had acquired any footing in Europe; but these habits, so foreign to the natural temper of man, were purchased in the one case by prostrate obedience to despotic rule, and in the other by the no less odious tyranny of a consecrated institution of caste. Every man's mode of life, his creed, his duties, his place in society, were fixed, in the one case by political and in the other by religious tyranny. The natural tendencies of such a system were towards a gross kind of civilization in mass, capable of the most stupendous results of mere physical labor, but at the same time opposed to great national advancement, to the acquisition of any high mental qualities, and the developments of individual genius. The individual man was degraded -lost in the masses, of whom he formed only a minute fraction-his life of little worth, and its loss seldom or never felt by the communi ty. We shall find the strongly-marked democratic type of Grecian civilization contrasting favorably with this in its character and tendencies: we shall see it stimulating to action the will and the reason, and, by elevating the individual man, and giving free scope to individual impulse and energy, furnishing, in the glorious consummations of genius, themes of admiration to all succeeding ages.

IX.

51. From the brief view that we have taken of the early history of mankind after the deluge, we are forced to the conclusion that Egypt was the earliest, most intelligent, and most powerful of CONCLUSION. the great kingdoms of antiquity, and that from her have

been handed down, through the Greeks and Romans, to modern times, many of the arts of civilized life; but that Assyria and Babylon, and perhaps Ethiopia also, attained a degree of splendor scarcely inferior to Egypt, in the magnitude, wealth, and magnificence of their cities, and the commercial industry of their people. Of those distant ages, however, after all our researches, we can obtain only a very imperfect knowledge; but from what little we do know we look back upon them as upon a world of buried greatness, while the few memorials that point to their untold treasures of opulence, and art, and power, overwhelm us with unavailing regret that so much of the history of our race is forever buried in oblivion.

CHAPTER III.

CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF CIVILIZATION DURING THE FABULOUS PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY.

ANALYSIS. 1. GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY, the introduction to Grecian history. Its Philosophical character.-2. Character of the LEGENDS OF THE HEROIC AGE.-3. Uncertainty of GRECIAN CHRNOLOGY prior to the first Olympiad. Character of the Laconian chronology.-4. INTERPRETATION OF THE GRECIAN FABLES.-5. Semi-historical interpretation. The allegorical. The latter generally to be preferred. Both inapplicable in certain cases. Examples of allegorical interpretation.-6. Personification of natural powers and agents. 7. The Cecropian fable.-8. The contest between Minerva and Neptune.-9. The fable of Cran' aus.-10. Of the Egyptian Dan' aus and his daughters.-11. The legend of Hercules,--allegorical explanation.12. The Egyptian legend of Hercules.-13. Extent of the legend of Hercules. Views of Thirlwall, Clinton, and Grote.-14. Legend of the Argonautic expedition. Different interpretations. -15. The story of Helen and the Trojan war. Views of Thirlwall.-16. Views of Grote.-17. Character, and value, of the Grecian legends.

18. RELIGION OF THE EARLY GREEKS. Great number and variety of the Grecian deities. Foundation of this religion.-19. The gods of the Greeks,--change from their symbolical character.-20. The merely symbolical character of the gods of the Egyptians and Asiatics. Causes of the hideous forms of some of their deities.-21. Why nothing of this kind existed among the Greeks. Traces of the symbolical representation.-22. Personal character of the gods.-23. BELIEF IN A FUTURE STATE. The souls of the dead in Hades. The "Islands of the Blessed." Punishment of the great offenders.-24. Influence of Grecian mythology upon Grecian art.

25. Early GRECIAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT. The class of chiefs or nobles.-26. Powers of the kings. Their pecuniary advantages.-27. Laws. Administration of justice.-23. GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE of the early Greeks.-29. ASTRONOMY AND COMMERCE. Naval expeditions.-30. DWELLINGS AND OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE.-31. Homer's representations.--32. MANCourtesies and friendships.-33. Enmities. Conduct in war.-34. DOMESTIC RELATIONS. Children and parents. Marriage.-35. Treatment of women.

NERS.

36. THE ISRAELITES. No evidences, from the hieroglyphics, of their sojourn in Egypt. Supposed reason.-37. Evidences from profane authors. The name Moses.-38. Confirmatory evidence of the name and deeds of Moses.-39. Extract from Manetho. Accounts given by Tacitus, Diodorus, and others.--40. The story of the supply of quails.--41. Conclusion arrived at from these circumstances.-42. Social character, and condition, &c., of the Israelites.-43. Evidences of an advanced state of society in the lifetime of Abraham and Isaac.-44. At the period of the Exodus.

I.

1. The world of fable, far back in the shadowy past of Grecian history, opens with a variety of strange legends of gods and goddesses, who were anterior, as well as superior, to the race of GRECIAN mortals. Chaos, Earth, Ocean, and Heaven, Night, Sleep, Dreams, and Time, personified, as well as Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, Vulcan, Juno, Venus, and Minerva, are represent

MYTHOLOGY.

ed by the Grecian muse as marrying and intermarrying, and begetting sons and daughters, some, of god-like natures, and others, mingling forms human and divine. Grecian mythology is the Grecian view of the Philosophy of Nature; and in the allegorical legends of the gods, natural agents, of gigantic powers, are represented as persons, possessing the attributes of free-will and conscious agency, and in a state of confusion and strife, until destroyed, imprisoned, or reduced to obedience, by the overmastering power of Jupiter, who finally acquires supremacy over gods and men.

LEGENDS

OF THE

HEROIC AGE.

