of secondary, physical laws. Take a single instance, that of Apollo. We assume here that Apollo was at first a sini-god; this, although no traces of such an identilication appear in the poets before /Eschylus, and although it has been denied by some writers on my- thology (as by Voss, Mythol. Briefe, ii, 378 sq.), is now admitted by the later and best scholars, in whose hands the Greek religion has been cleared of many of its difli- culties (as, e. g., Creuzer, Welcker, Preller, and others). And it was the sun-god with a personality after the fashion of men, although the sun, Jlelios, still retained a place — a subordinate place — in Greek worship, just as Demetcr, the earth-goddess, entered into the events of [ the world by the side of (isea, ?«?•//(, whose action was ; nearly confined to the myths of the cosmogony. The sun was thought to produce pestilence through the ex- cessive heats of summer and autumn. Apollo there- fore was conceived of as originating pestilential disease. The sun's rays are naturally thouglit of as darted forth from the body of the sun itself. Apollo now became an archer, the god of the silver-bow; and when at the be- ginning of the Iliad evil disease was sent through the army before Troy, it was because Apollo was angry at the treatment which his priest, Chryses, met with from Agamemnon. Here we have moral ideas, the god's protection of an injured suppliant, and relations which only a personal existence could assume. The god came down from Olympus — where we have a society of the upper gods under Zeus — he shot his arrow into the i army, the mules and dogs first, then the men, were j smitten and died. Hut this sun-god has human feel- ings and can be propitiated ; he can turn away his darts and heal disease. Perhaps here, too, a physical phe- nomenon may explain the attribute, that as the sun generates pestilence when there is an undue amount of moisture and heat, so his tempered rays bring health. However this may be, the author of pestilence became the arrester of it ; he is called Hekaergos, the driver off, and in the Doric dialect Apellon, the averter, which in common Greek became Apollon. As an averter, lie is the cui'er of disease — P»on or Paan, the healer. His connection with music and poetry is more accidental; and his relations to political and social life (which were so important that he became the leading divinity of Greece) must be explained on historical grounds. His name, Phahus, the bright or pure, Ijrings him again into connection with the sun and with purifying rites. He was a source of inspiration as well at Delphi as to others besides the priestess of the oracle — for instance, to the Sibyls. All this, however, does not reach the dith- culty. It is quite conceivable that mythological divin- ities should thus arise, as well as that events which are of common occurrence should be attributed to a special god. But go beyond such events, and you get into deeper water. Take the story of Niobe, for instance, and its exjdanation by two of the principal mythologcrs, Welcker {Gr. GOtler. iii) anil Preller (Gr. Mylhol. ii, 283). Omitting details, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, the mother of many children, exalted herself against Leto (Latona) because she had given birth to two chil- dren only, Apollo and Artemis. Accordingly the angry god avenged his mother; the children of Niolie were shot down, and she wasted away in grief, hhe was turned into stone, and her stone image was shown on Mount Sipylus, not far from IMagnesia, in Asia ^Minor, This is an Asiatic myth, naturalized in Greece proper, and it signifies the decay of the products of the earth. Niobe is Khea, the earth-mother, whose multitude of offspring, born in spring, are withered by the god of light in autumn ; or. as Welcker exitlains it, the new or renewed nature (Xiobe being from the root denoting new), losing her ciiildrcn by the solar heat, mourns for them like Hachel. What renders this fable very re- markable is the stone on I^Iount Sipylus, which many travellers describe (comp. Hamilton, Asia Minor, i, 49, 50) as having the resemblance of an image. Now, whether these or other explanations dcser\-c the prefer-
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ence, we have an annually recurring event turned into a historical and personal event that happened once for all. Here the difficulty comes up again, and is comhig up continually. The myth of Cybele and Attis, that of Adonis or Thammuz, that of Osiris, in the same waj' probably arose out of annually recurring physical phe- nomena, and yet they stood before the ancient mind as individual events that did not repeat themselves. In these myths dead gods represent the annual decay of life in nature. And so with much more certainty can we interpret the rape of Proserpine in a phj'sical way. She is snatched by the underground king — Hades, or the invisible one — and carried to his abode within the earth to be his wife. Here the myth takes the form of a stealing of a bride, which can be traced in Greece, and even now is found in the practice of many tribes. In consequence of the protests and grief of Demeter, it was arranged that she should be on earth with her mother two thirds of the year, and one third below with her husband, Hades. This threefold division clearly points to the division of the season in the early times of Greece into spring, summer, and winter (literally, ear, early time; tkeros, hot time; and cheima, either snow-time, from a root extant in Sanscrit, or j^ouring-time, rainy time, from Greek xlw). Thus the principle of vege- tative life manifests itself in spring and summer only. This myth is the most important one that the Greeks had, as it lay at the foundation of the worship and mysteries at Eleusis. We have explained it in its main features to our satisfaction ; but, supposing that we have been successful, the conversion of a recurring physical phenomenon into a historical event which appears in it we find hard to explain. We may say the gods be- came persons : their attributes, before physical, are now personal attributes; what they do must have a histori- cal quality, must be like human actions ; so that if any- thing physical was attributed to them before, it would be incongruous with their new personal, non-physical nature. But still this turning-point is dark to us, be- cause we are other men than those of the mythological period; we have no longer the mythological faculty in its full exercise — nay, it is all but dead. The anthro- pomorphic tendency — which men cannot escape from in speaking of the God of the Scriptures whenever they are exalted in their feelings — aided the mythological process, as well as the desire to express an object of worship in human form. But this pertains rather to the article Polytheism, where it will be spoken of more at length.