Strange clouded fragments of the ancient glory,
Late lingerers of the company divine;
For even in ruin of their marble limbs
They breathe of that far world wherefrom they came,
Of liquid light and harmonies serene,
Lost halls of heaven and far Olympian air.*
"Homer and Hesiod named the gods for the Greeks;" so Herodotus thought, and constructed the divine genealogies. Though the gods were infinitely older than Homer, though a few of them probably date from before the separation of the Indo-Aryan and Hellenic stocks, it is certain that Homer and Hesiod stereotyped, to some extent, the opinions about the deities which were current in their time.**
* Ernest Myers, Hermes, in The Judgment of Prometheus.
** As a proof of the Pre-Homeric antiquity of Zeus, it has
often been noticed that Homer makes Achilles pray to Zeus of
Dodona (the Zeus, according to Thrasybulus, who aided
Deucalion after the deluge) as the "Pelasgian" Zeus (Iliad,
xvi. 233). "Pelasgian" may be regarded as equivalent to "
pre-historic Greek ". Sophocles (Trach., 65; see Scholiast)
still speaks of the Selli, the priests of Dodonean Zeus, as
"mountain-dwelling and couching on the earth ". They
retained, it seems, very primitive habits. Be it observed
that Achilles has been praying for confusion and ruin to the
Achaeans, and so invokes the deity of an older, perhaps
hostile, race. Probably the oak-oracle at Dodona, the
message given by "the sound of a going in the tree-tops" or
by the doves, was even more ancient than Zeus, who, on that
theory, fell heir to the rites of a peasant oracle connected
with tree-worship. Zeus, according to Hesiod, "dwelt in the
trunk of the oak tree" (cited by Preller, i. 98), much as an
Indian forest-god dwells in the peepul or any other tree. It
is rather curious that, according to Eustathius (Iliad,
xvi. 233), "Pelargicus," "connected with storks," was
sometimes written for Pelasgicus; that there was a Dodona in
Thessaly, and that storks were sacred to the Thessalians.
Hesiod codified certain priestly and Delphian theories about their origin and genealogies. Homer minutely described their politics and society. His description, however, must inevitably have tended to develop a later scepticism. While men lived in city states under heroic kings, acknowledging more or less the common sway of one king at Argos or Mycenæ, it was natural that the gods (whether in the dark backward of time Greece knew a Moral Creative Being or not) should be conceived as dwelling in a similar society, with Zeus for their Agamemnon, a ruler supreme but not absolute, not safe from attempts at resistance and rebellion. But when Greek politics and society developed into a crowd of republics, with nothing answering to a certain imperial sway, then men must have perceived that the old divine order was a mere survival from the time when human society was similarly ordained. Thus Xenophanes very early proclaimed that men had made the gods in their own likeness, as a horse, could he draw, would design his deity in equine semblance. But the detection by Xenophanes of the anthropomorphic tendency in religion could not account for the instinct which made Greeks, like other peoples, as Aristotle noticed, figure their gods not only in human shape, but in the guise of the lower animals. For that zoomorphic element in myth an explanation, as before, will be sought in the early mental condition which takes no great distinction between man and the beasts. The same method will explain, in many cases, the other peculiarly un-Hellenic elements in Greek divine myth. Yet here, too, allowance must be made for the actual borrowing of rites and legends from contiguous peoples.
The Greeks were an assimilative race. The alphabet of their art they obtained, as they obtained their written alphabet, from the kingdoms of the East.* Like the Romans, they readily recognised their own gods, even under the barbarous and brutal disguises of Egyptian popular religion; and, while recognising their god under an alien shape, they may have taken over legends alien to their own national character.** Again, we must allow, as in India, for myths which are really late, the inventions, perhaps, of priests or oracle-mongers. But in making these deductions, we must remember that the later myths would be moulded, in many cases, on the ancient models. These ancient models, there is reason to suppose, were often themselves of the irrational and savage character which has so frequently been illustrated from the traditions of the lower races.
The elder dynasties of Greek gods, Uranus and Cronos, with their adventures and their fall, have already been examined.***
* Helbig, Homerwche Epos cms dem Denhmalern. Perrot and
Chipiez, on Mycenaean art, represent a later view.
** On the probable amount of borrowing in Greek religion see
Maury, Religions de la Greece, iii. 70-75; Newton, Nineteenth
Century, 1878, p. 306. Gruppe, Griech. Culte u. Mythen.,
pp. 153-163
*** "Greek Cosmogonic Myths," antea.
Uranus may have been an ancient sky-god, like the Samoyed Num, deposed by Cronus, originally, perhaps, one of the deputy-gods, active where their chief is otiose, whom we find in barbaric theology. But this is mere guess-work. We may now turn to the deity who was the acknowledged sovereign of the Greek Olympus during all the classical period from the date of Homer and Hesiod to the establishment of Christianity. We have to consider the legend of Zeus.
It is necessary first to remind the reader that all the legends in the epic poems date after the time when an official and national Olympus had been arranged. Probably many tribal gods, who had originally no connection with gods of other tribes, had, by Homer's age, thus accepted places and relationships in the Olympic family. Even rude low-born Pelasgian deities may have been adopted into the highest circles, and fitted out with a divine pedigree in perfect order.
To return to Zeus, his birth (whether as the eldest or the youngest of the children of Cronus) has already been studied; now we have to deal with his exploits and his character.