Interpretations of Poetry and Religion

by George Santayana

"That ever will
Oppress my heart with many a watery hill?
And therefore let him choose some other land,
Where he shall please, to build at his command
Temple and grove set thick with many a tree.
For wretched polypuses breed in me,
Retiring chambers, and black sea-calves den
In my poor soil, for penury of men."[1]

Leto reassures the island, however, and swears to build a great temple there which her son will haunt perpetually, preferring it to all his other shrines. Delos consents, and Apollo is born amid the ministrations of all the goddesses except Hera, who sits indignant and revengeful in the solitudes of Olympus. The child is bathed in the stream and delicately swaddled; but after tasting the nectar and ambrosia which one of the nymphs is quick to offer him, he bursts his bands, calls for his bow and his lyre, and flies upward into the sky announcing that he will henceforth declare the will of Zeus to mortals. Thereupon—

"All the immortals stood
In deep amaze....
All Delos, looking on him, all with gold
Was loaded straight, and joy'd to be extoll'd.
For so she flourished, as a hill that stood
Crown'd with the flower of an abundant wood."[2]

This legend, with all that accompanies it concerning the glories of Delos and its gods, and the pilgrimages and games that enlivened the island, was well-conceived to give form and justification to the cultus of the temple, and to delight the votaries whom custom or vague instincts of piety had gathered there. The sacred poet, in another part of this hymn, does the same service to the even greater sanctuary of Delphi. He tells us how Apollo wandered over many lands and waters, and he stops lovingly to recall the names of the various spots that claimed the honour of having at some time been visited by the god. The minstrels, wanderers themselves, loved to celebrate in this way the shores they had seen or heard of, and to fill at the same time their listener's minds with the spell of sonorous names, the sense of space and the thrill of mystery. In his journeys Apollo, the hymn tells us, finally came to the dell and fountain of Delphusa on the skirts of Parnassus. The nymph of the spot, fearing the encroachments of so much more powerful a deity, deceived him and persuaded him to plant his temple on another site, where Parnassus fronts the west, and the overhanging rocks form a cavern. There Apollo established his temple for the succour and enlightenment of mankind, while Trophonius and Agamedes, sons of Erginus, men dear to the immortal gods, built the approaches of stone.

Thus the divine origin of the temple is vindicated, the structure described, and the human architects honoured, whose descendants, very likely, were present to hear their ancestors' praise. But here a puzzling fact challenges the attention and stimulates the fancy of the poet: Apollo was a Dorian deity, yet his chief shrine was here upon Phocian ground. Perhaps some traditions remained to suggest an explanation of the anomaly; at any rate the poet is not at a loss for an account of the matter. The temple being established, Apollo bethought himself what race of priests he should make its ministers: at least, such is the naïve account in the poem, which expects us to forget that temples do not arise in the absence of predetermined servants and worshippers. While pondering this question, however, Apollo cast his eyes on the sea where it chanced that a swift ship, manned by many and excellent Cretans, was merrily sailing: whereupon the god, taking the form of a huge dolphin, leapt into the ship, to the infinite surprise and bewilderment of those worthy merchants, who, as innocent as the fishers of the Galilæan Lake of the religious destiny that awaited them, were thinking only of the pecuniary profits of their voyage. The presence of the god benumbed their movements, and they stood silent while the ship sailed before the wind. And the blast, veering at this place with the changed configuration of the coast, blew them irresistibly to the very foot of Parnassus, to the little haven of Crissa. There Apollo appeared to them once more, this time running down to the beach to meet them in the form of

