BOOK I.
the fact that they alone, among the deities of a second generation, are admitted to equal honour with the Kronid brothers, if not even to higher.[1] But some of their attributes are transferred to other beings, who are simply embodiments of the attribute so transferred and of no other. Thus Athênê is attended by Hermes, Ares, Themis, and Hephaistos; Apollôn by Paiêon and the Muses;[2] as, similarly, we have in Gaia a weaker impersonation of Dêmêtêr, and Nereus as representing simply the watery realm of Poseidôn. In Lêtô, their mother, is shadowed forth the woman whose seed was to bruise the head of the serpent; for Leto herself has scarcely any definite office in the Homeric theology, and she remains, from any view except this one, an anomaly in mythological belief.[3]
Nature of the doctrines perverted in Greek mythology.On this hypothesis, Greek mythology is no distortion of primary truths which first dawn on the mind of a child or are imparted to it, and which, it might have been supposed, would form the substance of divine truth granted to man during the infancy of his race. It is the corruption of recondite and mysterious dogmas which were not to become facts for hundreds or thousands of years. Zeus, the licentious tyrant, the perjured deceiver, the fierce hater, the lover of revelry and banqueting, who boasts of his immunity from all restraint and law, is the representative of the Eternal Father. He with Hades and Poseidôn represents the Christian Trinity; but Hades represents also the power of darkness, and Poseidôn shares the attributes of God with those of the devil,[4] while all are children of the dethroned Kronos, in whom again the evil power finds an impersonation.[5] That a theology thus wilfully falsified should be found with a people not utterly demoralised, but exhibiting on the whole a social condition of great promise and a moral standard rising constantly higher, is indeed astonishing. On the supposition that Greek mythology was a corrupted religious system, it must, to whatever extent, have supplied a rule of faith and practice, and the actions and character of the gods must have furnished a justification for the excesses of human passion. That no such justification is alleged, and that the whole system seems to exercise no influence either on their standard of morality or their common practice, are signs which might appear to warrant the presumption that this mythology was not the object of a moral belief The whole question, viewed in this light, is so utterly perplexing, and apparently so much at variance with the conditions of Homeric society, that we are driven to examine more strictly the evidence on which the hypothesis rests; and it must be admitted
