without being aware of the depth of their superstition. But this, we submit, is no adequate reason, why a history of religion, and long discussions on archæology and on poetry, should be actually incorporated with a general history. To take a case, not parallel, but far more extreme than that of Greece. From the breaking out of the Reformation under Luther, for more than a century, the whole history of Europe turned on the Protestant and Catholic controversy; and in England the same has pervaded, or affected, our public measures, at home and in Ireland, down to the present year. This, however, is not judged a sufficient reason for embracing in the same work the history of national events at large, and also the detailed discussion of religious opinion: much less for mingling up a critique on the Bible and on the decisions of councils. We confess, it appears to us, that Mr. Grote has done what is perfectly analogous to this. No doubt he has his reply ;-that some persons have held the Grecian gods, and very many still hold their heroes, to have been historical personages; hence, if he is to write history, he is forced to clear his way by refuting this opinion. We hope it is not ungracious, while admiring the matter, to dissent from the form, of his writings: but the apology adduced appears to us unsatisfactory. The good taste of all the ablest writers has long since decided, that narrative must form the staple of history and that discussion ought to be secondary. Arguments and criticism belong to notes and appendices, and even these ought not to be too lengthy. A historian is not bound to do more than glance at the dim fables which precede trustworthy fact, and concisely to characterise the religious tendencies of the nation whose fortunes he is to narrate. In so far as ancient poems contain undoubted fact concerning the earlier manners, they may be freely used; as they have been by Bishop Thirlwall in his beautiful chapters on Homeric Greece. But, with the exception of this, Mr. Grote's first part, it appears to us, would properly have appeared as a monograph on Greek mythology; which might profitably have been read in illustration of the history, but without forming part of it. Having so far delivered ourselves of a protest, we proceed to the substance of the work.

It testifies to the wonderful richness of the mine of Greek archæology, that a practical man in banking and political England should produce two ample volumes, rich in thought and teeming with eloquence, so soon after Bishop Thirlwall's learning and acuteness had apparently picked up every jewel from the promiscuous heap. We are bound to say, that there is a wonderful freshness in Mr. Grote's writing. He has thrown his heart into the subject, and presses his views with

so much warmth, as even to fall into repetitions which savour more of the practical reformer and advocate, than of the sedate and didactic judge.

But we must proceed to give some account in detail of Mr. Grote's views and arguments. His opening chapter is concerned entirely with legends about the gods, and the whole intcrest in it is derived from his tracing their growth in successive poets from a single nucleus to the elaborate fulness of the final system. Thus, in the Iliad and Odyssey, Apollo and the Sun are totally distinct deities; Apollo is distinguished by the bow and by prophecy, but not yet by the harp or by medicine. He is the peculiar god of the Trojans, and bears the especial surname Sminthian, (or, god of the field-mouse!) but is hostile to the Greeks; whereas, in rather later times he is peculiarly the tutelary deity of the Hellenes. Delos is not named in the Ilind at all, nor has Apollo the epithet of Delian; however, in the Odyssey, this island is already named as the centre of Apollo's worship. Mr. Grote well observes, that since Delphi (or Pytho) was the seat of the god's prophetic knowledge; and Delos, that of his festive games-the belief of his excelling in the harp, probably grew later out of the dance, music and song, which accompanied those games; and as Hermes or Mercury was esteemed the inventor of the lyre, this (he ingeniously argues) generated a new mythe, which we read in the (so-called) Homeric Hymn to Mercury;-that this god bargained away his instrument to Apollo.

Zeus, or Jupiter, is in Homer familiarly entitled, 'father of gods and men;' a phrase wnich must have belonged to an older religion, and carries the mind to Dodona, where was his most ancient temple. It is scarcely consistent with the Homeric views; for Kronus or Saturn is perpetually named as father of Jupiter, although no details are given of the unnatural strife between them, which so scandalized later philosophers. The Iliad merely informs us that Saturn and Japetus have been lodged by Jupiter 'beneath the earth and sea.' An enlargement of the genealogy is evidently a physical speculation, and of later date, which makes Saturn son of Uranus and Goa, (heaven and earth,) and finally traces these up to chaos, as the origin of all. It is well remarked by Mr. Kenrick, in his 'Egypt of Herodotus,' that Jupiter is really the first, as the highest, national divinity of the Greeks. No national worship was anywhere offered to Kronus nor to Uranus, who are the pure creations of incipient philosophy; since it can hardly be doubted that the name Kronus is identical with Khronus, time. The same Homer (if there be no interpolation) who names Jupiter Father of gods and men, sings of Oceanus, the origin of

the gods, and Tethys the mother.' Venus is, with Homer, the daughter of Jupiter and Dione. The later indecent fictions rose out of attempted etymology of her name Aphrodite.

To speak generally, the violent ceremonies which the Greek called orgies, are unknown to the Homeric poems; at least, if the legend of the raging Bacchus' be cited against this from the sixth book of the Iliad,* it is at any rate certain that neither Bacchus, nor Ceres, nor Cybele, stand in any high position in the Iliad or Odyssey. In Mr. Grote's opinion, the orgiastic worship rose out of a later familiarity with Asia, and the socalled mysteries were developed out of Egyptian notions of secret religion. A mysterious person in this connexion is denoted by the name of Orpheus, whom the Greeks in general conceived of as the earliest of poets, and as the revealer of sacred mysteries, but whom Aristotle (as we learn from Cicero's testimony) held to be an imaginary character; while the more critical of the moderns, with Mr. Grote, refer him to an era later than Hesiod: that is, as Mr. Grote expresses it, 'The names of Orpheus and Musæus represent the gradual influx of Thracian and Phrygian religious ceremonies and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries,' a process which in part has been bound up also with the name of Pythagoras, especially in regard to Egyptian influence. The Orphic Theogony, he urges, contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged, and mystically disguised; its vein of invention was less popular, adapted to the contemplation rather of an educated and speculative sect. It is never cited in the ample Scholia of Homer, though Hesiod is often alluded to; and by negative reasons of much weight, it may be inferred with high probability that it was never a widely-diffused Grecian belief. Mr. Grote insists that even Herodotus, if not ignorant of the name of Orpheus, cannot have believed his antiquity and his pretensions to be the author of Greek religion; since it is to Homer and Hesiod that the historian expressly attributes this prophetical office, if we may be allowed the phrase.

