FOOTNOTES

[12] The following are enumerated as the lost poems of Hesiod.

The Catalogue of Women or Heroines, in five parts, of which the fifth appears to have been entitled “The Herogony.” Suidas.

The Melampodia; from the sooth-sayer Melampus; a poem on divination. Pausanias, Athenæus.

The great Astronomy or Stellar Book. Pliny.

Descent of Theseus into Hades. Pausanias.

Admonitions of Chiron to Achilles. Pausanias, Aristophanes.

Soothsayings and Explications of Signs. Pausanias.

Divine Speeches. Maximus Tyrius.

Great Actions. Athenæus.

Of the Dactyli of Cretan Ida; discoverers of iron. Suidas, Pliny.

Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis. Tzetzes.

Ægimius. Athenæus. Apocryphal.

Elegy on Batrachus, a beloved youth. Suidas.

Circuit of the Earth. Strabo.

The Marriage of Ceyx. Athenæus, Plutarch.

On Herbs. Pliny.

On Medicine. Plutarch.

Fabricius (Bibliotheca Græca) supposes the two latter subjects to be alluded to as incidental topics in other works of Hesiod. But the passages quoted by him from Pliny and Plutarch seem to justify the opinion that they meant to advert to distinct poems. There is nothing in the works extant which favours the former idea. Mallows and asphodel are the only herbs mentioned: and that merely as synonymous with a frugal meal: like the cichorea levesque malvæ of Horace: nor is there anything medical; for the passages respecting bathing, children, &c. are mere superstitions, unconnected with health. Athenæus (book iii.) quotes some verses as ascribed to Hesiod respecting the fishes fit for salting; but says they seem to be rather the verses of a cook than of a poet; and adds that cities are mentioned in them which were posterior to Hesiod’s time. Lilius Gyraldus states that the fables of Æsop have been assigned to Hesiod. Plutarch, indeed, observes that Æsop might himself have profited by Hesiod’s apologue of the Hawk and the Nightingale; and Quintilian mentions Hesiod, and not Æsop, as the earliest fabulist; which passages may have been strained to bear the above meaning. As to the Greek fables, extant under the name of Æsop, they are proved to be spurious. See Bentley’s Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, &c. and the fables of Æsop.

[13] Manilius, describing the subjects of Hesiod, has a line

Atque iterum patrio nascentem corpore Bacchum,

excellently rendered by Creech, a translator now too fastidiously undervalued,

And twice-born Bacchus burst the Thunderer’s thigh:

but this tale, which Ovid and Nonnus have related, is not found in the present theogony.

[14] In the same poem, which is a love-elegy to his mistress Leontium on the sufferings of lovers, Homer is made to visit Ithaca, “sighing like furnace” for the chaste Penelope.

[15] The Quarterly Reviewer, in his critique on my “Specimens of the Classic Poets,” conceives it strange that I should prefer the Medea of Apollonius to Virgil’s Dido; and talks of critical heresies. The deliberation of Medea on her purposed suicide, and her interview with Jason in the temple of Hecate, place the matter beyond all question; except with those who may be frightened by the word heresy into a surrender of their judgments to vulgar prejudice and traditional error.

[16] This fine natural image is ridiculously parodied by Addison, “The old men, too, are bitterly pinched by the weather.” Essay on Virgil’s Georgics.

[17] These were excluded from the first edition of my translation, but are now reinstated, as curiously illustrative of manners.

SECTION IV.
ON THE MYTHOLOGY OF HESIOD.

Diogenes Laertius mentions that Pythagoras feigned to have seen the soul of Hesiod in the infernal regions, bound to a brazen pillar, and howling in torture for his false representations of the Deities: and that of Homer environed with serpents for the same reason. Plato, in a similar feeling, excluded both these poets from his ideal republic. It seems strange that the philosophers should have failed to perceive that Hesiod and Homer repeated merely the popular legends of their age; as is abundantly evident from the style and manner of narration and allusion throughout their poems.

The following passage of Herodotus has been construed to mean that they were the absolute inventors of the Grecian theology; “Whence each of the Gods came; whether all have continually existed, or what figures they severally had, was known but lately; or, if I may so speak, only yesterday; for I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer were older than myself by four hundred years, and not more; these are they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave titles to the gods; distinguishing their honours and functions, and describing their forms.”

