Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/433

 LEGEND OP TBOY IN HERODOTUS. 401 Herodotus adopts the Egyptian version of the legend of Troy, founded on that capital variation which seems to have originated with Stesichorus, and according to which Helen never left Sparta at all her eidolon had been taken to Troy in her place. Upon this basis a new story had been framed, midway between Homer and Stesichorus, representing Paris to have really carried oif Helen from Sparta, but to have been driven by storms to Egypt, SOCRAT. 'H/ctar', d?J>.' ai&t-pioe STREPS. Aivo$ ; TOVTI 'O Zeijf OVK &v, u/l/l' UVT' avrov Alvog vvvl To the same effect v. 1454, AiVof ftaaihevsi rbv Af }e}.7i?iaKue " Rota tion has driven oat Zeus, and reigns in his place." If Aristophanes had had as strong a wish to turn the public antipathies against Herodotus as against Socrates and Euripides, the explanation hero given would hare afforded him a plausible show of truth for doing so ; and it is highly probable that the Thcssalians would have been sufficiently dis- pleased with the view of Herodotus to sympathize in the poet's attack upon him. The point would have been made (waiving metrical considerations) 2 s t IT fj. b f j3aai2,VEi, rbv HocreiSuv' k^E^/ij^aKuf. The comment of Herodotus upon the Thessalian view seems almost as if it were intended to guard against this very inference. Other accounts ascribed the cutting of the defile of Tempe to Hcrnkles (Diodor. iv. 18). Respecting the ancient Grecian faith, which recognized the displeasure of Poseidon as the cause of earthquakes, see Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 2 ; Thucy did. i. 127 ; Strabo, xii. p. 579 ; Diodor. xv. 48-49. It ceased to give univer- sal satisfaction even so early as the time of Thales and Anaximenes (see Aristot. Meteorolog. ii. 7-8 ; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 15 ; Seneca, Natural. Qusest. vi. 6-23 ) ; and that philosopher, as well as Anaxagoras, Dcmocritus and others, suggested different physical explanations of the fact. Notwith- standing a dissentient minority, however, the old doctrine still continued to be generally received : and Diodorus, in describing the terrible earthquake in 373 B. c., by which Helike and Bura were destroyed, while he notices those philosophers (probably Kallisthenes, Sencc. Nat. Quoest. vi. 23) who substituted physical causes and laws in place of the divine agency, rejects their views, and ranks himself with the religious public, who traced this for- midable phenomenon to the wrath of Poseidon (xv. 48-49). The Romans recognized many different gods as producers of earthquakes ; an unfortunate creed, since it exposed them to the danger of addressing their prayers to the wrong god: " Undo in ritualibus et pontificiis obser- ratur, obtemperantibns sacerdotiis caute, ne alio Deo pro alio norainato, cam quis eorum terrain concutiat, piacula committantur." (Ammian. Mar cell. xvii. 7.) VOL. I. 260C.