Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/382

 350 HISTORY OF GREECE. ever, we have only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hesi odic paganism, and its operation in the genesis of the mythical narratives. We cannot doubt that it supplied the most powerful stimulus, and the only one which the times admitted, to the crea- tive faculty of the people ; as well from the sociability, the gra- dations, and the mutual action and reaction of its gods and heroes, as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely human cast, of its fundamental types. i?o rijv KCL-apohfiv ovpdvo&ev #, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect. Rhe- tor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again irspl 2/j.ivdta.Kuv Zeitf yeveaiv naiduv til] /LI iov pj eiv tvevoTjas 'A7r6/U.wi> TTJV J A.aK%.r]iriov yeveaiv idr/fitovp- y r a E, p .322-327 ; compare Hermogenes, about the story of Apollo and Daphne, Progymnasm. c. 4 ; and Julian. Orat. vii. p. 220. The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had him- sHf composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo Kepi '~E,ynu}iiuv, c. 3. t. ix. y. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy of notice. In the Hesi- odic Catalogue of Women much was said respecting the marriages and amours of the gods, so as to furnish many suggestions, like the love-songs of Sappho, to the composers of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. ib. sect. iv. c. 6. p. 268). Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to the Sminthian Apollo (p. 320) ; the spiritual character of which hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the same god. We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to Apollo is modified by Plutarch. To provide for the establishment of his temple at Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself, in the shape of a dolphin, gwam before a Kretan vessel and guided it to Ivrissa. where he directed the terrified crew to open the Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old statement was not correct : the god had not himself appeared in the shape of a dolphin he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel (Plutarch. de Solertia Animal, p. 983). See also a contrast between the Homeric Zens, and the genuine Zeus, (uTnjdivbs ) brought out in Plutarch, Defect Oracul. c. 30. p. 426. Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to the daifioveg : sec the singular controversy started among the fictitious pleadings of the ancient rhetors No^ou ovrof, irapdevove Kal Ka&apaf dvai TC itpeiaf, iepeia rif evps'&Ti uroKtov (pepovaa, Kal npiverai ......... 'AA/l' ipei, (j>aal, did, ruf TUV 6ai/j.avuv moiTqaeif Kal iinftovTiuf Trepiredclcrdai Kal vruf ova u.vbr]TQ ncnidrj rb TOIOVTOV ; edei yap npbf rd HTJ uyaipEdfivat TTJV nap&eviav opeli r* uirorpoiratov, ov IJ.TJV irpbe rb TEKSIV (Anonymi Scholia ai Hcrmogen. Srdcretf, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162). Apsines of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended to ba a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. 'Aipivtjf). The anecdote respecting the rivers Skamandcr and Marauder, in the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator jEschi- oes (p. 737), is curious, but we do not know the date of that epistle.