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'These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.' |
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'Dich haben diese Tränke, diese Kräftiger, |
The inference to be drawn from the foregoing comparisons is, that the Aryan nations before their separation cherished a belief in a hero or god to whom they owed all their comforts in life: it was he that made the Sun shine and the Dawn keep her time; and it was to him they looked for the weather they wanted. The first breeds of animals useful to man, whether domestic or wild, were believed to have been obtained by him through craft or violence from the jealous powers who wished to keep them from the human race. They traced probably to the same origin the fire that served to cook their food, and the intoxicating drink which they knew as a stimulant and a source of inspiration. But their benefactor was believed to have undergone unspeakable hardship in his quest of the boons he conferred on their kin, and that for a time the jealous powers were able to wreak their wrath on him for his goodwill to man. It was probably this goodwill that constituted the gravamen of his crime, and not the crafty and unscrupulous way in which he had gone to work; for that was calculated in certain stages of civilization to call forth admiration rather than the contrary, while the habit of imagining both gods and demons to be jealous of the human race is familiar to all in the literatures of various ancient nations. Among others, that of the Greeks has already been alluded to in this connection more than once; but
