and so many points of resemblance have presented themselves as to leave no doubt of the original identity of the systems.1 It is to the neglect of this rule that we owe so much of the absurdity to be found in the works of many mythologists, and nothing has tended more to the bringing of the science of mythology into neglect and contempt. The ancient Greeks were led from ignorance to give credit to the cunning priesthood of Egypt, and to believe that they had received their religion from that country; and it is but too well known how, in our own days, Sir William Jones and his followers have been deceived by their own imaginations, and the impostures of artful pundits, in their efforts to connect the religions of Greece and India.

2. In like manner the mythes themselves should be considered separately, and detached from the system in which they are placed; for the single mythes existed long before the system, and were the product of other minds than those which afterwards set them in connection, not unfrequently without fully understanding them."

3. We should pay particular attention to the genealogies which we meet with in mythology, as they frequently form the key to the meaning of a mythe, or even of a whole cycle. Great caution however should be used in the application of this rule, or it may lead us into error and absurdity if carried beyond its legitimate bounds.

4. The same or even greater caution is required in the application of etymology to this subject. If applied judiciously it will give most valuable results, and prove, in fact, to be the masterkey of mythology; if under no guidance but that of caprice and fancy, it will become the parent of all sorts of monsters and lusus naturæ.

5. Finally, though we should never pronounce a mythe which we have not examined to be absolutely devoid of signification, we should not too confidently assert that every mythe must have an important meaning, for certainly some have been but the creation of capricious fancy. On these occasions it would be well to bear in

1 Comp. Völcker, Myth. der Jap. pp. vi. vii.

2 Comp. Buttmann, Mytholog. i. 155, 157. Müller, Proleg. 218, 219. Orchom. 142. Hermann, Ueber das Wesen, &c. 71, 125, 132.

Comp. Völcker, Myth. der Jap. passim. Müller, Proleg. 274 seq.

Comp. Müller, Proleg. 232.

Völcker asserts positively that there is no mythe without a meaning. Myth. der Jap. 50. This may be true, but the meaning is often a trifling one. As examples of this kind of mythe, we may give the conversion of the clowns into frogs by Létó, of the boy into a lizard by Démétér, and the account of the birth of Oríón, all mere sports of fancy.

mind the following words of Johnson:1 "The original of ancient customs is commonly unknown, for the practice often continues after the cause has ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies, it is vain to conjecture, for what reason did not dictate reason cannot explain." We use the words bear in mind, for if adopted as a principle it will only serve to damp ardour and check inquiry. The rule should be,—this mythe most probably has an important meaning, but it is possible it may have only a trifling one.

As, in the following pages, we shall frequently have occasion to apply the principles of etymology, we will here add something further on that important subject.

At the time when most of the mythes and mythic names of Hellas were formed, its language was in an earlier state than that in which we find it even in the Homeric poems. It is further a fact, well-known to philologists, that the earlier the condition of a language is, the longer are its words and the more numerous its formative syllables. Such, then, we will assume to have been what we will call the mythic language of Hellas; and keeping this principle in view, we shall be able to obtain a good sense for names which are nearly devoid of meaning as long as we suppose the final syllables to be original portions of the words.

Thus we find in the later language the final syllables evs, uos, δης, της, τηρ, τος, των, τωρ, &c., used as formative, and active in sense. Supposing, then, these to have been originally longer, a letter, usually a liquid or σ, being prefixed, we at once arrive at the elucidation of many mythic names otherwise nearly inexplicable. Such are Tydeus, Odysseus, Nestór. There seem also to have been other formative syllables which went almost totally out of use, such as λος, λιων, νιων, οψ, ωψ, πος and probably κυς and rus (as in Phorkys and Diktys), and others. An ancient feminine termination was w (as in Kalypsó, Échó), active, and answering to the participles in ovoa and aoa; another similar to this, and also active, was ws,2 while those in α, η and in σrŋ, στις, corresponded with the masculines in πος and στης, στηρ, στωρ. In some cases there seems to have been a double termination, as in Pénelopeia.3

1 Rasselas, chap. 48. See Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, i. 480. Lobeck, Aglaoph. 172 seq. Buttmann, Mytholog. ii. 294, 295. Welcker, Tril. 249.

There are only three with this termination, 'Hès, Aús (Giver, a name of Démétér), and Aidos, i.e. Shamer, what excites the sense of shame (aidas sc. ὑμῖν γίνοιτο. Ι. v. 787).

* Πήνη, ΠΗΝΗΛΟΣ, Πηνελόπεια. On this principle we may perhaps explain the enigmatic names Edipus and Melampus: oldéw, OIANO; Οιδιπόδης, Οἰδίπους; μέλας, ΜΕΛΑΜΠΟΣ, ΜΕΛΑΜΠΟΔΗΣ, Μελάμπους. Ιn this way βασιλεὺς may come from ΒΑΩ, βάζω, or from ΒΑΩ, βαίνω.

We may finally add, contrary to the assertion of many eminent critics, that the quantity of the vowels is not to be regarded in etymology, as those which are long in one language or dialect are often short in another, and vice versa.1 It need hardly be observed that an accurate knowledge of the commutability of consonants is essential to the etymologist.

CHAPTER II.

GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY.

Its Origin.

