Chapter 9

Sky-andsun-gods.

Despite these divergences, the Aryans had a common chief deity—the sky, the ‘fair heaven.’ This, the most abstracted and intangible of natural appearances, at the same time the most exalted and unchanging, seemed to them to speak most plainly of an all-embracing deity. And though their minds were open to all the thousand voices of nature, and their imaginations equal to the task of giving a personality to each, yet none, not even the sun himself, imaged so well their ideal of a highest All-Father as did the over-arching heaven.

The traces of this primitive belief the Aryan people carried with them on their wanderings. This sky-god was the Dyâus (the sky) of Indian mythology, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, and the Zio, Tew, or Tyr of the Germans and Norsemen. For all these names are etymologically allied. Zeus (gen. Dios) and Dyâus are from the same root; so are Jupiter (anciently Diupiter) and the compound form Dyâus-pitar (father Dyâus); and Zio and Tew also bear traces of the same origin. Indeed, it is by the reappearance of this name as the name of a god among so many different nations that we argue his having once been the god of all the Atyan people. The case islike that of our worddaughter. As we find this reappearing in the Greekthugatêr, and the Sanskritduhitar, we feel sure that the old Aryans had a name for daughter from which all these names are derived; and as we find the Sanskrit name alone has a secondary meaning, signifying ‘the milker,’ we conclude that this was the original meaning of the name for a daughter. Just so, Zeus and Jupiter and Zio and Dyâus show a common name for the chief Aryan god; but the last alone explains the meaning of that name, for Dyâus signifies the sky.

This sky-god, then, stood to the old Aryans for the notion of a supreme and common divinity. Whatever may have been the divinities reigning over local streams and woods, they acknowledged the idea of one overruling Providence whom they could only image to their minds as the over-spreading sky. This, we may say, was the essential feature in their religion, its chief characteristic; whereas to the Semitic nations, the sun, the visible orb, was in every case the supreme god. The reason of this contrast does not, it seems to me, lieonlyin the different parts which the sun played in the southern and more northern regions; or, if it arises in the difference of the climate, it not the less forms an important chapter in religious development. There are discernible in the human mind two diverse tendencies in dealing with religious ideas. Both are to be found in every religion, among every people; one might almost say in every heart. The first tendency is an impulse upwards—a desire to press the mind continually forward in an effort to idealize the deity, but, by exalting or seeming to exalt Him into the highest regions of abstraction, it runs the risk of robbing Him of all fellowship with man, and man of all claims upon His sympathy and love. Then comes the other tendency, which oftentimes at one stroke brings down the deity asnear as possible to the level of human beings, and leaves him at the end no more than a demi-god or exalted man. One may be called the metaphysical, the other the mythological tendency; and we shall never be able to understand the history of religions until we learn to see how these influences interpenetrate and work in every system. They show at once that a distinction must be drawn between mythology and religion. The supreme god will not be he of whom most tales are invented, because, as these tales must appeal to human interests and relate adventures of the human sort, they will cling more naturally round the name of some inferior divinity. The very age of mythology—so far as regards the beings to whom it relates[56]—is probably rather that of a decaying religion.

In any case, there will probably be a metaphysical and a mythological side to every system. Thus among the Egyptians, Amun, the concealed, was the metaphysical god; but their mythology centred round the names of Osiris and Horus. And just so with the Aryans, the sky was the original, most abstracted, and most metaphysical god; the sun rose into prominence in obedience to the wish of man for a more human divinity. If the Semitic people were more inclined toward sun-worship, the Aryans inclined rather toward heaven-worship; and the difference is consistent with the greater faculty for abstract thought which has always belonged to our race.

