voked by the Heliasts, in the oath taken by the juries contemporary with Demosthenes.* The Athenian orators are full of references to the mythical tales of the land; and they employ them, not as graceful ornaments of their artificial periods, but as allegations of fact, and most irrefragable arguments. Would they, with their consummate and self-conscious art, have pursued this course, if these traditions had not retained their hold on the feelings and convictions of their audience, or had ceased to be operative upon their conduct? The mythological introduction was a necessary prelude to the satisfactory recomposition of the annals of Greece; and, if it is overloaded with erudition and dissertation-the habitual error of Grote—this blemish may be imputed to his predecessors, who have either treated the topic with too much neglect, or dissevered it from its natural connections. The history of all original nations commences with a line of gods and demigods; every primitive people has boasted of its own saturnian reign, though none of such a brilliant dream as gilded the advent of the Greeks. We refuse the instructions of history, and cramp the proportions of ancient story to the proportions of a prosaic age, when we ignore Osiris, and Baal, and Brahma, and Jupiter, and commence our studies with the definite realities of a later age, when the wild fictions of the olden time were still, but less cordially, believed, though we, in our narrow wisdom, would discard them altogether from our contemplation. Though Mr. Grote is the most critical and incredulous of the historians of Greece, he is guiltless of such delusive scepticism. History slowly emerges from mythology, and long retains the vestiges of its pristine condition. Grote inaugurates his subject with the primitive convictions and sentiments of the people he describes, and ushers in the history of Hellas, as it revealed itself in the realities of Hellas, with its mythological system. In this able summary of the most attractive fancies that ever adorned a false creed, or shed a poetic glow over the vagaries of human aberration, there is no bald repetition of the customary contents of the Greek Pantheon, but a skilful rearrangement and amplification of the chief results of modern investigation. We miss any congenial appreciation of the poetic imaginations which constitute the * Demosth. c. Timocratem, c. xxxvi, vol. vii, p. 322-3, ed. Dobson. Vide S. Petit, Legg. Att., lib. iv, Tit. i, p. 397. Vide præsertim, Lycurgi Orat. c. Leocratem, which is rendered wearisome by such references. The infidelity of Greece, of which Euripides became the poetical mouthpiece (v. Bellerophon, Fr. x, ed. Didot) was introduced by the sophists, and never extended beyond the circles of the philosophers. The Mainotes of Mount Taygetus remained pagans till the end of the ninth century. Const. Porphyrog. De Adm. Imp. c. L, vol. iii, p. 224, ed. Bourn. phantasmagoria. The old ideals rekindle no responsive flame, height answering to height with fire, like the beacons that announced the homeward return of Agamemnon. The task is admirably executed; but it is performed with the impassive sobriety of a Positive philosopher, not with the enthusiasm of an historical artist. The laborious assiduity of the German scholars had collected, collated, analysed, sifted, and coördinated the scattered indications of the general and local creeds of Greece. The abundant fruits of their inquiries have been conscientiously employed in preparing a connected view of the mythical traditions of the country. There is, however, no servile adherence to authorities, distinguished or obscure; but a bold deduction of novel inferences from the scrupulous examination of the original texts and the modern commentaries. It is an harmonious, and, so far as the fragmentary character of the materials will permit, a connected picture; not lumping together the anomalous and incongruous characteristics of diverse ages and localities, but tracing the growth and development of Greek theology, and following the dissemination of a rite, a doctrine, or an object of worship, from the original place of its limited acceptance to the period and mode of its general adoption. The changes and expansions of particular creeds the gradual approximation to a national belief, purely Hellenic, and distinct from either earlier or later forms of Polytheism the introduction of new deities, ceremonies, and mysteries-the influence of foreign ideas on the Hellenic worship, and consequently on Hellenic literature and life-the revolutions of religion even in the pre-historic ages, illustrate the developments and mutations in later periods. Singular acuteness and most diligent fidelity are displayed in the