12. From this view of the subject we may explain the singular story of the contest of Apollo with Linus, and of the defeat and consequent death of the latter.[1433] For this purpose it will be necessary to state shortly my ideas respecting the real character of Linus. Linus, then, the subject of the song called by his name, was originally a god of an elementary religion (in which there were numerous symbols to signify the death of all animated life): he was nearly connected with Narcissus (i.e., the Torpid), whose tomb was shown at Thebes and Argos, at which last place matrons and maidens bewailed him in the month Arneius, as a boy brought up among lambs and torn in pieces by dogs.[1434] The song of lamentation for the untimely death of Linus, the much-loved boy,[1435] was sung to the [pg 354] harp in a low and subdued voice, and listened to with pleasure in the times of Homer and Hesiod,[1436] although then, perhaps, the air was not always very melancholy. But in after times this was its predominant character, as is proved by the names Αἴλινος and Οἰτόλινος.[1437] It was a great favourite with the husbandmen,[1438] who were generally aboriginal inhabitants. In this point there was a resemblance between the usages of ancient Greece and Asia Minor, where religious dirges of this description, different, indeed, in different districts, but having every where the same mournful tune, were customary.[1439] Such were, for instance, the lament of the tribe of Doliones;[1440] the Hylas, sung at fountains in the country of the Mysians and Bithynians[1441] (probably the same as the Mysian song);[1442] the song of the beautiful Bormus, whose watery death was deplored by the husbandmen of Mariandyne on the flute in the middle of summer;[1443] of Lityerses, whom the Phrygians bewailed yearly during the time of harvest at Celænæ, the native place of Marsyas;[1444] and which, with the melancholy Carian strain, was played to the Phrygian flute.[1445] Besides these there were the Gingras, or song of Adonis, and the Maneros, the rustic song of Pelusium in Egypt, which Herodotus compares [pg 355] with the Linus.[1446] And even at Cyprus the contest of the two opposite kinds of music was in some measure renewed; there being a tradition that Cinyras, the priest of Aphrodite, and composer of the mournful strains in honour of Adonis, had, like Marsyas and Linus, been overcome and put to death by Apollo.[1447]
Thus we behold Apollo the representative of the severe, even, and simple music of the Greeks, in contest with that impassioned spirit, alternating between the extremes of fury and apathy, which the professors of an elementary religion sought to represent even in their music; and consequently this fable also harmonizes with the fundamental principles of the religion of Apollo.
13. Having now ascertained the general character of the music employed in the worship of Apollo, we shall endeavour to obtain a more accurate knowledge of its varieties.
One of the most ancient species of composition (in which Chrysothemis the Cretan and Philammon were said to have contended at Delphi) was a hymn to Apollo;[1448] which we must suppose to have been composed in the ancient Doric dialect, and sung simply to the cithara. In reference to its musical execution, this hymn was also called a nome,[1449] the invention of which was ascribed to Apollo himself.[1450] At Delos [pg 356] also there were nomes, which were sung at the cyclic choral dances, and were attributed to Olen, another representative of the ancient poetry of hymns.[1451] The general character of these was composure and regularity;[1452] the measure was anciently (as we know from certain testimony) only hexameter:[1453] which agrees well with the fact that the origin of the hexameter was derived from Pytho.[1454] In the account that Philammon, the ancient composer of hymns, had placed choruses of young women round the altar, who sang the birth of Latona and her children in lyric measures (ἐν μέλεσι),[1455] the nomes of Philammon,[1456] as improved by Terpander the ancient lyric poet, appear to be confounded with the original ones; since these, after the fashion of the most ancient composers, contained only hexameters.[1457] The ancient religious poets mentioned in these accounts, Chrysothemis, Philammon, and Olen, may be looked on as Dorians with the same certainty as the founders of the temples of Tarrha, Delphi, and Patara, to which they particularly belonged.[1458] The language also of the poems ascribed to [pg 357] them must have been Doric; though indeed the fact of a poetical use of this dialect before the historic times will not agree with the predominant, though perhaps not well-grounded notions respecting the progress of poetry in Greece.
14. That the pæan was a song of thanksgiving for deliverance has been mentioned above. With respect, however, to the manner in which it was performed, we learn from Homer that it was sung after the sacrificial feast,[1459] when the goblets were carried round after the sacred libation; and this was also the case at Sparta and Athens.[1460] It was generally sung in a sitting posture, although in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo that god is represented as accompanying the Cretans who sing in a measured step.[1461] At Sparta it was danced in choruses.[1462] On the whole it required a regular and sedate measure,[1463] even when it assumed a more lively air, as for the nome, and the solemn σπονδειακὸν, sung at libations.[1464]
But the most lively dance which accompanied the songs used in the worship of Apollo, was that termed the hyporcheme.[1465] In this, besides the chorus of singers who usually danced around the blazing altar, [pg 358] several persons were appointed to accompany the action of the poem with an appropriate pantomimic display (ὑπορχεῖσθαι). Homer himself bears witness to the Cretan origin of this custom, since the Cnosian dance, represented by Hephæstus on the shield of Achilles, appears from the description to have been a kind of hyporcheme,[1466] and hence all dances of this description were called Cretan.[1467] From that island they passed at an early period over to Delos, where, even in Lucian's time, the wanderings of Latona and her island, with their final repose, were represented in the above manner.[1468] At the same time also probably took place the custom mentioned in the hymn to the Delian Apollo as characterizing the songs of the young women of that island; viz., that they represented the voices and gestures of every nation:[1469] perhaps they introduced the peculiar dances of the various countries which Latona visited in her wanderings. The ludicrous, and at the same time complicated dance (γέρανος) which Theseus is said first to have danced with his crew round the altar at Delos,[1470] was probably of the same description. All that can be clearly ascertained [pg 359] respecting the rhythm of these compositions is that the hexameter was altogether unfitted to their playful and joyous character.[1471] But both the hyporcheme and pæan were first indebted for their systematic improvement to the Doric musicians, Xenodamus of Sparta, and Thaletas of Elyrus in Crete (about 620 B.C.),[1472] who first brought the Cretic or Pæonic metre into general use; which names point out beyond doubt its Cretan origin, and its use in pæans.[1473] Cretics form a quick and lively, though a pleasing and by no means inharmonious[1474] rhythm, being particularly adapted to rapid motion. Thus a joyous and agreeable harmony was added, at the festivals of Apollo, to the serious and solemn music, although the softness and insipidity of several Ionian and Asiatic tunes were, without doubt, always rejected.