"A stout and lusty fellow,
His mighty shoulders covered with his mane;
Who sped these words upon the wings of sound:
'Strangers, who are ye? and whence sail ye hither
The watery ways? Come ye to traffic justly
Or recklessly like pirates of the deep
Rove ye, adventuring your souls, to bring
Evil on strangers? Why thus sit ye grieving,
Nor leap on land, nor strike the mast and lay it
In your black ship? For so should traders do
When, sated with the labour of the sea,
They quit their painted galley for the shore,
And presently the thought of needful food
Comes gladsomely upon them.' So he spake,
Putting new courage in their breasts. To whom
The Cretan captain in his turn replied:
'Since thou art nothing like to things of earth
In form or stature, but most like the gods
That ever live, Hail, and thrice hail, O Stranger,
And may the gods pour blessings on thy head.
Now tell me truly, for I need to know,
What land is this, what people, from what race
Descended? As for us, over the deep
Broad sea, we sought another haven, Pylos,
Sailing from Crete, for thence we boast to spring;
But now our ship is cast upon this shore,
For some god steered our course against our will.'
Then the far-darter spoke and answered them.
'Friends, in well-wooded Cnossus hitherto
Ye have had homes, but ye shall not again
Return to your good native town, to find
Each his fair house and well-belovèd wife,
But here shall ye possess my temple, rich
And greatly honoured by the tribes of men.
For I am son to Zeus. Apollo is
My sacred name. 'Twas I that led you hither
Over the mighty bosom of the deep,
Intending you no ill; for ye shall here
Possess a temple sacred to me, rich,
And greatly honoured of all mortal men.
The counsels of the deathless gods shall be
Revealed to you, and by their will your days
Shall pass in honour and in peace for ever.
Come then and, as I bid, make haste to do.
... Build by the sea an altar; kindle flame;
Sprinkle white barley grains thereon, and pray,
Standing about the altar. And as first
Ye saw me leap into your swift black bark
In likeness of a dolphin, so henceforth
Worship me by the name Delphinius,
And Delphian ever be my far-seen shrine.'"

Thus the establishment of the Dorian god in Phocis is explained, and the wealth and dignity of his temple are justified by prophecy and by divine intention. For Apollo is not satisfied with repeatedly describing the future temple, by an incidental epithet, as opulent; that hint would not have been enough for the simplicity of those merchant sailors, new as they were to the mysteries of priestcraft. It was necessary for Apollo to allay their fears of poverty by a more explicit assurance that it will be easy for them to live by the altar. And what is more, Hermes and all the thieves he inspires will respect the shrine; its treasures, although unprotected by walls, shall be safe for-ever.

These were truly, as we see, the hymns of a levitical patriotism. With Homeric breadth and candour they dilated on the miracles, privileges, and immunities of the sacred places and their servitors, and they thus kept alive in successive generations an awe mingled with familiar interest toward divine persons and things which is characteristic of that more primitive age. Gods and men were then nearer together, and both yielded more frankly to the tendency, inherent in their nature, to resemble one another.

The same quality is found in another fragment, the most beautiful and the most familiar of all. This is the hymn to Demeter in which two stories are woven together, one telling of the rape of Persephone, and the other of the reception of Demeter, disguised in her sorrow, into the household of Celeus, where she becomes the nurse of his infant son Demophoon. Both stories belong to the religion of Eleusis, where this version of them seems intended to be sung. The place was sacred to Demeter and Persephone and its mysteries dealt particularly with the passage of souls to the nether world and with their habitation there. The pathetic beauty of the first fable—in which we can hardly abstain from seeing some symbolical meaning—expresses for us something of the mystic exaltation of the local rites; while the other tale of Celeus, his wife, his daughters, and his son, whom his nurse, the disguised goddess, almost succeeds in endowing with immortality, celebrates the ancient divine affinities of the chiefs of the Eleusinian state.

The first story is too familiar to need recounting; who has not heard of the gentle Persephone gathering flowers in the meadow and suddenly swallowed by the yawning earth and carried away to Hades, the god of the nether world, to share his sombre but sublime dominion over the shades?—a dignity of which she is not insensible, much as she grieves at the separation from her beloved mother; and how Demeter in turn is disconsolate and (in her wrath and despair at the indifference of the gods) conceals her divinity, refuses the fruits of the earth, and wanders about in the guise of an old woman, nursing her grief, until at last Zeus sends his messenger to Hades to effect a compromise; and Persephone, after eating the grain of pomegranate that obliges her to return yearly to her husband, is allowed to come back to the upper world to dwell for two-thirds of the year in her mother's company.