NOTES TO CHAPTER II
[1] It is not for nothing that what is here said of the “climate”, if one may so call it, of the Elysian plain, δ 566–8, reminds us so strikingly of the description of the abode of the Gods on Olympos, ζ 43–5.
[2] The announcement of the fate of Menelaos is quite superfluous; it is not necessitated (and not even justified) by his first request (468 ff.), or by his further questions (486 ff.; 551 ff.). Nitzsch already regarded the lines 561–8 as a later addition: Anm. z. Od. iii, p. 352—though indeed on grounds that I cannot regard as conclusive. Others have done the same since.
[3] The following are made invisible (by envelopment in a cloud) and carried away—this, though not always stated, is most probably to be understood in most cases: Paris, by Aphrodite, Γ 380 ff.; Aeneas, by Apollo, Ε 344 f.; Idaios, son of Dares, the priest of Hephaistos, by Heph., Ε 23; Hektor, by Apollo, Υ 443 f.; Aeneas, by Poseidon, Υ 325 ff.; Agenor, by Apollo, Φ 596 ff.—this last appears to be the original copied twice over in the story of this one day of fighting by later poets (in the above-mentioned cases of the use of the motif, Υ 325 ff.; 443 f.). It is remarkable (for no special reason for it suggests itself) that all these cases of translation are found on the Trojan side. Otherwise we only have one instance (and that only in the narrative of a long past adventure), the translation of the Anaktoriones by their father Poseidon, Λ 750 ff. Lastly, a case that hardly goes beyond those already mentioned: Zeus could have translated alive his son Sarpedon out of the fray and placed him in his Lykian home (Π 436), but refrains owing to the warning of Hera (440 ff.).
[4] The wish to die quickly is expressly contrasted with the wish to be carried off by the Harpies, 63 ἢ ἔπειτα—“or if not,” i.e. if quick death is denied to me. (v. Rh. Mus. 50, 2, 2.) Again 79–80: ὡς ἔμ’ ἀϊστώσειαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες ἠέ μ’ ἐϋπλόκαμος βάλοι Ἄρτεμις. Thus the Harpies (= θύελλα 63) in this case do not bring death but carry away men alive (ἀναρπάξασα οἴχοιτο 63 f., ἅρπυιαι ἀνηρείψαντο 77 = ἀνέλοντο θύελλαι 66, and they carry them off κατ’ ἠερόεντα κέλευθα 64 to the προχοαὶ ἀψορρόου Ὠκεανοῖο 65 ἔδοσαν στυγερῇσιν Ἐρινύσιν ἀμφιπολεύειν 78). At the “mouths of Okeanos” (where it goes into the sea) is the entrance to the world of the dead; κ 508 ff., λ 13 ff. To be carried off by the storm-spirits used proverbially as a wish: Ζ 345 ff. ὧς μ’ ὄφελ’ ἤματι τῷ ὅτε με πρῶτον τέκε μήτηρ οἴχεσθαι προφέρουσα κακὴ ἀνέμοιο θύελλα εἰς ὄρος ἢ εἰς κῦμα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης (i.e. to some solitary place, Orph., H. 19, 19; 36, 16; 71, 11). Such transportation through the air is elsewhere contrasted with death and dwelling in Hades, as in Penelope’s prayer. (Roscher, Kynanthropie [Abh. d. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. xvii], p. 67, gives a strange but hardly the correct explanation of this.) Cf. Soph., Tr., 953 ff.; Ai., 1193 ff.; (Phil., 1092 ff.?); cf. also Eur., Hipp., 1279 ff.; Ion, 805 f.; Supp., 833–6. A deeply rooted popular mode of thought, and one of primeval antiquity, lies at the root of all [81] these instances.—ὑπὸ πνευμάτων συναρπαγέντα ἄφαντον γενέσθαι is a reason for τιμαὶ ἀθάνατοι, in the only half-rationalized story of Hesperos in D.S. 3, 60, 3.
