The Remains of Hesiod

The Theogony

The Argument

The proem is a rhapsody in honour of the Muses. It opens with a description of their solemn dances on mount Helicon, and of the hymns which they sing during their nightly visitation of earth. The poet then relates their appearance to himself, and his consequent inspiration; describes their employments in heaven; their birth and dignity; their influence on kings or magistrates, minstrels and bards; and finishes with invoking their assistance and proposing his subject. The Cosmogony, or origin of nature, then commences, and blends into the Theogony, or generation of gods, which is continued through the whole poem, and concludes with the race of demi-gods, or those born from the loves of goddesses and mortals. The following legendary traditions are interwoven episodically with the main subject. I. The imprisonment of his children by Uranus or Heaven in a subterranean cave; and the consequent conspiracy of Earth and Cronus, or Saturn. II. The concealment of the infant Jupiter. III. The impiety and punishment of Prometheus. IV. The creation of Pandora, or Woman. V. The war of the Gods and Titans. VI. The combat of Jupiter with the giant Typhæus.

The Theogony

Begin we from the Muses oh my song!
Muses of Helicon: their dwelling-place
The mountain vast and holy: where around
The altar of high Jove and fountain dark
From azure depth, 142they lightly leap in dance
With delicate feet; and having duly bathed
Their tender bodies in Permessian streams,
143In springs that gush’d fresh from the courser’s hoof,
Or blest Olmius’ waters, many a time
Upon the topmost ridge of Helicon
Their elegant and amorous dances thread,
And smite the earth with strong-rebounding feet.
Thence breaking forth tumultuous, and enwrapt
With the deep mist of air, they onward pass
Nightly, and utter, as they sweep on high,
A voice in stilly darkness beautiful.
They hymn the praise of Ægis-wielding Jove,
And Juno, named of Argos, who august
In golden sandals walks: and her, whose eyes
Glitter with azure light, Minerva born
From Jove: Apollo, 144sire of prophecy,
And Dian gladden’d by the twanging bow:
Earth-grasping Neptune, shaker of earth’s shores:
Majestic Themis and Dione fair:
145And Venus twinkling bland her tremulous lids:
Hebe, her brows with golden fillet bound:
Morn, the vast Sun, and the resplendent Moon:
Latona and Japetus: and him
Of crooked wisdom, Saturn: and the Earth:
And the huge Ocean, and the sable Night
And all the sacred race of deities
Existing ever. They to Hesiod erst
Have taught their stately song: the whilst he fed
His lambs beneath the holy Helicon.
  And thus the goddesses, th’ Olympian maids
Whose sire is Jove, first hail’d me in their speech;
“Shepherds! that tend in fields the fold; ye shames!
146Ye fleshly appetites! the Muses hear:
’Tis we can utter fictions veil’d like truths,
Or, if we list, speak truths without a veil.”
  So said the daughters of the mighty Jove,
Sooth-speaking maids: and gave unto my hand
A rod of marvellous growth, 147a laurel-bough
Of blooming verdure; and within me breathed
A heavenly voice, that I might utter forth
All past and future things: and bade me praise
The blessed race of ever-living gods:
And ever first and last the Muses sing.
  Away then—why 148this tale of oaks and rocks?
Begin we from the Muses oh my song!
They the great spirit of their father Jove
Delight in heaven: their tongues symphonious breathe
All past, all present, and all future things:
Sweet, inexhaustible, from every mouth
That voice flows on: the Thunderer’s palace laughs
With scatter’d melody of honied sounds
From the breathed voice of goddesses, and all
The snow-topp’d summits of Olympus ring,
The mansions of immortals. They send forth
Their undecaying voice, and in their songs
Proclaim before all themes the race of gods
From the beginning: the majestic race,
Whom earth and awful heaven endow’d with life:
And all the deities who sprang from these,
Givers of blessings. Then again they change
The strain to Jove, the sire of gods and men:
Him praise the choral goddesses: him first
And last: with rising and with ending song:
How excellent he is above all gods,
And in his power most mighty. Once again
They sing the race of men, and giants strong;
And soothe the soul of Jupiter in heaven.
They, daughters of high Jove: Olympian maids:
Whom erst Mnemosyne, protecting queen
Of rich Eleuther’s fallows, in embrace
With Jove their sire amidst 149Pieria’s groves
Conceived: of ills forgetfulness; to cares
Rest: thrice three nights did counsel-shaping Jove
Melt in her arms, apart from eyes profane
Of all immortals to the sacred couch
Ascending: and when now the year was full,
When moons had wax’d and waned, and reasons roll’d,
And days were number’d, she, some space remote
From where Olympus highest towers in snow,
150Bare the nine maids, with souls together knit
In harmony: whose thought is only song:
Within whose bosoms dwells th’ unsorrowing mind.
There on the mount they shine in troops of dance,
And dwell in beautified abodes: and nigh
The Graces also dwell, and Love himself,
And hold the feast. But they through parted lips
Send forth a lovely voice; they sing the laws
Of universal heaven; the manners pure
Of deathless gods, and lovely is their voice.
Anon they bend their footsteps tow’rds the mount,
Rejoicing in their beauteous voice and song
Unperishing: far round the dusky earth
Rings with their hymning voices, and beneath
Their many-rustling feet a pleasant sound
Ariseth, as tumultuous pass they on
To greet their heavenly sire. He reigns in heaven,
The bolt and glowing lightning in his grasp,
Since by the strong ascendant of his arm
Saturn his father fell: he to the gods
Appoints the laws, and he their honours names.
  So sing the Muses; dwellers on the mount
Of heaven: nine daughters of the mighty Jove:
Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato,
Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia,
Urania, Clio, and Calliope:
The chiefest she: who walks upon the steps
Of kingly judges in their majesty:
And whomsoe’er of heavenly-nurtured kings
Jove’s daughters will to honour, looking down
With smiling aspect on his cradled head
They pour a gentle dew upon his tongue:
And words, as honey sweet, drop from his lips.
To him the people look: on him all eyes
Wait awful, who in righteousness discerns
The ways of judgment: in a single breath,
Utter’d with knowledge, ends the mightiest strife,
And all is peace. The wisdom this of kings:
That in their judgment-hall they from the oppress’d
Turn back the tide of ills, retrieving wrongs
With mild accost of 151soothing eloquence.
On him, the judge and king, when passing forth
Among the city-ways, all reverent look
With a mild worship, as he were a god:
And in 152the great assembly first is he.
Such is the Muses’ goodly gift to man.
The Muses, and Apollo darting far
The arrows of his splendour, raise on earth
153Harpers and men of song: but kings arise
From Jove himself. Oh blessed is the man
Whome’er the Muses love! sweet is the voice
That from his lips flows ever. 154Is there one
Who hides some fresh grief in his wounded mind
And mourns with aching heart? but he, the bard,
155The servant of the Muse, awakes the song
To deeds of men of old, and blessed gods
That dwell on mount Olympus. Straight he feels
His sorrow stealing in forgetfulness:
Nor of his griefs remembers aught: so soon
The Muse’s gift has turn’d his woes away.
  Daughters of Jove! all hail! but oh inspire
The lovely song! record the heavenly race
Of gods existing ever: those who sprang
From earth and starry heaven and murky night,
And whom the salt deep quicken’d. Say how first
The gods and earth became: how rivers flow’d:
Th’ unbounded sea raged high in foamy swell,
The stars shone forth, and overhead the sky
Spread its broad arch: and say from these what gods,
Givers of blessings, sprang: and how they shared
Heaven’s splendid attributes and parted out
Distinct their honours: and how first they fix’d
Their dwelling midst Olympus’ winding vales:
Tell, oh ye Muses! ye who also dwell
In mansions of Olympus: tell me all
From the beginning: say who first arose.
156First of all beings Chaos was: and next
Wide-bosom’d Earth, the seat for ever firm
Of all th’ immortals, whose abode is placed
Among the mount Olympus’ snow-top’d heads,
157Or in the dark abysses of the ground:
Then Love most beauteous of immortals rose:
He of each god and mortal man at once
Unnerves the limbs, dissolves the wiser breast
By reason steel’d, and quells the very soul.
  From Chaos, Erebus and sable Night:
From Night arose the Sunshine and the Day:
Offspring of Night from Erebus’ embrace.
  Earth first conceived with Heaven: whose starry cope,
Like to herself immense, might compass her
On every side: and be to blessed gods
A resting-place immoveable for ever.
She teem’d with the high Hills, the pleasant haunts
Of goddess nymphs, who dwell within the glens
Of mountains. With no aid of tender love
She gave to birth the sterile Sea, high-swol’n
In raging foam: and, Heaven-embraced, anon
She teem’d with Ocean, rolling in deep whirls
His vast abyss of waters. Crœus, then,
Cæus, Hyperion, and Iäpetus,
Themis, and Thea rose; Mnemosyne,
And Rhea; Phœbe diadem’d with gold,
And love-inspiring Tethys: and of these,
Youngest in birth, the wily Saturn came,
The sternest of her sons; for he abhorr’d
The sire who gave him life. Then brought she forth
158The Cyclops brethren, arrogant of heart,
Undaunted Arges, Brontes, Steropes:
Who forged the lightning shaft, and gave to Jove
His thunder: they were like unto the gods:
Save that a single ball of sight was fix’d
In their mid-forehead. Cyclops was their name,
From that round eye-ball in their brow infix’d:
And strength and force and manual craft were theirs.
  Others again were born from Earth and Heaven:
Three giant sons: strong, dreadful but to name,
Children of glorying valour: Briareus,
Cottus and Gyges: from whose shoulders burst
A hundred arms that mock’d approach, and o’er
Their limbs hard-sinew’d fifty heads upsprang:
Mighty th’ immeasurable strength display’d
In each gigantic stature: and of all
The children born to earth and heaven these sons
Were dreadfullest: and they, e’en from the first,
Drew down their father’s hate: as each was born
He seized them all, and hid them in th’ abyss
Of Earth: nor e’er released them to the light.
Heaven in his evil deed rejoiced: vast Earth
Groan’d inly, sore aggrieved: but soon devised
A stratagem of mischief and of fraud.
Sudden creating for herself a kind
Of whiter iron, she with labour framed
A scythe enormous: and address’d her sons:
She spoke emboldening words, though grieved at heart.
  “My sons! alas! ye children of a sire
Most impious, now obey a mother’s voice:
So shall we well avenge the fell despite
Of him your father, who the first devised
Deeds of injustice.” While she said, on all
Fear fell: nor utterance found they, till with soul
Embolden’d, wily Saturn huge address’d
His awful mother. “Mother! be the deed
My own: thus pledged I will most sure achieve
This feat: nor heed I him, our sire, of name
Detested: for that he the first devised
Deeds of injustice.” Thus he said, and Earth
Was gladden’d at her heart. She planted him
In ambush dark and secret: in his grasp
She placed the sharp-tooth’d scythe, and tutor’d him
In every wile. Vast Heaven came down from high,
And with him brought the gloominess of Night
On all beneath: with ardour of embrace
Hovering o’er Earth, in his immensity
He lay diffused around. The son stretch’d forth
His weaker hand from ambush: in his right
159He took the sickle huge and long and rough
With sharpen’d teeth: and hastily he reap’d
The genial organs of his sire, at once
Cut sheer: then cast behind him far away.
They not in vain escaped his hold: for Earth
Received the blood-drops, and as years roll’d round
Teem’d with strong furies and with giants huge,
Shining in mail, and grasping in their hands
Protended spears: and wood-nymphs, named of men
Dryads, o’er all th’ immeasurable earth.
  So severing, as was said, with edge of steel
The genial spoils, he from the continent
Amidst the many surges of the sea
Hurl’d them. Full long they drifted o’er the deeps:
Till now swift-circling a white foam arose
From that immortal substance, and a nymph
Was quicken’d in the midst. The wafting waves
First bore her to Cythera’s heavenly coast:
Then reach’d she Cyprus, girt with flowing seas,
And forth emerged a goddess, in the charms
Of awful beauty. Where her delicate feet
Had press’d the sands, green herbage flowering sprang.
Her Aphrodite gods and mortals name,
160The foam-born goddess: and her name is known,
As Cytherea with the blooming wreath,
For that she touch’d Cythera’s flowery coast:
And Cypris, for that on the Cyprian shore
She rose, amidst the multitude of waves:
And Philomedia, from the source of life.
161Love track’d her steps; and beautiful Desire
Pursued, while soon as born she bent her way
Towards heaven’s assembled gods: her honours these
From the beginning: whether gods or men
Her presence bless, to her the portion fell
Of 162virgin whisperings and alluring smiles,
And smooth deceits, and gentle ecstasy,
And dalliance, and the blandishments of love.
  But the great Heaven, rebuking those his sons
That issued from his loins, new-named them now
Titans: and said that they avenging dared
A crime; but retribution was behind.
  Abhorred Fate and dark Necessity
And Death were born from Night: by none embraced
These gloomy Night brought self-conceiving forth:

