LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO ESSAYS CLASSICAL AND MODERN MAOMILLAN AND CO., LIMIT-TO LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS MKI.BOURNK THB MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS BAN FRANCISCO THB MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOBONTO ESSAYS CLASSICAL & MODERN BY F. W. H. MYERS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1921 COPYRIGHT THE present volume contains Classical Essays and Modern Essays, originally published as two separate volumes in 1883. CONTENTS CLASSICAL ESSAYS PAO GREEK ORACLES 1 VIRGIL . . . . . . . 106 MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS . . . ,177 . MODEKN ESSAYS GIUSEPPE MAZZINI . . . . . .227 GEORGE SAND 296 VICTOR HUGO 331 ERNEST EENAN 389 ARCHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS . . . .461 GEORGE ELIOT .477 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY . . ^ . . . 602 A NEW EIRENICON ... . . . .815 ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY . . 638 PKEFATOKY NOTE IN reprinting this Essay from Hellenica, I have thought it needless to repeat my original list of authorities consulted. Since the Essay was written M. Bouche"-Leclercq has published his Histoire de la Divination dans I'AntiquiM, where the biblio- graphy of the subject is given with exhaustive fulness. The chief resources to oracles in classical authors have been long ago collected, and are now the common property of scholars. The last con- siderable addition to the list was made by G. "Wolff, and they have been judiciously arranged by Maury and others. What is needed is a true comprehension of them, towards which less progress has been made than the ordinary reader may suppose. Even Bouche'-Leclercq, whose accuracy and completeness within his self-proposed limits deserve high admira- tion, expressly excludes from his purview the lessons and methods of comparative ethnology, and hardly viii PREFATORY NOTE. cares to consider what those phenomena in reality were whose history he is recounting. I can claim little more of insight into their true nature than suffices to make me conscious of ignorance, but I have at least tried to indicate where the problems lie, and in what general directions we must look for their solution. It is indeed true (as was remarked by several critics when this Essay first appeared) that I have kept but inadequately my implied promise of illus- trating ancient mysteries by the light of modern discovery. But my difficulty lay not in the defect but in the excess of parallelism between ancient and modern phenomena. I found that each explicit reference of this kind would raise so many questions that the sequence of the narrative would soon have been destroyed. I was obliged, therefore, to content myself with suggestions and allusions allusions necessarily obscure to the general reader in the absence of any satisfactory treatise on similar phenomena to which he could be referred. I am not without hope that this blank may before long be filled up by a research conducted on a wider and sounder basis than heretofore ; and, should the sway of recognised law extend itself farther over that shadowy land, I shall be well content if this Essay PREFATORY NOTE. ix shall be thought to have aimed, however imper- fectly, at that "true interrogation" which is "the half of science." POSTSCRIPT, 1887. Since the above words were written in 1883, some beginning of the suggested inquiries has been recorded in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Some discussions on human automatism which will there be found are not without bearing on the subject of the present essay. POSTSCRIPT, 1897. The work of the Society for Psychical Research has now been pushed much further; and its Proceedings (Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co.) are indispensable for persons interested in the inquiries above referred to. CLASSICAL ESSAYS GEEEK OKACLES. 06 fj.v irus vvv (ffriv dirt) dpvbt o6S' &iri> T B 2 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [L such a study is of recent growth, and no sooner is the attempt made to colligate by general laws the enormous mass of the religious phenomena of the world than we find that the growing science is in danger of being choked by its own luxuriance that each conflicting hypothesis in turn seems to draw superabundant proof from the myriad beliefs and practices of men. We may, indeed, smile at the extravagances of one-sided upholders of each suc- cessive system. We need not believe with Bishop Huet 1 that Moses was the archetype both of Adonis and of Priapus. Nor, on the other hand, need we suppose with Pierson 2 that Abraham himself was originally a stone god. We may leave Dozy 8 to pursue his own conjecture, and deduce the strange story of the Hebrew race from their worship of the planet Saturn. Nor need the authority of Anony- mus de JZebiis Incredibilibus* constrain us to accept his view that Paris was a young man who wrote essays on goddesses, and Phaethon an unsuccessful astronomer. But it is far from easy to determine the relative validity of the theories of which these are exagger- ated expressions, to decide (for instance) what place is to be given to the direct transference of 1 Demonstr. Evang. iii. 3, viii. 5. ' Ap. K uencn. Religion of Israel, i. 390. 