to light, as a proof of his victory. In the old mythe he was made to engage with and wound Aïdés; and the Alkéstis of Euripidés exhibits him in conflict with Death.

But virtue, to be a useful example, must occasionally succumb to human weakness and the power of the evil principle. Hence Héraklés falls into fits of madness, sent on him by Héra; and hence, like the Rinaldo and Ruggiero of romance, he becomes the willing slave of Omphalé, the fair queen of Lydia, and changes his club and lion's skin for the distaff and the female robe. The mythe at length concludes most nobly with the assumption of the hero into Olympos. His protecting deity abandons him to the power of his persevering enemy;1 his mortal part is consumed by fire, the purest of elements; his shade or image (eïdwλov),2 like those of other men, descends to the realms of Hadés, while the divine portion, himself (avròs), ascends from the pyre in a thunder-cloud, and the object of Héra's persecution being now effected, espouses Youth the daughter of his reconciled foe.

Our chief objection to this beautiful theory is its making the mythe of Héraklés, from the very commencement, one entire and consistent fiction, framed with a moral view. This we regard as contrary to the mythic analogy, which, though it might devise single mythes, like that of Ixíón, in order to illustrate some ethic principle, never conducted the heroes through a long series of adventures like those of Héraklés.

3

The mythology of this hero is of a very mixed character in the form in which it has come down to us. There is apparently in it the identification of one or more Grecian heroes with Melkart, a god of the Phoenicians, and perhaps with one of the deities of Egypt. Hence we find Héraklés so frequently represented as the sun-god, and his twelve labours regarded as the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac.

The Grecian adventures of Héraklés are placed in Thessaly (chiefly about Mount Eté), Etólia and the Peloponnése: and as the Dórians, whose princes were supposed to be descended from Héraklés, had relations with all these countries, Müller1 1 ̓Αλλά € Μοῖρ ̓ ἐδάμασσε καὶ ἀργαλέος χόλος Ηρης.—Il. xviii. 119.

2 Od. xi. 602. It is not unworthy of notice, that in the Ilias (i. 3) it is said that the souls (4vxàs) of the heroes were sent to Aïs, themselves (auroùs) were made a prey for dogs and birds; while, in this place of the Odyssey, the image (eldwλov) of Héraklés was in the house of Ais, himself (avròs) was on Olympos. Two diametrically opposed species of psychology!

Malqereth (p) 'King of the City,' a name of the Sun or of the planet Jupiter. 4 Dórians, book ii. chap. 11, 12.

views in him the national hero of the Dórian race. He regards as the original exploits of the Dórian Héraklés the conquest of Echalia, the marriage with Déianeira (that is the league between the Dórians and Ætólians for the invasion of the Peloponnése), the taking of Ephyra, with which he connects the wounding of Hadés, and the whole of the Héraklean Nekyia, and even the carrying away of the cattle of Géryoneus, whom with Hekataos he places in E'peiros, and finally the death on the summit of Eté. He thinks that the Peloponnésian adventures were mostly invented after the time of the Dórian invasion, which they were intended to justify; there may, he allows, have been an Argive hero of perhaps the same name, who was the destroyer of the Nemeæan lion; but the enmity of Héra, the delay at his birth, the servitude to Eurystheus, etc., are Dórian legends, and meant to represent the political and religious contests between the ancient inhabitants and the invaders. The mythology of Héraklés at Thebes was, he thinks, introduced from Delphi, or by the Dóric Hérakleids. That he did not belong to the Kadmeian mythology is proved by the legend of the coming of Alkméné to Thébes, and by the fact of his temples there being without the walls,-a fact which is quite conclusive, as the ancient deities of a city always had their temples on or near the citadel. Returning to the Peloponnése; the adventures there, he says, may be divided into two classes, the combats with men and those with beasts. Of the former are the conquest of Pylos, Lakónia and E'lis, and the establishment of the Olympic games, in all of which there is a historic reference. The latter are perhaps of a symbolic nature. Many of the adventures out of Greece are to be referred to the Grecian colonists of the places which are made the scene of them.

