Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/48

 36 Presidential Address.

other forms of the drama, must be investigated before they are finally accepted. Many of us will object to the dis- regard of the historical facts. With the hero envisaged as a Daimon, the cult of the mighty dead, which is obviously an important element in popular beliefs, practically dis- appears. But there are signs of reaction. Critical opinion, as represented by Dr. Leaf,^^ is coming round to the belief that the tale of Troy is a fact of history, based upon the secular contest between Asia and Europe, in which com- mercial ambitions played a leading part. Enough remains of the great city to show that the epic which records its fall is something more than a myth of dawn or sunset or a legend depending upon a cult of fertility.

Again, we are told that the fertility spirit is more human and more a present power to his worshippers than the Olympians, hidden from view in a remote heaven, and requiring propitiation by a gift sacrifice. But, even if this be true, it hardly justifies the contumely which the new school lavishes on those mighty powers which have inspired the art and literature of the modern world. If they are assumed to be cold and jealous deities, who by their claim to immortality have lost their right to man's devotion, we must remember that, even at the stage when Zeus was already decadent, he could inspire the deepest religious feeling in his worshippers. The mere sight of the majestic image of Pheidias aroused in Dion* a sense of the divine nature far beyond the paganism of poetry or of the crowd : — " Whoever among mortal men is most utterly toil-worn in spirit, having drunk the cup of many sorrows and calamities, when he stands before this image, must utterly forget all the terrors and woes of this mortal life."^^

But the strongest objection to this and other similar attempts to explain the complex of religious beliefs lies in the danger of attempting to solve the problem by any single

3* W, Leaf, Troy, a Study in Homeric Geography, pp. 326 et seq.

3" [Sir] S. Dill, Noiiian Society from Nero to A/arciis Aureliits, p. 380.