MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE.

PART II.-THE HEROES.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

Origin and First State of Man.

Each

THE origin of mankind, like that of the earth their abode, is a subject which will be found to have engaged the thoughts of almost every race that occupies its surface. The mind feels itself invincibly impelled to this reflection, from observing the changes and revolutions which continually take place around it. revolving year brings to the vegetable world the seasons of decay and of reviviscence; mankind are born, flourish, and die; a new generation is ever filling up the vacancies caused by death; races migrate; where population once flourished, there is desolation; where once the wilderness spread, is heard the busy hum of men, and commerce and agriculture display their stores. Has it always been so ? is the question man naturally asks himself. Has the world ever gone on thus decaying and renewing ?-and he carries back his thoughts through ages and generations, till for very weariness he is obliged to stop somewhere and suppose a beginning.

A remnant of primæval tradition, or the natural operation of the mind itself, has led almost all races to conceive the original state of man to have been one of peace and happiness. At all periods of his life man looks back to the gay and careless days of childhood with pleasure and regret. Then, while his faculties were new and unworn, each part of nature was a source of bliss; then surs shone more brightly, plants diffused more fragrance, the melody of groves was poured forth more rapturously, the day closed in joy, the morning awoke to renewed delight. It was easy and it was natural to transfer these ideas to the race of man; to suppose them also to have commenced in blissful infancy, amid the abundant wealth and careless ease of nature, and to have passed progressively through different stages, deteriorating in each successive stage, as unhappily the greater part of mankind do,

and from the innocence of childhood advancing to the selfishness and hardened vice of mature and declining age. Most mythic systems therefore have their Golden Age.1

Ages of the World.

Homer nowhere speaks of cosmogony or of the ages of the world. Hésiod, who is the first that treats of them, gives in his didactic poem the following venerable mythe.2

The gods first made the Golden race of men, who were in the time when Kronos ruled in heaven.3 They lived like gods, free from toils and care, and death was to them a sinking into gentle slumber; and when earth had covered this race, they became good terrestrial dæmons, the guardians of mortal men, to mark their just and unjust deeds. They move along the earth shrouded in darkness, and are the bestowers of wealth. Such is their regal honour.*

The gods made a second far inferior race, called the Silver race, resembling the golden neither in appearance nor in disposition. A hundred years each child spent in ignorant simplicity with its mother, and when they attained to youth they lived but a short time, for they would not abstain from mutual injury, nor pay the service due to the gods. Zeus in indignation put a period to the

race.

Zeus now made a third, the Brazen race of men, unlike the silver race. These were formed from ash-trees: their delight was in war and deeds of violence. They ate not corn, but they had souls of steel, and prodigious strength. Their arms were brass, their houses brass, with brass they wrought, 'for black iron was not yet.' At length, slain by each other's hands, they went down to the mouldy house of cold Aïdés,' and left no fame behind them. A fourth and better race was next placed on the earth by Zeus, namely the divine race of Heroes, in former times called Semigods. These also were carried off by war and combat. They fought at Thébes, on account of the sheep of Edipus, and sailed to Troy for 'well-haired Helené.' When they died, Zeus removed them to the ends of the earth, where they dwell, away from man, in the Islands of the Blest, and live in bliss, earth producing for them 'honey-sweet fruit' thrice in each revolving year:

The poet draws a dismal picture of the fifth or Iron race of men; a picture often since his time re-drawn by moralists and poets in every region of the earth, for this is the race who still possess it. This race, says Hésiod, will never cease day or night 1 Comp. Völcker, Myth. der Jap. 256. 2 Epy. 109: see above, p. 62. See above, p. 43. 4 See Plató, Laws, iv. p. 7-13.

from toil and misery; the gods will give them grievous cares, yet good will still be mixed with the evil. Zeus will destroy this race also, when they become 'hoary-templed.' Fathers will not be at unity with their children, nor brethren with each other; friends and guests will be discordant, children will not honour their aged parents. Club-law will prevail, faith and justice will be in no repute, the evil-doer and the violent will be most esteemed, 'evilloving Envy' will accompany wretched man. Shame and Aversion (Nemesis) will wrap themselves in their white mantles' and depart to the gods, leaving misery to man; and there will be no defence against evil.

Arátos1 is the next in order of time who mentions the ages of the world. He speaks of but three races of men,-the golden, the silver, and the brazen. Justice (Aíkn), he says, dwelt familiarly among the first, teaching them what was right and good. When the silver race succeeded she retired to the mountains, whence she occasionally came down in the evening-time, and approaching their abodes upbraided them with their evil doings. Unable to endure the third race, who first forged arms and fed on the flesh of the labouring ox, she flew up to heaven and became the constellation of Astræa or the Virgin.

Ovid2 makes the races of men four in number,-golden, silver, brazen, and iron. The first enjoyed a perpetual spring, the earth producing everything spontaneously for them: in the time of the second the division of the seasons took place: the third were martial, but not yet utterly wicked: the fourth gave way to every species of vice and crime, Astræa left the earth, and Zeus destroyed them by a deluge of water.

