428 HISTORY OP GREECE ceedings of the gods. 1 Bat with instructed men they became rather subjects of respectful and curious analysis all agreeing that the Word as tendered to them was inadmissible, yet all equally convinced that it contained important meaning, though hidden yet not undiscoverable. A very large proportion of the force of Grecian intellect was engaged in searching after this unknown base, by guesses, in which sometimes the principle of semi-his torical interpretation was assumed, sometimes that of allegori cal, without any collateral evidence in either case, and without possibility of verification. Out of the one assumption grew a string of allegorized phenomenal truths, out of the other a long series of seeming historical events and chronological persons, both elicited from the transformed mythes and from nothing else. 2 before, is that of the critic, who thinks it needful to historicize and chronol- ogize the genuine legend ; which, to an inhabitant of Pheneus, at the time of the inundation, was doubtless as little questioned as if the theft of Herakles had been laid in the preceding generation. Agathocles of Syracuse committed depredations on the coasts of Ithaca and Korkyra : the excuse which he offered was, that Odysseus had come to Sicily and blinded Polyphemus, and that on his return he had been kindly received by the Phaeakians (Plutarch, ib.). This is doubtless a jest, either made by Agathocles, or more probably in- vented for him ; but it is founded upon a popular belief. 1 " Sanctiusque et revercntius visum, de actis Deorum credere quam scirc." (Tacit. German, c. 34.) Aristides, however, represents the Homeric theology (whether he would have included the Hesiodic we do not know) as believed quite literally among the multitude in his time, the second century after Christianity (Aristid. Orat. iii. p. 25). 'ATropw, OTT-J? TTOTE %pr] fie 6ia&ea-&ai jie^ vpuv, Trorepa (if rotf Tro/lAotf 6oKei Kal 'Qfif/pu 6e avvdoKei, vctiv KadrifiaTa avfnreia'&^vai KOI fjftuf, olov 'Apeof deafia Kal 'A7r6/l/li>of &t]TEia<; Kal 'HfyalaTov pcipeie elf Sdhaaaav, OVTU 6e Kal 'Ivovf a%i] nal Qvyuf nvaf. Compare Lucian, Zet)f Tpaywdof, c. 20, and De Luctu, c. 2 ; Dionys. Halicar. A. R. ii. p. 90, Sylb. Kallimachus ("Hymn, ad Jov. 9) distinctly denied the statement of the Kretans that they possessed in Krete the tomb of Zeus, and treated it as an instance of Kretan mendacity ; while Celsus did not deny it, but explained it in some figurative manner alviTToftevof TpoxiKuf vnovoias ( Origen. cont Celsum, iii. p. 137).
- There is here a change as compared with my first edition ; I had inserted
here some remarks on the allegorical theory of interpretation, as compared with the semi-historical. An able article on my work (in the Edinburgh