[5] One would like to know more of this strange story, but what we learn elsewhere of Pandareos and his daughters (Sch. υ 66–7; τ 518; Ant. Lib. 36) contributes nothing to the understanding of the Homeric narrative and probably belongs in part to another connexion. Pandareos, father of Aëdon (τ 518 ff.), seems to be another person. Even the strange representation of the two daughters of Pandareos in Polygnotos’ picture of the underworld (Paus. 10, 30, 2) casts no light on the Homeric fable. (Cf. Roscher, Kynan., 4 ff., 65 f.)
[6] The Erinyes live normally in Erebos, as is shown esp. by I 571 f.; Τ 259. But when they punish during the lifetime of the criminal acts done in contravention of the laws of family life, it must be supposed that they were sometimes thought of as going about the earth, e.g. I 454: λ 278—for “working at a distance” seems impossible—as in Hes., Op., 803 f.—Ἐρινύσιν ἀμφιπολεύειν (78) cannot be anything but “serve the Erinyes”, “become their ἀμφίπολοι”. To understand it as Roscher does (Kynan., 65, n. 183) following Eustathius, in the sense “fly about in the train of the E.” is forbidden by the use of the simple dative Ἐρινύσι joined closely with ἀμφ. (θεαῖς ἀμφιπολῶν Soph., O.C., 680, is different.)
[7] “When the Bride of the Wind comes by you must throw yourself on the ground as though it were the Muodisheere (on which see Grimm (E.T.), p. 931) otherwise they will carry you off.” Birlinger, Volksthüml. a. Schwaben, i, 192, “She is the Devil’s Bride,” ib. (On the “Bride of the Wind”, etc., see Grimm, pp. 632, 1009.) Such wind-spirits are in unholy alliance with the “Furious Host”, i.e. the unquiet “souls” of the dead that travel through the air by night.
[8] On the Harpies, see Rh. Mus., 50, 1–5.
[9] See Nägelsb., H.T., pp. 42–3, and Roscher, Nektar u. Ambrosia, p. 51 ff., answering Bergk’s objections, Opusc. ii, 669. (Arist. Meta., 1000a, 9–14, is very definite.)
[10] It is not improbable that this Ino Leukothea was originally a goddess who was later turned into a “Heroine” (identified with the daughter of Kadmos for reasons no longer recoverable) and only afterwards turned back again into a goddess. But for the Homeric age she was essentially a mortal who had become a goddess: for this reason, just because she was an example of such deification of mortals, she remained an interesting character to later writers; cf. in addition to the well-known passages in Pindar, etc., Cic., T.D. i, 28. Only what the actual conception of the people and their poets was—not what may possibly be suggested as the doubtful background of such conceptions—concerns me in this as in many other cases.
[11] Only temporary translation (ἀνήρπασε) of Marpessa by Apollo I 564.
[12] Ganymedes, ἀνήρπασε θέσπις ἄελλα, h. Ven., 208, as the θύελλα (= Ἅρπυια) did the daughters of Pandareos. The eagle is the addition of later poetry.
[13] Λ 1; ε 1.
[14] Ἠὼς . . . ἀπ’ Ὠκεανοῖο ῥοάων ὤρνυθ’, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι φόως φέροι ἠδὲ βροτοῖσιν, Τ 1 f.: cf. ψ 244 (h. Merc., 184 f.). So also h. Ven., 224 ff., says of Tithonos: Ἠοῖ τερπόμενος χρυσοθρόνῳ ἠριγενείῃ ναῖε παρ’ Ὠκεανοῖο ῥοῇς ἐπὶ πείρασι γαίης, in good Homeric style. It seems that the magic island Aiaia was considered the home of Eos (and of Tithonos): μ 3: νῆσόν τ’ Αἰαίην, ὅθι τ’ Ἠοῦς ἠριγενείης [82] οἰκία καὶ χοροί εἰσι ἀντολαὶ ἠελίοιο. I need not here go into the attempts made even in antiquity to explain the much-discussed difficulty introduced by this verse and to bring it into conformity with the westerly situation of Aiaia implied in the rest of the Odyssey. One thing is certain: the first composer of this verse thought of Aiaia as lying towards the east. Only the last resources of the commentator’s art could situate the place of the “sun’s uprising” and the “dwelling of the Dawn” in the west.
