GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECL.*

Of this History there is published only the standing, to comprehend Greece. But his History, esrlier portion: but it contains sufficient assurance with its manifold excellencies, belongs to the that the work will be the greatest regarding that Academy and the Scholar. Not that he is blamemost momentous epoch in the development of able for being a Scholar ; but the vistORIAN, who humanity, which Europe has yet produced. In re- should involve and master the scholar, has not, quisite knowledge and the power of appreciating it, in this case, quite accomplished the latter feat. in complete acquaintance with the materials on Much of his important work belongs accordingly to which the history of Greece must be founded, and his cell at Cambridge ; and when reading many in the capacity to sift these with the sagacity of of its chapters, one might easily be deceived into the true critic, and to arrange, value, and expose the feeling that he was gathering most admirable them, according to the laws of the highest art, lore from an article in the Classical Museum. In Nr. Grote is inferior to none of his illustrious the early part of it especially, and, indeed, all predecessors. In that universal sympathy with the through, we have Archæology instead of History. throbbings of man's heart in all circumstances Not that his right-hearted sympathies with what and conditions, without which no one can be a is worthy and noble ever flag: but by not enough historian, he is as accomplished as the best. But subjugating his scholarly nature, so much is often Le superadds a knowledge of practical affairs, and given to critical and laborious inquiry as to partithe concomitant ability to select what is impor- cular facts, that the great order and march of his tact in history, to descry the MOVING and DETER- History seems overlaid. How painfully, for inMINING CAUSE in the progress of a people, and to stance, or rather in one sense how meritoriously, separate it from simply concurrent and compara- does he dissert on all those shadowy tribes which, tirely unimportant phenomena, which, among the at the dawn of the Greek world, came from one writers on Greece, we have hitherto sought in | knows not where, and concurred in peopling the rain.

Hellenic lands! And yet what boots it? In so It were the worst of ingratitude to speak, even far as there explained, these separate people had by implication, slightingly of Bishop THIRLwALI's no cognizable separate or distinct peculiarities, Fery meritorious work. Until that elaborate book which, afterwards unfolding themselves, made was written, we had nothing in England to which Greece what it was. No doubt they, too, like all the title of the History of Greece could be given, human races, had especial characteristics, and as without a profanation of the name. Gillies’s is little doubt that the sum of them conspired to proa mere compilation, and that by a man-worthy duce the final, harmonious whole; but, unless such enough, as matters go, of the station of royal characteristics can be discerned, and their conse"historiographer, or, if chance had so ordered it, quences traced, it is of value only to the Antiquary leren of poet laureate — who, during his whole or Ethnographer, to be informed, through laborious existence, never cherished a thought which could research, in what valley these people previously lead to any Infinite larger than the contents of lived, or through what mountain pass they emibiz “ foursquare Study; and MiTFORD only grated to novel seats. Bishop Thirlwall's work will cared for the Greeks in so far as they could render long be valued as a storehouse not of authentic facts the acceptable service of, through their mistakes merely, but of acute and enlarged criticism, though and the failure of their earnest struggles, aiding him for the foregoing reasons we cannot regard it in in eternizing a wretched Pitt politics :-the im- the historical line as a book of finished art. mertal sacrifice of Leonidas, and the heroic, though This early portion of Mr. Grote's history is perdespairing bursts of Demosthenic invective and haps the most difficult and trying of all

, as the trumpet-tongued summonses even to a hopeless beginning of a long development; and it is occupied resistance, smelling democratic in his eyes and with the Myths, that in colours, dazzling and varied offensive to that selfish, sceptical, utterly negative, as light reflected by the fresh dewdrop, filled the and all-shivering aristocraticism which they called morning of Greece. But at this very outset we have the conservatism, (save the mark !) of the idol of the strongest proof of the historian's practical sense; the then statesmen of England! Thirlwall, in brave for at once, and without disguise, he presents these and indignant recoil, spurned these puerilities and old tales of gods and men, the genealogies acts and desecrations utterly away, and tried to know functions of the deities, and the legends of the toils Greece

, so that, without regard to passing events, of demi-gods, and the wars of heroes, simply and by that great people he might himself be taught :- avowedly as mythic and legendary, and not historihe is a man of a large heart, and therefore ever cal at all

. It is true, this idea, at the present time, open to instruction by any tidings from the uni- involves no originality ; but the acceptance, or, at Terse

. He did not indeed — although also well least, presentation of it, in its due completeness, able—write books on os or so; through which has not been common in our latest and best hismistake he is now lean Bishop of St. David's, tories. While stating the truth, writers hitherto instead of swelling with the purple and turtle of have felt it necessary to say much, like Niebuhr, the See of London ; being quite able, notwith- in demonstration of it ; and unless, perhaps, in

Grate. 2 vols. London: Murray.

