Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/670

660 (>0 Ogyges. If these conjectures are well founded, the name of Ogyges will suggest the notion of a physical event, which, by a pro- cess familiar to the human mind in all countries, has been transformed into a historical one. What we gain from the name however is not the knowledge of the fact, but merely of the belief which anciently prevailed about it. How this arose is a different question, which admits of many answers. On the other hand in attempting to exclude Ogyges from that class of persons in which J. K. has numbered him, we do not deny its existence, though the claim of each individual to be admitted into it must be tried on its own grounds. The proposition that so large a portion of the Greek mytho- logy, as it would appear from J. K'^s hypotheses, was stamped with a mystic and sacerdotal character, is one that requires to be carefully examined before it is embraced. On this sub- ject the reader will find some interesting remarks by Mr Keightley, p. 142, who in a short compass exhibits the main features of the antimystical view of the question. We regret that he has there assumed as an admitted fact an assertion of Lobeck'^s, which, if we remember right, has been corrected by Mueller, and which rests only on a misapprehension of the words of Herodotus, i. 37 : that Eleusis and Athens were independent of each other till the time of Solon. But this is one of the few blemishes which we hope will speedily disappear in a second edition of his work. C. T.