposedly, +playing the lyre, and the light issues round him from twinkling feet +and fair-woven raiment. But all they are glad, seeing him so high +of heart, Leto of the golden tresses, and Zeus the Counsellor, beholding +their dear son as he takes his pastime among the deathless Gods.</p> +<p>How shall I hymn thee aright, howbeit <!-- page 115--><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>thou +art, in sooth, not hard to hymn? Shall I sing of thee in love +and dalliance; how thou wentest forth to woo the maiden Azanian, with +Ischys, peer of Gods, and Elation’s son of the goodly steeds, +or with Phorbas, son of Triopes, or Amarynthus, or how with Leucippus +and Leucippus’ wife, thyself on foot, he in the chariot . . .? +<a name="citation115"></a><a href="#footnote115">{115}</a> Or +how first, seeking a place of oracle for men, thou camest down to earth, +far-darting Apollo?</p> +<p>On Pieria first didst thou descend from Olympus, and pass by Lacmus, +and Emathia, and Enienæ, and through Perrhæbia, and speedily +camest to Iolcus, and alight on Cenæum in Eubœa, renowned +for galleys. On the Lelantian plain thou stoodest, but it pleased +thee not there to stablish a temple and a grove. Thence thou didst +cross Euripus, far-darting Apollo, and fare up the green hill divine, +and thence camest speedily to Mycalessus and Teumesos of the bedded +meadow grass, and thence to the place of woodclad Thebe, for as yet +no mortals dwelt <!-- page 116--><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>in +Holy Thebe, nor yet were paths nor ways along Thebe’s wheat-bearing +plain, but all was wild wood.</p> +<p>Thence forward journeying, Apollo, thou camest to Onchestus, the +bright grove of Poseidon. There the new-broken colt takes breath +again, weary though he be with dragging the goodly chariot; and to earth, +skilled though he be, leaps down the charioteer, and fares on foot, +while the horses for a while rattle along the empty car, with the reins +on their necks, and if the car be broken in the grove of trees, their +masters tend them there, and tilt the car and let it lie. Such +is the rite from of old, and they pray to the King Poseidon, while the +chariot is the God’s portion to keep.</p> +<p>Thence faring forward, far-darting Apollo, thou didst win to Cephisus +of the fair streams, that from Lilæa pours down his beautiful +waters, which crossing, Far-darter, and passing Ocalea of the towers, +thou camest thereafter to grassy Haliartus. Then didst thou set +foot on Telphusa, and to thee the land seemed <!-- page 117--><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>exceeding +good wherein to stablish a temple and a grove.</p> +<p>Beside Telphusa didst thou stand, and spake to her: “Telphusa, +here methinketh to stablish a fair temple, an oracle for men, who, ever +seeking for the word of sooth, will bring me hither perfect hecatombs, +even they that dwell in the rich isle of Pelops, and all they of the +mainland and sea-girt islands. To them all shall I speak the decree +unerring, rendering oracles within my rich temple.”</p> +<p>So spake Phœbus, and thoroughly marked out the foundations, +right long and wide. But at the sight the heart of Telphusa waxed +wroth, and she spake her word:</p> +<p>“Phœbus, far-darting Prince, a word shall I set in thy +heart. Here thinkest thou to stablish a goodly temple, to be a +place of oracle for men, that ever will bring thee hither perfect hecatombs—nay, +but this will I tell thee, and do thou lay it up in thine heart. +The never-ending din of swift steeds will be a weariness to thee, and +the <!-- page 118--><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>watering of mules +from my sacred springs. There men will choose rather to regard +the well-wrought chariots, and the stamping of the swift-footed steeds, +than thy great temple and much wealth therein. But an if thou—that +art greater and better than I, O Prince, and thy strength is most of +might—if thou wilt listen to me, in Crisa build thy fane beneath +a glade of Parnassus. There neither will goodly chariots ring, +nor wilt thou be vexed with stamping of swift steeds about thy well-builded +altar, but none the less shall the renowned tribes of men bring their +gifts to Iepæon, and delighted shalt thou gather the sacrifices +of them who dwell around.”</p> +<p>Therewith she won over the heart of the Far-darter, even that to +Telphusa herself should be honour in that land, and not to the Far-darter.</p> +<p>Thenceforward didst thou fare, far-darting Apollo, and camest to +the city of the overweening Phlegyæ, that reckless of Zeus dwelt +there in a goodly glade by the Cephisian mere. Thence fleetly +didst thou speed to <!-- page 119--><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>the +ridge of the hills, and camest to Crisa beneath snowy Parnassus, to +a knoll that faced westward, but above it hangs a cliff, and a hollow +dell runs under, rough with wood, and even there Prince Phœbus +Apollo deemed well to build a goodly temple, and spake, saying: “Here +methinketh to stablish a right fair temple, to be a place oracular to +men, that shall ever bring me hither goodly hecatombs, both they that +dwell in rich Peloponnesus, and they of the mainland and sea-girt isles, +seeking here the word of sooth; to them all shall I speak the decree +unerring, rendering oracles within my wealthy shrine.”</p> +<p>So speaking, Phœbus Apollo marked out the foundations, right +long and wide, and thereon Trophonius and Agamedes laid the threshold +of stone, the sons of Erginus, dear to the deathless Gods. But +round all the countless tribes of men built a temple with wrought stones +to be famous for ever in song.</p> +<p>Hard by is a fair-flowing stream, and there, with an arrow from his +strong bow, <!-- page 120--><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>did the +Prince, the son of Zeus, slay the Dragoness, mighty and huge, a wild +Etin, that was wont to wreak many woes on earthly men, on themselves, +and their straight-stepping flocks, so dread a bane was she.</p> +<p>[This Dragoness it was that took from golden-throned Hera and reared +the dread Typhaon, not to be dealt with, a bane to mortals. Him +did Hera bear, upon a time, in wrath with father Zeus, whenas Cronides +brought forth from his head renowned Athene. Straightway lady +Hera was angered, and spake among the assembled Gods:</p> +<p>“Listen to me, ye Gods, and Goddesses all, how cloud-collecting +Zeus is first to begin the dishonouring of me, though he made me his +wife in honour. And now, apart from me, he has brought forth grey-eyed +Athene who excels among all the blessed Immortals. But he was +feeble from the birth, among all the Gods, my son Hephæstos, lame +and withered of foot, whom I myself lifted in my hands, and cast into +the wide sea. But the daughter of Nereus, Thetis of the silver +feet, <!-- page 121--><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>received him +and nurtured him among her sisters. Would that she had done other +grace to the blessed Immortals!</p> +<p>“Thou evil one of many wiles, what other wile devisest thou? +How hadst thou the heart now alone to bear grey-eyed Athene? Could +I not have borne her? But none the less would she have been called +thine among the Immortals, who hold the wide heaven. Take heed +now, that I devise not for thee some evil to come. Yea, now shall +I use arts whereby a child of mine shall be born, excelling among the +immortal Gods, without dishonouring thy sacred bed or mine, for verily +to thy bed I will not come, but far from thee will nurse my grudge against +the Immortal Gods.”</p> +<p>So spake she, and withdrew from among the Gods with angered heart. +Right so she made her prayer, the ox-eyed lady Hera, striking the earth +with her hand flatlings, <a name="citation121"></a><a href="#footnote121">{121}</a> +and spake her word: <!-- page 122--><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span></p> +<p>“Listen to me now, Earth, and wide Heavens above, and ye Gods +called Titans, dwelling beneath earth in great Tartarus, ye from whom +spring Gods and men! List to me now, all of you, and give me a +child apart from Zeus, yet nothing inferior to him in might, nay, stronger +than he, as much as far-seeing Zeus is mightier than Cronus!”</p> +<p>So spake she, and smote the ground with her firm hand. Then +Earth, the nurse of life, was stirred, and Hera, beholding it, was glad +at heart, for she deemed that her prayer would be accomplished. +From that hour for a full year she never came to the bed of wise Zeus, +nor to her throne adorned, whereon she was wont to sit, planning deep +counsel, but dwelling in her temples, the homes of Prayers, she took +joy in her sacrifices, the ox-eyed lady Hera.</p> +<p>Now when her months and days were fulfilled, the year revolving, +and the seasons in their course coming round, she bare a birth like +neither Gods nor mortals, the dread Typhaon, not to be dealt with, a +bane of men. <!-- page 123--><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span> Him +now she took, the ox-eyed lady Hera, and carried and gave to the Dragoness, +to bitter nurse a bitter fosterling, who received him, that ever wrought +many wrongs among the renowned tribes of men.]</p> +<p>Whosoever met the Dragoness, on him would she bring the day of destiny, +before the Prince, far-darting Apollo, loosed at her the destroying +shaft; then writhing in strong anguish, and mightily panting she lay, +rolling about the land. Dread and dire was the din, as she writhed +hither and thither through the wood, and gave up the ghost, and Phœbus +spoke his malison:</p> +<p>“There do thou rot upon the fruitful earth; no longer shalt +thou, at least, live to be the evil bane of mortals that eat the fruit +of the fertile soil, and hither shall bring perfect hecatombs. +Surely from thee neither shall Typhœus, nay, nor Chimæra +of the evil name, shield death that layeth low, but here shall black +earth and bright Hyperion make thee waste away.”</p> +<p>So he spake in malison, and darkness <!-- page 124--><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>veiled +her eyes, and there the sacred strength of the sun did waste her quite +away. Whence now the place is named Pytho, and men call the Prince +“Pythian” for that deed, for even there the might of the +swift sun made corrupt the monster. <a name="citation124"></a><a href="#footnote124">{124}</a></p> +<p>Then Phœbus Apollo was ware in his heart that the fair-flowing +spring, Telphusa, had beguiled him, and in wrath he went to her, and +swiftly came, and standing close by her, spoke his word:</p> +<p>“Telphusa, thou wert not destined to beguile my mind, nor keep +the winsome lands and pour forth thy fair waters. Nay, here shall +my honour also dwell, not thine alone.” So he spoke, and +overset a rock, with a shower of stones, and hid her streams, the Prince, +far-darting Apollo. And he made an altar in a grove of trees, +hard by the fair-flowing stream, where all men name him in prayer, “the +Prince Telphusian,” for that he shamed the streams of sacred Telphusa. +Then Phœbus Apollo considered in his <!-- page 125--><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>heart +what men he should bring in to be his ministers, and to serve him in +rocky Pytho. While he was pondering on this, he beheld a swift +ship on the wine-dark sea, and aboard her many men and good, Cretans +from Minoan Cnossus, such as do sacrifice to the God, and speak the +doom of Phœbus Apollo of the Golden Sword, what word soever he +utters of sooth from the daphne in the dells of Parnassus. For +barter and wealth they were sailing in the black ship to sandy Pylos, +and the Pylian men. Anon Phœbus Apollo set forth to meet +them, leaping into the sea upon the swift ship in the guise of a dolphin, +and there he lay, a portent great and terrible.</p> +<p>[Of the crew, whosoever sought in heart to comprehend what he was +. . . On all sides he kept swaying to and fro, and shaking the +timbers of the galley.] But all they sat silent and in fear aboard +the ship, nor loosed the sheets, nor the sail of the black-prowed galley; +nay, even as they had first set the sails so they voyaged onward, the +strong <!-- page 126--><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>south-wind +speeding on the vessel from behind. First they rounded Malea, +and passed the Laconian land and came to Helos, a citadel by the sea, +and Tænarus, the land of Helios, that is the joy of mortals, where +ever feed the deep-fleeced flocks of Prince Helios, and there hath he +his glad demesne. There the crew thought to stay the galley, and +land and consider of the marvel, and see whether that strange thing +will abide on the deck of the hollow ship or leap again into the swell +of the fishes’ home. But the well-wrought ship did not obey +the rudder, but kept ever on her way beyond rich Peloponnesus, Prince +Apollo lightly guiding it by the gale. So accomplishing her course +she came to Arene, and pleasant Arguphea, and Thryon, the ford of Alpheius, +and well-builded Aepu, and sandy Pylos, and the Pylian men, and ran +by Crounoi, and Chalcis, and Dyme, and holy Elis, where the Epeians +bear sway. Then rejoicing in the breeze of Zeus, she was making +for Pheræ, when to them out of the clouds showed <!-- page 127--><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>forth +the steep ridge of Ithaca, and Dulichium, and Same, and wooded Zacynthus. +Anon when she had passed beyond all Peloponnesus, there straightway, +off Crisa, appeared the wide sound, that bounds rich Peloponnesus. +Then came on the west wind, clear and strong, by the counsel of Zeus, +blowing hard out of heaven, that the running ship might swiftest accomplish +her course over the salt water of the sea.</p> +<p>Backward then they sailed towards the Dawn and the sun, and the Prince +was their guide, Apollo, son of Zeus. Then came they to far-seen +Crisa, the land of vines, into the haven, while the sea-faring ship +beached herself on the shingle. Then from the ship leaped the +Prince, far-darting Apollo, like a star at high noon, while the gledes +of fire flew from him, and the splendour flashed to the heavens. +Into his inmost Holy Place he went through the precious tripods, and +in the midst he kindled a flame showering forth his shafts, and the +splendour filled all Crisa, <a name="citation127"></a><a href="#footnote127">{127}</a> +and the <!-- page 128--><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>wives of +the Crisæans, and their fair-girdled daughters raised a wail at +the rushing flight of Phœbus, for great fear fell upon all. +Thence again to the galley he set forth and flew, fleet as a thought, +in shape a man lusty and strong, in his first youth, his locks swathing +his wide shoulders. Anon he spake to the seamen winged words:</p> +<p>“Strangers, who are ye, whence sail ye the wet ways? +Is it after merchandise, or do ye wander at adventure, over the salt +sea, as sea-robbers use, that roam staking their own lives, and bearing +bane to men of strange speech? Why sit ye thus adread, not faring +forth on the land, nor slackening the gear of your black ship? +Sure this is the wont of toilsome mariners, when they come from the +deep to the land in their black ship, foredone with labour, and anon +a longing for sweet food seizes their hearts.”</p> +<p>So spake he, and put courage in their breasts, and the leader of +the Cretans answered him, saying:</p> +<p>“Stranger, behold thou art no whit like <!-- page 129--><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>unto +mortal men in shape or growth, but art a peer of the Immortals, wherefore +all hail, and grace be thine, and all good things at the hands of the +Gods. Tell me then truly that I may know indeed, what people is +this, what land, what mortals dwell here? Surely with our thoughts +set on another goal we sailed the great sea to Pylos from Crete, whence +we boast our lineage; but now it is hither that we have come, maugre +our wills, with our galley—another path and other ways—we +longing to return, but some God has led us all unwilling to this place.”</p> +<p>Then the far-darting Apollo answered them:</p> +<p>“Strangers, who dwelt aforetime round wooded Cnossus, never +again shall ye return each to his pleasant city and his own house, and +his wife, but here shall ye hold my rich temple, honoured by multitudes +of men. Lo! I am the son of Zeus, and name myself Apollo, and +hither have I brought you over the great gulf of the sea, with no evil +intent. Nay, here shall ye possess my rich temple, <!-- page 130--><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>held +highest in honour among all men, and ye shall know the counsels of the +Immortals, by whose will ye shall ever be held in renown. But +now come, and instantly obey my word. First lower the sails, and +loose the sheets, and then beach the black ship on the land, taking +forth the wares and gear of the trim galley, and build ye an altar on +the strand of the sea. Thereon kindle fire, and sprinkle above +in sacrifice the white barley-flour, and thereafter pray, standing around +the altar. And whereas I first, in the misty sea, sprang aboard +the swift ship in the guise of a dolphin, therefore pray to me as Apollo +Delphinius, while mine shall ever be the Delphian altar seen from afar. +Then take ye supper beside the swift black ship, and pour libations +to the blessed Gods who hold Olympus. But when ye have dismissed +the desire of sweet food then with me do ye come, singing the Pæan, +till ye win that place where ye shall possess the rich temple.”</p> +<p>So spake he, while they heard and obeyed <!