Among the peculiar features of the Orphic mythology is the startling deviation from common ideas concerning the god Dionysus or Bacchus, who is called Zagreus in the Orphic mythe. He is son of Jupiter by his own daughter Proserpine; he is the favourite of his father, a child of magnificent promise, and pre-destined, if he grow up, to succeed to supreme dominion as well as to the handling of the thunderbolt. He is seated, while an infant, on the throne beside Jupiter, guarded by Apollo and the Curetes. But the jealous Juno intercepts

This passage seems to be interpolated into the sixth book, and the whole book is, in Mr. Grote's view, of later origin than the first.

his career, and incites the Titans against him; who, having first smeared their faces with plaster, approach him on the throne, tempt his childish fancy with play-things, and kill him with a sword, while he is contemplating his face in a mirror. They then cut up his body and boil it in a cauldron, leaving only the heart, which is picked up by Minerva and carried to Jupiter, who in his wrath strikes down the Titans with thunder into Tartarus; whilst Apollo is directed to collect the remains of Zagreus, and bury them at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The heart is given to Semele, and Zagreus is born again from her under the form of Dionysus. It may appear that the last incident is superadded to the tale, for the mere sake of identifying the foreign Zagreus with a national Greek god, with whom he has so little in common, that while the orgies of Bacchus were the type of all the madness and wantonness which real or pretended drunkenness may incite, the rites of Zagreus were mournful, meditative and ascetic.

Not only are all tales of sacred secrecy utterly foreign to the frankness and garrulity of Homeric religion, but rites of consecration and purification are scarcely known. Especially that interesting institution which in Herodotus we find equally well known in Lydia as in Greece, purification for homicide; which is not to be found in Homer, although he vividly describes the headlong race of a manslayer, hard pressed by the avenger of blood, until a foreign soil has been reached. Six cases, indeed, are found in these poems of such homicide, and of exile following, as a sufficient expiation.

We cannot afford space any further to develope Mr. Grote's discussions concerning the legends less known and less cared for among ourselves; and must be satisfied with picking out such points concerning the more superficial mythology as are either original with him, or little likely to be familiar to our readers.

It is usual to remark on the ethical and industrial strain pervading the (so-called) Hesiodic poem of the Works and Days,' which is essentially didactic, and on the personal prominence which the writer gives to himself; all of which particulars suggest its rather later origin. Such a view is confirmed beyond question by the remote distance above himself, at which the writer regards the heroic age to be; and, in fact, the picture of Greek life which he draws is of historical value as filling a chasm between the Homeric manners and those of later times. sides this, a notable addition to religious ideas is found in the demons of this poem, who are represented as 'intermediate agents and police between gods and men,'-beings essentially good, but used to relieve the gods from meddling in small

Be

affairs. Their infinite numbers made their service in such matters most efficient, and somewhat later they were believed to fulfil a still more important function; that of bearing away from the gods the odium of physical and moral evil. The word dæmon, in Homer, is applied to the greater gods, and is generally interpreted to mean knowing, skilful. Some explain it, as from the verb daíw, to divide; 'a distributor' or allotter of men's fortunes; and others suspect that it is connected with the words Deus, Deeva, of the Latins, Indians, etc. Whatever its origin, it was not in early times used, as afterwards, for the spirit of* a dead man; nor was the idea yet invented that there were two sorts of demons, good and bad. As the bad sense prevailed more and more in Christian times, the old poets seemed themselves to confess that Jupiter and Apollo were nothing but 'demons; a circumstance of which controversial writers diligently availed themselves.

While the Greek religion was thus growing up, the additions to the popular faith were generally depravations of the primitive simplicity; while those made to the more philosophic creed were, more and more, attempts to remove the grossnesses which offended maturing reason, and to enlarge the limited conceptions of barbarism. Such, at least, is our own prevailing conviction, and so far from being able (in any religious sense) to extol the race of Greek poets at large, it seems to us undeniable, that their influence on the whole was exceedingly pernicious. Like other poets, they gave loose reins to imagination; very few indeed of them had, or could have, a moral aim predominating in their works; and, as a consequence, wild licentiousness was through them established as religion, and set off with the charms of verse and music. We are willing to believe that this evil was essential to the development of the Grecian mind; (for perhaps nothing but an overruling priestly caste could have hindered it, and out of a censorship of the press no good can be expected, though some evil may be hindered;) and if so, it was all in the order of Providence towards ultimate benefit. Mr. Grote insists that many of the worst tendencies were not of Grecian origin, but imported from abroad; as the orgiastic rites, from Asia Minor and Crete; the principle of mystic secrecy, from Egypt. While we admit this, we cannot but think that in the legends which were purely Greek, there is a constant growth of gossiping tales and of horrors, which indicates that the poets were busy in satisfying the popular craving after excitement. This is manifested, alike in the stories of the gods themselves, and in those concerning the heroic families;

* We call those Manes,' says Cicero, whom the Greeks call daiμovec.'