nature to suggest them, it may be well to examine, in the light of the present day, for their justification, but not for ours (who have copied them and ought to have known better), what they really had as foundation for these monstrous forms in truth, real or apparent.
The conception of the Centaurs, we have already seen, is easily explained by the appearance of a man on horseback. Workers in metals, exposed to the intense heat and glare of their fires, would naturally protect their faces by masks of wood or leather, as makers of plate glass, for example, do now, looking out through a single median hole—hence the fabulous Cyclops. The Satyrs were evidently derived from some of the large anthropoid apes, which must have been known to primeval man.
The above-mentioned monsters, and many others which admit of a natural explanation, did not originate with the Greeks; they obtained them from the Egyptians, and these from antecedent races long before the historic period. The existence of man with the mammoth, mastodon, Irish elk, cave bear and lion, among quadrupeds—with the dodo, dinornis, and epiornis, among birds—suggests that perhaps he may have lived with the pterodactyl and serpent-like marine lizards, or their modified descendants, in the Tertiary or a more remote epoch. The mastodon, or the mammoth (either), might easily have been made into the Minotaur killed by Theseus; the Nemean lion slain by Hercules may well have been the Felis spelæa of the bone-caves; the rhinoceros would make an excellent foundation for the unicorn; the cuttle-fishes of the Mediterranean, with their eight or ten arms, moving independently, and armed with terrible suckers, would readily suggest the many-headed hydra, also killed by Hercules.
The Sirens, and other marine creatures of human likeness, are the natural outgrowths of the imagination of sailors returning from long voyages, without the sight of a woman for months or years. Seeing manatees and seals reclining on the shores, holding their young in their arms while suckling them, like all mammals, the semi-human faces, the womanly position, and the tender care and anxiety for their young in this act—their hearts would be filled with such joy at thoughts of home, and their eyes with tears long pent up, that the combination of indistinct vision and excited imagination would transform the creatures they saw into the beautiful women they longed to see.
At Stabiæ have been found mural tablets representing Nereids, or horses with the tail of a fish, evidently suggested by the little sea-horse (hippocampus) of the Mediterranean; in some the head of the horse is replaced by the head of a tiger—not a very abrupt transition.
The fauna of the Tertiary age from the Miocene down, which there is some reason to believe passed before the eyes of primeval man, would afford ample material for gorgons, dragons, sylphs, and satyrs, leviathan and behemoth, and the whole list of ancient and modern fabulous monsters. The birds with teeth, and the winged lizard of the Secondary