-- page 131--><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>eagerly. +First they lowered the sails, loosing the sheets, and lowering the mast +by the forestays, they laid it in the mast-stead, and themselves went +forth on the strand of the sea. Then forth from the salt sea to +the mainland they dragged the fleet ship high up on the sands, laying +long sleepers thereunder, and they builded an altar on the sea-strand, +and lit fire thereon, scattering above white barley-flour in sacrifice, +and, standing around the altar, they prayed as the God commanded. +Anon they took supper beside the fleet black ship, and poured forth +libations to the blessed Gods who hold Olympus. But when they +had dismissed the desire of meat and drink they set forth on their way, +and the Prince Apollo guided them, harp in hand, and sweetly he harped, +faring with high and goodly strides. Dancing in his train the +Cretans followed to Pytho, and the Pæan they were chanting, the +pæans of the Cretans in whose breasts the Muse hath put honey-sweet +song. All unwearied they strode to the hill, and swiftly were +got to <!-- page 132--><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>Parnassus +and a winsome land, where they were to dwell, honoured of many among +men.</p> +<p>Apollo guided them, and showed his holy shrine and rich temple, and +the spirit was moved in their breasts, and the captain of the Cretans +spake, and asked the God, saying:</p> +<p>“Prince, since thou hast led us far from friends and our own +country, for so it pleases thee, how now shall we live, we pray thee +tell us. This fair land bears not vines, nor is rich in meadows, +wherefrom we might live well, and minister to men.”</p> +<p>Then, smiling, Apollo, the son of Zeus, spoke to them:</p> +<p>“Foolish ones, enduring hearts, who desire cares, and sore +toil, and all straits! A light word will I speak to you, do ye +consider it. Let each one of you, knife in right hand, be ever +slaughtering sheep that in abundance shall ever be yours, all the flocks +that the renowned tribes of men bring hither to me. Yours it is +to guard my temple, and receive <!-- page 133--><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>the +tribes of men that gather hither, doing, above all, as my will enjoins. +But if any vain word be spoken, or vain deed wrought, or violence after +the manner of mortal men, then shall others be your masters, and hold +you in thraldom for ever. <a name="citation133"></a><a href="#footnote133">{133}</a> +I have spoken all, do thou keep it in thy heart.”</p> +<p>Even so, fare thou well, son of Zeus and Leto, but I shall remember +both thee and another song.</p> +<h3>II. HERMES</h3> +<p>Of Hermes sing, O Muse, the son of Zeus and Maia, Lord of Cyllene, +and Arcadia rich in sheep, the fortune-bearing Herald of the Gods, him +whom Maia bore, the fair-tressed nymph, that lay in the arms of Zeus; +a shamefaced nymph was she, shunning the assembly of the blessed Gods, +dwelling within a shadowy cave. Therein was Cronion wont to embrace +the fair-tressed nymph in the deep of night, when sweet sleep held white-armed +Hera, the immortal Gods knowing it not, nor mortal men.</p> +<p>But when the mind of great Zeus was fulfilled, and over <i>her</i> +the tenth moon stood in the sky, the babe was born to light, and all +was made manifest; yea, then she bore a child of many a wile and cunning +counsel, a robber, a driver <!-- page 135--><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>of +the kine, a captain of raiders, a watcher of the night, a thief of the +gates, who soon should show forth deeds renowned among the deathless +Gods. Born in the dawn, by midday well he harped, and in the evening +stole the cattle of Apollo the Far-darter, on that fourth day of the +month wherein lady Maia bore him. Who, when he leaped from the +immortal knees of his mother, lay not long in the sacred cradle, but +sped forth to seek the cattle of Apollo, crossing the threshold of the +high-roofed cave. There found he a tortoise, and won endless delight, +for lo, it was Hermes that first made of the tortoise a minstrel. +The creature met him at the outer door, as she fed on the rich grass +in front of the dwelling, waddling along, at sight whereof the luck-bringing +son of Zeus laughed, and straightway spoke, saying:</p> +<p>“Lo, a lucky omen for me, not by me to be mocked! Hail, +darling and dancer, friend of the feast, welcome art thou! whence gatst +thou the gay garment, a speckled shell, thou, a mountain-dwelling tortoise? +Nay, I will <!-- page 136--><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>carry +thee within, and a boon shalt thou be to me, not by me to be scorned, +nay, thou shalt first serve my turn. Best it is to bide at home, +since danger is abroad. Living shalt thou be a spell against ill +witchery, and dead, then a right sweet music-maker.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang136b.jpg"> +<img alt="Hermes making the lyre. Bronze relief in the British Museum (Fourth Century B.C.)" src="images/lang136s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>So spake he, and raising in both hands the tortoise, went back within +the dwelling, bearing the glad treasure. Then he choked the creature, +and with a gouge of grey iron he scooped out the marrow of the hill +tortoise. And as a swift thought wings through the breast of one +that crowding cares are haunting, or as bright glances fleet from the +eyes, so swiftly devised renowned Hermes both deed and word. He +cut to measure stalks of reed, and fixed them in through holes bored +in the stony shell of the tortoise, and cunningly stretched round it +the hide of an ox, and put in the horns of the lyre, and to both he +fitted the bridge, and stretched seven harmonious chords of sheep-gut. +<a name="citation136"></a><a href="#footnote136">{136}</a> <!-- page 137--><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span></p> +<p>Then took he his treasure, when he had fashioned it, and touched +the strings in turn with the <i>plectrum</i>, and wondrously it sounded +under his hand, and fair sang the God to the notes, improvising his +chant as he played, like lads exchanging taunts at festivals. +Of Zeus Cronides and fair-sandalled Maia he sang how they had lived +in loving dalliance, and he told out the tale of his begetting, and +sang the handmaids and the goodly halls of the Nymph, and the tripods +in the house, and the store of cauldrons. So then he sang, but +dreamed of other deeds; then bore he the hollow lyre and laid it in +the sacred cradle, then, in longing for flesh of kine he sped from the +fragrant hall to a place of outlook, with such a design in his heart +<!-- page 138--><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>as reiving men pursue +in the dark of night.</p> +<p>The sun had sunk down beneath earth into ocean, with horses and chariot, +when Hermes came running to the shadowy hills of Pieria, where the deathless +kine of the blessed Gods had ever their haunt; there fed they on the +fair unshorn meadows. From their number did the keen-sighted Argeiphontes, +son of Maia, cut off fifty loud-lowing kine, and drove them hither and +thither over the sandy land, reversing their tracks, and, mindful of +his cunning, confused the hoof-marks, the front behind, the hind in +front, and himself fared down again. Straightway he wove sandals +on the sea-sand (things undreamed he wrought, works wonderful, unspeakable) +mingling myrtle twigs and tamarisk, then binding together a bundle of +the fresh young wood, he shrewdly fastened it for light sandals beneath +his feet, leaves and all, <a name="citation138"></a><a href="#footnote138">{138}</a>—brushwood +that the <!-- page 139--><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>renowned +slayer of Argos had plucked on his way from Pieria [being, as he was, +in haste, down the long way].</p> +<p>Then an old man that was labouring a fruitful vineyard, marked the +God faring down to the plain through grassy Onchestus, and to him spoke +first the son of renowned Maia:</p> +<p>“Old man that bowest thy shoulders over thy hoeing, verily +thou shalt have wine enough when all these vines are bearing. . . . +See thou, and see not; hear thou, and hear not; be silent, so long as +naught of thine is harmed.”</p> +<p>Therewith he drave on together the sturdy heads of cattle. +And over many a shadowy hill, and through echoing corries and flowering +plains drave renowned Hermes. Then stayed for the more part his +darkling ally, the sacred Night, and swiftly came morning when men can +work, and sacred Selene, daughter of Pallas, mighty prince, clomb to +a new place of outlook, and then the strong son of Zeus drave the broad-browed +<!-- page 140--><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>kine of Phœbus +Apollo to the river Alpheius. Unwearied they came to the high-roofed +stall and the watering-places in front of the fair meadow. There, +when he had foddered the deep-voiced kine, he herded them huddled together +into the byre, munching lotus and dewy marsh marigold; next brought +he much wood, and set himself to the craft of fire-kindling. Taking +a goodly shoot of the daphne, he peeled it with the knife, fitting it +to his hand, <a name="citation140"></a><a href="#footnote140">{140}</a> +and the hot vapour of smoke arose. [Lo, it was Hermes first who +gave fire, and the fire-sticks.] Then took he many dry faggots, +great plenty, and piled them in the trench, and flame began to break, +sending far the breath of burning fire. And when the force of +renowned Hephæstus kept the fire aflame, then downward dragged +he, so mighty his strength, two bellowing kine of twisted horn: close +up to the fire he dragged them, and cast them both panting upon their +backs to the ground. [Then <!-- page 141--><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>bending +over them he turned them upwards and cut their throats] . . . task upon +task, and sliced off the fat meat, pierced it with spits of wood, and +broiled it,—flesh, and chine, the joint of honour, and blood in +the bowels, all together;—then laid all there in its place. +The hides he stretched out on a broken rock, as even now they are used, +such as are to be enduring: long, and long after that ancient day. <a name="citation141a"></a><a href="#footnote141a">{141a}</a> +Anon glad Hermes dragged the fat portions on to a smooth ledge, and +cut twelve messes sorted out by lot, to each its due meed he gave. +Then a longing for the rite of the sacrifice of flesh came on renowned +Hermes: for the sweet savour irked him, immortal as he was, but not +even so did his strong heart yield. <a name="citation141b"></a><a href="#footnote141b">{141b}</a> +. . . The fat and flesh he placed in the high-roofed stall, the +rest he swiftly raised aloft, a trophy of his reiving, and, gathering +dry faggots, he burned heads and feet entire with the vapour of flame. +Anon <!-- page 142--><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>when the God +had duly finished all, he cast his sandals into the deep swirling pool +of Alpheius, quenched the embers, and all night long spread smooth the +black dust: Selene lighting him with her lovely light. Back to +the crests of Cyllene came the God at dawn, nor blessed God, on that +long way, nor mortal man encountered him; nay, and no dog barked. +Then Hermes, son of Zeus, bearer of boon, bowed his head, and entered +the hall through the hole of the bolt, like mist on the breath of autumn. +Then, standing erect, he sped to the rich inmost chamber of the cave, +lightly treading noiseless on the floor. Quickly to his cradle +came glorious Hermes and wrapped the swaddling bands about his shoulders, +like a witless babe, playing with the wrapper about his knees. +So lay he, guarding his dear lyre at his left hand. But his Goddess +mother the God did not deceive; she spake, saying:</p> +<p>“Wherefore, thou cunning one, and whence comest thou in the +night, thou clad in shamelessness? Anon, methinks, thou <!-- page 143--><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>wilt +go forth at Apollo’s hands with bonds about thy sides that may +not be broken, sooner than be a robber in the glens. Go to, wretch, +thy Father begat thee for a trouble to deathless Gods and mortal men.”</p> +<p>But Hermes answered her with words of guile: “Mother mine, +why wouldst thou scare me so, as though I were a redeless child, with +little craft in his heart, a trembling babe that dreads his mother’s +chidings? Nay, but I will essay the wiliest craft to feed thee +and me for ever. We twain are not to endure to abide here, of +all the deathless Gods alone unapproached with sacrifice and prayer, +as thou commandest. Better it is eternally to be conversant with +Immortals, richly, nobly, well seen in wealth of grain, than to be homekeepers +in a darkling cave. And for honour, I too will have my dues of +sacrifice, even as Apollo. Even if my Father give it me not I +will endeavour, for I am of avail, to be a captain of reivers. +And if the son of renowned Leto make inquest for me, methinks some <!-- page 144--><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>worse +thing will befall him. For to Pytho I will go, to break into his +great house, whence I shall sack goodly tripods and cauldrons enough, +and gold, and gleaming iron, and much raiment. Thyself, if thou +hast a mind, shalt see it.”</p> +<p>So held they converse one with another, the son of Zeus of the Ægis, +and Lady Maia. Then Morning the Daughter of Dawn was arising from +the deep stream of Oceanus, bearing light to mortals, what time Apollo +came to Onchestus in his journeying, the gracious grove, a holy place +of the loud Girdler of the Earth: there he found an old man grazing +his ox, the stay of his vineyard, on the roadside. <a name="citation144"></a><a href="#footnote144">{144}</a> +Him first bespoke the son of renowned Leto.</p> +<p>“Old man, hedger of grassy Onchestus; hither am I come seeking +cattle from Pieria, all the crook-horned kine out of my herd: my black +bull was wont to graze apart from the rest, and my four bright-eyed +<!-- page 145--><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>hounds followed, +four of them, wise as men and all of one mind. These were left, +the hounds and the bull, a marvel; but the kine wandered away from their +soft meadow and sweet pasture, at the going down of the sun. Tell +me, thou old man of ancient days, if thou hast seen any man faring after +these cattle?”</p> +<p>Then to him the old man spake and answered:</p> +<p>“My friend, hard it were to tell all that a man may see: for +many wayfarers go by, some full of ill intent, and some of good: and +it is difficult to be certain regarding each. Nevertheless, the +whole day long till sunset I was digging about my vineyard plot, and +methought I marked—but I know not surely—a child that went +after the horned kine; right young he was, and held a staff, and kept +going from side to side, and backwards he drove the kine, their faces +fronting him.”</p> +<p>So spake the old man, but Apollo heard, and went fleeter on his path. +Then marked he a bird long of wing, and anon he knew <!-- page 146--><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>that +the thief had been the son of Zeus Cronion. Swiftly sped the Prince, +Apollo, son of Zeus, to goodly Pylos, seeking the shambling kine, while +his broad shoulders were swathed in purple cloud. Then the Far-darter +marked the tracks, and spake:</p> +<p>“Verily, a great marvel mine eyes behold! These be the +tracks of high-horned kine, but all are turned back to the meadow of +asphodel. But these are not the footsteps of a man, nay, nor of +a woman, nor of grey wolves, nor bears, nor lions, nor, methinks, of +a shaggy-maned Centaur, whosoever with fleet feet makes such mighty +strides! Dread to see they are that backwards go, more dread they +that go forwards.”</p> +<p>So speaking, the Prince sped on, Apollo, son of Zeus. To the +Cyllenian hill he came, that is clad in forests, to the deep shadow +of the hollow rock, where the deathless nymph brought forth the child +of Zeus Cronion. A fragrance sweet was spread about the goodly +hill, and many tall sheep were grazing the <!-- page 147--><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>grass. +Thence he went fleetly over the stone threshold into the dusky cave, +even Apollo, the Far-darter.</p> +<p>Now when the son of Zeus and Maia beheld Apollo thus in wrath for +his kine, he sank down within his fragrant swaddling bands, being covered +as piled embers of burnt tree-roots are covered by thick ashes, so Hermes +coiled himself up, when he saw the Far-darter; and curled himself, feet, +head, and hands, into small space [summoning sweet sleep], though of +a verity wide awake, and his tortoise-shell he kept beneath his armpit. +But the son of Zeus and Leto marked them well, the lovely mountain nymph +and her dear son, a little babe, all wrapped in cunning wiles. +Gazing round all the chamber of the vasty dwelling, Apollo opened three +aumbries with the shining key; full were they of nectar and glad ambrosia, +and much gold and silver lay within, and much raiment of the Nymph, +purple and glistering, such as are within the dwellings of the mighty +Gods. Anon, when <!-- page 148--><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>he +had searched out the chambers of the great hall, the son of Leto spake +to renowned Hermes:</p> +<p>“Child, in the cradle lying, tell me straightway of my kine: +or speedily between us twain will be unseemly strife. For I will +seize thee and cast thee into murky Tartarus, into the darkness of doom +where none is of avail. Nor shall thy father or mother redeem +thee to the light: nay, under earth shalt thou roam, a reiver among +folk fordone.”</p> +<p>Then Hermes answered with words of craft: “Apollo, what ungentle +word hast thou spoken? And is it thy cattle of the homestead thou +comest here to seek? I saw them not, heard not of them, gave ear +to no word of them: of them I can tell no tidings, nor win the fee of +him who tells. Not like a lifter of cattle, a stalwart man, am +I: no task is this of mine: hitherto I have other cares; sleep, and +mother’s milk, and about my shoulders swaddling bands, and warmed +baths. Let none know whence this feud arose! And verily +great marvel among the <!