38 On the Theogony. 



the name of Hesiod before that of Homer, when he assigns tlie following 

 as the peculiar character of their compositions : — "These were the first 

 who. fabricated a Theogony among the Greeks, attributing to tiie gods their 

 titles, distinguishing their honours and arts, and indicating their forms." — 

 (Euterpe, c. 53.) We therefore find a knowledge of this mythological 

 system as developed in its earliest sources, of the very highest importance 

 in the illustration of the later poets, who from hence borrowed almost every 

 thing J even that, which might at first sight have appeared among the bold- 

 est and most original conceptions of subsequent genius, may often be traced 

 to this source. Tbna if we turn to that Grecian drama, which, above all 

 others, bears the especial impress of a powerfully inventive mind, the Pro- 

 metheus of iEschylus, we shall find him indebted to Hesiod, not only for 

 the original fable concerning Prometheus, but those bold personifications, 

 KPATOS and BIA, Power and Force. These inevitable and irresistible 

 ministers of Jove's will had long before been enumerated by Hesiod, 

 among the offspring of Styx and Pallas, in a passage which we shall here- 

 after have occasion to quote, and we shall then see reason to refer them to 

 the very earliest period of this Mythology — a period anterior to the sepa- 

 ration of the various branches of the Indo-European race. One of the 

 most interesting speculations, indeed, connected with the history of the 

 classical Mythology, would be the endeavour to institute a comparative 

 view of the various Theogonies which have descended to us from the an- 

 cient nations, between whom a close connection and frequent interchange 

 of superstitions may be traced, not only in those cases where the affinities 

 of language point them out as the kindred offsets of a single great national 

 family ; but even where the affinity is so much more remote as scarcely to 

 be traceable by the comparison of languages.* Thus we shall find the dis- 

 tinct national families of Phoenicia and Egypt, often exhibiting the most 

 manifest mythological agreement with the various branches of that widely 

 spread and very remarkable original race, which, having its probable cradle 

 in India or Persia, has diffused languages marked by the most evident 

 identity of grammatical structure and essential substance over the whole 

 of Europe, with the exception of the small corner occupied by the Basque, 

 and the Tartarian colonists, who early possessed Finland, and in the tenth 

 century invaded and established themselves in Hungary. On the Mythology 



* In the case of Greece, tbis interchange of mythologies is very easily to be ac- 

 counted for. Its earliest civilization was avowedly introduced by foreign colonies 

 from Egypt and Phoenicia. Athens owed its foundation to the EgjT)tian Cecrops, and 

 was by him consecrated to the worship of his native goddess, Neith, whose name the 

 Greeks, by a transposition of letters, converted into Athene, the Roman Minerva. 

 The date of this is placed by the Arundel marbles more than 1500 years before our 

 sera. Within a century, Danaus led a second Egyptian colony to Argos, which was 

 so influential, that Danai became one of the collective names for a large proportion 

 of the southern Grecians. Herodotus (Lib. ii.) informs us, that the Greeks borrowed 

 the titles of their twelve principal gods from Egypt. About the same time, Cadmus 



