CHAPTER XVI.

GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT, AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

The mythes formed the entire mental stock of the early Greeks.—State of mind out of which they arose.—Tendency to universal personification.—Absence of positive knowledge—supplied by personifying faith.—Multitude and variety of quasi-human personages.—What we read as poetical fancies, were to the Greeks serious realities.—The gods and heroes—their chief agency cast back into the past, and embodied in the mythes.—Marked and manifold types of the Homeric gods.—Stimulus which they afforded to the mythopœic faculty.—Easy faith in popular and plausible stories.—Poets—receive their matter from the divine inspiration of the Muse.—Meaning of the word _mythe_—original—altered.—Matter of actual history—uninteresting to early Greeks.—Mythical faith and religious point of view—paramount in the Homeric age.—Gradual development of the scientific point of view—its opposition to the religious.—Mythopœic age—anterior to this dissent.—Expansive force of Grecian intellect.—Transition towards positive and present fact.—The poet becomes the organ of present time instead of past.—Iambic, elegiac, and lyric poets.—Influence of the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, B. C. 660.—Progress—historical, geographical, social—from that period to B. C. 500.—Altered standard of judgment, ethical and intellectual.—Commencement of physical science—Thalês, Xenophanês, Pythagoras.—Impersonal nature conceived as an object of study.—Opposition between scientific method and the religious feeling of the multitude.—How dealt with by different philosophers.—Socratês.—Hippocratês.—Anaxagoras.—Contrasted with Grecian religious belief.—Treatment of Socratês by the Athenians.—Scission between the superior men and the multitude—important in reference to the mythes.—The mythes accommodated to a new tone of feeling and judgment.—The poets and logographers.—Pindar.—Tragic poets.—Æschylus and Sophoklês.—Tendencies of Æschylus in regard to the old legends.—He maintains undiminished the grandeur of the mythical world.—Euripidês—accused of vulgarizing the mythical heroes, and of introducing exaggerated pathos, refinement, and rhetoric.—The logographers—Pherekydês, etc.—Hekatæus—the mythes rationalized.—The historians—Herodotus.—Earnest piety of Herodotus—his mystic reserve.—His views of the mythical world.—His deference for Egypt and Egyptian statements.—His general faith in the mythical heroes and eponyms—yet combined with scepticism as to matters of fact—His remarks upon the miraculous foundation of the oracle at Dôdôna.—His remarks upon Melampus and his prophetic powers.—His remarks upon the Thessalian legend of Tempê.—Allegorical interpretation of the mythes—more and more esteemed and applied.—Divine legends allegorized.—Heroic legends historicized.—Limits to this interpreting process.—Distinction between gods and dæmons—altered and widened by Empedoclês.—Admission of dæmons as partially evil beings—effect of such admission.—Semi-historical interpretation—utmost which it can accomplish.—Some positive certificate indispensable as a constituent of historical proof—mere popular faith insufficient.—Mistake of ascribing to an unrecording age the historical sense of modern times.—Matter of tradition uncertified from the beginning.—Fictitious matter of tradition does not imply fraud or imposture.—Plausible fiction often generated and accredited by the mere force of strong and common sentiment, even in times of instruction.—Allegorical theory of the mythes—traced by some up to an ancient priestly caste.—Real import of the mythes supposed to be preserved in the religious mysteries.—Supposed ancient meaning is really a modern interpretation.—Triple theology of the pagan world. Treatment and use of the mythes according to Plato.—His views as to the necessity and use of fiction.—He deals with the mythes as expressions of feeling and imagination—sustained by religious faith, and not by any positive basis.—Grecian antiquity essentially a religious conception.—Application of chronological calculation divests it of this character.—Mythical genealogies all of one class, and all on a level in respect to evidence.—Grecian and Egyptian genealogies.—Value of each is purely subjective, having especial reference to the faith of the people.—Gods and men undistinguishable in Grecian antiquity.—General recapitulation.—General public of Greece—familiar with their local mythes, careless of recent history.—Religious festivals—their commemorative influence.—Variety and universality of mythical relics.—The mythes in their bearing on Grecian art.—Tendency of works of art to intensify the mythical faith. 340-461