Thus, if we except the purifying and propitiatory rites, the festivals of Apollo bore the character of a serene and joyful mind, every other attribute of the deity being lost in those of victory and mercy. Hence in his statues at Delphi[1475] and Delos[1476] he was [pg 360] represented as bearing in his hand the Graces, who gave additional splendour and elegance to his festivals by the dance, music, and banquet.[1477]
15. We have as yet omitted the mention of two great national festivals celebrated at Amyclæ by the Spartans in honour of the chief deity of their race,[1478] viz., the Hyacinthia and the Carnea, from a belief that they do not properly belong to Apollo. That the worship of the Carnean Apollo, in which both were included, was derived from Thebes, whence it was brought over by the Ægidæ to Amyclæ, has been proved in a former work;[1479] our present object is to show, from the symbols and rites of this worship, that it was originally derived more from the ancient religion of Demeter than from that of Apollo. The youth Hyacinthus, whom the Carnean Apollo accidentally struck with a quoit,[1480] evidently took his name from the flower (a dark-coloured species of iris), which in the ancient symbolical language was an emblem of death; and the fable of his death is clearly a relic of an ancient elementary religion. Now the hyacinth most frequently occurs, in this sense, in the worship of Demeter; thus, for example, it was under the name Κοσμοσάνδαλος sacred to Demeter Chthonia at Hermione.[1481] We find further proof of this in the ancient sculptures with which the grave, and at the [pg 361] same time the altar of Hyacinthus, was adorned: the artists indeed appear to have completely comprehended the spirit of the worship. We find Demeter, Cora, Pluto, and the Cadmean Dionysus, with Ino and Semele, and Hyacinthus himself, together with a sister named Polybœa.[1482] Polybœa is hardly, if at all, distinct from Cora,[1483] whom Lasus of Hermione called Melibœa. To this may be added the sacrifices to the dead, and lamentations customary on the first day[1484] (which were forbidden at all other festivals of Apollo); nightly processions,[1485] and several other detached traces of the symbols of Demeter and Dionysus,[1486] which, by an attentive observer, may be easily distinguished from those of Apollo. The time of the festival was also different: it took place on the longest day of the Spartan month Hecatombeus, which corresponds to the Attic Hecatombæon,[1487] at the time when Hylas was invoked on the mountains of Bithynia, and the tender productions of nature droop their languid heads.
The Carnean festival took place, as it appears, in the following month to the Hyacinthian, equally in honour of Apollo of Amyclæ. But the Doric religion seems here to have preponderated, and to have supplanted the elementary symbols so evident in the Hyacinthia. The Carnea was, as far as we know, altogether a warlike festival, similar to the Attic Boëdromia. [pg 362] It lasted nine days, during which time nine tents were pitched near the city, in each of which nine men lived, for the time of the festival, in the manner of a military camp. There is no reference to an elementary religion except some obscure ceremonies of the priest Agetes and the Carneatæ.[1488] This leads us to suppose that at the union of the Amyclæan worship, introduced by the Ægidæ, with the Doric worship of Apollo at Sparta, the Hyacinthia preserved more of the peculiarities of the former, the Carnea of the latter, although the sacred rites of both were completely united. At the same time we do not deny the difficulty of inquiring into the origin and primitive form of ceremonies the history of which is so complicated; and this alone must excuse the shortness of our account respecting these two festivals.
16. Finally, the manner in which Apollo is represented in sculpture, particularly by the ancient artists, may assist our investigation into the ideas and sentiments on which his worship was founded. Apollo was a subject peculiarly adapted for sculpture. Since his connexion with elementary religion was slight, and there was nothing mystic in his character, the sculptors were soon able to fix upon a regular cast of features, to distinguish him from other deities: for Apollo, not only in poetry, but in the fables most nearly connected with his worship, is generally represented as a human god, and in all his actions and sufferings more nearly connected with the heroes than any other divinity. But before this perfection and conventional uniformity of the art, the early sculptors were much assisted in [pg 363] characterizing the statues of Apollo by his numerous and significant symbols, such as the bow, the cithara, the laurel, &c.: and thus they were able, in some measure, to give an idea of the power and properties of Apollo, though merely in stiff and rude images of wood and stone.