Against such an hypothesis several reasons obviously present themselves: 1st, A plurality of gods could scarcely be the production of a single age, much less of one or two individuals: 2dly, It is not likely that Greece, which was visited by Ægyptian and Phœnician colonists at an æra long antecedent to the age of Homer, should have been destitute of a religious system: 3dly, It is not credible that a whole nation, at the suggestion of one or two bards, should have abandoned this received system in order to adopt a whole hierarchy of divinities, of whom they had never before heard.

But the doubt of Herodotus, “whether they have continually existed,” shows that he merely considered Hesiod and Homer in the light of collectors and illustrators of the ancient religion of their country; and Wesseling accordingly interprets ποιησαντες as referring to arrangement and description, not invention. This stupid inference could in fact never have been drawn, had Herodotus been compared with himself: as in a preceding passage he says, “Nearly all the names of the gods have come into Greece from Ægypt; for I have ascertained it to be a fact that they are of barbaric extraction.”

Herodotus, however, seems to have been in error, even as to this position of Hesiod and Homer having first digested the mythology of Greece into a system: and as he could not be ignorant that theogonies were ascribed to poets reputed their elders, such as Musæus and Orpheus, he was reduced to the alternative of making these poets their juniors. “Those poets,” he observes, “who were said to be before them, were in my opinion after them.”

But Cicero (in Bruto, cap. xviii.) sensibly argues, “nor can it be doubted that there were poets before Homer; which may be inferred from the songs described by him as sung in the banquets of the Phæacians and the suitors.” Fabricius makes a comment, that “it cannot be proved from this, that Greek poems, before Homer, were committed to writing, and so handed down to posterity.” As if the poems of Homer himself had been transmitted in any other manner than by oral tradition![18]

The pre-existence of religious rites seems, indeed, to involve that of poetical cosmogonies and mythological hymns. Before the invention of letters there was no other traditionary record, or vehicle of popular instruction, or organ of religious homage and supplication, than verse: the conclusion follows that there were both poets anterior to the age of Homer,[19] and that these poets were also mythologists.

Pausanias mentions Olen of Lycia; who, he says, composed very ancient hymns; and who in his hymn to Lucina, makes her the mother of Love: and he names Pamphus and Orpheus, as succeeding Olen, and as also composing hymns to the mythological Love.

The doubt entertained by Aristotle and Cicero of the personal existence of Orpheus, neither affects the antiquity of the name, nor of that system of theology which bears the title of Orphic. The relics now extant under that name have, indeed, been suspected as the forgeries of Onomacritus, the sooth-sayer, who produced the hymns to the people of Athens: but Gesner is of opinion that he only altered the dialect of genuine Orphic remains, on which he ingrafted his own additions. The fragments which have come down to us appear certainly from internal evidence to contain a theology more ancient than that of Hesiod and Homer; for the nearer it approaches in any of its parts to the religious system of the Ægyptians, the stronger is the presumptive testimony of its antiquity.

[20]The Ægyptians held that the world was produced from Chaos, or Water. They worshipped the Sun, as Osiris, Hammon, and Horus; the Moon, as Isis; the Cabiri or Planets, as symbols of invisible divinities. They had two systems of worship; the one exoteric or popular, the other esoteric or mystical. The adoration of the celestial bodies was literal with the people, and emblematical with the priesthood. They supposed emanations from divinity to be resident in the parts of nature; and thus that the sun, moon, and stars, and the other bodies of the universe, were animated with a divine spirit or virtue; or retained portions of a divine essence from good demons or genii, who dwelt in them: these dæmons had been inclosed in the bodies of virtuous men; and having left them, passed into the stars and planets, which were consequently worshipped as gods. Hence probably the legend of Hesiod, who supposes the spirits of men in the golden age to become holy dæmons; though these dæmons are not sent to the stars, but hover round the earth and keep watch over the actions of humankind.

