Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/377

(J.EA, URANOS, HELIOS, ETC. 345 Helios, having favorite spots wherein his beautifu. cattle grazed, took pleasure in contemplating them during the course of his journey, and was sorely displeased if any man slew or injured them : he had moreover sons and daughters on earth, and as his all-seeing eye penetrated everywhere, he was sometimes in a situation to reveal secrets even to the gods themselves while on other occasions he was constrained to turn aside in order to avoid contemplating scenes of abomination. 1 To us these now appear puerile, though pleasing fancies, but to an Homeric Greek 1 Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter expresses it neatly (63) 'H<?/Uoi> (5' IKOVTO, &suv OKOTTOV ?]6e KCU uvdpuv. Also the remarkable story of Euenius of Apollonia, his neglect of the sacred cattle of Helios, and the awful consequences of it (Herodot. ix. 93 : compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130). I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies as Per sons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions, had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of its sol- diers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched upon the enor- mity of retaining so large an area in a state of waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): " Quotam partem campi jacere, in quam pecora et armenta militum aliquan- do transmitterentur ? Scrvarcnt sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam : modo ne vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicutt co3lum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas : qnaeque vacua;, eas publicas csse. Solem deinde respiciens, et ccetera sidera vocans, quasi coram interrogabat vellentne contueri inane solum ? potius mare superfunderent adver- gus terrarum ereptores. Commotus his Avitus," etc. The legate refused the request, but privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom refused it. After much wander- ing and privation, the whole tribe of the Ansibarii was annihilated : its war- riors were all slain, its women and children sold as slaves. I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the brave old chief was pleading before Avitus a matter of life and death bolh to himself and his tribe, and that the occasion was one least of all suited for a mere rhetorical 15*