The two influences of which we have spoken are perfectly well marked in Aryan mythology. The history of it may almost be said to represent the rivalry between the sky-gods and the gods of the sun. It is on account of his dailychange that the last far less becomes the position of a supreme god. Born each day in the east, faint and weak he battles with the clouds of morning; radiant and strong he mounts into the midday sky; and then, having touched his highest point, he turns to quench his beams in the shadowy embrace of night. Even the Egyptians and Assyrians, in view of these vicissitudes, were driven to invent a sort of abstract sun, separated in thought from the mere visible orb. This daily course might stand as an allegory of the life of man. The luminary who underwent these changing fortunes, however great and godlike in appearance, must have some more than common relationship with the world below; he must be either a hero raised among the gods, or, better (for of this thought the Aryans too had their dim foreshadowing), he is an Avatar, an Incarnation of the Godhead, come down to take upon him for a while the painful life of men. This was the way the sun-gods were regarded by the Indo-European nations. Accordingly, while their deepest religious feelings belonged to the abstract god Zeus, Jupiter among the Greeks and Romans, Dyâus and later on Brahma (a pure abstraction) among the Indians, the stories of their mythology belonged to a more human divinity, who in most cases is the sun-god. He is the Indra[57]of the Hindus, who wrestles with the black serpent, the Night, as Horus did with Typhon; he is the Apollo of the Greeks, likewise the slayer of the serpent, the Pythôn; or else he is Heracles (Hercules), the god-man—sometimes worshipped as a god, sometimes as a demi-god only—the great and mighty hero, the performer of innumerable labours for his fellows; or he is Thor, the Herculesof the Norsemen, the enemy of the giants and of the great earth-serpent, which represent the dark chaotic forces of nature; or Frey, the bearer of the sword, or the mild Balder, the fairest of all the gods, the best-beloved by gods and men.

It is clear that a different character of worship will belong to each order of divinity. The sacred grove or the wild mountain-summit would be naturally dedicated to the mysterious pervading presence; the temple would be the natural home of the human-featured god; and this all the more because men worshipped in forest glade or upon mountain-top before they dedicated to their gods houses made with hands. Dyâus is the old, the primevally old, divinity, the ‘son of time’ as the Greeks called him.[58]Whenever, therefore, we trace the meeting streams of thought, thecultof the sun-god and thecultof the sky, to the latter belongs the conservative part of the national creed, his rival is the reforming element. In the Vedic religion of India, Indra, as has been said, has vanquished the older deity; we feel in the Vedas that Dyâus, or even another sky-god, Varuna, though often mentioned, no longer occupy a commanding place. Not, however, without concessions on both sides. Indra could not have achieved this victory but that he partakes of both natures. He is the sky as well as the sun, more human than the unmovedwatchingheavens, he is a worker for man, the sender of the rain and the sunshine, the tamer of the stormwinds, and the enemy of darkness.

And if any one should examine in detail the different systems of the Aryan people, he would, I think, have no difficulty in tracing throughout them the two influenceswhich have been dwelt upon, and in each connecting these two influences with their sky-and sun-gods. Whatever theory may be used to account for it, the change of thought is noticeable. Man seems to awake into the world with the orison of Belarius upon his lips; he is content with the silent unchanging abstract god. But as he advances in the burden and heat of the day he wishes for a fellow-worker, or at least for some potency which watches his daily struggles with less of godlike sublime indifference. Hence arise his sun-gods—the gods who toil and suffer, and even succumb and die.

Theearth-goddess.

The sky-and the sun-gods, then, were, I think, the two chief male divinities among the Aryan folk taken as a whole. There corresponded to them in most Aryan creeds two female divinities, an older and a younger, a wife and a maiden, such as were on the one side among the Greeks Hera and Demeter, and on the other side Athene and Artemis,[59]or Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. In the Norse creed, again, there is Frigg, the wife of Odin, and Freyja, the sister of Frey. This last is indeed not a maiden in the Eddic mythology. But the husband of Freyja is a person of such very small importance that we may feel sure he is only a sort ofaddendumto her nature and surroundings, and that she is in character very much the counterpart of her brother, a maiden-goddess—goddess of spring-time and of love.

In respect to the elder, the married goddess, we may say, almost with certainty, that she is the earth—the natural wife of the heavens, and naturally thought of as the mother of all mankind—Terra Mater. We know that the ancient Germans worshipped a goddess whom Tacitus calls Nerthus(possibly a mistake forHertha, Earth), and, he adds,Nerthus id est Terra Mater. And in the Scandinavian offshoot of the ancient German creed there can be no doubt that the same idea of Mother Earth is embodied in the goddess Frigg, the wife of Odin.

The Romans had their native goddess Tellus, who was only obscured in later times by such Greek or half-Greek divinities as Demeter or Cybele. For this Demeter of the Greeks bears a name which most philologists are agreed had a signification precisely the same asTerra Mater—Gê-mêtêr. Demeter is but one of many wives of Zeus mentioned in the Theogony of Hesiod. All of these wives, including Hera (Juno), the highest in rank of them all, were probably at one time or another personifications of the earth.

The Vedas, too, have their mother-goddess, their Mother Earth. This is Prithvi, or Prithivi, the wide-stretching, generally called Prithivi-mátar, which is also Earth-Mother. And some think this word ‘Prithvi’ is connected with that of the Northern Frigg.[60]And the Vedas have their young maiden-goddess, who in the Vedas is called Ushas the Dawn.