A History of Greece: 1. Legendary Greece ; II. Grecian History to the reign of Peisistratus at Athens. By George

the case of ARNOLD, the reality of the myth or less moment than his thorough conviction of legend, has been so mixed up with discussions its' import as "the root of subsequent Greek on its pretended historical grounds, that, in com- development. With every people, indeed, whert pany, they have both vanished as shadows. the higher and imaginative faculties prepouThe Myths, however, are no shadows here. derate, whether they are practically unfolded or They are subjected to examination indeed, but not (the Romans were very little such) somesystem only that the tradition may be represented as it of myths and legends is the source from which was, and those august images exactly reproduced, the most important phenomena of their subsequent out of belief in which the Greek intellect worked existence spring. As an extreme instance, look its long and glorious course. Uranos, Kropos at the Jews. The religion of that people has long and the Titans, Zeus, Apollo, and Athêne, Prome- been essentially mythical. For all purposes theus the god-defier, demi-gods without number, reality, what was universal in Judassm—those the fearful Pelopids, the Argonauts, the wars of universal features in the age of their patriarche, Thebes, and the legend of Troy divine, all are and the grand lessons of their seers and lyrists, here, robed in majesty,' even as we knew and has, for its votaries, ceased to exist; having givet lived among them while young, before our faith, way before interpretations of certain parts of the so full and confiding, in Helen's youth and beauty, Sacred Volume, having no more true foundation and in the struggles, and victories, and wander- than one may find among the legends of old Briings, and fateful doom of the confederated heroes, tain concerning the return of Arthur and Excakwas questioned by the angular demonstrations of bur : and yet, through the weight of these myths, the foolish, ruthless, ice-begotten Dro!

this people has for centuries been voluntarily exNot only, however, is the mythology unkisto- truded from amongst other nations, and with allits rical, but it must be accepted, with Mr. Grote, as great and undeniable qualities consented to remain a primary and inexplicable fact in the history of as a spectacle. Not, even in circumstances most that people. "It were'as easy to say why a Greek favourable for their extermination, can old mywas not a Celt or Negro, as why, instead of en-thologies be easily rooted out and rendered ineffecclosing victims in an osier tower for a holocaust, tual over future events. A novel creed regarding or worshipping some devilish fetish, he peopled divine things, impressed by a more enlightened the world with riant deities, conversed with people, which is certainly the most powerful of nymphs and naiads, listened with reverence to the all means of change, --has so seldom fall effect, voice of Pan as the old forests swung in the that we rather find the old mythology transbreeze, or saw the great god Helios careering planting into the midst of the new belief its through the sky in his chariot, and gazing all the more fixed forms and ideas, and claiming, while on favourite haunts, where his beautiful among its systems and traditions, a place under cattle grazed. As the mythology is, so we must new, appellations, for the ancient heroes. Pagan take it; just as we accept the seed from which the Europe, for instance, became Christian ; but tree is to spring, nor look deeper into the myste- then Christianity became more than half Ps. ries of its organization. From the nature of the gan, of which potent relics still exist in the tiara tree, it is no more possible to deduce the character of the Pope and the peror's triple crown and organization of the seed, than, from the nature But the Greek mythology was never disturbed of the Greek race, to evolve its primary notions or affected by external influence. It remained concerning the gods. These notions are, in fact, during their entire existence, as their first among our first discernible elements of its nature, inheritance from the unknown'; and it was which we must take as we find it, springing up the effort through all succeeding epochs of their inexplicably, but gifted with power unsurpassed, philosophy, poetry, and art, to reconcile it to themand a freshness never known before amid some selves, and themselves to it, in their interpretations obscure valleys in a nook of Europe. How the of the manifold experiences regarding the material phenomenon came, tell we cannot ; nor, indeed, is order of nature, and the moral, social, and pt it easy to comprehend it after it has appeared. litical feelings and requirements of Man, which We approach it only by recalling—he who can sprang up with the growth of civilisation. The part --the springtime of his own youth. To the early of Mr. Grote's work which unquestionably struck Greek, the daisy spoke as to the child ; the mur- us most, is that elaborate sixteenth chapter, in mur of the stream was a companion voice ; God which he unfolds the leading principles of this bent the rainbow, and frowned in the storm. Alas! progress in all its phases. The following extract that through the weight of custom, those joyous is, in many points of view, very emphatic, and is reminiscences become so faded, that the Greek a good specimen of his labours. He is unfolding mythology has sunk with most, not merely into the phenomena of the growing scission of the what is scientifically false--for so are the realest spirit of physical inquiry and the Homeric miyof childhood's inspirations—but into the chaos of thology. bizarre and unintelligible things !

