Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 18

**** Paus., iii. 21, l; but the reading is doubtful.

The tradition of descent from this or that beast or plant has been shown to be most widely prevalent. On the general establishment of a higher faith in a national deity, these traditions, it is presumed, would not wholly disappear, but would be absorbed into the local legend of the G.o.d. The various beasts would become sacred to him, as the sheep was sacred to Hera in Samos, according to Mandrobulus,* and images of the animals would congregate in his temple. The amours of Zeus, then, are probably traceable to the common habit of deriving n.o.ble descents from a G.o.d, and in the genealogical narrative older totemistic and other local myths found a place.** Apart from his intrigues, the youth of Zeus was like that of some masquerading and wandering king, such as James V. in Scotland. Though Plato, in the _Republic_, is unwilling that the young should be taught how the G.o.ds go about disguised as strangers, this was their conduct in the myths. Thus we read of

Lycaon and his fifty sons, whom Zeus In their own house spied on, and unawares Watching at hand, from his disguise arose, And overset the table where they sat Around their impious feast, and slew them all.***

Clemens of Alexandria**** contrasts the "human festival" of Zeus among the Ethiopians with the inhuman banquet offered to him by Lycaon in Arcadia.*****

* Op. Clem. Alex., i. 36.

** Compare Heyne, Observ. in Apollodor., i. 8, 1.

*** Bridges, _Prometheus the Firegiver_.

**** Clem. Alex., L 31.

***** Paus., viii. 2, l.

The permanence of Arcadian human sacrifice has already been alluded to, and it is confirmed by the superst.i.tion that whoever tasted the human portion in the mess sacrificed to Zeus became a were-wolf, resuming his original shape if for ten years he abstained from the flesh of men.*

A very quaint story of the domestic troubles of Zeus was current in Plataea, where it was related at the festival named _Daedala_. It was said that Hera, indignant at the amours of her lord, retired to Euboae.

Zeus, wishing to be reconciled to her, sought the advice of Cithaeron, at that time king of Plataea. By his counsel the G.o.d celebrated a sham marriage with a wooden image, dressed up to personate Plataea, daughter of Asopus. Hera flew to the scene and tore the bridal veil, when, discovering the trick, she laughed, and was reconciled to her husband.**

Probably this legend was told to explain some incident of ritual or custom in the feast of the Daedala, and it is certainly a more innocent myth than most that were commemorated in local mystery-plays.

* The wolves connected with the worship of Zeus, like his rams, goats, and other animals, are commonly explained as mythical names for elemental phenomena, clouds and storms.

Thus the ram's fleece, (--------), used in certain expiatory rites (Hesych., s. v., Lobeck, p. 183), is presumed by Preller to be a symbol of the cloud. In the same way his regis or goat-skin is the storm-wind or the thunder-cloud.

The opposite view will be found in Professor Robertson Smith's article on "Sacrifice" in _Encyc. Brit_., where the similar totemistic rites of the lower races are adduced. The elemental theory is set forth by Decharme, _Mythologie de la Grece Antique_ (Paris, 1879), p. 16. For the "storm-wolf,"

see Preller, i. 101. It seems a little curious that the wolf, which, on the solar hypothesis, was a brilliant beast connected with the worship of the sun-G.o.d, Apollo Lycaeus, becomes a cloud or storm-wolf when connected with Zeus. On the whole subject of the use of the skins of animals as clothing of the G.o.d or the ministrant, see Lobeck, _Aglaoph_., pp. 188-186, and Robertson Smith, op. cit.

