The next most important deity as regards the whole Greek race is Heracles (Hercules). It is a great mistake to regard him, as our mythology-books often lead us to do, as a demi-god or hero only. Originally, and among a portion of the Greek race, he was one of the mightiest gods; but at last, perhaps because his adventures became in later tradition rather preposterous and undignified, he sank to be a demi-god, or immortalized man. The story of Heracles’ life and labours is a pure but most elaborate sun-myth. From his birth, where he strangles the serpents in his cradle—the serpents of darkness, like the Pythôn which Apollo slew—through his Herculean labours to his death, we watch the labours of the sun through the mists and clouds of heaven to its ruddy setting; and these stories are so like to others which are told of the Northern Heracles, Thor, that we cannot refuse to believe that they were known in the main in days before there were either Greek-speaking Greeks or Teutons. The closing scene of Heracles’ life speaks the most eloquently of his nature-origin. Returning home in victory—his last victory—to Trachis, Deianira sends to him there the fatal white robe steeped in the blood of Nessus. No sooner has he put it on than his death-agony begins. In the madness of his pain he dashes his companion, Lichas, against the rocks; he tears at the burning robe, and with it brings away the flesh from his limbs. Then, seeing that all is over, he becomes more calm. He gives his last commands to his son, Hyllus, and orders his funeral pile to be prepared upon mount Œta, as the sun, after its last fatal battle with the clouds of sunset, sinks down calmly into the sea. Then as, after it has gone, the sky lights up aglow with colour, so does the funeral pyre of Heracles send out its light over the Ægean, from its western shore.
Ares.
I believe Ares to have been once likewise a sun-god. The special home of his worship was warlike Macedon and Thrace. There can be no question, however, that in pre-historic times his worship was much more widely extended than we should suppose from reading Homer or the poets subsequent to Homer. Traces of his worship are to be found in the Zeus Areios at Elis, and in the Athenian Areopagus. But his natural home was in the North. He was the national divinity of the Thracians. And I have no doubt, as I have said, that he was once the sun-god of these Northern people, and only in later times became an abstraction, a god of war and valour.
Dêmêtêr.
Another deity who was distinctly of Aryan origin was Dêmêtêr (Ceres), a name which is, as we have said, probably, none other than Gêmêtêr, ‘mother earth.’ She is the Greek equivalent of the Prithvi of the Vedas. But whereas Prithvi has sunk into obscurity, Dêmêtêr was associated with some of the most important rites of Greek religion. The association of ideas which, face to face with the masculine godhead, the sun or sky, placed the fruitful all-nourishing earth, is so natural as to find a place in almost every system. We have seen how the two formed a part of the Egyptian and Chaldæan mythologies. And we have seen that each branch of the Aryan folk carried away along with their sky-and sun-worship this earth-worship also. But among none of the different branches was the great nature-myth which always gathers round the earth-goddess, woven into a more pathetic story than by the Greeks. The story is that of the winter death or sleep of earth, or of all that makes earth beautiful and glad. And it was thus the Greeks told that world-old legend. Persephone (Proserpina), or Corê, is the green earth, or the green verdure which may be thought the daughter of earth and sky. She is, indeed, almost the reduplication of Dêmêtêr herself; and in art it is not always easy to distinguish a representation as of one or of the other. At spring-time Persephone, a maiden, with her maidens, is wandering careless in the Nysian plain, plucking the flowers of spring, ‘crocuses and roses and fair violets,’[72] when in a moment all is changed. Hades, regent of Hell, rises in his black-horsed golden chariot; unheeding her cries, he carries her off to share his infernal throne and rule in the kingdoms of the dead. In other words, the awful shadow of death falls across the path of youth and spring, and Hades appears to proclaim the fateful truth that all spring-time, all youth and verdure, are alike with hoary age candidates for service in his Shadowy Kingdom. The sudden contrast between spring flowers and maidenhood and death gives a dramatic intensity to the scene and represents the quiet course of decay in one tremendous moment.[73] To lengthen out the picture and show the slow sorrow of earth robbed of its spring and summer, Dêmêtêr is portrayed wandering from land to land in bootless search of her lost daughter. We know how deep a significance this story had in the religious thought of Greece; how the representation of it composed the chief feature of the Eleusinian mysteries, and how these and other mysteries probably enshrined the intenser, more hidden feelings of religion, and continued to do so when mythology had lost its hold upon the popular mind. It is, indeed, a new-antique story, patent to all and fraught for all with solemnest meaning. So that this myth of the death of Proserpine has lived on in a thousand forms through all the Aryan systems.
Athenê and
other goddesses.
Persephone is one of the most characteristic of the maiden-goddesses of whom we spoke above. The most literal and material interpretation of her myth would show her to be an embodiment of the grain, which sinks into the ground when it is sown and springs up again to live above the earth for half the year. But in a wider sense I have no doubt that Persephone is meant to typify the spring of which the grain might well be a sort of symbol, or to typify vegetation generally. And this is one of the natural characters belonging to the maiden-goddess. She is very frequently a goddess of spring in some aspect or other—of spring as the season of beauty and love. Such is the Freyja of the Norse mythology; such, to some extent, are Aphroditê (Venus) and Artemis (Diana).[74]
There is, however, one divinity among the Greeks who seems to have a somewhat different character, and who is so much more important a maiden-goddess than any of these that she at once springs into our thoughts when we are speaking of divinities of this class. I mean, of course, Athenê (Minerva). But in the first place, the wide worship of Athenê is partly accidental and due to her being the patroness of Athens; in the second place, Athenê has taken so many ethical characteristics, she is so advanced a conception of a divine being, that she is not at all a good representative of a religion in its early state. It would be rather confusing than otherwise to have to trace the character of Athenê step by step out of the natural phenomenon from which she sprang. I will only say here that I believe her to have been originally born from the sea or from a river. She may once have actually been a goddess of water. Afterwards she became, I think, the goddess of the rivers of heaven or the clouds. And as the clouds hold the storm and the lightning, Athenê is sometimes a storm-goddess, sometimes a goddess of the lightning.[75] Or again, she may be the heaven which bears the storm-cloud, the thundering heaven. We remember that Zeus and Athenê each have the privilege of wearing the Ægis—the dreadful fringed Ægis, which is, I think, the lightning-bearing cloud.
Artemis (Diana) is the moon-goddess, at least she is so in her character as sister of Apollo. But there were really many different Artemises in Greece. And very often she is a river-goddess. In the same way, there were many different Aphroditês. The more sensuous the character in which Aphroditê (Venus) appears, the more does she show her Asiatic birth; and this was why the Greeks, when regarding her especially as the goddess of love, called her Cypris, or Cytheræa, after Cyprus and Cythera, which had been in ancient days stations for the Phœnician traders, and where they had first made acquaintance with the Greeks. Aphroditê was the favourite goddess of these mariners, as, indeed, a moon-goddess well might be; and it was they who gave her her most corrupt and licentious aspect. For she has not always this character even among the Phœnicians; but oftentimes appears as a huntress, more like Artemis, or armed as a goddess of battle, like Athenê. Doubtless, however, goddesses closely allied to Aphroditê or Artemis, divinities of productive nature and divinities of the moon, belonged to the other branches of the Indo-European family. The idea of these divinities was a common property; the exact being in whom these ideas found expression varied with each race.
Scandinavian
religion.