340 HISTORY OF GREECE. considerably earlier than the Mitylenaean occupation of Sigeiuin Lampsacus and PSRSUS, on the neighboring shores of the Propon- tis, were also Milesian colonies, though we do not know their date Pariura was jointly settled from Miletus, Erythrse and Parus. CHAPTER XVI. CRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES. THE preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch of that narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so interesting, out of which early Grecian history and chronology ha^e been extracted. Raised originally by hands unseen and from data unassignable, it existed first in the shape of floating talk among the people, from whence a large portion of it passed into the song of the poets, who multiplied, transformed and adorn- ed it in a thousand various ways. These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged ; con- taining, as it were, the preface and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace each in its separate development. They furnished aliment to the curiosity, and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age ; they explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were familiar ; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sym- pathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious presen- timents of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods : moreover they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for tho