In all these accounts it is to be observed that it is races of men, not ages of the world, which are spoken of. Hésiod makes these races separate creations: the first two, he says, were made by the gods, the last three by Zeus, who attained the supremacy of neaven in the time of the second or silver race. Earth covers each race before its successor is made. Arátos expressly says that the golden were the parents of the silver, and these of the brazen race of men. Ovid would appear to view the subject in the same

light.

To dispel the gloomy prospect presented by the delineation of the vices and miseries of man in the last stage of the progression, it was asserted, that as the four seasons, commencing with a bright 1 Phænomena, 100 seq. 2 Met. i. 89 seq.

3 So also Vergil (Buc. iv. passim, Geor. ii. 537) and Claudian (Rapt. Pros. ii. 286). The modern error has arisen from not observing that in these places of the poets atas is the translation of yévos.

golden spring and ending with a gloomy iron winter, form the solar year, which is continually renewed; so the four ages of the world compose a mundane year which will also be renewed and the iron race be succeeded by a new one of gold, when Kronos will once more assume the government, and the former innocent and happy state return.1

A mythologist, of whom even when we dissent from his opinions we must always admire the sound learning, ingenious reasoning, and high moral feeling,2 gives the following view of the mythe of the races of man.

This mythe is an oriental one, derived from the same source with the narrative in the first chapters of Genesis, and introduced into Grecian literature by Hésiod, who may be regarded as the Plató of his age. It contained originally, as it is given by Arátos, only the first three ages. Its object was not to give a view of the gradual deterioration of mankind, but to exhibit the relation of the deity to the wickedness of the human race, and particularly to impress the belief that when evil has attained its maximum the gods will destroy mankind. To this intent it was necessary to commence with a state of innocence; and the original framer of the mythe probably made the silver and brazen races, instead of successively following that of gold, exist simultaneously after it,— effeminacy and violence, the two vices into which virtue is most apt to degenerate, being their respective characters,—and feigned that the former was gradually extirpated by the latter, which was then destroyed by the gods; but this was misunderstood by Hésiod. The account of the fourth and fifth races was an application of the ancient mythe to the actual world, and from a moral it became a continuation of the narrative. As the working of iron was regarded as a later invention than that of brass or copper, and as it is a harder metal, it was naturally selected to express the last and worst race of men; but as tradition spake distinctly of the Heroic race who fought at Thébes and Troy, it was necessary to distinguish it from the iron one: hence the cycle is, as it were, repeated; but the latter one, being founded on reality, consists of only two parts. The heroes who correspond to the golden race are like them rewarded after death, but in an inferior degree: the iron are menaced with utter destruction like the brazen.

This critic is further of opinion that in the original narrative the three races were represented as becoming after death three different classes of spirits, the golden celestial, the silver terrestrial, and the brazen infernal; answering to the good and evil 1 Verg. Buc. iv. 6. Voss. in loco. Seneca, Octavia, ii. 1. 16 seq. On the other hand see Lobeck, Aglaoph. 791 seq. 2 Buttmann, Mythol. ii. 1 seq.

angels of the religions of the East; but that, as the Grecian religion acknowledged no evil spirits, the poet found it necessary to cut away this last part of the original mythe.

Völcker1 on the other hand considers the Heroic race to have been an essential part of the original mythe, which he regards chiefly on that account as being a post-Homéric composition, framed with a regard to the Homéric and other contemporary poems. He also thinks that the lines in which Hésiod describes the deification of the golden race are an interpolation, inserted at the time when the intercourse prevailed with Egypt, and Grecian philosophers visited that country. As we do not esteem the notion of a community of mythology between Greece and Asia and Egypt in the ante-Homéric times to rest on any solid foundation, though we freely acknowledge the sublimity of that theory, we feel disposed to acquiesce to a certain extent in this last opinion, and to reject the ingenious hypothesis stated above.2

Ιαπετός, Ατλας, Μενοίτιος, Προμηθεὺς καὶ Ἐπιμηθεύς. Iapetos, Atlas, Menatios, Prometheus et Epimetheus. According to the Theogony the Titan Iapetos espoused Klymené (Bright-one), a daughter of O'keanos, by whom he was the father of four sons, Atlas, Mencetios, Prométheus and Epimétheus. We find Iapetos frequently joined with Kronos, apart as it were from the other Titans; and it is worthy of notice, that in the Theogony (where there is more of order and method than is usually supposed) the account of Iapetos and his progeny immediately succeeds that of Kronos and the gods sprung from him. These circumstances, combined with the plain meaning of the names of his children, led to the conclusion of Iapetos being intended to represent the origin of the human race.

The gods, as we have seen, are the offspring of Time, and as man, according to the sacred Scriptures, is born unto misery,' it may not be unreasonable to find in the name of the progenitor of mankind a reference to this condition; and hence perhaps we

1 Myth. der Jap. 250 seq.

2 We however agree with Buttmann in thinking that in the original mythe there were only four ages. The Hindús, it may be observed, have also four Yúgas or ages of the world, and we must recollect the analogy of the four

seasons.

3 On the subject of Iapetos and his children, see the excellent work of Völcker so frequently quoted in the preceding pages.

Theog. 507 seq. Some said Ethra (Timæos ap. Sch. Il. xviii. 486), others Asia, others Libya; these two last refer to the abodes of Prométheus and Atlas.