** Paus., ix. 3, 1.

It was not only when he was _en bonne fortune_ that Zeus adopted the guise of a bird or beast. In the very ancient temple of Hera near Mycenae there was a great statue of the G.o.ddess, of gold and ivory, the work of Polycletus, and therefore comparatively modern. In one hand the G.o.ddess held a pomegranate, in the other a sceptre, on which was perched a cuckoo, like the Latin woodp.e.c.k.e.r Picus on his wooden post. About the pomegranate there was a myth which Pausanias declines to tell, but he does record the myth of the cuckoo. "They say that when Zeus loved the yet virgin Hera, he changed himself into a cuckoo, which she pursued and caught to be her playmate." Pausanias admits that he did not believe this legend. Probably it was invented to account for the companionship of the cuckoo, which, like the cow, was one of the sacred animals of Hera. Myths of this cla.s.s are probably later than the period in which we presume the divine relationships of G.o.ds and animals to have pa.s.sed out of the totemistic into the Samoan condition of belief. The more general explanation is, that the cuckoo, as a symbol of the vernal season, represents the heaven in its wooing of the earth. On the whole, as we have tried to show, the symbolic element in myth is late, and was meant to be explanatory of rites and usages whose original significance was forgotten. It would be unfair to a.s.sume that a G.o.d was disrespectfully viewed by his earliest worshippers because aetiological, genealogical, and other myths, crystallised into his legend.

An extremely wild legend of Zeus was current among the Galatae, where Pausanias expressly calls it a "local myth," differing from the Lydian variant. Zeus in his sleep became, by the earth, father of Attes, Va being both male and female in his nature. Agdistis was the local name of this enigmatic character, whom the G.o.ds feared and mutilated. From the blood grew up, as in so many myths, an almond tree. The daughter of Sangarius, Nana, placed some of the fruit in her bosom, and thereby became pregnant, like the girl in the Kalewala by the berry, or the mother of Huitzilopochtli, in Mexico, by the floating feather. The same set of ideas recurs in Grimm's _Marchen Machandelhoom_,* if we may suppose that in an older form the juniper tree and its berries aided the miraculous birth.** It is customary to see in these wild myths a reflection of the Phrygian religious tradition, which leads up to the birth of Atys, who again is identified with Adonis as a hero of the spring and the reviving year. But the story has been introduced in this place as an example of the manner in which floating myths from all sources gravitate towards one great name and personality, like that of Zeus. It would probably be erroneous to interpret these and many other myths in the vast legend of Zeus, as if they had originally and intentionally described the phenomena of the heavens. They are, more probably, mere accretions round the figure of Zeus conceived as a personal G.o.d, a "magnified non-natural man".***

* Mrs. Hunt's translation, i. 187.

** For parallels to this myth in Chinese, Aztec, Indian, Phrygian and other languages, see _Le Fils de la Vierge_, by M. H. de Charency, Havre, 1879. See also "Les Deux Freres"

in M. Maspero's _Contes Egyptians_

***As to the Agdistis myth, M. de Charency writes (after quoting forms of the tale from all parts of the world), "This resemblance between different shapes of the same legend, among nations separated by such expanses of land and sea, may be brought forward as an important proof of the antiquity of the myth, as well as of the distant date at which it began to be diffused".

Another example of local accretion is the fable that Zeus, after carrying off Ganymede to be his cupbearer, made atonement to the royal family of Troy by the present of a vine of gold fashioned by Hephaestus.* The whole of the myth of Callisto, again, whom Zeus loved, and who bore Areas, and later was changed into a bear, and again into a star, is clearly of local Arcadian origin. If the Arcadians, in very remote times, traced their descent from a she-bear, and if they also, like other races, recognised a bear in the constellation, they would naturally mix up those fables later with the legend of the all-powerful Zeus.**

* Scholia on _Odyssey_, xL 521; Iliad, xx. 234; Eurip., Orestes, 1392, and Scholiast quoting the _Little Iliad_.

** Compare C. O. Muller, _Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology_, London, 1884, pp. 16,17; Pausaniaa, i 25, 1, viii. 35, 7.

So far we have studied some of the details in the legend of Zeus which did not conspicuously win their way into the national literature. The object has been to notice a few of the myths which appear the most ancient, and the most truly native and original. These are the traditions preserved in mystery-plays, tribal genealogies, and temple legends, the traditions surviving from the far off period of the village Greeks. It has already been argued, in conformity with the opinion of C.

