Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/109

87 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GUEFCE. 87 We might not improperly apply to this poem the name of a German poem of the middle ages, and call it a Greek Ritterspiegel. § 3. We now follow this school of poetry to the great attempt of forming from the Greek legends respecting the gods a connected and regular picture of their origin and powers, and in general of the entire polytheism of the Greeks. The Thcogony of Hesiod is not, indeed, to be despised as a poem ; besides many singular legends, it contains thoughts and descriptions of a lofty and imposing character ; but for the history of the religious faith of Greece it is a production of the highest importance. The notions concerning the gods, their rank, and their affini- ties, which had arisen in so much greater variety in the different dis- tricts of Greece than in any other country of the ancient world, found in the Theogony a test of their general acceptance. Every legend which could not be brought into agreement with this poem sank into the obscurity of mere local tradition, and lived only in the limited sphere of the inhabitants of some Arcadian district, or the ministers of some temple, under the form of a strange and marvellous tale, which was cherished with the greater fondness because its uncon- formity with the received theogony gave it the charm of mystery*. It was through Hesiod that Greece first obtained a kind of religious code, which, although without external sanctions or priestly guardians and interpreters (such as the Vedas had in the Brahmans, and the Zenda- vesta in the Magians), must have produced the greatest influence on the religious condition of the Greeks ; inasmuch as it impressed upon them the necessity of agreement, and as the notions prevalent among the most powerful races, and at the most renowned temples, were em- bodied by the poet with great skill. Hence Herodotus was justified in saying that Hesiod and Homer had made the theogony of the Greeks, had assigned the names, offices, and occupations of the gods, and had determined their forms. According to the religious notions of the Greeks, the deity, who governs the world with omnipotence, and guides the destinies of man with omniscience, is yet without one attribute, which is the most essential to our idea of the godhead — eternity. The gods of the Greeks were too closely bound up with the existence of the world to be exempt from the law by which large, shapeless masses are de- veloped into more and more perfect forms. To the G reeks the gods of Olympus were rather the summit and crowning point of organized and animate life, than the origin of the universe. Thus Zens, who must be considered as the peculiar deity of the Greeks, was doubtless, long before the time of Homer or Hesiod, called Cronion, or Cronides, as we know from Pausauias, in currency, especially in Arcadia; but how little should vrt know of them from writers who addressed themselves to the entire nation. The Attic tragedians likewise, in their accounts of the affinities of the gods, follow the Hesiodear. Theogony far Tiiore than the local worships and legends of Attica.
 * Numbers of these fables, which cannot be reconciled with the Theogony. were,