was an emblem of victory and immortality, of devotion and devotional consecration 111. 111 So far the drama is a physical one; but Nature schools not only the eyes but the sentiments, and Hercules and Prometheus are not mere physical powers but intellectual and moral symbols of humanity. The punishment of the Titan was supposed to have occurred at the close of the golden age, "when want and disease in dread array invaded earth, and destiny hastened the lingering steps of death." "12 Man, actual or "fallen," is bound by many fetters, of which he must not only feel the smart but understand the mechanism before he can be emancipated. The chains of Prometheus attach not only to the criminal, the vassal, or the slave, they are in the cabinet as in the workshop, in the study of Faust as in Auerbach's Gold, love, ambition, ignorance as well as knowledge, rivet fetters as securely as imprisonment or servitude; society has its thousand ties whether of affection, profession, or opinion; by want we are bound to labour, by knowledge to duty; in short, every element of experience may be called a new chain, binding man either to endurance or action. Many characters are blended in Prometheus; he is not only the suffering god and the struggling enterprise of man, but the mediatorial being who raises man out of his first helpless condition, ministering to those material wants the feeling and acknowledgment of which constituted his earliest impression of "a Fall." The mediation Tertull. de Cor. 10. Pliny, xvi. 4; xviii. 2. Clem. Alex. Pæd. ii. 8. 70, p. 213, Pott. 112 Hor. Ode, i. 3. 30. Virg. Ecl. vi. 41. Hes. Theog. 535. specifically attributable to Hercules is of a higher kind. Prometheus, as first inventor of social institutions, is an imperfect type of Hercules; and though by the poet he is said. to have rendered men self conscious and intelligent, “ Έννους και φρενων επηβολους,” the dawn of knowledge was accompanied with doubt, apprehension, and estrangement. In other words, the æra of Prometheus was properly that of the "Fall," when the divine government seemed harsh and arbitrary 115, and the claims of labour and duty the tyrannical imposition of a taskmaster. His liberation, philosophically interpreted, marks a higher æra of development, when the first superficial impressions are removed, and the divine character is better understood. The Deity is then no longer at variance with a being instrumental in raising the condition of mankind; and though the acropolis of Zeus is still intellectually inaccessible 116, the advent of Hercules announces a hope of final success in a higher moral and mental maturity. He pursued the active course of beneficence which Prometheus began; he was the perfect representative of his divine father, performing on earth what Zeus wills in heaven". He cleansed the Augean stable of the accumulated contamination of time, or of the herds of Helios; he was the scourge of wrong doers, purger of injustice and crime 118, averter of evil 19. Even his deeds of violence were to purify and save 120; he battled like Perseus with the effeminate superstitions of Asia, and against the gigantic power of physical and moral evil represented 115 Eschyl. Prom. 150. 186. 116 "Ες την του Διος οικησιν ουκετι ενεχωρει εισελθειν." Plato, Protag. 331. 117 Hes. Theog. 529. ·Zungyos To TaTg." Aristid. Orat. i. p. 57, Cant.; comp. Eschyl. Suppl. 589. 118 46 • Καθαρτης ανομίας και αδικίας.” Arrian, Indic. 8. ii. 16; iii. 24. Guigniaut, R. ii. 162. Institutor of the Ideen, i. 223. 119 40 "Aλsixanos." Pind. Nem. vii. 87. lanicus. Sturz. 163. Welcker, Trilogie, 45. 120 Olympiodor. in Plat. Alcib. p. 157. 121 Guigniant, R. ii. 55. 163. Dissert. Epictet. i. 6; Aristoph. Nubes, 1354, Schol. Hel by Antæus. He was indeed the sun, but he is also that sun of virtue which supplies a divine model for man's imitation, and which alone can create in him a resemblance to the Deity 122. Prometheus, as well as Hercules, assisted the gods in their wars against the Titans or giants '23, the insubordination of wild nature which he contributed to make subservient to human wants; the career of Hercules implied more than this, for it exhibited man rising by the resources of fortitude and virtue to the dignity of a god, indicating by the very expression of the idea that the highest aspirations of his nature were prospectively satisfied, and his mind reconciled with heaven and with itself. Man is no longer bound by the god of Nature to the pillar of necessity, to a wearying round of hopeless privation and unrequited toil, for the burden which at first appeared intolerable becomes by perseverance unexpectedly light and easy 125. God did not spare his own son, or exempt him from the calamities incidental to humanity' The Theban progeny of Jove had his share of pain and trial 12. It was by vanquishing earthly difficulties that he proved his affinity with heaven. His life, through the agency of Até, was a continued struggle, but the mischief-making power was now for ever expelled from the communion of the gods 128. Hercules fainted before Typhon in the desert 129, and in the commencement of the autumnal season, "Cum longæ redit hora noctis," descended under the guidance of Minerva 130 to Hades; he died, but first applied for initiation to Eumolpus, in order to foreshow that state of 122 "Hercules est ea solis potestas quæ humano generi virtutem ad similitudinem præstat Deorum." Macrob. Sat. i. 20, p. 320, Zeun. Comp. Max. Tyr. Diss. vi. 1, 2. 