Goddessesof Springand Dawn.

What is the nature-significance of this maiden-goddess? It is less easy to determine than in the case of the other three divinities. One form of the maiden-goddess is the divinity of the seed, like Persephone, that is to say, a goddess of all vegetation, and hence of the spring. In the Vedas, again, Ushas is a goddess of the dawn, an idea nearly allied to that of Spring; and some people think that this is also the foundation of Athenê’s nature. There are other characteristics of the maiden-goddess which look as if she were an embodiment of the clouds; but then the clouds are so nearly connectedwith the dawn that such an idea can scarcely be said to contradict the other notion. The maiden-goddess is in many cases born of the sea. Not only is Aphroditê, or Venus, born of the sea, but Athenê is so likewise; at any rate one of her names, Tritogeneia, implies this origin. The more common story of Athenê’s birth, that she sprang from the head of her father, Zeus—this, too, when we remember that Zeus is the sky, is not inconsistent with her being the cloud.

When all is said, it must be owned that the nature-origin of this maiden-goddess is not so obvious as in the case of the divinities of the sky, sun, or earth. That only means that, as a nature-goddess, she is not so necessary to the creed, but that on the other hand many objects of nature—the dawn, the clouds, streams, the wind, sunshine—have suggested the thought of this divinity, and that the suggestion found a natural echo in the heart of mankind.

There are, of course, behind the greater nature-gods a number of other natural forces—the sea, the wind, lightning, fire, streams, fountains, the dawn, the clouds. These all receive their place in the Aryan pantheon. But the characters of the lesser gods tend to echo those of the greater. Sometimes two different but nearly allied objects of nature are rolled into one to form a new god.

Thus the god of storms and thunder is often associated with the sky, as are Zeus and Jupiter among the Greeks and Romans. Dyâus, the most primitive form of sky-god, is the clear heaven. The name is connected with a rootdiv, to shine. But Zeus and Jupiter are the cloudy or thundery skies. The Vedic Indra is often not unlike them. That is to say, the sky-god, in their persons, has taken upon him the nature of the god of storms. But despite these changes, we may still go back to the gods of earth, and sky, and sun,and cloud as forming the backbone of the Aryan creed taken as a whole.

Vedicreligionof India.

From this primitive stock different religious systems developed themselves just as different nationalities sprang from the original Aryan race. We can only form an adequate idea of what these religious systems were like by studying them in the books of religion, of poetry, and mythology which the various peoples have left behind them. And as a matter of fact, we have really only three or four literatures of ancient religion and mythology among the different branches of the Aryan people from which much information can be gained. These are the Vedas for the ancient Indians, Greek literature for the religion of the Greeks, and the Old Norse poetry—what we may call the Eddaic literature—for the religion of the Scandinavians. The Romans, before their literature began, had almost exchanged their early creed for that of the Greeks; the other German races (not Scandinavian) and the Slavs left no record of their beliefs before they were converted to Christianity. Of the Zend Avesta, the religious book of the Persians, we will speak hereafter.

Indra.

Naturally enough, each separate creed has developed many peculiar features. In the religion of India, Indra, who had been the younger and more active divinity—whether a sun-god or no we cannot be quite sure—had, before the Vedas came to be written, almost completely ousted Dyâus from the supreme position which he once occupied. The worship of Indra is the central point of Vedic religion; and in many hymns of the Vedas Indra has taken the character of a god of storms; almost as much so as Zeus and Jupiter. It was the power of thegod which was especially worshipped. He was no doubt the god of battlespar excellenceto the ancient Indian. The Vedic hymnist calls upon him, as the Psalmist calls upon Jehovah, to show his might and confound those who dared to doubt his supremacy. For here in India, as in Palestine, ‘the wicked saith in his heart There is no God.’

HYMN TO INDRA.

Indra speaks.‘I come with might before thee, stepping first,And behind me move all the heavenly powers.The Poet speaks.‘If thou, O Indra, wilt my lot bestow,A hero’s part dost thou perform for me.‘To thee the holy drink I offer first;Thy portion here is laid, thysoma[61]brewed.Be, while I righteous am, to me a friend;So shall we slay of foemen many a one.‘Ye who desire blessings bring your hymnTo Indra, for the true is always true.“There is no Indra,” many say. “Who everHath seen him? Why should we his praise proclaim?”Indra speaks.‘I am here, singer; look on me, here stand I.In might all other beings I surpass.Thy holy service still my strength renews,And thereby smiting, all things I smite down.‘And as on heaven’s height I sat alone,To me thy offering and thy prayer rose up.Then spake my soul this word unto herself:“My votaries and their children call upon me.” ’

Indra speaks.‘I come with might before thee, stepping first,And behind me move all the heavenly powers.