O. Muller, that these myths are most antique and thoroughly local. "Any attempt to explain these myths in order, such, for instance, as we now find them in the collection of Apollodorus, as a system of thought and knowledge, must prove a fruitless task." Equally useless is it to account for them all as stories originally told to describe, consciously or unconsciously, or to explain any atmospheric and meteorological phenomena. Zeus is the bright sky; granted, but the men who told how he became an ant, or a cuckoo, or celebrated a sham wedding with a wooden image, or offered Troy a golden vine, "the work of Hephaestus," like other articles of jewellery, were not thinking of the bright sky when they repeated the story. They were merely strengthening some ancient family or tribal tradition by attaching it to the name of a great, powerful, personal being, an immortal. This being, not the elemental force that was Zeus, not the power "making for righteousness" that is Zeus, not the pure spiritual ruler of the world, the Zeus of philosophy, is the hero of the myths that have been investigated.

In the tales that actually won their way into national literature, beginning with Homer, there is observable the singular tendency to combine, in one figure, the highest religious ideas with the fables of a capricious, and often unjust and l.u.s.tful supernatural being. Taking the myths first, their contrast with the religious conception of Zeus will be the more remarkable.

Zeus is the king of all G.o.ds and father of some, but he cannot keep his subjects and family always in order. In the first book of the _Iliad_, Achilles reminds his mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, how she once "rescued the son of Cronus, lord of the storm-clouds, from shameful wreck, when all other Olympians would have bound him, even Hera, and Poseidon, and Pallas Athene ". Thetis brought the hundred-handed Briareus to the help of the outnumbered and over-mastered Zeus. Then Zeus, according to the Scholiast, hung Hera out of heaven in chains, and gave Apollo and Poseidon for slaves to Laomedon, king of Troy. So lively was the recollection of this _coup d'etat_ in Olympus, that Hephaestus implores Hera (his mother in Homer) not to anger Zeus, "lest I behold thee, that art so dear, chastised before mine eyes, and then shall I not be able to save thee for all my sorrow".* He then reminds Hera how Zeus once tossed him out of heaven (as the Master of Life tossed Ataentsic in the Iroquois myth), and how he fell in Lemnos, "and little life was left in me". The pa.s.sage is often interpreted as if the fall of Hephaestus, the fire-G.o.d, were a myth of lightning; but in Homer a.s.suredly the incident has become thoroughly personal, and is told with much humour. The offence of Hera was the raising of a magic storm (which she could do as well as any Lapland witch) and the wrecking of Heracles on Cos. For this she was chained and hung out of heaven, as on the occasion already described.**

* Iliad, i. 587.

** Ibid., 590; Scholia, xiv. 255. The myth is derived from Pherecydes.

The constant bickerings between Hera and Zeus in the _Iliad_ are merely the reflection in the upper Olympian world of the wars and jealousies of men below. Ilios is at war with Argos and Mycenae, therefore the chief protecting G.o.ds of each city take part in the strife. This conception is connected with the heroic genealogies. n.o.ble and royal families, as in most countries, feigned a descent from the G.o.ds. It followed that Zeus was a partisan of his "children," that is, of the royal houses in the towns where he was the most favoured deity. Thus Hera when she sided with Mycenae had a double cause of anger, and there is an easy answer to the question, _quo numine laeso?_ She had her own townsmen's quarrel to abet, and she had her jealousy to incite her the more; for to become father of the human families Zeus must have been faithless to her.

Indeed, in a pa.s.sage (possibly interpolated) of the fourteenth _Iliad_ he acts as his own Leporello, and recites the list of his conquests.

The Perseidae, the Heraclidae, the Pirithoidae, with Dionysus, Apollo and Artemis spring from the amours there recounted.* Moved by such pa.s.sions, Hera urges on the ruin of Troy, and Zeus accuses her of a cannibal hatred. "Perchance wert thou to enter within the gates and long walls, and devour Priam raw, and Priam's sons, and all the Trojans, then mightest thou a.s.suage thine anger."** That great stumbling-block of Greek piety, the battle in which the G.o.ds take part,*** was explained as a physical allegory by the Neo-Platonists.**** It is in reality only a refraction of the wars of men, a battle produced among the heavenly folk by men's battles, as the earthly imitations of rain in the Vedic ritual beget rain from the firmament. The favouritism which Zeus throughout shows to Athene***** is explained by that rude and ancient myth of her birth from his brain after he had swallowed her pregnant mother.******

* Pherecydes is the authority for the treble night, in which Zeus persuaded the sun not to rise when he wooed Alemena.