And Sleep and all the hovering host of dreams.
163Then bare she Momus; Care, still brooding sad
On many griefs; and next 164th’ Hesperian maids,
Whose charge o’er-sees the fruits of blooming gold
Beyond the sounding ocean, the fair trees
Of golden fruitage. Then the Destinies
Arose, and Fates in vengeance pitiless:
Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos:
Who at the birth of men dispense the lot
Of good and evil. They of men and gods
The crimes pursue, nor ever pause from wrath
Tremendous, till destructive on the head
Of him that sins the retribution fall.
  Then teem’d pernicious Night with Nemesis,
The scourge of mortal men: again she bare
Fraud and lascivious Love: slow-wasting Age,
And still-persisting Strife. From hateful Strife
Came sore Affliction and Oblivion drear:
Famine and weeping Sorrows: Combats, Wars,
And Slaughters, and all Homicides: and Brawls,
And Bickerings, and deluding Lies: with them
Perverted Law and galling Injury,
Inseparable mates: and the dread Oath;
A mighty bane to him of earth-born men
Who wilful swears, and perjured is forsworn.
  The Sea with Earth embracing, Nereus rose,
165Eldest of all his race: unerring seer,
And true: with filial veneration named
Ancient of Years: for mild and blameless he:
Remembering still the right; still merciful
As just in counsels. 166Then rose Thaumas vast,
167Phorcys the mighty, Ceto fair of cheek,
And stern Eurybia, of an iron soul.
  From Nereus and the fair-hair’d Doris, nymph
Of ocean’s perfect stream, the lovely race
Of goddess Nereids rose to light, whose haunt
Is midst the waters of the sterile main:
Eucrate, Proto, Thetis, Amphitrite,
Love-breathing Thália, Sao, and Eudora,
And Spio, skimming with light feet the wave:
Galene, Glauce, and Cymothöe:
Agave, and the graceful Melita:
168Rose-arm’d Eunice, and Eulimene:
Pasithea, Doto, Erato, Pherusa,
Nesæa, Cranto, and Dynamene:
Protomedía, Doris, and Actæa:
And Panope, and Galatæa fair:
Rose-arm’d Hipponöe: soft Hippothöe:
Cymodoce who calms, at once, the waves
Of the dark sea, and blasts of heaven-breathed winds:
With whom Cymatolége, and the nymph
Of beauteous ankles Amphitrite glide:
Cymo, Eïone, Liagore,
And Halimede, with her sea-green wreath:
Pontoporïa, and Polynome;
Evagore, and blithe Glauconome:
Laomedía, and Evarne blest
With gracious nature and with faultless form:
Lysianassa, and Autonome,
And Psamathe, with shape of comeliness:
Divine Menippe, Neso, and Themistho:
And Pronöe, and Eupompe, and Nemertes:
Full of her deathless sire’s prophetic soul.
These sprang from blameless Nereus: 169Nereid nymphs:
Who midst the waters ply their blameless tasks.
  Electra, nymph of the deep-flowing ocean,
Embraced with Thaumas: rapid Iris thence
Rose, and Aëllo and Ocypetes,
170The sister-harpies, fair with streaming locks:
Who track the breezy winds and flights of birds,
On wings of swiftness hovering nigh the heaven.
  Then Ceto, fair of cheek, to Phorcys bore
171The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray: and hence
Their name with gods, and men that walk the earth:
Long-robed Pephredo, saffron-veil’d Enýo:
And Gorgons dwelling on the brink of night
Beyond the sounding main: where silver-voiced
Th’ Hesperian maidens in their watches sing:
Stheno, Euryale, Medusa these:
The last ill-fated, since of mortal date:
The two immortal, and unchanged by years.
Yet her alone the blue-hair’d god of waves
Enfolded, on the tender meadow grass,
And bedded flowers of spring: 172when Perseus smote
Her neck, and snatch’d the sever’d bleeding head,
173The great Chrysaor then leap’d into life:
174And Pegasus the steed; who born beside
175Old Nilus’ fountains thence derived a name.
Chrysaor, grasping in his hands a sword
Of gold, flew upward on the winged horse:
And left beneath him earth, mother of flocks,
And soar’d to heaven’s immortals: and there dwells
In palaces of Jove, and to the god
Deep-counsell’d bears the bolt and arrowy flame.
  Chrysaor with Callirhöe, blending love,
Nymph of sonorous ocean, 176Geryon rose,
Three headed form: him the strong Hercules
Despoil’d of life among his hoof-cloven herds
On Erythia, girdled by the wave:
What time those oxen ample-brow’d he drove
To sacred Tyrinth, the broad ocean frith
Once past: and Orthrus, the grim herd-dog, stretch’d
Lifeless; and in their murky den beyond
The billows of the long-resounding deep,
The keeper of those herds, Eurytion, slain.
  Another monster Ceto bare anon
177In the deep-hollow’d cavern of a rock:
Stupendous nor in shape resembling aught
Of human or of heavenly; the divine
Echidna, the untameable of soul:
Above, a nymph with beauty-blooming cheeks,
And eyes of jetty lustre; but below,
A speckled serpent horrible and huge,
Gorged with blood-banquets, monstrous, hid in caves
Of sacred earth. There in the uttermost depth
Her cavern is, within a vaulted rock:
Alike from mortals and immortals deep
Remote: the gods have there decreed her place
In mansions known to fame. So pent beneath
The rocks of Arima Echidna dwelt
Hideous: a nymph immortal, and in youth
Unchanged for evermore. But legends tell,
That with the jet-eyed nymph Typhaon mix’d
His fierce embrace: 178a whirlwind rude and wild:
She, fill’d with love, conceived a progeny
Of strain undaunted. Geryon’s dog of herds,
Orthrus, the first arose: the second birth,
Unutterable, was the dog of hell:
Blood-fed and brazen-voiced, and bold and strong,
179The fifty-headed Cerberus; and third
Upsprang the Hydra, pest of Lerna’s lake:
Whom Juno, white-arm’d goddess, fostering rear’d
With deep resentment fill’d, insatiable,
’Gainst Hercules: but he, the son of Jove,
Named of Amphytrion, in the dragon’s gore
Bathed his unpitying steel: by warlike aid
Of Iolaus, and the counsels high
Of Pallas the Despoiler. Last came forth
180Chimæra, breathing fire unquenchable:
A monster grim and huge, and swift and strong:
Her’s were three heads: a glaring lion’s one:
One of a goat: a mighty snake’s the third:
In front the lion threatened, and behind
The serpent, and the goat was in the midst,
Exhaling fierce the strength of burning flame.
But the wing’d Pegasus his rider bore,
The brave Bellerophon, and laid her dead.
  She, grasp’d by forced embrace of Orthrus, gave
181Depopulating Sphinx, the mortal plague
Of Cadmian nations: and the lion bare
Named of Nemæa. Him Jove’s glorious spouse
To fierceness rear’d: and placed his secret lair
Among Nemæa’s hills, the pest of men.
There lurking in his haunts he long ensnared
The roving tribes of man, and held stern sway
O’er cavern’d Tretum: o’er the mountain heights
Of Apesantus, and Nemæa’s wilds:
Till strong Alcides quell’d his gasping strength.
  Now Ceto, in embrace with Phorcys, bare
Her youngest born: the dreadful snake, that couch’d
In the dark earth’s abyss, his wide domain,
Holds o’er the golden apples wakeful guard.
182Tethys to Ocean brought the rivers forth,
In whirlpool waters roll’d: Eridanus
Deep-eddied, and Alpheus, and the Nile:
Fair-flowing Ister, Strymon, and Meander,
Phasis and Rhesus: Achelous bright
With silver-circled tides: Heptaporus,
And Nessus: Haliacmon and Rhodíus:
Granícus and the heavenly Simois:
Æsapus, Hermus, and Sangarius vast:
Penéus, and Caicus smoothly flowing:
And Ladon, and Parthenius, and Evenus:
Ardescus, and Scamander the divine.
  Then bore she a blest race of Naiad nymphs,
Who with the rivers and the king of day
O’er the wide earth 183claim the shorn locks of youth:
Their portion this and privilege from Jove.
Admete, Pitho, Doris and Ianthe:
Urania heavenly-fair: and Clymene:
Prymno, Electra, and Calliröe:
Rhodía, Hippo, and Pasithöe:
Plexaure, Clytie, and Melobosis:
Idya, Thöe, Xeuxo, Galaxaure:
And amiable Dione, and Circeis
Of nature soft, and Polydora fair;
184And Ploto, with the bright dilated eyes:
Perseis, Ianira, and Acaste:
Xanthe, the sweet Petræa, saffron-robed
Telestho, Metis, and Eurynome:
And Crisie, and Menestho, and Europa:
Lovely Calypso, Amphiro, Eudora:
Asia, and Tyche, and Ocyröe:
And Styx, the chief of oceanic streams.
  The daughters these of Tethys and of Ocean,
The eldest-born: for more untold remain:
Three-thousand graceful Oceanides
185Long-stepping tread the earth: or far and wide
Dispersed, they haunt 186the glassy depth of lakes,
A glorious sisterhood of goddess birth.
As many rivers also, yet untold,
Rushing with hollow-dashing echoes, rose
From awful Tethys: but their every name
Is not for mortal man to memorate,
Arduous; yet known to all the borderers round.
  Now Thia, yielding to Hyperion’s arms,
Bare the great Sun and the refulgent Moon:
And Morn, that scatters wide the rosy light
To men that walk the earth, and deathless gods
Whose mansion is yon ample firmament.
  Eurybia, noble goddess, blending love
With Crius, gave the great Astræus birth,
Pallas the god, and Perses, wise in lore.
  The Morning to Astræus bare the Winds
Of spirit untamed: 187East, West, and South, and North
Cleaving his rapid course: a goddess thus
Embracing with a god. Last, Lucifer
Sprang radiant from the dawn-appearing Morn:
And all the glittering stars that gird the heaven.
  Styx, ocean-nymph, with Pallas mingling love,
Bare Victory, whose feet are beautiful
In palaces: and Zeal, and Strength, and Force,
Illustrious children. 188Not apart from Jove
Their mansion is: nor is there seat, or way,
But he before them in his glory sits
Or passes forth: and where the Thunderer is,
Their place is found for ever. So devised
The nymph of Ocean, the eternal Styx:
What time the Lightning-sender call’d from heaven,
And summon’d all th’ immortal deities
To broad Olympus’ top: then thus he spake:
“Hear all ye gods! That god who wars with me
Against the Titans, shall retain the gifts
Which Saturn gave, and honours heretofore
His portion midst th’ immortals: and whoe’er
Unhonour’d and ungifted has repined
Under Saturnian sway, the same shall rise,
“As just it is, to honours and rewards.”
  Then first of every power eternal Styx,
Sway’d by the careful counsels of her sire,
Stood on Olympus, and her sons beside:
Her Jove received with honour, and endow’d
With goodly gifts: ordain’d her the great oath
Of deities: her sons for evermore
Indwellers with himself. Alike to all,
Even as he pledged that sacred word, the god
Perform’d; so reigns he, strong in power and might.
  Now Phœbe sought the love-delighting couch
Of Cœus: so within a god’s embrace
Conceived the goddess. Then arose to life
The azure-robed Latona: ever mild:
Gracious to man and to immortal gods:
Mild from the first beginning of the world:
Gentlest of all within th’ Olympian courts.
  Anon she bare 189Asteria, blest in fame:
Whom Perses to his spacious palace led,
That he might call her spouse: and 190she conceived
With Hecaté. Her o’er all others Jove
Hath honour’d, and endow’d with splendid gifts:
With power on earth and o’er the untill’d sea:
Nor less her glory from the starry heaven,
Chief honour’d by immortals: and if one
Of earthly men performing the due rite
Of victim divination, would appease
The gods above, he calls on Hecaté:
To him, whose prayer the goddess gracious hears,
High honour comes spontaneous, and to him
She yields all affluence; for the power is hers.
Whatever gods, the sons of heaven and earth,
Shared honour at the hands of Jove, o’er all
191Her wide allotment stands: nor whatsoe’er
Of rank she held, midst the old Titan gods,
Has Saturn’s son invaded or deprived;
As was the ancient heritage of power
So hers remains: e’en from the first of things.
Nor is 192her solitary birth reproach:

Nor less, though singly born, her rank and power
In heaven and earth and main, but higher meed
Of glory, since her honour is from Jove.
She, in the greatness of her power, is nigh
With aid to whom she lists: whoe’er she wills
O’er the great council of the people shines:
And when the mailed men arise to wage
Destroying battle, she to whom she lists
Is present, yielding victory and fame;
And on the judgment-seat with awful kings
She sits; and when in the gymnastic strife
Men struggle, the propitious goddess comes
Present with aid: then easily the man,
Conqueror in hardiment and strength, obtains
The graceful wreath, and glad-triumphing sheds
193A gleam of glory o’er his parents’ days.
She, as she lists, is nigh to charioteers
Who strive with steeds: and voyagers who cleave
Through the blue watery vast th’ untractable way.
They call upon the name of Hecaté
With vows: and his, loud-sounding god of waves,
Earth-shaker Neptune. Easily at will
The glorious goddess yields the woodland prey
Abundant: easily, while scarce they start
On the mock’d vision, snatches them in flight.
She too with Hermes is propitious found
To herd and fold: and bids increase the droves
Innumerable of goats and woolly flocks,
And swells their numbers or their numbers thins.
And thus, although her mother’s lonely child,
She midst th’ immortals shares all attributes.
Her Jove appointed nursing-mother bland
Of babes, who after her to morn’s broad light
Should lift the tender lid: so from the first
The foster-nurse of babes: her honours these.
  Embraced by Saturn, Rhea gave to light
Illustrious children. 194Golden-sandal’d Juno,
195Ceres, and Vesta: 196Pluto strong, who dwells
In mansions under earth: of ruthless heart;
197Earth-shaker Neptune, loud with dashing waves:
And 198Jupiter th’ all-wise: the sire of gods
And men; beneath whose crashing thunder-peal
The wide earth rocks in elemental war.
But them, as issuing from the sacred womb
They touch’d the mother’s knees, did Saturn huge
Devour: revolving in his troubled thought
Lest other one of beings heavenly-born
Usurp the kingly honours. For from earth
And starry heaven the rumour met his ear,
That it was doom’d by Fate, strong though he were,
199To his own son he should bow down his strength.
Jove’s wisdom this fulfill’d. No blind design
He therefore cherish’d, and in crooked craft
Devour’d his children. But on Rhea prey’d
Never-forgotten anguish. When the time
Was full, and Jove, the sire of gods and men,
Came to the birth, her parents she besought,
Earth and starr’d Heaven, that they should counsel yield
How secretly the babe may spring to life:
And how the father’s furies ’gainst his race
In subtlety devour’d may meet revenge:
They to their daughter listen’d and complied:
Unfolding what the Fates had sure decreed
Of kingly Saturn and his dauntless son:
And her they sent to Lyctus: to the clime
Of fallow’d Crete. Now when her time was come,
The birth of Jove her youngest-born, vast Earth
Took to herself the mighty babe, to rear
With nurturing softness in the spacious isle
Of Crete. So came she then, transporting him
With the swift shades of night, to Lyctus first:
And thence, upbearing in her arms, conceal’d
Beneath the sacred ground, in sunless cave,
Where shagg’d with thickening woods th’ Egæan mount
Impends. Then swathing an enormous stone
She placed it in the hands of Heaven’s huge son,
The ancient king of gods: that stone he snatch’d;
And in his ravening breast convey’d away:
Wretch! nor bethought him that the stone supplied
His own son’s place; survivor in its room,
Unconquer’d and unharm’d: the same, who soon
Subduing him with mightiness of arm,
Should drive him from his state, and reign himself
King of immortals. Swiftly grew the strength
And hardy limbs of that same kingly babe:
And when the great year had fulfill’d its round,
Gigantic Saturn, wily as he was,
Yet foil’d by Earth’s considerate craft, and quell’d
By his son’s arts and strength, released his race:
The stone he first disgorged, the last devour’d:
This Jove on earth’s broad surface firmly fix’d
At Pythos the divine, in the deep cleft
Of high Parnassus: 200to succeeding times
A monument, and miracle to man.
The brethren of his father too he loosed,
Whom Heaven, their sire, had in his frenzy bound:
They the good deed in grateful memory bore:
And gave the thunder, and the burning bolt,
And lightning, which vast Earth had heretofore
Hid in her central caves. In these confides
The god, and reigns o’er deities and men.
  Iäpetus ascends the bed of love
With Clýmene, fair-ankled ocean-nymph:
She brought forth Atlas: her undaunted son:
Glorying Menœtius and Prometheus vers’d
In changeful turns and shifting subtleties:
And Epimetheus of unwary mind:
Who from old time became an evil curse
To man’s inventive race; for he received
The clay-form’d virgin-woman sent from Jove.
All-seeing Jove struck with his smouldering flash
Haughty Menœtius, and cast down to hell;
Shameless in crime and arrogant in strength.
Atlas, enforced by stern necessity,
201Props the broad heaven: on earth’s far borders, where
Full opposite th’ Hesperian virgins sing
With shrill sweet voice, he rears his head and hands
Aye unfatiguable: Heaven’s counsellor
So doom’d his lot. But with enduring chains
202He bound Prometheus, train’d in shifting wiles,
With galling shackles fixing him aloft
Midway a column. Down he sent from high
His eagle hovering on expanded wings:
She gorged his liver: still beneath her beak
Immortal; for it sprang with life, and grew
In the night-season, and repair’d the waste
Of what the wide-wing’d bird devour’d by day.
But her the fair Alcmena’s hardy son
Slew; from Prometheus drove the cruel plague,
And freed him from his pangs. Olympian Jove,
Who reigns on high, consented to the deed;
That thence yet higher glory might arise,
O’er peopled earth, to Hercules of Thebes:
And in his honour, Jove now made to cease
The wrath he felt before; ’gainst him who strove
In wisdom e’en with Saturn’s mighty son.
  Of yore when strife arose for sacrifice,
Twixt gods and men, within Mecona’s walls,
Prometheus wilful 203parted a huge ox
And set before the god: so tempting him
With purpose to deceive: for here he laid
The unctuous substance, entrails, and the flesh
Close cover’d with the belly of the hide:
There the white bones he craftily disposed;
And with the marrowy substance wrapt them round.
Then spake the father of the gods and men:
“Son of Iäpetus!” thou famous god!
How partial, friend! are thy divided shares!”
So in rebuke spoke Jupiter: whose thoughts
Of wisdom perish not. Then answer’d him
Wily Prometheus, with a laugh suppress’d,
And well remembering his insidious fraud:
“Hail glorious Jove! thou mightiest of the gods
Who shall endure for ever: choose the one
Which now the spirit in thy breast persuades.”
He spoke, revolving treachery. Jove, whose thoughts
Of wisdom perish never, knew the guile,
Not unforewarn’d: and straight his soul devised
Evil to mortals, that should surely be:
He raised the snowy portion with his hands,
And felt his spirit wroth: yea, anger seiz’d
His spirit, when he saw the whitening bones
O’erlaid with cunning artifice: and thence,
E’en from that hour, the dwellers upon earth
Consume the whitening bones, when climbs the smoke
Wreath’d from their flaming altars. Then again
Cloud-gatherer Jove with indignation spake:
“Son of Iäpetus! of all most wise!
Still, friend! rememberest thou thy arts of guile?”
So spake, incensed, the god, whose wisdom yields
To no decay: and from that very hour,
Remembering still the treachery, he denied
The strength of indefatigable fire
To all the dwellers upon earth. But him
Benevolent Prometheus did beguile:
For in a hollow reed he stole from high
The far-seen splendour of unwearied flame.
Then deep resentment stung the Thunderer’s soul;
And his heart chafed in anger, when he saw
The fire far-gleaming in the midst of men.
And for the flame restored, he straight devised
A mischief to mankind. At Jove’s behest
Famed Vulcan fashion’d from the yielding clay
A bashful virgin’s likeness: and the maid
Of azure eyes, Minerva, round her waist
Clasp’d the broad zone, and dress’d her limbs in robe
Of flowing whiteness; placed upon her head
A wondrous veil of variegated threads;
Entwined amidst her hair delicious wreaths
Of verdant herbage and fresh-blooming flowers;
And set a golden mitre on her brow;
Which Vulcan framed, and with adorning hands
Wrought, at the pleasure of his father Jove.
Rich-labour’d figures, marvellous to sight,
Enchased the border: forms of beasts that range
The earth, and fishes of the rolling deep:
Of these innumerable he there had graven;
And exquisite the beauty of his art
Shone in these wonders, like to animals
Moving in breath, with vocal sounds of life.
Now when his plastic hand instead of good
Had framed this beauteous bane, he led her forth
Where were the other gods and mingled men.
She went exulting in her graced array,
Which Pallas, daughter of a mighty sire,
Known by her eyes of azure, had bestow’d.
On gods and men in that same moment seiz’d
The ravishment of wonder, when they saw
The deep deceit, th’ inextricable snare.
From her the sex of tender woman springs:
204Pernicious is the race: the woman tribe
Dwell upon earth, a mighty bane to men:
No mates for wasting want, but luxury:
And as within the close-roof’d hive, the drones,
Helpers of sloth, are pamper’d by the bees;
These all the day, till sinks the ruddy sun,
Haste on the wing, “their murmuring labours ply,”
And still cement the white and waxen comb:
Those lurk within the cover’d hive, and reap
With glutted maw the fruits of others’ toil;
Such evil did the Thunderer send to man
In woman’s form, and so he gave the sex,
Ill helpmates of intolerable toils.
Yet more of ill instead of good he gave:
The man who shunning wedlock thinks to shun
The vexing cares that haunt the woman-state,
And lonely waxes old, shall feel the want
Of one to foster his declining years:
Though not his life be needy, yet his death
Shall scatter his possessions to strange heirs,
And aliens from his blood. Or if his lot
Be marriage, and his spouse of modest fame,
Congenial to his heart, e’en then shall ill
For ever struggle with the partial good,
And cling to his condition. But the man,
Who gains the woman of injurious kind,
Lives bearing in his secret soul and heart
Inevitable sorrow: ills so deep
As all the balms of medicine cannot cure.
Therefore it is not lawful to elude
The eye of Heaven, nor mock th’ Omniscient Mind.
For not Prometheus, the benevolent,
Could shun Heaven’s heavy wrath: and vain were all
His arts of various wisdom: vain to ’scape
Necessity, or loose the mighty chain.
  When Heaven their sire ’gainst Cottus, Briareus,
And Gyges, felt his moody anger chafe
Within him, sore amazed with that their strength
Immeasurable, their aspect fierce, and bulk
Gigantic, with a chain of iron force
He bound them down; and fix’d their dwelling-place
Beneath the spacious ground: beneath the ground
They dwelt in pain and durance: in th’ abyss
There sitting, where earth’s utmost bound’ries end.
Full long oppress’d with mighty grief of heart
They brooded o’er their woes: but them did Jove
Saturnian, and those other deathless gods
Whom fair-hair’d Rhea bare to Saturn’s love,
By policy of Earth, lead forth again
To light. For she successive all things told:
How with the giant brethren they should win
Conquest and splendid glory. Long they fought
With toil soul-harrowing: they the deities
Titanic and Saturnian: each to each
Opposed, in valour of promiscuous war.
From Othrys’ lofty summit warr’d 205the host
Of glorious Titans: from Olympus they,
The band of gift-dispensing deities
Whom fair-hair’d Rhea bore to Saturn’s love.
So waged they war soul-harrowing: each with each
Ten years and more the furious battle join’d,
Unintermitted: nor to either host
Was issue of stern strife or end: alike
Did either stretch the limit of the war.
  But now when Jove had set before his powers
All things befitting; the repast of gods;
The nectar and ambrosia, in each breast
Th’ heroic spirit kindled: and now all
With nectar and with sweet ambrosia fill’d,
Thus spake the father of the gods and men:
“Hear me! illustrious race of Earth and Heaven!
That what the spirit in my bosom prompts
I now may utter. Long, and day by day,
Confronting each the other, we have fought
For conquest and dominion: Titan gods,
And we the seed of Saturn. Still do ye,
Fronting the Titans in funereal war,
Show mighty strength: invulnerable hands:
Remembering that mild friendship, and those pangs
Remembering, when ye trod the upward way
Back to the light: and by our counsels broke
“The burthening chain, and left the murky gloom.”
  He spake: and Cottus brave of soul replied:
“Oh Jove august! not darkly hast thou said:

