Even the remains of the dead animals were of high importance in Teutonic divination. Their flesh was pre-eminently witches' food; horses' hoofs made witches' drinking-cups; the pipers at witches' revels played on horses' heads, which were besides an indispensable adjunct to many diabolical ceremonies.1 3 Homer describes the Trojans as flinging live horses into the Scamander; 2 and the Persians in the time of Herodotus occasionally resorted to the same barbarous means of propitiating rivers. In honour of the sun-perhaps the legitimate claimant to such honours-horses were immolated on the summit of Taygetus, and a team of four, with chariot attached, was yearly sunk by the Rhodians into the sea. The Argives worshipped Poseidon with similar rites, certainly not learned from the Phoenicians, to whom they were unknown. They were unknown as well to the Homeric Greeks; for the slaughter on the funeral-pyre of Patroclus belonged to a different order of ideas. Here the prompting motive was that ingrained desire to supply the needs, moral and physical, of the dead, which led to so many blood-stained obsequies. Horses and dogs fell, in an especial manner, victims to its prevalence; and have consequently a prominent place on early Greek tomb-reliefs representing the future state.1 1 Grimm and Stallybrass, op. cit. pp. 47, 659, 1050. 2 Iliad, xxi. 132. 3 Pausanias, lib. iii. cap. 20, viii. 7. 4 Gardner, Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. v. p. 130. Homer's description of the Troad as 'rich in horses' has been very scantily justified by the results of underground exploration. Few of the animal's bones were found at Hissarlik, none at the neighbouring Hanai-Tepe. Yet every Trojan at the present day is a born rider.2 Locomotion on horseback is universal, at all ages, and for both sexes. Priam himself could scarcely now be accommodated with a mule-cart. He should leave the Pergamus, if at all, mounted in some fashion on the back of a steed. The author of the Iliad, however, was no equestrian. His knowledge of horses was otherwise acquired. But how intimate and accurate that knowledge was, one example may suffice to show. A thunderstorm, sent by Zeus in tardy fulfilment of his promise to Thetis, caused a panic among the Greeks; the bravest yielded to the contagion of fear; there was a sauve qui peut to the ships. In the wild rout, Gerenian Nestor, aged prop of Greece, 1 Calvert, in Schliemann's Ilios, p. 711. 2 Virchow, Abhandlungen Berlin. Acad. 1879, p. 62. I The most vulnerable point is here pointed out with anatomical correctness.1 Exactly where the mane begins, the bony shield of the skull comes to an end, and the route to the brain, especially to a dart coming, like that of Paris, from behind, lies comparatively open. The sudden upspringing of the deathsmitten creature, followed by his struggle on the ground, is also perfectly true to nature, and suggests personal observation of the occurrence described. Observation, both close and sympathetic, assuredly dictated the brilliant lines in which Paris, issuing from the Scaan gate, is compared to a courser breaking loose from confinement to disport himself in the open. As some proud steed, at well-fill'd manger fed, To bathe his sides; then tossing high his head, 3 The simile, less happily appropriated to Hector, is repeated in a subsequent part of the poem; and it was by Virgil transferred bodily to the Eleventh Eneid, where it serves to adorn Turnus, the wearer of many borrowed Iliadic plumes. They, however, it must be admitted, make a splendid show in their new setting. 1 Buchholz, Homer. Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 175. 3 Ib. xv. 263. The makers of the Iliad, whether few or many, were at least unanimous in their fervid admiration for the horse. The verses glow with a kind of rapture of enjoyment that describe his strength, beauty, and swiftness, his eager spirit and fine nervous organisation, his docility to trusted guidance, his intelligent participation in human contentions and pursuits. No animal has elsewhere achieved true epic personality; no animal has been raised to so high a dignity in art. The whole Iliad might be called an 'Aristeia' or eulogistic celebration of the species. 1 Cf. Milchhöfer, Die Anfänge der Kunst, p. 57. CHAPTER V. HOMERIC ZOOLOGY. THE establishment of a clear distinction between men and beasts might seem a slight effort of defining intellect, yet it has not been quite easily made. In children the instinct of assimilation long survives the experience of difference. A little boy of six, asked by the present writer what profession he thought of adopting, replied with alacrity that he would like to be a bird,' and it was only on being reminded of the diet of grubs associated with that state of life, that he began to waver as to its desirability. The same incapacity for drawing a boundary-line between the realm of their own imperfect consciousness and the mysterious encompassing region of animal life, is visible in the grown-up children of the wilds. Hence the zoological speculations of primitive man inevitably take the form of a sort of projection of human faculties into animal natures. Now human faculties, released from the control of actuality, spontaneously expand. In a vague and vaporous way, they trans |