-- page 149--><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>Immortals +it would be, that a new-born child should cross the threshold after +kine of the homestead; a silly rede of thine. Yesterday was I +born, my feet are tender, and rough is the earth below. But if +thou wilt I shall swear the great oath by my father’s head, that +neither I myself am to blame, nor have I seen any other thief of thy +kine: be kine what they may, for I know but by hearsay.”</p> +<p>So spake he with twinkling eyes, and twisted brows, glancing hither +and thither, with long-drawn whistling breath, hearing Apollo’s +word as a vain thing. Then lightly laughing spake Apollo the Far-darter:</p> +<p>“Oh, thou rogue, thou crafty one; verily methinks that many +a time thou wilt break into stablished homes, and by night leave many +a man bare, silently pilling through his house, such is thy speech to-day! +And many herdsmen of the steadings wilt thou vex in the mountain glens, +when in lust for flesh thou comest on the herds and sheep thick of fleece. +Nay come, lest thou sleep <!-- page 150--><span class="pagenum">p. 150</span>the +last and longest slumber, come forth from thy cradle, thou companion +of black night! For surely this honour hereafter thou shalt have +among the Immortals, to be called for ever the captain of reivers.”</p> +<p>So spake Phœbus Apollo, and lifted the child, but even then +strong Argus-bane had his device, and, in the hands of the God, let +forth an Omen, an evil belly-tenant, with tidings of worse, and a speedy +sneeze thereafter. Apollo heard, and dropped renowned Hermes on +the ground, then sat down before him, eager as he was to be gone, chiding +Hermes, and thus he spoke:</p> +<p>“Take heart, swaddling one, child of Zeus and Maia. By +these thine Omens shall I find anon the sturdy kine, and thou shalt +lead the way.”</p> +<p>So spake he, but swiftly arose Cyllenian Hermes, and swiftly fared, +pulling about his ears his swaddling bands that were his shoulder wrapping. +Then spake he:</p> +<p>“Whither bearest thou me, Far-darter, of Gods most vehement? +Is it for wrath about <!-- page 151--><span class="pagenum">p. 151</span>thy +kine that thou thus provokest me? Would that the race of kine +might perish, for thy cattle have I not stolen, nor seen another steal, +whatsoever kine may be; I know but by hearsay, I! But let our +suit be judged before Zeus Cronion.”</p> +<p>Now were lone Hermes and the splendid son of Leto point by point +disputing their pleas, Apollo with sure knowledge was righteously seeking +to convict renowned Hermes for the sake of his kine, but he with craft +and cunning words sought to beguile,—the Cyllenian to beguile +the God of the Silver Bow. But when the wily one found one as +wily, then speedily he strode forward through the sand in front, while +behind came the son of Zeus and Leto. Swiftly they came to the +crests of fragrant Olympus, to father Cronion they came, these goodly +sons of Zeus, for there were set for them the balances of doom. +Quiet was snowy Olympus, but they who know not decay or death were gathering +after gold-throned Dawn. Then stood Hermes and Apollo of the Silver +Bow before <!-- page 152--><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>the knees +of Zeus, the Thunderer, who inquired of his glorious Son, saying:</p> +<p>“Phœbus, whence drivest thou such mighty spoil, a new-born +babe like a Herald? A mighty matter this, to come before the gathering +of the Gods!”</p> +<p>Then answered him the Prince, Apollo the Far-darter:</p> +<p>“Father, anon shalt thou hear no empty tale; tauntest thou +me, as though I were the only lover of booty? This boy have I +found, a finished reiver, in the hills of Cyllene, a long way to wander; +so fine a knave as I know not among Gods or men, of all robbers on earth. +My kine he stole from the meadows, and went driving them at eventide +along the loud sea shores, straight to Pylos. Wondrous were the +tracks, a thing to marvel on, work of a glorious god. For the +black dust showed the tracks of the kine making backward to the mead +of asphodel; but this child intractable fared neither on hands nor feet, +through the sandy land, but this other strange craft had he, <!-- page 153--><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>to +tread the paths as if shod on with oaken shoots. <a name="citation153"></a><a href="#footnote153">{153}</a> +While he drove the kine through a land of sand, right plain to discern +were all the tracks in the dust, but when he had crossed the great tract +of sand, straightway on hard ground his traces and those of the kine +were ill to discern. But a mortal man beheld him, driving straight +to Pylos the cattle broad of brow. Now when he had stalled the +kine in quiet, and confused his tracks on either side the way, he lay +dark as night in his cradle, in the dusk of a shadowy cave. The +keenest eagle could not have spied him, and much he rubbed his eyes, +with crafty purpose, and bluntly spake his word:</p> +<p>“I saw not, I heard not aught, nor learned another’s +tale; nor tidings could I give, nor win reward of tidings.”</p> +<p>Therewith Phœbus Apollo sat him down, but another tale did +Hermes tell, among the Immortals, addressing Cronion, the master of +all Gods:</p> +<p>“Father Zeus, verily the truth will I tell <!-- page 154--><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>thee: +for true am I, nor know the way of falsehood. To-day at sunrise +came Apollo to our house, seeking his shambling kine. No witnesses +of the Gods brought he, nor no Gods who had seen the fact. But +he bade me declare the thing under duress, threatening oft to cast me +into wide Tartarus, for he wears the tender flower of glorious youth, +but I was born but yesterday, as well himself doth know, and in naught +am I like a stalwart lifter of kine. Believe, for thou givest +thyself out to be my father, that may I never be well if I drove home +the kine, nay, or crossed the threshold. This I say for sooth! +The Sun I greatly revere, and other gods, and Thee I love, and <i>him</i> +I dread. Nay, thyself knowest that I am not to blame; and thereto +I will add a great oath: by these fair-wrought porches of the Gods I +am guiltless, and one day yet I shall avenge me on him for this pitiless +accusation, mighty as he is; but do thou aid the younger!”</p> +<p>So spake Cyllenian Argus-bane, and winked, with his wrapping on his +arm: he <!-- page 155--><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>did not cast +it down. But Zeus laughed aloud at the sight of his evil-witted +child, so well and wittily he pled denial about the kine. Then +bade he them both be of one mind, and so seek the cattle, with Hermes +as guide to lead the way, and show without guile where he had hidden +the sturdy kine. The Son of Cronos nodded, and glorious Hermes +obeyed, for lightly persuadeth the counsel of Zeus of the Ægis.</p> +<p>Then sped both of them, the fair children of Zeus, to sandy Pylos, +at the ford of Alpheius, and to the fields they came, and the stall +of lofty roof, where the booty was tended in the season of darkness. +There anon Hermes went to the side of the rocky cave, and began driving +the sturdy cattle into the light. But the son of Leto, glancing +aside, saw the flayed skins on the high rock, and quickly asked renowned +Hermes:</p> +<p>“How wert thou of avail, oh crafty one, to flay two kine; new-born +and childish as thou art? For time to come I dread thy <!-- page 156--><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>might: +no need for thee to be growing long, thou son of Maia!” <a name="citation156"></a><a href="#footnote156">{156}</a></p> +<p>[So spake he, and round his hands twisted strong bands of withes, +but they at his feet were soon intertwined, each with other, and lightly +were they woven over all the kine of the field, by the counsel of thievish +Hermes, but Apollo marvelled at that he saw.]</p> +<p>Then the strong Argus-bane with twinkling glances looked down at +the ground, wishful to hide his purpose. But that harsh son of +renowned Leto, the Far-darter, did he lightly soothe to his will; taking +his lyre in his left hand he tuned it with the <i>plectrum</i>: and +wondrously it rang beneath his hand. Thereat Phœbus Apollo +laughed and was glad, and the winsome note passed through to his very +soul as he heard. Then Maia’s son took courage, and sweetly +harping with his harp he stood at Apollo’s left side, playing +his prelude, and thereon followed his winsome voice. <!-- page 157--><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span> +He sang the renowns of the deathless Gods, and the dark Earth, how all +things were at the first, and how each God gat his portion.</p> +<p>To Mnemosyne first of Gods he gave the meed of minstrelsy, to the +Mother of the Muses, for the Muse came upon the Son of Maia.</p> +<p>Then all the rest of the Immortals, in order of rank and birth, did +he honour, the splendid son of Zeus, telling duly all the tale, as he +struck the lyre on his arm. But on Apollo’s heart in his +breast came the stress of desire, who spake to him wingèd words:</p> +<p>“Thou crafty slayer of kine, thou comrade of the feast; thy +song is worth the price of fifty oxen! Henceforth, methinks, shall +we be peacefully made at one. But, come now, tell me this, thou +wily Son of Maia, have these marvels been with thee even since thy birth, +or is it that some immortal, or some mortal man, has given thee the +glorious gift and shown thee song divine? For marvellous is this +new song in mine ears, <!-- page 158--><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>such +as, methinks, none hath known, either of men, or of Immortals who have +mansions in Olympus, save thyself, thou reiver, thou Son of Zeus and +Maia! What art is this, what charm against the stress of cares? +What a path of song! for verily here is choice of all three things, +joy, and love, and sweet sleep. For truly though I be conversant +with the Olympian Muses, to whom dances are a charge, and the bright +minstrel hymn, and rich song, and the lovesome sound of flutes, yet +never yet hath aught else been so dear to my heart, dear as the skill +in the festivals of the Gods. I marvel, Son of Zeus, at this, +the music of thy minstrelsy. But now since, despite thy youth, +thou hast such glorious skill, to thee and to thy Mother I speak this +word of sooth: verily, by this shaft of cornel wood, I shall lead thee +renowned and fortunate among the Immortals, and give thee glorious gifts, +nor in the end deceive thee.”</p> +<p>Then Hermes answered him with cunning words:</p> +<p>“Shrewdly thou questionest me, Far-darter, <!-- page 159--><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>nor +do I grudge thee to enter upon mine art. This day shalt thou know +it: and to thee would I fain be kind in word and will: but within thyself +thou well knowest all things, for first among the Immortals, Son of +Zeus, is thy place. Mighty art thou and strong, and Zeus of wise +counsels loves thee well with reverence due, and hath given thee honour +and goodly gifts. Nay, they tell that thou knowest soothsaying, +Far-darter, by the voice of Zeus: for from Zeus are all oracles, wherein +I myself now know thee to be all-wise. Thy province it is to know +what so thou wilt. Since, then, thy heart bids thee play the lyre, +harp thou and sing, and let joys be thy care, taking this gift from +me; and to me, friend, gain glory. Sweetly sing with my shrill +comrade in thy hands, that knoweth speech good and fair and in order +due. Freely do thou bear it hereafter into the glad feast, and +the winsome dance, and the glorious revel, a joy by night and day. +Whatsoever skilled hand shall inquire of it artfully and wisely, surely +its voice shall teach <!-- page 160--><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>him +all things joyous, being easily played by gentle practice, fleeing dull +toil. But if an unskilled hand first impetuously inquires of it, +vain and discordant shall the false notes sound. But thine it +is of nature to know what things thou wilt: so to thee will I give this +lyre, thou glorious son of Zeus. But we for our part will let +graze thy cattle of the field on the pastures of hill and plain, thou +Far-darter. So shall the kine, consorting with the bulls, bring +forth calves male and female, great store, and no need there is that +thou, wise as thou art, should be vehement in anger.”</p> +<p>So spake he, and held forth the lyre that Phœbus Apollo took, +and pledged his shining whip in the hands of Hermes, and set him over +the herds. Gladly the son of Maia received it; while the glorious +son of Leto, Apollo, the Prince, the Far-darter, held the lyre in his +left hand, and tuned it orderly with the <i>plectrum</i>. Sweetly +it sounded to his hand, and fair thereto was the song of the God. +Thence anon the twain turned the kine to <!-- page 161--><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>the +rich meadow, but themselves, the glorious children of Zeus, hastened +back to snow-clad Olympus, rejoicing in the lyre: ay, and Zeus, the +counsellor, was glad of it. [Both did he make one in love, and +Hermes loved Leto’s son constantly, even as now, since when in +knowledge of his love he pledged to the Far-darter the winsome lyre, +who held it on his arm and played thereon.] But Hermes withal +invented the skill of a new art, the far-heard music of the reed pipes.</p> +<p>Then spake the son of Leto to Hermes thus:</p> +<p>“I fear me, Son of Maia, thou leader, thou crafty one, lest +thou steal from me both my lyre and my bent bow. For this meed +thou hast from Zeus, to establish the ways of barter among men on the +fruitful earth. Wherefore would that thou shouldst endure to swear +me the great oath of the Gods, with a nod of the head or by the showering +waters of Styx, that thy doings shall ever to my heart be kind and dear.”</p> +<p>Then, with a nod of his head, did Maia’s <!-- page 162--><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>son +vow that never would he steal the possessions of the Far-darter, nor +draw nigh his strong dwelling. And Leto’s son made vow and +band of love and alliance, that none other among the Gods should be +dearer of Gods or men the seed of Zeus. [And I shall make, with +thee, a perfect token of a Covenant of all Gods and all men, loyal to +my heart and honoured.] <a name="citation162a"></a><a href="#footnote162a">{162a}</a> +“Thereafter shall I give thee a fair wand of wealth and fortune, +a golden wand, three-pointed, which shall guard thee harmless, accomplishing +all things good of word and deed that it is mine to learn from the voice +of Zeus. <a name="citation162b"></a><a href="#footnote162b">{162b}</a> +But as touching the art prophetic, oh best of fosterlings of Zeus, concerning +which thou inquirest, for thee it is not fit to learn that <!-- page 163--><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>art, +nay, nor for any other Immortal. That lies in the mind of Zeus +alone. Myself did make pledge, and promise, and strong oath, that, +save me, none other of the eternal Gods should know the secret counsel +of Zeus. And thou, my brother of the Golden Wand, bid me not tell +thee what awful purposes is planning the far-seeing Zeus.</p> +<p>“One mortal shall I harm, and another shall I bless, with many +a turn of fortune among hapless men. Of mine oracle shall he have +profit whosoever comes in the wake of wings and voice of birds of omen: +he shall have profit of mine oracle: him I will not deceive. But +whoso, trusting birds not ominous, approaches mine oracle, to inquire +beyond my will, and know more than the eternal Gods, shall come, I say, +on a bootless journey, yet his gifts shall I receive. Yet another +thing will I tell thee, thou Son of renowned Maia and of Zeus of the +Ægis, thou bringer of boon; there be certain Thriæ, sisters +born, three maidens rejoicing in swift wings. Their heads are +sprinkled with white barley flour, <!-- page 164--><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>and +they dwell beneath a glade of Parnassus, apart they dwell, teachers +of soothsaying. This art I learned while yet a boy I tended the +kine, and my Father heeded not. Thence they flit continually hither +and thither, feeding on honeycombs and bringing all things to fulfilment. +They, when they are full of the spirit of soothsaying, having eaten +of the wan honey, delight to speak forth the truth. But if they +be bereft of the sweet food divine, then lie they all confusedly. +These I bestow on thee, and do thou, inquiring clearly, delight thine +own heart, and if thou instruct any man, he will often hearken to thine +oracle, if he have the good fortune. <a name="citation164"></a><a href="#footnote164">{164}</a> +These be thine, O Son of Maia, and the cattle of the field with twisted +horn do thou tend, and horses, and toilsome mules. . . . And be +lord over the burning eyes of lions, and white-toothed swine, and dogs, +and sheep <!-- page 165--><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>that wide +earth nourishes, and over all flocks be glorious Hermes lord. +And let him alone be herald appointed to Hades, who, though he be giftless, +will give him highest gift of honour.”</p> +<p>With such love, in all kindness, did Apollo pledge the Son of Maia, +and thereto Cronion added grace. With all mortals and immortals +he consorts. Somewhat doth he bless, but ever through the dark +night he beguiles the tribes of mortal men.</p> +<p>Hail to thee thus, Son of Zeus and Maia, of thee shall I be mindful +and of another lay. <!