Jablonski, in his Pantheon Ægyptiorum, considers this stellar theology as resolvable into an astronomical and Niliacal idolatry. The terrestrial Osiris is the Nile: the celestial Osiris the Sun, in his zodiacal progress through the signs that preside over the seasons. Amon, Jupiter, designates the Sun in the constellation of Aries. In the vernal equinox he is Hercules, in the summer solstice Horus or Apollo, in the winter solstice Harpocrates. Serapis was the Nile in its period of fertilization, or the autumnal Sun of the lower hemisphere. Isis was the moon, the mother of multiform nature; the same also as Neitha or Minerva, and the causer of the Nile’s inundations. Tithrambo, Brimo, or Hecate, was Isis incensed, or the maleficent moon. Bubastis, Diana, or Latona, was the titular symbol of the New Moon, and Buto or Latona of the full. The Cabiri, or Seven Planets, were worshipped as appendants of the greater gods; thus the planet Venus was the star of Isis, and the planet Jupiter the star of Osiris. The dog-headed Anubis, or Mercury, was the celestial horizon, the guard of the Sun’s gate, and the follower of Isis or the Moon. The bull Apis was a living symbol of the Nile; but was supposed to have been generated in a heifer by the transmission of celestial fire from the Moon; and was sacred both to that planet and to the Sun. A living goat was the symbol of Mendes or Pan; the generative principle of all nature. These animal types were multiplied; thus a lion figured the Sun; a cow, Isis and Venus; and a hawk, Osiris. Stones were also made typical. An obelisk represented the Sun; and seven columns, such as Pausanias saw in Laconia, the Planets. They worshipped also Night, the supposed creative principle of all things, as Athor, Venus,[21] or Juno; and Pthas, the Vulcan as well as Minerva of the Grecians; the masculo-feminine cause and soul of the world; a pervading infinite spirit, or subtile ethereal fire, superior to the solar and planetary orbs; from which emanated terrestrial souls, and to which they returned. This system may very well be reconciled with the received theology; as it is not at all improbable that the subtile and scientific Ægyptians should have refined upon their original emblems, by connecting with them a secondary astronomical signification. In the explication of certain terms, and the identity and nature of many of the deities, the “Ægyptian Pantheon” agrees with the “New Analysis.”

Proclus (in Timæum, book i.) mentions a statue of Neitha or Minerva in a temple at Sais, in Ægypt, inscribed on the base with hieroglyphical characters to this effect: “I am whatever things are, whatever shall be, and whatever have been. None have lifted up my veil. The fruit which I have brought forth is the Sun.” Notwithstanding the mixed planetary worship, the Sun was considered by the Ægyptians as the king and architect of the universe: who under the name of Osiris comprehended in himself the power and efficacy of all the other material gods. Consistent with this is the Orphic fragment:

Hear me thou! for ever whirling round the rolling heavens on high

Thy far-travelling orb of splendour midst the whirlpools of the sky:

Hear, effulgent Jove and Bacchus! father both of earth and sea!

Sun all-various! golden-beaming! all things teeming out of thee!

In another passage Orpheus identifies with the sun the different deities.

One Jove and Pluto; Bacchus, and the Sun;

One God alike in all, and all are one.

The cosmogonists of Ægypt represented the Demiurgus or Universal Maker, in a human form, sending forth from his mouth an egg; which egg was the world. They called him Kneph; who was the same as Pthas, the essential pervading energy. Chaos is described by Orpheus, in the manner of Ovid, as an immense, self-existent, heterogeneous mass; neither luminous nor tenebrous; which in the lapse of ages generated an egg; and from this egg was produced a masculo-feminine principle, which disposed the elements, and created the forms of nature. A primæval water or Chaos, and a mundane egg, are found also in the mythology of India.

In the cosmogonic system of Ægypt the world was Deity, and its parts other gods; a doctrine equivalent to the το πᾶν of the Stoics; the inherent divinity of the universe; which Lucan seems to intend in the sentiment of Cato:

Deus est quodcunque vides: quòcunque moveris.

Whate’er we see, where’er we move, is God.