We have thus given a sketch of the theory of this most able mythologist, and there is much in it to which it is difficult to refuse assent. But we think that, like his theory of Apolló, it is too much affected by what appears to us his exaggerated conception of the influence of Dóric ideas and institutions in Greece. There are, in fact, parts of the Héraclean mythology to our apprehension almost inexplicable on this hypothesis: his name, too, Héra-renowned, seems quite unsuitable to a hero of the Dórians anterior to the Migration. This however may be obviated by supposing the name of the Dórian hero to have been different, and that of the Argive to have been adopted in its stead. But again, it does not seem likely that an Argive hero should be the object of persecution to the Argive goddess; on the contrary, all analogy would lead us to suppose him, from his name,

to have been her favourite.1 We would therefore hint as a possibility, that the original Héraklés was the conception of a Peloponnésian hero," who, in obedience to the great goddess of the country (the goddess of the earth), cleared it of the noxious animals that infested it, and, it may be, went on toilsome journeys to distant regions to bring home cattle and plants to adorn and improve it; but that when he had been identified with the Dóric hero a new series of adventures was devised for him, and he was made the object of the persecution instead of the favour of the Argive goddess. We do not think that the identification with Melkart had much influence beyond that of localising some of the legends, such as that of Géryoneus.

In the Homéric poems there is, as we have seen, frequent mention of Héraklés; and in the Theogony his birth at Thébes, his combats with the Nemeæan lion, the Hydra and Géryoneus, his release of Prométheus and marriage with Hébé, are noticed. In the E'œœ the conquest of Pylos and other events were recorded; the Shield relates the combat with Kyknos; and the Egimios and Wedding of Kéyx, ascribed to Hésiod, contained adventures of this hero. Of the age of these poems however we can only make a conjecture; for it is well known that some of the Hésiodic poems, as they are called, come down even below the thirtieth Olympiad. Kinæthos of Lakedæmón, who flourished about the fifth Olympiad, composed a Hérakleia, and Peisander of Kameiros (about Ol. 33) another very celebrated one; Stésichoros of Himera (Ol. 48) also composed a lyric poem named the Géryonéis, on the expedition to Erytheia: Panyasis of Samos (Ol. 72) wrote a Hérakleia in fourteen books, containing nearly as many verses as the Odyssey.

Pherekýdés, Hellaníkos and Hekatæos all gave the adventures of Héraklés a place in their works: and Hérodóros of Hérakleia on the Pontos, a contemporary of Sókratés, composed a long Hérakleia in prose. The Attic tragedians also introduced Héraklés into their dramas; and as they viewed him as a Bœótian, his character was treated with but little ceremony on some occasions. Apollodóros and Diodóros relate the adventures of this hero; they were also the subjects of the verses of the Alexandrian and the Latin poets.

1 All the compounds of this form seem to be in a good sense. Such are Sophoklés, Agathoklés, Calliklés, Hieroklés, Themistoklés, Euklés. Dioklés, Hermoklés, Theoklés, seem to intimate the divine favour.

2 Héraklés, son of the Strong-one (Alkméne) by Zeus-Amphitryón (Wearerout or Vanquisher); also named Alkeides (Son-of-strength) from his grandŝire Alkæos.

CHAPTER V.

MYTHES OF ATTICA.

Kékpoy. Cecrops.

O'GYGES, in whose time the Boótic flood is placed, is said by some to have been the first who reigned over Attica and Bœótia: his son Eleusínos was the founder of Eleusis.