-- page 166--><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span></p> +<h3>III. APHRODITE</h3> +<p>Tell me, Muse, of the deeds of golden Aphrodite, the Cyprian, who +rouses sweet desire among the Immortals, and vanquishes the tribes of +deathly men, and birds that wanton in the air, and all beasts, even +all the clans that earth nurtures, and all in the sea. To all +are dear the deeds of the garlanded Cyprian.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang166b.jpg"> +<img alt="Aphrodite. Marble statue in the Louvre" src="images/lang166s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Yet three hearts there be that she cannot persuade or beguile: the +daughter of Zeus of the Ægis, grey-eyed Athene: not to her are +dear the deeds of golden Aphrodite, but war and the work of Ares, battle +and broil, and the mastery of noble arts. First was she to teach +earthly men the fashioning of war chariots and cars fair-wrought with +<!-- page 167--><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>bronze. And +she teaches to tender maidens in the halls all goodly arts, breathing +skill into their minds. Nor ever doth laughter-loving Aphrodite +conquer in desire Artemis of the Golden Distaff, rejoicing in the sound +of the chase, for the bow and arrow are her delight, and slaughter of +the wild beasts on the hills: the lyre, the dance, the clear hunting +halloo, and shadowy glens, and cities of righteous men.</p> +<p>Nor to the revered maiden Hestia are the feats of Aphrodite a joy, +eldest daughter of crooked-counselled Cronos [youngest, too, by the +design of Zeus of the Ægis], that lady whom both Poseidon and +Apollo sought to win. But she would not, nay stubbornly she refused; +and she swore a great oath fulfilled, with her hand on the head of Father +Zeus of the Ægis, to be a maiden for ever, that lady Goddess. +And to her Father Zeus gave a goodly meed of honour, in lieu of wedlock; +and in mid-hall she sat her down choosing the best portion: and in all +temples of the Gods is <!-- page 168--><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>she +honoured, and among all mortals is chief of Gods. <a name="citation168"></a><a href="#footnote168">{168}</a></p> +<p>Of these she cannot win or beguile the hearts. But of all others +there is none, of blessed Gods or mortal men, that hath escaped Aphrodite. +Yea, even the heart of Zeus the Thunderer she led astray; of him that +is greatest of all, and hath the highest lot of honour. Even his +wise wit she hath beguiled at her will, and lightly laid him in the +arms of mortal women; Hera not wotting of it, his sister and his wife, +the fairest in goodliness of beauty among the deathless Goddesses. +To highest honour did they beget her, crooked-counselled Cronos and +Mother Rheia; and Zeus of imperishable counsel made her his chaste and +duteous wife.</p> +<p>But into Aphrodite herself Zeus sent sweet <!-- page 169--><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>desire, +to lie in the arms of a mortal man. This wrought he so that anon +not even she might be unconversant with a mortal bed, and might not +some day with sweet laughter make her boast among all the Gods, the +smiling Aphrodite, that she had given the Gods to mortal paramours, +and they for deathless Gods bare deathly sons, and that she mingled +Goddesses in love with mortal men. Therefore Zeus sent into her +heart sweet desire of Anchises, who as then was pasturing his kine on +the steep hills of many-fountained Ida, a man in semblance like the +Immortals. Him thereafter did smiling Aphrodite see and love, +and measureless desire took hold on her heart. To Cyprus wended +she, within her fragrant shrine: even to Paphos, where is her sacred +garth and odorous altar. Thither went she in, and shut the shining +doors, and there the Graces laved and anointed her with oil ambrosial, +such as is on the bodies of the eternal Gods, sweet fragrant oil that +she had by her. Then clad she her body in goodly raiment, and +<!-- page 170--><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>prinked herself with +gold, the smiling Aphrodite; then sped to Troy, leaving fragrant Cyprus, +and high among the clouds she swiftly accomplished her way.</p> +<p>To many-fountained Ida she came, mother of wild beasts, and made +straight for the steading through the mountain, while behind her came +fawning the beasts, grey wolves, and lions fiery-eyed, and bears, and +swift pards, insatiate pursuers of the roe-deer. Glad was she +at the sight of them, and sent desire into their breasts, and they went +coupling two by two in the shadowy dells. But she came to the +well-builded shielings, <a name="citation170"></a><a href="#footnote170">{170}</a> +and him she found left alone in the shielings with no company, the hero +Anchises, graced with beauty from the Gods. All the rest were +faring after the kine through the grassy pastures, but he, left lonely +at the shielings, walked up and down, harping sweet and shrill. +In front of him stood the daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite, in semblance +and stature like an unwedded maid, lest he should be <!-- page 171--><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>adread +when he beheld the Goddess. And Anchises marvelled when he beheld +her, her height, and beauty, and glistering raiment. For she was +clad in vesture more shining than the flame of fire, and with twisted +armlets and glistering earrings of flower-fashion. About her delicate +neck were lovely jewels, fair and golden: and like the moon’s +was the light on her fair breasts, and love came upon Anchises, and +he spake unto her:</p> +<p>“Hail, Queen, whosoever of the Immortals thou art that comest +to this house; whether Artemis, or Leto, or golden Aphrodite, or high-born +Themis, or grey-eyed Athene. Or perchance thou art one of the +Graces come hither, who dwell friendly with the Gods, and have a name +to be immortal; or of the nymphs that dwell in this fair glade, or in +this fair mountain, and in the well-heads of rivers, and in grassy dells. +But to thee on some point of outlook, in a place far seen, will I make +an altar, and offer to thee goodly victims in every season. But +for thy part <!-- page 172--><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>be kindly, +and grant me to be a man pre-eminent among the Trojans, and give goodly +seed of children to follow me; but for me, let me live long, and see +the sunlight, and come to the limit of old age, being ever in all things +fortunate among men.”</p> +<p>Then Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus answered him:</p> +<p>“Anchises, most renowned of men on earth, behold no Goddess +am I,—why likenest thou me to the Immortals?—Nay, mortal +am I, and a mortal mother bare me, and my father is famous Otreus, if +thou perchance hast heard of him, who reigns over strong-warded Phrygia. +Now I well know both your tongue and our own, for a Trojan nurse reared +me in the hall, and nurtured me ever, from the day when she took me +at my mother’s hands, and while I was but a little child. +Thus it is, thou seest, that I well know thy tongue as well as my own. +But even now the Argus-slayer of the Golden Wand hath ravished me away +from the choir of Artemis, the Goddess of the Golden <!-- page 173--><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>Distaff, +who loves the noise of the chase. Many nymphs, and maids beloved +of many wooers, were we there at play, and a great circle of people +was about us withal. But thence did he bear me away, the Argus-slayer, +he of the Golden Wand, and bore me over much tilled land of mortal men, +and many wastes unfilled and uninhabited, where wild beasts roam through +the shadowy dells. So fleet we passed that I seemed not to touch +the fertile earth with my feet. Now Hermes said that I was bidden +to be the bride of Anchises, and mother of thy goodly children. +But when he had spoken and shown the thing, lo, instantly he went back +among the immortal Gods,—the renowned Slayer of Argus. But +I come to thee, strong necessity being laid upon me, and by Zeus I beseech +thee and thy good parents,—for none ill folk may get such a son +as thee,—by them I implore thee to take me, a maiden as I am and +untried in love, and show me to thy father and thy discreet mother, +and to thy brothers of one lineage with thee. No <!-- page 174--><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>unseemly +daughter to these, and sister to those will I be, but well worthy; and +do thou send a messenger swiftly to the Phrygians of the dappled steeds, +to tell my father of my fortunes, and my sorrowing mother; gold enough +and woven raiment will they send, and many and goodly gifts shall be +thy meed. Do thou all this, and then busk the winsome wedding-feast, +that is honourable among both men and immortal Gods.”</p> +<p>So speaking, the Goddess brought sweet desire into his heart, and +love came upon Anchises, and he spake, and said:</p> +<p>“If indeed thou art mortal and a mortal mother bore thee, and +if renowned Otreus is thy father, and if thou art come hither by the +will of Hermes, the immortal Guide, and art to be called my wife for +ever, then neither mortal man nor immortal God shall hold me from my +desire before I lie with thee in love, now and anon; nay, not even if +Apollo the Far-darter himself were to send the shafts of sorrow from +the silver bow! Nay, thou lady like the Goddesses, willing <!-- page 175--><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>were +I to go down within the house of Hades, if but first I had climbed into +thy bed.”</p> +<p>So spake he and took her hand; while laughter-loving Aphrodite turned, +and crept with fair downcast eyes towards the bed. It was strewn +for the Prince, as was of wont, with soft garments: and above it lay +skins of bears and deep-voiced lions that he had slain in the lofty +hills. When then they twain had gone up into the well-wrought +bed, first Anchises took from her body her shining jewels, brooches, +and twisted armlets, earrings and chains: and he loosed her girdle, +and unclad her of her glistering raiment, that he laid on a silver-studded +chair. Then through the Gods’ will and design, by the immortal +Goddess lay the mortal man, not wotting what he did.</p> +<p>Now in the hour when herdsmen drive back the kine and sturdy sheep +to the steading from the flowery pastures, even then the Goddess poured +sweet sleep into Anchises, and clad herself in her goodly raiment. <!-- page 176--><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span> +Now when she was wholly clad, the lady Goddess, her head touched the +beam of the lofty roof: and from her cheeks shone forth immortal beauty,—even +the beauty of fair-garlanded Cytherea. Then she aroused him from +sleep, and spake, and said:</p> +<p>“Rise, son of Dardanus, why now slumberest thou so deeply? +Consider, am I even in aspect such as I was when first thine eyes beheld +me?”</p> +<p>So spake she, and straightway he started up out of slumber and was +adread, and turned his eyes away when he beheld the neck and the fair +eyes of Aphrodite. His goodly face he veiled again in a cloak, +and imploring her, he spake winged words:</p> +<p>“Even so soon as mine eyes first beheld thee, Goddess, I knew +thee for divine: but not sooth didst thou speak to me. But by +Zeus of the Ægis I implore thee, suffer me not to live a strengthless +shadow among men, but pity me: for no man lives in strength that has +couched with immortal Goddesses.” <!-- page 177--><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span></p> +<p>Then answered him Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus:</p> +<p>“Anchises, most renowned of mortal men, take courage, nor fear +overmuch. For no fear is there that thou shalt suffer scathe from +me, nor from others of the blessed Gods, for dear to the Gods art thou. +And to thee shall a dear son be born, and bear sway among the Trojans, +and children’s children shall arise after him continually. +Lo, <span class="smcap">Æneas</span> shall his name be called, +since dread sorrow held me when I came into the bed of a mortal man. +And of all mortal men these who spring from thy race are always nearest +to the immortal Gods in beauty and stature; witness how wise-counselling +Zeus carried away golden-haired Ganymedes, for his beauty’s sake, +that he might abide with the Immortals and be the cup-bearer of the +Gods in the house of Zeus, a marvellous thing to behold, a mortal honoured +among all the Immortals, as he draws the red nectar from the golden +mixing-bowl. But grief incurable possessed the heart of Tros, +nor knew <!-- page 178--><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>he whither +the wild wind had blown his dear son away, therefore day by day he lamented +him continually till Zeus took pity upon him, and gave him as a ransom +of his son high-stepping horses that bear the immortal Gods. These +he gave him for a gift, and the Guide, the Slayer of Argus, told all +these things by the command of Zeus, even how Ganymedes should be for +ever exempt from old age and death, even as are the Gods. Now +when his father heard this message of Zeus he rejoiced in his heart +and lamented no longer, but was gladly charioted by the wind-fleet horses.</p> +<p>“So too did Dawn of the Golden Throne carry off Tithonus, a +man of your lineage, one like unto the Immortals. Then went she +to pray to Cronion, who hath dark clouds for his tabernacle, that her +lover might be immortal and exempt from death for ever. Thereto +Zeus consented and granted her desire, but foolish of heart was the +Lady Dawn, nor did she deem it good to ask for eternal youth for her +lover, and to keep him unwrinkled by grievous old age. <!-- page 179--><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span> +Now so long as winsome youth was his, in joy did he dwell with the Golden-throned +Dawn, the daughter of Morning, at the world’s end beside the streams +of Oceanus, but so soon as grey hairs began to flow from his fair head +and goodly chin, the Lady Dawn held aloof from his bed, but kept and +cherished him in her halls, giving him food and ambrosia and beautiful +raiment. But when hateful old age had utterly overcome him, and +he could not move or lift his limbs, to her this seemed the wisest counsel; +she laid him in a chamber, and shut the shining doors, and his voice +flows on endlessly, and no strength now is his such as once there was +in his limbs. Therefore I would not have thee to be immortal and +live for ever in such fashion among the deathless Gods, but if, being +such as thou art in beauty and form, thou couldst live on, and be called +my lord, then this grief would not overshadow my heart.</p> +<p>“But it may not be, for swiftly will pitiless old age come +upon thee, old age that <!-- page 180--><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>standeth +close by mortal men; wretched and weary, and detested by the Gods: but +among the immortal Gods shall great blame be mine for ever, and all +for love of thee. For the Gods were wont to dread my words and +wiles wherewith I had subdued all the Immortals to mortal women in love, +my purpose overcoming them all; for now, lo you, my mouth will no longer +suffice to speak forth this boast among the Immortals, <a name="citation180"></a><a href="#footnote180">{180}</a> +for deep and sore hath been my folly, wretched and not to be named; +and distraught have I been who carry a child beneath my girdle, the +child of a mortal. Now so soon as he sees the light of the sun +the deep-bosomed mountain nymphs will rear him for me; the nymphs who +haunt this great and holy mountain, being of the clan neither of mortals +nor of immortal Gods. Long is their life, and immortal food do +they eat, and they join in the goodly dance with the immortal Gods. +With them the <!-- page 181--><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>Sileni +and the keen-sighted Slayer of Argus live in dalliance in the recesses +of the darkling caves. At their birth there sprang up pine trees +or tall-crested oaks on the fruitful earth, nourishing and fair, and +on the lofty mountain they stand, and are called the groves of the immortal +Gods, which in no wise doth man cut down with the steel. But when +the fate of death approaches, first do the fair trees wither on the +ground, and the bark about them moulders, and the twigs fall down, and +even as the tree perishes so the soul of the nymph leaves the light +of the sun.</p> +<p>“These nymphs will keep my child with them and rear him; and +him when first he enters on lovely youth shall these Goddesses bring +hither to thee, and show thee. But to thee, that I may tell thee +all my mind, will I come in the fifth year bringing my son. At +the sight of him thou wilt be glad when thou beholdest him with thine +eyes, for he will be divinely fair, and thou wilt lead him straightway +to windy Ilios. But if any mortal <!-- page 182--><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>man +asketh of thee what mother bare this thy dear son, be mindful to answer +him as I command: say that he is thy son by one of the flower-faced +nymphs who dwell in this forest-clad mountain, but if in thy folly thou +speakest out, and boastest to have been the lover of fair-garlanded +Cytherea, then Zeus in his wrath will smite thee with the smouldering +thunderbolt. Now all is told to thee: do thou be wise, and keep +thy counsel, and speak not my name, but revere the wrath of the Gods.”</p> +<p>So spake she, and soared up into the windy heaven.</p> +<p>Goddess, Queen of well-stablished Cyprus, having given thee honour +due, I shall pass on to another hymn. <!