Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/477

 GRECIAN CHRONOLOGY FOUNDED ON MYTHES. 445 that of the Greeks generally, the more shall we be com inccd that it formed essentially and inseparably a portion of Hellenic religious faith. The mythe both presupposes, and springs out of, a settled basis, and a strong expansive force of religious, social, and patriotic feeling, operating upon a past which is little better than a blank as to positive knowledge. It resembles history, in so far as its form is narrative ; it resembles philosophy, in so far as it is occasionally illustrative ; but in its essence and substance, in the mental tendencies by which it is created as well as in those by which it is judged and upheld, it is a popularized expression of the divine and heroic faith of the people. Grecian antiquity cannot be at all understood except in con- nection with Grecian religion. It begins with gods and it ends with historical men, the former being recognized not simply as gods, but as primitive ancestors, and connected with the latter by a long mythical genealogy, partly heroic and partly human. Now the whole value of such genealogies arises from their being taken entire ; the god or hero at the top is in point of fact the most im- portant member of the whole j 1 for the length and continuity of the series arises from anxiety on the part of historical men to join themselves by a thread of descent with the being whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices. Without the ancestorial god, the whole pedigree would have become not only acephalous, but worthless and uninteresting. The pride of the Herakleids, Asklepiads, JEakids, Neleids, Daedalids, etc. was attached to the primitive eponymous hero and to the god from whom they sprung, not to the line of names, generally long and barren, through which the divine or heroic dignity gradually dwindled down into com- mon manhood. Indeed, the length of the genealogy (as I have before remarked) was an evidence of the humility of the his- torical man, which led him to place himself at a respectful dis- tance from the gods or heroes ; for Hekatajus of Miletus, who ranked himself as the fifteenth descendant of a god, might per- 1 For a description of similar tendencies in the Asiatic religions, see Movers, Die Phonizier, ch. v. p. 153 (Bonn, 1841): he points out the same phenomena as in the Greek, coalescence between the ideas of ancestry and worship, confusion between gods and men in the past, increasing tendency to Euemerize (pp. 156-1 57 )t