ancient Greek theology? Was Homer himself participant of all the highest religious culture of which, as a Greek, in those early times, he was capable? To answer these questions we must inquire whether there are any existing sources from which any sure indication of a pre-Homeric theology can be obtained, and specially, whether the famous Eleusinian, or other mysteries, supposing them to have existed in Homer's time, revealed to the initiated any religious knowledge more elevated and more reasonable than what is exhibited to the vulgar eye in the secular cantos of the Iliad.

That a pre-Homeric literature, not written, of course, but sung, and with it a pre- Homeric theology, existed, the whole course of early ancient history, and the whole character of the Greek language used by Homer distinctly prove; but where are we to find it? First of all, perhaps, in Homer himself, just as we find the fragments of an older formation embedded in a later stratum among the many rocky and earthy coats which form the superficial engirdment of our globe. And unquestionably we do stumble here and there in the Iliad on strange physico-theological allusions, the matter of which does not seem to fit naturally into the thoroughly anthropomorphised celestial aristocracy of which the thunder-loving Jove is the head. That familiar line, for instance

Ωκεανὸν τε θεῶν γένεσιν καὶ μήτερα Τηθύν : Ocean whence gods have their birth, and Tethys the mother primeval, transporting us, as it does with a word, into that pre-Jovian era of which Æschylus has made such grand use in his Prometheus, is certainly a part of an archaic elemental theology which afterwards appeared in the shape of the sage sentences of Thales, the philosophical poetry of Empedocles, and the

mystical verses of the Orphic hymns. To the same source, I agree with Creuzer, may justly be referred the curious legend about the rebellion of the other Olympians against Jove in Iliad I. 396; and the sharp vision of that profound theological mythologist may detect similar fragments in other places, where to our broad British view they are not so manifest. But the principal source from which a knowledge of a pre-Homeric theology may now be gained, is the description of Greece by the pious old topographer Pausanias, a work from which more is to be learned of the remotest Greek antiquity than from all other sources combined. The intelligent reader will readily understand how, with the conservatism natural to all religious observances, in the remote glens of Arcadia, Boeotia, and Argolis, many singular and characteristic sacred usages existed even in the days of the Roman emperors, which bore on their face an antiquity by not a few centuries transcending the earliest age which has been assigned to Homer. Above all, the oldest and most venerated images of the gods, in the most hallowed shrines, continued to bear an unfaltering testimony to the archaic and quaintly symbolical theology of an age long anterior to the time when the light play of the poet's fancy, and the skilful touch of the sculptor's chisel, had combined to submit the whole hereditary types of Greek faith to the laws of a symmetrical beauty, and the demands of a human similitude. Take as an example the following account of an ancient image of Jove, as seen by Pausanias, in the Acropolis of Argos:

:

"On the summit of the Larissa there is a temple of Jove, surnamed the Larissaan, without a roof; but the image of the god, made

1 "In dieser Stelle zeigt sich das Durchscheinen inhaltsreicher symbolischer Lehre."-Symbolik, vol. iii. p. 66.

of wood, was not standing on its pedestal.

There is also a temple

of Minerva worthy of being seen; in this there are many votive monuments, and among others a carved image of Jove, with three eyes, one in the mid forehead, the two others where we naturally have them. This Jove, they say, was the family Jove of Laomedon, which had its place in the open court of his palace; and when Troy was taken by the Greeks, it was to the altar of this Jove that Priam fled. But when the spoils were divided, this image fell to the lot of Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus, who dedicated it in this place. As to its having three eyes, the reason of this may be readily guessed. For that Jove reigneth in heaven is the common belief of all men ; but that the ruler of the subterranean realms also beareth this designation, the verse of Homer doth aptly testify—

Ζεὺς δὲ καταχθόνιος καὶ ἐπαινὴ Περσεφόνεια.

And again, Eschylus the son of Euphorion calleth the ruler of the sea also by the name of Jove. It seemeth plain, therefore, that the maker of this image, whoever he was, gave three eyes to one face, indicating that it was one god, who, under three different designations, ruled over three different realms."