3 Ibid. i. 262. 4 Opvscula Ifythologica (Amst. 1688). L] GREEK ORACLES. 3 beliefs from nation to nation, to fetish-worship, to the worship of the heavenly bodies, to the deification of dead men. In an essay like the present, dealing only with a fragment of this great inquiry, it will be safest to take the most general view, and to say that man's fear and wonder invest every object, real or imaginary, which strongly impresses him, beasts or stones, or souls and spirits, or fire and the sun in heaven, with an intelligence and a power darkly resembling his own; and, moreover, that certain phenomena, real or supposed, dreams and epilepsy, eclipse and thunder, sorceries and the uprising of the dead, recur from time to time to supply him with apparent proof of the validity of his beliefs, and to modify those beliefs according to the nature of his country and his daily life. Equally natural is it that, as his social instincts develop and his power of generalisation begins, he will form such conceptions as those of a moral government of the world, of a retributory hereafter, of a single Power from which all others emanate, or into which they disappear. Avoiding, therefore, any attempt to take a side among conflicting theories, I will draw from the considerations which follow no further moral than one which is well-nigh a truism, though too often forgotten in the heat of debate, namely, that we are assuredly not as yet in a position to pass a final judgment on the forms which religion has assumed 4 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [L ill the past ; we have traversed too small a part of the curve of human progress to determine its true character ; even yet, in fact, " we are ancients of the earth, and in the morning of the times." The diffi- culty of bearing this clearly in mind, great in every age, becomes greater as each age advances more rapidly in knowledge and critical power. In this respect the eighteenth century teaches us an obvious lesson. That century witnessed a marked rise in the standard of historical evidence, a marked en- lightenment in dealing with the falsities and super- stitions of the past. The consequence was that all things seemed explicable ; that whatever could not be reduced to ordinary rules seemed only worthy of being brushed aside. Since that day the standard of evidence in history has not declined, it has become stricter still; but at the same time the need of sympathy and insight, if we would compre- hend the past, has become strongly felt, and has modified or suspended countless judgments which the philosophers of the last century delivered with- out misgiving. The difference between the two great critics and philosophers of France, at that day and in our own, shows at a glance the whole gulf between the two points of view. How little could the readers of Voltaire have anticipated Kenan ! How little could they have imagined that their master's trenchant arguments would so soon have fallen to the level of half-educated classes and half- I.] GREEK ORACLES. 6 civilised nations, would have been formidable only in sixpenny editions, or when translated into Hindo- stani for the confutation of missionary zeal ! What philosophical enlightenment was in the last century, science, physical or historical, is in our own. Science is the power to which we make our first and undoubting appeal, and we ruii a corre- sponding risk of assuming that she cau already solve problems wholly, which as yet she can solve only in part, of adopting under her supposed guidance explanations which may hereafter be seen to have the crudity and one-sidedness of Voltaire's treatment of Biblical history. The old school of theologians were apt to assume that because all men or all men whom they chose to count had held a certain belief, that belief must be true. Our danger lies rather in being too ready to take for granted that when we have explained how a belief arose we have done with it altogether ; that because a tenet is of savage parentage it hardly needs formal disproof. In this view the wide diffu- sion of a belief serves only to stamp its connection with uncivilised thought, and " quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," has become to many minds rather the badge of superstition than the test of catholic truth. That any one but ourselves should have held a creed seems to lower the average intelli- gence of its adherents. Yet, on behalf of savages, and our ancestors in 6 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [L genera], there may be room for some apology. If we reflect how large a part of human knowledge consists of human emotion, we may even say that they possessed some forms of knowledge which we have since lost. The mind of man (it has been well said), like the earth on which he