2. Growing out of, and interwoven with, the Grecian theogony, and still authenticated by the Greek muse alone, we next meet with a class of heroic legends and genealogies, furnishing a series of names and personal adventures, through which the Greek looked back to his gods, and which he regarded as the primitive history of his race. In this primitive history, extending down through a period of at least a thousand years subsequent to the supposed founding of Argos, it is impossible to distinguish names and events, real and historical, from fictitious creations; and much that was deeply seated in the national faith and feelings of the Greeks, and to which the moderns have assigned a positive chronology, is found to rest on no firmer basis than the songs and traditionary legends of bards and story-tellers.

GRECIAN CHRONOLOGY.

3. The whole of Grecian chronology prior to the year 776 B. C., the date of the first recorded Olympiad,' consists of calculations founded upon the fabulous genealogies of kings, heroes, and demi-gods, in the supposed line of descent from some remote ancestor. Thus, Laconian chronology, which is generally taken as the basis of the whole, is traced back through the Spartan kings to Hercules-about three generations being reckoned to a century-a computation altogether illusory, and as doubtful as the reality of the legendary and poetical personages thus erected into definite historical land-marks.a

II.

4. As the Grecian myths or fables, from the earliest assignable

1. An Olympiad was a period of four years-the space of time which intervened between any two celebrations of the Olympic Games. The Olympiads are reckoned from the year 776 B. C., in which year Corcbus was victor in the foot race,-hence called the Olympiad of Coroebus. The Olympic Games were celebrated before this period, but their origin is unknown. a. See the "Application of Chronology to Grecian Legends" examined: Grote, ii. 34-57.

INTERPRETA

TION OF THE
GRECIAN

period of Grecian history down to a period subsequent to the supposed Trojan war, continually confound the human and the divine, and deal in the most incredible narrations, they eventually fell into discredit, except among FABLES. the multitude, with the Greeks themselves; and with the philosophers they early became the subjects of a respectful and curious analysis, which has continued to divide the opinions of the learned to the present day. By some, the principle of semi-historical interpretation has been assumed; and by others the allegorical.

5. The semi-historical interpretation, leaving out of the fabulous legend whatever is miraculous, highly colored, or extravagant, retains only a series of credible incidents: of which all that can be asserted is, that they may or may not be true-they may be matters of fact, or they may be plausible fiction. The allegorical interpretation represents the poetic legends as conveying to the early Greeks, religious, physical, and historical knowledge, under the veil of symbols and allegories. Doubtless both modes of interpretation are partially correct, and will apply to particular cases; but the semi-historical is never to be adopted unless some collateral evidence can be brought to its support. In the legendary accounts of the founding of the chief Grecian cities, and even of the Argonautic expedition, and the siege of Troy, it will be found, therefore, that we can place little or no historical reliance, while, on the other hand, many of these fables contain highly interesting and intrinsic evidence of their allegorical character. There are others, doubtless, the special product of the imagination and feelings-mere fictions-radically distinct both from genuine history and philosophy, that cannot be broken down and decomposed into the one, nor allegorized into the other.a A few examples of plausible allegorical interpretation, together with the reasons for distrusting the semi-historical view of some of the more important and commonly-received heroic legends, will serve to characterize more truly what are appropriately styled the fabulous and uncertain periods of Grecian history.

6. The propensity of the Greeks to personify natural powers and agents may be regarded both as the basis of their religion and their legendary history. And when Earth, Ocean, and Heaven, personified, are placed at the beginning of celestial beings, it is not wonderful that rivers, fountains, and other natural objects, viewed as rational existences, should form the connecting link with humanity. Thus,

a. Grote, i. 450.

by a figure of speech, the tributary streams and fountains may be spoken of as sons and daughters of Ocean; and when the latter was converted into a god, it required no great effort of the Greek imagi nation to select from his numerous progeny here and there one, like Inachus, of sufficient distinction to become the founder of a Grecian State.

7. The probable origin of the Cecropian fable exhibits the same personifying propensity of the Grecian mind. According to an Attic legend, the form of Cecrops was half human and half serpent, supposed to denote his indigenous nature; as the serpent was said to be 66 a child of the earth." The name Cecrops has also been reduced to the meaning indigenous, and also to a synonyme of the name of an insect, the cicada, which the vulgar supposed to spring spontaneously from the earth. Cecrops is therefore considered by some to be nothing more than an emblem of the indigenous cicada itself, con verted by the poets into the first king of Athens. This supposition is strengthened by the names of three of the daughters of the fabled Cecrops, Herse, dew, Pandrosus, all-dewy, and Agraulos, a field insect sacred to Apollo.

8. Moreover, in the contest between Minerva and Neptune, in which Cecrops was made umpire, has been recognized an account of the rivalry that subsisted between two classes of the people of Attica, the one maritime and commercial, and the other pastoral and agricultural, whose occupations were typified, the former by the emblem of the trident, the sceptre of the god of the seas, and the latter by that of the olive, the symbol of peace. The victory of Minerva expresses a preponderance of the peaceful habits of pastoral and agricultural life, and aptly denotes the condition of the Athenian people down to the age of Themistocles.

9. Cran' aus, the successor of Cecrops, is said to have married Pédias, and the issue of their wedlock was Atthis. Here is a coincidence of Greek words, woven into an historical myth, which affords a plausible explanation of the allegorical character of the legend. Cran' aus, (xparan 77,)" the rocky country," is united with Pédias (Пedias) the "country of the plains;" and the union of the inhabitants of the hills with those of the plains forms Attica, or Atthis. "And yet a hundred histories have repeated the name of Cran' aus as a king of Attica !"a

10. The origin and name of the Egyptian Dan'aus, who with his

a. Anthon's Clas. Dict. and Wordsworth's Greece.