Nor was it alone as an ethical and social critie that The pansy at my feet

11.1?!!!!

Xenophanês stood distinguished. He was one of a grest Doth the same tale repeat :

and eminent triad --Thales and Pythagoras being the Whither is fled the visionary gleam,

others -- who, in the sixth century before the Christina Where is it now—the glory and the dream? era, first opened up those veins of speculative philosophy

which occupied afterwards 50 large a portion of Greina But we esteem Mr. Grote's account of the intellectual energy. Of the material differences between oritical position of the Greek mythology, of the three, I do riot here speak ; I regard them only is

rature.

ference to the Homeric and Hesiodic philosophy which | employment of abstract words, substituting metaphysiceceded them, and from which all three deviated by a cal cidola in the place of polytheism, and to an exaggerFP, perhaps the most remarkable in all the history of ated application of certain narrow physical theories, we hilosophy. In the scheme of ideas common to Homer are to remember that nothing else could be expected od to the Hesiodic Theogony (as has been already from the scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that ated,) we find nature distributed into a variety of per- the most profound study of the human mind points out nal agencies, administered according to the free-will such transition as an inevitable law of intellectual prodifferent Beings more or less analogous to man; each gress. At present we have to compare them only with

these Beings haying his own character, attributes, and that state of the Greek mind which they partially superowers, his own sources of pain and pleasure, and his seded, and with which they were in decided opposition. wn especial sympathies or antipathies with human The rudiments of physical science were conceived and ndividuals ; each being determined to act or forbear, to developed among superior men; but the religious feelrant favour or inflict injury in his own department of ing of the mass was averse to them; and the aversion, benomena, according as men, or perhaps other Beings though gradually mitigated, never wholly died away. nalogous to himself, might conciliate or offend him. Some of the philosophers were not backward in chargThe Gods, properly so called, (those who bore a proper 'ing others with irreligion; while the inultitude seems to ame and received some public or family worship,) were have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all be most commanding and capital members amidst this or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with ast network of agents, visible and invisible, spread over determinate conditions of occurrence, which scientific he universe. The whole view of nature was purely study implies, and which they could not reconcile with Sigious and subjective, the spontaneous suggestion of their belief in the agency of the gods, to whom they the early mind : it proceeded from the instinctive ten- were constantly praying for special succour and blessings. dencies of the feelings and imagination to transport, to The discrepancy between the scientific and the relithe world without, the familiar type of free-will and gious point of view was dealt with differently by differconscious personal action : above all, it took deep hold ent philosophers. Thus Socrates openly admitted it, of the emotions, from the widely extended sympathy and assigned to each a distinct and independent province. saich it so perpetually called forth between man and He distributed phenomena into two classes : one wherein