"1

A similar archaic character is presented in the image of the sable Demeter, as it was worshipped in a sacred cave by the Phigalians :-

"Now the Phigalians keep this cave sacred to Demeter, and they have placed in it an image of the goddess, carved in wood, after this fashion. The figure sitteth upon a rock, and hath the shape of a woman in all parts, save only the head; but the head hath the mane of a horse, and close to it there grow the likenesses of snakes and other wild beasts. The robe with which the image is clothed goeth down so as to cover the whole feet; and in one hand the goddess holdeth a dolphin, in the other a pigeon. Now, with what

1 Pausan. 11. 24. 4.—This is one of the passages quoted by those who wish to maintain that the Greeks had a

proper triumvirate or Trinity in their theology, concerning which notion see notes to Il. iv. 288, infra, vol. iii.

significance the image was made after this fashion, a man of a sound understanding and of a good memory needeth not to be told; and she is called sable, plainly from the colour of the garment which she weareth." "1

The same Arcadian people had, as is told in the preced-ing chapter, an image of a sort of mermaid goddess, halfwoman, half-fish, under the name of Eurynome, whose name also occurs in Homer (Il. XVIII. 398). These instances, a few out of many that might be adduced, may be sufficient to illustrate the general statement that there was unquestionably an old theology among the Greeks, of which we receive only accidental and involuntary indications from Homer; for there is not the slightest reason to believe that the blithe old minstrel had any distinct consciousness of the changes of religious usage and sacred type which had taken place previous to his day, or cared to inquire what was old and what was new in the rich tissue of theological legend with which the human story of the fall of Troy was interwoven. But the important question of course remains: Of what nature, was this pre-Homeric theology, and have we any reason to suppose that it contained elements which render Homer a partial and imperfect expositor of the religious faith of the Hellenes in its purest days? Here we are met by the doctrine of Creuzer, that "the Greek theology strayed from an original feeling of divine unity into a belief in multiplicity, and returned afterwards, through the influence of poets and philosophers, to the point from which it started." Now, in reference to this matter, the whole history of polytheistic idolatry in Greece and India, and elsewhere, wherever we

1 Pausan. VIII. 42. 3.-The caution | bols were explained in the ceremonies observed by the writer in indicating of the Eleusinian mysteries, and could the significance of this symbolical not be divulged. image, shows, I presume, that the sym

2 Symbolik, vol. i. p: 46. 1836.

have an opportunity of tracing it, distinctly shows a tendency to multiplication; so that the farther back we follow any mythological system, the simpler do its elements appear; and these elements, in all cases, are the grand original elements of nature themselves, by which we are surrounded, on which we stand, through which we exist, and by means of which we energize, that is to say, as Plato expressly witnesses both of the Greeks and the Barbarians, the heavens, the earth, the sea, the rivers, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the dark region of subterranean fire and commotion.1 But whether in the special case of the Greeks we have any trustworthy grounds for laying down the proposition that the multiplicity of their Olympian personages originally started from an absolute unity, that is, from a primitive Pelasgic monotheism, this, I must confess, notwithstanding my respect for the profound and capacious genius of Creuzer, is a point on which I do not feel at all clear. I should perhaps rather be inclined to assume the doctrine propounded by the old Boeotian theologer as a historical fact, and say that the polytheism of the Greeks commenced with the dualism of Oupavòs and Ãǹ-Heaven and Earth,--and, under the influence of the anthropomorphic principle, branched naturally out into the full complement of the thoroughly humanized Olympian clanship that we find in Homer. For the gods, of course, the great source of all generation, could not be childless; and their children would be gods also. But this is a section of the great chapter of beginnings, on which no wise man will hastily dogmatize. Those who hold with Creuzer on this point-a point of vital importance to our estimate of Homer as a complete interpreter of Hellenic faith-will probably maintain that the doctrine of the divine unity, obscured before Homer's 1 Cratylus, 397, D.