[1] My special debt to Hegel's Philosophy of History in this paragraph ought to be acknowledged.
[2] I do not mean by this that one poet must have composed both epics, but that each bears upon it the mark of unity in conception and execution. Whether the same poet produced both is a different question, and I am inclined to accept the Odyssey as a later work.
[3] The date of Pheidon is in truth unfixed. According to recent calculations, he may have celebrated the 28th and not the 8th Olympiad. The involved alteration in his date would bring him into closer connection with the other despots.
[4] The Margites Eiresione, attributed by the Greeks to Homer, contain possibly the earliest fragments of iambic verses.
[5] Satire, it is well known, was permitted at some of the festivals of Demeter; and the legend of the maid Iambé, who alone could draw a smile from Demeter, after she had lost Persephone, seems to symbolize the connection of iambic recitations with the cultus of this goddess.
[6] Nothing overmuch; measure is best; know thyself; know the right moment; against necessity not even gods fight.
[7] Recent criticism renders the age and country of the critic Longinus doubtful.
CHAPTER II.
MYTHOLOGY.
The Notion of a Systematic Pantheon.—Homer and Hesiod.—Mythology before Homer.—Supposed Conditions of the Mythopœic Age.—Vico.—The Childhood of the World.—Goethe's Boyhood.—Mythology is a Body of Rudimentary Thought, Penetrated with the Spirit of the Nation.—Different Views of the Greek Myths.—Grote.—Relics of a Primitive Revelation.—The Symbolic Hypothesis.—Rationalism and Euhemerus.—Fetichism.—Poetic Theory.—The Linguistic Theory.—Comparative Philology.—Solar Theory.—The Myth of Herakles: its Solar Interpretation—its Ethical Significance.—Summary of the Points Suggested with Regard to Mythology.—Mediæval Myths.—The Action of the Greek Intelligence upon Mythology: in Art—in Philosophy.—Persistence of the National Polytheism.—Homer Allegorized at Alexandria.—Triumph of Christianity.—The Greek Pantheon in the Middle Ages.—Greek Mythology Recovers Poetic and Artistic Value in the Renaissance.