collection of loose indications from the remnants of the early poetry, and in the separation of scraps of valuable information from the chaff of the fragments of the Greek logographers. With these broken straws, Mr. Grote repairs the gaps in former narrations, corrects error, and combines his other materials into a rational and orderly system. There is great ingenuity, as well as a most extraordinary facility of recollection, in the prompt manner in which the mythological statements of the earlier volumes are continually adduced to explain historical incidents in the later chapters. The view of the theology and legendary antiquities of Greece, entertained by Mr. Grote, is novel in English literature, and is applied by him to a novel extent in historical speculation. The eminent success of the experiment evinces the presence of considerable merits, if not of entire propriety. He has adapted to the primitive Hellenic annals the process so notoriously applied by Strauss to the gospels, and to the biography of our Saviour. His Positive predilections might have suggested this attempt: for there is a strong affinity between Strauss and Comte. This peculiar mode of contemplating the remote ages of nations, has been designated the mythical. It possesses numerous characteristic advantages. It preserves distinct and intact the legends themselves; it recognizes the lively credence reposed in them; and, without authenticating any thing but the fact and character of the belief, it avoids the cumbrous, awkward, and artificial affectations of the allegorical schemes of interpretation, brought into vogue by Euemerus and his precursors, and fruitlessly favoured by the perverse ingenuity of modern scholars. If the fables of the olden time be once recognized as susceptible of a rational explanation, we lose sight entirely of the frame of mind and the habits of thought attending their original reception. The life of the pristine age resides in their poetic instincts, and in the poetic fancies habitually cherished as real truths. They had no experience-no precise and recorded facts for their guidance. Reason, which feeds upon experience, and is trained by cautious comparison, was as yet denied to them. "Youth pastures in a valley of its own."+ This is as true of nations as of individuals. They have only the spontaneous inspiration of the ideal faculty to shape flexible traditions into dreams, and thereby govern the actions of their infancy. If we deny to them an unquestioning faith in these imaginations, we paralyse their energies, and enshroud their world in a complete eclipse. The substance and the poetry of their creed are destroyed by the attempt to extract, by the subtle but deceitful alchemy of conjecture, any concealed reality from that whose sole reality consists in its poetry and its belief. In these cases, the fiction is the history. It may hang before our tantalized vision like a curtain before a picture; but, as in the rivalry of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, the curtain is itself the picture-there is no other painting behind it. The "linteum pictum" is all: nothing apprehensible lies behind the veil of Isis. These fictions are the earliest discoverable traditions of Greece: the obscurity of the silent time before them precludes us from penetrating, or hoping to penetrate, to their origin and gradual conception. Like the glittering spiculæ shooting through the liquid menstruum in the process of crystallization, they first reveal themselves in a crystallized form, and announce that the chief operation of the plastic force has been already exercised, though it has escaped our cognizance for ever. All that we can know, or should desire to know, on the subject of these myths, is, what were the fables accredited, how were they received, what modifications did they undergo, what emotions, *Grote, Hist. Greece, pt. i, chap. xvi-xvii, vol. i, pp. 340-489, admirably explains and illustrates the character and necessity of the mythical habit of mind. It is a long digression, but not without its use. Bulwer's version of Soph. Trachm., v. 144. and what actions did they inspire. We wander from the path of judicious inquiry, if we refuse to entertain these questions, or pursue the evanescent shadows of their possible meaning. From the mythology of the Greeks Mr. Grote descends to the consideration of their land and tribes. He furnishes a minute and accurate delineation of the country which was their first and principal historical abode; and this is succeeded by a still more extended investigation of the subdivisions of the race. It is a peculiarity of his History, meritorious in one aspect, objectionable in another, that it exhausts every topic it touches. The