Mnemosyne: memory. Other Titans were Coeus and Phoebe, figurative of the radiant lights of heaven; Creüs and Eurybië, mighty powers, probably of the sea; Ophion, the mighty serpent, and Eurynome, the far-ruling, who, according to Apollonius of Rhodes, held sway over the Titans until Cronus cast them into the Ocean, or into Tartarus. Cronus (Greek Kronos) is, as his name shows, the god of ripening, harvest, maturity. Rhea comes from Asia Minor, and was there worshipped as the Mother Earth, dwelling creative among the mountains. Cronus (Kronos) has been naturally, but wrongly, identified with Chronos, the personification of Time, which, as it brings all things to an end, devours its own offspring; and also with the Latin Saturn, who, as a god of agriculture and harvest, was represented with pruning-knife in hand, and regarded as the lord of an ancient golden age. The three Cyclopes were Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. Cyclops means the round-eyed. The Hecatonchires were Briareus, the strong, called also Ægæon (see 21 C); Cottus, the striker; Gyes (or Gyges), the vaulter, or crippler. Gyges is called by Horace (Carm. 2, 17: 14) Centimanus, — the hundred-handed. Illustrative. Milton, in Paradise Lost 10: 581, refers to the tradition of Ophion and Eurynome, who had first the rule of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven." Hyperion: see Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself." Also Hen. V. 4:1; Troil. and Cressida 2:3; Titus Andron. 5:3; Gray, Prog. of Poesy, "Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war"; Spenser, Prothalamion, " Hot Titans beames." On Oceanus, Ben Jonson, Neptune's Triumph. On Saturn, see Shakespeare, Much Ado 1:3; 2 Hen. IV. 2:4; Cymbeline 2:5; Titus Andron. 2:3 and 4:3; Milton, P. L. 1:512, 519, 583, and Il Penseroso 24. See Robert Buchanan, Cloudland, "One like a Titan cold," etc.; Keats, Hyperion. In Art. - Helios (Hyperion) rising from the sea: sculpture of eastern pediment of the frieze of the Parthenon (British Museum). § 18. Homer makes Jupiter (Zeus) the oldest of the sons of Cronus; Hesiod makes him the youngest, in accordance with a widespread savage custom which makes the youngest child heir in chief. — LANG, Myth, Ritual, etc., I: 297. According to other legends Zeus was born in Arcadia, or even in Epirus at Dodona, where was his sacred grove. He was in either case reared by the nymphs of the locality. According to Hesiod, Theog. 730, he was born in a cave of Mount Dicte, in Crete. § 19. Atlas, according to other accounts, was not doomed to support the heavens until after his encounter with Perseus. See § 136. § 21. See Milton's Christ's Nativity, "Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine." The monster is also called Typhöeus (Hesiod, Theog. 1137). The name means to smoke, to burn. The monster personifies fiery vapors proceeding from subterranean places. Other famous Giants were Mimas, Polybotes, Ephialtes, Rhoetus, Clytius. See Preller, I : 60. Briareus (really a Centimanus) is frequently ranked among the giants. Illustrative. Shakespeare, Troil. and Cressida I: 2; Milton, P. L. 1: 199; Pope, Dunciad 4:66. For giants, in general, see P. L. 3: 464; 11:642, 688; Samson Agonistes, 148. §§ 22-25. Prometheus: forethought. Epimetheus: afterthought. The secret preserved by Prometheus was to the effect that, in time, Jupiter and his dynasty should be overthrown. Prometheus knew also that he would be released from chains by one of his descendants in the thirteenth generation. This deliverer was Hercules, son of Alcmene and Jupiter. Sicyon (or Mecone): a city of the Peloponnesus, near the Isthmus of Corinth. Illustrative. - Milton, P. L., “More lovely than Pandora whom the gods endowed with all their gifts." Poems. D. G. Rossetti, Pandora; Longfellow, Masque of Pandora; Thos. Parnell, Hesiod, or the Rise of Woman. Prometheus, by Byron, Lowell, H. Coleridge; Prometheus Bound, by Mrs. Browning; translations of Eschylus, Prometheus Bound, Augusta Webster, E. H. Plumptre; Shelley, Prometheus