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owes her extraordinary beauty to the partiality of Aphrodite. Even a hearty laugh is ascribed to the genial influence of the gods. A constant living intercourse is supposed to exist between them and mortals. They descend visibly to this earth to converse with mankind. They often visit cities in the disguise of travellers, to inspect the conduct of men.

Wrong and foolish actions are likewise attributed to supernatural influence. Helen ascribes her elopement from her husband to an infatuation implanted in her heart by Aphrodite. A man, who goes out without his cloak in a cold night, is represented as saying: "A god deceived me that I did this thing.”

The rewards of vice and virtue in another life, and all that is said of the condition of departed souls, is exceedingly dim and shadowy.

Succeeding poets enlarged and embellished the history of the gods, sometimes from their own imagination, sometimes from the traditions of various other nations; and the populace received it all with the ready credulity of bright, elastic, youthful natures. Many of the subordinate deities are obviously mere personifications of the elements and the forces of nature. Thus the violence of the ocean is represented as Poseidon swallowing thousands of victims. It is to be presumed that most of these legends were intended to convey, in allegorical form, some truth, physical or metaphysical, astronomical or moral; but at this distance of time, and with altogether foreign habits of thought, we can with difficulty perceive here and there a gleam of meaning; especially in the numerous amours of the gods, which, if taken literally, would make them appear more sensual than mortals.

A religion composed of such various and flexible fragments, of course left great freedom of construction to the worshippers. But the conservative principle which prevents all erratic things from flying entirely out of their orbits, came in, to check the excess of Grecian freedom. Gods from other countries were continually adopted into

their Pantheon, but this was never done until the formal sanction of the state had been obtained. When rites and festivals were once established, and the populace had invested them with the sacredness which belongs to timehallowed usages, it was extremely difficult for government to abolish them. Thus the custom of running naked through the streets at the festival in honour of Pan, called Lupercalia, was continued long after a large portion of the community had come to regard it as indecent.

All their deities bear traces of a foreign origin, and the histories told of them are obviously the mixed legends of various nations. That their prominent deities were Spirits of the Planets, is indicated by their names: Apollo the Sun, Diana the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, and Venus. Like Hindoos and Egyptians, they consecrated the days successively to these Planetary Spirits. The seventh day was sacred to Saturn, from time immemorial. Homer and Hesiod call it the holy day.

Zeus, whom Romans called Jupiter, was differently represented at different epochs of their history. As the Son of Heaven, with Metis, the wisest of deities, for his wife, he resembles Brahma of Hindostan, and Amun of Egypt. Hesiod and Homer describe him as the Supreme Creator of heaven, earth, and sea, the Father of Gods and men; strengthening the weak, sustaining the strong, seeing past, present, and future, at a glance, and subject to nothing except the unalterable decrees of the Fates. He alone never appears in person on the stage of human affairs. He is so highly exalted above all beings, that he needs the agency of mediators to converse with mortals. Greeks, as well as Hindoos and Egyptians, believed in an element above the air, called ether. Some descriptions of Jupiter represent him as Son of Ether, armed with a thunderbolt, surrounded by moon and stars. This is a reappearance of Indra, the Hindoo god of the Firmament; and in this capacity he is married to his sister Juno, who represented the Air, and had Iris, the Rainbow, for her attendant and messenger. According to another account, Jupiter was the VOL. 1.-25

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Son of Saturn, or Time, and Rhea, the Earth. Cretans were accustomed to show the grotto on Mount Ida where he was said to be born, and the sepulchre where he was buried. But these traditions excited the ridicule and indignation of other Greeks. "All this is fiction," exclaims Callimachus; "for thou, O Father, livest forever."

Pallas Athena, whom Romans called Minerva, resembles the Hindo Sereswati, and the Egyptian Neith. She was goddess of wisdom, presiding over philosophy, poetry, arts, sciences, and military tactics. She is represented as for ever by the side of Jupiter, from whose brain she was

born.

Dionysus, or Bacchus, was god of wine and vintage. He resembles Osiris in one department of his beneficence; namely, that of introducing the cultivation of vines. There is great similarity between Rama, Osiris, and Bacchus, in several of their adventures, and the ceremonials of their worship. They are all represented as having taught men agricultural arts, and performed great exploits in India.

