Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/44

 V 30 STRABO. BOOK i. incited to deeds of virtue by the beauties of fable, when they hear the poets in a strain of enthusiasm recording noble ac- tions, such as the labours of Hercules or Theseus, and the honours bestowed on them by tfie gods, or even when they see paintings, sculptures, or figures bearing their romantic evidence to sucli""events. In the same way they are re- strained from vicious courses, when they think they have received from the gods by oracles or some other invisible in- timations, threats, menaces, or chastisements, or even if they^ only believe they have befallen others. The great mass of women and common people, cannot be induced by mere force of reason to devote themselves to EJetypvIrtue, ancf lionesty ; superstition must_ therefore be_employed, and even this is in- sufficient without the aid of the marvellous and the terrible. For what are the thunderbolts, the asgis, the trident, the torches, the dragons, the barbed thyrses, the arms oTtne gods, and all the paraphernalia of antique tlieology, but fables em- ployed by the founders of states, as bugbears to frighten timorous minds. Such was mythology ; and when our ancestors found it ca- pable oi subserving the purposes of social and political life, and even contributing to the knowledge of truth, they conti- nued the education of childhood to rnaturer years, and main- tained that poetry was sufficient to form the understanding of every age. In course of time history and our present philo- sophy were introduced; these, however, suffice but for the chosen few,, and to the present day poetry is the main agent which instructs our people and crowds our theatres. Homer here stands pre-eminent, but in truth all the early historians and natural philosophers were mythologists as well. 9. Thus it is that our_poet, though he sometimes employs fiction for the purposes of instruction, always gives the pre- ferejQce to truth ; he makes use of what is false, merely toler- ating it in order the more easily to lead and govern the mul- titude. As a man "Binds with a golden verge Bright silver: " l so Hgmer, heightening by fiction actual occurrences, adorns and embellishes his subject ; but his end is always the same as that of the historian, who relates nothing but facts. In 1 Odyssey vfm