Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/500

 468 mSTORY OF GREECE and the worship of the ancient gods was even adorned by new architects and sculptors who greatly strengthened its imposing effect. While then in Greece the mythopoeic stream continued in the same course, only with abated current and influence, in modern Europe its ancient bed was blocked up, and it was turned into new and divided channels. The old religion though as an as- cendent faith, unanimously and publicly manifested, it became extinct still continued in detached scraps and fragments, and under various alterations of name and form. The heathen gods and goddesses, deprived as they were of divinity, did not pass out of the recollection and fears of their former worshippers, but were sometimes represented (on principles like those of Eueme- rus) as having been eminent and glorious men sometimes de- graded into daemons, magicians, elfs, fairies, and other supernatural agents, of an inferior grade and generally mischievous cast. Christian writers, such as Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Stur- leson, committed to writing the ancient oral songs of the Scandiv- ian Scalds, and digested the events contained in them into contin- uous narrative performing in this respect a task similar to that of the Grecian logographers Pherekydes and Hellanikus, in reference to Hesiod and the Cyclic poets. But while Pherekydes and Hellanikus compiled under the influence of feelings substan- tially the same as those of the poeis on whom they bestowed their care, the Christian logographers felt it their duty to point out the Odin and Thor of the old Scalds as evil daemons, or cunning enchanters, who had fascinated the minds of men into a false belief in their divinity. 1 In some cases, the heathen recitals and ideas 1 Interea tamen homines Christiani in numina non credant ethnica, nee alitcr fidem narrationibus hisce adstruere vel adhibere debent, quam in libri hujus prooemio monitum est de causis et occasionibus cur et quomodo genu3 humanum a vef fide aberraverit." (Extract from the Prose Edda, p. 75, in the Lexicon Mythologicum ad calcem Eddae Ssemund. vol. iii. p. 357, Co- penliag. edit.) A similar warning is to be found in another passage cited by P. E. Miiller Tiber den Ursprung und V^rfall der Islandischen Historiographie, p. 138 Copenhagen, 1813 ; compare the Prologue to the Prose Edda, p. 6, and Mal- let, Introduction a 1'Histoire de Dannemarc, ch. vii. pp. 114-132. Saxo Grammaticus represents Odin sometimes as a magician, sometimes U an evil daemon, sometimes as a high priest or pontiff of heathenism, who