those who reformed the Greek race, and through whom the Pelasgic people grew into the Hellenes, this god is Apollo.
Apollo is, we have said, in origin a sun-god. We see some traces of his nature even in the statues which represent him, as in the abundant hair which streams from his head, the picture of the sun’s rays.[70] But, of course, long before historic days he had become much more than a mere god of nature to his worshippers. He had become what we know him, the ideal of youthful manhood as the Greeks admired it most, the ideal of suppleness and strength, the ideal, too, of what we call ‘culture,’ of poetry and music, and all that adds a grace to life.
Apollo’s chief shrines were rather on the eastern than on the western side of Greece—at Delphi, for example, in Phocis. (Is it not characteristic to find in this wise the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the oracle of Zeus at Dodona?) But Delphi is the most westerly of Apollo’s favourite homes. Another, we know, was on the island of Delos, midway in the Ægean, that island which the Greeks fancied the umbilicus orbis—the navel of the world. Delphi and Delos are the shrines of Apollo belonging to one out of the two great nationalities of the new blood who reformed the nation of the Greeks. Delphi and Delos belong to the Dorians. But among the Ionians of Asia Minor, who were the other great reforming element in Greek life, Apollo had likewise many holy places. And we know how, in the Iliad, he is represented as the champion of the easterns, the Asiatic Greeks, against the westerns, the Greeks of Greece proper. ‘Hear me,’ prays Glaucus, in the Iliad—‘hear me, O king, who art somewhere in the rich realm of Lycea or of Troy; for everywhere canst thou hear a man in sorrow, such as my sorrow is.’
Not but that these worshippers of Apollo were likewise worshippers of Zeus. It was from the Dorians, whose ancient home was in Thessaly, in the vale of Tempe, and under the shadow of Olympus, that sprang the worship of the Olympian Zeus. This Olympian Zeus was the same as the ancient god of the Pelasgians—the Pelasgian Zeus—the same, and yet different, for he was the ancient storm-god, softened and made more human by his contact with Apollo. In time this Olympian Zeus superseded the Pelasgic god even in his own favourite seats, and we have the phenomenon of the festival in his honour—the greatest festival of Greece—the Olympia, being held in the plains of Elis, near the ancient grove of the Pelasgian Zeus.
Hermes.
As before by a comparison of words, so now in mythology by a comparison of legends, we form our notion of the remoteness of the time at which these stories first passed current. Not only, for instance, do we see that Indra and Apollo resembled each other in character, but we have proof that nature-myths—stories really narrating some process of nature—were familiar alike to Greeks and Indians. The Vedas, the sacred books from which we gather our knowledge of ancient Hindu religion, do not relate their stories of the gods in the same way, or with the same clearness and elaboration, that the Greek poets do. They are collections of hymns, prayers in verse, addressed to the gods themselves, and what they relate is told more by reference and implication than directly. But even with this difference, we have no difficulty in signalizing some of the adventures of Indra as almost identical with those of the son of Lêtô. Let one suffice. The pastoral life of the Aryans is reflected in their mythology, and thus it is that in the Vedas almost all the varied phenomena of nature are in their turn compared to cattle. Indra is often spoken of as a bull; still more commonly are the clouds the cows of Indra, and their milk the rain. More than one of the songs of the Rig-Veda allude to a time when the wicked Panis (beings of fog or mist[71]) stole the cows from the fields of Indra and hid them away in a cave. They obscured their footprints by tying up their feet or by making them drag brushwood behind them. Then Indra sent his dog Sarama (the dawn or breath of dawn), and she found out where the cattle were hidden. But (according to one story) the Panis overcame her honesty and gave her a cup of milk to drink, so that she came back to Indra and denied having seen the cows. But Indra discovered the deception, and came with his strong spear and conquered the Panis, and recovered what had been stolen.
Now turn to the Greek myth. The story here is cast in a different key.
‘Te boves olim nisi reddidisses
Per dolum amotas, puerum minaci
Voce dum terret, viduus pharetra
Risit Apollo.’
Hermes (Mercury) is here the thief. He steals the cattle of Apollo feeding upon the Pierian mountain, and conceals his theft much as the Panis had done. Apollo discovers what has been done, and complains to Zeus. But Hermes is a god, and no punishment befalls him like that which was allotted to the Panis; he charms Apollo by the sound of his lyre, and is forgiven, and allowed to retain his booty. Still, all the essentials of the story are here; and the story in either case relates the same nature-myth. The clouds which in the Indian tale are stolen by the damp vapours of morning, are in the Greek legend filched away by the morning breeze; for this is the nature of Hermes. And that some such power as the wind had been known to the Indians as accomplice in the work, is shown by the complicity of Sarama in one version of the tale. For Sarama likewise means the morning breeze; and, in fact, Sarama and Hermes are derived from the same root, and are almost identical in character. Both mean in their general nature the wind; in their special appearances they stand now for the morning, now for the evening breeze, or even for the morning and evening themselves.
Heracles.