The Poet speaks.‘If thou, O Indra, wilt my lot bestow,A hero’s part dost thou perform for me.

‘To thee the holy drink I offer first;Thy portion here is laid, thysoma[61]brewed.Be, while I righteous am, to me a friend;So shall we slay of foemen many a one.

‘Ye who desire blessings bring your hymnTo Indra, for the true is always true.“There is no Indra,” many say. “Who everHath seen him? Why should we his praise proclaim?”

Indra speaks.‘I am here, singer; look on me, here stand I.In might all other beings I surpass.Thy holy service still my strength renews,And thereby smiting, all things I smite down.

‘And as on heaven’s height I sat alone,To me thy offering and thy prayer rose up.Then spake my soul this word unto herself:“My votaries and their children call upon me.” ’

Thecharacterof Indra, then, is, as we find it in the Vedas, more like that of a supreme Zeus than of any other divinity of the parallel Aryan religious systems. But hisdeeds, the mythology connected with his name, remind us of the deeds of Apollo. For he is the great serpent-or dragon-slayer, like the Greek Apollo and the Northern Thor. Heracles, too, as we remember, is a serpent-slayer. The ‘enemy’ whom Indra is most constantly implored to strike are two serpents, Ahi and Vritra. These are serpents of darkness, but they are also the concealers of the water, and this water Indra sets free. ‘Him (the serpent) the god struck with Indra-might, and set free the all-gleaming water for the use of man.’ Therefore these serpents must also typify the clouds.

In going forth to fight, Indra is accompanied by a band of supernatural heroes, who have no exact counterpart in any of the other Aryan mythologies, and who are certainly beings, children we might say, of the storm. Their name is the Maruts. And some of the many hymns dedicated to them have a fine martial ring, like the tramp of armed men—

HYMN TO THE MARUTS.

Agni.

The god who is most peculiar to the Vedic pantheon is Agni, the Fire-god. The wordAgniis allied to the Latinignis. No doubt Agni has his representatives in the creeds of other Aryan peoples, in the Hephæstus of the Greeks, or in the Vulcan of the Romans; probably in the Loki of the Scandinavians. But these are all quite secondary beings: Loki cannot be called a god at all. Agni, on the other hand, is one of the very greatest of the Vedic deities. Only Indra has more hymns dedicated to him than Agni. This shows how great was the reverence which fire commanded among the Indians, and it is consistent with much that has been said in an earlier chapter of the importance which primitive people always attach, and which the native Indians to this day still attach, to the sacred house-fire in their midst. It reminds us too of the fire-worship of the Persians.[64]

Agni, however, is not only the house-fire. He has a double birth—one on earth, one in the clouds. He descends as the lightning descends from heaven. But, at the same time, he is born of the rubbing of two sticks, and in the flame of the sacrifice he is imagined to ascend again to heaven bringing with him the prayers of the worshipper. How well, therefore, Agni was adapted to take the place of the younger god, the friend of man, when Indra, once probably a sun-god, had (so to say) removed himself from familiar approach by taking his throne high in heaven!

HYMN TO AGNI.

‘Agni is messenger of all the world.* * * * *Skyward ascends his flame the merciful,With our libations watered well;And now the red smoke seeks the heavenly way,And men enkindle Agni here.‘We make of thee our Herald, Holy One;Bring down the gods unto our feast.O son of night, and all who nourish man,Pardon us when on you we call.‘Thou, Agni, art the ruler of the house;Thou at the altar art our priest.O purifier, wise and rich in good,O sacrificer, bring us safely now.’

‘Agni is messenger of all the world.* * * * *Skyward ascends his flame the merciful,With our libations watered well;And now the red smoke seeks the heavenly way,And men enkindle Agni here.

‘We make of thee our Herald, Holy One;Bring down the gods unto our feast.O son of night, and all who nourish man,Pardon us when on you we call.

‘Thou, Agni, art the ruler of the house;Thou at the altar art our priest.O purifier, wise and rich in good,O sacrificer, bring us safely now.’