walks, under- goes perpetual processes of denudation as well as of deposit. We ourselves, as children, did in a sense know much which we know no more ; our picture of the universe, incomplete and erroneous as it was, wore some true colours which we cannot now recall. The child's vivid sensibility, reflected in his vivifying imagination, is as veritably an inlet of truth as if it were an added clearness of physical vision ; and though the child himself has not judgment enough to use his sensibilities aright, yet if the man is to discern the poetic truth about Nature, he will need to recall to memory his impressions as a child. Now, in this way too, the savage is a kind of child ; his beliefs are not always to be summarily referred to his ignorance ; there may be something in them which we must realise in imagination before we venture to explain it away. Ethnologists have recognised the need of this difficult self-identification with the remote past, and have sometimes remarked, with a kind of envy, how much nearer the poet is than the philosopher to the savage habit of mind. There is, however, one ancient people in whose case much of this difficulty disappears, whose re- L] GREEK ORACLES. 7 ligion may be traced backwards through many phases into primitive forms, while yet it is easy to study its records with a fellow-feeling which grows with our knowledge till it may approach almost to an identity of spirit. Such is the ascendency which the great works of the Greek imagination have estab- lished over the mind of man, that it is no paradox to say that the student's danger lies often in excess rather than in defect of sympathy. He is tempted to ignore the real superiority of our own religion, morality, civilisation, and to re-shape in fancy an adult world on an adolescent ideal. But the remedy for over-estimates, as well as for under-estimates, lies in an increased definiteness of knowledge, an ever-clearer perception of the exact place in the chain of development which Greek thought and worship hold. The whole story of Greek mythology must ere long be retold in a form as deeply modified by comparative ethnology as our existing treatises have been modified by comparative philology. Such a task would be beyond my powers ; but while awaiting some more comprehensive treatment of the subject by a better-qualified hand, I have in this Essay endeavoured to trace, by suggestion rather than in detail, but with constant reference to the results of recent science, the development and career in Greece of one remarkable class of religious phenomena which admits to some extent of separate treatment. 8 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [L Greek oracles reflect for a thousand years l the spiritual needs of a great people. They draw their origin from an Animism 2 which almost all races share, and in their early acd inarticulate forms they contain a record of most of the main currents in which primitive beliefs are wont to run. After- wards closely connected both with the idea of supernatural possession and with the name of the sun-god Apollo they exhibit a singular fusion of nature-worship with Shahmanism or sorcery. Then, as the non-moral and naturalistic conception of the deity yields to the moral conception of him as an idealised man, the oracles reflect the change, and the Delphian god becomes in a certain sense the con- science of Greece. A period of decline follows ; due, as it would seem, partly to the depopulation and political ruin of Greece, but partly also to the indifference or scepticism of her dominant schools of philosophy. But this decline is followed by a revival which forms one of the most singular of those apparent checks which complicate the onward movement of thought by ever new modifications of the beliefs of the remote past So far as this complex movement 1 Roughly speaking, from 700 B.O. to 300 A.D., but the earliest oracles probably date much farther back. 2 It is hardly necessary to say that by Animism is meant a belief in the existence around us of souls or spirits, whether disembodied, as ghosts, or embodied in fetishes, animals, etc. Shahmanism is a word derived from the title of the Siberian wizards, who procure by agitated trance some manifestation from their gods. I.] GREEK ORACLES. 9 can be at present understood, it seems to have been connected among the mass of the people with the wide-spread religious upheaval of the first Christian centuries, and to have been at last put an end to by Christian baptism or sword. Among the higher minds it seems to have rested partly on a perplexed admission of certain phenomena, partly on the strongly-felt need of a permanent and elevated re- velation, which yet should draw its origin from the Hellenic rather than the Hebrew past. And the story reaches a typical conclusion in the ultimate disengagement of the highest natures of declining Greece from mythology and ceremonial, and the absorption of definite dogma into an overwhelming ecstasy. II. The attempt to define the word " oracle " con- fronts us at once with the