Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/229

Rh S O M S 211 tho only evidences still extant of the early worship of Thor in Germany. By their alliance with Nib rd and his children the yEsir secured fertility to the earth and mankind, and the intervention of mild gentle agencies in nature to counteract the destructive influence of Thor s power. In Ty or Tyr we have the Mars of the Northmen. It is he who gives victory, and although he is as wise as he is brave, it is he who stirs men to strife, and not to peace. His name, which signifies honour, is found in the names of the days of the Aveek in O. Nor., Dan., A.-S., and in our own &quot;Tuesday;&quot; and shows that, like Thor and Frey or Freyia, whose memory is perpetuated in our Thursday and Friday, the worship of this bravest of the ^sir was widely spread among peoples of Northern origin. In Eragi the Northmen honoured the originator of their Skaldic poetry, the god of eloquence and wise utterances. At guilds and at grave-feasts the Bragi-cup was drunk; and at the funeral of kings or jarls the heir was not permitted to take his father s seat till the &quot; Bragarfull&quot; was brought in, when, rising to receive it, he drank the contents of the cup, and was led to the high seat of honour. At guild feasts the Bragi-cup was signed with Thor s mallet, and was drunk after the company had drained Odin s cup for victory, and Niord s and Frey s cup for a bountiful year. The peculiarity of Bragi s cup was that, on drinking it, a vow held to be inviolable was made to perform some deed worthy of a skald s song. Bragi s wife, Idun, as the guardian of the casket which contained apples that gave to those who ate them perpetual youth, was specially cherished by the other JEsir. In her aoduction by the giant Thiassi, and her removal to the nether world through Loki s craft, her mute grief, and her release in the spring, we have an analogy with the myth of Proserpine ; and like her she presides over fresh verdure. Heimdal, whose attribute is the rainbow, is the god of watchfulness, the doorkeeper of the ^Esir; while Vidar, the strongest of the gods after Thor, is the impersonation of silence and caution; Ull decides the issue of single com bats, and Forsetti settles all quarrels. In the goddesses Lofn and Vur lovers find protectors ; the former unites the faithful, the latter punishes the faithless. Gefton, to whom the Danes owe the formation of the island Seeland, watches over maidens, and knows the decrees of fate. lllin guards those whom Frigg, the queen and mother of heaven, is desirous of freeing from peril: Frigg herself, as Odin s wife and the mother of the yEsir, knows the destinies of men, but is silent in regard to them. As goddess of the earth, she is known as Frygga, the fertile summer earth, and Rinda the frost-hardened surface, and is attended by Fulla, the full, Eir, the young goddess of healing, and many other goddesses. Saga, whose name is derived from Segja, to narrate, is the goddess of history and narration. Odin and she pledge each other daily in golden cups filled from the copious ever-flowing streams of her abode, Sockquabek (from Sokk, abyss, in allusion to the abundant streams of narrative). Snotra is the goddess of sagacity and elegance, from whom men and women seek good sense and refinement of manners. The Norns and the Valkyriur, if not actually goddesses, are closely connected with the ^Esir. The three principal Norns or Nornir are Urd, past time; Verdandi, present time; and Skulld, future time. They and the Valkyriur, who are known under many names, twist and spin the threads of destiny, and make known what has been decreed from the beginning of time. From this brief outline it may be seen that in their ^Esir the Northmen recognised the creators, sustainers, and regulators of the world as it now is, from whom eman ated the thought and life that pervade and animate all nature, and the efforts to subject it to the spiritual will. With Odin and the ^Esir the intellectual life of the northern people began ; and although they ascribed to them human forms and acts, these were seldom without some thing higher and nobler than what pertains to mortals; and while they recognised the existence of a state of chaos and darkness before this world began with the creation of the vEsir, they anticipated the advent of another state, in which gods, like men, would receive their award at the hands of a supreme All-father. (E. c. o.) ^ESOP, the fabulist, is supposed to have been born about the year 620 B.C., but the place of his birth is uncertain, that honour being claimed alike by Samos, Sardis, Mesem- bria in Thrace, and Cotiaeurn in Phrygia. He was brought, while young, to Athens as a slave, and having served several masters, was eventually enfranchised by ladmon the Samian. He thereupon visited Croesus, king of Lydia, at whose court he is represented by Plutarch as reproving Solon for his discourteous manner towards the king. During the usurpa tion of Pisistratus he is said to have visited Athens, and composed the fable of Jupiter and the Frogs for the instruc tion of the citizens (Pluedrus, i. 2). As the ambassador of Croesus at Delphi he was charged with the payment of the large sum of four minse to each of the citizens; but in consequence of some dispute, he declined to distribute the money. The Delphians, incensed at his conduct, accused him of sacrilege, and threw him headlong from a precipice, about 564 B.C. A pestilence which ensued being attri buted to this crime, the people declared their willingness to make compensation for his death; which, in default of a nearer connection, was claimed and received by ladmon, the grandson of his old master (Plut. de sera Num. Vind., p. 556, Herodot. ii. 134). None of ^Esop s works are extant. The popular stories regarding him are derived from a life prefixed to a book of fables purporting to be his, collected by Maximus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century, in which he is represented as a monster of ugliness and de formity, a notion utterly without foundation, and doubtless intended to heighten his wit by the contrast. That this life, however, was in existence a century before Planudes s time, appears by a manuscript of it found at Florence, and published in 1809. In Plutarch s Convimum, where ^Esop is a guest, though there are many jests on his original ser vile condition, there are none on his appearance; and it would seem that the ancients were not usually restrained by delicacy in this point, since the personal defects of Socrates, and his resemblance to old SUenus, afford ample matter for merriment and raillery in the Symposium of Plato. We are told, besides, that the Athenians erected in honour of ./Esop a noble statue by the famous sculptor Lysippus, a circumstance which alone would be sufficient to confute the absurd fiction of his deformity ; but more to the point is the statement of Pliny (xxxvi. 12), that he was the Contubernalis of Khodopis, his fellow-slave, whose extraordinary beauty passed into a proverb : &quot;A.Trav6 6/ji.ota, Kal PoSwiris rj Ka.rf The obscurity in which the history of ^Esop is involved has induced some to deny his existence altogether; and Giambattista Vico, in his Scienza Nuova, chooses rather to consider him as an abstraction, an excess of scepticism which is quite unreasonable. Whether ,/Esop left any written fables has been more justly disputed, and Bentley inclines to the negative. Thus Aristophanes ( Vesper, v. 1259) represents Philocleon as learning his fables in conversation, and not from a book; and Socrates essayed to versify such as he remembered (Plat. Pha d. p. 61). Others, again, are of opinion that a collection had been made of them before the time of Socrates (Mus. Crit. i. 408). It is, however, certain that fables bearing yEsop s name were popular at Athens during the most brilliant period of its literary history; though the discrepancies of authors in quoting the same fables seem in favour of Bentley s hypothesis. (Compare Aristot. De Part. Anint.