Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/37

Rh Syrophœnician tribes. As a singular being, however, in the assembly of the Greek deities, stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, and renovated Nature, Dionysus, whose alternate joys and sufferings, and marvellous adventures, show a strong resemblance to the form which religious notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced by the Thracians (a tribe which spread from the north of Greece into the interior of the country), and not, like the gods of Olympus, recognized by all the races of the Greeks, Dionysus always remained to a certain degree estranged from the rest of the gods, although his attributes had evidently most affinity with those of Demeter and Cora. But in this isolated position, Dionysus exercises an important influence on the spirit of the Greek nation, and both in sculpture and poetry gives rise to a class of feelings which agree in displaying more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder flight of the imagination, and more acute sensations of pain and pleasure, than were exhibited on occasions where this influence did not operate.

§ 5. In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not only by what they say, but also by what they do not say), when attentively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly exercises his powers as a ruler and a king; although he is still designated (by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the god of the ether and the storms ; as in much later times the old picturesque expression was used, "What is Zeus doing?" for "What kind of weather is it?" In the Homeric conception of Hera, Athena, and Apollo, there is no trace of any reference of these deities to the fertility of the earth, the clearness of the atmosphere, the arrival of the serene spring, and the like; which, however, can be discovered in other mythical legends concerning them, and still more in the ceremonies practised at their festivals, which generally contain the most ancient ideas. Hephæstus has passed from the powerful god of fire in heaven and in earth into a laborious smith and worker of metals, who performs his duty by making armour and arms for the other gods and their favourite heroes. As to Hermes, there are some stories in which he is represented as giving fruitfulness to cattle, in his capacity of the rural god of Arcadia; from which, by means of various metamorphoses, he is transmuted into the messenger of Zeus, and the servant of the gods.

Those deities, however, which stood at a greater distance from the relations of human life, and especially from the military and political actions of the princes, and could not easily be brought into connexion with them, are for that reason rarely mentioned by Homer, and never take any part in the events described by him; in general they keep aloof