Nor know we not how excellent thou art
In counsel and in knowledge: thou hast been
Deliverer of immortals from a curse
Of horror: by thy wisdom have we risen,
Oh kingly son of Saturn! from dark gloom
And bitter bonds, unhoping of relief.
Then with persisting spirit and device
Of prudent warfare, shall we still assert
Thy empire midst the fearful fray, and still
In hardy conflict brave the Titan foe.”
  He said: the gods, the givers of all good,
Heard with acclaim: nor ever till that hour
So burn’d each breast with ardour to destroy.
All on that day stirr’d up the mighty strife,
Female and male: Titanic gods, and sons
And daughters of old Saturn; and that band
Of giant brethren, whom, from forth th’ abyss
Of darkness under earth, deliverer Jove
Sent up to light: grim forms and strong, with force
Gigantic: arms of hundred-handed gripe
Burst from their shoulders: fifty heads up-sprang,
Cresting their muscular limbs. They thus opposed
In dreadful conflict ’gainst the Titans stood,
In all their sinewy hands 206wielding aloft
Precipitous rocks. On th’ other side, alert
The Titan phalanx closed: then hands of strength
Join’d prowess, and show’d forth the works of war.
Th’ immeasurable sea tremendous dash’d
With roaring; earth re-echoed; the broad heaven
Groan’d shattering: vast Olympus reel’d throughout
Down to its rooted base beneath the rush
Of those immortals: the 207dark chasm of hell
Was shaken with the trembling, with the tramp
Of hollow footsteps and strong battle-strokes,
And measureless uproar of wild pursuit.
So they against each other through the air
Hurl’d intermix’d their weapons, scattering groans
Where’er they fell. The voice of armies rose
With rallying shout through the starr’d firmament,
And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts
Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove
Curb down his force; but sudden in his soul
There grew dilated strength, and it was fill’d
With his omnipotence: 208his whole of might
Broke from him, and the godhead rush’d abroad.
The vaulted sky, the mount Olympus, flash’d
With his continual presence; for he pass’d
Incessant forth, and lighten’d where he trod.
Thrown from his nervous grasp the lightnings flew
Reiterated swift; the whirling flash
Cast sacred splendour, and the thunderbolt
Fell. Then on every side the foodful earth
Roar’d in the burning flame, and far and near
The trackless depth of forests crash’d with fire.
Yea—the broad earth burn’d red, the floods of Nile
Glow’d, and the desert waters of the sea.
Round and around the Titans’ earthy forms
Roll’d the hot vapour, and on fiery surge
Stream’d upward, swathing in one boundless blaze
The purer air of heaven. Keen rush’d the light
In quivering splendour from the writhen flash:
Strong though they were, intolerable smote
Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare
Scorch’d up their blasted vision. 209Through the void
Of Erebus, the preternatural flame
Spread, mingling fire with darkness. But to see
With human eye and hear with ear of man
Had been, as on a time 210the heaven and earth
Met hurtling in mid-air: as nether earth
Crash’d from the centre, and the wreck of heaven
Fell ruining from high. Not less, when gods
Grappled with gods, the shout and clang of arms
Commingled, and the tumult roar’d from heaven.
Shrill rush’d the hollow winds, and roused throughout
A shaking and a gathering dark of dust;
Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air,
Hot thunderbolts and flames, the fiery darts
Of Jove: and in the midst of either host
They bore upon their blast the cry confused
Of battle, and the shouting. For the din
Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife
Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof
Wreak’d there its deeds, till weary sank the fight.
But first, array’d in battle, front to front,
Full long they stood, and bore the brunt of war.
Amid the foremost, towering in the van,
211The war-unsated Gyges, Briareus,
And Cottus, bitterest conflict waged: for they
Successive thrice a hundred rocks in air
Hurl’d from their sinewy grasp: with missile storm
212The Titan host o’ershadowing, them they drove,
Vain-glorious as they were, with hands of strength
O’ercoming them, beneath th’ expanse of earth
And bound with galling chains: 213so far beneath
This earth, as earth is distant from the sky:
So deep the space to darksome Tartarus.
A brazen anvil rushing from the sky
Through thrice three days would toss in airy whirl,
Nor touch this earth, till the tenth sun arose:
Or down earth’s chasm precipitate revolve,
Nor till the tenth sun rose attain 214the verge
Of Tartarus. A fence of massive brass
Is forged around: around the pass is roll’d
A night of triple darkness; and above
Impend the roots of earth and barren sea.
There the Titanic gods in murkiest gloom
Lie hidden: such the cloud-assembler’s will:
There in a place of darkness, where vast earth
Has end: from thence no egress open lies:
Neptune’s huge hand has closed with brazen gates
The mouth: a wall environs every side.
There Gyges, Cottus, high-souled Briareus,
Dwell vigilant: the faithful sentinels
Of Ægis-bearer Jove. Successive there
The dusky Earth, and darksome Tartarus,
The sterile Ocean, and the starry Heaven,
215Arise and end, their source and boundary.
216A drear and ghastly wilderness, abhorr’d
E’en by the gods; a vast vacuity:
Might none the space of one slow-circling year
Touch the firm soil, that portal enter’d once,
217But him the whirls of vexing hurricanes
Toss to and fro. E’en by immortals loathed
This prodigy of horror. There too stand
The mansions drear of gloomy Night, o’erspread
With blackening vapours: and before the doors
Atlas upholding heaven his forehead rears,
And indefatigable hands. There Night
And Day, near passing, mutual greeting still
Exchange, 218alternate as they glide athwart
The brazen threshold vast. This enters, that
Forth issues; nor the two can one abode
At once constrain. This passes forth and roams
The round of earth; that in the mansion waits,
Till the due season of her travel come.
Lo! from the one the far-discerning light
Beams upon earthly dwellers; but a cloud
Of pitchy blackness veils the other round:
Pernicious Night: aye-leading in her hand
219Sleep, Death’s half-brother: sons of gloomy Night
There hold they habitation, Death and Sleep;
Dread deities: 220nor them the shining Sun
E’er with his beam contemplates, when he climbs
The cope of heaven, or when from heaven descends.
Of these the one glides gentle o’er the space
Of earth and broad expanse of ocean waves,
Placid to man. The other has a heart
Of iron; yea, the heart within his breast
Is brass, unpitying: whom of men he grasps
Stern he retains: e’en 221to immortal gods
A foe. The hollow-sounding palaces
Of Pluto strong the subterranean god,
222And stern Prosérpina, there full in front
Ascend: a grisly dog, implacable,
Holds watch before the gates: a stratagem
Is his, malicious: them who enter there,
With tail and bended ears he fawning soothes:
But suffers not that they with backward step
Repass: whoe’er would issue from the gates
Of Pluto strong and stern Prosérpina,
For them with marking eye he lurks; on them
Springs from his couch, and pitiless devours.
  There, odious to immortals, dreadful Styx
Inhabits: refluent Ocean’s eldest-born:
She from the gods apart for ever dwells
In far-re-echoing mansions, 223with arch’d roofs
Of loftiest rock o’erhung: and all around
The silver columns lean upon the skies.
  Swift-footed Iris, nymph of Thaumas born,
Takes with no frequent embassy her way
O’er the broad main’s expanse, when haply strife
Be risen, and midst the gods dissension sown:
And if there be among th’ Olympian race
Who falsehood utters, 224Jove sends Iris down
To bring the great oath in a golden ewer:
The far-famed water, from steep, sky-capt rock
Distilling in cold stream. Beneath wide Earth
Abundant from 225the sacred river-head,
Through shades of blackest night, the Stygian horn
Of ocean flows: a tenth of all the streams
To the dread oath allotted. In nine streams
Circling the round of earth and the broad seas,
With silver whirlpools twined in many a maze,
It falls into the deep: one stream alone
Flows from the rock; a mighty bane to gods.
Who of immortals, that inhabit still
Olympus top’d with snow, 226libation pours
And is forsworn, he one whole year entire
Lies reft of breath: nor yet approaches once
The nectar’d and ambrosial sweet repast:
But still reclines on the spread festive couch
Mute, breathless; and a mortal lethargy
O’erwhelms him: but, his malady absolved
With the great round of the revolving year,
More ills on ills afflictive seize: nine years
From ever-living deities remote
His lot is cast: in council nor in feast
Once joins he, till nine years entire are full:
The tenth again he mingles with the blest
Societies, who fill th’ Olympian courts.
So great an oath the deities of heaven
Decreed the water of eternal Styx,
The ancient stream; that sweeps with wandering waves
A rugged region: where of dusky Earth,
And darksome Tartarus, and Ocean waste,
And starry Heaven, the source and boundary
Successive rise and end: a dreary wild
And ghastly: e’en by deities abhorr’d.
  There gates resplendent rise; the threshold brass;
Immoveable; on deep foundations fix’d;
Self-framed. Before them the Titanic gods
Abide, without th’ assembly of the Blest,
Beyond the gulf of darkness. There beneath
The ocean-roots, th’ auxiliaries renown’d
Of Jove who rolls the hollow-pealing thunder,
Cottus and Gyges in near mansions dwell:
But He that shakes the shores with dashing surge
Hailing him son, gave Briareus as bride
Cymopolía; prize of brave desert.
  But now when Jupiter from all the heaven
Had cast the Titans forth, huge Earth embraced
By Tartarus, through balmy Venus’ aid,
227Her youngest-born Typhœus bore; whose hands
Of strength are fitted to stupendous deeds:
And indefatigable are the feet
Of the strong god: and from his shoulders rise
A hundred snaky heads of dragon growth,
Horrible, quivering with their blackening tongues:
In each amazing head, from eyes that roll’d
Within their sockets, fire shone sparkling: fire
Blazed from each head, the whilst he roll’d his glance
Glaring around him. In those fearful heads
Were voices of all sound, miraculous:
Now utter’d they distinguishable tones
Meet for the ear of gods: now the deep cry
Of a wild-bellowing bull untamed in strength:
And now the roaring of a lion, fierce
In spirit: and anon the yell of whelps
Strange to the ear: and now the monster hiss’d,
That the high mountains echoed back the sound.
Then had a dread event that fatal day
Inevitable fall’n, and he had ruled
O’er mortals and immortals; but the Sire
Of gods and men the peril instant knew
Intuitive; and vehement and strong
He thunder’d: instantaneous all around
Earth reel’d with horrible crash: the firmament
Of high heaven roar’d: the streams of Nile, the sea,
And uttermost caverns. While the king in wrath
Uprose, 228beneath his everlasting feet
The great Olympus trembled, and earth groan’d.
From either god a burning radiance caught
The darkly azured ocean: from the flash
Of lightnings, and that monster’s darted flame,
Hot thunderbolts, and blasts of fiery winds.
Earth, air, sea, glow’d: the billows, heaved on high,
Foam’d round the shores, and dash’d on every side
Beneath the rush of gods. Concussion wild
And unappeasable uprose: aghast
The gloomy monarch of th’ infernal dead
Shudder’d: the sub-tartarean Titans heard
E’en where they stood, with Saturn in the midst:
They heard appall’d the unextinguish’d rage
Of tumult, and the din of dreadful war.
But now when Jove had gather’d all his strength,
And grasp’d his weapons, bolts, and bickering flames,
He from the mount Olympus’ topmost ridge
Leap’d at a bound, and smote him: hiss’d at once
The horrible monster’s heads enormous, scorch’d
In one conflagrant blaze. When thus the god
Had quell’d him, thunder-smitten, mangled, prone,
He fell: earth groan’d and shook beneath his weight.
Flame from 229the lightning-stricken deity
Flash’d, midst the mountain-hollows, rugged, dark,
Where he fell smitten. Broad earth glow’d intense
From that unbounded vapour, and dissolv’d:
As fusile tin by art of youths above
The wide-brimm’d vase up-bubbling foams with heat;
Or iron, hardest of the mine, subdued
By burning flame amidst 230the woody dales
Melts in the sacred caves beneath the hands

