Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/175

165 Memnoii. 165 lands ^^. It may therefore be fairly assumed that a name which a Greek would naturally form into Memnon, was long before the time of Homer celebrated in the west of Asia, as that of a hero who had come from the East, and had achieved many glorious exploits: and this very simple sup- position, if it may not rather be termed a well attested fact, appears to me quite sufficient to explain every feature in the Greek legend of Memnon. This I shall proceed to shew by analysing the legend and successively examining its elements. These are, the parentage of Memnon, his extra- ordinary beauty, his premature death, his funeral honours. As to the first point I may be very brief, because it raises no difficulty, at least none that is peculiar to my hypothesis. To say that Memnon came out of the distant East, was equi- valent to calling him an Ethiopian, and no parent could be as- signed to him more befitting his beauty and his illustrious deeds than the goddess of the morning. It was not an arbitrary fiction, but a mythological deduction, as legitimate as that which determined the lineage of Achilles and ^neas. The beauty of Memnon may at first sight appear a necessary re- sult of his birth : since the rosyfingered goddess could bear none but comely children. It it however quite as probable that the beauty of the hero was the earlier feature, and con- tributed to fix the story of his birth. The sense of beauty, which gradually developed itself among the Greeks in so many directions, manifested itself in the attention paid to the human form, perhaps before they had begun to attempt even the rudest imitation of it. It is a characteristic tradition, even if it should not be literally true, that Cypselus, the ancient king of Arcadia, instituted a contest for the palm of female beauty on the Alpheus^^ The antiquity of similar contests at Tenedos ^^ SynceU. p. 102. (Bonn.) Me-ra vetcva^ Kal tov^ JifMideov^ irpMT^u ^vvacTTeiav KaTapidfJLoda-L /SacrtXewi/ o/ctoJ. oov yeyove M?;!/!^?, 05 SLao-iyxco^ avTwv -nyyjcrai-o — Mt]vi]9, ov 'H.p6Son-o^ Mrjva oovofxaa-ev. — ovto^ vircpopiov (TTpan-eiav €7ron/(raTO Kal hoo^o^ eKpidi], xjTTo ce iTnroTroTdfxov vpTrdardi]. It is remarkable that he too comes to an untimely end. 3^ Nicias ev toZs 'ApKaSiKoT^ Athen. xiii. p. 609. The contest took place at the festival of the Eleusmian Ceres. Another is mentioned in the same page, on the au- thority of Theophrastus, among the Eleans for the other sex. On comparing this passage with what is said of the Elean contest in p. 565. F. we are led to suspect that the object in all these contests was to select the most comely persons for the service of the deity.