treatment is always thorough. He handles all the obvious, and many recondite points, with a patient perseverance, with a pertinacious argumentation, which scarcely leaves anything unexplained. Whether an unsettled date, a disputed event, a questionable policy, a dubious character, a philosophical fashion, a topographical difficulty, an unusual locution, or an obscure passage in Thucydides, Xenophon, or Demosthenes, engages his attention, he never lets it escape from his grasp, till he has pressed out of it all the information it may contain, and impressed on the mind of his reader all the views and the exact views it suggests to himself, or has suggested to others. The learning of all ages and countries is showered down upon us, till we bend beneath the pitiless storm. Authority is piled upon authority, statement is contrasted with statement, argument is added to argument with diligent iteration, and illustration is appended to illustration, till we yield to his convictions and the evidences adduced in their support, and are worn out with their urgent presentation. Let us not complain; such cause of complaint is too unusual to justify murmuring. Nowhere is this amplitude of treatment more welcome, or less obnoxious to reprehension, than in regard to the land of Greece— the ancestral home of the Hellenes, the cradle of their civilization. The Hellenic domain embraced a much wider range. Like the German's fatherland, it extended wherever the tongue of Greece was spoken, wherever the gods of Greece were adored. Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? The designation of Hellas, in its customary acceptation, signified * Even Strabo, though still inspired by the old Hellenic influences, perceived that many mythological statements would bear neither examination nor Euemeristic interpretation. Πολλὰ μὲν οὖν και μὴ ὄντα λέγουσιν οι αρχαίοι συγγραφεις, συντεθραμ μενοι τῷ ψεύδει διὰ τῆς μυθογραφίας. Lib. viii, cap. iii. Observe the pointed felicity of his expression. The views of Strabo are acutely exhibited by Grote. not a definite tract of country, but the country of the Hellenes,* including the coasts of Asia Minor, the islands of the Ægean and the eastern part of the Mediterranean, the Cyrenaic settlements in Africa, part of Sicily, Southern Italy, Marseilles and its neighbourhood, and reaching along the shores of the Euxine to the mouths of the Volga. Hellenic, in antiquity, like Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon in later times, was a term of very latitudinarian import. Pindar ranks the Greek colonies in Sicily with the cities of Greece, and appropriately speaks in the same breath of Himera, Salamis, and Platea. The usage arose early, and continued late, for Ovid writes from his place of exile, at Tomi:+ Hic quoque sunt igitur Graiæ (quis crederet ?) urbes, Inter inhumanæ nomina barbariæ. It is necessary to take into consideration this wider application of the Hellenic name, which justifies Mr. Grote's careful and copious descriptions of the outlying members of the Hellenic aggregate; for to them belongs, especially in commerce, enterprise, philosophy, literature, and art, much of the glory of the race. But though Hellas embraced so great an extent and diversity of country, the original, or continuous Hellas, possesses a peculiar and more lively interest as the early home of the people. The characteristics of their primitive abode impressed themselves on the subsequent development of the whole population, and were reflected in their manners and institutions. The genial but various climate of Greece; its rugged mountains and broken surface; its narrow valleys and winter torrents; its difficult defiles; its caverns, and its frequent catabothra; its isolated limestone hills, furnished every town with a strong position for its acropolis; its earthquakes, mephitic exhalations, and other subterranean phenomena, exercised a potent influence in determining the superstitions, the social and political organization, and the pursuits of the Greeks. To these peculiarities must be added its extensive and sinuous coast, its promontories, headlands, reëntering bays, and number less, though often insecure havens, which have tempted the people in all ages to engage in maritime, and usually in piratical pursuits. Hence, a minute topographical delineation of Hellas Hellenica (if we may thus convert a generic into a specific designation), is of essential service to the due comprehension of * Thirlwall, Hist. Greece, vol. i, p. 34. This peculiarity is forcibly presented by Grote. Pindar, Pythia. I, vv. 73-80, ed. Bergkh. Ovid, Tristia, III, eleg. ix, vv. i-iv. Compare the introductory chapters of Thucydides with the account given in Finlay's Medieval Greece. |