[15] Among innumerable unsuccessful attempts made by the ancients at finding an etymological derivation for the word Ἠλύσιον (Sch., δ 563, Eust., p. 1509, Hesych., s.v., etc., also Cels. ap. Orig., Cels. vii, 28, p. 53 L.) occurs also the right one, E.M., 428, 36: παρὰ τὴν ἔλευσιν, ἔνθα οἱ εὐσεβεῖς παραγίνονται. The grammarians seem to have disputed over the question, did Menelaos live for ever in Elysion? It was agreed on all hands that he reached that abode alive, without separation of psyche from body; but the over-subtle thought that the prophecy meant that he too should die there though not in Argos—not that he should never die at all: so esp. E. Gud., 242, 2 ff. This was the opinion also of those who derived Ἠλύσιον from the fact that there the ψυχαὶ λελυμέναι τῶν σωμάτων διάγουσι: Eust., 1509, 29, E.M., etc. The etymology is as bad as the interpretation of the line. The line remained, however, throughout antiquity as a curiosity; intelligent readers understood the prophecy quite rightly as referring to the translation of Menelaos to everlasting life without separation of ψυχή from body; e.g. Porph. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 422, 8 ff., W. So, too, those who gave the right interpretation of fact, but rested it upon the more dubious etymology: Ἠλύσιον οὐλύσιον, ὅτι οὐ διαλύονται ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων αἱ ψυχαί. Hesych. (cf. E.M., 428, 34–5; Sch., δ 563; Procl. on Hes., Op., 169).
[16] οὐ μὴν φαίνεταί γε (ὁ ποιητής) προαγαγὼν τὸν λόγον ἐς πλέον ὡς εὕρημα ἄν τις οἰκεῖον, προσαψάμενος δὲ αὐτοῦ μόνον ἅτε ἐς ἅπαν ἤδη διαβεβοημένου τὸ Ἑλληνικόν—to adopt the words that Pausanias (10, 31, 4) uses of a similar case.
[17] The reasons for the special favour shown to Rhadamanthys are as unknown to us as they evidently were to the Greeks of later times. What is generally said of the “justice” of Rhad. rests upon private opinion only and does not supply the place of the precise legend that should have justified his translation. That he once had a complete legend of his own may be guessed from the allusion to him in η 323, though that passage still leaves us quite in the dark. At any rate, it certainly does not follow from that reference that while dwelling in Elysion he was a neighbour of the Phaeacians as Welcker thinks: nor further that he had always been a dweller in Elysion, as Preller supposes, instead of being transported there. Nothing in the former passage justifies us in regarding him as then dwelling in Elysion; while the other reference to him must be supposed to mean that Rhad. just as much as Menelaos, was translated to Elys. (and so e.g. Paus. understood the poet 8, 53, 5: πρότερον δὲ ἔτι Ῥαδάμανθυν ἐνταῦθα ἥκειν; doubtful: Aesch. fr. 99, 12–13). In fact, we have lost the legends which gave the details of his translation: his figure had become isolated and had not entered into the greater circle of epic figures—and as a consequence his mythical context soon disappeared too.