Of Vulcan, so earth melted in the glare
Of blazing fire. He down wide Hell’s abyss
His victim hurl’d in bitterness of soul.
231Lo! from Typhœus is the strength of winds
Moist-blowing: save the South, North, East, and West:
232These born from gods, a blessing great to man:
Those, unavailing gusts, o’er the waste sea
Breathe barren: with sore peril fraught to man:
In whirlpool rage fall black upon the deep:
Now here, now there, they rush with stormy gale,
Scatter the rolling barks, and whelm in death
The mariner: an evil succourless
To men, who midst the ocean-ways their blast
Encounter. They again o’er all th’ expanse
Of flowery earth the pleasant works of man
Despoil, and fill the blacken’d air with cloud
Of eddying dust and hollow rustlings drear.
  Now had the blessed Powers of Heaven fulfill’d
Their toils, for meed of glory ’gainst the gods
Titanic striving in their strength: and now,
Earth-counsell’d, they exhort Olympian Jove,
Of wide beholding eyes, to regal sway
And empire o’er immortals: he to them
Due honours portion’d with an equal hand.
  First as a bride the Monarch of the gods
233Led Metis: her o’er deities and men
Vers’d in all knowledge. But when now the time
Was full, that she should bear 234the blue-eyed maid
Minerva, he with treacheries of smooth speech
Beguiled her thought, and hid his spouse away
In his own breast: so Earth and starry Heaven
Had counsell’d: him they both advising warn’d
Lest, in the place of Jove, another seize
The kingly honour o’er immortal gods.
For so the Fates had destined, that from her
An offspring should be born, of wisest strain.
First the Tritonian virgin azure-eyed:
Of equal might and prudence with her sire:
And then a son, king over gods and men,
Had she brought forth, invincible of soul,
But Jove in his own breast before that hour
Deposited the goddess: evermore
So warning him of evil and of good.
  Next led he shining Themis: and she bare
Order, and Justice, and the blooming Peace,
The Hours by name: who perfect all the works
Of human kind: and Destinies, whom Jove
All-wise array’d with honour: Lachesis,
Clotho, and Atropos: who deal to men
The dole of good or ill. To him anon
Old Ocean’s daughter, amiablest of mien,
Eurynome, 235brought the three Graces forth
Beauteous of cheek: Euphrosyne, Aglaia,
And Thália blithe: their eye-lids, as they gaze,
Drop love, unnerving: and beneath the shade
Of their arch’d brows they steal the sidelong glance
Of sweetness. To the couch anon he came
Of many-nurturing Ceres: Proserpine
The snowy-arm’d she bare: her gloomy Dis
Snatch’d from her mother, and all-prudent Jove
Consign’d the prize. Next loved he the fair-hair’d
Mnemosyne: from her the Muses nine
Are born: their brows with golden fillets wreath’d;
Whom feasts delight, and rapture sweet of song.
  In mingled joy with ægis-wielding Jove
Latona bore 236the arrow-shooting Dian,
And Phœbus, loveliest of the heavenly tribe.
  He last the blooming Juno led as bride:
And she, embracing with the king of gods
And men, bore Mars, and 237Hebe, and Lucina.
  He from his head disclosed himself to birth
The blue-eyed maid, Tritonian 238Pallas; fierce,
Rousing the war-field’s tumult; unsubdued;
Leader of armies; awful: whom delight
The shout of battle and the shock of war.
  Without th’ embrace of love did Juno bear
239Illustrious Vulcan, o’er celestials graced
With arts: and strove contending with her spouse
Emulous. From the god of sounding waves,
Shaker of earth, and Amphitrite, sprang
240Sea-potent Triton huge: beneath the deep
He dwells in golden edifice, a god
Of awful might. Now 241Venus gave to Mars,
Breaker of shields, a dreadful offspring: Fear,
And Consternation: they confound, in rout
Of horrid war, the phalanx dense of men,
With city-spoiler Mars. 242Harmonia last
She bare, whom generous Cadmus clasp’d as bride.
  Daughter of Atlas, Maia bore to Jove
243The glorious Hermes, herald of the gods;
The sacred couch ascending. 244Semele,
Daughter of Cadmus, melting in embrace
With Jove, gave jocund Bacchus to the light:
A mortal an immortal: now alike
Immortal deities. Alcmena bare
Strong Hercules: dissolving in embrace
With the cloud-gatherer Jove. The crippled god,
In arts illustrious, Vulcan, as his bride
The gay Aglaia led, the youngest Grace.
245Bacchus of golden hair, his blooming spouse
Daughter of Minos, Ariadne clasp’d
With yellow tresses. Her Saturnian Jove
Immortal made, and fearless of decay.
  Fair-limb’d 246Alcmena’s valiant son, achieved
His agonizing labours, Hebe led
A bashful bride, the daughter of great Jove
And Juno golden-sandal’d, on the mount
Olympus top’d with snow. Thrice blest who thus,
A mighty task accomplish’d, midst the gods
Uninjur’d dwells, and free from withering age
For evermore. Perseis, ocean-nymph
Illustrious, to th’ unwearied Sun produced
Circe and king Æetes. By the will
Of Heaven, Æetes, boasting for his sire
The world-enlightning Sun, Idya led
Cheek-blooming, nymph of ocean’s perfect stream:
And she, to love by balmy Venus’ aid
Subdued, 247Medea beauteous-ankled bare.
  And now farewell, ye heavenly habitants!
Ye islands, and ye continents of earth!
And thou, oh main! of briny wave profound!
Oh sweet of speech, Olympian Muses! born
From ægis-wielding Jove! sing now the tribe
Of goddesses; whoe’er, by mortals clasp’d
In love, have borne a race resembling gods.
  Ceres, divinest goddess, in soft joy
Blends with Iäsius brave, in the rich tract
Of Crete, whose fallow’d glebe thrice-till’d abounds;
And 248Plutus bare, all-bountiful, who roams
Earth, and th’ expanded surface of the sea:
And him that meets him on his way, whose hands
He grasps, him gifts he with abundant gold,
And large felicity. Harmonia, born
Of lovely Venus, gave to Cadmus’ love
Ino and Semele: and fair of cheek
Agave, and Autonöe, the bride
Of Aristæus with the clustering locks;
And Polydorus, born in towery Thebes.
  Aurora to Tithonus Memnon bare,
The brazen-helm’d, the Æthiopian king,
And king Emathion: and to Cephalus
Bare she a son illustrious, Phäethon,
Gallantly brave, a mortal like to gods:
Whom, while a youth, e’en in the tender flower
Of glorious prime, a boy, and vers’d alone
In what a boy may know, love’s amorous queen
Snatch’d with swift rape away: in her blest fane
Appointing him her nightly-serving priest;
The heavenly dæmon of her sanctuary.
249Jason Æsonides, by heaven’s high will,
Bore from Æetes, foster-son of Jove,
His daughter: those afflictive toils achieved,
Which Pelias, mighty monarch, bold in wrong,
Unrighteous, violent of deed, imposed:
And much-enduring reach’d th’ Iolchian coast,
Wafting in winged bark the jet-eyed maid,
His blooming spouse. She yielding thus in love
To Jason, shepherd of his people, bare
Medeus, whom the son of Philyra,
250Sage Chiron, midst the mountain-solitudes
Train’d up to man: thus were high Jove’s designs
Fulfill’d. Now Psamathe, the goddess famed,
Who sprang from ancient Nereus of the sea,
Bare Phocus; through the lovely Venus’ aid
By Æacus embraced. To Peleus’ arms
Resign’d, the silver-footed Thetis bare
Achilles lion-hearted: cleaving fierce
The ranks of men. Wreath’d Cytherea bare
Æneas: blending in ecstatic love
With brave Anchises on the verdant top
Of Ida, wood-embosom’d, many-valed.
  Now 251Circe, from the Sun Hyperion-born
Descended, with the much-enduring man
Ulysses blending love, Latinus bare,
And Agrius, brave and blameless: far they left
Their native seats in Circe’s hallow’d isles,
And o’er the wide-famed Tyrrhene tribes held sway.
  Calypso, noble midst the goddess race,
Clasp’d wise Ulysses: and from rapturous love
Nausithous and Nausinous gave to day.
  Lo! these were they, who yielding to embrace
Of mortal men, themselves immortal, gave
A race resembling gods. Oh now the tribe
Of gentle women sing! Olympian maids!
Ye Muses, born from ægis-bearer Jove!

Footnotes

142 They lightly leap in dance.] This representation of the Muses is taken from the ancient custom of dancing round the altar during sacrifice.

143 In springs that gush’d fresh from the courser’s hoof.] Hippos was an Ægyptian title of the sun. This ancient term became obsolete, and was misapplied by the Greeks, who uniformly applied it to horses. Hippocrene was a sacred fountain denominated from the god of light, who was the patron of verse and science. But by the Greeks it was referred to an animal, and supposed to have been produced by the hoof of a horse. Other nations, says Athanasius, reverenced rivers and fountains: but above all people in the world the Ægyptians held them in the highest honour, and esteemed them as divine. From hence the custom passed westward to Greece, Italy, and the extremities of Europe. One reason for holding waters so sacred arose from a notion that they were gifted with supernatural powers. Bryant.

144 Sire of prophecy.] Phœbus is thought to be derived from Φαος βιου, light of life: but the Greeks always associated with the name the prophetic attribute of Apollo: hence they formed from it the word φοιβαζω, to prophecy: as βακχευν, to celebrate orgies or madden, is formed from βακχος: like the debacchor of the Latins. Lycophron, v. 6:

Δαφιηφαγων φοιβαζεν εκ λαιμων οπα.

From foaming mouth with laurel fed
She pour’d the voice of prophecy.

145 And Venus twinkling bland her tremulous lids.] Ελικοβλεφαρος is explained by Guietus arcuatis superciliis: so Creech, in his translation of a chapter of Plutarch’s Morals, where the verse is quoted;

And Venus beauteous with her bending brows.

But the Greek for an eyebrow is οφρυς. Robinson more properly interprets it orbiculatis palpebris, with semicircular eye-lids: after the old scholiast; who conceives it a metaphor drawn from ελιξ: the bending tendril of ivy or the vine. Le Clerc explains it volubilibus palpebris: and is supported by Grævius, who quotes Petronius in illustration of the peculiar propriety of the epithet as applied to Venus:

  Blandos oculos et inquietos,
Et quadam propriâ notâ loquaces.

  Soft and ever restless eyes,
Still talkative, with language all their own.

Ελισσω is circumvolvo, to roll about.

146 Ye fleshly appetites.] This degrading address seems to betray a modern hand. If the proem be genuine, the shepherd’s occupation must have degenerated in the time of Hesiod from its ancient honourable character. But it is not likely that an agricultural poet should speak of husbandmen in these debasing terms. Le Clerc’s apology, that revilings such as these belong to the manners of primeval simplicity, does not appear very satisfactory. The poet, whoever he was, meant the address, probably, as an exhortation to higher pursuits.

147 A laurel-bough.] Salmasius observes that they who aspired to skill in divination, chewed the leaf of the laurel. Its poisonous quality produced a preternatural action on the nerves, and a convulsion and frothing at the mouth, favourable to the idea of being possessed or inspired. As poets feigned a kind of divination, and a knowledge of supernatural things, the laurel was equally a symbol of poesy and prophecy: and held sacred to Phœbus, the god of verse and divination. We find from Pausanias that those poets who did not play on the lyre held a laurel-bough in their hand, during their public recitations, as the badge of their profession. Hence probably the term “rhapsodist:” επι ραβδω αδειν, “to sing to the branch.” and a rhapsody seems to have designated such a portion of verses as the bard would recite at one time. Salmasius seems therefore mistaken in deriving the word from ραπτειν τας ωδας, stitching together songs: in allusion to the centos which the Homeric rhapsodists were accustomed to recite from the works of Homer: although the derivation appears countenanced by Pindar’s expression of ραπτων επεων αοιδοι, singers of tissued verses.

148 This tale of oaks.] This seems to have been a proverbial expression to signify any idle tale or preamble. The Scholiasts illustrate it from Odyssey xvii. 163, where Penelope asks Ulysses, whom she does not yet recognise, “whence he is?” and observes,

Thou comest not from some ancient oak or rock:

in allusion to the fable of men born from trees: originating, possibly, in children being found exposed in hollow trees and cavities of rocks. But there is another passage in Homer more to the purpose, Il. xx. 126:

It is no time from oak or hollow rock
With him to parley, as a nymph and swain,
A nymph and swain soft parley mutual hold.

Cowper.

Mr. Bryant explains this passage in Homer by the traditionary reverence paid to caverns: which in the first ages were deemed oracular temples: whence persons entered into compacts under rocks and oaks as places of security. But surely there is no need to go back to the first ages, or to dive into traditional superstitions for the solution of a circumstance so extremely obvious, as that of two lovers conversing in the shade. Harmer in his “Illustrations of the Classics,” vol. iii. of his “Observations on Scripture,” renders απο δρυος, on account of an oak: instead of from an oak: “when people meet each other on account of some rock or some tree which they happen upon in travelling.” But the alteration is quite unnecessary: the word from perhaps indicates that one is resting under the tree, while the other is passing by. The adage in Hesiod is expressed “around an oak:” which implies a number of persons. The rock associated with the oak marks the peculiar climate of Greece and the East. The shade cast by a rock is described by Eastern travellers as singularly cool.

149 Pieria’s groves.] The Pierians were celebrated for their skill in music and poetry. Hence Pieria came to be regarded as the birth place of the Muses. Bryant.

150 Bare the nine maids.] The origin of verse itself, which is to be sought in the necessity of some mechanical help for the memory at an æra when letters were not invented, and every thing depended on oral tradition, obviously accounts for the fiction of memory being the mother of the Muses. But there is a farther reason. The ancient temples were the depositaries of all traditionary knowledge. We are told by Homer that the voice of the Syrens was enchanting, but their knowledge of the past equally so. The Syrens appear to have been merely priestesses of one of this description of temples, which stood in Sicily, and was erected on the sea-shore, answering also the purpose of a lighthouse. The rites of the temple consisted partly of hymns chanted by young and beautiful women to the sound of harps and flutes: and it was their office to entangle by their allurements such strangers as touched upon the coast: who were instantly seized by the priests and sacrificed to the solar god. The Syrens are described as the daughters of Calliope, Melpomene, and Terpsichore; three of the Muses: they were in fact the same with the Muses. These temples were sacred colleges: sciences were taught there: in particular music and astronomy. The transition was easy from the young priestesses of these temples, to blooming goddesses who presided over history, poetry, &c. See the “Analysis of Ancient Mythology.”

151 Soothing eloquence.] This passage is exactly similar to one in the Odyssey, b. viii.:
Jove
Crowns him with eloquence: his hearers charm’d
Behold him, while with unassuming tone
He bears the prize of fluent speech from all;
And when he walks the city, as they pass,
All turn and gaze, as they had pass’d a god.

Cowper.

152 The great assembly.] The ancient Grecian princes, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus remarks, were not absolute like the Asiatic monarchs: their power being limited by laws and established customs:” and this is perfectly consonant to the higher authority of Homer. The poet himself appears a warm friend to monarchical rule, and takes every opportunity zealously to inculcate loyalty. “The government of many is bad: let there be one chief, one king.” It is, however, sufficiently evident that the poet means here to speak of executive government only: “Let there be one chief, one king,” he says: but he adds, “to whom Jupiter has intrusted the sceptre and the laws, that by them he may govern.” Accordingly in every Grecian government which he has occasion to enlarge upon, he plainly discovers to us strong principles of republican rule. Not only the council of principal men, but the assembly of the people also is familiar to him. The name agora signifying a place of meeting, and the verb formed from it to express haranguing in assemblies of the people, were already in common use; and to be a good public speaker was esteemed among the highest qualifications a man could possess. In the government of Phæacia, as described in the Odyssey, the mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy is not less clearly marked than in the British constitution. One chief, twelve peers (all honoured, like the chief, with the title which we translate king), and the assembly of the people, shared the supreme authority. The universal and undoubted prerogatives of kings were religious supremacy and military command. They often also exercised judicial power. But in all civil concerns their authority appears very limited. Every thing, indeed, that remains concerning government in the oldest Grecian poets and historians, tends to demonstrate that the general spirit of it among the early Greeks was nearly the same as among our Teutonic ancestors. The ordinary business of the community was directed by the chiefs. Concerning extraordinary matters and more essential interests, the multitude claimed a right to be consulted. Mitford, History of Greece, i. 3.

153 Harpers and men of song.] Singer was a common name among the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and other ancient people, for poet and musician; employments which were then inseparable: as no poetry was written but to be sung; and little or no music composed, but as an accompaniment to poetry. Burney, History of Music, 312.

154 Is there one
Who hides some fresh grief.]

This whole passage is found among the fragments attributed to Homer. This sentiment of the power of poesy and the subjects chosen by the bard is entirely in the spirit of antiquity, when mythology and heroism were the favourite themes. Achilles is described by Homer as diverting the uneasiness of his mind by warlike odes which he accompanied on the lyre, Il. ix. 189:

          Arriving soon
Among the Myrmidons, their chief they found
Soothing his sorrows with the silver-framed
Harmonious lyre, spoil taken when he took
Æetion’s city: with that lyre his cares
He soothed, and glorious heroes were his theme.

Cowper.

155 The servant of the Muse.] Laws were always promulgated in verse, and often publicly sung; a practice which remained in many places long after letters were become common: morality was taught: history was delivered in verse. Lawgivers, philosophers, historians, all who would apply their experience or their genius to the instruction and amusement of others, were necessarily poets. The character of poet was therefore a character of dignity: an opinion even of sacredness became attached to it: a poetical genius was esteemed an effect of divine inspiration and a mark of divine favour: and the poet, who moreover carried with him instruction and entertainment, not to be obtained without him, was a privileged person, enjoying by a kind of prescription the rights of universal hospitality. Mitford.
Yet in the vulgar tradition, Homer is represented as a mere ballad-singing mendicant! and whoever attempts to refute, by the light of historic evidence and of reason, this or similar absurdities of modern ignorance, when sanctioned by popular prejudice, must expect to be set down as a dealer in paradoxes.