** See the whole pa.s.sage, Iliad, iv. 160.

*** Ibid., v. 385.

**** Scholia, ed. Dindorf, vol iii.; Ibid., v. 886.

*****Ibid., v. 875.

****** Cf. "Hymn to Apollo Pythius," 136.

But Zeus cannot allow the wars of the G.o.ds to go on unreproved, and* he a.s.serts his power, and threatens to cast the offenders into Tartarus, "as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above earth". Here the supremacy of Zeus is attested, and he proposes to prove it by the sport called "the tug of war". He says, "Fasten ye a chain of gold from heaven, and all ye G.o.ds lay hold thereof, and all G.o.ddesses, yet could ye not drag from heaven to earth Zeus, the supreme counsellor, not though ye strove sore. But if once I were minded to drag with all my heart, then I could hang G.o.ds and earth and sea to a pinnacle of Olympus."** The supremacy claimed here on the score of strength, "by so much I am beyond G.o.ds and men," is elsewhere based on primogeniture,*** though in Hesiod Zeus is the youngest of the sons of Cronos. But there is, as usual in myth, no consistent view, and Zeus cannot be called omnipotent. Not only is he subject to fate, but his son Heracles would have perished when he went to seek the hound of h.e.l.l but for the aid of Athene.**** Grat.i.tude for his relief does not prevent Zeus from threatening Athene as well as Hera with Tartarus, when they would thwart him in the interest of the Achaeans. Hera is therefore obliged to subdue him by the aid of love and sleep, in that famous and beautiful pa.s.sage,***** which is so frankly anthropomorphic, and was such a scandal to religious minds.******

* Iliad, viii. ad init.

** M. Decharme regards this challenge to the tug of war as a very n.o.ble and sublime a.s.sertion of supreme sovereignty.

Myth, de la Greece, p. 19.

*** Iliad, xv. 166.

**** Ibid., viii. 369. *****Ibid., adv. 160-350.

****** Schol. Iliad, xiv. 346; Dindorf, vol. iv. In the Scholiast's explanation the scene is an allegorical description of spring; the wrath of Hera is the remains of winter weather; her bath represents the April showers; when she busks her hair, the new leaves on the boughs, "the high leafy tresses of the trees," are intended, and so forth. Not to a.n.a.lyse the whole divine plot of the _Iliad_, such is Zeus in the mythical portions of the epic. He is the father and master of G.o.ds and men, and the strongest; but he may be opposed, he may be deceived and cajoled; he is hot- tempered, amorous, luxurious, by no means omnipotent or omniscient. He cannot avert even from his children the doom that Fate span into the threads at their birth; he is no more omniscient than omnipotent, and if he can affect the weather, and bring storm and cloud, so at will can the other deities, and so can any sorcerer, or Jossakeed, or Biraark of the lower races.

In Homeric religion, as considered apart from myth, in the religious thoughts of men at solemn moments of need, or dread, or prayer, Zeus holds a far other place. All power over mortals is in his hands, and is acknowledged with almost the fatalism of Islam. "So meseems it pleaseth mighty Zeus, who hath laid low the head of many a city, yea, and shall lay low, for his is the highest power."* It is Zeus who gives sorrows to men,** and he has, in a mythical picture, two jars by him full of evil and good, which he deals to his children on earth. In prayer*** he is addressed as Zeus, most glorious, most great, veiled in the storm-cloud, that dwelleth in the heaven. He gives his sanction to the oath:****

* _Iliad_, ii. 177.

** Ibid., 378.

*** Ibid., 408.

**** Ibid., iii 277.

"Thou sun, that seest all, Father Zeus, that rulest from Ida, most glorious, most great, and things, and nearest all things, and ye rivers, and thou earth, and ye that in the underworld punish men forsworn, whosoever sweareth falsely, be ye witnesses, and watch over the faithful oath". Again it is said: "Even if the Olympian bring not forth the fulfilment" (of the oath) "at once, yet doth he fulfil at the last, and men make dear amends, even with their own heads, and their wives and little ones".* Again, "Father Zeus will be no helper of liars ".**