and, in a word, by his single arm effecting works which properly belong to the united labours of a young community. The other class exhibits a state of things comparatively settled and mature, when the first victory has been gained, and the contest is now between one tribe and another, for possession or dominion; we see him maintaining the cause of the weak against the strong, of the innocent against the oppressor, punishing wrong, and robbery, and sacrilege, subduing tyrants, exterminating his enemies, and bestowing kingdoms on his friends. It would be futile to inquire, who the person was to whom deeds of the former kind were attributed; but it is an interesting question, whether the first conception of such a being was formed in the mind of the Greeks by their own unassisted imagination, or was suggested to them by a different people,in other words, whether Hercules, viewed in this light, is a creature of the Greek, or of any foreign mythology.

It is sufficient to throw a single glance at the fabulous adventures called the labours of Hercules, to be convinced that a part of them at least belongs to the Phoenicians, and their wandering god, in whose honour they built temples in all their principal settlements along the coast of the Mediterranean. To him must be attributed all the journeys of Hercules round the shores of western Europe, which did not become known to the Greeks for many centuries after they had been explored by the Phoenician navigators. The number to which those labours are confined by the legend, is evidently an astronomical period, and thus itself points to the course of the sun which the Phoenician god represented. The event which closes the career of the Greek hero, who rises to immortality from the flames of the pile on which he lays himself, is a prominent feature in the same Eastern mythology, and may therefore be safely considered as borrowed from it. All these tales may indeed be regarded as additions made

See Boettiger, Kunst-Mythologie, p. 37. Mueller, in the Rheinisches Museum, iii. p. 28.

at a late period to the Greek legend, after it had sprung up independently at home. But it is at least a remarkable coincidence, that the birth of Hercules is assigned to the city of Cadmus; and the great works ascribed to him, so far as they were really accomplished by human labour, may seem to correspond better with the art and industry of the Phoenicians, than with the skill and power of a less civilised race. But in whatever way the origin of the name and idea of Hercules may be explained, at least in that which we have distinguished as the second class of legends relating to him he appears, without any ambiguity, as a Greek hero; and here it may reasonably be asked, whether all or any part of the adventures they describe, really happened to a single person, who either properly bore the name of Hercules, or received it as a title of honour.

We must briefly mention the manner in which these adventures are linked together in the common story. Amphitryon, the reputed father of Hercules, was the son of Alcæus, who is named first among the children born to Perseus at Mycenæ. The hero's mother, Alcmena, was the daughter of Electryon, another son of Perseus, who had succeeded to the kingdom. In his reign, the Taphians, a piratical people who inhabited the islands called Echinades, near the mouth of the Achelous, landed in Argolis, and carried off the king's herds. While Electryon was preparing to avenge himself by invading their land, after he had committed his kingdom and his daughter to the charge of Amphitryon, a chance like that which caused the death of Acrisius stained the hands of the nephew with his uncle's blood. Sthenelus, a third son of Perseus, laid hold of this pretext to force Amphitryon and Alemena to quit the country, and they took refuge in Thebes: thus it happened that Hercules, though an Argive by descent, and, by his mortal parentage, legitimate heir to the throne of Mycena, was, as to his birthplace, a Theban. Hence Boeotia is the scene of his youthful exploits : bred up among the herdsmen of Citharon, like Cyrus