difficulties of the subject. The Latin term, indeed, which we are forced to employ, points specially to cases where the voice of God or spirit was actually heard, whether directly or through some human intermediary. But the corresponding Greek term (jiavreiov) merely signifies a seat of soothsaying, a place where divinations are obtained by whatever means. And we must not regard the oracles of Greece as rare and majestic phenomena, shrines founded by a full-grown mytho- logy for the direct habitation of a god. Bather they 10 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [i. are the products of a long process of evolution, the modified survivals from among countless holy places of a primitive race. Greek literature has preserved to us abundant traces of the various causes which led to the ascrip- tion of sanctity to some particular locality. Oftenest it is some chasm or cleft in the ground, filled, perhaps, with mephitic vapours, or with the mist of a subterranean stream, or merely opening in its dark obscurity an inlet into the mysteries of the underworld. Such was the chasm of the Clarian, 1 the Delian, 2 the Delphian Apollo; and such the oracle of the prophesying nymphs on Cithseron. 3 Such was Trophonius' cave, 4 and his own name perhaps is only a synonym for the Mother Earth, "in many names the one identity," who nourishes at once and reveals. 6 Sometimes as for instance at Megara, 6 Sicyon, Orchomenus, Laodicea the sanctity gathers around some j3atTv\o<; or fetish-stone, fashioned, it may be, 1 Iambi, de Myst. p. 74. 3 Lebegue, RechenJus sur Dtlos, p. 89. 8 Paus. ix. 3. See also Paus. v. 14, for a legend of an oracle of Earth herself at Olympia. 4 Paus. be. 39. 6 fpod>viot from Tptw. The visitor, who lay a long time, 06 fj.d\a ffv(uf>pov&v tvapy&s etr' iypTriyopev elr' &veipoir(>\ti (Plut. de Genio Socratis, 22), had doubtless been partially asphyxiated. St. Patrick's Purgatory was perhaps conducted on the same plan. ' Paus. L 43, and for further references on bsetyls see Lebegue, p. 85. See also Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 225. i.] GEEEK ORACLES. 11 into a column or pyramid, and probably in most cases identified at first with the god himself, though, after the invention of statuary, its significance might be obscured or forgotten. Such stones outlast all religions, and remain for us in their rude shapeless- ness the oldest memorial of the aspirations or the fears of man. Sometimes the sacred place was merely some favourite post of observation of the flight of birds, or of lightning, like Teiresias' " ancient seat of augury," 1 or the hearth 2 from which, before the sacred embassy might start for Delphi, the Pythaists watched above the crest of Parnes for the summons of the heavenly flame. Or it might be merely some spot where the divination from burnt -offerings seemed unusually true and plain, at Olympia, for instance, where, as Pindar tells us, " soothsayers divining from sacrifice make trial of Zeus who lightens clear." It is need- less to speak at length of groves and streams and mountain -summits, which in every region of the world have seemed to bring the unseen close to man by waving mystery, or by rushing murmur, or by nearness to the height of heaven. 3 It is enough to 1 Soph. Ant. 1001 ; Pans. ix. 16 ; and cf. Eur. Phoen. 841. * Strabo, ix. p. 619. They watched dirit Tri^iff-x.6.pa.^rov &ffrpa.ira.lov At6s. See also Eur. Ion. 295. Even a place where lots were custom- arily drawn might become a seat of oracle. Paus. vii. 25. 8 There is little trace in Greece of "weather-oracles," such as the Blocksberg, hills deriving a prophetic reputation from the 12 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [i understand that in Greece, as in other countries over which successive waves of immigration have passed, the sacred places were for the most part selected for primitive reasons, and in primitive times ; then as more civilised races succeeded and Apollo came, whence or in what guise cannot here be discussed, the old shrines were dedicated to new divinities, the old symbols were metamorphosed or disappeared. The fetish-stones were crowned by statues, or re- placed by statues and buried in the earth. 1 The Sibyls died in the temples, and the sun-god's island holds the sepulchre of the moon -maidens of the northern sky. 2 It is impossible to arrange in quite logical order phenomena which touch each other at so many points, but in making our transition from these impersonal or hardly personal oracles of divination to the " voice-oracles " a of classical times, we may indications of coming rain, etc., drawn from clouds on their summits. The sanctity of Olympus, as is well known, is connected with a supposed elevation above all elemental disturbances. 1 Find. 01. via.. 3, and for further references see Hermann, Orieck. Ant. ii. 247. Maury (ii. 447) seems to deny this localisa- tion on insufficient grounds. 