123 Pind. Nem. i. 100. 124 Archilochi, Frag. 1. 125 Hes. Works, 292. 126 . Eschyl. Prom. 227. Stobæ. Floril. p. 615. 1.6 Maxim. Tyrius, Dissert. xxxviii. 20. 127 Hom. I. xi. 620. Yet it has been sometimes said that the salutary influences of sorrow and suffering were first revealed in Christianity. 128 Iliad, ix. 511; xix. 91. 126. 129 Eudoxus ap Athenæ, ix. 449. 130 Iliad, viii. 366. Creuz. S. ii. 99. 131 Iliad, xviii. 117. 135 133 religious preparation which should precede the momentous change. Yet his descent was not like that of Esculapius, an infliction or penalty, but a beneficent expedient exhibiting the energy of divine goodness potent even in the grave. He there rescued Theseus, and removed the stone of Ascalaphus; he reanimated the bloodless spirits 132, and dragged into the light of day Cerberus, the monster justly reputed invincible 1, because an emblem of Time itself; he burst the chains of the grave (for Busiris is the grave personified) 134, and triumphant at the close as in the dawn of his career was received after his labours into the repose of the heavenly mansions 136, living for ever with Zeus in the arms of eternal Youth 137. For though in a probably corrupt passage of the Odyssee 138, his phantom, like those of deceased men, is said to be found in Hades, yet unlike other heroes he lingers neither in the lunar sphere nor in the western ocean, still less is he a victim of the grave, or left to be torn by vultures on the field of battle; but himself, the "autos," is preferred to Olympus by the side of his immortal father, when he unites the hero with the god 19, continuing the friend and intercessor of man 140, and by his illustrious example encouraging him to fulfil the noblest purposes of his existence11. 132 Apollod. ii. 5. 12. 7. 133 Soph. Ed. Colon. 1568. 134 Diod. S. i. 88. Creuz. S. ii. 92. 94. Pherecyd. Sturz. 132. 135 Pind. Nem. i. 35. 136 Hes. Theog. 955. Hom. Odyss. xi. 601. Protag. 321. Την του Διός οικησιν. Plato, 137 Pind. Nem. i. 62. 110. Hor. Od. iv. 8. 30. Diod. S. iv. 38, 39. 138 xi. 602, and Nitsch's Note. 139 A union first recognised in Attica (Diod. S. iv. 39. Paus. i. 32; ii. 10. Herod. ii. 44), but which probably existed in the Caucasian Hercules of the Scythians, among whom the Prometheus who was bound, the Hercules who released him, and the Zeus who authorized the release, appear as one being. Comp. Schol. Apollon. Rh. ii. 1253. Diod. S. ii. 43. Supr. vol. i. p. 212. 140 Pind. Nem. vii. 140. Philostr. Vit. A. 8, 9, p. 341. 141 Pind. Nem. ix. 44. § 16. GREEK DÆMONOLOGY. Greek anthropomorphism, itself a qualified or incipient euhemerism, was insufficient to satisfy or repress those natural feelings of awe in regard to the unseen, which, according to the mode of their exhibition, are either religion or superstition. In order to express these deeper apprehensions, whether of divinity in general, or of its diversified agencies and manifestations, it became necessary to imagine, or, more properly speaking, to revert to a class of beings behind that array of personifications which the common mythology had rendered too sensuous and familiar. The word "hero," in poetical terminology, was properly "a distinguished personage among men," etymologically akin to Herus, Hera, and the German Herr2, and connected with the supernatural or divine' only indirectly through the personifying system which contemplated the gods, and inclusively all derivative beings under a humanised form. But the word was afterwards differently used, and popularly or even systematically confounded with the more mysterious conception conveyed by the word "dæmon." The Δαιμονιον and Θειον, the former term perhaps still more than the latter, implied the general notion of the supernatural or divine without distinction of rank or person. It conveyed that vague feeling of the spiritual within, above, and beyond humanity which exists everywhere"; and though we 1 “Oi hyrμoves Tay agxawy," in contrast with the "numerus," or common people. Aristot. Problem. xix. 48. 2. Ethics, vii. 1. Xenoph. de Rep. Laced. 15, end. 2 Zeus was called "Errus." Hesych. Albert. i. 1445; and Juno, Hera. 3 "Huibear govos avdgwv. Iliad, xii. 23. Comp. Plato, Apol. 28. Here the term "so," if not an interpolation, must be understood as a mere laudatory appellative. Hom. Odyss. xi. 134. Karsten's Xenophanes, p. 114. For instance, in the spirit-powers of the air or sideλa, which from the Magi down to Lady Hester Stanhope have always been favourite subjects of Eastern fancy. Creuz. S. iii. 757. Ephes. ii. 2. VOL. II. H |