There are other genuine sun-gods in the Vedic creed, to whom hymns are addressed. One of these is Mitra.[65]Mitra too is a friend of man—

To man comes Mitra down in friendly converse.Mitra it was who fixed the earth and heaven.Unslumbering mankind he watches over.To Mitra then your full libations pour.’

But there are not many hymns addressed to Mitra alone. And he stands far behind Indra or Agni in the Vedic creed as we actually find it. Another sun-god—the disk of the sun, so to say—is Surya, the shiner. He is sometimes called the eye of Mitra and Varuna. But in other places he is said to come through heaven dragging his wheel. Yet great as he is, the sun-god is compelled to follow his dailyround. ‘He travels upon changeless paths.’ Another sun-god is Savitar, whose name is almost identical in meaning with Surya.

Dawn andEvening.

The writers of the Vedic hymns were very largely taken up with observing and recording in their mythic fashion all the skyey phenomena from dawn to sunset. For each changed aspect of the heavens, bright or cloudy, calm or windy, they had a divinity. They sang to the fair young morning as she came out of the chambers of darkness and opened the stalls for the cattle to go forth to pasture; they sang the heavy labouring sun of midday; they sang the stormy sky or the hurrying clouds; and at evening they sang the evening sun sinking peacefully to rest and bringing ‘night and peace’ to all the world. Wherefore, to bring to a close this picture of the religion of the Vedas, we will give just two more hymns from that vast collection, the Rig-Veda—a hymn to the morning, and a hymn to the sun (Savitar) at sun-setting.

HYMN TO THE DAWN.

‘Dawn full of wisdom, rich in everything!Fairest! attend the singers’ song of praise.O thou rich goddess, old, yet ever young!Thou, all-dispenser, in due order comest.‘Shine forth, O goddess, thine eternal morning,With thy bright cars our song of praise awakening.Thee draw through heaven the well-yoked team of horses—The horses golden-bright, that shine afar.‘Enlightener of all being, breath of morning,Thou holdest up aloft the light of gods.Unto one goal ever thy course pursuing,Oh, roll towards us now thy wheel again!‘Opening at once her girdle, she appears,The lovely Dawn, the ruler of the stalls.She, light-producing, wonder-working, noble,Up-mounted from the coast of earth and heaven.‘Up, up, and bring to meet the Dawn, the goddessBright beaming now, your humble song of praise.To heaven climbed up her ray the sweet due bearing,Joying to shine the airy space she filled.‘With beams of heaven the Pure One was awakened,The Rich One’s ray mounted through both the worlds.To Ushas[66]goest thou, Agni, with a prayerFor goodly wealth, when she bright-shining comes.’

‘Dawn full of wisdom, rich in everything!Fairest! attend the singers’ song of praise.O thou rich goddess, old, yet ever young!Thou, all-dispenser, in due order comest.

‘Shine forth, O goddess, thine eternal morning,With thy bright cars our song of praise awakening.Thee draw through heaven the well-yoked team of horses—The horses golden-bright, that shine afar.

‘Enlightener of all being, breath of morning,Thou holdest up aloft the light of gods.Unto one goal ever thy course pursuing,Oh, roll towards us now thy wheel again!

‘Opening at once her girdle, she appears,The lovely Dawn, the ruler of the stalls.She, light-producing, wonder-working, noble,Up-mounted from the coast of earth and heaven.

‘Up, up, and bring to meet the Dawn, the goddessBright beaming now, your humble song of praise.To heaven climbed up her ray the sweet due bearing,Joying to shine the airy space she filled.

‘With beams of heaven the Pure One was awakened,The Rich One’s ray mounted through both the worlds.To Ushas[66]goest thou, Agni, with a prayerFor goodly wealth, when she bright-shining comes.’

HYMN TO THE EVENING SUN.

‘Savitar the god arose, in power arose,His quick deeds and his journey to renew.He ‘tis who to all gods dispenses treasure,And blesses those that call him to the feast.‘The god stands up and stretches forth his arm,Raises his hand and all obedient wait;For all the waters to his will incline,And the winds even on his path are stilled.‘Now he unyokes the horses that have borne him,The wanderer from his travel now he frees,The serpent-slayer’s fury now is stayed;At Savitar’s command come night and peace.And now rolls up the spinning wife her web,The artificer now his cunning labour leaves,* * * * *And to the household folk beneath the roof,The household fire imparts their share of light.* * * * *‘He who to work went forth is now returned,The longing of all wand’rers turns toward home;Leaving his toil, goes each man to his house:The universal mover orders so.‘In the water settest thou the water’s heir,[67]On the firm earth badst the wild beast to roam;The bird[68]makes for his nest, cattle for their stall,To their own home all beasts the sun-god sends.’

