Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/459

 INTERPRETATION OF THE MYTHES. 427 nity of tlie gods : it obviated the necessity of pronouncing either that the gods were unworthy, or the legends untrue. Yet although devised for the purpose of satisfying a more scrupulous religious sensibility, it was found inconvenient afterwards, when assailants arose against paganism generally. For while it abandoned as indefensible a large portion of what had once been genuine faith, it still retained the same word daemons with an entirely altered signification. The Christian writers in their controversies found ample warrant among the earlier pagan authors 1 for treating all the gods as daemons and not less ample warrant among the later pagans for denouncing the demons generally as evil beings. 2 Such were the different modes in "which the ancient mythes were treated, during the literary life of Greece, by the four classes above named poets, logographers, historians, and philosophers. Literal acceptance, and unconscious, uninquiring faith, such as they had obtained from the original auditors to whom they were addressed, they now found only among the multitude alike retentive of traditional feeling 3 and fearful of criticizing the pro- 1 Tatian. adv. Grsecos, c. 20 j Clemens Alexandria. Admonit. ad Gentes, pp. 26-29, Sylb. ; Minuc. Felix, Octav. c. 26. "Isti igitur impuri spiritus, ut ostensum a Magis, a philosophis, a Platone, sub statuis et imaginibus conse- "rati delitescunt, et afflatu suo quasi auctoritatem praesentis miminis conse- quuntur," etc. This, like so many other of the aggressive arguments of the Christians against paganism, was taken from the pagan philosophers them selves. Lactantius, De Veril Philosophic, iv. 28. " Ergo iidem sunt Daemones, IDS fatcntur execrandos esse : iidem Dii, quibus supplicant. Si nobis ere- i -udum csse non putant, credant Homero ; qui summum ilium Jovem Die- monibus aggregavit," etc. 2 See above, Chapter II. p. 70, the remarks on the Hesiodic Theogony. 3 A destructive inundation took place at Pheneus in Arcadia, seemingly m the time of Plutarch : the subterranean outlet (pdpadpov) of the river had become blocked up, and the inhabitants ascribed the stoppage to the anger of Apollo, who had been provoked by the stealing of the Pythian tripod by Herakles : the latter had carried the tripod to Pheneus and de- posited it there. T Ap' ovv owe uron-tirepof TOVTUV b 'AiroATiuv, d $wearaf aTTiiyl/lvat rotif vvv, e/i(j>pdS;ac rd (iupadpov, KOI KaraK^vctaf TTJV xupav unaoav aiivdv, 6rt irpb %i/iiuv eruv, <5f (paciv, 6 'Hpa/cA^c avaffTrdaaf ~bv ipt7ro<5a TOV (lavrmbv els Qevebv a7n?vey/c; (Plutarch, de Ser& Numin. Vindicta, p. 577 ; compare Pausan. viii. 14, 1.) The expression of Plutarch, that the abstraction of the tripod by Herakles had taken place 1000 yean