[18] Hasisatra’s Translation: see the translation of the Babylonian account in Paul Haupt’s Der Keilins. Sintfluthber. (Leip. 1881), p. 17, 18. The expressions used by the Greek-writing reporters are exactly like those common in Greek accounts of translation: γενέσθαι ἀφανῆ [83] (τὸν Ξίσουθρον) μετὰ τῶν θεῶν οἰκήσοντα, Beros. ap. Sync., p. 55, 6, 11 Di.; θεοί μιν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀφανίζουσι, Abydenus ap. Syncell., p. 70, 13. Of Enoch we read, Gen. 524: οὐχ εὑρίσκετο ὅτι μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός (μετετέθη, Ecclus., 4416; Hebr. 115); ἀνελήφθη ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς, Ecclus. 4914; ἀνεχώρησε πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, Jos., AJ. i, 3, 4 (of Moses: ἀφανίζεται, Jos., AJ. iv, 8, 48). On the translation of Enoch and Elijah, see also Schwally, D. Leben. nach d. Tode n. d. Vorst. d. a. Israel (1892), p. 140. Translation of the living into Sheol often in the O.T., see Schwally, p. 62. Even Enoch has not escaped the fate of being regarded by comparative mythologists as the sun. Enoch may be given up to them, if the Orientalists have no objection; but it seems a pity that the theory, in accordance with the favourite argument from analogy, should be applied to Greek Translation-myths too, so that we should see the whole series of such figures, from Menelaos to Apollonios of Tyana, transformed by magic into mythological suns (or dawns, water-meadows, thunder-clouds, etc.).
[19] μαλθακὸς αἰχμητής, Ρ 588.
[20] Ξ 321–2.
[21] One might even suspect that Menelaos is translated to everlasting life not merely because he has Helen, Zeus’ daughter, to wife: οὕνεκ’ ἔχεις Ἑλένην as Proteus tells him, but in imitation of a much earlier mythical tradition, according to which Helen herself was translated and made immortal. No ancient tradition reports the death of Helen—with the exception of the absurd invention of Ptolemaios Chennos (Phot. Bibl., p. 149a, 37 Bk.; 42; 149b, 1 ff.) and the not very superior aetiological myth in Paus. 3, 19, 10. On the other hand, we often hear of her deification, living on the island Leuke or else in the Islands of the Blest. It was not unnatural that mythological tradition should have at an early period set free the most “daemonic” of women from the usual fate of mankind and that Menelaos should rather have followed her example than she his (as Isoc. 10, 62, definitely says).
[22] Cf. Tylor, ii, 85: J. G. Müller, Ges. d. Americ. Urrelig., 660 f.; Waitz, Anthrop. v, 2, 114; vi, 302, 307.
[23] We are told that Rhadamanthys was once conveyed by the Phaeacians to Euboea ἐποψόμενος Τιτυὸν Γαιήϊον υἱόν (η 321 ff.). We have no grounds and no right to complete this story by supposing that this was when Rh. already lived in Elysion. To regard the Phaeacians as a sort of “ferry-folk of the dead” connected in some way with Elysion is pure unsupported fancy.
[24] The possessor of ἀθανασία did not necessarily possess also δύναμιν ἰσόθεον (Isoc. 10, 61).
[25] To identify Ὀρτυγίη, ο 404, with Delos, and Συρίη with the island Syros as the older commentators and K. O. Müller, Dorier, i, 381 [? not in E.T.], did, is impossible on account of the addition of the words ὅθι τροπαὶ ἠελίοιο alone. These show that Syrie was far away in the fabulous west, the only possible place for such a wonderland. It is evident that Ortygia is originally a purely mythical spot, sacred to Artemis and no more certainly fixed in one place than the Dionysian Nysa, and for that reason always to be found wherever the cult of Artemis was especially popular, in Aetolia, Syracuse, Ephesos, or Delos. Delos is clearly distinguished from O. in h. Ap. 16, and only later identified with O. (Delos being considered the older name, O. Schneider, Nicandr., p. 22, n.), when Artemis had been brought into closer connexion with Apollo, and even then not invariably. Thus in Homer Ortygia never clearly = Delos. [84]
[26] Ἄρτεμις δὲ αὐτὴν ἑξαρπάξασα εἰς Ταύρους μετακομίζει (cf. the μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός of Enoch, Gen. 524) καὶ ἀθάνατον ποιεῖ, ἔλαφον δὲ ἀντὶ τῆς κόρης παρίστησι τῷ βωμῷ, Procl., Chrest. ap. Kinkel Epic. Fr., p. 19: [Apollod.] Epit. iii, 22. Wagn.
