Bulfinch's Mythology: the Age of Fable , livre ebook

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340 pages

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The literature of our time, as of all the centuries of Christendom, is full of allusions to the gods and goddesses of the Greeks and Romans. Occasionally, and, in modern days, more often, it contains allusions to the worship and the superstitions of the northern nations of Europe. The object of this book is to teach readers who are not yet familiar with the writers of Greece and Rome, or the ballads or legends of the Scandinavians, enough of the stories which form what is called their mythology, to make those allusions intelligible which one meets every day, even in the authors of our own time.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947547
Langue	English

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Chapter I
Introduction
The literature of our time, as of all the centuriesof Christendom, is full of allusions to the gods and goddesses ofthe Greeks and Romans. Occasionally, and, in modern days, moreoften, it contains allusions to the worship and the superstitionsof the northern nations of Europe. The object of this book is toteach readers who are not yet familiar with the writers of Greeceand Rome, or the ballads or legends of the Scandinavians, enough ofthe stories which form what is called their mythology, to makethose allusions intelligible which one meets every day, even in theauthors of our own time.
The Greeks and Romans both belong to the same raceor stock. It is generally known in our time as the Aryan family ofmankind; and so far as we know its history, the Greeks and Romansdescended from the tribes which emigrated from the high table-lands of Northern India. Other tribes emigrated in differentdirections from the same centre, so that traces of the Aryanlanguage are found in the islands of the Pacific ocean.
The people of this race, who moved westward, seem tohave had a special fondness for open air nature, and a willingnessto personify the powers of nature. They were glad to live in theopen air, and they specially encouraged the virtues which anopen-air people prize. Thus no Roman was thought manly who couldnot swim, and every Greek exercised in the athletic sports of thepalaestra.
The Romans and Grecian and German divisions of thisgreat race are those with which we have most to do in history andin literature. Our own English language is made up of the dialectsof different tribes, many of whom agreed in their use of wordswhich they had derived from our Aryan ancestry. Thus oursubstantive verb I AM appears in the original Sanscrit of theAryans as ESMI, and m for ME (MOI), or the first person singular,is found in all the verbal inflections. The Greek form of the sameverb was ESMI, which became ASMI, and in Latin the first and lastvowels have disappeared, the verb is SUM. Similar relationships aretraced in the numerals, and throughout all the languages of thesenations.
The Romans, like the Etruscans who came before them,were neither poetical nor imaginative in temperament. Theiractivity ran in practical directions. They therefore invented few,if any stories, of the gods whom they worshipped with fixed rites.Mr. Macaulay speaks of these gods as “the sober abstractions of theRoman pantheon. ” We owe most of the stories of the ancientmythology to the wit and fancy of the Greeks, more playful andimaginative, who seized from Egypt and from the East such legendsas pleased them, and adapted them in their own way. It oftenhappens that such stories, resembling each other in theirfoundation, are found in the Greek and Roman authors in severaldifferent forms.
To understand these stories, we will here firstacquaint ourselves with the ideas of the structure of the universe,which the poets and others held, and which will form the scenery,so to speak, of the narratives.
The Greek poets believed the earth to be flat andcircular, their own country occupying the middle of it, the centralpoint being either Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods, or Delphi,so famous for its oracle.
The circular disk of the earth was crossed from westto east, and divided into two equal parts by the SEA, as theycalled the Mediterranean, and its continuation the Euxine.
Around the earth flowed the RIVER OCEAN, its coursebeing from south to north on the western side of the earth, and ina contrary direction on the eastern side. It flowed in a steady,equable current, unvexed by storm or tempest. The sea, and all therivers on earth, received their waters from it.
The northern portion of the earth was supposed to beinhabited by a happy race named the Hyperboreans [this wordmeans “who live beyond the north” from the word “hyper, ” beyond,and boreas, the north wind] , dwelling in everlasting blissand spring beyond the lofty mountains whose caverns were supposedto send forth the piercing blasts of the north wind, which chilledthe people of Hellas (Greece). Their country was inaccessible byland or sea. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toilsand warfare. Moore has given us the “Song of a Hyperborean, ”beginning
"I come from a land in the sun-bright deep,
Where golden gardens glow,
Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep,
Their conch-shells never blow. "
