Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/471

 TRIPLE THEOLOGY OF PAGAflW^l. 439 Hie doctrine, supposed to have been originally symbolizel and subsequently overclouded, in the Greek mythes, was in reality first intruded into them by the unconscious fancies of later inter- preters. It was one of the various roads which instructed men took to escape from the literal admission of the ancient mythes, and to arrive at some new form of belief, more consonant with their ideas of what the attributes and character of the gods ought to be. It was one of the tvays of constituting, by help of the mysteries, a philosophical religion apart from the general public, and of connecting that distinction with the earliest periods of Grecian society. Such a distinction was both avowed and justi- fied among the superior men of the later pagan world. Varro and Scaevola distributed theology into three distinct departments, the mythical or fabulous, the civil, and the physical. The first had its place in the theatre, and was left without any inter- ference to the poets ; the second belonged to the city of political community as such, it comprised the regulation of all the public worship and religious rites, and was consigned altogether to the direction of the magistrate ; the third was the privilege of philo- sophers, but was reserved altogether for private discussion in the schools, apart from the general public. 1 As a member of the arc full of instruction on the subject of this supposed interior doctrine, and on the ancient mysteries in general : the latter treatise, especially, is not less distinguished for its judicious and circumspect criticism than for its copious learning. Mr. Halhed (Preface to the Gentoo Code of Laws, pp. xiii.-xiv.) has good observations on the vanity of all attempts to allegorize the Hindu mytholo- gy : he observes, with perfect truth, " The vulgar and illiterate have always understood the mythology of their country in its literal sense ; and thero was a time to every nation, when the highest rank in it was equally vulgar and illiterate with the lowest A Hindu esteems the astonishing miracles attributed to a Briina, or a Kishcn, as facts of the most indubitable authenticity, and the relation of them as most strictly historical." Compare also Gibbon's remarks on the allegorizing tendencies of the later Phitonists (Hist. Decl. and Fall, vol. iv. p. 71). 1 Varro, ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 27 ; vi. 5-6. " Dicis fabulosos Dcos accommodates esse ad theatrum, naturales ad mundum, civiles ad urbem." " Varro, de religionibus loquens, multa esse vera dixit, qua non modo vulgo scire non sit utile, sed etiam tametsi falsa sint, aliter existimare populum expediat: et ideo Grajcos teletas et mysteria taciturnitate parieti basque clausisse" (ibid, iv in See Villoison, De Triplici Theologii Cora