‘Savitar the god arose, in power arose,His quick deeds and his journey to renew.He ‘tis who to all gods dispenses treasure,And blesses those that call him to the feast.

‘The god stands up and stretches forth his arm,Raises his hand and all obedient wait;For all the waters to his will incline,And the winds even on his path are stilled.

‘Now he unyokes the horses that have borne him,The wanderer from his travel now he frees,The serpent-slayer’s fury now is stayed;At Savitar’s command come night and peace.

And now rolls up the spinning wife her web,The artificer now his cunning labour leaves,* * * * *And to the household folk beneath the roof,The household fire imparts their share of light.* * * * *‘He who to work went forth is now returned,The longing of all wand’rers turns toward home;Leaving his toil, goes each man to his house:The universal mover orders so.

‘In the water settest thou the water’s heir,[67]On the firm earth badst the wild beast to roam;The bird[68]makes for his nest, cattle for their stall,To their own home all beasts the sun-god sends.’

Greekreligion.

In Greece it would seem that the chief religious influences came from Zeus (Jupiter[69]) and Apollo, and belonged, as appears, to two separate branches of the same race who came together to form the Hellenic people. The ancestors of the Greeks had, we know, travelled from the Aryan home by a road which took them south of the Black Sea, and on to the table-land of Asia Minor. So far a comparison of names and traditions shows them advancing in a compact body. Here they separated; and, after a stay of some centuries, during which a part had time to mingle with the Semitic people of the land, they pushed forward, some across the Hellespont and round that way by land through Thrace and Thessaly, spreading as they went down to the extremity of the peninsula; others to the western coast of Asia Minor, and then, when through the lapse of years they had learnt their art from the Phœnician navigators who frequented all that land, onward from island to island, as over stepping-stones, across the Ægean.

Zeus.

The Pelasgic Zeus, however, is not quite the same being as is the Zeus whom we are to fancy as the supreme god of the Hellenic race. This last, we know, is called the Olympic Zeus. The Pelasgic god is a being who loves solitary mountain heights or dark groves of trees. In this aspect of his character he is very like the chief divinity of the Northmen, Odin. And there can be nodoubt that in his nature he is a god of storms and wind. He is not the clear sky, as is the Vedic Dyâus (from the rootdiv, shining), and as had once been the supreme god of the Aryan race. From that condition to the condition of a god of storms, Zeus had already passed before we catch any sight of him under this name Zeus—in other words, before we catch any sight ofhimat all.

These Pelasgi were before all things the worshippers of pure nature. Theirs were all those primitive elements in the Greek religion which were caught up into the more developed creed, and, though they were softened in the process of amalgamation with it, still showed above its surface as masses of rock show upon a hillside, albeit they are covered over by a thin covering of green. Those strange half-human beings like Pan, the Arcadian god, like the Thessalian centaurs,—these belong to the primitive creed of the Greeks. So long as they were confounded with the phenomena of nature in which they took their rise, they were, in every sense, natural enough. But when art took possession of them, and tried to body them forth in visible shapes, they became monsters, unformed, neither man nor beast.

The fact that the greatest shrines of Zeus were at Dodona in Epirus, and in Elis, both states on thewesterncoast of Greece, would almost of itself show that the worship of Zeus belonged more especially to the first comers of the Greek race, who got pushed further westward as the more enlightened people came in from the east; and whilethesewere worshipping their gods in temples, the Pelasgic Greeks still worshipped their Zeus in sacred groves like those of Dodona and of Elis.

The god, on the other hand, who is more especially the god of the newer Greek people, the Dorians and the Ionians,

Apollo.

those who reformed the Greek race, and through whom the Pelasgic people grew into the Hellenes, this god is Apollo.

Apollo is, we have said, in origin a sun-god. We see some traces of his nature even in the statues which represent him, as in the abundant hair which streams from his head, the picture of the sun’s rays.[70]But, of course, long before historic days he had become much more than a mere god of nature to his worshippers. He had become what we know him, the ideal of youthful manhood as the Greeks admired it most, the ideal of suppleness and strength, the ideal, too, of what we call ‘culture,’ of poetry and music, and all that adds a grace to life.