the connexion of antecedent and consequent was invariThe first attempt to disenthral the philosophic intel-able and ascertainable by human study, and therefore heet from this all-personifying religious faith, and to con- future results accessible to a well-instructed foresight; stitute a method of interpreting nature distinct from the the other, and those, too, the most comprehensive and pontaneous inspirations of untaught minds, is to be important, which the gods had reserved for themselves found in Thalés, Xenophanes and Pythagoras, in the and their own unconditional agency, wherein there was axth century before the Christian era. It is in them no invariable or ascertainable sequence, and where the that we first find the idea of Person tacitly set aside or result could only be foreknown by some omen, prophecy, limited, and an impersonal Nature conceived as the or other special inspired communication from themselves. wject of study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus Each of these classes was essentially distinct, and reand Tethys, parents of many gods and of the Oceanic quired to be looked at and dealt with in a manner radiographs, together with the avenging goddess Styx, are cally incompatible with the other. Socrates held it translated into the material substance water, or, as we wrong to apply the scientific interpretation to the latter, saght rather to say, the Fluid: and Thalês set himself to or the theological interpretation to the former. Physics prove that water was the primitive element, out of which and astronomy, in his opinion, belonged to the divine all the different natural substances had been formed. He, class of phenomena, in which human research was in33 well as Xenophanes and Pythagoras, started the sane, fruitless, and impious. problem of physical philosophy, with its objective char- On the other hand, Hippocrates, the contemporary of aeter and invariable laws, to be discoverable by a pro- Socratès, denied the discrepancy, and merged into one per and methodical application of the human intellect. those two classes of phenomena,

-- the divine and the The Greek word burii, denoting nature, and its deri- scientifically determinable, - which the latter had put ratives physics and physiology, unknown in that large asunder. Hippocrates treated all phenomena as at once seuse to Homer, or Hesiod, as well as the word Kosmos both divine and scientifically determinable. In discussto denote the mundane system, first appears with these ing certain peculiar bodily disorders found among the philosophers. The elemental analysis of Thales -- the Scythians, he observes, « The Seythians themselves she unchangeable cosmic substance, varying only in ascribe the cause of this to God, and reverence and appearance, but not in reality, as suggested by Xeno- bow down to such sufferers, each man fearing that he phanés, – and the geometrical and arithmetical combi- may suffer the like : and I myself think too that these Bations of Pythagoras,-- all these were different ways affections, as well as all others, are divine: no one # approaching the explanation of physical phenomena, among them is either more divine or more human than and each gave rise to a distinct school or succession of another, but all are on the same footing, and all divine; philosophers

. But they all agreed in departing from nevertheless each of them has its own physical condithe primitive method, and in recognising determinate tions, and not one occurs without such physical condiproperties, invariable sequences, and objective truth, in tions." hature - either independent of willing or designing A third distinguished philosopher of the same day, Agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indis- | Anaxagoras, allegorized Zeus and the other personal pensable subject-matter and as a limiting condition. gods, and proclaimed the doctrine of one common perA sophanes disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting vading Mind, as having first established order and systhe gods, and pronounced that no man could have any tem in the mundane aggregate, which had once been in beans of ascertaining when he was right and when he a state of chaos, -- and as still manifesting its uninter

trong, in affirmations respecting them: while rupted agency for wise and good purposes. This genePythagoras represents in part the scientific tendencies ral doctrine obtained much admiration from Plato and

of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of Aristotle : but they at the same time remarked with special fraternities for religious and ascetio observance, surprise, that Anaxagoras never made any

use at all of which became diffused

throughout Greece in the sixth his own general doctrine for the explanation of the centary before the Christian era : this was another phenomena

of nature; that he looked for nothing but point which placed him in antipathy

with the simple, physical causes and connecting laws, so that in fact the Banconscious and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as spirit of his particular researches was not materially let these distinguished men, when they ceased to fol- ever might be the difference in their general theories

. above the primitive instinct

of tracing the phenomena of His investigations in meteorology and astronomy, treathet me to personal and designing agents, passed over, ing the heavenly bodies as subjects for ealenlation, have pot at once to induction and observation, but to a mis- / been already

noticed as offensive, not only to the gene

A well as with the current legends.

ral public of Greece, but even to Socrates himself among at the end of his life for an irreligious man. But we them : he was tried at Athens, and seems to have see, by the defence which Xenophon as well as Plata escaped condemnation only by voluntary exile.