But in general Kekrops is held to have been the first who ruled over the country called Kekropia from him, and Attica from its peninsular form. He is said by mythologists to have been an autochthón, i.e. one who came from no foreign country, but was born in, and as it were from, the land; and, like autochthones in general, to have had a body composed of those of a man and a snake. In his time the gods began to choose cities for themselves; and Poseidón and Athéna both fixed on Athens. The former came and struck the middle of the future Akropolis with his trident, and formed the well of salt water in the Erechtheion; Athéna then came, and making Kekrops witness of her taking possession, planted the olive which stood in the Pandrosion. Twelve gods sat to decide the cause; and on the testimony of Kekrops, they adjudged the place to Athéna. She named the city from herself, and Poseidón testified his anger by laying the Thriasian plain under water.1

Kekrops married Agraulos the daughter of Aktæos, who bore him a son Erysichthón, and three daughters, Aglauros or Agraulos, Pandrosos, and Hersé. Erysichthón died without children; Agraulos had by Arés a daughter named Alkippé,2 and Hersé by Hermés a son named Kephalos.3

One of the earliest events recorded in modern histories of Greece is the coming of Kekrops at the head of a colony, from Saïs in Lower Egypt to Attica, where he civilised the rude aborigines, gave them religion, marriage, and other social institutions, and taught them to cultivate corn for their subsistence. This remarkable event is placed, on the authority of the Parian Chronicle, B.C. 1582.

It may therefore seem strange that Kekrops should apparently have been utterly unknown to Homer and Hésiod; that the Apollod. iii. 14, 1. For other marks of the vengeance of this god, see Sch. Aristoph. Eccles. 471. Varro, Fr. p. 360 (Bip.) 2 See above, p. 95. 3 See above, p. 146.

kyklic and the lyric poets do not speak of him; that the logographers, and their follower Apollodóros, seem ignorant of his Egyptian birth; that the same should be the case with the dramatists; and that Hérodotos should speak of the Athéna of Sais and of the Attic Kekrops without giving the slightest hint of any connexion between them. Plató is, in fact, the first who intimates it; the priests of Saïs, he says, informed Solón out of their temple-archives that the goddess Néith or Athéna was the founder of both their cities, but that Athens was the elder by one thousand years. When in those remote ages the people of the isle Atlantis invaded the countries within the Pillars of Héraklés, the Athenians bravely repelled them; and in the war Kekrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonios, and Erysichthón distinguished themselves.1

We should think it hardly necessary to inform the reader that the whole story of the Atlantis, and everything relating to it, is as pure a fiction as the Utopia or any other political romance, and that Plató makes in it the same use of Solón that he does of Sókratés on other occasions. At all events he gives not the slightest hint of Kekrops being an Egyptian, but rather the very reverse. Elsewhere he states the genuine Athenian creed of his day. Neither a Pelops, nor a Danaos, nor a Kadmos, nor an Ægyptos, nor any other, who, being originally a Barbarian, has been naturalised among the Hellénes, has settled among us. We are of pure Hellénic blood, no mixed people, and hence the hatred of foreign manners and customs is especially implanted in our city."

2

The first notice of the Egyptian origin of the Athenians appeared in a work which went under the name of Theopompos, but which was a forgery intended to injure him. It was named Tpikápavos and it attacked the traditions and history of Athens, Sparta, and Thébes. On the other hand Kallistratos and Phanodémos maintained that Saïs was colonised from Athens. In the time of the Ptolemies it became the fashion to regard the Egyptians as the colonisers of half the world. Still it is only in an imperfect fragment of Diodóros and in Scholia that the Egyptian Kekrops occurs. Few then, we think, will now dissent from the following, judgment: The derivation of Kekrops from Saïs is a historic sophism and no mythe.' 3

Critias, 108 seq.

3

1 Timæos, 21 seq. 2 Menexenos, 245. Isocratés (Enc. Hel. 20; Panath. 19) omits Kekrops in his list of Athenian kings; and he speaks (Panég. 41; Panath. 258) of the Athenian autochthony in the same manner as Plató: see also Euripidés, Ión. 590, Fr. Erechtheus, i. 7 seq.

3 See Müller, Orchom. 106 seq. Proleg. 175. Voss, Myth. Br. iii. 180 seq.