-- page 183--><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span></p> +<h3>IV. HYMN TO DEMETER</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang183b.jpg"> +<img alt="Syracusan medallion by Euainetos. Obv. Head of Persephone. Rev. Victorious Chariot" src="images/lang183s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Of fair-tressed Demeter, Demeter holy Goddess, I begin to sing: of +her and her slim-ankled daughter whom Hades snatched away, the gift +of wide-beholding Zeus, but Demeter knew it not, she that bears the +Seasons, the giver of goodly crops. For her daughter was playing +with the deep-bosomed maidens of Oceanus, and was gathering flowers—roses, +and crocuses, and fair <!-- page 184--><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>violets +in the soft meadow, and lilies, and hyacinths, and the narcissus which +the earth brought forth as a snare to the fair-faced maiden, by the +counsel of Zeus and to pleasure the Lord with many guests. Wondrously +bloomed the flower, a marvel for all to see, whether deathless gods +or deathly men. From its root grew forth a hundred blossoms, and +with its fragrant odour the wide heaven above and the whole earth laughed, +and the salt wave of the sea. Then the maiden marvelled, and stretched +forth both her hands to seize the fair plaything, but the wide-wayed +earth gaped in the Nysian plain, and up rushed the Prince, the host +of many guests, the many-named son of Cronos, with his immortal horses. +Maugre her will he seized her, and drave her off weeping in his golden +chariot, but she shrilled aloud, calling on Father Cronides, the highest +of gods and the best.</p> +<p>But no immortal god or deathly man heard the voice of her, . . . +save the daughter of Persæus, Hecate of the <!-- page 185--><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>shining +head-tire, as she was thinking delicate thoughts, who heard the cry +from her cave [and Prince Helios, the glorious son of Hyperion], the +maiden calling on Father Cronides. But he far off sat apart from +the gods in his temple haunted by prayers, receiving goodly victims +from mortal men. By the design of Zeus did the brother of Zeus +lead the maiden away, the lord of many, the host of many guests, with +his deathless horses; right sore against her will, even he of many names +the son of Cronos. Now, so long as the Goddess beheld the earth, +and the starry heaven, and the tide of the teeming sea, and the rays +of the sun, and still hoped to behold her mother dear, and the tribes +of the eternal gods; even so long, despite her sorrow, hope warmed her +high heart; then rang the mountain peaks, and the depths of the sea +to her immortal voice, and her lady mother heard her. Then sharp +pain caught at her heart, and with her hands she tore the wimple about +her ambrosial hair, and cast a dark veil about her shoulders, and then +sped she <!-- page 186--><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>like a bird +over land and sea in her great yearning; but to her there was none that +would tell the truth, none, either of Gods, or deathly men, nor even +a bird came nigh her, a soothsaying messenger. Thereafter for +nine days did Lady Deo roam the earth, with torches burning in her hands, +nor ever in her sorrow tasted she of ambrosia and sweet nectar, nor +laved her body in the baths. But when at last the tenth morn came +to her with the light, Hecate met her, a torch in her hands, and spake +a word of tidings, and said:</p> +<p>“Lady Demeter, thou that bringest the Seasons, thou giver of +glad gifts, which of the heavenly gods or deathly men hath ravished +away Persephone, and brought thee sorrow: for I heard a voice but I +saw not who the ravisher might be? All this I say to thee for +sooth.”</p> +<p>So spake Hecate, and the daughter of fair-tressed Rheie answered +her not, but swiftly rushed on with her, bearing torches burning in +her hands. So came they to <!-- page 187--><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>Helios +that watches both for gods and men, and stood before his car, and the +lady Goddess questioned him:</p> +<p>“Helios, be pitiful on me that am a goddess, if ever by word +or deed I gladdened thy heart. My daughter, whom I bore, a sweet +plant and fair to see; it was her shrill voice I heard through the air +unharvested, even as of one violently entreated, but I saw her not with +my eyes. But do thou that lookest down with thy rays from the +holy air upon all the land and sea, do thou tell me truly concerning +my dear child, if thou didst behold her; who it is that hath gone off +and ravished her away from me against her will, who is it of gods or +mortal men?”</p> +<p>So spake she, and Hyperionides answered her:</p> +<p>“Daughter of fair-tressed Rheia, Queen Demeter, thou shalt +know it; for greatly do I pity and revere thee in thy sorrow for thy +slim-ankled child. There is none other guilty of the Immortals +but Zeus himself that gathereth the clouds, who gave thy daughter <!-- page 188--><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>to +Hades, his own brother, to be called his lovely wife; and Hades has +ravished her away in his chariot, loudly shrilling, beneath the dusky +gloom. But, Goddess, do thou cease from thy long lamenting. +It behoves not thee thus vainly to cherish anger unassuaged. No +unseemly lord for thy daughter among the Immortals is Aidoneus, the +lord of many, thine own brother and of one seed with thee, and for his +honour he won, since when was made the threefold division, to be lord +among those with whom he dwells.”</p> +<p>So spake he, and called upon his horses, and at his call they swiftly +bore the fleet chariot on like long-winged birds. But grief more +dread and bitter fell upon her, and wroth thereafter was she with Cronion +that hath dark clouds for his dwelling. She held apart from the +gathering of the Gods and from tall Olympus, and disfiguring her form +for many days she went among the cities and rich fields of men. +Now no man knew her that looked on her, nor no deep-bosomed woman, till +she came to the dwelling of <!-- page 189--><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>Celeus, +who then was Prince of fragrant Eleusis. There sat she at the +wayside in sorrow of heart, by the Maiden Well whence the townsfolk +were wont to draw water. In the shade she sat; above her grew +a thick olive-tree; and in fashion she was like an ancient crone who +knows no more of child-bearing and the gifts of Aphrodite, the lover +of garlands. Such she was as are the nurses of the children of +doom-pronouncing kings. Such are the housekeepers in their echoing +halls.</p> +<p>Now the daughters of Celeus beheld her as they came to fetch the +fair-flowing water, to carry thereof in bronze vessels to their father’s +home. Four were they, like unto goddesses, all in the bloom of +youth, Callidice, and Cleisidice, and winsome Demo, and Callithoe the +eldest of them all, nor did they know her, for the Gods are hard to +be known by mortals, but they stood near her and spake winged words:</p> +<p>“Who art thou and whence, old woman, of ancient folk, and why +wert thou wandering <!-- page 190--><span class="pagenum">p. 190</span>apart +from the town, nor dost draw nigh to the houses where are women of thine +own age, in the shadowy halls, even such as thou, and younger women, +too, who may kindly entreat thee in word and deed?”</p> +<p>So spake they, and the lady Goddess answered:</p> +<p>“Dear children, whoever ye be, of womankind I bid you hail, +and I will tell you my story. Seemly it is to answer your questions +truly. Deo is my name that my lady mother gave me; but now, look +you, from Crete am I come hither over the wide ridges of the sea, by +no will of my own, nay, by violence have sea-rovers brought me hither +under duress, who thereafter touched with their swift ship at Thoricos +where the women and they themselves embarked on land. Then were +they busy about supper beside the hawsers of the ship, but my heart +heeded not delight of supper; no, stealthily setting forth through the +dark land I fled from these overweening masters, that they might not +sell me whom they had never bought <!-- page 191--><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>and +gain my price. Thus hither have I come in my wandering, nor know +I at all what land is this, nor who they be that dwell therein. +But to you may all they that hold mansions in Olympus give husbands +and lords, and such children to bear as parents desire; but me do ye +maidens pity in your kindness, till I come to the house of woman or +of man, that there I may work zealously for them in such tasks as fit +a woman of my years. I could carry in mine arms a new-born babe, +and nurse it well, and keep the house, and strew my master’s bed +within the well-builded chambers, and teach the maids their tasks.”</p> +<p>So spake the Goddess, and straightway answered her the maid unwed, +Callidice, the fairest of the daughters of Celeus:</p> +<p>“Mother, what things soever the Gods do give must men, though +sorrowing, endure, for the Gods are far stronger than we; but this will +I tell thee clearly and soothly, namely, what men they are who here +have most honour, and who lead the people, and by <!-- page 192--><span class="pagenum">p. 192</span>their +counsels and just dooms do safeguard the bulwarks of the city. +Such are wise Triptolemus, Diocles, Polyxenus, and noble Eumolpus, and +Dolichus, and our lordly father. All their wives keep their houses, +and not one of them would at first sight contemn thee and thrust thee +from their halls, but gladly they will receive thee: for thine aspect +is divine. So, if thou wilt, abide here, that we may go to the +house of my father, and tell out all this tale to my mother, the deep-bosomed +Metaneira, if perchance she will bid thee come to our house and not +seek the homes of others. A dear son born in her later years is +nurtured in the well-builded hall, a child of many prayers and a welcome. +If thou wouldst nurse him till he comes to the measure of youth, then +whatsoever woman saw thee should envy thee; such gifts of fosterage +would my mother give thee.”</p> +<p>So spake she and the Goddess nodded assent. So rejoicing they +filled their shining pitchers with water and bore them away. Swiftly +they came to the high hall of their <!-- page 193--><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>father, +and quickly they told their mother what they had heard and seen, and +speedily she bade them run and call the strange woman, offering goodly +hire. Then as deer or calves in the season of Spring leap along +the meadow, when they have had their fill of pasture, so lightly they +kilted up the folds of their lovely kirtles, and ran along the hollow +chariot-way, while their hair danced on their shoulders, in colour like +the crocus flower. They found the glorious Goddess at the wayside, +even where they had left her, and anon they led her to their father’s +house. But she paced behind in heaviness of heart, her head veiled, +and the dark robe floating about her slender feet divine. Speedily +they came to the house of Celeus, the fosterling of Zeus, and they went +through the corridor where their lady mother was sitting by the doorpost +of the well-wrought hall, with her child in her lap, a young blossom, +and the girls ran up to her, but the Goddess stood on the threshold, +her head touching the <!-- page 194--><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>roof-beam, +and she filled the doorway with the light divine. Then wonder, +and awe, and pale fear seized the mother, and she gave place from her +high seat, and bade the Goddess be seated. But Demeter the bearer +of the Seasons, the Giver of goodly gifts, would not sit down upon the +shining high seat. Nay, in silence she waited, casting down her +lovely eyes, till the wise Iambe set for her a well-made stool, and +cast over it a glistering fleece. <a name="citation194"></a><a href="#footnote194">{194}</a> +Then sat she down and held the veil before her face; long in sorrow +and silence sat she so, and spake to no man nor made any sign, but smileless +she sat, nor tasted meat nor drink, wasting with long desire for her +deep-bosomed daughter.</p> +<p>So abode she till wise Iambe with jests and many mockeries beguiled +the lady, the holy one, to smile and laugh and hold a happier heart, +and pleased her moods even thereafter. Then Metaneira filled a +cup of sweet wine and offered it to her, but she refused it, saying, +that it was not permitted for her to <!-- page 195--><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>drink +red wine; but she bade them mix meal and water with the tender herb +of mint, and give it to her to drink. Then Metaneira made a potion +and gave it to the Goddess as she bade, and Lady Deo took it and made +libation, and to them fair-girdled Metaneira said:</p> +<p>“Hail, lady, for methinks thou art not of mean parentage, but +goodly born, for grace and honour shine in thine eyes as in the eyes +of doom-dealing kings. But the gifts of the Gods, even in sorrow, +we men of necessity endure, for the yoke is laid upon our necks; yet +now that thou art come hither, such things as I have shall be thine. +Rear me this child that the Gods have given in my later years and beyond +my hope; and he is to me a child of many prayers. If thou rear +him, and he come to the measure of youth, verily each woman that sees +thee will envy thee, such shall be my gifts of fosterage.”</p> +<p>Then answered her again Demeter of the fair garland:</p> +<p>“And mayst thou too, lady, fare well, and <!-- page 196--><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>the +Gods give thee all things good. Gladly will I receive thy child +that thou biddest me nurse. Never, methinks, by the folly of his +nurse shall charm or sorcery harm him; for I know an antidote stronger +than the wild wood herb, and a goodly salve I know for the venomed spells.”</p> +<p>So spake she, and with her immortal hands she placed the child on +her fragrant breast, and the mother was glad at heart. So in the +halls she nursed the goodly son of wise Celeus, even Demophoon, whom +deep-breasted Metaneira bare, and he grew like a god, upon no mortal +food, nor on no mother’s milk. For Demeter anointed him +with ambrosia as though he had been a son of a God, breathing sweetness +over him, and keeping him in her bosom. So wrought she by day, +but at night she was wont to hide him in the force of fire like a brand, +his dear parents knowing it not. <a name="citation196"></a><a href="#footnote196">{196}</a> +Nay, to <!-- page 197--><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>them it was +great marvel how flourished he and grew like the Gods to look upon. +And, verily, she would have made him exempt from eld and death for ever, +had not fair-girdled Metaneira, in her witlessness, spied on her in +the night from her fragrant chamber. Then wailed she, and smote +both her thighs, in terror for her child, and in anguish of heart, and +lamenting she spake wingèd words: “My child Demophoon, +the stranger is concealing thee in the heart of the fire; bitter sorrow +for me and lamentation.”</p> +<p>So spake she, wailing, and the lady Goddess heard her. Then +in wrath did the fair-garlanded Demeter snatch out of the fire with +her immortal hands and cast upon the ground that woman’s dear +son, whom beyond all hope she had borne in the halls. Dread was +the wrath of Demeter, and anon she spake to fair-girdled Metaneira. +“Oh redeless and uncounselled race of men, that know not beforehand +the fate of coming good or coming evil. For, lo, thou hast wrought +upon thyself a bane incurable, by <!-- page 198--><span class="pagenum">p. 198</span>thine +own witlessness; for by the oath of the Gods, the relentless water of +Styx, I would have made thy dear child deathless and exempt from age +for ever, and would have given him glory imperishable. But now +in nowise may he escape the Fates and death, yet glory imperishable +will ever be his, since he has lain on my knees and slept within my +arms; [but as the years go round, and in his day, the sons of the Eleusinians +will ever wage war and dreadful strife one upon the other.] Now +I am the honoured Demeter, the greatest good and gain of the Immortals +to deathly men. But, come now, let all the people build me a great +temple and an altar thereby, below the town, and the steep wall, above +Callichorus on the jutting rock. But the rites I myself will prescribe, +that in time to come ye may pay them duly and appease my power.”</p> +<p>Therewith the Goddess changed her shape and height, and cast off +old age, and beauty breathed about her, and the sweet scent was breathed +from her fragrant robes, and afar <!-- page 199--><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>shone +the light from the deathless body of the Goddess, the yellow hair flowing +about her shoulders, so that the goodly house was filled with the splendour +as of levin fire, and forth from the halls went she.</p> +<p>But anon the knees of the woman were loosened, and for long time +she was speechless, nay, nor did she even mind of the child, her best +beloved, to lift him from the floor. But the sisters of the child +heard his pitiful cry, and leapt from their fair-strewn beds; one of +them, lifting the child in her hands, laid it in her bosom; and another +lit fire, and the third ran with smooth feet to take her mother forth +from the fragrant chamber. Then gathered they about the child, +and bathed and clad him lovingly, yet his mood was not softened, for +meaner nurses now and handmaids held him.</p> +<p>They the long night through were adoring the renowned Goddess, trembling +with fear, but at the dawning they told truly to mighty Celeus all that +the Goddess had commanded; <!-- page 200--><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>even +Demeter of the goodly garland. Thereon he called into the market-place +the many people, and bade them make a rich temple, and an altar to fair-tressed +Demeter, upon the jutting rock. Then anon they heard and obeyed +his voice, and as he bade they builded. And the child increased +in strength by the Goddess’s will.