gives for him, that the Athenian public really evaThe three eminent men just named, all essentially sidered him, in spite of his own disclaimer, as honodifferent from each other, may be taken as illustrations geneous with Anaxagoras and the other physeal of the philosophical mind of Greece during the last half inquirers, because he had applied similar scienta of the fifth century B.C. Scientific pursuits had acquired reasonings to moral and social phenomena : they lookid a powerful hold, and adjusted themselves in various upon him with the same displeasure as he himself ki: ways with the prevalent religious feelings of the age. towards the physical philosophers, and we canno: bat Both Hippocratês and Anaxagoras modified their ideas admit that in this respect they were more unfortunate's of the divine agency so as to suit their thirst for scienti- consistent than he was. It is true that the moje fic research. According to the former, the gods were defence adopted by Socrates contributed much to the the really efficient agents in the production of all pheno- verdict found against him, and that he was further mena, ---- the mean and indifferent not less than the weighed down by private offence given to powerft: terrific or tutelary: being thus alike connected with all individuals and coteries; but all these separate antipa. phenomena, they were specially associated with none; thies found their best account in swelling the cry again: and the proper task of the inquirer was, to find out those him as an over-curious sceptic and as an impious Erules and conditions by which (he assumed) their novator. agency was always determined, and according to which Now the scission thus produced between the superar it might be foretold. And this led naturally to the pro- minds and the multitude, in consequence of the develer ceeding which Plato and Aristotle remark in Anaxa- ment of science and the scientific point of view, is goras,--that the all-governing and Infinite Mind, having fact of great moment in the history of Greek progre*, been announced in sublime language at the beginning of and forms an important contrast between the age et his treatise, was afterwards led out of sight, and never

Homer and Hesiod and that of Thucydides; though i applied to the explanation of particular phenomena, point of fact even the multitude, during this later age, being as much consistent with one modification of were partially modified by those very scientific rjers nature as with another. Now such a view of the divine which they regarded with disfavour. And we me! agency could never be reconciled with the religious feel. keep in view the primitive religious faith, once universa: ings of the ordinary Grecian believer, even as they stood and unobstructed, but subsequently disturbed by the in the time of Anaxagoras; still less could it have been intrusions of science; we must follow the great change, reconciled with those of the Homeric man, more than as well in respect to enlarged intelligence as to refizethree centuries earlier. To him Zeus and Athênê were

ment of social and ethical feeling, among the Greeks, conceived as definite Persons, objects of special reve- from the Hesiodic times downward, in order to render rence, hopes, and fears, and animated with peculiar some account of the altered manner in which the feelings, sometimes of favour, sometimes of wrath, to- ancient mythes came to be dealt with. These mythese wards himself or his family or country; they were pro- the spontaneous growth of a creative and personifying pitiated by his prayers, and prevailed upon to lend him interpretation of nature, had struck root in Grecis succour in danger, while they were offended and dis associations at a time when the national faith requires posed to bring evil upon him if he omitted to render no support from what we call evidence. They were thanks or sacrifice : this sense of individual communion now submitted, not simply to a feeling, imagining, and with, and dependence upon them, was the essence of his believing public, but also to special classes of instructed faith. And with that faith, the all-pervading Mind men, - philosophers, historians, ethical teachers, at proclaimed by Anaxagoras, —- which had no more con- critics, -- and to a public partially modified by their cern with one man or one phenomenon than with ideas as well as improved by a wider practical exp.another, -- could never be brought into harmony; nor rience. They were not intended for such an audience; could the believer, while he prayed with sincerity for they had ceased to be in complete harmony even with special blessings or protection from the gods, acquiesce the lower strata of intellect and sentiment,-much more in the doctrine of Hippocratês, that their agency was

so with the higher. But they were the cherished governed by constant laws and physical conditions. inheritance of a past time; they were interwoven in 3