3 The Hyperborese, see reff. ap. Lebegue, p. 69. M. Bouche"- Leclercq's discussion (vol. ii.) of the Sibylline legends is more satisfactory than that of Klausen (Aeneas und die Penaten, p. 107, foil) He describes the Sibylline type as "une personnification gracieuse de la mantique intuitive, intennediaire entre le babil iuconscient de la nymphe cho et la sagacity inhumaine de la Sphinx." * X/>7JO>XOi (pOf-Ypa.TI.Koi. L] GREEK ORACLES. 13 first mention the well-known Voice or Eumour which as early as Homer runs heaven-sent through the multitude of men, or sometimes prompts to revolution by " the word of Zeus." 1 To this we may add the belief that words spoken at some critical and culminant, or even at some arbitrarily-chosen moment, have a divine sig- nificance. We find some trace of this in the oracle of Teiresias, 2 and it appears in a strange form in an old oracle said to have been given to Homer, which tells him to beware of the moment when some young children shall ask him a riddle which he is unable to answer. 3 Cases of omens given by a chance word in classical times are too familiar to need further reference. 4 What we have to notice here is, that this casual method of learn- ing the will of heaven was systematised into a practice at certain oracular temples, where the applicant made his sacrifice, stopped his ears, went into the market-place, and accepted the first words 1 6ff^ II. ii. 93; Herod, ix. 100 ; Od. iii. 215, etc. These words are probably used sometimes for regular oracular communications. 3 Od. xi. 126. 8 d\XA veuv iralSuv atviypa $i5\a TMv nva. (woiav Xoirrpov, o$ fUvrot x&pk ye birovda.*, and i. 285. 8 Athen. viii. 2, and see Lebegue, p. 218 ; comp. Aesch. Ag. 276. Eur. Iph. Taur. 1234 foil. 6 Paus. L 40. Paus. L 34. 16 CLASSICAL ESSAY& [L chus, 1 Charon,* Pasiphae, 8 Herakles, 4 Dionysus, 8 and above all Asklepios, 6 gave answers after this fashion, mainly, but not entirely, in cases of sick- ness. The prevalence of heroes, rather than gods, as the givers of oracles in dreams seems still further to indicate the immediate derivation of this form of revelation from the accustomed appearance of departed friends in sleep. The next step takes us to the most celebrated class of oracles, those in which the prophetess, or more rarely the prophet, gives vent in agitated trance to the words which she is inspired to utter. 7 We encounter here the phenomena of possession, so familiar to us in the Bible, and of which theology still maintains the genuineness, while science would explain them by delirium, hysteria, or epilepsy. It 1 Dio Cass. Ixxii. 7. 2 Eustath. Schol. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1153. 1 Cic. de Div. L 43 ; Plut. Agis 9, and cf. Maury, ii. 453. 4 Paus. iz. 24, comp. inscr. ap. G. Wolff, de Noviss. p. 29, and see Plut. de Malign. Herod. 31, for the dream of Leonidas in Herakles' temple. 6 Pans. x. 33. 6 AT. Khet. passim; Iambi. Myst. 3, 3, etc. See also Val. Max. L 7 ; Diod. Sic. v. 62 ; Ar. Rhet. Sacr. Serm. iii. 311, for dreams sent by Athene, the Soteres, Hemithea. Further references will be found in Maury, iii. 456, and for the relation of Apollo to dreams see Bouche-Leclercq, i 204. 7 Pindar's phrase (for the prophecy of lamus), wv^.v djcit/etv i]/tv$ui> Ayvuffrov, 01. vi. 66, reminds us of Socrates' inward moni- tor. The expressions used about the Pythia vary from this concep- tion of mere clairaudience to the idea of an absolute possession, which for the time holds the individuality of the prophetess entirely in abeyance. r.] GREEK ORACLES. 17 was this phenomenon, connected first, as Pausanias tells us, 1 with the Apolline oracles, which gave a wholly new impressiveness to oracular replies. No longer confined to simple affirmation and negation, or to the subjective and ill-remembered utterances of a dream, they were now capable of embracing all topics, and of being preserved in writing as a revela- tion of general applicability. These oracles of in- spiration, taken in connection with the oracles uttered by visible phantoms, which become prominent at a later era, may be considered as marking the highest point of development to which Greek oracles attained. It will be convenient to defer our con- sideration of some of these phenomena till we come to the great controversy between Porphyry and Eusebius, in which they were for the first time fully discussed. But there is one early oracle of the dead, different in some respects from any that succeeded it, 2 which presents so many points for notice that a 1 Pans. i. 34. We should have expected this prophetic frenzy to have been connected with Bacchus or the Nymphs rather than with Apollo, and it is possible that there may have been some transference of the phenomena from the one worship to the other. The causes which have determined the attributes of the Greek deities are often too fanciful to admit of explanation now. * The distinction drawn by Nagelsbach between this and other "Todtenorakeln" (Nachhom. Theologie, p. 189) is surely exagger- ated. See Klausen, Aeneas und die Penaten, p. 129 foil., for other legends connecting Odysseus with early necromancy, and on this general subject see Herod, v. 92 ; Eur. Ale. 1131 ; Plat. Leg. x. 909 ; Plut. dm. 6, de Ser. Num. Find. 17 ; Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 41. The fact, on which Nagelsbach dwells, that Odysseus, after C 18 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [i. few reflections on the state of belief which it indi- cates will assist us in comprehending the nature of the elevation of Greek faith which was afterwards effected under the influence of Delphi For this, the first oracle of which we have a full account, the descent of Odysseus to the underworld, "to consult the soul of the Theban Teiresias," shows in a way which it would be hard to parallel elsewhere the possible co-existence in the same mind of the creed and practices of the lowest races with a majesty, a pathos, a power, which human genius has never yet overpassed. The eleventh book of the Odyssey is steeped in the Animism of barbarous peoples. The Cimmerian entrance to the world of souls is the close parallel (to take one instance among many) of the extreme western cape of Vanua Levi, a calm and solemn place of cliff and forest, where the souls of the Fijian dead embark for the judgment - seat of Ndengei, and whither the living come on pilgrim- age, thinking to see ghosts and gods. 1 Homer's ghosts cheep and twitter precisely as the shadow- consulting Teiresias, satisfied his affection and his curiosity by interviews with other ghosts in no way alters the original injunc- tion laid on him, the purport of his journey ^vxo xP 1 l ff ^f JLev01 ' Qrifialov Ttipefflao. Nagelsbach's other argument, that in later times we hear only of a dream-oracle, not an apparition-oracle, of Teire- sias seems to me equally weak. Readers of Pausanias must surely feel what a chance it is which has determined the oracles of which we have heard. 1 Prim. Cult. i. 408. I.] GREEK ORACLES. 19 souls of the Algonquin Indians chirp like crickets, and Polynesian spirits speak in squeaking tones, and the accent of the ancestral Zulu, when he reappears on earth, has earned for him the name of Whistler. 1 The expedition of Odysseus is itself paralleled by the exploit of Ojibwa, the eponymous hero of the Ojibbeways, of the Finnish hero Wainamoinen, and of many another savage chief. The revival of the ghosts with blood, itself closely paralleled in old Teutonic mythologies, 2 speaks of the time when the soul is conceived as feeding on the fumes and sha- dows of earthly food, as when the Chinese beat the drum which summons ancestral souls to supper, and provide a pail of gruel and a spoon for the greater convenience of any ancestor who may unfortunately have been deprived of his head. 8 Nay, even the inhabitants of that underworld are only the semblances of once living men. " They them- selves," in the terrible words of the opening sentence of the Iliad, " have been left a prey to dogs and every bird." Human thought has not yet reached a point at which spirit could be conceived of as more than the shadow of matter. And if further evidence were needed, the oracle of Teiresias himself opening like a chasm into Hades through the sunlit soil of Greece reveals unwittingly all the sadness which underlies that freshness and power, the misgiving which so often > Prim. Cult. ii. 42. J Ibid. ii. 346. Ibid. ii. 30. 20 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [i unites the savage and the philosopher, the man who comes before religions and the man who comes after them, in the gloom of the same despair. Himself alone in his wisdom among the ineffectual shades, Teiresias offers to Odysseus, in the face of all his unjust afflictions, no prevention and no cure ; " of honey-sweet return thou askest, but by God's will bitter shall it be;" for life's struggle he has no remedy but to struggle to the end, and for the wan- dering hero he has no deeper promise than the serenity of a gentle death. And yet Homer "made the theogony of the Greeks." 1 And Homer, through the great ages which followed him, not only retained, but deep- ened his hold on the Hellenic spirit. It was no mere tradition, it was the ascendency of that essen- tial truth and greatness in Homer, which we still so strongly feel, which was the reason why he was clung to and invoked and explained and allegorised by the loftiest minds of Greece in each successive age; why he was transformed by Polygnotus, trans- formed by Plato, transformed by Porphyry. Nay, even in our own day, and this is not the least sig- nificant fact in religious history, we have seen one of the most dominant, one of the most religious intellects of our century, falling under the same spell, and extracting from Homer's almost savage 1 Herod, ii. 63, o&rot & (Homer and Hesiod) den. ol rot^owrcs 0eo7 Sid. \oyuv dXXet 8iA nvuv T' tv vvOfdvi fayov. See Plat. Pliaedr. 275. 6 Aesch. Prom. 832 ; Soph. Track. 172 and 1167. 6 See Herod, ii. 54, and comp. Od. xii. 63. 7 See Herm. Griech. Antiq. ii. 250. Dr. Robertson Smith suggests " that the Dove-soothsayers were so named from their croon . . . and that the ftf\urffa (the Pythia) in like manner is the humming priestess." Journal of Philology, vol. xiv. p. 120. .1 GREEK ORACLES. 