</p> +<p>Now when they had done their work, and rested from their labours, +each man started for his home, but yellow-haired Demeter, sitting there +apart from all the blessed Gods, abode, wasting away with desire for +her deep-bosomed daughter. Then the most dread and terrible of +years did the Goddess bring for mortals upon the fruitful earth, nor +did the earth send up the seed, for Demeter of the goodly garland concealed +it. Many crooked ploughs did the oxen drag through the furrows +in vain, and much white barley fell fruitless upon the land. Now +would the whole race of mortal men have perished utterly from the stress +of famine, and the Gods that hold mansions in Olympus would <!-- page 201--><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>have +lost the share and renown of gift and sacrifice, if Zeus had not conceived +a counsel within his heart.</p> +<p>First he roused Iris of the golden wings to speed forth and call +the fair-tressed Demeter, the lovesome in beauty. So spake Zeus, +and Iris obeyed Zeus, the son of Cronos, who hath dark clouds for his +tabernacle, and swiftly she sped adown the space between heaven and +earth. Then came she to the citadel of fragrant Eleusis, and in +the temple she found Demeter clothed in dark raiment, and speaking wingèd +words addressed her: “Demeter, Father Zeus, whose counsels are +imperishable, bids thee back unto the tribes of the eternal Gods. +Come thou, then, lest the word of Zeus be of no avail.” +So spake she in her prayer, but the Goddess yielded not. Thereafter +the Father sent forth all the blessed Gods, all of the Immortals, and +coming one by one they bade Demeter return, and gave her many splendid +gifts, and all honours that she might choose among the immortal Gods. +<!-- page 202--><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span> But none availed +to persuade by turning her mind and her angry heart, so stubbornly she +refused their sayings. For she deemed no more for ever to enter +fragrant Olympus, and no more to allow the earth to bear her fruit, +until her eyes should behold her fair-faced daughter.</p> +<p>But when far-seeing Zeus, the lord of the thunder-peal, had heard +the thing, he sent to Erebus the slayer of Argos, the God of the golden +wand, to win over Hades with soft words, and persuade him to bring up +holy Persephone into the light, and among the Gods, from forth the murky +gloom, that so her mother might behold her, and that her anger might +relent. And Hermes disobeyed not, but straightway and speedily +went forth beneath the hollow places of the earth, leaving the home +of Olympus. That King he found within his dwelling, sitting on +a couch with his chaste bedfellow, who sorely grieved for desire of +her mother, that still was cherishing a fell design against the ill +deeds of the Gods. Then the strong slayer <!-- page 203--><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>of +Argos drew near and spoke: “Hades of the dark locks, thou Prince +of men out-worn, Father Zeus bade me bring the dread Persephone forth +from Erebus among the Gods, that her mother may behold her, and relent +from her anger and terrible wrath against the Immortals, for now she +contrives a mighty deed, to destroy the feeble tribes of earth-born +men by withholding the seed under the earth. Thereby the honours +of the Gods are minished, and fierce is her wrath, nor mingles she with +the Gods, but sits apart within the fragrant temple in the steep citadel +of Eleusis.”</p> +<p>So spake he, and smiling were the brows of Aidoneus, Prince of the +dead, nor did he disobey the commands of King Zeus, as speedily he bade +the wise Persephone: “Go, Persephone, to thy dark-mantled mother, +go with a gentle spirit in thy breast, nor be thou beyond all other +folk disconsolate. Verily I shall be no unseemly lord of thine +among the Immortals, I that am the brother of Father Zeus, and whilst +<!-- page 204--><span class="pagenum">p. 204</span>thou art here shalt +thou be mistress over all that lives and moves, but among the Immortals +shalt thou have the greatest renown. Upon them that wrong thee +shall vengeance be unceasing, upon them that solicit not thy power with +sacrifice, and pious deeds, and every acceptable gift.”</p> +<p>So spake he, and wise Persephone was glad; and joyously and swiftly +she arose, but the God himself, stealthily looking around her, gave +her sweet pomegranate seed to eat, and this he did that she might not +abide for ever beside revered Demeter of the dark mantle. <a name="citation204"></a><a href="#footnote204">{204}</a> +Then openly did Aidoneus, the Prince of all, get ready the steeds beneath +the golden chariot, and she climbed up into the golden chariot, and +beside her the strong Slayer of Argos took reins and whip in hand, and +drove forth from the halls, and gladly sped the horses twain. +Speedily they devoured the long way; nor sea, nor rivers, nor grassy +glades, nor cliffs, could stay the rush of the deathless horses; nay, +far above <!-- page 205--><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>them they +cleft the deep air in their course. Before the fragrant temple +he drove them, and checked them where dwelt Demeter of the goodly garland, +who, when she beheld them, rushed forth like a Mænad down a dark +mountain woodland. <a name="citation205"></a><a href="#footnote205">{205}</a></p> +<p>[But Persephone on the other side rejoiced to see her mother dear, +and leaped to meet her; but the mother said, “Child, in Hades +hast thou eaten any food? for if thou hast not] then with me and thy +father the son of Cronos, who has dark clouds for his tabernacle, shalt +thou ever dwell honoured among all the Immortals. But if thou +hast tasted food, thou must return again, and beneath the hollows of +the earth must dwell in Hades a third portion of the year; yet two parts +of the year thou shalt abide with me and the other Immortals. +When the earth blossoms with all manner of fragrant flowers, then from +beneath the murky gloom shalt thou come again, a mighty marvel to <!-- page 206--><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>Gods +and to mortal men. Now tell me by what wile the strong host of +many guests deceived thee? . . . ”</p> +<p>Then fair Persephone answered her august mother: “Behold, I +shall tell thee all the truth without fail. I leaped up for joy +when boon Hermes, the swift messenger, came from my father Cronides +and the other heavenly Gods, with the message that I was to return out +of Erebus, that so thou mightest behold me, and cease thine anger and +dread wrath against the Immortals. Thereon Hades himself compelled +me to taste of a sweet pomegranate seed against my will. And now +I will tell thee how, through the crafty device of Cronides my father, +he ravished me, and bore me away beneath the hollows of the earth. +All that thou askest I will tell thee. We were all playing in +the lovely meadows, Leucippe and Phaino, and Electra, and Ianthe, and +Melitê, and Iachê, and Rhodeia, and Callirhoe, and Melobosis, +and Tuchê, and flower-faced Ocyroe, and Chræsis, and Ianeira, +and Acastê, and Admetê, and Rhodope, <!-- page 207--><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>and +Plouto, and winsome Calypso, and Styx, and Urania, and beautiful Galaxaurê. +We were playing there, and plucking beautiful blossoms with our hands; +crocuses mingled, and iris, and hyacinth, and roses, and lilies, a marvel +to behold, and narcissus, that the wide earth bare, a wile for my undoing. +Gladly was I gathering them when the earth gaped beneath, and therefrom +leaped the mighty Prince, the host of many guests, and he bare me against +my will despite my grief beneath the earth, in his golden chariot; and +shrilly did I cry. This all is true that I tell thee.”</p> +<p>So the livelong day in oneness of heart did they cheer each other +with love, and their minds ceased from sorrow, and great gladness did +either win from other. Then came to them Hekatê of the fair +wimple, and often did she kiss the holy daughter of Demeter, and from +that day was her queenly comrade and handmaiden; but to them for a messenger +did far-seeing Zeus of the loud thunder-peal send fair-tressed Rhea +to bring <!-- page 208--><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>dark-mantled +Demeter among the Gods, with pledge of what honour she might choose +among the Immortals. He vowed that her daughter, for the third +part of the revolving year, should dwell beneath the murky gloom, but +for the other two parts she should abide with her mother and the other +gods.</p> +<p>Thus he spake, and the Goddess disobeyed not the commands of Zeus. +Swiftly she sped down from the peaks of Olympus, and came to fertile +Rarion; fertile of old, but now no longer fruitful; for fallow and leafless +it lay, and hidden was the white barley grain by the device of fair-ankled +Demeter. None the less with the growing of the Spring the land +was to teem with tall ears of corn, and the rich furrows were to be +heavy with corn, and the corn to be bound in sheaves. There first +did she land from the unharvested ether, and gladly the Goddesses looked +on each other, and rejoiced in heart, and thus first did Rhea of the +fair wimple speak to Demeter:</p> +<p>“Hither, child; for he calleth thee, far-seeing <!-- page 209--><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>Zeus, +the lord of the deep thunder, to come among the Gods, and has promised +thee such honours as thou wilt, and hath decreed that thy child, for +the third of the rolling year, shall dwell beneath the murky gloom, +but the other two parts with her mother and the rest of the Immortals. +So doth he promise that it shall be and thereto nods his head; but come, +my child, obey, and be not too unrelenting against the Son of Cronos, +the lord of the dark cloud. And anon do thou increase the grain +that bringeth life to men.”</p> +<p>So spake she, and Demeter of the fair garland obeyed. Speedily +she sent up the grain from the rich glebe, and the wide earth was heavy +with leaves and flowers: and she hastened, and showed the thing to the +kings, the dealers of doom; to Triptolemus and Diocles the charioteer, +and mighty Eumolpus, and Celeus the leader of the people; she showed +them the manner of her rites, and taught them her goodly mysteries, +holy mysteries which none may <!-- page 210--><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>violate, +or search into, or noise abroad, for the great curse from the Gods restrains +the voice. Happy is he among deathly men who hath beheld these +things! and he that is uninitiate, and hath no lot in them, hath never +equal lot in death beneath the murky gloom.</p> +<p>Now when the Goddess had given instruction in all her rites, they +went to Olympus, to the gathering of the other Gods. There the +Goddesses dwell beside Zeus the lord of the thunder, holy and revered +are they. Right happy is he among mortal men whom they dearly +love; speedily do they send as a guest to his lofty hall Plutus, who +giveth wealth to mortal men. But come thou that holdest the land +of fragrant Eleusis, and sea-girt Paros, and rocky Antron, come, Lady +Deo! Queen and giver of goodly gifts, and bringer of the Seasons; +come thou and thy daughter, beautiful Persephone, and of your grace +grant me goodly substance in requital of my song; but I will mind me +of thee, and of other minstrelsy. <!-- page 211--><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span></p> +<h3>V. TO APHRODITÉ</h3> +<p>I shall sing of the revered Aphrodité, the golden-crowned, +the beautiful, who hath for her portion the mountain crests of sea-girt +Cyprus. Thither the strength of the west wind moistly blowing +carried her amid soft foam over the wave of the resounding sea. +Her did the golden-snooded Hours gladly welcome, and clad her about +in immortal raiment, and on her deathless head set a well-wrought crown, +fair and golden, and in her ears put earrings of orichalcum and of precious +gold. Her delicate neck and white bosom they adorned with chains +of gold, wherewith are bedecked the golden-snooded Hours themselves, +when they come to the glad dance of the Gods in the dwelling of the +Father. Anon when they had thus <!-- page 212--><span class="pagenum">p. 212</span>adorned +her in all goodliness they led her to the Immortals, who gave her greeting +when they beheld her, and welcomed her with their hands; and each God +prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife, so much they +marvelled at the beauty of the fair-garlanded Cytherean. Hail, +thou of the glancing eyes, thou sweet winsome Goddess, and grant that +I bear off the victory in this contest, and lend thou grace to my song, +while I shall both remember thee and another singing. <!-- page 213--><span class="pagenum">p. 213</span></p> +<h3>VI. TO DIONYSUS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang213b.jpg"> +<img alt="Dionysus sailing in his sacred ship. (Interior Design on a Kylix by Exekias in Munich.)" src="images/lang213s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Concerning Dionysus the son of renowned Semele shall I sing; how +once he appeared upon the shore of the sea unharvested, on a jutting +headland, in form <!-- page 214--><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>like +a man in the bloom of youth, with his beautiful dark hair waving around +him, and on his strong shoulders a purple robe. Anon came in sight +certain men that were pirates; in a well-wrought ship sailing swiftly +on the dark seas: Tyrsenians were they, and Ill Fate was their leader, +for they beholding him nodded each to other, and swiftly leaped forth, +and hastily seized him, and set him aboard their ship rejoicing in heart, +for they deemed that he was the son of kings, the fosterlings of Zeus, +and they were minded to bind him with grievous bonds. But him +the fetters held not, and the withes fell far from his hands and feet. +<a name="citation214"></a><a href="#footnote214">{214}</a> There +sat he smiling with his dark eyes, but the steersman saw it, and spake +aloud to his companions: “Fools, what God have ye taken and bound? +a strong God is he, our trim ship may not contain him. Surely +this is Zeus, or Apollo <!-- page 215--><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>of +the Silver Bow, or Poseidon; for he is nowise like mortal man, but like +the Gods who have mansions in Olympus. Nay, come let us instantly +release him upon the dark mainland, nor lay ye your hands upon him, +lest, being wroth, he rouse against us masterful winds and rushing storm.”</p> +<p>So spake he, but their captain rebuked him with a hateful word: “Fool, +look thou to the wind, and haul up the sail, and grip to all the gear, +but this fellow will be for men to meddle with. Methinks he will +come to Egypt, or to Cyprus, or to the Hyperboreans, or further far; +and at the last he will tell us who his friends are, and concerning +his wealth, and his brethren, for the God has delivered him into our +hands.”</p> +<p>So spake he, and let raise the mast and hoist the mainsail, and the +wind filled the sail, and they made taut the ropes all round. +But anon strange matters appeared to them: first there flowed through +all the swift black ship a sweet and fragrant wine, and the <!-- page 216--><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>ambrosial +fragrance arose, and fear fell upon all the mariners that beheld it. +And straightway a vine stretched hither and thither along the sail, +hanging with many a cluster, and dark ivy twined round the mast blossoming +with flowers, and gracious fruit and garlands grew on all the thole-pins; +and they that saw it bade the steersman drive straight to land. +Meanwhile within the ship the God changed into the shape of a lion at +the bow; and loudly he roared, and in midship he made a shaggy bear: +such marvels he showed forth: there stood it raging, and on the deck +glared the lion terribly. Then the men fled in terror to the stern, +and there stood in fear round the honest pilot. But suddenly sprang +forth the lion and seized the captain, and the men all at once leaped +overboard into the strong sea, shunning dread doom, and there were changed +into dolphins. But the God took pity upon the steersman, and kept +him, and gave him all good fortune, and spake, saying, “Be of +good courage, <!-- page 217--><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>Sir, +dear art thou to me, and I am Dionysus of the noisy rites whom Cadmeian +Semele bare to the love of Zeus.” Hail, thou child of beautiful +Semele, none that is mindless of thee can fashion sweet minstrelsy. +<!-- page 218--><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span></p> +<h3>VII. TO ARES</h3> +<p>Ares, thou that excellest in might, thou lord of the chariot of war, +God of the golden helm, thou mighty of heart, thou shield-bearer, thou +safety of cities, thou that smitest in mail; strong of hand and unwearied +valiant spearman, bulwark of Olympus, father of victory, champion of +Themis; thou tyrannous to them that oppose thee with force; thou leader +of just men, thou master of manlihood, thou that whirlest thy flaming +sphere among the courses of the seven stars of the sky, where thy fiery +steeds ever bear thee above the third orbit of heaven; do thou listen +to me, helper of mortals, Giver of the bright bloom of youth. +Shed thou down a mild light from above upon this life of mine, and my +<!-- page 219--><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>martial strength, +so that I may be of avail to drive away bitter cowardice from my head, +and to curb the deceitful rush of my soul, and to restrain the sharp +stress of anger which spurs me on to take part in the dread din of battle. +But give me heart, O blessed one, to abide in the painless measures +of peace, avoiding the battle-cry of foes and the compelling fates of +death. <!