Part 10 (2/2)
One pleasing and prominent virtue of the age was hospitality. There were no public inns in those times, hence a sort of gentle necessity compelled the entertainment of wayfarers. The hospitality accorded was the same free and impulsive welcome that the Arab sheik of to-day extends to the traveller whom chance brings to his tent. But while hospitable, the n.o.bles of the heroic age were often cruel, violent, and treacherous. Homer represents his heroes as committing without a blush all sorts of fraud and villanies. Piracy was considered an honorable occupation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FORTY-OARED GREEK BOAT. (After a Vase Painting.)]
Art and architecture were in a rudimentary state. Yet some advance had been made. The cities were walled, and the palaces of the kings possessed a certain barbaric splendor. Coined money was unknown; wealth was reckoned chiefly in flocks and herds, and in uncoined metals. The art of writing was probably unknown, at least there is no certain mention of it; and sculpture could not have been in an advanced state, as the Homeric poems make no mention of statues. The state of literature is shown by the poems of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_: before the close of the age, epic poetry had reached a perfection beyond which it has never been carried.
Commerce was yet in its infancy. Although the Greeks were to become a great maritime people, still in the Homeric age they had evidently explored the sea but little. The Phoenicians then ruled the waves. The Greeks in those early times knew scarcely anything of the world beyond Greece proper and the neighboring islands and sh.o.r.es. Scarcely an echo of the din of life from the then ancient and mighty cities of Egypt and Chaldaea seems to have reached their ears.
CHAPTER XI.
RELIGION OF THE GREEKS.
INTRODUCTORY.--Without at least some little knowledge of the religious ideas and inst.i.tutions of the ancient Greeks, we should find very many pa.s.sages of their history wholly unintelligible. Hence a few remarks upon these matters will be in place here.
COSMOGRAPHY OF THE GREEKS.--The Greeks supposed the earth to be, as it appears, a plane, circular in form like a s.h.i.+eld. Around it flowed the ”mighty strength of the ocean river,” a stream broad and deep, beyond which on all sides lay realms of Cimmerian darkness and terror. The heavens were a solid vault, or dome, whose edge shut down close upon the earth. Beneath the earth, reached by subterranean pa.s.sages, was Hades, a vast region, the realm of departed souls. Still beneath this was the prison Tartarus, a pit deep and dark, made fast by strong gates of bra.s.s and iron. Sometimes the poets represent the gloomy regions beyond the ocean stream as the cheerless abode of the dead.
The sun was an archer-G.o.d, borne in a fiery chariot up and down the steep pathway of the skies. Naturally it was imagined that the regions in the extreme east and west, which were bathed in the near splendors of the sunrise and sunset, were lands of delight and plenty. The eastern was the favored country of the Ethiopians [Footnote: There was also a western division of these people.], a land which even Zeus himself so loved to visit that often he was found absent from Olympus when sought by suppliants. The western region, adjoining the ocean stream, formed the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the souls of heroes and of poets. [Footnote: These conceptions, it will be understood, belong to the early period of Greek mythology. As the geographical knowledge of the Greeks became more extended, they modified considerably the topography not only of the upper- world, but also of the nether-world.]
THE OLYMPIC COUNCIL.--There were twelve members of the celestial council, six G.o.ds and as many G.o.ddesses. The male deities were Zeus, the father of G.o.ds and men; Poseidon, ruler of the sea; Apollo, or Phoebus, the G.o.d of light, of music, and of prophecy; Ares, the G.o.d of war; Hephaestus, the deformed G.o.d of fire, and the forger of the thunderbolts of Zeus; Hermes, the wing-footed herald of the celestials, the G.o.d of invention and commerce, himself a thief and the patron of thieves.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HOMER.]
The female divinities were Hera, the proud and jealous queen of Zeus; Athena, or Pallas,--who sprang full-grown from the forehead of Zeus,--the G.o.ddess of wisdom, and the patroness of the domestic arts; Artemis, the G.o.ddess of the chase; Aphrodite, the G.o.ddess of love and beauty, born of the sea-foam; Hestia, the G.o.ddess of the hearth; Demeter, the earth- mother, the G.o.ddess of grains and harvests. [Footnote: The Latin names of these divinities are as follows: Zeus = Jupiter; Poseidon = Neptune; Apollo = Apollo; Ares = Mars; Hephaestus = Vulcan; Hermes = Mercury; Hera = Juno; Athena = Minerva; Artemis = Diana; Aphrodite = Venus; Hestia = Vesta; Demeter = Ceres.
