In the post-Homeric, but yet early, hymn to Venus, three beings alone in the wide universe are declared to be exempt from her sway. One of them is Hestie, who represents the impersonation of the marriage bond and the family life, and whose exemption therefore testifies directly to the nature of the dominion from which it frees her. The other two privileged beings are Pallas and Diana[192].
The character of Apollo in this respect is by some degrees less elevated: for he is an enjoying spectator of the scene described by the certainly licentious lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey, from which the goddesses in a body absent themselves. In the legend, too, of the Ninth Iliad we find that Apollo carried off the daughter of Marpessa, afterwards named by her parents Alcyone: but this passage, we shall see, is susceptible of an interpretation, which gives it another construction, and one certainly far more agreeable to the general character of this divinity. The epithet enjoyed by the Homeric Diana, expressive of purity, is accorded by Æschylus[193] (whose accuracy and truthfulness often recall those of Homer) to Apollo;
ἁγνόν τ’ Ἀπόλλω φυγάδ’ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ θεόν.
And here the question arises, how did it happen that, while the element of purity was strictly preserved in the tradition of the Wisdom, it was lost in the twin tradition of the Seed of the woman?
The Wisdom naturally, when impersonated, assumed the feminine form. Now the character of woman seems to be in itself better fenced against impurity than that of man. Her comparatively dependent condition, and the more direct operation of her failure in this respect on the marriage tie through the disorganization of the family, have had a further influence in giving an additional stringency to the ideas of mankind with respect to her observance of this virtue; a stringency not the less real, because it exemplifies the partial administration of a law essentially just, nor because it has become rather less conspicuous since the Gospel laid down with rigour, upon higher grounds, one law for all. Thus it remained possible to conceive a woman chaste, after the conditions of that idea had been almost lost in connection with the standard of excellence in the other sex: and this virtue, banished from the earth in general, still found here and there, even down to the fœtid corruption of the time of Martial[194], a last refuge in individual cases of untainted womanhood. This course of thought and feeling is exemplified in the Minerva of the Olympian Court.
Yet the idea was not simply extinguished in the twin tradition, of which Apollo is the chief representative. Submerged in him, a home is found for it in the appropriate form of Diana as his sister. The power and majesty of this form of the Messianic tradition fall chiefly to his share: she retains what was then, to the shame of our race, thought its less precious ingredient, freedom from sensual taint. Apollo would have been its natural vehicle: but in him, for the reason that he was a man, it was perhaps to the Greek mind inconceivable: a new vehicle was either framed, or adapted, in order to carry it: the idea of the great Deliverer that should be born was thus disintegrated, like other traditions, and like other historical characters, which men could not so readily embrace in their integrity.
As this is the first point in the discussion at which we have encountered an actual instance of this disintegration, it may be well to explain the meaning I attach to the term.
Disintegration of traditions.
It seems indubitable, that moral combinations, which are intelligible as well as credible to one age, may become incredible to another. Just as there are individual men at every epoch, who cannot believe in generosity and elevation of character, because they have in themselves no mirror which can reflect such qualities; so a generation ruled by more debased ideas cannot comprehend what another, influenced by less impure tendencies, could readily embrace. On the same principle, the Gospel gives not to the sagacious, but to the ‘pure in heart,’ the greatest triumph of mental vision, namely, that ‘they shall see God[195].’
Accordingly, when it happens that a tradition becomes unintelligible to the mind of a given people, it is lost. It may be lost by the disappearance even of its outward form and shell. Or it may be lost by the alteration of its meaning while its words are retained. Or the work of destruction may take another turn: it may be lost by being torn into pieces; the effect being that one old tradition disappears, and more than one partial substitute for it is created.