412 HISTORY OF GREECE. tolled by them as an excellent specimen of careful historical inquiry. 1 But though the pagan world repudiated that " lowering tone of explanation," which effaced the superhuman personality of Zeus and the great gods of Olympus, the mythical persons and narratives generally came to be surveyed more and more from the point of view of history, and subjected to such alterations as might make them look more like plausible matter of fact. Po lybius, Strabo, Diodorus, and Pausanias, cast the mythes into historical statements with more or less of transformation, as 'he case may require, assuming always that there is a basis of truth, which may be discovered by removing poetical exaggera- tions and allowing for mistakes. Strabo, in particular, lays down that principle broadly and unequivocally in his remarks upon Homer. To give pure fiction, without any foundation of fact, was in his judgment utterly unworthy of so great a genius ; and he comments with considerable acrimony on the geographer Era- tosthenes, win maintains the opposite opinion. Again, Polybius tells us that the Homeric JEolus, the dispenser of the winds by 1 Strabo, ii. p. 102. Ov 7ro/U) ovv faiTrerai ravraruv Rvdeu nai 'Evrj/j.t-poi Kai 'A.v TiQavovf ipevaparuv ; compare also i. p. 47, and ii. p. 104. St. Augustin, on the contrary, tells us (Civitat. Dei, vi. 7), " Quid de ipsc Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio posuerunf? Nonne attestati sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulosA garrulitate, sed historicd diligentid, homines fuisse mortalesque conscripsit ? " And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20- 21 ), " Euemerus exequitur Deorum natales : patrias, sepulcra dinumerat, et per provincias monstrat, Dictasi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici, ct Pharia; Isidis, ct Cercris Eleusiniae." Compare Augustin, Civit. Dei, xviii. 8-14; and Clemens Alexand. Cohort, ad Gent. pp. 15-18, Sylb. Lactantius (De Falsi Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious citations from Ennius's translation of the Historia Sacra of Euemerus. Ei>J7//epof, 6 kTnKhrr&els u&eof, Sextns Empiricus, adv. Physicos, ix. 17- 51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Dcor. i. 42; Plutarch, DC Iside et Osiride, c. 23. torn. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt. Nitzsch assumes (Helden Sage der Griechen, sect. 7. p. 84^ that the voy- age of Euemerus to Panchaia was intended only as an amusing romance, and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenes and Plutarch were mistaken in con- struing it as a serious recital. Bottiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Grie- chen ( Absch. ii. s. 6. p. 190), takes the same view. But not the least reason is given for adopting this opinion, and it seems to me far-fetched and improbable; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 989), though Nitzsch alludes to him as hcMing it nanifests no such tendency, as far as I can observe.
