Nevertheless, there were distinctions deserving of notice, which render the foregoing proposition more absolutely exact with regard to Greece than with regard to the middle ages. The tales of the epic, and the mythes in their most popular and extended signification, were the only intellectual nourishment with which the Grecian public was supplied, until the sixth century before the Christian æra: there was no prose writing, no history, no philosophy. But such was not exactly the case at the time when the epic of the middle ages appeared. At that time, a portion of society possessed the Latin language, the habit of writing, and some tinge both of history and philosophy: there were a series of chronicles, scanty, indeed, and imperfect, but referring to contemporary events and preventing the real history of the past from passing into oblivion: there were even individual scholars, in the twelfth century, whose acquaintance with Latin literature was sufficiently considerable to enlarge their minds and to improve their judgments. Moreover, the epic of the middle ages, though deeply imbued with religious ideas, was not directly amalgamated with the religion of the people, and did not always find favor with the clergy; while the heroes of the Grecian epic were not only linked in a thousand ways with existing worship, practices, and sacred localities, but Homer and Hesiod pass with Herodotus for the constructors of Grecian theology. We thus see that the ancient epic was both exempt from certain distracting influences by which that of the middle ages was surrounded, and more closely identified with the veins of thought and feeling prevalent in the Grecian public. Yet these counteracting influences did not prevent Pope Calixtus II. from declaring the Chronicle of Turpin to be a genuine history.
If we take the history of our own country as it was conceived and written from the twelfth to the seventeenth century by Hardyng, Fabyan, Grafton, Hollinshed, and others, we shall find that it was supposed to begin with Brute the Trojan, and was carried down from thence, for many ages and through a long succession of kings, to the times of Julius Cæsar. A similar belief of descent from Troy, arising seemingly from a reverential imitation of the Romans and of their Trojan origin, was cherished in the fancy of other European nations. With regard to the English, the chief circulator of it was Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it passed with little resistance or dispute into the national faith—the kings from Brute downward being enrolled in regular chronological series with their respective dates annexed. In a dispute which took place during the reign of Edward I. (A. D. 1301) between England and Scotland, the descent of the kings of England from Brute the Trojan was solemnly embodied in a document put forth to sustain the rights of the crown of England, as an argument bearing on the case then in discussion: and it passed without attack from the opposing party,[1045]—an incident which reminds us of the appeal made by Æschinês, in the contention between the Athenians and Philip of Macedôn, respecting Amphipolis, to the primitive dotal rights of Akamas son of Thêseus—and also of the defence urged by the Athenians to sustain their conquest of Sigeium, against the reclamations of the Mitylenæans, therein the former alleged that they had as much right to the place as any of the other Greeks who had formed part of the victorious armament of Agamemnôn.[1046]
The tenacity with which this early series of British kings was defended, is no less remarkable than the facility with which it was admitted. The chroniclers at the beginning of the seventeenth century warmly protested against the intrusive scepticism which would cashier so many venerable sovereigns and efface so many noble deeds. They appealed to the patriotic feelings of their hearers, represented the enormity of thus setting up a presumptuous criticism against the belief of ages, and insisted on the danger of the precedent as regarded history generally.[1047] How this controversy stood, at the time and in the view of the illustrious author of Paradise Lost, I shall give in his own words, as they appear in the second page of his History of England. After having briefly touched upon the stories of Samothes son of Japhet, Albion son of Neptune, etc., he proceeds:—
“But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny of kings to the entrance of Julius Cæsar, we cannot so easily be discharged: descents of ancestry long continued, laws and exploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or devised, which on the common belief have wrought no small impression: defended by many, denied utterly by few. For what though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up, seeing they, who first devised to bring us some noble ancestor, were content at first with Brutus the Consul, till better invention, though not willing to forego the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabulous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan tales, in affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, pitched there: Yet those old and inborn kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity. For these, and those causes above mentioned, that which hath received approbation from so many, I have chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must follow: so far as keeps aloof from impossible or absurd, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the due and proper subject of story.”[1048]
Yet in spite of the general belief of so many centuries—in spite of the concurrent persuasion of historians and poets—in spite of the declaration of Milton, extorted from his feelings rather than from his reason, that this long line of quasi-historical kings and exploits could not be all unworthy of belief—in spite of so large a body of authority and precedent, the historians of the nineteenth century begin the history of England with Julius Cæsar. They do not attempt either to settle the date of king Bladud’s accession, or to determine what may be the basis of truth in the affecting narrative of Lear.[1049] The standard of historical credibility, especially with regard to modern events, has indeed been greatly and sensibly raised within the last hundred years.