and Romulus, he delivers Thespiæ from the lion which made havoc among its cattle. He then frees Thebes from the yoke of its more powerful neighbour, Orchomenus and here we find something which has more the look of a historical tradition, though it is no less poetical in its form. The king of Orchomenus had been killed, in the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestus, by a Theban. His successor, Erginus, imposes a tribute on Thebes; but Hercules mutilates his heralds when they come to exact it, and then marching against Orchomenus, slays Erginus, and forces the Minyans to pay twice the tribute which they had hitherto received.1 According to a Theban legend, it was on this occasion that he stopped the subterraneous outlet of the Cephisus, and thus formed the lake which covered the greater part of the plain of Orchomenus.2 In the meanwhile Sthenelus had been succeeded by his son Eurystheus, the destined enemy of Hercules and his race, at whose command the hero undertakes his labours. This voluntary subjection of the rightful prince to the weak and timid usurper is represented as an expiation, ordained by the Delphic oracle, for a fit of phrenzy, in which Hercules had destroyed his wife and children. This, as a poetical or religious fiction, is very happily conceived: but when we are seeking for a historical thread to connect the Baotian legends of Hercules with those of Peloponnesus, it must be set entirely aside; and yet it is not only the oldest form of the story, but no other has hitherto been found or devised to fill its place with a greater appearance of probability. The supposed right of Hercules to the throne of Mycena was, as we shall see, the ground on which the Dorians, some generations later, claimed the dominion of Peloponnesus. Yet, in any other than a poetical view, his enmity to Eurystheus is utterly inconsistent with the exploits ascribed to him in the peninsula. It is also remarkable, that while the adventures which he undertakes at the bidding of his rival are prodigious and 1 Apollod. ii. 4. 11.

2 Paus. ix. 38.7.

supernatural, belonging to the first of the two classes above distinguished, he is described as during the same period engaged in expeditions which are only accidentally connected with these marvellous labours, and which, if they stood alone, might be taken for traditional facts. In these he appears in the light of an independent prince, and a powerful conqueror. He leads an army against Augeas, king of Elis, and having slain him, bestows his kingdom on one of his sons, who had condemned his father's injustice. So he invades Pylus to avenge an insult which he had received from Neleus, and puts him to death, with all his children, except Nestor, who was absent, or had escaped to Gerenia. Again he carries his conquering arms into Laconia, where he exterminates the family of the king Hippocoon, and places Tyndareus on the throne. Here, if any where in the legend of Hercules, we might seem to be reading an account of real events. Yet who can believe, that while he was overthrowing these hostile dynasties, and giving away sceptres, he suffered himself to be excluded from his own kingdom?

It was the fate of Hercules to be incessantly forced into dangerous and arduous enterprises: and hence every part of Greece is in its turn the scene of his achievements. Thus we have already seen him, in Thessaly, the ally of the Dorians, laying the foundation of a perpetual union between the people and his own descendants, as if he had either abandoned all hope of recovering the crown of Mycenæ, or had foreseen that his posterity would require the aid of the Dorians for that purpose. In Ætolia too he appears as a friend and a protector of the royal house, and fights its battles against the Thesprotians of Epirus. These perpetual wanderings, these successive alliances with so many different races, excite no surprise, so long as we view them in a poetical light, as issuing out of one source, the implacable hate with which Juno persecutes the son of Jove. They may also be understood as real events, 1 Apollod. ii. 7. 6.

if they are supposed to have been perfectly independent of each other, and connected only by being referred to one fabulous name. But when the poetical motive is rejected, it seems impossible to frame any rational scheme according to which they may be regarded as incidents in the life of one man, unless we imagine Hercules, in the purest spirit of knight-errantry, sallying forth in quest of adventures, without any definite object, or any impulse but that of disinterested benevo lence. It will be safer, after rejecting those features in the legend which manifestly belong to Eastern religions, to distinguish the Theban Hercules from the Dorian, and the Peloponnesian, hero. In the story of each some historical fragments have most probably been preserved, and perhaps least disfigured in the Theban and Dorian legends. In those of Peloponnesus it is difficult to say to what extent their original form may not have been distorted from political motives. If we might place any reliance on them, we should be inclined to conjecture that they contain traces of the struggles by which the kingdom of Mycena attained to that influence over the rest of the peninsula, which is attributed to it by Homer, and which we shall have occasion to notice when we come to speak of the Trojan war.

The name of Hercules immediately suggests that of Theseus, according to the mythical chronology his younger contemporary, and only second to him in renown. It was not without reason that Theseus was said to have given rise to the proverb, another Hercules; for not only is there a strong resemblance between them in many particular features, but it also seems clear that Theseus was to Attica what Hercules was to the rest of Greece, and that his career likewise represents the events of a period which cannot have been exactly measured by any human life, and probably includes many centuries. His legend is chiefly interesting to us, so far as it may be regarded as a poetical outline of the early history of Attica. The list which has been