Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/68

 32 HISTCKY OF GREECE. cient passport to the belief of the hearers. Mr. Clinton talks of w consistent and general tradition." But that the tale of a poet, when once told with effect and beauty, acquired general belief, is no proof that it was founded on fact: otherwise, what are we to say to the divine legends, and to the large portion of th Homeric narrative which Mr. Clinton himself sets aside as un- true, under the designation of " poetical ornament ? " When a mythical incident is recorded as " forming the basis " of some known historical fact or institution, as, for instance, the suc- cessful stratagem by which Melanthus killed Xanthus, in the bat- tle on the boundary, as recounted in my last chapter, we may adopt one of two views ; we may either treat the incident as real, and as having actually given occasion to what is described as ita eflect, or we may treat the incident as a legend imagined in order to assign some plausible origin of the reality, " Aut ex re nomen, aut ex vocabulo fabula." 1 In cases where the legend- ary incident is referred to a time long anterior to any records, as it commonly is, the second mode of proceeding appears to me far more consonant to reason and probability than the first. It is to be recollected that all the persons and facts, here defended as matter of real history, by Mr. Clinton, are referred to an age long preceding the first beginning of records. I have already remarked that Mr. Clinton shrinks from his own rule in treating Kadmus and Danaus as real persons, since they are as much eponyms of tribes or races as Dorus and Hellen. And if he can admit Herakles to be a real man, I cannot see upon what reason he can consistently disallow any one of the mythical personages, for there is not one whose exploits are more strikingly at variance with the standard of historical probability. Mr. Clinton reasons upon the supposition that " Hercules was a Dorian hero:" but he was Achaean and Kadmeian as well as Dorian, though the legends respecting him are different in all the three characters. Whether his son Tlepolemus and his grandson Cleoda3us belong to the category of historical men, I will not take upon me to say, though O. Mijller (in my opinion without any warranty) appears to admit it ; but Hyllus certainly is not a real man, if the canon of Mr. Clinton himself respecting the 1 Pomponius Mela iii. 7.