On the south side of the earth, close to the streamof Ocean, dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans.They were named the AEthiopians. The gods favored them so highlythat they were wont to leave at times their Olympian abodes, and goto share their sacrifices and banquets.
On the western margin of the earth, by the stream ofOcean, lay a happy place named the Elysian Plain, whither mortalsfavored by the gods were transported without tasting of death, toenjoy an immortality of bliss. This happy region was also calledthe “fortunate fields, ” and the “Isles of the Blessed. ”
We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knewlittle of any real people except those to the east and south oftheir own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean. Theirimagination meantime peopled the western portion of this sea withgiants, monsters, and enchantresses; while they placed around thedisk of the earth, which they probably regarded as of no greatwidth, nations enjoying the peculiar favor of the gods, and blessedwith happiness and longevity.
The Dawn, the Sun, and the Moon were supposed torise out of the Ocean, on the western side, and to drive throughthe air, giving light to gods and men. The stars also, except thoseforming Charles' Wain or Bear, and others near them, rose out ofand sank into the stream of Ocean. There the sun-god embarked in awinged boat, which conveyed him round by the northern part of theearth, back to his place of rising in the east. Milton alludes tothis in his “Commmus. ”
"Now the gilded car of day
His golden axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream,
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing towards the other goal
Of his chamber in the east. "
The abode of the gods was on the summit of MountOlympus, in Thessaly. A gate of clouds, kept by the goddesses namedthe Seasons, opened to permit the passage of the Celestials toearth, and to receive them on their return. The gods had theirseparate dwellings; but all, when summoned, repaired to the palaceof Jupiter [Or Zeus. The relation of these names to eachother will be explained on the next page] , as did alsothose deities whose usual abode was the earth, the waters, or theunderworld. It was also in the great hall of the palace of theOlympian king that the gods feasted each day on ambrosia andnectar, their food and drink, the latter being handed round by thelovely goddess Hebe. Here they conversed of the affairs of heavenand earth; and as they quaffed their nectar, Apollo, the god ofmusic, delighted them with the tones of his lyre, to which themuses sang in responsive strains. When the sun was set, the godsretired to sleep in their respective dwellings.
The following lines from the Odyssey will show howHomer conceived of Olympus:—
"So saying, Minerva, goddess azure-eyed,
Rose to Olympus, the reputed seat
Eternal of the gods, which never storms
Disturb, rains drench, or snow invades, but calm
The expanse and cloudless shines with purestday.
There the inhabitants divine rejoice
Forever. :" Cowper
Such were the abodes of the gods as the Greeksconceived them. The Romans, before they knew the Greek poetry, seemto have had no definite imagination of such an assembly of gods.But the Roman and Etruscan races were by no means irreligious. Theyvenerated their departed ancestors, and in each family the worshipof these ancestors was an important duty. The images of theancestors were kept in a sacred place, each family observed, atfixed times, memorial rites in their honor, and for these and otherreligious observances the family hearth was consecrated. Theearliest rites of Roman worship are supposed to be connected withsuch family devotions.
As the Greeks and Romans became acquainted withother nations, they imported their habits of worship, even in earlytimes. It will be remembered that as late as St. Paul's time, hefound an altar at Athens “to an unknown god. ” Greeks and Romansalike were willing to receive from other nations the legendsregarding their gods, and to incorporate them as well as they couldwith their own. It is thus that in the poetical mythology of thosenations, which we are now to study, we frequently find a Latin anda Greek name for one imagined divinity. Thus Zeus, of the Greeks,becomes in Latin with the addition of the word pater (a father) [The reader will observe that father is one of the wordsderived from an Ayan root. Let p and t become rough, as thegrammarians say, let p become ph, and t th, and you have phather orfather] , Jupiter Kronos of the Greeks appears as “Vulcanus”of the Latins, “Ares” of the Greeks is “Mars” or Mavors of theLatins, “Poseidon” of the Greeks is “Neptunus” of the Latins,“Aphrodite” of the Greeks is “Venus” of the Latins. This variationis not to be confounded with a mere translation, as where “Paulos”of the Greek becomes “Paulus” in Latin, or “Odysseus” becomes“Ulysses, ” or as when “Pierre” of the French becomes “Peter” inEnglish. What really happened was, that as the Romans, morecultivated than their fathers, found in Greek literature a god offire and smithery, they transferred his name “Hephaistos” to theirown old god “Vulcanus, ” who had the same duties, and in theirafter literature the Latin name was used for the stories of Greekand Latin origin.
As the English literature came into being largely onFrench and Latin models, and as French is but a degraded Latin andretains Latin roots largely, in our older English poets the Latinforms of these names are generally used. In o