156 First of all beings Chaos was.] The ancients were in general materialists, and thought the world eternal. But the mundane system, or at least the history of the world, they supposed to commence from the deluge. The confusion which prevailed at the deluge is often represented as the chaotic state of nature: for the earth was hid, and the heavens obscured, and all the elements in disorder. Bryant.

157 Or in the dark abysses of the ground.] Tartarus is considered by Brucker in his epitome of the Theogony (Historia Critica Philosophiæ, tom. 1.) as the third birth. Tartarus is, indeed, after introduced as a person, but in the singular number: the word is here used in the plural, and I conceive it to mean simply the cavities of the earth, and to be connected with the preceding sentence.

158 The Cyclops brethren.] Thucydides acquaints us concerning the Cyclopes, that they were the most ancient inhabitants of Sicily, but that he could not find out their race. Strabo places them near Ætna and Icontina, and supposes that they once ruled over that part of the island; and it is certain that a people called Cyclopians did possess that province. It is generally agreed by writers upon the subject, that they were of a size superior to the common race of mankind. Among the many tribes of the Amonians who went abroad, were to be found people who were styled Anakim; and were descended from the sons of Anak: so that this history, though carried to a great excess, was probably founded in truth. They were particularly famous for architecture; and in all parts whither they came, they erected noble structures, which were remarkable for their height and beauty: and were often dedicated to the chief deity, the sun, under the name of Elorus and P’Elorus. People were so struck with their grandeur, that they called every thing great or stupendous Pelorian (πελωρος, huge): and when they described the Cyclopians as a lofty towering race, they came at last to borrow their ideas of this people from the towers to which they alluded. They supposed them in height to reach the clouds, and in bulk equal to the promontories on which these edifices were founded. As these buildings were often-times light-houses, and had in their upper story one round casement, “like an Argolick buckler or the moon,” by which they afforded light in the night-season, the Greeks made this a characteristic of the people. They supposed this aperture to have been an eye, which was fiery and glaring, and placed in the middle of their foreheads. What confirmed the mistake was the representation of an eye, which was often engraved over the entrance of these temples: the chief deity of Ægypt being elegantly represented by the symbol of an eye, which was intended to signify the superintendency of Providence. The notion of the Cyclopes framing the thunder and lightning for Jupiter, arose chiefly from the Cyclopians engraving hieroglyphics of this sort upon the temples of the deity. The poets considered them merely in the capacity of blacksmiths, and condemned them to the anvil. Bryant.

The proximity of Ætna doubtless had its share in this delusion, Virg. Æn. viii. 417:

          Deep below
In hollow caves the fires of Ætna glow.
The Cyclops here their heavy hammers deal:
Loud strokes and hissings of tormented steel
Are heard around: the boiling waters roar,
And smoky flames through fuming tunnels soar.
Hither the father of the fire by night,
Through the brown air precipitates his flight:
On their eternal anvils here he found
The brethren beating, and the blows go round.

Dryden.

159 He took the sickle.] In a fragment of Sanchoniatho, the Phœnician philosopher, translated by Philo the Jew, is recorded this very history of Uranus and Cronus, or Saturn. De Gebelin, in his “Monde Primitif,” resolves it, according to his system, into the invention of reaping, which he supposes Saturn to personify. But Saturn is often represented with a ship, as well as a sickle; which has no reference to agriculture. The explanation may, however, be correct, if we consider Saturn not as a mere figurative prosopopœia of reaping, but as the real person who restored the labours of harvest; in the same manner as his Greek name Cronus, which some have thought to intimate a personification of Time, points out very significantly the person who began the new æra of time: the great father of the post-diluvian world. The type of the ship on the ancient coins of Saturn is an apposite emblem of the ark: and the concealment of the children of Heaven in a cavern seems an obscure remnant of the same tradition.

160 The foam-born goddess.] The name of the Dove among the ancient Amonians was Iön and Iönah. This term is often found compounded, and expressed Ad-Iönah, queen dove: from which title another deity, Adiona, was constituted. This mode of idolatry must have been very ancient, as it is mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and is one species of false worship, which Moses forbade by name. According to our method of rendering the Hebrew term it is called Idione. This Idione or Adione was the Dione of the Greeks: the deity who was sometimes looked upon as the mother of Venus: at other times as Venus herself: and styled Venus Dionæa. Venus was no other than the ancient Iönah: and we shall find in her history numberless circumstances relating to the Noachic dove, and to the deluge. We are told, when the waters covered the earth, that the dove came back to Noah, having roamed over a vast uninterrupted ocean, and found no rest for the sole of her foot. But upon being sent forth a second time by the patriarch, in order to form a judgment of the state of the earth, she returned to the ark in the evening, and “Lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off.” From hence Noah conceived his first hopes of the waters being assuaged, and the elements reduced to order. He likewise began to foresee the change that was to happen in the earth: that seed-time and harvest would be renewed, and the ground restored to its pristine fecundity. In the hieroglyphical sculptures and paintings where this history was represented, the dove was depicted hovering over the face of the deep. Hence it is that Dione, or Venus, is said to have risen from the sea. Hence it is, also, that she is said to preside over waters, to appease the troubled ocean, and to cause by her presence a universal calm: that to her were owing the fruits of the earth, and the flowers of the field were renewed by her influence. The address of Lucretius to this goddess is founded on traditions, which manifestly allude to the history above mentioned. Bryant.

161 Love track’d her steps.] What the Greeks called Iris, was expressed Eiras by the Ægyptians. The Greeks out of Eiras formed Eros, a god of love, whom they annexed to Venus, and made her son: and finding that the bow was his symbol, instead of the iris they gave him a material bow, with the addition of a quiver and arrows. The bows of Apollo and Diana were formed from the same original. After the descent from the ark the first wonderful occurrence was the bow in the clouds, and the covenant of which it was made an emblem. At this season another æra began. The earth was supposed to be renewed, and Time to return to a second infancy. They therefore formed an emblem of a child with the rainbow, to denote this renovation in the world, and called him Eros, or Divine Love. But however like a child he might be expressed, the more early mythologists esteemed him the most ancient of the gods; and Lucian, with great humour, makes Jupiter very much puzzled to account for the appearance of this infant deity. “Why thou urchin,” says the father of the gods, “how came you with that little childish face, when I know you to be as old as Iapetus?” The Greek and Roman poets reduced the character of this deity to that of a wanton, mischievous pigmy: but he was otherwise esteemed of old. He is styled by Plato a mighty god; and it is said that Eros was the cause of the greatest blessings to mankind. Bryant.

162 Virgin whisperings.] These attributes of Venus suggest a comparison with the properties of her cestus as described by Homer:
It was an ambush of sweet snares: replete
With love, desire, soft intercourse of hearts,
And music of resistless whisper’d sounds,
Which from the wisest steal their best resolves.

Cowper.

163 Then bare she Momus.] Hesiod has truly painted the nature of detraction (Momus) in describing it as born from Night. The same origin is given to Care: because all anxieties are increased in the night-season: whence Night is styled by Ovid, “the mighty nurse of Cares.” Le Clerc.

164 Th’ Hesperian maids.] The ancient temples in which the sun was adored often stood within enclosures of large extent. Some of them were beautifully planted, and ornamented with pavilions and fountains. Places of this nature are alluded to under the description of the gardens of the Hesperides and Alcinous. They were also regal edifices: and termed Tor-chom and Tar-chon; which signified a regal tower, and was of old a high place or temple of Cham. By a corruption it was in later times rendered Trachon. The term was still further sophisticated by the Greeks, and expressed Drachon. The situation of these buildings on a high eminence, and the reverence in which they were held, made them be looked upon as places of great security. On these accounts they were the repositories of much treasure. When the Greeks understood that in these temples the people worshipped a serpent-deity, they concluded that Trachon was a serpent: hence the name Draco came to be appropriated to that imaginary animal. Hence also arose the notion of treasures being guarded by dragons, and of the gardens of the Hesperides being under the protection of a serpent. Bryant.
Perhaps also in these gardens was kept up the ancient Paradisiacal tradition: as the golden apples and the dragon present an analogy with the hieroglyphic account given by Moses of the forbidden fruit and the serpent. This is the more probable, as it is evident this tradition had mixed itself in the dispersed legends of pagan mythology from the remarkable coincidence of the “serpent-woman,” considered by the Mexicans as the mother of the human race, and ranked next to “the god of the celestial paradise.” The Mexican temples, also, where “the great spirit,” or sun personified, was worshipped, are described by Humboldt in his “American Researches,” as raised in the midst of a square and walled enclosure, which contained gardens and fountains. This mixed worship of the Paradisiacal serpent may account for a serpent, twisted into the form of a fillet, being made an emblem of the sun’s disk: and for snaky hair being typical of divine wisdom: while the tresses were, at the same time, so disposed as to figure the sun’s rays, and the human visage represented his orb.
The Hesperian virgins seem the same with the Muses and Syrens, the priestesses of the temple: and their singing sweetly on their watch, as described afterwards by Hesiod, alludes to the hymns which they chanted at the altar. They are made the daughters of Night, because the gardens were in Afric: which, equally with Italy and Spain, was denominated Hesperia by the Greeks: and the region of the west was considered as synonymous with Night.

165 Eldest of all his race.] The history of the patriarch was recorded by the ancients through their whole theology. All the principal deities of the sea, however diversified, have a manifest relation to him. Noah was figured under the history of Nereus: and his character of an unerring prophet, as well as of a just, righteous, and benevolent man, is plainly described by Hesiod. Bryant.

166 Then rose Thaumas vast.] That beautiful phenomenon in the heavens, which we call the rainbow, was by the Ægyptians styled Thamuz, and signified “the wonder.” The Greeks expressed it Thaumas: and hence was derived θαυμαζω, to wonder. This Thaumas they did not immediately appropriate to the bow: but supposed them to be two personages, and Thaumas the parent. Bryant.

167 Phorcys the mighty.] Homer calls him “the old man of the sea:” and gives precisely the same appellation to Proteus. The character of the latter varies only from that of Nereus in the quality of transforming himself into sundry shapes. This may have a reference to the great diluvian changes, varying the face of nature. The connexion of Phorcys and Ceto favours the supposition that these three deities are one and the same personage.
“The ark in which mankind were preserved was figured under the semblance of a large fish. It was called Cetos.” Bryant.
Cetos is the Greek term for a whale.

168 Rose-arm’d Eunice.] ροδοπῃχυς, rosy-elbow’d: this epithet, together with that of ροδοδακτυλος, rosy-fingered, was derived from the artificial custom of staining the elbow and tops of the fingers with rose-colour. In Dallaway’s Constantinople it is remarked of the modern Greek girls “that the nails both of the fingers and the feet are always stained of a rose-colour:” a curious vestige of Grecian antiquity.

169 Nereid nymphs.] Spenser, in his “Spousals of the Thames and Medway,” b. 4. cant. ii. of the “Faery Queen,” has imposed on himself a task, from which a translator would fain escape: and has transposed into his stanzas the whole fifty Nereids of Hesiod, together with his catalogue of Rivers.

170 The sister-harpies.] The harpies were priests of the sun: they were denominated from their seat of residence, which was an oracular temple called Harpi. The representation of them as winged animals was only the insigne of the people, as the eagle and vulture were of the Ægyptians. They seem to have been a set of rapacious persons, who for their repeated acts of violence and cruelty were driven out of Bithynia, their country. Bryant.

171 The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray.] The circumstance of their being gray seems to be explained by a passage of Æschylus, who describes them as half-women, half-swans:
The Gorgonian plains
Of Cisthine, where dwell the Phorcydes
Swan-form’d, three ancient nymphs, one common eye
Their portion.

Prometheus Chained.

“This history relates to an Amonian temple founded in the extreme parts of Africa, in which there were three priestesses of Canaänitish race, who on that account are said to be in the shape of swans: the swan being the insigne under which their country was denoted. The notion of their having but one eye among them took its rise from a hieroglyphic very common in Ægypt and Canaän: this was the representation of an eye, which was engraved on the pediment of their temples.” Bryant.

The Gorgons were probably similar personages: they are described by Æschylus with wings and serpentine locks: attributes apparently borrowed from the emblematical devices in the temples of Ægypt. Gorgon was a title of Minerva at Cyrene in Lybia.

172 When Perseus smote
Her neck.]

The island of Seriphus is represented as having once abounded with serpents; and it is styled by Virgil in his Ciris serpentifera: it had this epithet, not on account of any real serpents, but according to the Greeks, from Medusa’s head, which was brought thither by Perseus. By this is meant the serpent-deity, whose worship was here introduced by a people called Peresians. It was usual with the Ægyptians to describe upon the architrave of their temples some emblem of the deity who there presided: among others the serpent was esteemed a most salutary emblem, and they made use of it to signify superior skill and knowledge. A beautiful female countenance surrounded with an assemblage of serpents was made to denote divine wisdom. Many ancient temples were ornamented with this curious hieroglyphic. These devices upon temples were often esteemed as talismans, and supposed to have a hidden influence by which the building was preserved. In the temple of Minerva, at Tigea, was some sculpture of Medusa, which the goddess was said to have given to preserve the city from ever being taken in war. It was probably from this opinion that the Athenians had the head of Medusa represented on the walls of their Acropolis; and it was the insigne of many cities, as we find from ancient coins. Perseus was one of the most ancient heroes in the mythology of Greece: the merit of whose supposed achievements the Helladians took to themselves, and gave out that he was a native of Argos. Herodotus more truly represents him as an Assyrian; by which is meant a Babylonian. Yet he resided in Ægypt, and is said to have reigned at Memphis. To say the truth, he was worshipped at that place: for Perseus was a title of the deity, and was no other than the Sun, the chief god of the gentile world. His true name was Perez; rendered Peresis, Perses, and Perseus: and in the account given of this personage we have the history of the Peresians in their several peregrinations; who were no other than the Heliadæ and Osirians. It is a mixed history in which their forefathers are alluded to: particularly their great progenitor, the father of mankind. He was supposed to have had a renewal of life: they therefore described Perseus as enclosed in an ark and exposed in a state of childhood on the waters, after having been conceived in a shower of gold. Bryant.

173 The great Chrysaor.] Chus by the Ægyptians and Canaanites was styled Or-chus, and Chus-or: the latter of which was expressed by the Greeks by a word more familiar to their ear Chrusor; as if it had a reference to gold. This name was sometimes changed into Chrusaor: and occurs in many places where the Cuthites were known to have settled. They were a long time in Ægypt: and we read of a Chrusaor in those parts, who is said to have sprung from the blood of Medusa. We meet with the same Chrusaor in the regions of Asia Minor, especially among the Carians: in those parts he was particularly worshipped, and said to have been the first deified mortal. The Grecians borrowed this term, and applied it to Apollo: and from this epithet, Chrusaor, he was denominated the god of the golden sword. This weapon was at no time ascribed to him, nor is he ever represented with one either on a gem or marble. He is described by Homer in the hymn to Apollo, as wishing for a harp and a bow. There is never any mention made of a sword, nor was the term Chrusaor of Grecian etymology. Since, then, we may be assured that Chus was the person alluded to, we need not wonder that so many cities, where Apollo was particularly worshipped, should be called Chruse, and Chrusopolis. Nor is this observable in cities only, but in rivers. It was usual in the first ages to consecrate rivers to deities, and to call them after their names. Hence many were denominated from Chrusorus: which by the Greeks was changed to χρυσορροας, flowing with gold: and from this mistake, the Nile was called Chrusorrhoas, which had no pretensions to gold. In all the places where the sons of Chus spread themselves, the Greeks introduced some legend about gold. Hence we read of a golden fleece at Colchis: golden apples at the Hesperides: at Tartessus a golden cup: and at Cuma in Campania a golden branch. But although this repeated mistake arose in great measure from the term Chusus being easily convertible into Chrusus, there was another obvious reason for the change. Chus was by many of the Eastern nations expressed Cuth; and his posterity, the Cuthim. This term, in the ancient Chaldaic and other Amonian languages, signified gold: and hence many cities and countries where the Cuthites settled were described as golden. Bryant.

174 And Pegasus the steed.] Pegasus received its name from a well-known emblem, the horse of Poseidon: by which we are to understand an ark or ship. “By horses,” says Artemidorus, “the poets mean ships:” and hence it is that Poseidon is called Hippius; for there is a strict analogy between the poetical or winged horse on land, and a real ship in the sea. Hence it came that Pegasus was esteemed the horse of Poseidon (Neptune), and often named scuphius; a name which relates to a ship, and shows the purport of the emblem. The ark, we know, was preserved by divine providence from the sea, which would have overwhelmed it: and as it was often represented under this symbol of a horse, it gave rise to the fable of the two chief deities, Jupiter and Neptune, disputing about horses. Bryant.
To this we may add the still more remarkable fable of the dispute between Neptune and Pallas: when the former produces a horse, and the latter an olive-tree. “These notions,” observes the author of the Analysis, “arose from emblematical descriptions of the deluge, which the Grecians had received by tradition: but what was general they limited, and appropriated to particular places.”