23 Oracles were also given at Dodona by means of lots, 1 and by the falling of water. 2 Moreover, Ger- man industry has established the fact, that at Dodona it thunders on more days than anywhere else in Europe, and that no peals are louder anywhere than those which echo among the Acroceraunian mountains. It is tempting to derive the word Dodona from the sound of a thunderclap, and to associate this old Pelasgic sanctuary with the pro- pitiation of elemental deities in their angered hour. 3 But the notices of the oracle in later days are per- plexingly at variance with all these views. They speak mainly of oracles given by the sound of cal- drons, struck, according to Strabo, 4 by knuckle- 1 Cic. de Div. ii. 32. 2 Serv. ad Aen. iii. 466. 8 I do not think that we can get beyond some such vague con- jecture as this, and A. Mommsen and Schmidt's elaborate calcula- tions as to months of maximum frequency of thunderclaps and centres of maximum frequency of earthquakes, as determining the time of festivals or the situation of oracular temples, seem to me to be quite out of place. If a savage possessed the methodical patience of a German observer, he would be a savage no more. Savants must be content to leave Aristotle's Tvx'n Kal ri> aM/jiarov, chance and spontaneity, as causes of a large part of the action of primitive men. The dictum of Gotte (Delphische Orakel, p. 13) seems to me equally unproveable : " Dodona, wohin die schwarzen aegyptischen Tauben geflogen kamen, ist wohl unbestreitbar eine aegyptische Cultstatte, die Schwesteranstalt von Ammonium, beide Thebens Tochter." The geographical position of Dodona is much against this view, the doves are very problematical, and the possible ex- istence of a primitive priesthood in the Selloi is no proof of an Egyptian influence. 4 Strab. lib. vii. Fragtn. ap. Hermann, Griech. Atti. ii. 251, where see further citations. 24 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [t bones attached to a wand held by a statue. The temple is even said to have been made of caldrons, 1 or at least they were so arranged, as a certain Demon tells us, 2 that " all in turn, when one was smitten, the caldrons of Dodona rang." The perpetual sound thus caused is alluded to in a triumphant tone by other writers, 8 but it is the more difficult to determine in what precise way the will of Zeus was understood. Among such a mass of traditions, it is of course easy to find analogies. The doves may be compared to the hissing ducks of the Abipones, which were connected with the souls of the dead, 4 or with the 1 Steph. Byz. s. voc, AuSAvq, quoted by Carapanos, in whose monograph on Dodona citations on all these points will be found. 2 Miiller, Fragm. Hist. Gr. iii. 125. 8 Callim. Hymn, in Del. 286 ; Philostr. Imag. ii. 33 (a slightly different account). 4 Prim. Cult. ii. 6. The traces of animal worship in Greece are many and interesting, but are not closely enough connected with our present subject to be discussed at length. Apollo's possible characters, as the Wolf, the Locust, or the Fieldmouse (or the Slayer of wolves, of locusts, or of fieldinice), have not perceptibly affected his oracles. Still less need we be detained by the fish-tailed Eurynome, or the horse-faced Demeter (Paus. viii. 41, 42). And although from the time when the boy-prophet lamus lay among the wall-flowers, and " the two bright-eyed serpents fed him with the harmless poison of the bee " (Find. 01. vi. 28), snakes appear frequently in connection with prophetic power, their worship falls under the head of divination rather than of oracles. The same remark may be made of ants, cats, and cows. The bull Apis occu- pies a more definite position, but though he was visited by Greeks, his worship was not a product of Greek thought. The nearest Greek approach, perhaps, to an animal-oracle was at the fount of Myrae in Cilicia (Plin. H.N. xxxii. 2), where fish swam up to eat or reject the food thrown to them. "Diripere eos carnes objectaa L] GREEK ORACLES. 25 doves in Popayan, which are spared as inspired by departed souls. The tree-worship opens up lines of thought too well known for repetition. We may liken the Dodonsean " voiceful oak " to the tamarisks of Beersheba, and the oak of Shechem, its whisper to the " sound of a going in the tops of the mul- berry-trees," which prompted Israel to war, 1 and so on down the long train of memories to Joan of Arc hanging with garlands the fairies' beech in the woods of Domremy, and telling her persecutors that if they would set her in a forest once more she would hear the heavenly voices plain. 