[27] τούτῳ (τῷ Μέμνονι) Ἠὼς παρὰ Διὸς αἰτησαμένη ἀθανασίαν δίδωσι says Proclus with regrettable brevity (p. 33, Kinkel).
[28] It cannot be doubted (in spite of Meier, Annali dell’ Inst. Arch., 1883, p. 217 ff.) that the story given in Π of Sarpedon’s death and the carrying away of his body, even if it does not belong to the oldest part of the poem (which I cannot regard as certain), is nevertheless earlier than the Aithiopis and was the model for its account of Memnon’s death (cf. also Christ, Chron. altgr. Epos., p. 25). But why do Thanatos and Hypnos carry away the body of Sarpedon (instead of the usual θύελλα, ἄελλα, Ἅρπυια, or the winds, Q.S. ii, 550, in the case of Memnon)? Where these two are found on Attic lekythoi as bearers of the corpse (Robert, Thanatos, 19) they were perhaps intended in some consolatory sense as in the grave inscriptions ὕπνος ἔχει σε, μάκαρ . . . καὶ νέκυς οὐκ ἐγένου. The Homeric poet, however, can hardly have meant anything of the sort, but merely invents the indispensable second bearer to assist Thanatos—an effective touch but not one that rested on any religious grounds. Hypnos as brother of Thanatos is also found in the Διὸς ἀπάτη, Ξ 231.
[29] ἐκ τῆς πυρᾶς ἡ Θέτις ἀναρπάσασα τὸν παῖδα εἰς τὴν Λευκὴν νῆσον διακομίζει, Procl., Chrest., p. 34, Kink. Then he continues, οἱ δὲ Ἀχαιοὶ τὸν τάφον χώσαντες ἀγῶνα τιθέασιν. Thus a grave-mound is set up though the body of Achilles has been translated: evidently a concession to the older narrative (ω 80–4), which knew nothing of the translation of the body but gives prominence to the grave-mound. Besides which, the tumulus of Achilles—a landmark on the seashore of the Troad—required explanation, and the poet accordingly speaks of the erection of a cenotaph. It was not considered a contradiction to erect cenotaphs, not only to those whose bodies were irrecoverable (see above, Ch. I, [n. 88]), but also to Heroes whose bodies had been translated. Thus Herakles, after he has been struck by lightning and snatched up into the sky, has a χῶμα made for him, though no bones were found upon the πυρά, D.S. 4, 38, 5; 39, 1. (The tumuli found in the Troad were not, indeed, originally empty as Schliemann, Troy, etc., pp. 252, 263, supposed; they were not cenotaphs but merely grave-mounds that had once been filled and belong to a type frequently met with in Phrygia; see Schuchhardt, Schliemann’s Excav. [E.T.], p. 84 ff. Kretschmer, Einl. Ges. gr. Spr., 1896, p. 176.)
[30] What became of Odysseus? Proclus is silent on the point, and we have no means of guessing. According to Hyginus 127 he was buried in Aiaia; but if nothing more was going to be done with his body why bring him to Aiaia? Acc. to Sch. Lyc., 805, he was raised to life again by Kirke, but what happened to him then? (Acc. to [Apollod.] Epit. vii, 37 W., the dead Odysseus seems to remain in Ithaka.—We have no grounds for altering the words to suit the Telegoneia as Wagner does, esp. as a complete correspondence with that poem cannot be obtained.) The death and burial of Od. among the Tyrrhenians (Müller, Etruscans iii, 281 tr. Gray) belong to quite another connexion.
[31] The Aithiopis is later than the Hades scenes in ω, and consequently later still than the Nekyia of λ. The prophecy of the Translation of Menelaos in δ is likewise later than the Nekyia but to all appearance older than the Aithiopis. [85]
[32] The extract from the Nostoi in Proclus, Chrest., is particularly inadequate and evidently gives no full idea of the very wide and various subject matter of that poem. Thus, too, the notices of it preserved from other sources give details of its subject matter (esp. of the Nekyia which was included in it) that cannot be fitted into the limits of Proclus’ outline.