-- page 220--><span class="pagenum">p. 220</span></p> +<h3>VIII. TO ARTEMIS</h3> +<p>Sing thou of Artemis, Muse, the sister of the Far-darter; the archer +Maid, fellow-nursling with Apollo, who waters her steeds in the reedy +wells of Meles, then swiftly drives her golden chariot through Smyrna +to Claros of the many-clustered vines, where sits Apollo of the Silver +Bow awaiting the far-darting archer maid. And hail thou thus, +and hail to all Goddesses in my song, but to thee first, and beginning +from thee, will I sing, and so shall pass on to another lay. <!-- page 221--><span class="pagenum">p. 221</span></p> +<h3>IX. TO APHRODITE</h3> +<p>I shall sing of Cytherea, the Cyprus-born, who gives sweet gifts +to mortals, and ever on her face is a winsome smile, and ever in her +hand a winsome blossom. Hail to thee, Goddess, Queen of fair-set +Salamis, and of all Cyprus, and give to me song desirable, while I shall +be mindful of thee and of another song. <!-- page 222--><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span></p> +<h3>X. TO ATHENE</h3> +<p>Of Pallas Athene, the saviour of cities, I begin to sing; dread Goddess, +who with Ares takes keep of the works of war, and of falling cities, +and battles, and the battle din. She it is that saveth the hosts +as they go and return from the fight. Hail Goddess, and give to +us happiness and good fortune. <!-- page 223--><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span></p> +<h3>XI. TO HERA</h3> +<p>I sing of golden-throned Hera, whom Rhea bore, an immortal queen +in beauty pre-eminent, the sister and the bride of loud-thundering Zeus, +the lady renowned, whom all the Blessed throughout high Olympus honour +and revere no less than Zeus whose delight is the thunder. <!-- page 224--><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span></p> +<h3>XII. TO DEMETER</h3> +<p>Of fair-tressed Demeter the holy Goddess I begin to sing; of her +and the Maiden, the lovely Persephone. Hail Goddess, and save +this city and inspire my song. <!-- page 225--><span class="pagenum">p. 225</span></p> +<h3>XIII. TO THE MOTHER OF THE GODS</h3> +<p>Sing for me, clear-voiced Muse, daughter of great Zeus, the mother +of all Gods and all mortals, who is glad in the sound of rattles and +drums, and in the noise of flutes, and in the cry of wolves and fiery-eyed +lions, and in the echoing hills, and the woodland haunts; even so hail +to thee and to Goddesses all in my song. <!-- page 226--><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span></p> +<h3>XIV. TO HERACLES THE LION-HEART</h3> +<p>Of Heracles the son of Zeus will I sing, mightiest of mortals, whom +Alcmena bore in Thebes of the fair dancing places, for she had lain +in the arms of Cronion, the lord of the dark clouds. Of old the +hero wandered endlessly over land and sea, at the bidding of Eurystheus +the prince, and himself wrought many deeds of fateful might, and many +he endured; but now in the fair haunts of snowy Olympus he dwells in +joy, and hath white-ankled Hebe for his wife. Hail prince, son +of Zeus, and give to us valour and good fortune. <!-- page 227--><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span></p> +<h3>XV. TO ASCLEPIUS</h3> +<p>Of the healer of diseases, Asclepius, I begin to sing, the son of +Apollo, whom fair Coronis bore in the Dotian plain, the daughter of +King Phlegyas; a great joy to men was her son, and the soother of evil +pains. Even so do thou hail, O Prince, I pray to thee in my song. +<!-- page 228--><span class="pagenum">p. 228</span></p> +<h3>XVI. TO THE DIOSCOURI</h3> +<p>Of Castor and Polydeuces do thou sing,—shrill Muse, the Tyndaridæ, +sons of Olympian Zeus, whom Lady Leda bore beneath the crests of Taygetus, +having been secretly conquered by the desire of Cronion of the dark +clouds. Hail, ye sons of Tyndarus, ye cavaliers of swift steeds. +<!-- page 229--><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span></p> +<h3>XVII. TO HERMES</h3> +<p>I sing of Cyllenian Hermes, slayer of Argus, prince of Cyllene and +of Arcadia rich in sheep, the boon messenger of the Immortals. +Him did Maia bear, the modest daughter of Atlas, to the love of Zeus. +The company of the blessed Gods she shunned, and dwelt in a shadowy +cave where Cronion was wont to lie with the fair-tressed nymph in the +dark of night, while sweet sleep possessed white-armed Hera, and no +Immortals knew it, and no deathly men. Hail to thee, thou son +of Zeus and Maia, with thee shall I begin and pass on to another song. +Hail, Hermes, Giver of grace, thou Guide, thou Giver of good things. +<!-- page 230--><span class="pagenum">p. 230</span></p> +<h3>XVIII. TO PAN</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang230b.jpg"> +<img alt="Pan. With Goat and Shepherd’s Crook. Terra cotta Statuette from Tanagra, in the British Museum" src="images/lang230s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Tell me, Muse, concerning the dear son of Hermes, the goat-footed, +the twy-horned, the lover of the din of revel, who haunts the wooded +dells with dancing nymphs that tread the crests of the steep cliffs, +calling upon Pan the pastoral God of the long wild hair. Lord +is he of every snowy crest and mountain peak and rocky path. Hither +and thither he goes through the thick copses, sometimes being drawn +to the still waters, and sometimes faring through the lofty crags he +climbs the highest peak whence the flocks are seen below; ever he ranges +over the high white hills, and ever among the knolls he chases and slays +the wild beasts, the God, with keen eye, and at evening returns piping +from the chase, <!-- page 231--><span class="pagenum">p. 231</span>breathing +sweet strains on the reeds. In song that bird cannot excel him +which, among the leaves of the blossoming springtide, pours forth her +plaint and her honey-sweet song. With him then the mountain nymphs, +the shrill singers, go wandering with light feet, and sing at the side +of the dark water of the well, while the echo moans along the mountain +crest, and the God leaps hither and thither, and goes into the midst, +with many a step of the dance. On his back he wears the tawny +hide of a lynx, and his heart rejoices with shrill songs in the soft +meadow where crocus and fragrant hyacinth bloom all mingled amidst the +grass. They sing of the blessed Gods and of high Olympus, and +above all do they sing of boon Hermes, how he is the fleet herald of +all the Gods, and how he came to many-fountained Arcadia, the mother +of sheep, where is his Cyllenian demesne, and there he, God as he was, +shepherded the fleecy sheep, the thrall of a mortal man; for soft desire +had come upon <!-- page 232--><span class="pagenum">p. 232</span>him +to wed the fair-haired daughter of Dryops, and the glad nuptials he +accomplished, and to Hermes in the hall she bare a dear son. From +his birth he was a marvel to behold, goat-footed, twy-horned, a loud +speaker, a sweet laugher. Then the nurse leaped up and fled when +she saw his wild face and bearded chin. But him did boon Hermes +straightway take in his hands and bear, and gladly did he rejoice at +heart. Swiftly to the dwellings of the Gods went he, bearing the +babe hidden in the thick skins of mountain hares; there sat he down +by Zeus and the other Immortals, and showed his child, and all the Immortals +were glad at heart, and chiefly the Bacchic Dionysus. Pan they +called the babe to name: because he had made glad the hearts of all +of them. Hail then to thee, O Prince, I am thy suppliant in song, +and I shall be mindful of thee and of another lay. <!-- page 233--><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span></p> +<h3>XIX. TO HEPHÆSTUS</h3> +<p>Sing, shrill Muse, of Hephæstus renowned in craft, who with +grey-eyed Athene taught goodly works to men on earth, even to men that +before were wont to dwell in mountain caves like beasts; but now, being +instructed in craft by the renowned craftsman Hephæstus, lightly +the whole year through they dwell happily in their own homes. +Be gracious, Hephæstus, and grant me valour and fortune. <!-- page 234--><span class="pagenum">p. 234</span></p> +<h3>XX. TO APOLLO</h3> +<p>Phœbus, to thee the swan sings shrill to the beating of his +wings, as he lights on the bank of the whirling pools of the river Peneus; +and to thee with his shrill lyre does the sweet-voiced minstrel sing +ever, both first and last. Even so hail thou, Prince, I beseech +thee in my song. <!-- page 235--><span class="pagenum">p. 235</span></p> +<h3>XXI. TO POSEIDON</h3> +<p>Concerning Poseidon, a great God, I begin to sing: the shaker of +the land and of the sea unharvested; God of the deep who holdeth Helicon +and wide Ægæ. A double meed of honour have the Gods +given thee, O Shaker of the Earth, to be tamer of horses and saviour +of ships. Hail Prince, thou Girdler of the Earth, thou dark-haired +God, and with kindly heart, O blessed one, do thou befriend the mariners. +<!-- page 236--><span class="pagenum">p. 236</span></p> +<h3>XXII. TO HIGHEST ZEUS</h3> +<p>To Zeus the best of Gods will I sing; the best and the greatest, +the far-beholding lord who bringeth all to an end, who holdeth constant +counsel with Themis as she reclines on her couch. Be gracious, +far-beholding son of Cronos, thou most glorious and greatest. <!-- page 237--><span class="pagenum">p. 237</span></p> +<h3>XXIII. TO HESTIA</h3> +<p>Hestia, that guardest the sacred house of the Prince, Apollo the +Far-darter, in goodly Pytho, ever doth the oil drop dank from thy locks. +Come thou to this house with a gracious heart, come with counselling +Zeus, and lend grace to my song. <!-- page 238--><span class="pagenum">p. 238</span></p> +<h3>XXIV. TO THE MUSES AND APOLLO</h3> +<p>From the Muse I shall begin and from Apollo and Zeus. For it +is from the Muses and far-darting Apollo that minstrels and harpers +are upon the earth, but from Zeus come kings. Fortunate is he +whomsoever the Muses love, and sweet flows his voice from his lips. +Hail, ye children of Zeus, honour ye my lay, and anon I shall be mindful +of you and of another hymn. <!-- page 239--><span class="pagenum">p. 239</span></p> +<h3>XXV. TO DIONYSUS</h3> +<p>Of ivy-tressed uproarious Dionysus I begin to sing, the splendid +son of Zeus and renowned Semele. Him did the fair-tressed nymphs +foster, receiving him from the king and father in their bosoms, and +needfully they nurtured him in the glens of Nysê. By his +father’s will he waxed strong in the fragrant cavern, being numbered +among the Immortals. Anon when the Goddesses had bred him up to +be the god of many a hymn, then went he wandering in the woodland glades, +draped with ivy and laurel, and the nymphs followed with him where he +led, and loud rang the wild woodland. Hail to thee, then, Dionysus +of the clustered vine, and grant to us to come gladly again to the season +of vintaging, yea, and afterwards for many a year to come. <!-- page 240--><span class="pagenum">p. 240</span></p> +<h3>XXVI. TO ARTEMIS</h3> +<p>I sing of Artemis of the Golden Distaff, Goddess of the loud chase, +a maiden revered, the slayer of stags, the archer, very sister of Apollo +of the golden blade. She through the shadowy hills and the windy +headlands rejoicing in the chase draws her golden bow, sending forth +shafts of sorrow. Then tremble the crests of the lofty mountains, +and terribly the dark woodland rings with din of beasts, and the earth +shudders, and the teeming sea. Meanwhile she of the stout heart +turns about on every side slaying the race of wild beasts. Anon +when the Archer Huntress hath taken her delight, and hath gladdened +her heart, she slackens her bended bow, and goes to the great hall of +her dear Phœbus Apollo, to the rich <!-- page 241--><span class="pagenum">p. 241</span>Delphian +land; and arrays the lovely dance of Muses and Graces. There hangs +she up her bended bow and her arrows, and all graciously clad about +she leads the dances, first in place, while the others utter their immortal +voice in hymns to fair-ankled Leto, how she bore such children pre-eminent +among the Immortals in counsel and in deed. Hail, ye children +of Zeus and fair-tressed Leto, anon will I be mindful of you and of +another hymn. <!-- page 242--><span class="pagenum">p. 242</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang241b.jpg"> +<img alt="Apollo, Artemis and Leto in procession. Marble relief in the Louvre" src="images/lang241s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h3>XXVII. TO ATHENE</h3> +<p>Of fairest Athene, renowned Goddess, I begin to sing, of the Grey-eyed, +the wise; her of the relentless heart, the maiden revered, the succour +of cities, the strong Tritogeneia. Her did Zeus the counsellor +himself beget from his holy head, all armed for war in shining golden +mail, while in awe did the other Gods behold it. Quickly did the +Goddess leap from the immortal head, and stood before Zeus, shaking +her sharp spear, and high Olympus trembled in dread beneath the strength +of the grey-eyed Maiden, while earth rang terribly around, and the sea +was boiling with dark waves, and suddenly brake forth the foam. +Yea, and the glorious son of Hyperion checked for long his swift steeds, +till the maiden <!-- page 243--><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>took +from her immortal shoulders her divine armour, even Pallas Athene: and +Zeus the counsellor rejoiced. Hail to thee, thou child of ægis-bearing +Zeus, anon shall I be mindful of thee and of another lay. <!-- page 244--><span class="pagenum">p. 244</span></p> +<h3>XXVIII. TO HESTIA</h3> +<p>Hestia, thou that in the lofty halls of all immortal Gods, and of +all men that go on earth, hast obtained an eternal place and the foremost +honour, splendid is thy glory and thy gift, for there is no banquet +of mortals without thee, none where, Hestia, they be not wont first +and last to make to thee oblation of sweet wine. And do thou, +O slayer of Argus, son of Zeus and Maia, messenger of the blessed Gods, +God of the golden wand, Giver of all things good, do thou with Hestia +dwell in the fair mansions, dear each to other; with kindly heart befriend +us in company with dear and honoured Hestia. [For both the twain, +well skilled in <!-- page 245--><span class="pagenum">p. 245</span>all +fair works of earthly men, consort with wisdom and youth.] Hail +daughter of Cronos, thou and Hermes of the golden wand, anon will I +be mindful of you and of another lay. <!-- page 246--><span class="pagenum">p. 246</span></p> +<h3>XXIX. TO EARTH, THE MOTHER OF ALL</h3> +<p>Concerning Earth, the mother of all, shall I sing, firm Earth, eldest +of Gods, that nourishes all things in the world; all things that fare +on the sacred land, all things in the sea, all flying things, all are +fed out of her store. Through thee, revered Goddess, are men happy +in their children and fortunate in their harvest. Thine it is +to give or to take life from mortal men. Happy is he whom thou +honourest with favouring heart; to him all good things are present innumerable: +his fertile field is laden, his meadows are rich in cattle, his house +filled with all good things. Such men rule righteously in cities +of fair women, great wealth and riches are theirs, their children grow +glorious in <!-- page 247--><span class="pagenum">p. 247</span>fresh +delights: their maidens joyfully dance and sport through the soft meadow +flowers in floral revelry. Such are those that thou honourest, +holy Goddess, kindly spirit. Hail, Mother of the Gods, thou wife +of starry Ouranos, and freely in return for my ode give me sufficient +livelihood. Anon will I be mindful of thee and of another lay. +<!-- page 248--><span class="pagenum">p. 248</span></p> +<h3>XXX. TO HELIOS</h3> +<p>Begin, O Muse Calliope, to sing of Helios the child of Zeus, the +splendid Helios whom dark-eyed Euryphæssa bore to the son of Earth +and starry Heaven. For Hyperion wedded Euryphæssa, his own +sister, who bore him goodly children, the rosy-armed Dawn, and fair-tressed +Selene, and the tireless Helios, like unto the Immortals, who from his +chariot shines on mortals and on deathless Gods, and dread is the glance +of his eyes from his golden helm, and bright rays shine forth from him +splendidly, and round his temples the shining locks flowing down from +his head frame round his far-seen face, and a goodly garment wrought +delicately shines about his body in the breath of the winds, and <!-- page 249--><span class="pagenum">p. 249</span>stallions +speed beneath him when he, charioting his horses and golden-yoked car, +drives down through heaven to ocean. Hail, Prince, and of thy +grace grant me livelihood enough; beginning from thee I shall sing the +race of heroes half divine, whose deeds the Goddesses have revealed +to mortals. <!-- page 250--><span class="pagenum">p. 250</span></p> +<h3>XXXI. TO THE MOON</h3> +<p>Ye Muses, sing of the fair-faced, wide-winged Moon; ye sweet-voiced +daughters of Zeus son of Cronos, accomplished in song! The heavenly +gleam from her immortal head circles the earth, and all beauty arises +under her glowing light, and the lampless air beams from her golden +crown, and the rays dwell lingering when she has bathed her fair body +in the ocean stream, and clad her in shining raiment, divine Selene, +yoking her strong-necked glittering steeds. Then forward with +speed she drives her deep-maned horses in the evening of the mid-month +when her mighty orb is full; then her beams are brightest in the sky +as she waxes, a token and a signal to mortal men. With her once +was <!-- page 251--><span class="pagenum">p. 251</span>Cronion wedded +in love, and she conceived, and brought forth Pandia the maiden, pre-eminent +in beauty among the immortal Gods. Hail, Queen, white-armed Goddess, +divine Selene, gentle of heart and fair of tress. Beginning from +thee shall I sing the renown of heroes half divine whose deeds do minstrels +chant from their charmed lips; these ministers of the Muses. <!