Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/201

Rh to the Iliad. We find Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and other deities described much as Zeus, Here, and Aphrodite would be described by Greek poets, and in the Odes of Horace we have expressions of thought and feeling such as the idea of these gods would naturally evoke in the minds of the Hellenic worshippers. We also come across notices of strange beings, as for instance Census, Anna Perenna, Muttunus, Mana, Semo Sancus, which for us at least are associated with no very definite images; and we include these beings along with the deities spoken of by Virgil or Horace under the one head of Latin gods, and treat what is said about them as Latin mythology. No two things could well be more entirely distinct The great poets of the Augustan age simply borrowed at will from the vast storehouse of Greek tradition, and set before their countrymen a mythology towards which they had no natural attraction and for which they never acquired any genuine liking. The gods of the country population, which had at one time been the only gods worshipped by the Latin tribes, were practically nothing more than natural powers and processes called by the names which naturally expressed them. The seed-time, the harvest, the changes of the seasons, the periods of human and other life, the garnering and grinding of grain, all these, with other incidents in the history of the revolving year, were marked by a particular name; and this name passed for that of the god by whom these processes were supposed to be wrought. But so thin was the disguise that the growth of a Latin mythology, strictly so called, became impossible. We might as well imagine the growth of the infinitely complex mythology of the Greeks, if their minds had had to work only on such beings as Hellos, Selene, Astraios, Eos, Herse, and others of a like transparent sort. For the Latins their gods, although their name was legion, remained mysterious beings without human forms, feelings, or passions; and they influenced human affairs without shanng or having any sympathy with human hopes, fears, or joys. Neither had they, like the Greek deities, any society among themselves. There was for them no Olympos, where they might gather and take counsel with the father of gods and men. They had no parentage, no marriage, no offspring. They thus became a mere multitude of oppressive beings, living beyond the circle of human interests, yet constantly interfering within it; and their worship was thus as terrible a bondage as any under which the world has yet suffered. Not being associated with any definite bodily shapes, they could not, like the beautiful creations of the Greek mind, promote the growth of the highest art of the sculptor, the painter, and the poet. Thus