This system is unfolded in the Orphic hymns:

Jove is the breath of all: the force of quenchless flame:

The root of ocean Jove: the sun and moon the same:

Jove is the king, the sire, whence generation sprang:

One strength, one Dæmon, great, on whom all beings hang:

His regal body grasps the vast material round:

There fire, earth, air, and wave, and day and night, are found.

The same physico-theology appears in the Orphean verses,

I swear by those, the generating powers,

Whence sprang the gods that have eternal being;

Fire, Water, Earth, and Heaven, the Moon and Sun,

Great Love effulgent, and the sable Night!

and in another fragment, preserved by Eusebius: (Præparat. Evang. iii. 9.)

Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day,

Metis, first sire, and all-delighting Love.

Metis is Minerva or Vulcan, the mind of the universe already noticed.

From a general view of the Ægyptian and Orphic theogonies, they would appear to consist in an atheistic materialism; for although they acknowledge a certain divine, or active, principle pervading and animating passive matter, nothing can be inferred from this, superior to a physical operative energy. Jablonski indeed contends that, exclusive of the worship of the signs of the zodiac, and the solar and lunar phenomena, the more ancient Ægyptians recognized an intelligent power, or infinite Eternal Mind, on whose wisdom the operations of the sensible or visible divinities depended. But it may be doubted whether this controlling intelligence were any thing different from the before described emanation of the supposed ethereal spirit of holy dæmons, or deified men.

Hesiod begins his poem on the generation of the gods with certain cosmogonical principles. Chaos first exists; then Earth; and thirdly Love. Erebus and Night spring from Chaos, and generate Ether and Day; and Earth produces Heaven. But we search in vain through the rest of the work for the subtile intelligence of the Orphic philosophy. It has been attempted, indeed, to reduce the whole into a consistent scheme of theogonic physiology, by allegorizing the supernatural battles into volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and earthquakes; but much would still remain incapable of being wrested to a physical sense. On certain crude principles of cosmogonical tradition, and lineal generations of gods, intermingled with the generation of the world, the theogonist has ingrafted ancient legendary histories, and poetical and moral allegories. The historical mythology is alone significant; for every thing respecting the nature of the gods was in Hesiod’s time perverted and misunderstood. The bard was no longer clothed in the robe of the hierophant.

Very different hypotheses have been framed to explain the Greek polytheism. They have failed because they were hypotheses. When the Abbé Banier[22] detects the real characters of profane history in the gods of the Pantheon; and when De Gebelin[23] sees in them only emblematical shadows, personifying the successive inventions of the sciences and arts, we are reminded of the observation of Dr. Reid; (Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man:) “that there never was an hypothesis invented by an ingenious man, which although destitute of direct evidence, did not serve to account for a variety of phenomena, and had not therefore an indirect evidence in its favour.” Even the Alchemists have laid claim to the heathen mythology; the pagan stories have been analysed into chemical arcana: the golden fleece becomes a recipe for the discovery of the philosopher’s stone inscribed on a ram’s-skin, and Medea restores her father to life by means of the grand elixir.[24]

But it were an unreasonable scepticism to argue from these visionary theories, that the ancient fabulous philosophy is a mass of inscrutable and unmeaning superstition. The affinity between the different systems of paganism rests on irrefutable proof.[25] This affinity points to a common origin. The light of history directs us to Ægypt. The astronomical genius of that nation led them to symbolize their idols by the celestial signs. These idols were the deified memories of men. As to their individuality, we are assisted by certain resemblances in heathen theology to Mosaic scripture. This parallel may have been urged too closely and too fancifully; as by Huet, in his “Demonstratio Evangelica:” who affirms that all the deities of the Ægyptians, Indians, Americans, Greeks, and Italians, are only Moses in disguise; and by Theophilus Gale, in his “Court of the Gentiles;” who draws a parallel between the god Pan, and the Messias, Abel, and Israel; and who derives not only both the mythic or fabulous, and the physical theology of the heathens, but all human letters and sciences from the Hebrew language and scriptures, and the philosophies of Joseph, Moses, and Solomon. Mistakes may have arisen from trusting too much to a specious analogy; as where Tubal-cain, the artificer of brass and iron, is identified with Vulcan.[26] The conjectures of Hebraic etymologists, also, as of Bochart, in the Phaleg and Canaan of his Geographia sacra, must be acknowledged to be often vague and inconclusive. But so plain are the general traces of corrupted scripture-history, that Celsus, in his books against the Christians, attacks the biblical records as plagiarisms from the pagan mythology; and asserts that Paradise is borrowed from the gardens of Alcinous, and the flood of Noah from that of Deucalion; which Origen refutes by the greater antiquity of the Jewish traditions.

