The highest fraud and the highest force appear to have been, according to original tradition, joined in the Evil One: they were separated in the Grecian forms of[196] that tradition. The Apollo of Homer was still one, with a great diversity of gifts; but mythological solecisms were already apparent in his character, like cracks in a stately building. This, too, was settled by disintegration; and in the later mythology there were many Apollos: other causes probably concurring to extend the multiplying process.
The same operation took effect upon the traditions of human character. Homer, with the finest powers of light and shade, has represented Helen as erring, and as penitent. The moral sense of later, less simple, and more deeply corrupted, times became impervious to a balanced conception of this kind. Accordingly, the one Helen was torn into two, and supplied material both for the guilty Helen, or εἴδωλον of Helen, at Troy, and for the innocent Helen detained in Egypt. In like manner, it became a question, probably first when Athens had grown great, how Minos could on the one hand be great and wise, and could on the other have made war and imposed tribute upon Attica. Hence the fable of two Minoses[197]: so that those who venerated the ancient traditions of Crete might still be allowed to cherish their pious sentiment, while, upon the other hand, the Athenian dramatists might exercise a fertile imagination in inventing circumstances of horror for the biography of the piratical enemy of their country.
It was, I conceive, an early example of this disintegration, which divided between Apollo and Diana different members of a primitive Messianic tradition. And, when we again combine the two personalities of the brother and the sister in one, the tradition resumes its completeness and roundness.
It is likely that the same mental process, which thus deposited the element of chastity in the person of the comparatively feeble Diana, also conferred on her the figure of the Huntress-Queen. For thus she lived in seclusion from the ways and haunts of man: and it was only by seclusion that she could be kept in maiden innocence.
But although the logical turn of the Greek mind soon came to place Apollo in morally disadvantageous contrast, under this particular head, both with his sister and with Pallas, he may be favourably compared with the other Homeric gods. There is something in the tradition that he was unshorn (ἀκερσεκόμης), which is evidently intended to connect him with the innocence of youth. And in Homer, unless it be by the legend of the Ninth Iliad, he is unharmed by connection with any of those relations which assign to Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, and Mercury, human children as the fruit of their indulgence.
Legend of Marpessa.
The reasons which lead me to suppose that the legend of Marpessa is not of a sensual character are these. The words used are[198];
ὅτε μιν ἑκάεργος ἀνήρπασε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων.
Now none of the numerous intrigues of the mythical deities with women include violence: they always appear, so far as the language used gives them a specific character, to have been voluntarily accepted connections[199]. It was not likely that the case of Apollo should have been the exception. Again, they are always mentioned as having led to the birth of children: but there is no such mention in this case, and Apollo has no human progeny. Lastly, the word used does not mean ravished, but seized and carried up. It nearly corresponds with the expression in the case of Ganymede[200],
τὸν καὶ ἀνηρείψαντο θεοὶ Διὶ οἰνοχοεύειν,