Apollo’s chief shrines were rather on the eastern than on the western side of Greece—at Delphi, for example, in Phocis. (Is it not characteristic to find in this wise the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the oracle of Zeus at Dodona?) But Delphi is the most westerly of Apollo’s favourite homes. Another, we know, was on the island of Delos, midway in the Ægean, that island which the Greeks fancied theumbilicus orbis—the navel of the world. Delphi and Delos are the shrines of Apollo belonging to one out of the two great nationalities of the new blood who reformed the nation of the Greeks. Delphi and Delos belong to the Dorians. But among the Ionians of Asia Minor, who were the other great reforming element in Greek life, Apollo had likewise many holy places. And we know how, in the Iliad, he is represented as the champion of the easterns, the AsiaticGreeks, against the westerns, the Greeks of Greece proper. ‘Hear me,’ prays Glaucus, in the Iliad—‘hear me, O king, who art somewhere in the rich realm of Lycea or of Troy; for everywhere canst thou hear a man in sorrow, such as my sorrow is.’

Not but that these worshippers of Apollo were likewise worshippers of Zeus. It was from the Dorians, whose ancient home was in Thessaly, in the vale of Tempe, and under the shadow of Olympus, that sprang the worship of the Olympian Zeus. This Olympian Zeus was the same as the ancient god of the Pelasgians—the Pelasgian Zeus—the same, and yet different, for he was the ancient storm-god, softened and made more human by his contact with Apollo. In time this Olympian Zeus superseded the Pelasgic god even in his own favourite seats, and we have the phenomenon of the festival in his honour—the greatest festival of Greece—the Olympia, being held in the plains of Elis, near the ancient grove of the Pelasgian Zeus.

Hermes.

As before by a comparison of words, so now in mythology by a comparison of legends, we form our notion of the remoteness of the time at which these stories first passed current. Not only, for instance, do we see that Indra and Apollo resembled each other in character, but we have proof that nature-myths—stories really narrating some process of nature—were familiar alike to Greeks and Indians. The Vedas, the sacred books from which we gather our knowledge of ancient Hindu religion, do not relate their stories of the gods in the same way, or with the same clearness and elaboration, that the Greek poets do. They are collections of hymns, prayers in verse, addressed to the gods themselves, and what they relate is told more by reference andimplication than directly. But even with this difference, we have no difficulty in signalizing some of the adventures of Indra as almost identical with those of the son of Lêtô. Let one suffice. The pastoral life of the Aryans is reflected in their mythology, and thus it is that in the Vedas almost all the varied phenomena of nature are in their turn compared to cattle. Indra is often spoken of as a bull; still more commonly are the clouds the cows of Indra, and their milk the rain. More than one of the songs of the Rig-Veda allude to a time when the wicked Panis (beings of fog or mist[71]) stole the cows from the fields of Indra and hid them away in a cave. They obscured their footprints by tying up their feet or by making them drag brushwood behind them. Then Indra sent his dog Sarama (the dawn or breath of dawn), and she found out where the cattle were hidden. But (according to one story) the Panis overcame her honesty and gave her a cup of milk to drink, so that she came back to Indra and denied having seen the cows. But Indra discovered the deception, and came with his strong spear and conquered the Panis, and recovered what had been stolen.

Now turn to the Greek myth. The story here is cast in a different key.

‘Te boves olim nisi reddidissesPer dolum amotas, puerum minaciVoce dum terret, viduus pharetraRisit Apollo.’

Hermes (Mercury) is here the thief. He steals the cattle of Apollo feeding upon the Pierian mountain, and conceals his theft much as the Panis had done. Apollo discovers what has been done, and complains to Zeus. But Hermes is a god, and no punishment befalls him like that which wasallotted to the Panis; he charms Apollo by the sound of his lyre, and is forgiven, and allowed to retain his booty. Still, all the essentials of the story are here; and the story in either case relates the same nature-myth. The clouds which in the Indian tale are stolen by the damp vapours of morning, are in the Greek legend filched away by the morning breeze; for this is the nature of Hermes. And that some such power as the wind had been known to the Indians as accomplice in the work, is shown by the complicity of Sarama in one version of the tale. For Sarama likewise means the morning breeze; and, in fact,SaramaandHermesare derived from the same root, and are almost identical in character. Both mean in their general nature the wind; in their special appearances they stand now for the morning, now for the evening breeze, or even for the morning and evening themselves.

Heracles.