175 Old Nilus’ fountains.] Ωκεανου περι πηγας. Le Clerc remarks that “this derivation is absurd: as we do not talk of the fountains of the sea, but of rivers.” He adds, however, that “Hesiod more than once calls the ocean the river:” and this should have led him to perceive that it is in fact a river of which Hesiod speaks. The oceanic river was the Nile, which in very ancient times was called the Oceanus.

176 Geryon rose.] One of the principal and most ancient settlements of the Amonians upon the ocean was at Gades; where a prince was supposed to have reigned, named Geryon. The harbour at Gades was a very fine one, and had several tor, or towers, to direct shipping: and as it was usual to imagine the deity to whom the temple was erected to have been the builder, this temple was said to have been built by Hercules. All this the Grecians took to themselves. They attributed the whole to Hercules of Thebes: and as he was supposed to conquer wherever he came, they made him subdue Geryon: and changing the tor or towers into so many head of cattle, they describe him as leading them off in triumph. Tor-keren signified a regal tower; and this being interpreted τρικαρηνος, this personage was in consequence described with three heads. Bryant.
Erythia, according to Pliny, is another name for Gades.

177 In the deep-hollow’d cavern of a rock.] It is probable that at Arima in Cilicia there was an Ophite temple; which, like all the most ancient temples, was a vast cavern. Some emblematical sculpture of the serpent-deity may have given rise to the creation of this mythological prodigy. The Hydra had, probably, a similar origin.

178 A whirlwind, rude and wild.] There were two distinct Typhons or Typhaons, although they are sometimes confounded together. The one is the same as the gigantic Typhæus, subsequently described by Hesiod: the other the whirlwind here mentioned.
“By this Typhon was signified a mighty whirlwind, or inundation. It had a relation to the deluge. In hieroglyphical descriptions, the dove was represented as hovering over the mundane egg which was exposed to the fury of Typhon: for an egg, containing in it the proper elements of life, was thought no improper emblem of the ark, in which were preserved the rudiments of the future world.” Bryant.
Robinson is therefore manifestly wrong in proposing to substitute ανομον, lawless, for ανεμον, a wind: though the reading be countenanced by the Bodleian copy and the Florentine edition of Junta.

179 The fifty-headed Cerberus.] Cerberus was the name of a place, though esteemed the dog of hell. We are told by Eusebius from Plutarch, that Cerberus was the Sun: but the term properly signified the temple, or place, of the Sun. The great luminary was styled by the Amonians both Or and Abor; that is, light, and the parent of light: and Cerberus is properly Kir-abor, the place of that deity. The same temple had different names from the diversity of the god’s titles, who was there worshipped. It was called Tor-caph-el; which was changed to τρικεφαλος: and Cerberus was from hence supposed to have had three heads. Bryant.
The poets increased the number of heads, as they seem to have thought a multitude of heads or arras sublimely terrific. Pindar out-does Hesiod by a whole fifty, and speaks of the hundred-headed Cerberus. Εκατον τα κεφαλον.

180 Chimæra, breathing fire unquenchable.] The same passage occurs in the 6th book of the Iliad. “In Lycia was the city Phaselis, situated upon the mountain Chimæra; which mountain was sacred to the god of fire. Phaselis is a compound of Phi, which in the Amonian language is a mouth or opening, and of Az-el: another name for Orus, the god of light. Phaselis signifies a chasm of fire. The reason why this name was imposed may be seen in the history of the place. All the country around abounded in fiery eruptions. Chimæra is a compound of Chamur, the name of the deity, whose altar stood towards the top of the mountain. But the most satisfactory idea of it may be obtained from coins which were struck in its vicinity, and particularly describe it as a hollow and inflamed mountain.” Bryant.

181 Depopulating Sphinx.] The Nile begins to rise during the fall of the Abyssinian rains; when the sun is vertical over Æthiopia: and its waters are at their height of inundation when the sun is in the signs Leo and Virgo. The Ægyptians seem to have invented a colossal representation of the two zodiacal signs, which served as a water-mark to point out the risings of the Nile: and this biform emblem of a virgin and lion constituted the famous ænigma.

182 Tethys to Ocean brought the rivers forth.] When towers were situated upon eminences fashioned very round, they were by the Amonians called Tith, answering to Titthos in Greek. They were so denominated from their resemblance to a woman’s breast, and were particularly sacred to Orus and Osiris, the deities of light, who by the Grecians were represented under the title of Apollo. Tethys, the ancient goddess of the sea, was nothing else but an old tower upon a mount. On this account it was called Tith-is, the mount of fire. Thetis seems to have been a transposition of the same name, and was probably a Pharos, or fire-tower, near the sea. Bryant.

183 Claim the shorn locks.] It was the custom of the Greeks for adult youths to poll their hair as an offering to Apollo and the Rivers.

184 And Ploto, with the bright dilated eyes.] Βοωπις, ox-eyed: that is, with eyes artificially enlarged. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 6, speaks of the stibium or antimony as an astringent, especially as to the eye-lid: and mentions that it was called platyophthalmum, eye-opener: from its forming an ingredient in the washes of women, as it had the effect of opening or dilating the eye by contracting the lid. The modern Greek women retain the custom. “Of the few that I have seen with an open veil or without one, the faces were remarkable for symmetry and brilliant complexion: with the nose straight and small: the eyes vivacious: either black or dark-blue: having the eyebrows, partly from nature, and as much from art, very full, and joining over the nose. They have a custom, too, of drawing a black line with a mixture of powder of antimony and oil above and under the eye-lashes in order to give the eye more fire.” Dallaway, Constantinople Ancient and Modern.

Strutt, in the general introduction to his “View of the Dress and Habits of the People of England,” observes that the Moorish ladies in Barbary, the women in Arabia Felix, and those about Aleppo continue the same traditional custom of tinging the inside of the eye-lid. Dr. Russel describes the operation as effected “by means of a short smooth probe of ivory, wood, or silver; charged with a powder named the black Kohol. This substance is a kind of lead-ore brought from Persia: and is prepared by roasting it in a quince, an apple, or a truffle; then, adding a few drops of oil of almonds, it is ground to a subtile powder on a marble. The probe being first dipped in water, a little of the powder is sprinkled on it. The middle part is then applied horizontally to the eye, and the eye-lids being shut upon it, the probe is drawn through between them, leaving the inside tinged, and a black rim all round the edge. The Kohol is used likewise by the men: but not so generally by way of ornament merely: the practice being deemed rather effeminate. It is supposed to strengthen the sight and prevent various disorders of the eye.” Natural History of Aleppo, vol. i. iii. 22.

Mr. Gifford, in the notes to his admirable version of Juvenal, supposes the effeminate practice of the Roman fops to assimilate with this: in the passage which he translates,

Some with a tiring-pin their eye-brows dye,
Till the full arch gives lustre to the eye.

Sat. ii. 67.

Juvenal, however, mentions only the painting of the eye-brows: unless by the epithet tremulous, trementes, which he applies to the eyes, he means to intimate the whole operation, and the eye-ball quivering under the application of the needle.

In the second book of Kings, ix. 30, when it is said “Jezebel painted her face,” the Septuagint has it, “she antimonized her eyes:” Εστιμμιζατο τους οφθαλμους αυτης.

185 Long-stepping tread the earth.] The Greeks, as appears from their female epithets, were very attentive to the form of the ankle, and the manner of walking: and a long step, no less than a well-turned ankle, as implying a tallness of figure, was thought characteristic of graceful beauty.

186 The glassy depth of lakes.] All fountains were esteemed sacred: but especially those which had any preternatural quality and abounded with exhalations. It was an universal notion that a divine energy proceeded from the effluvia; and that the persons who resided in their vicinity were gifted with a prophetic quality. Fountains of this nature, from the divine influence with which they were supposed to abound, the Amonians styled Ain-omphe, or oracular fountain. These terms the Greeks contracted to numphe, a nymph: and supposed such a person to be an inferior goddess who presided over waters. Hot springs were imagined to be more immediately under the inspection of the nymphs. Another name for these places was Ain-Ades, the fountain of Ades or the Sun; which in like manner was changed to Naïades, a species of deities of the same class. Bryant.

187 East, West, and South, and North.] Le Clerc and the generality of editors suppose Hesiod to omit the east-wind entirely: and consider αργεστεω as an epithet, signifying swift or serene: as the term is so used by Homer. Grævius quotes a subsequent line of the Theogony as authority for αργεστης being so used by Hesiod also: but there is evidence for αργεστης being the name of a wind; though Aulus Gellius and Pliny suppose it to be a west-wind, called by the Latins Caurus. Aristotle also, as is observed by the Monthly Reviewer, describes the αργεστης as a westerly wind, which blows from that part of the heaven in which the sun sets at the summer solstice: and adds that by some it is called Olympias, by others Iapyx. We see however from this very passage of Aristotle, that the names of winds were capricious and arbitrary: and in fact almost every district in Greece called the winds by names different from those which the neighbouring district used. The same critic observes that in a note to the word σκειροιν (Caurus), in Alberti’s edition of Hesychius, an opinion is intimated that αργεστης is properly an easterly wind, απηλιωτης ανεμος: nor can there be the least doubt of the matter, in so far as regards Hesiod. The London Reviewer, indeed, remarks that “the omission of the wind would be no proof of Hesiod’s ignorance of its existence”: a similar omission occurs in the Psalms. “Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor the west, nor yet from the south.” But it is forgotten that Hesiod is describing the genealogy of the winds: and it is very inconceivable that one of the four cardinal winds should have escaped his notice. The editions of Stephens and Trincavellus read

Νοσφι Νοτου, Βορεω τε, και Αργεστου, Ζεφυρου τε:

instead of αργεστεω Ζεφιροιο: and I have no doubt that this is the true reading.

188 Not apart from Jove
Their mansion is.]

So Callimachus, Hymn to Jupiter:

  No lots have made thee king above all gods:
But works of thy own hands: thy Strength and Force,
Whom thou hast, therefore, station’d next thy throne.

Strength and Force are introduced by Æschylus as characters, in the first scene of his “Prometheus Chained.”

189 Asteria, blest in fame.] According to Callimachus Asteria was metamorphosed into the Isle of Delos: a term which alludes to its appearing after having been submerged in the sea: δηλος, visible. Asteria is from αστηρ a star.

          Asteria was thy name
Of old: since like a star from heaven on high
Thou didst leap down precipitate within
A fathomless abyss of waters, flying
From nuptial violence of Jove.

Hymn to Delos.

190 She conceived
With Hecaté.]

Εκατη was a title of Diana, as εκατος of Apollo: from εκας far off: alluding to the distance to which the sun and moon dart their rays. This goddess is represented in ancient sculptures as three females joined in one, with various attributes in their hands: this triple figure was combined of the three characters sustained by the moon: who was Selene or Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine in the subterranean regions. Luna is said by Cicero to be the same as Lucina, the goddess of child-bearing: a title given also to Diana and Juno. Hecate has also assigned to her by Hesiod the office of foster-mother of children. This may be explained partly by the reckoning of pregnant women being guided by the number of lunar periods; and partly by the emblematic character of the moon, as an object of worship.

“The moon was a type of the ark: the sacred ship of Osiris being represented in the form of a crescent, of which the moon was made an emblem. Selene was the reputed mother of the world, as Plutarch confesses: which character cannot be made in any degree to correspond with the planet. Selene was the same as Isis: the same also as Rhea, Vesta, Cubele, and Damater, or Ceres.” Bryant.

These female deities not only melt into each other, but at last resolve themselves into the one Zeus: so that the lunar idolatry is absorbed ultimately in the solar. “The patriarch had the names of Meen or Menes; which signify a moon, and was worshipped all over the east as Deus Lunus. Strabo mentions several temples of this lunar god in different places: all these were dedicated to the same Arkite deity, called Lunus, Luna, and Selene. The same deity was both masculine and feminine: what was Deus Lunus in one country was Dea Luna in another. Meen was also one of the most ancient titles of the Ægyptian Osiris; the same as Apollo.” Bryant.

The sacred bull Apis is figured in the ancient coins and sculptures, with a crescent moon upon his head instead of horns: by which the great restorer of husbandry, Noah, was connected with the ark in which he had been miraculously preserved; and of which the lunar crescent was an emblem.

191 Her wide allotment stands.] The other gods were either celestial, terrestrial, marine, or subterranean: but the divinity of Hecate pervaded heaven, earth, and the abyss, from her being intermixed with Luna, Dian, and Proserpine: and the sea, from the moon influencing the tides. She was invoked at sacrifices, probably, as presiding over divination from the entrails of beasts: because she was the patroness of magical rites and incantations: from such ceremonies being performed in the secrecy of night by the light of the moon. The Greeks, on every new moon, were accustomed to spread a feast in the cross-ways, which was carried away by the poor: this was called “Hecate’s supper;” and was said to have been eaten by Hecaté. See Aristophanes, Plutus.

192 Her solitary birth.] This alludes to the honour and the privileges attached by the ancients to numerous children. The moon is said to be single in birth, as the only planet of the same apparent size and lustre.

193 A gleam of glory o’er his parents’ days.] The odes of Pindar are traditional records of the glory attached by the Greeks to the conquerors in their games: a glory which extended to their parents and connexions, and even to the city in which they were born. Cicero describes the return from an Olympic victory as equivalent to a Roman triumph. The victor in fact rode in a triumphal chariot, and entered through a breach in the walls into the city: which Plutarch explains to signify that walls are useless with such defenders. The same writer relates, that a Spartan meeting Diagoras, who had been crowned in the Olympic games, and had seen his sons and grand-children crowned after him, exclaimed, “Die Diagoras! for thou canst not be a god.” A memorial on the gymnastic exercises of the Greeks will be found in the “Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,” tom. i. 286.

194 Golden-sandal’d Juno.] Juno was the same as Iöna: and she was particularly styled Juno of Argus. Argus was one of the terms by which the ark was distinguished. The Grecians called her Hera; which was not originally a proper name, but a title: the same as Ada of the Babylonians; and expressed “the Lady” or “Queen.” She was the same as Luna or Selene, from her connexion with the ark; and at Samos she was described as standing in a lunette, with the lunar emblem on her head. She was sometimes worshipped under the symbol of an egg: so that her history had the same reference as that of Venus. She presided equally over the seas, which she was supposed to calm or trouble. Isis, Io, and Ino were the same as Juno, and Venus also was the same deity under a different title. Hence in Laconia there was an ancient statue of the goddess styled Venus Junonia. Juno was also called Cupris, and under that title was worshipped by the Hetrurians. As Juno was the same with Iöna we need not wonder at the Iris being her concomitant. Bryant.

195 Ceres, and Vesta.] Ceres was the deity of fire; hence at Cnidus she was called Cura: a title of the Sun. The Roman name Ceres, expressed by Hesychius Gerys, was by the Dorians more properly rendered Garis. It was originally the name of a city called Charis: for many of the deities were erroneously called by the names of the places where they were worshipped. Charis is Char-is, the city of fire: the place where Orus and Hephaistus were worshipped. It may after this seem extraordinary that she should ever be esteemed the goddess of corn. This notion arose from the Greeks not understanding their own theology. The towers of Ceres were P’urtain or Prutaneia: so called from the fires which were perpetually there preserved. The Grecians interpreted this purou tameion: and rendered what was a temple, a granary of corn. In consequence of this, though they did not abolish the ancient usage of the place, they made it a repository of grain; from whence they gave largesses to the people. In early times the corn there deposited seems to have been for the priests or divines: but this was only a secondary use to which these places were adapted. They were properly sacred towers, where a perpetual fire was preserved. It was sacred to Hestia, the Vesta of the Romans, which was only another title for Damater or Ceres: and the sacred hearth had the same name. Bryant.

196 Pluto strong.] “Some,” says Diodorus, “think that Osiris is Serapis: others that he is Dionusus: others still that he is Pluto: many take him for Zeus or Jupiter, and not a few for Pan.” This was an unnecessary embarrassment, for they were all titles of the same god. Pluto, among the best mythologists, was esteemed the same as Jupiter; and indeed the same as Proserpine, Ceres, Hermes, Apollo, and every other deity. Bryant.

