CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN. 44'j divine honors. Herodotus cannot bring himself to believe this story, but he frankly avows his inability to determine whether Zalmoxis was a god or a man,* nor can he extricate himself from a similar embarrassment in respect to Dionysus and Pan. Amidst the confusion of the Homeric fight, the goddess Athene confers upon Diomedes the miraculous favor of dispelling the mist from his eyes, so as to enable him to discriminate gods from men ; and nothing less than a similar miracle could enable a critical reader of the mythical narratives to draw an ascertained boundary-line between the two 2 But the original hearers of the mythes felt neither surprise nor displeasure from this confusion of the divine with the human individual. They looked at the past with a film 1 Herod, iv. 94-96. After having related the Euemeristic version given by the Hellespont^ Greeks, he concludes with his characteristic frankness and simplicity 'E/w tie, rrepl per TOVTOV KOI TOV Karayaiov oiKfjfiaToe, ovre umaTeu, ovre uv Tuarevu TL TJ.IJV. doKeu Se TroUoiai ereai nporepov rbv Za/l- uo^iv TOVTOV yeviadai Tlv&ayopeu. Etre 6e eyeveTO TIC Zutyo&e uv&puirof, SIT' EOTI daipuv rif TeTrjat ovTOf km%upiOf, ^afperw. So Plutarch (Numa c. 19) will not undertake to determine whether Janus was a god or a king Eire 6ai/j.av, etTS paaiTiede yevouevos, etc. Herakleitus the philosopher said that men were &eol dvyrol, and the gods were av&puTtoi udavaroi (Lucian, Vitar. Auctio. c. 13. rol. i. p. 303, Tauch. compare the same author, Dialog. Mortuor. iii. vol. i. p. 182, ed. Tauchn). 3 Iliad, v. 127: 'A^Ai)v d* av TOI UTT' b<j>da'k[iuv S7(.ov, % irplv iTrqev,
- 0(j>p' ev yLyvuanTjf rjfj.ev &sbv, fade Kal uvopa.
Of this undistinguishable confusion between gods and men, striking illus- trations are to be found both in the third book of Cicero de Natura Deorum (16-21), and in the long disquisition of Strabo (x. pp. 467-474) respecting the Kabeiri, the Korybantes, the Dactyls of Ida ; the more so, as he cites the statements of Pherekydes, Akusilaus, Demetrius of Skepsis, and others. Under the Etonian empire, the lands in Greece belonging to the immortal gods were exempted from tribute. The Roman tax-collectors refused to recognize as immortal gods any persons who had once been men ; but this rale could not be clearly applied (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 20). See the re- marks of Pausanias (ii. 26, 7) about Asklepius : Galen, too, is doubtful about Asklepius and Dionysus 'AcvcA^Triof ye TOI Kal Atovvoof, eZr* avdpuiw irporepov rjffTTjv, CITE Kal dp^i?v $W (Galen in Protreptic. 9. torn. i. p. 22, cd. Ktlhn). Xenophon (De Vcnat. c. i) considers Cheiron as the brother ot Zens. The ridicule of Lucian (Dccrum Concilium, t. iii. p 527-538, Hems.) brings out still more forcibly the confusion here indicated. VOL. T. 29oe.
