Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/425

 THE MYTHES AS VIEWED BY HERODOTUS. 393 fus avowedly proclaims as chaining up his tongue, affords a strik- ing contrast with the plain-spoken and unsuspecting tone of the ancient epic, as well as of the popular legends, wherein the gods and their proceedings were the familiar and interesting subjects of common talk as well as of common sympathy, without ceasing to inspire both fear and reverence. Herodotus expressly distinguishes, in the comparison of Poly- krates with Minos, the human race to which the former belonged, from the divine or heroic race which comprised the latter. 1 But he has a firm belief in the authentic personality and parentage of all the names in the mythes. divine, heroic and human, as well as in the trustworthiness of their chronology computed by gene- rations. He counts back 1600 years from his own day to that of Semele, mother of Dionysus ; 900 years to Herakles, and 800 years to Penelope, the Trojan war being a little earlier in date.2 Indeed even the longest of these periods must have seemed to him comparatively short, seeing that he apparently accepts the prodi- gious series of years which the Egyptians professed to draw from a recorded chronology 17,000 years from their god HeraklSs, and 15,000 years from their god Osiris or Dionysus, down to their king Amasis 3 (550 B. c.) So much was his imagination familiarized with these long chronological cotaputations barren of events, that he treats Homer and Hesiod as u men of yesterday," though separated from his own age by an inter v?l which he reck- ons as four hundred years. 4 mention what it was : also about the Thcsmophoria, 01 Ttfarrj of Demeter (c. 171> Kal irtpl fiev TOVTUV roaavra Tj/tiv slnovat, KCU napu i ~>v deuv KOI r/puuv ei'fisveia eh (c. 45). Compare similar scruples on the part of Pausanias (viir. 25 and 37). The passage of Herodotus (ii. 3) is equivocal, and has b.^en understood in more ways than one (see Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 1287). The aversion of Dionysius of Halikarnassus to reveal the divine secrets is not less powerful (see A. R. i. 67, 68), and Pausanias passim. 1 Herod, iii. 122. 2 Herod, ii. 145. 3 Herodot. ii. 43-145. Kal ravra Alyinrnoi urpeKsuf aal tniaTaoi K wf elirelv ^679. 'HoYodo* yap Kdl 'QfiTipov Ti^tKijjv TtTpctKoaioiai Ireai &OKEU pev npeopvrefovs yev* n^tff, KaC ov nTifoai. 17*