[33] The idea that the Bronze age is really identical with the age of Heroes is at first sight attractive (see e.g. Steitz, Die W. u. T. des Hesiod, p. 61); one soon finds, however, that it breaks down on closer examination.
[34] It does not seem to me absolutely necessary to strike out lines 124 f. (οἵ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα, ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ’ αἶαν). They are repeated in lines 254 f., but that is a natural place to repeat them. Proclus does not comment on them; but it does not follow that he did not have them before him; and Plutarch, D.O. 37, p. 431 B, seems to allude to l. 125 in its present context.
[35] Plu., D.O., 10, p. 415 B, in obvious error, takes Hesiod’s δαίμονες for such an intermediate class of beings; he supposes that Hesiod distinguishes four classes τῶν λογικῶν, θεοί, δαίμονες, ἥρωες, ἄνθρωποι. In this Platonist division the ἥρωες would correspond rather with Hesiod’s δαίμονες of the first age. (What Proclus has to say on Hesiod, Op. 121, p. 101, Gaisf., is taken evidently word for word from Plutarch’s commentary on Hesiod and resembles closely the remarks in the passage cited from the Def. Orac.) Modern critics have often failed to notice the difference between the Hesiodic δαίμονες and the Platonic. Plato himself is very decided about the difference (Crat. 397 E–398 C).
[36] ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι 125 (cf. 223; Ξ 282) is a naive equivalent for “invisible” as Tzet. correctly explains. This is how it is to be understood regularly in Homer whenever there is mention of envelopment in a cloud and the like.
[37] These daimones are called ἐπιχθόνιοι in contrast (not to the ὑποχθόνιοι of l. 141, but) to the θεοὶ ἐπουράνιοι, as Proclus on l. 122 rightly remarks. Thus in Homer we have ἐπιχθόνιοι regularly used as an adjective, or, standing alone, as an equivalent of men as distinguished from gods. Then the ὑποχθόνιοι of 141 are brought in to form another and secondary contrast with the ἐπιχθόνιοι.
[38] ρ 485 ff. It follows that the descriptions of the visits paid by gods to the homes of men are of great antiquity; cf. my Griech. Roman, p. 506 ff. Zeus Philios in particular is fond of visiting men: Diod. Com. Ἐπίκληρ., Mein. Com. iii, p. 543 f. (ii, p. 420 K.).
[39] τιμὴ καὶ τοῖσιν ὀπηδεῖ 142. τιμή in the sense not of simple honour but of practical worship, as frequently in Homer, e.g. in such phrases as: τιμὴ καὶ κῦδος ὀπηδεῖ, Ρ 251; τιμῆς ἀπονήμενος, ω 30: τιμὴν δὲ λελόγχασιν ἶσα θεοῖσιν, λ 304; ἔχει τιμήν, λ 495, etc. In the same way here, l. 138: οὕνεκα τιμὰς οὐκ ἐδίδουν μακάρεσσι θεοῖς.
[40] Light and dark, i.e. good and bad, δαίμονες are acc. to Roth, Myth. v. d. Weltaltern (1860), pp. 16–17, distinguished in Hesiod’s daimones of the golden and silver age. Such a distinction, however, never appears in Hesiod; and it is hardly credible that the gods and spirits of ancient Greek popular belief (which never really admitted the categories good and bad) should in this primitive period have been actually classified in accordance with such categories. At any rate, Greek readers never found anything of the kind expressed in Hesiod: [86] the conception of bad daimones is regularly supported by reference to the philosophers alone (e.g. Plut., D.O., 17, p. 419 A), and the conception is certainly no older than the earliest philosophic speculation.
