Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/498

 466 HISTORY OF GREECE. gies consisted not so much in their length, as in the revereuea attached to the name serving as primitive source. After the worship attached to Odin had been extinguished, the genealogi- cal line was lengthened up to Japhet or Noah, and Odin, no longer accounted worthy to stand at the top, was degraded into one of the simple human members of it. 1 And Ave find this alteration of the original mythical genealogies to have taken place even among the Scandinavians, although the introduction of Christianity was in those parts both longer deferred, so as to opposing it to the line of kings given by Saxo Grammaticus (p. 352). Tor- faeus makes Harold Haarfagcr a descendant from Odin through twenty-seven generations ; Alfred of England through twenty-three generations ; Offa of Mercia through fifteen (p. 362). See also the translation by Lange of P. A. Miiller's Saga Bibliothek, Introd. p. xxviii. and the genealogical tables pre- fixed to Snorro Sturlcson's Edda. Mr. Sharon Turner conceives the human existence of Odin to be distinct- ly proved, seemingly upon the same evidence as Euemcrus believed in tho human existence of Zens (History of the Anglo-Saxons, Appendix to b. ii. ch. 3. p. 219, 5th edit). 1 Dahlmann, Histor. Forschnng. t. i. p. C"X). There is a valuable article on this subject in the Zeitschrift fur Geschichts Wissenschaft (Berlin, vol. i. pp. 237-282) by Stuhr, " Uber einige Hauptfragen des Nordischen Alterthums," wherein the writer illustrates both the strong motive and the effective ten- dency, on the part of the Christian clergy who had to deal with these newly- converted Teutonic pagans, to Euemerize the old gods, and to represent a genealogy, which they were unable to efface from men's minds, as if it con sisted only of mere men. Mr. John Kemble (Uber die Stammtafel der "Westsachsen, ap. Stuhr, p. 254) remarks, that " nobilitas," among that people, consisted in descent fro re Odin and the other gods. Colonel Sleeman also deals in the same manner with the religious legends of the Hindoos, so natural is the proceeding of Euemerus, towards any religion in which a critic does not believe : " They (the Hindoos) of course think that the incarnation of their three great divinities were beings infinitely superior to prophets, being in all their attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves. But we are disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing more than great men whom thsir flatterers and poets have exalted into gods, this was tfie way in which men made their gods in ancient Greece and Egypt. All that the poets have sung of the actions of these men is now received as revelation from heaven: though nothing can be more monstrous than the actions ascribed to tho best Incarnation, Krishna, of the best of the gods, Vishnoo." (Sleeman, Ramble* and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. viii. 61.)