Demeter, or Ceres, is Isis limited to the cultivation of the earth and the protection of harvests.

Hermes, or Mercury, was god of merchants, orators, and thieves. Like Thoth, he was messenger between gods and men, and conducted departed souls to the Judges of the Dead.

Pan, god of generation, was represented, like the Egyptian Kham, with the body and legs of a goat. His name signifies All, and was bestowed upon him because the generative principle pervades all things in the universe.

Rhea and Cybele were two very ancient goddesses, whose worship was introduced from different countries, and in process of time mixed together. They both represented the Earth, or Nature in her productive power. One of their names was Maia, the Hindoo name for the goddess of Nature.

Apphrodite, or Venus, goddess of beauty and pleasure, like the Hindoo Parvati, was born of the foam of the sea, and was the mother of Love.

Eros, or Cupid, god of love, is represented, like the Cama of the Hindoos, as a mischievous boy, armed with bow and arrows.

The central figure in Grecian mythology was Phoebus, or Apollo. He was god of light, of poetry, eloquence, and medicine, but was especially honoured as presiding over prophecy. As god of medicine, he was originally worshipped under the form of a Serpent, and men invoked him as the Helper. In later times, his worship was confounded with that of Helios, the visible sun; but, like the Hindoo Crishna, he was the representative of spiritual light and warmth. Poets sometimes called him "king of intellectual fire." Perhaps, like the Persian Mithras, he was the attendant Ferver, or guardian angel of the visible luminary. He excelled in music, and is often represented playing on a flute, with the nine Muses dancing round him, like the nine Gopiæ of Hindostan. Like Crishna, he is said to have killed a huge venomous serpent in his childhood, and to have performed the duties of a shepherd many years in the family of Admetus. Egyptians consecrated the island of Phila, where Osiris and his twin sister Isis were said to have been born. Greeks had a tradition that the island of Delos had risen suddenly from the sea to provide a birth-place for Apollo and his twin sister, Phoebe, or Diana. No dog was allowed to approach the sacred island, no mortal was permitted to be born or die there, and no diseased person to remain. On the sea-shore stood a very beautiful temple of Apollo, the altar of which was never stained with blood.

In Greek mythology there was no one deity to represent the power of evil. Zeus was supposed to distribute good gifts from an urn at his right hand, and evil from an urn at his left. Among the subordinate deities several were of malign influence. Hades, whom Romans called Pluto, reigned in dismal subterranean regions, seated on a throne of sulphur, presiding over death and funerals. His countenance was gloomy and stern. Men erected no temples to him. The only sacrifices offered were black animals,

and their blood was not sprinkled on altars, but poured into holes in the ground. All unlucky things were sacred to him, especially the number two. Around his throne were seated the three Eumenides, or Furies, employed to execute the vengeance of the gods. On earth they inflicted war, pestilence, famine, and remorse. In the regions of Pluto, they scourged sinners with scorpions and tormented them continually. They were represented with bloody garments, frightful countenances, and snakes wreathed in their hair. Mortals feared to utter their names, or look up at their temples as they passed. If any person guilty of crime dared to approach their altars, it was supposed he would be instantly deprived of reason. The Parcæ, or Fates, were depicted as three old women, who spun the thread of life and cut it in twain. Black sheep were annually sacrificed to them, but no prayers were ever offered, because it was believed that not even Jupiter himself could change their inexorable decrees. It was supposed that no person could die, unless Proserpine, wife of Pluto, or one of the Fates, cut some hairs from his head. It was customary to strew the hair of the deceased on the threshold of the door, as an offering to them.

Every district and town had some tutelary deity to preside over it, who was supposed to be peculiarly connected with its welfare. Athenians considered themselves under the especial protection of Minerva, and Eleans placed themselves under the guardianship of Olympian Jupiter. It was deemed very hazardous to the prosperity, and even to the safety, of a state or district, to neglect any of the accustomed worship to their tutelary deity; therefore they never abandoned any of the ancient gods, though they introduced many new ones. They believed that the priests were possessed of knowledge, originally revealed from above, which enabled them to perform the ceremonies and repeat the words necessary to bring down Celestial Spirits into statues, and even into pillars and consecrated stones; and that prayers addressed to these visible objects were heard by the deities to whom they were dedicated.

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