[41] l. 141: τοὶ μὲν ὑποχθόνιοι (ἐπιχθόνιοι all MSS. except one, see Köchly’s Apparatus; also Tz.) μάκαρες θνητοὶ καλέονται.—φύλακες θνητοὶ was read and explained by Proclus. This is clearly wrong, and is corrected to φύλακες θνητῶν (as in l. 123) by Hagen and Welcker. But this transfers from the first to the second race an expression that we cannot be sure Hesiod meant to be transferred. Not merely the words but the sense, too, is thus corrected, without due ground. μάκαρες does not look like a corruption; it is more likely that φύλακες is an accidental alteration. ὑπ. μάκαρες θνητοῖς καλέονται is the reading of the latest editor: but here to say the least of it the addition of θνητοῖς is superfluous. We should rather try to understand and explain the traditional text and show how the poet came by the remarkable expression.
[42] When philosophers and philosophizing poets of a later age occasionally refer to the soul when freed from the body as a δαίμων, the expression has a totally different sense.
[43] Similarly, though the oxymoron is much less daring in his case, Isocrates, 9, 72, has δαίμων θνητός. In order to describe a daimon who has originally been a mortal later ages boldly invented the compound ἀνθρωποδαίμων which corresponds fairly well with the Hesiodic μάκαρ θνητός: [Eur.] Rhes., 971; Procop., An. 12, p. 79, 17 D. (νεκυδαίμων on a defixio from Carthage, BCH. xii, 299). Later still a king destined to become a god is called, even at his birth, by Manetho (i, 280) θεὸν βροτὸν ἀνθρώποισιν.
[44] The silver race was created by the gods of Olympos, like the golden before them (l. 110; 128); only the third race (l. 143) and then the fourth (158) by Zeus alone. It might be supposed from this that the silver age as well as the golden age occurred in the period before Zeus’ rule, ἐπὶ Κρόνου ὅτ’ οὐρανῷ ἐμβασίλευεν (l. 111); and in this sense “Orpheus” understood the words of Hesiod when he τοῦ ἀργυροῦ γένους βασιλεύειν φησὶ τὸν Κρόνον (Proclus on l. 126). But it would be very difficult to reconcile l. 138 Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κτλ. with this view. Hesiod may then have placed the silver age in the time when sub Iove mundus erat (as Ovid explicitly states, M. i, 113 f.); but all the same it lay for him in the far distant past before all history.
[45] νώνυμνοι 154 may quite as well mean “nameless”, i.e. without name or special title, as “fameless” (as it does for the most part though not invariably in Homer).
[46] See Welcker, Kl. Schr. ii, 6, who, however, in the desire to rule out all possibility of identifying Scherie with Korkyra asserts too positively that it was a part of the mainland. ζ 204 (compared with δ 354) at least comes very close to regarding it as an island. But it is clear that nowhere is it explicitly called an island.—It is possible that Σχερίη, connected with σχερός, may really mean “mainland” (Welcker, loc. cit.; Kretschmer, Einl. Gesch. gr. Spr., 281): but the question still remains whether the Homeric poet, who did not invent the name, understood or respected its original significance. At any rate, it was no longer understood by those who in very early times identified Scherie with the island Korkyra.
[47] The objections to l. 169 as regards its form are brought out by Steitz, Hesiods W. u. T., p. 69. The line is missing in most of the MSS.; it was rejected (together with the line following, which, however, [87] is quite sound) by ancient critics (Proclus on l. 158). Later editors are united in condemning it. But the interpolation is at any rate old: probably even Pindar already knew the line in this place (O. ii, 70).
[48] λῦσε δὲ Ζεὺς ἄφθιτος Τιτᾶνας Pi. (P. iv, 291), in whose time, however, this was a well-known myth to which he is only making a passing allusion for the sake of an example. The Hesiodic Theogony still knows nothing of it.
