of our ships, and the cables fastening to the shore, and all to reach home favoured with a prosperous return from Ilium."[1]
Euripides would not have put these words into the mouth of the son of Achilles had they not been in accord with the sympathies of an Athenian audience.
Comparing the Greek mythological traditions, such as they have come down to us, with those of the Maori, some striking resemblance is to be observed. First, there is the fact that both treat the elements of nature, and abstract notions as persons capable of propagating from each other by generation. In both Light springs out of Darkness. The sons of Heaven and Earth in both accounts conspire against their father for the same reason—that their father had confined them in darkness. And lastly the first human female, in both, is said to have been formed out of earth. The first woman, in the Maori Mythology, drags down her offspring to Po (= Night), meaning to death. And the first woman of the Greek Mythology, Pendora, introduces all kinds of afflictions as an heritage for hers.
It is also to be noticed that just as Zeus and the Olympian Gods were national deities for Greeks, so their old mythical deities—Po, Rangi, Papa, Tiki, &c., were invoked alike by the whole Maori race, especially in the ceremonies required to free a person from the sacred restrictions comprised under the term tapu. They were the Maori national Gods, for they were their common ancestors. But at the same time
- ↑ Hecuba, 1. 533–9.