These Latin names, however, are not the equivalents of the Greek names, and should not be used as such. The mythologies of the h.e.l.lenes and Romans were as distinct as their languages. Consult Rawlinson's _Religions of the Ancient World_.]
These great deities were simply magnified human beings, possessing all their virtues, and often their weaknesses. They give way to fits of anger and jealousy. ”Zeus deceives, and Hera is constantly practising her wiles.” All the celestial council, at the sight of Hephaestus limping across the palace floor, burst into ”inextinguishable laughter”; and Aphrodite, weeping, moves all to tears. They surpa.s.s mortals rather in power, than in size of body. They can render themselves visible or invisible to human eyes. Their food is ambrosia and nectar; their movements are swift as light. They may suffer pain; but death can never come to them, for they are immortal. Their abode is Mount Olympus and the airy regions above the earth.
LESSER DEITIES AND MONSTERS.--Besides the great G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that const.i.tuted the Olympian council there was an almost infinite number of other deities, celestial personages, and monsters neither human nor divine.
Hades (Pluto) ruled over the lower realms; Dionysus (Bacchus) was the G.o.d of wine; the G.o.ddess Nemesis was the punisher of crime, and particularly the queller of the proud and arrogant; aeolus was the ruler of the winds, which he confined in a cave secured by mighty gates.
There were nine Muses, inspirers of art and song. The Nymphs were beautiful maidens, who peopled the woods, the fields, the rivers, the lakes, and the ocean. Three Fates allotted life and death, and three Furies (Eumenides or Erinnyes) avenged crime, especially murder and unnatural crimes. The Gorgons were three sisters, with hair entwined with serpents. A single gaze upon them chilled the beholder to stone. Besides these there were Scylla and Charybdis, sea-monsters that made perilous the pa.s.sage of the Sicilian Straits, the Centaurs, the Cyclops, Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hades, and a thousand others.
Many at least of these monsters were simply personifications of the human pa.s.sions or of the malign and destructive forces of nature. Thus, the Furies were the embodiment of an aroused and accusing conscience; the Gorgons were tempests, which lash the sea into a fury that paralyzes the affrighted sailor; Scylla and Charybdis were dangerous whirlpools off the coast of Sicily. To the common people at least, however, they were real creatures, with all the parts and habits given them by the poets.
MODES OF DIVINE COMMUNICATION.--In the early ages the G.o.ds were wont, it was believed, to visit the earth and mingle with men. But even in Homer's time this familiar intercourse was a thing of the past--a tradition of a golden age that had pa.s.sed away. Their forms were no longer seen, their voices no longer heard. In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,--particularly of birds that mount to a great height, as these were supposed to know the secrets of the heavens,--the appearance or action of the sacrificial victims, or any strange coincidence. The art of interpreting these signs or omens was called the art of divination.
ORACLES.--But though the G.o.ds might reveal their will and intentions through signs and portents, still they granted a more special communication of counsel through what were known as _oracles_. These communications, it was believed, were made by Zeus, and especially by Apollo, who was the G.o.d of prophecy, the Revealer.
Not everywhere, but only in chosen places, did these G.o.ds manifest their presence and communicate the divine will. These favored spots were called oracles, as were also the responses there received. There were twenty-two oracles of Apollo in different parts of the Grecian world, but a much smaller number of those of Zeus. These were usually situated in wild and desolate spots--in dark forests or among gloomy mountains.
The most renowned of the oracles was that of the Pelasgian Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus, and that of Apollo at Delphi, in Phocis. At Dodona the priests listened in the dark forests for the voice of Zeus in the rustling leaves of the sacred oak. At Delphi there was a deep fissure in the ground, which emitted stupefying vapors, that were thought to be the inspiring breath of Apollo. Over the spot was erected a splendid temple, in honor of the oracle. The revelation was generally received by the Pythia, or priestess, seated upon a tripod placed over the orifice. As she became overpowered by the influence of the prophetic exhalations, she uttered the message of the G.o.d. These mutterings of the Pythia were taken down by attendant priests, interpreted, and written in hexameter verse. Sometimes the will of Zeus was communicated to the pious seeker by dreams and visions granted to him while sleeping in the temple of the oracle.
The oracle of Delphi gained a celebrity wide as the world: it was often consulted by the monarchs of Asia and the people of Rome in times of extreme danger and perplexity. Among the Greeks scarcely any undertaking was entered upon without the will and sanction of the oracle being first sought.
Especially true was this in the founding of colonies. Apollo was believed ”to take delight in the foundation of new cities.” No colony could prosper that had not been established under the superintendence of the Delphian G.o.d.
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