But in regard to ancient Grecian history, the rules of evidence still continue relaxed. The dictum of Milton, regarding the ante-Cæsarian history of England, still represents pretty exactly the feeling now prevalent respecting the mythical history of Greece: “Yet those old and inborn kings (Agamemnôn, Achilles, Odysseus, Jasôn, Adrastus, Amphiaräus, Meleager, etc.), never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity.” Amidst much fiction (we are still told), there must be some truth: but how is such truth to be singled out? Milton does not even attempt to make the severance: he contents himself with “keeping aloof from the impossible and the absurd,” and ends in a narrative which has indeed the merit of being sober-colored, but which he never for a moment thinks of recommending to his readers as true. So in regard to the legends of Greece,—Troy, Thêbes, the Argonauts, the Boar of Kalydôn, Hêraklês, Thêseus, Œdipus,—the conviction still holds in men’s minds, that there must be something true at the bottom; and many readers of this work may be displeased, I fear, not to see conjured up before them the Eidôlon of an authentic history, even though the vital spark of evidence be altogether wanting.[1050]
I presume to think that our great poet has proceeded upon mistaken views with respect to the old British fables, not less in that which he leaves out than in that which he retains. To omit the miraculous and the fantastic, (it is that which he really means by “the impossible and the absurd,”) is to suck the lifeblood out of these once popular narratives,—to divest them at once both of their genuine distinguishing mark, and the charm by which they acted on the feelings of believers. Still less ought we to consent to break up and disenchant in a similar manner the mythes of ancient Greece,—partly because they possess the mythical beauties and characteristics in far higher perfection, partly because they sank deeper into the mind of a Greek, and pervaded both the public and private sentiment of the country to a much greater degree than the British fables in England.
Two courses, and two only, are open; either to pass over the mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians treat the old British fables, or else to give an account of them as mythes; to recognize and respect their specific nature, and to abstain from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable history. There are good reasons for pursuing this second method in reference to the Grecian mythes; and when so considered, they constitute an important chapter in the history of the Grecian mind, and indeed in that of the human race generally. The historical faith of the Greeks, as well as that of other people, in reference to early and unrecorded times, is as much subjective and peculiar to themselves as their religious faith: among the Greeks, especially, the two are confounded with an intimacy which nothing less than great violence can disjoin. Gods, heroes, and men—religion and patriotism—matters divine, heroic, and human—were all woven together by the Greeks into one indivisible web, in which the threads of truth and reality, whatever they might originally have been, were neither intended to be, nor were actually, distinguishable. Composed of such materials, and animated by the electric spark of genius, the mythical antiquities of Greece formed a whole at once trustworthy and captivating to the faith and feelings of the people; but neither trustworthy nor captivating, when we sever it from these subjective conditions, and expose its naked elements to the scrutiny of an objective criticism. Moreover, the separate portions of Grecian mythical foretime ought to be considered with reference to that aggregate of which they form a part: to detach the divine from the heroic legends, or some one of the heroic legends from the remainder, as if there were an essential and generic difference between them, is to present the whole under an erroneous point of view. The mythes of Troy and Thêbes are no more to be handled objectively, with a view to detect an historical base, than those of Zeus in Krête, of Apollo and Artemis in Dêlos, of Hermês, or of Promêtheus. To single out the Siege of Troy from the other mythes, as if it were entitled to preëminence as an ascertained historical and chronological event, is a proceeding which destroys the true character and coherence of the mythical world: we only transfer the story (as has been remarked in the preceding chapter) from a class with which it is connected by every tie both of common origin and fraternal affinity, to another with which it has no relationship, except such as violent and gratuitous criticism may enforce.
By drawing this marked distinction between the mythical and the historical world,—between matter appropriate only for subjective history, and matter in which objective evidence is attainable,—we shall only carry out to its proper length the just and well-known position long ago laid down by Varro. That learned man recognized three distinguishable periods in the time preceding his own age: “First, the time from the beginning of mankind down to the first deluge; a time wholly unknown. Secondly, the period from the first deluge down to the first Olympiad, which is called the mythical period, because many fabulous things are recounted in it. Thirdly, the time from the first Olympiad down to ourselves, which is called the historical period, because the things done in it are comprised in true histories.”[1051]
Taking the commencement of true or objective history at the point indicated by Varro, I still consider the mythical and historical periods to be separated by a wider gap than he would have admitted. To select any one year as an absolute point of commencement, is of course not to be understood literally: but in point of fact, this is of very little importance in reference to the present question, seeing that the great mythical events—the sieges of Thêbes and Troy, the Argonautic expedition, the Kalydônian boar-hunt, the Return of the Hêrakleids, etc.—are all placed long anterior to the first Olympiad, by those who have applied chronological boundaries to the mythical narratives. The period immediately preceding the first Olympiad is one exceedingly barren of events; the received chronology recognizes four hundred years, and Herodotus admitted five hundred years, from that date back to the Trojan war.