It is not to be supposed that they, who trace these parallels of mythology with scripture, mean that scripture was its immediate source: as the French Encyclopædists seem to think, when they ridicule the idea of the Grecian poets having deduced their fables from the Mosaic books, of which they knew nothing. The religious separation of the Jews renders it improbable, that even the intellectual philosophy of the Greek sages, as Thales and Pythagoras, should have been indebted for the idea of pure incorporeal deity to the sacred oracles: though Dr. Anderson conceives it probable that “the Mosaic scriptures, and other prophetical writings under the Jewish dispensation, could not be unknown to the priests of Ægypt, Chaldæa, and other adjacent countries.” History of Philosophy, p. 88.

But the improbability is greatly increased with respect to the mythological philosophy; nor is it credible that the circumstances of pagan story, on the supposition of their representing the same events as those recorded in the book of Genesis, should have been transferred immediately from the volume of Moses by poets or philosophers into the popular religion. Nations do not borrow vast systems of theology from poets or even from priests. Gale does not suppose that priests or bards imported the Hebrew accounts from the sacred writings; but that they were learnt, through international communication with the Jews, by the Phœnicians; who, in their various nautical enterprizes, carried them to distant countries.

But the temple of heathen mythology rests its pillars in the two hemispheres, and overshadows climes unvisited by the navigators of Phœnicia. Its basis must, apparently, be sought without the circle of Jewish report and scripture, in ancient gentile tradition. Stillingfleet convincingly argues, that, assuming the descent of mankind from the posterity of Noah, the obliteration and extinction of all remnants of oral history concerning the ancient world is utterly inconceivable. He proceeds to show that such fragments were, in fact, so preserved in many nations after the dispersion; that they were appropriated by the Phœnicians, Greeks, Italians, and others to their respective countries; and that portions of Noah’s memory, in particular, were retained in many fables under Saturn, Janus, Prometheus, and Bacchus.

Similar to this is the outline of the Analytic System; in which, however, the dæmon-worship of the patriarchs of mankind is connected with the arkite and ophite idolatry under the types of the sun and moon. The affinities in the pagan sister-mythologies are explained by the general dissemination of these idolatrous mysteries, and the traditions which they were designed to commemorate, through the dispersion of a peculiar people in the early ages; migrating from a central point, and spreading through the extremest regions of the east and west.

“This wonderful people were the descendants of Chus; and called Cuthites and Cuseans. They stood their ground at the general migration of families, but were at last scattered over the face of the earth. They were the first apostates from the truth, yet great in worldly wisdom. They introduced, wherever they came, many useful arts, and were looked up to as a superior order of beings. They were joined in their expeditions by other nations; especially by the collateral branches of their family; the Mizraim, Caphtorim, and the sons of Canaän. These were all of the line of Ham, who was held by his posterity in the highest veneration. They called him Amon; and having in process of time raised him to a divinity, they worshipped him as the Sun; and from this worship they were called Amonians. Under this denomination are included all of this family; whether they were Ægyptians or Syrians, of Phœnicia or of Canaän. They were a people who carefully preserved memorials of their ancestors, and of those great events which had preceded their dispersion. These were described in hieroglyphics on pillars and obelisks.

“The deity whom they originally worshipped was the Sun; but they soon conferred his titles upon some other of their ancestors; whence arose a mixed worship. Chus was one of these; and the idolatry began among his sons. The same was practised by the Ægyptians; but this nation made many subtile distinctions; and supposing that there were certain emanations of divinity, they affected to particularize each by some title, and to worship the deity by his attributes. This gave rise to a multiplicity of gods. The Grecians, who received their religion from Ægypt and the East, misapplied the terms which they had received, and made a god out of every title.” Preface to the Analysis of Ancient Mythology.