THE remote antiquities of Greece are involved in such total obscurity, that nothing certain can be adduced respecting the origin of the people or their mythology. Reasoning from analogy and existing monuments, some men of learning venture to maintain, that the first inhabitants of that country were under the direction of a sacerdotal caste, resembling those of India and Egypt; but that various circumstances concurred to prevent their attaining to the same power as in these countries. In the Homeric poems, however, by far the earliest portion of Grecian literature, we find no traces of sacerdotal dominion; and in the subsequent part of our work we shall bring forward some objections against this hypothesis.2

It is certainly not improbable that these ancient priests, if such there were, may have had their religion arranged systematically, and have represented the various appearances and revolutions of nature under the guise of the loves, the wars, and other actions of these deities, to whom they ascribed a human form and human passions. But the Grecian mythology, as we find it in the works of the ancients, offers no appearance of a regular concerted system. It is rather a loose collection of various images and fables, many of which are significant of the same objects.

The ancient inhabitants of Greece were divided into a great variety of little communities, dwelling separately, parted in general by mountains and other natural barriers. As they were naturally endowed with a lively imagination, there gradually grew up in each of these little states a body of tales and legends. These tales of gods and heroes were communicated by wandering minstrels and travellers from one part of the country to another. 1 Thus the Latin diphthong au becomes o in Italian and French; as aurum, Ŏro, or; glōria is gloria, It., while timeo is tēmo, It.

2 Comp. Müller, Proleg. 249 seq.; Min. Pol. 9.

Phoenician mariners probably introduced stories of the wonders of the East and of the West, which in those remote ages they alone visited; and these stories, it is likely, were detailed with the usual allowance of travellers' licence. Poets, a race indigenous in the favoured clime of Hellas, caught up the tales, and narrated them with all the embellishments a lively fancy could bestow; and thus at a period long anterior to that at which her history commences, Greece actually abounded in a rich and luxuriant system of legendary lore. This is proved by the poems of Homer and Hésiod, which, exclusive of the ancient legends they contain, make frequent allusion to others; some of which are related by subsequent writers, and many are altogther fallen into oblivion.

These poems also bear evident testimony to the long preceding existence of a race of poets, a fact indeed sufficiently evinced by the high degree of perfection in the poetic art which they them. selves exhibit. Modern mythologists have therefore been naturally led to the supposition of there having been in ancient Greece aœdic schools, in which the verses of preceding bards were taught, and the art of making similar verses was acquired. One of the ablest of our late inquirers2 is of opinion that the original seat of these schools was Pieria, at the northern foot of Mount Olympos. He has been led to this supposition by Heyne's remark, that Homer always calls the Muses Olympian, which remark he extends by observing that the Homeric gods in general are the Olympian, and no others. In this however we can only see that, as we shall presently show, Olympos was in the time of Homer held to be the seat of the gods. It does not appear to us that any one spot can be regarded as the birth-place of the Grecian religion and mythology; they were, like the language and manners of the people, a portion of their being; and the knowledge of the origin of the one is as far beyond our attainment as that of the other.3

The Greeks, like most of the ancient nations, were little inclined to regard as mere capricious fiction any of the legends of the different portions of their own race or those of foreign countries. Whatever tales they learned, they interwove into their own system; taking care, however, to avoid contradiction as far as was possible. When, therefore, they found in them any foreign deities possessing the same attributes as some of their own, they at once

1 Wolf, it is well known, held this opinion. The Schools of the Prophets among the Hebrews were evidently of the same nature.

2 Völcker, Myth. der Jap. p. 5 seq.: see also Böttiger, Ideen zur KunstMyth. ii. 50. Müller, Proleg. 219.

3 From what has been said in my Introduction, it is clear that the first elements of the Hellenic religion must have come with the people from the East.-ED.

C

inferred them to be the same under different names; but where the legends would not accord, the deities themselves were regarded as being different, even when they were in reality perhaps the same.1

Beside the original deities of the Hellénic race, we meet in Grecian mythology with many gods and mythic personages who are indebted for their origin to epithets of those higher divinities. An epithet, when thus separated from its subject, became sometimes another deity of the same kind, or even a hostile power; at other times a child or a companion of the original deity. Such apparently were Pan, Phaethón, Hekaté, Medusa, Kallistó, and others, which will meet us on our progress.

On taking a comprehensive view of the whole of the mythology of ancient Greece, and carefully considering all the tales of gods and heroes which it contains, the conviction almost necessarily arises that these beings are nothing more than the personifications of natural and moral powers and objects, and that the various mythes are merely the vehicles of physical and ethical truths. Grecian mythology is in fact like that of most other countries, philosophy or religion clothed in the garb of poetry, and hence it may often receive illustration from the poetry of other times and other regions. The reader therefore will not be surprised to meet with passages from modern and even Oriental poets adduced in illustration of it in the following pages.

Historic View of Grecian Mythology.2

The poets of ancient Hellas having taken possession of the popular legends, adorned, amplified, added to them, and sought to reduce the whole to a somewhat harmonious system. They however either studiously abstained from departing from the popular faith, or were themselves too much affected by all that environed them to dream of anything which might shock the opinions of their auditors. Accordingly we may be certain that the mythes contained in Homer and Hésiod accord with the current creed of their day, and are a faithful picture of the mode of thinking prevalent in those distant ages.

As knowledge of the earth, of nature, her laws and powers, advanced, the false views of them contained in the venerable mythes of antiquity became apparent. The educated sometimes sought to reconcile tradition and truth; but the vulgar still held fast to the legends hallowed by antiquity and sanctioned by govern

1 See Buttmann, Mythol. i. 24. Welcker, Tril. 95. 2 See Heyne, ad Apollod. p. 911 seq.

3 See Müller, Proleg. 212.