That radical discord between the mental impulses of thousand ways with the religious faith, the patriote science and religion, which manifests itself so decisively retrospect, and the national worship, of every Greeinz during the most cultivated ages of Greece, and which community ; the general type of the mythe was the harassed more or less so many of the philosophers, pro- ancient, familiar, and universal form of Grecian thought, duced its most afflicting result in the condemnation of which even the most cultivated men had imbibed in Socrates by the Athenians. According to the remark- their childhood from the poets, and by which they pere able passage recently cited from Xenophòn, it will to a certain degree unconsciously enslaved. Taken as appear that Socrates agreed with his countrymen in a whole, the mythes had acquired prescriptive and denouncing physical speculations as impious, – that he ineffaceable possession : to attack, call in question, er recognised the religious process of discovery as a pecu- repudiate the entire bundle of them, was a task painti liar branch, co-ordinate with the scientific, --- and that

even to undertake, and far beyond the power of any ! he laid down a theory, of which the basis was, the con

to accomplish. fessed divergence of these two processes from the

The thoughtful reader will easily recognise, in beginning, thereby seemingly satisfying the exigencies this passage, not a mere narrative of facts, but a of religious hopes and fears on the one hand, and those complete command over the causes of the struggles of reason, in her ardour for ascertaining the invariable of the mind of Greece. It is a sketch merely, laws of phenomena, on the other. We may remark that the theory of this religious and extra-scientific but one by a master, and foreshadows the hisprocess of discovery was at that time sufficiently com- torian's full picture, when he shall deal in detail plete; for Socrates could point out, that those anomalous with the most momentous period of the ancien and into which science was forbidden to pry, were yet to demur: Mr. Grote clearly adopts M. CONTE phenomena which the gods had reserved for themselves, philosophy. At one thing alone we are incline

! accessible to the seekings of the pious man, through three historical epochs — the religious

, or rather munication which divine benevolence vouchsafed to the mythical, the metaphysical, and the positive, si keep open. Considering thus to how great an extent characteristic of all the transitions of humaa Socrates was identified in feeling with the religious thought regarding the universe ; and he signaliza public of Athens, and considering moreover that his the Greeks as having reached, and remained af, performance of open religious duties was assiduous, we might wonder, as Xenophôn does wonder, how it could the metaphysical age. M. Comte's view, even in have happened that the Athenian dikasts muistook him regard to the progress of philosophy en masse,

រ

incomplete, inasmuch as his positive epoch is not, the demigod seamen of Jasôn and the ship Argô, but and cannot be the last. Perfect as a representa- also the Centaur Cheiròn, the hundred-headed Typhốs, tion of the representible or phantasmal, it yet the Chimæra, the Amazons and the Hyperboreans, all

the giant Alcyoneus, Antaus, Bellerophôn and Pegasus, leaves us amidst a display of mere orderly and appear painted on the same canvass, and touched with associated forms and phantasms ; nor goes one the same colours, as the men of the recent and recorded step towards replying to a question which, being past, Phalaris and Kræsus ; only they are thrown back unanswered, leaves philosophy a caput mortuum, to a greater distance in the perspective. The heroic and incapable of ever satisfying the essential Argeian, &c. families, whose present members the poet

ancestors of those great Eginetan, Thessalian, Thêban, and primary demands which the human spirit celebrates for their agonistic victories, sympathize with makes of it;—the question, viz., where and whence the exploits and second the efforts of their descendants : is the reality of these shadows, how are they the inestimable value of a privileged breed and of the joined with the ABSOLUTE and UNREPRESENTIBLE

stamp of nature is powerfully contrasted with the impo

tence of unassisted teaching and practice. The power their sequences changed into connexions, and their and skill of the Argeian Thexus and his relatives as outward order into effects springing, like the wrestlers, are ascribed partly to the fact that their human mind, from an unchangeable and endur- ancestor Pamphaes in aforetime had hospitably enter

Perhaps ing cause? The epoch whose characteristic shall tained the Tyndarids Castor and Pollux. be, the search for and philosophic definition of mythical faith is afforded when he notices a guilty in

however the strongest proof of the sincerity of Pindaris this necessary connexion, has never yet histori-cident with shame and repugnance, but with an unwillcally developed itself: but, inasmuch as the ing confession of its truth, as in the case of the fratriminds and speculations of the highest thinkers cide committed on Phocus by his brothers Pêleus and are not limited to any process of mere historic

Telamôn.