The next most important deity as regards the whole Greek race is Heracles (Hercules). It is a great mistake to regard him, as our mythology-books often lead us to do, as a demi-god or hero only. Originally, and among a portion of the Greek race, he was one of the mightiest gods; but at last, perhaps because his adventures became in later tradition rather preposterous and undignified, he sank to be a demi-god, or immortalized man. The story of Heracles’ life and labours is a pure but most elaborate sun-myth. From his birth, where he strangles the serpents in his cradle—the serpents of darkness, like the Pythôn which Apollo slew—through hisHerculeanlabours to his death, we watch the labours of the sun through the mists and clouds of heaven to its ruddy setting; and these stories are so like to others which are told of the Northern Heracles, Thor, that we cannot refuse to believe that they were known in the main in days beforethere were either Greek-speaking Greeks or Teutons. The closing scene of Heracles’ life speaks the most eloquently of his nature-origin. Returning home in victory—his last victory—to Trachis, Deianira sends to him there the fatal white robe steeped in the blood of Nessus. No sooner has he put it on than his death-agony begins. In the madness of his pain he dashes his companion, Lichas, against the rocks; he tears at the burning robe, and with it brings away the flesh from his limbs. Then, seeing that all is over, he becomes more calm. He gives his last commands to his son, Hyllus, and orders his funeral pile to be prepared upon mount Œta, as the sun, after its last fatal battle with the clouds of sunset, sinks down calmly into the sea. Then as, after it has gone, the sky lights up aglow with colour, so does the funeral pyre of Heracles send out its light over the Ægean, from itswesternshore.

Ares.

I believe Ares to have been once likewise a sun-god. The special home of his worship was warlike Macedon and Thrace. There can be no question, however, that in pre-historic times his worship was much more widely extended than we should suppose from reading Homer or the poets subsequent to Homer. Traces of his worship are to be found in the Zeus Areios at Elis, and in the Athenian Areopagus. But his natural home was in the North. He was the national divinity of the Thracians. And I have no doubt, as I have said, that he was once the sun-god of these Northern people, and only in later times became an abstraction, a god of war and valour.

Dêmêtêr.

Another deity who was distinctly of Aryan origin was Dêmêtêr (Ceres), a name which is, as we have said, probably, none other than Gêmêtêr, ‘mother earth.’ She is the Greek equivalent of the Prithvi of the Vedas. But whereas Prithvi has sunk into obscurity,Dêmêtêr was associated with some of the most important rites of Greek religion. The association of ideas which, face to face with the masculine godhead, the sun or sky, placed the fruitful all-nourishing earth, is so natural as to find a place in almost every system. We have seen how the two formed a part of the Egyptian and Chaldæan mythologies. And we have seen that each branch of the Aryan folk carried away along with their sky-and sun-worship this earth-worship also. But among none of the different branches was the great nature-myth which always gathers round the earth-goddess, woven into a more pathetic story than by the Greeks. The story is that of the winter death or sleep of earth, or of all that makes earth beautiful and glad. And it was thus the Greeks told that world-old legend. Persephone (Proserpina), or Corê, is the green earth, or the green verdure which may be thought the daughter of earth and sky. She is, indeed, almost the reduplication of Dêmêtêr herself; and in art it is not always easy to distinguish a representation as of one or of the other. At spring-time Persephone, a maiden, with her maidens, is wandering careless in the Nysian plain, plucking the flowers of spring, ‘crocuses and roses and fair violets,’[72]when in a moment all is changed. Hades, regent of Hell, rises in his black-horsed golden chariot; unheeding her cries, he carries her off to share his infernal throne and rule in the kingdoms of the dead. In other words, the awful shadow of death falls across the path of youth and spring, and Hades appears to proclaim the fateful truth that all spring-time, all youth and verdure, are alike with hoary age candidates for service in his Shadowy Kingdom. The sudden contrast between spring flowers and maidenhood and death gives a dramatic intensity to the scene and represents the quiet course of decay in one tremendousmoment.[73]To lengthen out the picture and show the slow sorrow of earth robbed of its spring and summer, Dêmêtêr is portrayed wandering from land to land in bootless search of her lost daughter. We know how deep a significance this story had in the religious thought of Greece; how the representation of it composed the chief feature of the Eleusinian mysteries, and how these and other mysteries probably enshrined the intenser, more hidden feelings of religion, and continued to do so when mythology had lost its hold upon the popular mind. It is, indeed, a new-antique story, patent to all and fraught for all with solemnest meaning. So that this myth of the death of Proserpine has lived on in a thousand forms through all the Aryan systems.

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