CHAP. not be duly performed by one who was polluted by bloodshed, or by any atrocious crime. Even celibacy B. C. 1184. was frequently required; but in many instances the Oracles. same end was more wisely pursued by the selection either of the age when the passions are yet dormant, or that in which they have subsided.1 The most important branch of the Greek religion, Paus. ii. 33. 2. vii. 26. 5. vii. 19. 1. vii. 25. 13. viii, 47. 5. x. 34. 8. CHAP. VI. science.1 The most ancient and celebrated of the Greek oracles were attached to the sanctuaries of these deities at Dodona and Delphi.2 The political B.C. 1184. causes that raised the oracle of Apollo at Delphi to its high pre-eminence over all similar institutions, belongs to a later period; but Homer describes it as already renowned and wealthy before the Trojan war. He is equally, or rather more, familiar with the personal and hereditary faculty of divination. The shades of the dead were also believed to possess the power of revealing the future, and there were a few oracles where they might be consulted. But these institutions seem not to have been congenial with the feelings of the Greeks, and to have been seldom resorted to, except by those who had been goaded by remorse into an unwonted superstition. divination. Another mode of divination, which has prevailed, Omens and and perhaps continues to exist, in almost all countries in the world, was known in the earliest ages of Greece, and survived every other similar form of superstition, -the interpretation of casual sights and sounds, which, as they derive all their imaginary importance from the difficulty of perceiving their connection with the ordinary state of things, attract notice precisely in proportion as they least deserve it. Every variation, however minute, from the common and anticipated tenor of life, was regarded as an omen denoting some remarkable turn of events, and was According to Hermann's explanation (Brief. au Creuzer, p. 112.), Apollo predicts that which he causes. He is the Power who sends or averts pestilence and destruction: but, as nothing perishes without making room for something else to fill its place, he is said to foresee the consequences involved in his own acts; "yet, in mythological language, not as possessing prescience in himself, but as the minister of Zeus, the vital principle, which gives birth to the future: in other words, from the destruction of any thing it may be foreseen that the ever-stirring vitality of nature will produce something else." * Hermann (an Creuzer, p. 60.) observes that Homer mentions no oracle beside that of Dodona. But the Delphic oracle seems to be very clearly described in Od. viii. 79. Ως γάρ οἱ χρείων μυθήσατο Φοῖβος Απόλλων Πυθοῖ ἐν ἀγαθέῃ, ὅθ ̓ ὑπέρβη λάϊνον οὐδὲν Χρησόμενος. 'Mueller, Prolegg. p. 363. (297. Engl.) CHAP. VI. observed with the deeper interest, when it happened to coincide with a momentous occasion. Thus, in an B.C. 1184. assembly convened for a grave deliberation, the utterance of a word associated with a pleasing or unwelcome thought might suspend or determine the issue of a debate. The flight and voice of a bird was never witnessed with indifference at a critical juncture; still less, such phenomena as thunder, lightning, and eclipses. The various appearances of a victim, in the several stages of a sacrifice, were believed to indicate the mind of the deity to whom it was offered. Hence arose a system of experimental divination, which in later times afforded employment for a large class of soothsayers. A victim was sacrificed on great occasions, as the eve of an expedition, or a battle, for the purpose of ascertaining the event by the inspection of its entrails. The diviners who interpreted these signs did not usually pretend to any permanent or temporary inspiration, but professed to found their predictions, or advice, on rules discovered by experience. The flight of birds, the changes of the atmosphere, and the heavenly bodies, were likewise at times subject to deliberate inspection. But neither augury, nor the other branches of the art, were so studiously cultivated, and reduced to such a semblance of scientific exactness, by the Greeks, as by the Tuscans; and, in the Homeric age, though accidental omens are carefully noted, experimental divination seems hardly to be known. We are even agreeably surprised to find the poet putting into Hector's mouth a sentiment, which it surpassed the force of Xenophon's mind or character to conceive: One omen is the best: to fight for one's country. Dreams also were held to proceed from Zeus, and the art of interpreting them gave a name to a distinct class of diviners. But it does not appear that oracles had yet been founded, in which the established method of in tercourse with the deity consisted in nocturnal visions, obtained by passing a night in his temple. CHAP. VI. worship. The worship of heroes, which in after times forms B.C. 1184. so prominent a feature in the Greek religion, is not Heromentioned by Homer. We are very far from adopting the opinion that this worship was the foundation of the Greek religion: but the views and feelings out of which it arose, seem to be clearly discernible in the Homeric poems. The Greek hero-worship presented two sides it was an expression of religious veneration for departed excellence, which had exalted the deceased mortal above the level of his kind; and it was a tribute of affection and gratitude to a departed friend, kinsman, or benefactor. According to the Homeric theology, eminent virtue might raise a mortal even to the society of the gods, as it had changed the nature of Hercules 1, or it might transport him, as Menelaus and Rhadamanthys, to a state of blessedness little inferior. In either case the person who approached so nearly to deity, was a fit object of similar worship. The piety of surviving friends displayed itself in the most costly offerings at the funeral pile; and it was probably usual at a very early period to repeat such honours at certain intervals over the grave of the deceased. Thus the tomb gradually became an altar, and sometimes the site of a temple.2 But this kind of worship was in- Dæmons. debted for its wider diffusion to an opinion, which appears first expressed in the poetry of Hesiod3, who speaks of thirty thousand guardian dæmons, spirits of departed heroes, which are continually walking over the earth, veiled in darkness, watching the deeds of men, and dispensing weal or woe. The general notion of a dæmon comprehended every species of 1 Of Leucothea also it is said, Od. vi. 334., that she was once a mortal, but afterwards obtained divine honours. * See an essay by Col. Mure in the Rhein. Mus. vi. 2. p. 268. 3 O. et D. 250. VI. CHAP. mysterious, supernatural agency, which the imagination had not conceived under a distinct form, and B.C.1184. afforded a basis for the personifying of all abstract properties and relations, by which they acquired an influence over the feelings, independent of poetical fancy.1 Whatever, either in nature or in man, excited admiration or wonder, by its excellence or singularity, was considered as partaking of this character. Without entering into this feeling, we shall be unable to comprehend the prodigality with which heroic honours were conferred by the Greeks, as when we find the people of Segesta erecting a chapel, and instituting sacrifices, at the grave of a slain enemy, with no other motive than his extraordinary beauty.2 The heroes, with whom the notion of a dæmon was thus associated, approach very near to the fairies and goblins of other mythologies.3 Greek superstition represented them as always active, sometimes beneficent, but not unfrequently wanton and mischievous.4 We have dwelt the more largely on this subject here, because the changes which took place in the Greek religion after the age of Homer, affect its external aspect, rather than its essential character. Its relation indeed to the state, to science, and to morality, did not continue always the same: as fresh avenues were opened for commerce with foreign regions, some new objects of worship were introduced the progress of wealth and art multiplied and refined its rites: but the germ at least of every im 1 Some excellent remarks on the principle of personification, and on its religious, historical, poetical, and popular manifestations, are to be found in Dissen's Kl. Schr. p. 349. Bode (Gesch. d. H.D. i. p. 416.), would refer the introduction of the doctrine of dæmons to the influence of the priestly houses, which devised it to bring the Phrygian worship of Dionysus into harmony with that of Apollo: a theory which, at least in this form, seems almost as difficult to understand as to establish. 2 Her. v. 47. 3 Aristoph. Av. 1490. and the Scholiast. Hesiod, O. et D. 122. and the history of the hero of Temesa in Pausanias, vi. 6. |