Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/480

 448 HISTORY OF GREECE, i repudiated altogether the idea of men begotten by godi or of heroes. 1 But these counter-genealogies, are, in respect to trustwcrthinfess and evidence, on the same footing. Each represents partly the religious faith, partly the retrospective imagination, of the persons from whom it emanated ; in each, the lower members of the series (to what extent we cannot tell) are rsal, the upper members fabu- lous ; but in each also the series derived all its interest and all its imposing effect from being conceived unbroken and entire. Herodotus is much perplexed by the capital discrepancy between the Grecian and Egyptian chronologies, and vainly employs his ingenuity in reconciling them. There is no standard of objective evidence by which either the one or the other of them can be tried : each has its own subjective value, in conjunction with the faith and feelings of Egyptians and Greeks, and each presup- poses in the believer certain mental prepossessions which are not to be found beyond its own local limits. Nor is the greater or less extent of duration at all important, when we once pass the limits of evidence and verifiable reality. One century of recorded time, adequately studded with authentic and orderly events, pre- sents a greater mass and a greater difficulty of transition to the imagination than a hundred centuries of barren genealogy. Her- odotus, in discussing the age of Homer and Hesiod, treats an an- terior point of 400 years as if it were only yesterday ; the reign of Henry VI. is separated from us by an equal interval, and the reader will not require to be reminded how long that interval now appears. The mythical age was peopled with a mingled aggregate of gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it was often impossible to distinguish to which class any individual name belonged. In regard to the Thracian god Zalmoxis, the Helles- pontic Greeks interpreted his character and attributes according to the scheme of Euemerism. They affirmed that he had been a man, the slave of the philosopher Pythagoras at Samos, and that he had by abilities and artifice established a religious ascen- dency over the minds of the Thracians, and obtained from them 1 Herod, ii. 143-145. Kcu ravra AiyvTrrioi uTpeKsug fyaalv lirioraadai, aia rt %o-yiofievoi Kal aid ano-ypa6~ii>oi TU free.