Æschylus and Sophoclês exhibit the same spontaneevolution, and seeing that even epochs themselves

ous and uninquiring faith as Pindar in the legendary are actually never pure, but rather exhibit, in antiquities of Greece, taken as a whole; but they allow reality, a preponderance only of some particular themselves greater license as to the details. "It was method or idea,

- it is, in our view, a question of indispensable to the success of their compositions that grave doubt, whether Plato, and some others of the they should recast and group anew the legendary

events, preserving the names and general understood grand intellects of Greece, have not often passed relation of those characters whom they introduced : the through M. Comte's positive era, not indeed experi- demand for novelty of combination increased with the mentally, but with a perfect appreciation of its multiplication of tragic spectacles at Athens : morespirit, and settled with vigorous unmythic me- over the feelings of the Athenians, ethical as well as thod among the grander and solemn inquiries reproduction of many among the ancient stories.

political, had become too critical to tolerate the literal occupying that farther period, which, in so far as Both of them exalted rather than lowered the dignity we yet see, is the highest and the last.

of the mythical world, as something divine and heroic One more extract tempts us : it is a view ofhe rather than human: indeed the Prometheus of Æschylus efforts of the poets to develop the mythology.

is a far more exalted conception than his keen-witted

namesake in Hesiod: and the more homely details of Pindar repudiates some stories and transforms others, the ancient Thébaïs and Edipodia were in like manner because they are inconsistent with his conceptions of modified by Sophocles. The religious agencies of the the gods. Thus he formally protests against the tale old epic are constantly kept prominent, and the paternal that Pelops had been killed and served up at table by curse,-the wrath of deceased persons against those from his father, for the immortal gods to eat; he shrinks whom they have sustained wrong,--the judgments of froin the idea of imputing to them so horrid an appetite; Erinnys against guilty or foredoomed persons, somebe pronounces the tale to have been originally fabri- times inflicted directly, sometimes brought about through cated by a slanderous neighbour. Nor can he bring dementation of the sufferer himself (like the Homeric himself to recount the quarrels between different Gods. Ate,)—are frequent in their tragedies. Æschylus in The amours of Zeus and Apollo are noway displeasing two of his remaining pieces brings forward the gods as to him; but he occasionally suppresses some of the the chief personages; and far from sharing the objection sitople details of the old mythe, as deficient in dignity : of Pindar to dwell' upon dissensions of the gods, he thus, according to the Hesiodic narrative, Apollo was in- introduces Prometheus and Zeus in the one, Apollo formed by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Coronis: and the Eumenidês in the other, in marked opposition. but the mention of the raven did not appear to Pindar The dialogue, first superinduced by him upon the consistent with the majesty of the god, and he there- primitive Chorus, gradually became the most important fore wraps up the mode of detection in vague and portion of the drama, and is more elaborated in Sophomysterious language. He feels considerable repug- clês than in Æschylus : even in Sophocles, however, it nance to the character of Odysseus, and intimates more still generally retains its ideal majesty as contrasted than once that Homer has unduly exalted him, by force with the rhetorical and forensic tone which afterwards of poetical artifice : with the character of the Æacid Ajax, crept in; it grows out of the piece, and addresses itself on the other hand, he has the deepest sympathy, as well to the emotions more than to the reason of the audience. 2x with his untimely and inglorious death, occasioned Nevertheless, the effect of Athenian political discussion by the undeserved preference of a less worthy rival. I and democratical feeling is visible in both these dramaHe appeals for his authority usually to the Muse, but tists: the idea of rights and legitimate privileges as sometimes to ancient sayings of men,” accompanied opposed to usurping force, is applied by Aischylus even prith a general allusion to story-tellers and bards; but to the society of the gods: the Eumenidês accuse Apollo he vecasionally admits that these stories present great of having, with the insolence of youthful ambition, discrepancy, and sometimes that they are false. The "ridden down” their old prerogatives, while the Titan marvellous and the supernatural, however, afford no Prometheus, the champion of suffering humanity against ground whatever for rejecting a 'story : Pindar makes the unfriendly dispositions of Zeus, ventures to depict an express declaration to this effect in reference to the the latter as a recent usurper reigning only by his romantic adventures of Perseus and the Gorgon's head. superior strength, exalted by one successful revolution, He treats even those mythical characters, which conflict and destined at some future time to be overthrown by the most palpably with positive experience, as connected another,-a fate which cannot be averted except through himn : not merely the heroes of Troy and Thebes, and . It is commonly understood that Æschylus disapproved