Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/125

103 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 103 lime. This may have been the reason that very earl) Homerids formed of this subject a separate epos, the execution of which does not appear to have been unworthy o: the name of Homer. Other portions of the legends of Hercules had found a place in the larger poems of Hesiod, the Eoise, the Catalogues, and the short epics ; and C inaithon the Lacedaemonian may have brought forward many legends little known before his time. Yet this whole series of legends wanted that main feature which every one would now collect from poets and works of art. This conception of Hercules could not arise before his contests with animals were combined from the local tales separately related of him in Peloponnesus, and were embellished with all the ornaments of poetry. Hence, too, he assumed a figure different from that of all other heroes, as he no longer seemed to want the brazen helmet, breast-plate, and shield, or to require the weapons of heroic warfare, but trusting solely to the immense strength of his limbs, and simply armed with a club, and covered with the skin of a lion which he had slain, he exercises a kind of gymnastic skill in slaying the various monsters which he encounters, sometimes exhibiting rapidity in running and leaping, sometimes the highest bodily strength in wrestling and striking. The poet who first represented Hercules in this manner, and thus broke through the monotony of the ordinary heroic combats, was Peisander, a Rhodian, from the town of Cameirus, who is placed at the 33d Olympiad, though he probably flourished somewhat later. Nearly all the allusions in his Heraclea may be referred to those combats, which were considered as the tasks imposed on the hero by Eurystheus, and which were properly called 'llpaKkiovg adoi. It is, indeed, very pro- bable that Peisander was the first who fixed the number of these labours at twelve, a number constantly observed by later writers, though they do not always name the same exploits, and which had moreover esta- blished itself in art at least as early as the time of Phidias (on the tem- ple of Olympia). If the first of these twelve combats have a somewhat rural and Idyllian character, the later ones afforded scope for bold ima- ginations and marvellous tales, which Peisander doubtless knew how to turn to account ; as, for example, the story that Hercules, in his expedi- tion against Geryon, was carried over the ocean in the goblet of the Sun, is first cited from the poem of Peisander. Perhaps he was led to this invention by symbols of the worship of the Sun, which existed from early times in Rhodes. It was most likely the originality, which prevailed with equal power through the whole of this not very long poem, that induced the Alexandrian grammarians to receive Peisander, together with Homer and Hesiod, into the epic canon, an honour which they did not extend to any other of the poets hitherto mentioned. Thus the Greek Epos, which seemed, from its genealogical tendency, to have acquired a dry and steril character, now appeared once more animated with new life, and striking out new paths. Nevertheless it