more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resembling some of the Holy Chapters (ἱεροὶ λόγοι) of the more recent mysteries, such (for example) as the tale of Dionysos Zagreus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local legends current both at Krête and at Delph; for he mentions both the mountain-cave in Krête wherein the new-born Zeus was hidden, and the stone near the Delphian temple the identical stone which Kronos had swallowed—"placed by Zeus himself as a sign and wonder to mortal men." Both these two monuments, which the poet expressly refers to, and had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and explanatory local legends—current probably among the priests of Krête and Delphi, between which places, in ancient times, there was an intimate religious connection. And we may trace further in the poem, that which would be the natural feeling of Krêtan worshippers of Zeus,—an effort to make out that Zeus was justified in his aggression on Kronos, by the conduct of Kronos himself both towards his father and towards his children: the treatment of Kronos by Zeus appears in Hesiod as the retribution foretold and threatened by the mutilated Uranos against the son who had outraged him. In fact the relations of Uranos and Gæa are in almost all their particulars a mere copy and duplication of those between Kronos and Rhea, differing only in the mode whereby the final catastrophe is brought about. Now castration was a practice thoroughly abhorrent both to the feelings and to the customs of Greece;[1] but it was seen with melancholy fre-
- ↑ The strongest evvidences of this feeling are exhibited in Herodotus, iii 48; viii 105. See an example of this mutilation inflicted upon a youth
tures are to be described, must have enemies, worthy of himself and his vast type, and whom it is some credit for him to overthrow. Those who contend with him or assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn on the same imposing canvas: the dwarfish proportions of man will not satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the grandeur and glory of the gods. To obtain creations of adequate sublimity for such an object, the poet may occasionally borrow analogies from the striking accidents of physical nature, and when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, the critic does well to point it out. But it seems to me a mistake to treat these approximations to physical phænomena as forming the main scheme of the poet,—to look for them everywhere, and to presume them where there is little or no indication.
