Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/49

LEGKNDARY PAST IMAGINED AS DISTANT. 83 Assumir/g M. Eochette's view of the heroic ages to be correct, and reasoning upon the supposition that the adventures ascribed to the Grecian heroes are matters of historical reality, trans- mitted by tradition from a period of time four centuries before the recorded Olympiads, and only embellished by describing poets. the blank which he here dwells upon is, to say the least of it, embarrassing and unaccountable. It is strange that the stream of tradition, if it had once begun to flow, should (like several of the rivers in Greece) be submerged for two or three centuries and then reappear. But when we make what appears to me the proper distinction between legend and history, it will be seen that a period of blank time between the two is perfectly conformable to the conditions under which the former is gen- crated. It is not the immediate past, but a supposed remote past, which forms the suitable atmosphere of mythical narrative, a past originally quite undetermined in respect to distance from the present, as we see in the Iliad and Odyssey. And even when we come down to the genealogical poets, who affect to give a cer- tain measure of bygone time, and a succession of persons as well as of events, still, the names whom they most delight to honor and upon whose exploits they chiefly expatiate, are those of the ancestral gods and heroes of the tribe and their supposed con- temporaries ; ancestors separated by a long lineage from the present hearer. The gods and heroes were conceived as re- moved from him by several generations, and the legendary mat- ter which was grouped around them appeared only the more im- posing when exhibited at a respectful distance, beyond the days of father and grandfather, and of all known predecessors. The Odes of Pindar strikingly illustrate this tendency. We thus see how it happened that, between the times assigned to heroic adven- ture and those of historical record, there existed an intermediate blank, filled with inglorious names ; and how, amongst the same society which cared not to remember proceedings of fathers and grandfathers, there circulated much popular and accredited narra- tive respecting real or supposed ancestors long past and gone " The obscure transactions of Greece, during the four following centuries ill correspond with the splendor of the Trojan, or even of the Argonauti. expedition," etc. OL. ii. 2* 8..