Unbound; R. H. Horne, Prometheus, the Fire-bringer. See Byron's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte. The Golden Age: Chaucer, The Former Age (Ætas Prima). In Art. - Ancient: Prometheus Unbound, vase picture (Monuments Inédits: Rome and Paris). Modern: Thorwaldsen's sculpture, Minerva and Prometheus; Sichel's painting, Pandora. § 26. Dante (Durante) degli Alighieri was born in Florence, 1265. Banished by his political opponents 1302, he remained in exile until his death, which took place in Ravenna, 1321. His Vita Nuova (New Life), recounting his ideal love for Beatrice Portinari, was written between 1290 and 1300; his great poem, the Divina Commedia (the Divine Comedy) consisting of three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso,—during the years of his exile. Of the Divine Comedy, says Lowell, "It is the real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul." John Milton (b. 1608) was carried by the stress of the civil war, 1641–1649, away from poetry, music, and the art which he had sedulously cultivated, into the stormy sea of politics and war. Perhaps the severity of his later sonnets and the sublimity of his Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes are the fruit of the stern years of controversy through which he lived, not as a poet, but as a statesman and a pamphleteer. Cervantes (1547-1616), the renown. author of the greatest of Spanish romances, Don Quixote. His life was full of adventure, privation, suffering, with but brief seasons of happiness and He distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto, 1571; but in 1575, being captured by Algerine cruisers, he remained five years in harsh captivity. After his return to Spain he was neglected by those in power. For full twenty years he struggled for his daily bread. Don Quixote was published in and after 1605. Corybantes: the priests of Cybele, whose festivals were violent, and whose worship consisted of dances and noise suggestive of battle, § 45 a. § 28. Astræa was placed among the stars as the constellation Virgo, the virgin. Her mother was Themis (Justice). Astræa holds aloft a pair of scales, in which she weighs the conflicting claims of parties. The old poets prophesied a return of these goddesses and of the Golden Age. See also Pope's Messiah, — "All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail, and Milton's Hymn to the Nativity, 14, 15. In P. L. 4: 998, et seq., is a different conception of the golden scales, "betwixt Astræa and the Scorpion sign." § 29. Illustrative.-B. W. Proctor, the Flood of Thessaly. See Ovid's famous narrative of the Four Ages and the Flood, Metamorphoses 1: 89-415. Deucalion: Bayard Taylor's Prince Deukalion; Milton, P. L. II: 12. Interpretative. This myth combines two stories of the origin of the Hellenes, or indigenous Greeks, — one, in accordance with which the Hellenes, as earth-born, claimed descent from Pyrrha (the red earth); the other and older, by which Deucalion was represented as the only survivor of the flood, but still the founder of the race (in Greek lads), which he created by casting stones (in Greek ldes) behind him. The myth, therefore, proceeds from an unintended pun. Although, finally, Pyrrha was by myth-makers made the wife of Deucalion, the older myth of the origin of the race from stones was preserved. See Max Müller, Sci. Relig., Lond.: 1873, p. 64. § 30. For genealogy of the race of Inachus, Phoroneus, Pelasgus, and Io, see § 59 C. Pelasgus is frequently regarded as the grandson, not the son, of Phoroneus. For the descendants of Deucalion and Hellen, see § 132 (5) of this commentary. § 31. In the following genealogical table (A), the names of the great gods of Olympus are printed in heavy-face. Latin forms of names or Latin substitutes are used. Illustrative. On the Gods of Greece, see E. A. Bowring's translation of Schiller's Die Götter Griechenlands and Bayard Taylor's Masque of the Vesta Ceres Juno Pluto Neptune Jupiter = (1) Juno = (2) Latona = (3) Dione (4) Maia = (5) Ceres (6) Semele (7) Alcmene Minerva Hebe Mars Vulcan Apollo Diana Venus Mercury Proserpina Bacchus Hercules The Great Gods of Olympus. Gods. On Olympus, see Lewis Morris, the Epic of Hades. Allusions abound; e.g. Viol and Flute). § 32. The Olympian Gods. — There were, according to Mr. Gladstone (No. Am. Rev. April, 1892), about twenty Olympian deities: (1) The five really great gods, Zeus, Hera, Posidon, Apollo, and Athene; (2) Hephæstus, Ares, Hermes, Iris, Leto, Artemis, Themis, Aphrodite, Dione, Pæëon (or Pæon), and Hebe,also usually present among the assembled immortals; (3) Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, and Thetis, whose claims are more or less obscured. According to the same authority, the Distinctive Qualities of the Homeric Gods were as follows: (1) they were immortal; (2) they were incorporated in human form; (3) they enjoyed power far exceeding that possessed by mortals; (4) they were, however (with the possible exception of Athene, who is never ignorant, never deceived, never baffled), all liable to certain limitations of energy and knowledge; (5) they were subject also to corporeal wants and to human affections. The Olympian Religion, as a whole, was more careful of nations, states, public affairs, than of individuals and individual character; and in this respect, according to Mr. Gladstone, it differs from Christianity. He holds, however, that despite the occasional immoralities of the gods, their general government 1 For Latin names, see Index, or Chaps. V.-VIII. not only "makes for righteousness," but is addressed to the end of rendering it triumphant. Says Zeus, for instance, in the Olympian assembly, "Men complain of us the gods, and say that we are the source from whence ills proceed; but they likewise themselves suffer woes outside the course of destiny, through their own perverse offending." But, beside this general effort for the triumph of right, there is little to be said in abatement of the general proposition that, whatever be their collective conduct, the common speech of the gods is below the human level in point of morality.1 § 33. Zeus.-In Sanskrit Dyaus, in Latin Jovis, in German Tiu. The same name for the Almighty (the Light or Sky) used probably thousands of years before Homer, or the Sanskrit Bible (the Vedas). It is not merely the blue sky, nor the sky personified, not merely worship of a natural phenomenon, but of the Father who is in Heaven. So in the Vedas we find Zeus pitar, in the Greek Zeu pater, in Latin Jupiter — all meaning Heavenfather. MAX MÜLLER, Sci. Relig. 171, 172. Oracle: the word signifies also the answers given at the shrine. Illustrative. Allusions to Jove on every other page of Milton, Dryden, Prior, Gray, and any poet of the Elizabethan and Augustan periods. On the Love Affairs of Jupiter and the other gods, Milton, Paradise Regained 2 : 182. Dodona: Tennyson's Talking Oak :· That Thessalian growth on which the swarthy ring-dove sat Poem: Lewis Morris, Zeus, in the Epic of Hades. In Art. Beside the representations of Jupiter noted in the text may be mentioned that on the eastern frieze of the Parthenon; the Jupiter Otricoli in the Vatican; also the Jupiter and Juno (painting) by Annibale Carracci; the Jupiter (sculpture) by Benvenuto Cellini. § 34. Juno was called by the Romans Juno Lucina, the special goddess of childbirth. In her honor wives held the festival of the Matronalia on the first of March of each year. The Latin Juno is for Diou-n-on, from the stem Diove, and is the feminine parallel of Jovis, just as the Greek Dione (one of the loves of Zeus) is the feminine of Zeus. These names (and Diana, too) come from the root div, to shine, to illumine. There are many points of resemblance between the Italian Juno and the Greek Dione (identified with Hera, as Hera-Dione). Both are goddesses of the moon, of women, of marriage; to both the cow (with moon-crescent horns) is sacred. (See Roscher, 21:576-579.) 1 The Olympian Religion (N. A. Rev. May, 1892). See also his Juventus Mundi. |