197 Earth-shaker Neptune.] The patriarch was commemorated by the name of Poseidon. Under the character of Neptune Genesius he had a temple in Argolis: hard by was a spot of ground called the place of descent; similar to the place on mount Ararat, mentioned by Josephus; and undoubtedly named from the same ancient history. The tradition of the people of Argolis was, that it was so called because in this spot Danaus made his first descent from the ship in which he came over. In Arcadia was a temple of “Neptune looking-out.” Poseidon god of the sea was also reputed the chief god, the deity of fire. This we may infer from his priest; who was styled P’urcon. P’urcon is the lord of fire or light; and from the name of the priest we may know the department of the god. He was no other than the supreme deity, the Sun: from whom all may be supposed to descend. Hence Neptune in the Orphic verses is, like Zeus or Jupiter, styled the father of gods and men. Bryant.

198 Jupiter th’ all-wise.] In the Orphic fragments both Jove and Bacchus are identified with the Sun: which is described as the source of all things. Hammon, the African Jupiter, is mentioned by Lucan; who specifies his having horns. These were the lunar crescent of Apis or Osiris, the Arkite god. The patriarch, his son Ham, and his grandson Chus, are reciprocally mixed with each other; in the same manner as the ark and the dove: the moon, the sun, and the typical serpent, are often mixed and confounded in this hieroglyphical mythology.

199 To his own son he should bow down his strength.] Although the Romans made a distinction between Janus and Saturn they were two titles of one and the same person. The former had the remarkable characteristic of being the author of time, and the god of the new year: the latter also was looked upon as the author of time, and held in his hand a serpent, whose tail was in his mouth and formed a circle: by which emblem was denoted the renovation of the year. On their coins they were equally represented with keys in their hand and a ship near them. Janus was described with two faces: the one that of an aged man; the other that of a youthful personage. Saturn as of an uncommon age with hair white like snow: but they had a notion that he would return to infancy. He is also said to have destroyed all things: which however were restored with vast increase. Bryant.
The faces of Janus, supposed to look to the time past and that which is to come, evidently regard the æra before the flood and that after it: and the aged and youthful visage represent the old world and the new. The keys may allude to the shutting up the productions of the earth, and again opening them. The ship is the ark. The story of Saturn and the infant Jupiter involves similar allusions. The old god devouring his children significantly points to the destruction of the human race. Saturn and Jupiter seem only separate personifications of the double visage of Janus: and the infant Jupiter personifies the second infancy of Saturn. The new order of things which took place on the renovation of nature is typified in the dethronement of the aged monarch by his youthful son.

200 To succeeding times
A monument.]

The stone, which Saturn was supposed to have swallowed instead of a child, stood according to Pausanias at Delphi: it was esteemed very sacred, and used to have libations of wine poured upon it daily: and upon festivals was otherwise honoured. The purport of the above history I take to have been this. It was for a long time the custom to offer children at the altar of Saturn: but in process of time they removed it, and in its form erected a stone pillar, before which they made their vows, and offered sacrifices of another nature. Bryant.

201 Props the broad heaven.] “This Atlas,” says Maximus Tyrius, “is a mountain, with a cavity of a tolerable height, which the natives esteem both as a temple and a deity: and it is the great object by which they swear, and to which they pay their devotions.” The cave in the mountain was certainly named Cöel, the house of god: equivalent to Cœlus of the Romans: and this was the heaven which Atlas was supposed to support. Bryant.

202 He bound Prometheus.] Prometheus, who renewed the race of men, was Noos, or Noah. Prometheus raised the first altar to the gods, constructed the first ship, and transmitted to posterity many useful inventions. He was supposed to have lived at the time of the deluge, and to have been guardian of Ægypt at that season. He was the same as Osiris, the great husbandman, the planter of the vine, and inventor of the plough. Prometheus is said to have been exposed on mount Caucasus, near Colchis, with an eagle placed over him, preying on his heart. These strange histories are undoubtedly taken from the symbols and devices which were carved upon the front of the ancient Amonian temples, and especially those of Ægypt. The eagle and vulture were the insignia of that country. We are told by Orus Apollo that a heart over burning coals was an emblem of Ægypt. The history of Tityus, Prometheus, and many other poetical personages was certainly taken from hieroglyphics misunderstood and badly explained. Prometheus was worshipped by the Colchians as a deity, and had a temple and high place upon mount Caucasus: and the device upon the portal was Ægyptian, an eagle over a heart. Bryant.

203 Parted a huge ox.] Pliny, book vii. ch. 56, speaks of Prometheus as the first who slaughtered an ox. This traditionary circumstance is agreeable to that passage in scriptural history, where Noah receives the divine permission to kill animals for food: and Hesiod’s tale of the division of the ox may be only a disfigured representation of the first sacrifice after the flood. The affinity of Iäpetus, the father of Prometheus, with Japhet, is very remarkable. This confusion of personages has been already noticed as common in the ancient mythology.

204 Pernicious is the race.] Lord Kaimes, in his sketches of the History of Man, i. 6. observes that in the more polished age of Greece women were treated with but little consideration by their husbands: and female influence was confined to the artful accomplishments of courtezans. But it was very different at an earlier æra of society. “Women in the Homeric age,” remarks Mr. Mitford, “enjoyed more freedom, and communicated more in business and amusement among men, than in after-ages has been usual in those eastern countries; far more than at Athens, in the flourishing times of the commonwealth. Equally, indeed, Homer’s elegant eulogies and Hesiod’s severe sarcasm prove women to have been in their days important members of society.”
Milton has imitated this description of the infelicities supposed to be produced by woman-kind, in a prophetic complaint, which comes with beautiful propriety from the lips of Adam: and which his own domestic unhappiness enabled him to express with feeling.

205 The host
Of glorious Titans.]

The giants, whom Abydenus makes the builders of Babel, are by other writers represented as the Titans. They are said to have received their name from their mother Titæa: by which we are to understand that they were denominated from their religion and place of worship. The ancient altars consisted of a conical hill of earth, in the shape of a woman’s breast. Titæa was one of these. It is a term compounded of Tit-aia, and signifies literally a breast of earth. These altars were also called Tit-an, and Tit-anis, from the great fountain of night, styled An and Anis: hence many places were called Titanis and Titana where the worship of the sun prevailed. By these giants and Titans are always meant the sons of Ham and Chus. That the sons of Chus were the chief agents both in erecting the tower of Babel, and in maintaining principles of rebellion, is plain: for it is said of Nimrod, the son of Chus, that “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” The sons of Chus would not submit to the divine dispensation in the original disposition of the several families: and Nimrod, who first took upon him regal state, drove Ashur from his demesnes, and forced him to take shelter in the higher parts of Mesopotamia. This was their first act of rebellion and apostacy. Their second was to erect a lofty tower, as a landmark to repair to, as a token to direct them, and prevent their being scattered abroad. It was an idolatrous temple, erected in honour of the sun, and called the tower of Bel: as the city, from its consecration to the sun, was named Bel-on: the city of the solar god. Their intention was to have founded a great, if not an universal, empire: but their purpose was defeated by the confounding of their labial utterance. By this judgment they were dispersed; the tower was deserted; and the city left unfinished. These circumstances seem, in great measure, to be recorded by the gentile writers. They add, that a war soon after commenced between the Titans and the family of Zeuth. This was no other than the war mentioned by Moses; which was carried on by four kings of the family of Shem against the sons of Ham and Chus. The dispersion from Babylonia had weakened the Cuthites. The house of Shem took advantage of their dissipation, and recovered the land of Shinar, which had been unduly usurped by their enemies. After this success they proceeded farther: and attacked the Titans in all their quarters. After a contest of some time they made them tributaries: but upon their rising in rebellion, after a space of thirteen years, the confederates made a fresh inroad into their countries. “Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer: and in the thirteenth they rebelled: and in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashtaroth Karnaim;” who were no other than the Titans. They were accordingly rendered by the Seventy, “the giant brood of Ashtaroth:” and the valley of the Rephaim, in Samuel, is translated “the valley of the Titans.” From the sacred historians we may then infer that there were two periods of this war. The first, when the king of Elam and his associates laid the Rephaim under contribution: the other, when, upon their rebellion, they reduced them a second time to obedience. The first part is mentioned by several ancient writers, and is said to have lasted ten years. Hesiod takes notice of both, but makes the first rather of longer duration:

Ten years and more they sternly strove in arms.

In the second engagement the poet informs us that the Titans were quite discomfited and ruined: and according to the mythology of the Greeks, they were condemned to reside in Tartarus, at the extremity of the known world. A large body of Titanians, after their dispersion, settled in Mauritania: which is the region called Tartarus. The mythologists adjudged the Titans to the realms of night merely from not attending to the purport of the term ζοφος. This word described the West, and it signified also darkness. From this secondary acceptation the Titans of the West were consigned to the realms of night: being situated, with respect to Greece towards the regions of the setting sun. Bryant.

206 Wielding aloft
Precipitous rocks.]

This, perhaps, suggested to Milton the arming the angels with mountains:

They pluck’d the seated hills with all their load;
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.

Par. Lost. vi.

207 The dark chasm of hell
Was shaken.]

This is expanded by Milton with uncommon sublimity:

Hell heard th’ insufferable noise: hell saw
Heaven ruining from heaven, and would have fled
Affrighted: but strict Fate had cast too deep
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound.

Book vi.

208 His whole of might
Broke from him.]

Milton attains to a higher conception of omnipotence in the passage:

Yet half in strength he put not forth, but check’d
His thunder in mid-volley: for he meant
Not to destroy, but root them out of heaven.

There is, however, nothing in Milton which equals in sublimity the sudden expansion of power in the soul of the deity: ειθαρ μεν μενεος πληντο φρενες. The plan of the battle of angels is evidently built on that of the battle of giants: the Messiah, like Hesiod’s Jove, coming forth to decide the contest; and sending before him thunderbolts and plagues. Milton’s magnificent imagery of the chariot is borrowed from the vision of the prophet Ezekiel.

209 Through the void
Of Erebus.]

Χαος is here only a gulf or void. Le Clerc quotes Aristophanes to show that it is the vacuity of air: but the conflagration of air has already been described. Grævius is undoubtedly right in interpreting it the subterraneous abyss, or Erebus: in which sense it is afterwards used by Hesiod; when the Titans are said to dwell “beyond the obscure chaos,” or chasm. Virgil uses chaos in this acceptation, Æneid. vi. 205:

          Ye silent shades!
Oh Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!

Pitt.

So also Ovid, Metamorph. x. Orpheus to Pluto and Proserpine:

I call you by those sights so full of fear:
This chaos vast; these silent kingdoms drear!

210 The heaven and earth
Met hurtling in mid-air.]

Milton, Paradise Lost, book ii:

          Nor was his ear less pealed
With noises loud and ruinous...
          than if this frame
Of heaven were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from their axle torn
The steadfast earth.

211 The war-unsated Gyges.] Hesiod has confounded the history by supposing the Giants and Titans to have been different persons. He accordingly makes them oppose each other: and even Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges, whom all other writers mention as Titans, are by him introduced in opposition, and described as of another family. His description is however much to the purpose, and the first contest and dispersion are plainly alluded to. Bryant.

212 The Titan host o’er-shadowing.] Milton, Par. Lost, b. vi.:
Themselves invaded next and on their heads
Main promontories flung, which in the air
Came shadowing, and oppress’d whole legions arm’d.

213 So far beneath
This earth.]

Virgil, Æn. vi. 577:

The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,
And twice as deep as earth is distant from the skies:
The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,
Here, singed with lightning, roll within th’ unfathom’d space.

Dryden.

214 The verge
Of Tartarus.]

The ancients had a notion that the earth was a widely extended plain, which terminated abruptly in a vast clift of immeasurable descent. At the bottom was a chaotic pool, which so far sunk beneath the confines of the world, that, to express the depth and distance, they imagined an anvil of iron, tossed from the top, could not reach it in ten days. This mighty pool was the great Atlantic ocean: and these extreme parts of the earth were Mauritania and Iberia: for in each of these countries the Titans resided. Bryant.

This explains the introduction of Atlas before the gates of Tartarus: Guietus is therefore in error when, not being able to account for this situation of Atlas, he marks the passage as supposititious.

Milton’s classical reading appears in his admeasurement of the distance which the rebel angels passed in their fall from heaven:

Nine days they fell: the tenth the yawning gulf
Received them.

215 Arise and end.] Seneca, Hercules Frantic:
Rank with corruption’s moss the sterile vast
    Of that abyss: th’ unsightly earth is numb’d
    In its eternal barren hoariness:
        The dismal end of things:
        The limits of the world:
Air moveless hangs with clinging weight above:
    And black night brooding sits
    Upon the lifeless universe.

216 A drear and ghastly wilderness.] Homer, Il. xx.:
A dismal wilderness
Hoary with desolation: which the gods
Behold, and shuddering turn their eyes away.

217 But him the whirls of vexing hurricanes
Toss to and fro.]

Dante, Inferno, canto quinto:

I venn’ in luogo d’ogni luce muto:
Che mughia, come fa mar per tempesta,
Se da contrarii venti se combattuto:
La bufera infernale, che mai non resta,
  Mena gli spiriti con la sua rapina,
Voltando et percuotendo gli molesta.

They reach a spot, void of all ray of light,
Which howls as seas in storms, where winds opposing fight:
The hellish whirlwind, never resting, hurls
The hovering spirits snatch’d upon its whirls:
And vexing smites, and eddying turns them round.

Milton seems to have conceived from this passage of Hesiod his idea of Satan falling down the chaotic void, book ii.:

A vast vacuity: all unawares,
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathoms deep: and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance,
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud
Instinct with fire and nitre hurried him
As many miles aloft.

218 Alternate as they glide athwart
The brazen threshold.]

Milton, Par. Lost, vi. 4:

          There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night:
Light issues forth, and at the other door
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour
To veil the heaven.

219 Sleep, Death’s half brother.] Virg. Æn. vi. 278:
Here Toils and Death, and Death’s half-brother Sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep.

Dryden.

220 Nor them the shining Sun
E’er with his beam contemplates.]

Odyssey, xi. 14:

With clouds and darkness veil’d: on whom the Sun
Deigns not to look with his beam-darting eye:
Or when he climbs the starry arch, or when
Earthward he slopes again his westering wheels.

Cowper.

221 To immortal gods
A foe.]

Probably from his destroying the human favourites of the gods, and the sons of the goddesses who have descended to mortal amours: as in the instances of Hyacinthus, the favourite of Apollo; and Memnon, the son of Aurora; whose death and burial are described with such romantic fancy in Quintus Calaber, Post-Homerics, or Supplemental Iliad.

222 And stern Prosérpina.] Many of the temples of Ceres were dedicated to the deity under the name of Persephone or Proserpine, who was supposed her daughter; but they were in reality the same personage. Persephone was styled Cora; which the Greeks misinterpreted the virgin or damsel. This was the same as Cura, a feminine title of the Sun; by which Ceres also was called at Cnidos. However mild and gentle Proserpine may have been represented in her virgin state by the poets, yet her tribunal seems in many places to have been very formidable. In consequence of this we find her, with Minos and Rhadamanthus, condemned to the shades below as an infernal inquisitor. Nonnus says, “Proserpine armed the Furies:” the notion of which Furies arose from the cruelties practised in the Prutaneia, or fire-temples. They were originally only priests of fire; but were at last ranked among the hellish tormentors. Herodotus speaks of a Prutaneion in Achaia Pthiotic, of which he gives a fearful account. No person, he says, ever entered the precincts, that returned: whatever person strayed that way was immediately seized upon by the priests and sacrificed. Bryant.

223 With arch’d roofs
Of loftiest rock o’erhung.]

Not far from the ruins (of Nonacrum, a town of Arcadia,) is a lofty cliff: I have seen none that ascended to such a height. A stream distils from the declivity. This water is denominated Styx by the Greeks. It is deadly to man and to all animals whatever. Pausanias, Arcadics, b. viii.

Le Clerc supposes an opinion to have existed, that a person wrongfully accused might securely drink the water of Styx: and conceives Hesiod to mean that the gods drank of the water at the same time that they made a libation, and if they took a false oath, were convicted by the lethargic properties of this noxious stream.

224 Jove sends Iris down.] To this covenant (with Noah) Hesiod alludes: he calls it the great oath. He says that this oath was Iris, or the bow in the heavens; to which the deity appealed when any of the inferior divinities were guilty of an untruth. On such an occasion the great oath of the gods was appointed to fetch water from the extremities of the ocean, with which those were tried who had falsified their word. Bryant.
The words will certainly admit of this construction; but the context directs that the great oath be connected with the Stygian water. The employment of Iris on the mission is still a remarkable coincidence with the diluvian covenant.

225 The sacred river-head.] That is, the ocean; which probably received this title from the Nile, a river highly venerated, being of old called the Oceanus. Styx is said to be a horn, or branch of the ocean, from the ancient idea that all rivers sprang from it: Homer Il. 21:
Therefore not kingly Acheloius,
Nor yet the strength of ocean’s vast profound:
Although from him all rivers and all seas,
All fountains and all wells proceed, can boast
Comparison with Jove.

Cowper.

