The most important gods were Okeanos, Japetós, and Kronos. The human character of Greek mythology begins even before the birth of Zeus. Uranos was afraid of his own children, and had them confined in eternal darkness in Tartaros; their mother, Gæa, had pity on them, and armed the youngest, Kronos, with a sickle, with which he attacked Uranos, and deprived him of his creative power. From that moment Uranos was idle, could produce no new forms, and was neither worshipped by gods nor men. The fact which underlies this dramatic scene, in which gods are the actors, is a cosmical phenomenon. In time all things were created, and in time the creative force, as far as our earth was concerned, ceased with the creation of man, to be productive of new forms. Kronos had five children—Hestia, Demeter, Here, Pluton, and Poseidon, and these he devoured. In this cruel image we see represented the revolving movements of time, in which the present is everlastingly the prey of the past, engendering the future. The sixth son of Kronos, Zeus (creative ether), was saved by his mother’s cunning, for she gave the inhuman god a stone instead of her child; Metis, however (Maya, Matter), afterwards the wife of Zeus; rescues the children that Kronos had swallowed, and he is obliged to give them back again in an eternal circle. These children of Kronos are years, months, weeks, days and hours. We have here an instance of the manner in which phenomena were turned by the Hellenes into living beings. Kronos was an old man with a long flowing beard, and held a sickle or scythe in his hands, with which he cut down everything. And as symbol of eternity a serpent lay by his side.
Zeus serves us even more as a specimen of the anthropomorphic tendency of the Greeks. He was the father of the gods, and had to fight with the Titans. He led the immortal gods, who assembled on Mount Olympus against these terrible Titans, who mustered in great strength on Mount Othrys. For ten years the battle raged without result; heaven, earth, and sea resounded with the frightful struggle. Gæa advised the gods to call in the Kyklopes and Hekatoncheires. These presented Poseidon with the trident, Pluton with the helmet that had the power to make the wearer invisible, and Zeus received from the depths of the earth the flaming thunderbolts. Then only the Titans had to yield to storms and lightnings, and were chained down at last in Tartaros. We read a chapter of geology when we peruse Hesiod’s description of this struggle. In the Titans, Kyklopes, and the hundred-handed giants we recognise the antediluvian monsters—the mastodons, megatheriums, and saurians, petrified for ever in the strata of the earth’s crust. Zeus, after his conquest, began to rule the Olympian gods and mankind. He himself was full of passion and wrath, of human failings and shortcomings; but, after all, he was kind, dignified—even in his weakness, just and grand. He smiled, and love and joy pervaded the universe; he frowned, and the universe shook to its very foundations. He indulged in freaks, and still was afraid of his haughty and jealous wife, who acted in many instances as a well-bred lady would, who had the misfortune to be wedded to an amorous husband. Zeus was frequently so troubled by his riotous gods and goddesses, that he had a bad headache, and was once obliged to call in Hephaistos to cure him with a heavy blow, and on this occasion Minerva (wisdom) sprang forth armed with spear, helmet, and shield. The truth that intellect and reason are of divine origin was proclaimed in this myth. In the Greek legends the poet’s imagination has turned the forces of nature into beautiful men, women, or children. How much the gods, with them, were the creatures of man’s fancy, may be seen in the fear of the opinions of their earth-born children with which the gods were endowed. The Almighty Thunderer, when his heavenly subjects made too much noise, often cried: ‘What will my earthly sons say?’ and for fear that they might find fault with him he yielded, and made concessions, and heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars were again at peace.
It is true that in Indian lore the same characters are drawn, but, like their supernatural gods, they are gigantic and monstrous. Men and women in the Indian fables, behave like unwieldy spectres, that frighten us during an uneasy dream; we must first divest them of their inhuman forms in order to comprehend them. The conceptions are too marvellous to impress us with moral lessons; we are lost in allegories, metaphors, symbols and double meanings. This occurs less in Greek mythology. Atlas was the representative of patience; he had for ever to carry the world on his shoulders, and was turned at last into a rocky mountain range. Epimetheus was the prototype of senseless carelessness, and was destroyed by his own folly. Prometheus at last was the embodiment of considerate prudence; he was devoured by the vulture of ‘care and sorrow for the morrow.’ Prometheus may be said to be the best, most intelligible emblem of classic humanity, as Faust may be considered as the incarnation of romantic mankind. Prometheus wanted to bring matter into form; Faust to know what held spirit and matter together. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, made man of clay, and vivified him. Faust knew that this heavenly fire was a force over which he had no control, and he called in a spirit to teach him ‘how all one whole harmonious weaves, each in the other works and lives.’ The ‘formal’ is the longing of the Greek Faust, and the ‘spiritual’ the aspiration of the Teuton Prometheus. All the Greek eîdola embodied some power of nature. Philomela was a pining woman. The Laurel was formed out of the lovely Daphne (from the Sanskrit Dahanah, our word ‘dawn’). In every tree a Dryad dwelt, in every wave a Naiad sported. Demeter’s tears for her lost daughter Persephone nourished rivulets. On the bright heights of Mount Olympus, on Helikon, or Parnassus, or Pindus, above the petty cares of every-day life, sat the earnest Klio with an open scroll and a stylum, recording with lovely patience the events of the past. Euterpe, with her two flutes, brought harmony into the discordant sounds of the earthly spheres, and filled the world with songs and tunes; Melpomene, armed with gloomy mask and dagger, presided over the fictitious sufferings of humanity struggling with the inexorable fates, reflecting in an artificial mirror—reality. Thalia, with a shepherd’s staff and a Silenus’ mask, endowed with an eternal smile, comforted man with more cheerful views. Terpsichore, with a lyre of seven chords, taught him to express joy, happiness, and pious veneration by the rhythmical movements of his body. Erato, on her Kythera with nine chords, warbled love-songs, and inspired and aided young poets to pour out in measured language the immeasurable feelings of their souls. Polyhymnia, or Polymnia, protected orators, philosophers, and stage-players, and enabled them to keep within the boundaries of moderation, for she placed the first finger of her right hand on her lips, impressing them with the necessity for caution. Urania, with her eyes lifted to the starry heavens, tried to draw man’s attention to the well-regulated courses of the heavenly bodies, proclaiming in eternal silence with fiery tongues the glories of the universe. Kalliope finally taught man to record heroic deeds in epic poetry. These nine muses, presided over by the manly and wise, valorous and glorious Apollo, nursed, taught, and accompanied the Hellenes through life; they met them as lovely charmers in a thousand different forms, in temples, on friezes, metopes, goblets, pateras, amphoræ, and urns; nothing possessed a meaning for them that had not a poetical, artistic, and scientific aim.
Life with the Greeks was one continual festivity. They worshipped their gods in singing joyous songs, in running, playing, and wrestling. They thought it a duty to develop both body and intellect, the gifts of the immortal gods. They deeply loved poetry, wrote it if they could, or recited it, or listened to it and imbibed it with their whole souls. They rejoiced in athletic sports; influenced by Terpsichore, they showed the wondrous beauty of their harmoniously-constructed bodies. Joy and delight swelled their muscles when they wrestled, and throbbed through all their veins when they moved in rhythmical simplicity, like the stars in heaven. They prayed when they composed epic poems; they worshipped when they wrote tragedies or comedies; they honoured the gods when they built temples; they humbly beseeched their blessing when they sculptured. The whole life of the Greeks was one grateful act of artistic devotion. Their temples were so many hymns in stone and marble; their ornamentations in reliefs, sculptures, winding frets and meanders, are epic poems, dramatic representations, and lyric effusions of the very highest intellectual refinement. Art with the Greeks was cherished, cultivated, and loved for its own divine sake. Rich and poor, old and young, men and women, boys and girls, used art and poetry, science and philosophy, as the plastic language of their ever-praying lips, hands and minds. Whenever the life of a nation is thus inspired; when the comprehensive culture of intellect, the harmonious development of the body, and the mysterious feelings of existence are guided by the mighty and productive energy of an awakened and excited imagination, and regulated by a consciousness of order; art must attain that expansive, noble, and beautiful form which we admire in the Greeks.
Greek poetry and philosophy had the same basis of reality as their mythology. That which was asserted by the Asiatic and African law-givers to have been directly dictated by the gods, was gradually acquired by the Greeks through deductive and inductive reasoning. Soon the mythological conceptions of the poets were turned into eîdola. Aphrodite was set down as the representative of matter, out of which all things were formed. Pallas-Athene lost her individuality, and became intellect pervading humanity. Apollo was no more the ‘god-man’ or the living sun, but cosmical heat. The forms of fearful monsters that originated in Asia, with ferocious jaws, with three heads, spreading fear and awe, looking as if nothing but human flesh could satisfy their voracity, also terrified the Greeks during the mythic period of their national existence, and human flesh was accordingly sacrificed. Such sacrifices were prevalent wherever monster-gods, without human shape, without legs or arms, with fishes’ tails, dog’s or cat’s heads, with round and glaring eyes, and many arms, inspired the masses with fear and trembling. This was the case in Greece when monsters and pirates peopled the sea-coasts; when Geryon, the giant with three bodies, three heads, six hands, six legs, and two wings; Echidna, the wife of Typhon; the Lernean serpent, with nine or with fifty heads; the Chimera, with a lion’s or goat’s head; the Sphinx, with a woman’s head and bust, the body of a lion, and the wings and tail of a dragon; and the fearfully howling Skylla, with six heads and six long necks, formed part of their pantheon. As soon, however, as poetry threw a glittering veil of beauty over the forces and phenomena of nature, no one thought of sacrificing human flesh to the gods. Who could have slaughtered a human being in the sight of the Olympian Zeus or the Pallas-Athene of Pheidias, the Venus of Alkemenes, or the Apollo of Praxiteles?
The Greek mind, once on the road to progress through a correct appreciation of beauty, developed with incredible rapidity.
The elements of art as well as of science are threefold. We have:—
α. The reign of imagination through the emotional element, more or less regulated;
β. That of intellect, the reflective element, more or less influenced by imagination; and
γ. That of reason, the speculative element, discerning between imagination and intellect, and binding the two into one.