-- page 252--><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span></p> +<h3>XXXII. TO THE DIOSCOURI</h3> +<p>Sing, fair-glancing Muses, of the sons of Zeus, the Tyndaridæ, +glorious children of fair-ankled Leda, Castor the tamer of steeds and +faultless Polydeuces. These, after wedlock with Cronion of the +dark clouds, she bore beneath the crests of Taygetus, that mighty hill, +to be the saviours of earthly men, and of swift ships when the wintry +breezes rush along the pitiless sea. Then men from their ships +call in prayer with sacrifice of white lambs when they mount the vessel’s +deck. But the strong wind and the wave of the sea drive down their +ship beneath the water; when suddenly appear the sons of Zeus rushing +through the air with tawny wings, and straightway have they stilled +the tempests of <!-- page 253--><span class="pagenum">p. 253</span>evil +winds, and have lulled the waves in the gulfs of the white salt sea: +glad signs are they to mariners, an ending of their labour: and men +see it and are glad, and cease from weary toil. Hail ye, Tyndaridæ, +ye knights of swift steeds, anon will I be mindful of you and of another +lay. <!-- page 254--><span class="pagenum">p. 254</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/lang252b.jpg"> +<img alt="The Dioscuri coming to the feast of the Theoxenia. From a Vase in the British Museum (Sixth Century B.C.)" src="images/lang252s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h3>XXXIII. TO DIONYSUS</h3> +<p>Some say that Semele bare thee to Zeus the lord of thunder in Dracanon, +and some in windy Icarus, and some in Naxos, thou seed of Zeus, Eiraphiotes; +and others by the deep-swelling river Alpheius, and others, O Prince, +say that thou wert born in Thebes. Falsely speak they all: for +the Father of Gods and men begat thee far away from men, while white-armed +Hera knew it not. There is a hill called Nysê, a lofty hill, +flowering into woodland, far away from Phœnicia, near the streams +of Ægyptus. . . .</p> +<p>“And to thee will they raise many statues in the temples: as +these thy deeds are three, so men will sacrifice to thee hecatombs every +three years.” <a name="citation254"></a><a href="#footnote254">{254}</a> +<!-- page 255--><span class="pagenum">p. 255</span></p> +<p>So spake Zeus the counsellor, and nodded with his head. Be +gracious, Eiraphiotes, thou wild lover, from thee, beginning and ending +with thee, we minstrels sing: in nowise is it possible for him who forgets +thee to be mindful of sacred song. Hail to thee, Dionysus Eiraphiotes, +with thy mother Semele, whom men call Thyone.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> Baumeister, +p. 94, and note on Hymn to Hermes, 51, citing Antigonus Carystius. +See, too, Gemoll, <i>Die Homerischen Hymnen</i>, p. 105.</p> +<p><a name="footnote13"></a><a href="#citation13">{13}</a> <i>Journal +of Hellenic Society</i>, vol. xiv. pp. 1-29. Mr. Verrall’s +whole paper ought to be read, as a summary cannot be adequate.</p> +<p><a name="footnote16a"></a><a href="#citation16a">{16a}</a> +Henderson, “The Casket Letters,” p. 67.</p> +<p><a name="footnote16b"></a><a href="#citation16b">{16b}</a> +Baumeister, “Hymni Homerici,” 1860, p. 108 <i>et seq</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote18"></a><a href="#citation18">{18}</a> <i>Die +Homerischen Hymnen</i>, p. 116 (1886).</p> +<p><a name="footnote23a"></a><a href="#citation23a">{23a}</a> +<i>Journal Anthrop. Inst</i>., Feb. 1892, p. 290.</p> +<p><a name="footnote23b"></a><a href="#citation23b">{23b}</a> +(<i>Op. cit</i>., p. 296.) See “Are Savage Gods Borrowed +from Missionaries?” (<i>Nineteenth Century</i>, January 1899).</p> +<p><a name="footnote24"></a><a href="#citation24">{24}</a> Hartland, +“Folk-Lore,” ix. 4, 312; x. I, p. 51.</p> +<p><a name="footnote30"></a><a href="#citation30">{30}</a> Winslow, +1622.</p> +<p><a name="footnote34"></a><a href="#citation34">{34}</a> For +authorities, see Mr Howitt in the <i>Journal of the Anthropological +Institute</i>, and my “Making of Religion.” Also <i>Folk +Lore</i>, December-March, 1898-99.</p> +<p><a name="footnote37a"></a><a href="#citation37a">{37a}</a> +Manning, “Notes on the Aborigines of New Holland.” +Read before Royal Society of New South Wales, 1882. Notes taken +down in 1845. Compare Mrs. Langloh Parker, <i>More Australian +Legendary Tales</i>, “The Legend of the Flowers.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote37b"></a><a href="#citation37b">{37b}</a> +Spencer and Gillen, “Natives of Central Australia,” p. 651, +<i>s.v</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote39"></a><a href="#citation39">{39}</a> For +the use of Hermes’s tortoise-shell as a musical instrument <i>without +strings</i>, in early Anahuac, see Prof. Morse, in Appleton’s +<i>Popular Science Monthly</i>, March 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote41"></a><a href="#citation41">{41}</a> Gemoll.</p> +<p><a name="footnote44"></a><a href="#citation44">{44}</a> “Golden +Bough,” i. 279. Mannhardt, <i>Antike-Wald-und Feldkulte</i>, +p. 274.</p> +<p><a name="footnote45"></a><a href="#citation45">{45}</a> Howitt, +<i>Journal Anthtop. Inst</i>., xvi. p. 54.</p> +<p><a name="footnote46a"></a><a href="#citation46a">{46a}</a> +The Kurnai hold this belief.</p> +<p><a name="footnote46b"></a><a href="#citation46b">{46b}</a> +Brough Smyth, vol. i. p. 426</p> +<p><a name="footnote46c"></a><a href="#citation46c">{46c}</a> +<i>Journal Anthrop. Inst</i>., xvi. pp. 330-331.</p> +<p><a name="footnote59"></a><a href="#citation59">{59}</a> The +most minute study of Lobeck’s <i>Aglaophamus</i> can tell us no +more than this; the curious may consult a useful short manual, <i>Eleusis, +Ses Mystères, Ses Ruines, et son Musée</i>, by M. Demetrios +Philios. Athens, 1896. M. Philios is the Director of the +Eleusinian Excavations.</p> +<p><a name="footnote61"></a><a href="#citation61">{61}</a> “Golden +Bough,” ii. 292.</p> +<p><a name="footnote62"></a><a href="#citation62">{62}</a> “Golden +Bough,” ii. 369.</p> +<p><a name="footnote64a"></a><a href="#citation64a">{64a}</a> +“Golden Bough,” ii. 44.</p> +<p><a name="footnote64b"></a><a href="#citation64b">{64b}</a> +Ibid., 46.</p> +<p><a name="footnote65"></a><a href="#citation65">{65}</a> Mrs. +Langloh Parker, “More Australian Legends,” pp. 93-99.</p> +<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66">{66}</a> The +anthropomorphic view of the Genius of the grain as a woman existed in +Peru, as I have remarked in “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” +i. 213. See, too, “Golden Bough,” i. p. 351; Mr. Frazer +also notes the Corn Mother of Germany, and the Harvest Maiden of Balquhidder.</p> +<p><a name="footnote67"></a><a href="#citation67">{67}</a> “Golden +Bough,” p. 351, citing from Mannhardt a Spanish tract of 1649.</p> +<p><a name="footnote68"></a><a href="#citation68">{68}</a> Howitt, +on Mysteries of the Coast Murring (<i>Journal Anthrop. Instit</i>., +vol. xiv.).</p> +<p><a name="footnote69"></a><a href="#citation69">{69}</a> De +Smet, “Oregon Mission,” p. 359. Tanner’s “Narrative” +(1830), pp. 192-193.</p> +<p><a name="footnote72"></a><a href="#citation72">{72}</a> Pater, +“Greek Studies,” p. 90.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74a"></a><a href="#citation74a">{74a}</a> +“Africana,” i. 130.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74b"></a><a href="#citation74b">{74b}</a> +<i>Journal Anthrop. Instit</i>. (1884), xiii. pp. 444, 450.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74c"></a><a href="#citation74c">{74c}</a> +<i>Op. cit</i>., xiv. pp. 310, 316.</p> +<p><a name="footnote75"></a><a href="#citation75">{75}</a> “New +South Wales,” by Barren Field, pp. 69, 122 (1825).</p> +<p><a name="footnote76a"></a><a href="#citation76a">{76a}</a> +Aristophanes, <i>Ranæ</i>, 445 <i>et seq</i>.; Origen. <i>c. Cels</i>., +iii. 59; Andocides, <i>Myst</i>., 31; Euripides, <i>Bacch</i>, 72 <i>et +seq</i>. See Wobbermin, <i>Religionsgeschitliche Studien</i>, +pp. 36-44.</p> +<p><a name="footnote76b"></a><a href="#citation76b">{76b}</a> +Wobbermin, <i>op. cit</i>., p. 38.</p> +<p><a name="footnote77"></a><a href="#citation77">{77}</a> Wobbermin, +<i>op. cit</i>., p. 34.</p> +<p><a name="footnote78"></a><a href="#citation78">{78}</a> Hatch, +“Hibbert Lectures,” pp. 284, 285.</p> +<p><a name="footnote82"></a><a href="#citation82">{82}</a> <i>Recherches +sur l’Origine et la Nature des Mystères d’Eleusis</i>. +Klinikseck. Paris, 1895.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84"></a><a href="#citation84">{84}</a> Herodotus, +ii. 171.</p> +<p><a name="footnote85a"></a><a href="#citation85a">{85a}</a> +Spencer and Gillen, “Natives of Central Australia,” p. 399. +The myth is not very quotable.</p> +<p><a name="footnote85b"></a><a href="#citation85b">{85b}</a> +Foucart, p. 19, quoting <i>Philosophoumena</i>, v. 7. M. Foucart, +of course, did not know the Arunta parallel.</p> +<p><a name="footnote85c"></a><a href="#citation85c">{85c}</a> +<i>Journal Anthrop. Inst</i>. (1884), pp. 194, 195, “Ngarego and +Wolgal Tribes of New South Wales.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote85d"></a><a href="#citation85d">{85d}</a> +Ibid. (1885), p. 313.</p> +<p><a name="footnote86a"></a><a href="#citation86a">{86a}</a> +For ample information on this head see Mr. Clodd’s “Tom-Tit-Tot,” +and my “Custom and Myth” (“Cupid, Psyche, and the +Sun Frog”).</p> +<p><a name="footnote86b"></a><a href="#citation86b">{86b}</a> +<i>Panegyr</i>., 28.</p> +<p><a name="footnote87a"></a><a href="#citation87a">{87a}</a> +Clem. Alex. <i>Protrept</i>., ii. 77 <i>et seq</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote87b"></a><a href="#citation87b">{87b}</a> +Harpocration, <i>s. v</i>. Δυσαυλης.</p> +<p><a name="footnote87c"></a><a href="#citation87c">{87c}</a> +<i>Cf. ανασυρτολις</i>. +Hippon, 90, and Theophrastus, Charact. 6, and Synesius, 213, c. +Liddell and Scott, <i>s.v</i>. ανασυρω.</p> +<p><a name="footnote88a"></a><a href="#citation88a">{88a}</a> +“Sand and Spinifex,” 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote88b"></a><a href="#citation88b">{88b}</a> +Foucart, pp. 45, 46</p> +<p><a name="footnote88c"></a><a href="#citation88c">{88c}</a> +Hymn, Orph., 41, 5-9.</p> +<p><a name="footnote89a"></a><a href="#citation89a">{89a}</a> +Heriot, 1586.</p> +<p><a name="footnote89b"></a><a href="#citation89b">{89b}</a> +Foucart, pp. 56-59.</p> +<p><a name="footnote90"></a><a href="#citation90">{90}</a> Foucart, +p. 64.</p> +<p><a name="footnote91a"></a><a href="#citation91a">{91a}</a> +Basil Thomson, “The Kalou-Vu” (<i>Journal Anthrop. Inst</i>., +May 1895, pp. 349-356). Mr. Thomson was struck by the Greek analogies, +but he did not know, or does not allude to, Plutarch and the Golden +Scroll.</p> +<p><a name="footnote91b"></a><a href="#citation91b">{91b}</a> +Fragments, V. p. 9, Didot; Foucart, p. 56, note.</p> +<p><a name="footnote95a"></a><a href="#citation95a">{95a}</a> +Herodotus, Alilat, i. 131, iii. 8.</p> +<p><a name="footnote95b"></a><a href="#citation95b">{95b}</a> +“Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia,” 1895, vol. i. pp. 91, +92.</p> +<p><a name="footnote104"></a><a href="#citation104">{104}</a> +Callim., H. Apoll. 30.</p> +<blockquote><p>ουδ' ο χορος +τον φοιβον εφ' +εν μονον ημαρ αεισει<br /> +εστι yαρ ευυμνις +τις αν ου ρεα +φοιβον αειδοι;</p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="footnote115"></a><a href="#citation115">{115}</a> +The Greek is corrupt, especially in line 213.</p> +<p><a name="footnote121"></a><a href="#citation121">{121}</a> +This action was practised by the Zulus in divination, and, curiously, +by a Highlander of the last century, appealing to the dead Lovat not +to see him wronged.</p> +<p><a name="footnote124"></a><a href="#citation124">{124}</a> +A folk-etymology from πυθειν = to rot.</p> +<p><a name="footnote127"></a><a href="#citation127">{127}</a> +A similar portent is of recent belief in Maori tradition.</p> +<p><a name="footnote133"></a><a href="#citation133">{133}</a> +See Essay on this Hymn.</p> +<p><a name="footnote136"></a><a href="#citation136">{136}</a> +In our illustration both the lyre with a tortoise shell for sounding-board, +and the cithara, with no such sounding-board, are represented. +Is it possible that “the tuneful shell” was primarily used +<i>without</i> chords, as an instrument for drumming upon? The +drum, variously made, is the primitive musical instrument, and it is +doubted whether any stringed instrument existed among native American +races. But drawings in ancient Aztec MSS. (as Mr. Morse has recently +observed) show the musician using a kind of drum made of a tortoise-shell, +and some students have (probably with too much fancy) recognised a figure +with a tortoise-shell fitted with chords, in Aztec MSS. It is +possible enough that the early Greeks used the shell as a sort of drum, +before some inventor (Hermes, in the Hymn) added chords and developed +a stringed instrument. <i>Cf</i>. p. 39.</p> +<p><a name="footnote138"></a><a href="#citation138">{138}</a> +Such sandals are used to hide their tracks by Avengers of Blood among +the tribes of Central Australia.</p> +<p><a name="footnote140"></a><a href="#citation140">{140}</a> +This piece of wood is that in which the other is twirled to make fire +by friction.</p> +<p><a name="footnote141a"></a><a href="#citation141a">{141a}</a> +Otherwise written and interpreted, “as even now the skins are +there,” that is, are exhibited as relics.</p> +<p><a name="footnote141b"></a><a href="#citation141b">{141b}</a> +“Der Zweite Halbvers is mir absolut unverstandlich!”—<i>Gemoll</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote144"></a><a href="#citation144">{144}</a> +This is not likely to be the sense, but sense the text gives none. +Allen, <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, xvii. II.</p> +<p><a name="footnote153"></a><a href="#citation153">{153}</a> +“As if one walked with trees instead of feet.”—<i>Allen</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote156"></a><a href="#citation156">{156}</a> +The passage which follows (409-414) is too corrupt to admit of any but +conjectural rendering. Probably Apollo twisted bands, which fell +off Hermes, turned to growing willows, and made a bower over the kine. +See Mr. Allen, <i>op. cit</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote162a"></a><a href="#citation162a">{162a}</a> +This passage is a playing field of conjecture; some taking συμβολον += Mediator, or Go-between: some as = pactum, “covenant.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote162b"></a><a href="#citation162b">{162b}</a> +There seems to be a reference to the <i>caduceus</i> of Hermes, which +some have compared to the forked Divining Rod. The whole is corrupt +and obscure. To myself it seems that, when he gave the lyre (463-495), +Hermes was hinting at his wish to receive in exchange the gift of prophecy. +If so, these passages are all disjointed, and 521, with what follows, +should come after 495, where Hermes makes the gift of the lyre.</p> +<p><a name="footnote164"></a><a href="#citation164">{164}</a> +It appears from Philochorus that the prophetic lots were called <i>thriæ</i>. +They are then personified, as the prophetic Sisters, the Thriæ. +The white flour on their locks may be the grey hair of old age: we know, +however, a practice of divining with grain among an early agricultural +people, the Hurons.</p> +<p><a name="footnote168"></a><a href="#citation168">{168}</a> +Hestia, deity of the sacred hearth, is, in a sense, the Cinderella of +the Gods, the youngest daughter, tending the holy fire. The legend +of her being youngest yet eldest daughter of Cronos may have some reference +to this position. “The hearth-place shall belong to the +youngest son or daughter,” in Kent. See “Costumal +of the Thirteenth Century,” with much learning on the subject, +in Mr. Elton’s “Origins of English History,” especially +p. 190.</p> +<p><a name="footnote170"></a><a href="#citation170">{170}</a> +Shielings are places of summer abode in pastoral regions.</p> +<p><a name="footnote180"></a><a href="#citation180">{180}</a> +Reading χεισεται, Mr. +Edgar renders “no longer will my mouth ope to tell,” &c.</p> +<p><a name="footnote194"></a><a href="#citation194">{194}</a> +κλισμος seems to answer to +<i>fauteuil</i>, διφρος to <i>tabouret</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote196"></a><a href="#citation196">{196}</a> +M. Lefébure suggests to me that this is a trace of Phœnician +influence: compare Moloch’s sacrifices of children, and “passing +through the fire.” Such rites, however, are frequent in +Japan, Bulgaria, India, Polynesia, and so on. See “The Fire +Walk” in my “Modern Mythology.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote204"></a><a href="#citation204">{204}</a> +An universally diffused belief declares that whosoever tastes the food +of the dead may never return to earth.</p> +<p><a name="footnote205"></a><a href="#citation205">{205}</a> +The lines in brackets merely state the probable meaning of a dilapidated +passage.</p> +<p><a name="footnote214"></a><a href="#citation214">{214}</a> +This appears to answer to the difficult passage about the bonds of Apollo +falling from the limbs of Hermes (<i>Hermes</i>, 404, 405). Loosing +spells were known to the Vikings, and the miracle occurs among those +of Jesuits persecuted under Queen Elizabeth.</p> +<p><a name="footnote254"></a><a href="#citation254">{254}</a> +There is a gap in the text. Three deeds of Dionysus must have +been narrated, then follows the comment of Zeus.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOMERIC HYMNS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 16338-h.htm or 16338-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/3/3/16338 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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