2 Or we may prefer, with another school, to trace this tree also back to the legendary Ygdrassil, "the celestial tree of the Aryan family," with its spreading branches of the stratified clouds of heaven. One legend at least points to the former interpretation as the more natural. For just as a part of the ship Argo, keel or prow, was made of the Dodonsean oak, and Argo's crew heard with astonishment the ship herself pro- phesy to them on the sea : laetum est consul t an tibus," says Pliny, "caudis abigere dirum." The complaint of a friend of Plutarch's (Quctet. conviv. iv. 4) "that it was impossible to obtain from fishes a single instructive look or sound," is thus seen to have been exaggerated. And it appears that live snakes were kept in the cave of Trophonius (Philostr. Fit. Apoll. viii. 19), in order to inspire terror in visitors, who were instructed to appease them with cakes (Suid. s. v. /ieXtroOrra). 1 2 Sam. v. 24. 2 " Dixit quod si esset in uno nemore bene audiret voces venientes ad earn." On Tree-worship, see Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 206 foil. 26 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [i. " But Jason and the builder, Argus, knew Whereby the prow foretold things strange and new ; Nor wondered aught, but thanked the gods therefore, As far astern they left the Mysian shore," l so do we find a close parallel to this among the Siamese, 2 who believe that the inhabiting nymphs of trees pass into the guardian spirits of boats built with their wood, to which they continue to sacrifice. Passing on to the answers which were given at this shrine, we find that at Dodona, 8 as well as at Delphi, 4 human sacrifice is to be discerned in the background. But in the form in which the legend reaches us, its horror has been sublimed into pathos. Coresus, priest of Bacchus at Calydon, loved the maiden Callirhoe in vain. Bacchus, indignant at his servant's repulse, sent madness and death on Calydon, The oracle of Dodona announced that Coresus must sacrifice Callirhoe, or some one who would die for her. No one was willing to die for her, and she stood up beside the altar to be slain. But when Coresus looked on her his love overcame his anger, and he slew himself in her stead. Then her heart turned to him, and beside the fountain to which her name was given she died by her own hand, and followed him to the underworld. 1 Morris' Life and Death of Jason, Book iv. ad fin, 3 Prim. CuU. iL 198. 3 Paus. vii. 21. 4 Bus. Pr. Ev. v. 27, irapOtvov AlvvriSav icXiJpos /caXet, etc. See also the romantic story of Melanippus and Coraaetho, Paus. vii. 19. L] GREEK ORACLES. 27 There is another legend of Dodona 1 to which the student of oracles may turn with a certain grim satisfaction at the thought that the ambiguity of style which has so often baffled him did once at least carry its own penalty with it. Certain Boeotian envoys, so the story runs, were told by Myrtile, the priestess of Dodona, " that it would be best for them to do the most impious thing possible." The Bceo- tians immediately threw the priestess into a caldron of boiling water, remarking that they could not think of anything much more impious than that. The ordinary business of Dodona, however, was of a less exciting character. M. Carapanos has dis- covered many tablets on which the inquiries of visitors to the oracle were inscribed, and these give a picture, sometimes grotesque, but oftener pathetic, of the simple faith of the rude Epirots who dwelt round about the shrine. The statuette of an acrobat hanging to a rope shows that the " Dodonsean Pelas- gian Zeus " did not disdain to lend his protection to the least dignified forms of jeopardy to life and limb. A certain Agis asks "whether he has lost his blankets and pillows himself, or some one outside has stolen them." An unknown woman asks simply how she may be healed of her disease. Lysanias asks if he is indeed the father of the child which his wife Nyla is soon to bear. Evandrus and his 1 Ephor. ad Strab. ix. 2 ; Heracl. Pont. Fragm. Hist. Or. ii. 198 ; Proclus, Chrest. ii. 248, and see Carapanos. 28 CLASSICAL ESSAYS. [i wife, in broken dialect, seek to know "by what prayer or worship they may fare best now and for ever." And there is something strangely pathetic in finding on a broken plate of lead the imploring inquiry of the fierce and factious Corcyreans, made, alas ! in vain, " to what god or hero offering prayer and sacrifice they might live together in unity ?" l " For the men of that time," says Plato, 2 " since they were not wise as ye are nowadays, it was enough in their simplicity to listen to oak or rock, if only these told them true." To those rude tribes, indeed, their voiceful trees were the one influence which lifted them above barbarism and into contact with the sur- rounding world. Again and again Dodona was ravaged, 3 but so long as the oak was standing the temple rose anew. When at last an Illyrian bandit cut down the oak 4 the presence of Zeus was gone, and the desolate Thesprotian valley has known since then no other sanctity, and has found no other voice. I proceed to another oracular seat, of great mythical celebrity, though seldom alluded to in classical times, to which a recent exploration 5 has given a striking interest, bringing us, as it were, into direct connec- tion across so many ages with the birth and advent of a god. 1 Tlvi tea 0f&v 1) ripuuv 0t5orr ical uxfaevoi bfjLovooiev tirl Phaedr. 276. 3 Strab. viL 6 ; Polyb. ix. 67, and cf. Wolff,