[49] Before Hesiod we have no mention of the myth of a Golden, Saturnian Age, nor any complete description of the imaginary life upon Blessed Islands. But epic poetry had already, as we have seen, provided him with occasional examples of translation to a place of blessedness, and he only collects these into a combined picture of such a place. To that extent the belief in a blessed life beyond the grave meets us earlier than the myth of a Golden Age. But we have not the slightest ground for saying that the former “must have existed from the beginning among the Greeks” (as Milchhöfer at least thinks, Anf. Kunst, p. 230). On the other hand, it may be mere accident that the myth of the Golden Age has no older authority than Hesiod—the story itself may be much earlier. After Hesiod it was frequently taken up and improved upon; not, however, first by Empedocles as Graf supposes, ad aureæ aet. fab. sym. (Leip. Stud. viii, p. 15), but already in the epic Ἀλκμεωνίς, see Philod. Piet., p. 51 Gp. (See also some remarks by Alfred Nutt, The Voyage of Bran, p. 269 f., 1895, with which I cannot agree.)
CHAPTER III
CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION
The history of Greek culture and religion shows no sudden break or revolution in its course. The Greeks neither at any time experienced a movement from within that caused a violent recoil from the path which they had chosen, nor were they ever diverted by the overwhelming might of an invading force from the natural course of their evolution. Out of their own natural feelings and reflexion this most intellectually gifted nation evolved the great ideas that nourished succeeding centuries. They anticipated all later ages. The profoundest and the boldest, the most devout as well as the most irreverent speculations as to the nature of God, the world and men have their origin among the Greeks. But this excessive many-sidedness led to a general condition of equipoise in which individual factors restrained or balanced each other. Whereas the most violent impacts and sudden revolutions in the history of civilization are given by just those nations who are only able to embrace one idea at a time and who, confined in the narrow limits of their fanaticism, throw everything else overboard.
It is true, indeed, that the Greeks were ever open to influences—whether civilized or the reverse—from abroad. In wave after wave of peaceful invasion foreign ideas and ways of life, especially from the East, flowed over Greece. In one case, at least (that of the ecstatic religion of the Thracian Dionysos-worshippers), a spring flood burst out that broke down all the dykes. In many cases the invading elements might be easily eliminated again from Greek culture; in many others they obtained a permanent footing and influenced it deeply. But never did an influence from abroad obtain in Greece an authority at all comparable to the subversive and transforming power exercised by Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam over the peoples on whom they laid their grip. The Greek genius, as supple as it was tenacious, maintained control over all such foreign influences, in full possession of its original nature, its genial naivety. New ideas, whether introduced from abroad or engendered at home, were taken up and assimilated, but the old were not done away with; they gradually amalgamated with the new so that much was learnt while nothing was quite forgotten. The stream flowed on in its peaceful course, but it still remained the same stream. Nec manet ut fuerat nec formas servat easdem: sed tamen ipse idem est. [89]
The history of Greek culture, then, has no sharply contrasted epochs, no periods of abrupt change, when the old is completely given up and a new era definitely begins. Indeed, the most serious revulsions of Greek history, culture, and religion took place beyond doubt before the time of the Homeric Epos, and in that dim past it is possible that more violent and startling upheavals may have occurred to make the Greeks what we afterwards know them to be. Greek life becomes first clearly known to us in Homer. It is true that the broad uniformity that it has in the picture reflected for us in the poems of Homer vanishes in the course of the years that follow. New forces emerge; much that was forgotten comes to light again now that the Homeric system of ideas, once all powerful, is falling to pieces; out of the very old and the quite new things of which Homer never gives the least hint are being put together. But nowhere during the violent movements of the next troubled centuries after Homer did any absolute break with the Epic or its system take place. Only in the sixth century did the defiant speculation of a few bold spirits begin to seek a way of escape from the thraldom of the Homeric poems which still lay over the whole of Greece. The history of the Greek common people knows nothing of a reaction against Homer and his world. Homeric religion and moral ideas gradually ceased to reign supreme in men’s minds, but they were never violently or completely discarded.
So we, too, though we leave behind us Homer and the Epos and enter upon the tortuous paths of the later history of Greek soul worship and belief in immortality, may still for a time be guided by the Ariadne thread of the epic. In our subject, too, there are links which connect the Homeric with following ages. Soon enough the thread will break, and we shall have to enter the new field of inquiry depending on our own resources. . . .