Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/449

 MYTHES AS HANDLED BY THE PHILOSOPHERS. 417 sailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged horse of Bellerophon. 1 By such ingenious conjectures, Paloephatus eliminates all the incredible circumstances, and leaves to us a string of tales per- fectly credible and commonplace, which we should readily believe, provided a very moderate amount of testimony could be pro- duced in their favor. If his treatment not only disenchants the original mythes, but even effaces their generic and essential char- acter, we ought to remember that this is not more than what is done by Thucydides in his sketch of the Trojan war. Palacpha- tus handles the mythes consistently, according to the semi-his- torical theory, and his results exhibit the maximum which that theory can ever present. By aid of conjecture, we get out of the impossible, and arrive at matters intrinsically plausible, but to- 1 Palaephat Narrat 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 21, 29. Two short treatises on the same subject as this of Palaephatus, are printed along with it, both in the collection of Gale and of "Westermann ; the one, Heraditi de Incredibilibus, the othef Anonymi de Incredibilibus. They both profess to interpret some of the extra- ordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not unlike that of Palsephatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan, surrounded with abominable parasites : she ensnared and ruined the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent enough to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) Atlas was a great astronomer : Pasiphae fell in love with a youth named Taurus ; the monster called the Chimaera was in reality a ferocious queen, who had two brothers called Leo and Drako ; the ram which carried Phryxu* and Hellu across the ^Egean was a boatman named Krias (Heraclit. c. 2, 6. 15,24). A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout the Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without specification of their authors. Theon considers such resolution of fable into plausible history as a proof of surpassing ingenuity CProgymnasmata, cap. 6, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett Grcec. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors, too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes in controverting, the probability of the ancient mythes. See the Progymnasmata of Nicolaus KaTaoKevr) on eiKora TU KOTO. Ni6/3r}i> 'Avacncevrj on OVK ckora rH /card Nto/J^v (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor, i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful mode of handling. Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs, Sphinxes, Centaurs, etc. as realities ; he treats them as products of the monstrous, incestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man, which he contrasts with th' simple and moderate passions of animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990) VOL. i. 18* 27oc