Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/38

16 from the circle of the Olympic gods. Demeter is never mentioned as assisting any hero, or rescuing him from danger, or stimulating him to the battle; but if any one were thence to infer that this goddess was not known as early as Homer's time, he would be refuted by the incidental allusions to her which frequently occur in connexion with agriculture and corn. Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as the mother and author of life ) was in the ancient Pelasgic time honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity; but the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other gods of Olympus. Hence her worship gradually obtained a peculiar form, and chiefly from this cause assumed the character of mysteries: that is, religious solemnities, in which no one could participate without having undergone a previous ceremony of admission and initiation. In this manner Homer was, by a just and correct taste, led to perceive that Demeter, together with the other divine beings belonging to her, had nothing in common with the gods whom the epic muse assembled about the throne of Zeus; and it was the same feeling which also prevented him from mixing up Dionysus, the other leading deity of the mystic worship of the Greeks, with the subject of his poem, although this god is mentioned by him as a divine being, of a marvellous nature, stimulating the mind to joy and enthusiasm.





§ 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen.—§ 2. Description of several of these songs, viz. the Linus.—§ 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus, the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and the laments for Hylas and Adonis.—§ 4. The Pæan, its origin and character. — § 5. The Threnos, or lament for the dead, and the Hymenæos, or bridal song.—§ 6. Origin and character of the chorus.—§ 7. Ancient poets who composed sacred hymns, divided into three classes, viz. those connected, i. With the worship of Apollo; ii. With the worship of Demeter and Dionysus; and iii. With the Phrygian worship of the mother of the Gods, of the Corybantes, &c.—§ 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the early Greek poets.—§ 9. Influence of the early Thracian or Pierian poets on the epic poetry of Homer.

§ 1. centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of the Greeks could have attained the splendour, the copiousness, and the fluency which so strongly excite our admiration in the poems of Homer. The service of the gods, to which all the highest energies of the mind were first directed, and from which the first beginnings of sculpture, 