The rivers of Earth and Orcus were believed to communicate; thus Virgil, Æn. vi. 658, of the Elysian fields:

In fragrant laurel groves, where Po’s vast flood
From upper earth rolls copious through the wood.

226 Libation pours
And is forsworn.]

It was customary to pour a libation, while taking a solemn oath. Thus in the third Iliad:

Then pouring from the beaker to the cups
They fill’d them.
All-glorious Jove, and ye, the powers of heaven!
Whoso shall violate this contract first,
So be their blood, their children’s and their own,
Pour’d out, as this libation on the ground.

Cowper.

227 Her youngest-born Typhœus.] Taph, which at times was rendered Tuph, Toph, and Taphos, was a name current among the Amonians, by which they called their high places. Lower Ægypt being a flat, and annually overflowed, the natives were forced to raise the soil on which they built their principal edifices, in order to secure them from the inundation: and many of their sacred towers were erected on conical mounds of earth. There were often hills of the same form constructed for religious purposes, upon which there was no building. These were high altars; on which they used sometimes to offer human sacrifices. Tophet, where the Israelites made their children pass through fire to Moloch, was a mount of this form. Those cities in Ægypt which had a high place of this sort, and rites in consequence of it, were styled Typhonian. Many writers say that these rites were performed to Typhon at the tomb of Osiris. Hence he was in later times supposed to have been a person; one of immense size; and he was also esteemed a god. But this arose from the common mistake by which places were substituted for the deities there worshipped. Typhon was the Tuph-on, or altar; and the offerings were made to the Sun, styled On; the same as Osiris and Busiris. What they called his tombs were mounds of earth raised very high: some of these had also lofty towers adorned with pinnacles and battlements. They had also carved on them various symbols; and particularly serpentine hieroglyphics; in memorial of the god to whom they were sacred. In their upper story was a perpetual fire, that was plainly seen in the night. The gigantic stature of Typhon was borrowed from this object: and his character was formed from the hieroglyphical representations in the temples styled Typhonian. This may be inferred from the allegorical description of Typhœus given by Hesiod. Typhon and Typhœus were the same personage; and the poet represents him of a mixed form; being partly a man, and partly a monstrous dragon, whose head consisted of an assemblage of smaller serpents: and as there was a perpetual fire kept up in the upper story, he describes it as shining through the apertures of the building. The tower of Babel was undoubtedly a Tuph-on, or altar of the Sun; though generally represented as a temple. Hesiod certainly alludes to some ancient history concerning the demolition of Babel, when he describes Typhon or Typhœus as overthrown by Jove. He represents him as the youngest son of Earth; as a deity of great strength and immense stature; and adds what is very remarkable, that had it not been for the interposition of the chief god, this dæmon would have obtained a universal empire. Bryant.
Equally remarkable is the diversity of voices, described as issuing from the different heads of the giant. In the Mexican mythology a giant builds an artificial hill, in the form of a pyramid, as a memorial of the mountain, in whose caverns he, with six others, had taken shelter from a deluge. This monument was to reach the clouds; but the gods destroyed it with fire. See Humboldt’s American Researches.

228 Beneath his everlasting feet
The great Olympus trembled.]

Mr. Todd, in his notes on Milton, quotes the passage describing the rushing of the Messiah’s chariot, as superior in grandeur to this of Hesiod:

          Under his burning wheels
The steadfast empyreum shook throughout,
All but the throne itself of God.

The majesty of Milton’s exception certainly exceeds Hesiod in loftiness of thought: but the mere rising of Jupiter causing the mountain to rock beneath his eternal feet, is more sublime than the shaking of the firmament from the rolling of wheels.

229 The lightning-stricken deity.] Τοιο ανακτος. King is merely a title of deity, and was applied before to Prometheus.

230 The woody dales.] Forges were erected in woody valleys, on account of the abundance of fuel. Guietus.

231 Lo! from Typhœus is the strength of winds.] By these are meant the intermediary winds: with some of which it is evident that Hesiod was acquainted, although perhaps they were not yet distinguished by names. The ancient Greeks at first used only the four cardinal winds: but afterwards admitted four collaterals. Vitruvius enumerates twenty collateral winds in the Roman practice.

232 These born from gods.] That is, from superior gods: as Aurora and Astræus.

233 Led Metis.] One of the most ancient deities of the Amonians was named Meed or Meet; by which was signified divine wisdom. It was rendered by the Grecians Metis. It was represented under the symbol of a beautiful female countenance surrounded with serpents. Bryant.
The figure of wedding Wisdom occurs in “The Wisdom of Solomon,” ch. viii. v. 2. “I loved her, and sought her out from my youth: I desired to make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty.”
In the Proverbs, Solomon describes Wisdom as the companion of Deity, in the language of exquisite poetry:
“I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths I was brought forth: when there were no fountains abounding with water. When he prepared the heavens I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depths: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.” Chap. viii.

234 The blue-eyed maid
Minerva.]

An-ath signified the fountain of light: and was abbreviated Nath and Neith by the Ægyptians. They worshipped under this title a divine emanation, supposed to be the goddess of Wisdom. The Athenians, who came from Sais, in Ægypt, were denominated from this deity, whom they expressed Athana, or in the Ionian manner, Athene. Bryant.

Cudworth mentions Hammon and Neith as titles for one and the same deity; and quotes Plutarch as authority that Isis and Neith were also the same among the Ægyptians: and therefore the temple of Neith or Athene (Minerva) at Sais, was by him called the temple of Isis. Intellectual System, b. i. ch. 4.

235 Brought the three Graces forth.] As Charis was a tower sacred to fire, some of the poets supposed a nymph of that name, who was beloved by Vulcan. Homer speaks of her as his wife. The Graces were said to be related to the Sun, who was, in reality, the same as Vulcan. The Sun, among the people of the East, was called Hares, and with a strong guttural, Chares: and his temple was styled Tor-chares: this the Greeks expressed Tricharis; and from thence formed a notion of three Graces. Bryant.

236 The arrow-shooting Dian.] Artemis Diana and Venus Dione were in reality the same deity, and had the same departments. This sylvan goddess was distinguished by a crescent, as well as Juno Samia; and was an emblem of the Arkite history, and in consequence of it was supposed to preside over waters. Bryant.

237 Hebe.] Hebe is a mere personification of youth. The poets made her the cup-bearer of the gods, as an emblem of their immortality.

238 Pallas; fierce,
Rousing the war-field’s tumult.]

In her martial character Minerva is intended to personify the wisdom and policy of war as opposed to brute force and animal courage; which are represented by Mars.

239 Illustrious Vulcan.] The author of the New Analysis has exploded the notion that Vulcan was the same with Tubal-cain: who is mentioned in Genesis iv. 22, as “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron:” for nothing of this craft was of old attached to Hephaistus or Vulcan: who was the god of fire; that is, the Sun. Later mythologists degraded him to a blacksmith; and placed him over the Cyclops, or Cyclopians, the Sicilian worshippers of fire. The emblems carved in the temples led to the idea of Vulcan and the Cyclops forging thunderbolts and weapons for the celestial armoury.

240 Sea-potent Triton.] The Hetrurians erected on their shores towers and beacons for the sake of their navigation, which they called Tor-ain: whence they had a still farther denomination of Tor-aini (Tyrrheni). Another name for buildings of this nature was Tirit or Turit: which signified a tower or turret. The name of Triton is a contraction of Tirit-on: and signifies the tower of the Sun: but a deity was framed from it, who was supposed to have had the appearance of a man upwards, but downwards to have been like a fish. The Hetrurians are thought to have been the inventors of trumpets; and in their towers on the sea-coast there were people appointed to be continually on the watch, both by day and by night, and to give a proper signal if any thing happened extraordinary. This was done by a blast from the trumpet. In early times, however, these brazen instruments were but little known; and people were obliged to use what were near at hand; the conchs of the sea: by sounding these they gave signals from the tops of the towers when any ship appeared: and this is the implement with which Triton is more commonly furnished. So Amphi-tirit is merely an oracular tower, which by the poets has been changed into Amphitrite, and made the wife of Neptune. Bryant.

241 Venus gave to Mars,
Breaker of shields, a dreadful offspring.]

The making the goddess of Love, Concord, and Fertility, the spouse of Mars, and the mother of Fear and Terror, is obviously of later invention and of Grecian origin: and was, no doubt, suggested by the Rape of Helen, which was supposed to be instigated by Venus, and which kindled the war of Troy. See that elegant and classical poem of the sixth century: “The Rape of Helen” of Coluthus.

242 Harmonia last
She bare, whom generous Cadmus clasp’d as bride.]

I am persuaded that no such person as Cadmus ever existed. If we consider the whole history of this celebrated hero, we shall find that it was impossible for any one person to have effected what he is supposed to have performed. They were not the achievements of one person nor of one age: the travels of Cadmus, like the expeditions of Perseus, Sesostris, and Osiris, relate to colonies, which at different times went abroad and were distinguished by this title. As colonies of the same denomination went to parts of the world widely distant, their ideal chieftain, whether Cadmus, or Bacchus, or Hercules, was supposed to have traversed the same ground.

Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, who has been esteemed a mere woman, seems to have been an emblem of nature, and the fostering nurse of all things. In some of the Orphic verses she is represented not only as a deity, but as the light of the world. She was supposed to have been a personage from whom all knowledge was derived. On this account the books of science were styled the books of Harmonia: as well as the books of Hermes. These were four in number; of which Nonnus gives a curious account, and says that they contained matter of wonderful antiquity. The first of them is said to be coeval with the world. Hence we find that Hermon or Harmonia was a deity to whom the first writing is ascribed. The same is said of Hermes. The invention is also attributed to Thoth. Cadmus is said not only to have brought letters into Greece, but to have been the inventor of them. Whence we may fairly conclude, that under the characters of Hermon, Hermes, Thoth, and Cadmus, one person is alluded to.

The story of Cadmus, and of the serpent with which he engaged upon his arrival in Bœotia, relates to the Ophite worship which was there instituted by the Cadmians. So Jason in Colchis, Apollo in Phocis, Hercules at Lerna, engaged with serpents: all of which are histories of the same purport, but mistaken by the latter Grecians. It is said of Cadmus that, at the close of his life, he was, together with his wife Harmonia, changed into a serpent of stone. This wonderful metamorphosis is supposed to have happened at Encheliæ, a town of Illyria. The true history is this. These two personages were here enshrined in a temple, and worshipped under the symbol of a serpent. Bryant.

243 The glorious Hermes, herald of the gods.] The Ægyptians acknowledged two personages under the title of Hermes and Thoth. The first was the same as Osiris; the most ancient of all the gods, and the head of all. The other was called the second Hermes; and likewise, for excellence, styled Trismegistus. This person is said to have been a great adept in mysterious knowledge, and an interpreter of the will of the gods. He was a great prophet; and on that account was looked upon as a divinity. To him they ascribed the reformation of the Ægyptian year: and there were many books, either written by him, or concerning him, which were preserved by the Ægyptians in the most sacred recesses of their temples. As he had been the cause of great riches to their nation, they styled him the dispenser of wealth, and esteemed him the god of gain. We are told that the true name of this Hermes was Siphoas. What is Siphoas but Aosiph misplaced? and is not Aosiph the Ægyptian name of the patriarch Joseph, as he was called by the Hebrews? Bryant.

244 Semele.] The amour of Jupiter with Semele is described with brilliant luxuriancy of fancy and diction by Nonnus in his Dionysiacs.

245 Bacchus of golden hair.] The history of Dionusus is closely connected with that of Bacchus, though they were two distinct persons. Dionusos is interpreted by the Latins Bacchus; but very improperly. Bacchus was Chus, the grandson of Noah; as Ammon was Ham. Dionusus was Noah; expressed Noos, Nus, Nusus; the planter of the vine, and the inventor of fermented liquors: whence he was also denominated Zeuth; which signifies ferment; rendered Zeus by the Greeks. Dionusus was the same as Osiris. According to the Grecian mythology, he is represented as having been twice born; and is said to have had two fathers and two mothers. He was also exposed in an ark, and wonderfully preserved. The purport of which histories is plain. We must, however, for the most part, consider the account given of Dionusus as the history of the Dionusians. This is two-fold: part relates to their rites and religion, in which the great events of the infant world and preservation of mankind in general were recorded: in the other part, which contains the expeditions and conquests of this personage, are enumerated the various colonies of the people who were denominated from him. They were the same as the Osirians and Herculeans. There were many places which claimed his birth: and as many where was shown the spot of his interment. The Grecians, wherever they met with a grot or cavern sacred to him, took it for granted that he was born there: and wherever he had a taphos, or high altar, supposed that he was there buried. The same is also observable in the history of all the gods.

There are few characters which at first sight appear more distinct than those of Apollo and Bacchus. Yet the department which is generally appropriated to Apollo as the Sun, I mean the conduct of the year, is by Virgil given to Bacchus, Georg. i. 5:

Lights of the world! ye brightest orbs on high,
Who lead the sliding year around the sky,
Bacchus and Ceres!

Warton.

Hence we find that Bacchus is the Sun or Apollo; in reality they were all three the same; he was the ruling deity of the world. Bryant.

In this passage of Virgil, Ceres is Luna, or the Moon.

246 Alcmena’s valiant son.] Hercules was a title given to the chief deity of the gentiles: who has been multiplied into almost as many personages as there were countries where he was worshipped. What has been attributed to this god singly was the work of Herculeans, a people who went under this title, among the many which they assumed, and who were the same as the Osirians, Peresians, and Cuthites. Wherever there were Herculeans, a Hercules has been supposed. Hence his character has been variously represented. One while he appears little better than a sturdy vagrant: at other times he is mentioned as a great benefactor; also as the patron of science; the god of eloquence, with the Muses in his train. He was the same as Hermes, Osiris, and Dionusus; and his rites were introduced into various parts by the Cuthites. In the detail of his peregrinations is contained in great measure a history of that people, and of their settlements. Each of these the Greeks have described as a warlike expedition, and have taken the glory of it to themselves. Bryant.

247 Medea.] The natives of Colchis and Pontus were of the Cuthite race: they were much skilled in simples. Their country abounded in medicinal herbs, of which they made use both to good and bad purposes. In the fable of Medea we may read the character of the people: for that princess is represented as very knowing in all the productions of nature, and as gifted with supernatural powers. Bryant.

248 Plutus.] Plutus is the same with Pluto: who, in his subterranean character, presided over all the riches of the ground: whether metallic or vegetable.

249 Jason.] In the account of the Argo we have, undeniably, the history of a sacred ship; the first which was ever constructed. This truth the best writers among the Grecians confess; though the merit of the performance they would fain take to themselves. Yet after all their prejudices, they continually betray the truth, and show that the history was derived to them from Ægypt. Plutarch informs us, that the constellation, which the Greeks called the Argo, was a representation of the sacred ship of Osiris: and that it was out of reverence placed in the heavens. The ship of Osiris was esteemed the first ship constructed; and was no other than the ark. Jason was certainly a title of the Arkite god; the same as Areas, Argus, Inachus, and Prometheus: and the temples supposed to have been built by him in regions so remote were temples erected to his honour. It is said of this personage that, when a child, he underwent the same fate as Osiris, Perseus, and Dionusus: “he was concealed, and shut up in an ark, as if he had been dead.” Bryant.

250 Sage Chiron.] Chiron, so celebrated for his knowledge, was a mere personage formed from a tower or temple of that name. It stood in Thessaly; and was inhabited by a set of priests called Centauri. They were so denominated from the deity they worshipped, who was represented under a particular form. They styled him Cahen-taur: and he was the same as the Minotaur of Crete, and the Tauromen of Sicilia: consequently of an emblematical and mixed figure. The people, by whom this worship was introduced, were many of them Anakim; and are accordingly represented as of great strength and stature. Such persons among the people of the East were styled nephele, which the Greeks, in after-times, supposed to relate to Nephele, a cloud: and in consequence described the Centaurs as born of a cloud. Chiron was a temple: probably at Nephele in Thessalia; the most ancient seat of the Nephelim. His name is a compound of Chir-on: the tower or temple of the Sun. In places of this sort, people used to study the heavenly motions; and they were made use of for seminaries, where young persons were instructed. Hence Achilles was said to have been taught by Chiron; who is reported to have had many disciples. Bryant.

251 Circe.] From the knowledge of the Cuthites in herbs we may justly infer a great excellence in physic. Ægypt the nurse of arts, was much celebrated for botany. To the Titanians, or race of Chus, was attributed the invention of chemistry: hence it is said by Syncellus, that chemistry was the discovery of the Giants. Circe and Calypso are, like Medea, represented as very experienced in pharmacy and simples. Under these characters we have the history of Cuthite priestesses, who presided in particular temples near the sea-coast, and whose charms and incantations were thought to have a wonderful influence. The nymphs who attended them were a lower order in these sacred colleges; and they were instructed by their superiors in their arts and mysteries. Bryant.