HISTORY OF GREECE. 



Besides these, called the twelve great gods of 

 Olympus, there was 

 an indefinite number 

 of others, some of 

 whom were little in- 

 ferior in power and 

 dignity. Such were 

 Helios or Sol, Bac- 

 chus, the Muses, 

 the Nereides, the 

 Nymphs, &c. There 

 were also monsters, 

 the progeny of the 



_ gods as the Har- 



Centaur. p{eSj the Gorgons> 



Cerberus, the Centaurs, the Dragon of the Hes- 

 perides, Xanthos and Balios, the immortal horses, 

 &c. 



Some deities performed special services for the 

 greater gods as Iris, a messenger of the gods ; 

 Hebe, who waited upon them, and filled their cups 

 with nectar ; and the Hone, who guarded the 

 doors of Olympus. 



It was thus that all nature was imagined to be i 

 moving and working through a number of per- I 

 sonal agents ; all things in earth and heaven, as ! 

 well as the earth itself and the solid heaven, were j 

 considered as endowed with appetite, feeling, sex, \ 

 and other attributes of humanity. 



The gods were propitiated by animal sacrifices, i 

 of which the bones only and the fat were pre- ! 

 sented to them; likewise by offerings of fruits, ] 

 oils, and fragrant odours ; and by the dedication 

 of lands and treasures to their service. Every 

 king was the priest of his subjects, and every 

 father sacrificed for his family. 



At the favourite shrines of each particular 

 deity, periodical festivals were celebrated ; and at 

 these festivals, hymns were sung in honour of the 

 god, giving an account of his birth, and of the 

 exploits by which he had manifested his divinity. 

 These legends were for the most part sufficiently 

 silly and grotesque, and sometimes shocking; 

 but they were in harmony with the religious 

 feeling of the believing Greek in the early ages, 

 and were received with unsuspecting reverence. 



As a specimen of these religious legends, we 

 give that connected with the goddess Demeter 

 or Ceres and the Eleusinian mysteries. These 

 mysteries were one of a series of innovations on 

 the primitive Hellenic religion. The native reli- 

 gious worship and ceremonies of the Greeks were 

 simple, open-hearted, calculated for publicity, and 

 of a joyous character, the very opposite of ascetic. 

 But about the sixth century B.C. various religious 

 novelties were introduced into Greece from Egypt, 

 Asia Minor, and Thrace, attaching themselves 

 chiefly to the worship of Bacchus and Ceres. 

 Such were the special mysteries and orgies in 

 honour of some particular god, distinct both from 

 the public and the family solemnities of primitive 

 Greece, celebrated apart from the citizens gener- 

 ally, and approachable only through a certain 

 course of initiation. 



These rites, particularly those in honour of 

 Bacchus, were in many cases furious and ecstatic, 

 especially among the women, who had every- j 

 where occasional meetings of their own, apart 

 from the men. At a stated time every three 

 years, crowds of females, dressed in fawn-skins, 

 and bearing the consecrated thyrsus, flocked to 



the solitudes of Parnassus, Cithaeron, or Taygetus, 

 and passed the night in dancing by torchlight' 

 clamorously invoking the god, and abandoning 

 themselves to the most frantic excitement ; while 

 the men celebrated noisy revels in the streets, 

 playing the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying 

 the image of the god in procession. It was under- 

 stood that those who resisted the inspiration 

 became obnoxious to the displeasure of the 

 god. 



The legend connected with the Eleusinian 

 mysteries was in substance the following : Proser- 

 pina, the daughter of Ceres, had been seized by 

 Pluto while she was gathering flowers in a 

 meadow, and was carried off to become his wife 

 in the world of shades. The disconsolate mother 

 wandered for nine days and nights by torchlight 

 in search of the maiden; and at length Helios 

 (Sol) revealed the truth to her, and, moreover, 

 that Jove had permitted the abduction. Ceres, 

 in anger and despair, renounced the society of 

 Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambrosia, 

 and wandered fasting upon earth. Thus she 

 came to Eleusis, where she was found by the 

 daughters of the prince sitting in the form of an 

 old woman by a well. She said she wanted 

 employment as a nurse, and the damsels effectu- 

 ally used their good offices to have her intrusted 

 with the care of their only brother, a new-born 

 infant. She gave the child no food, but anointed 

 him with ambrosia, and he grew like a god ; every 

 night she plunged him in the fire, and took him 

 out unhurt. She would have rendered him im- 

 mortal, but for the interference of the mother, 

 who one night stealthily witnessed the process. 

 The goddess now revealed herself, and directed 

 that a temple and altar should be erected to her 

 on the neighbouring hill, where she was to be 

 served with orgies of her own prescribing. Her 

 injunctions were obeyed, and she took up her 

 abode in the temple, still pining with grief. She 

 withheld from mortals her beneficent aid ; the 

 barley which was sown that year never sprung 

 up, and the human race was in danger of starva- 

 tion. Jupiter sent various deputations of god- 

 desses to implore her to relent : but she would be 

 satisfied with nothing except the restoration of 

 her daughter, which Jupiter was obliged at length 

 to effect. Ceres was now reconciled both to the 

 gods and to men; the buried seed came up in 

 abundance, and she returned to Olympus. She 

 was obliged, however, to allow Proserpina to 

 spend three months of every year with Pluto, 

 departing always at seed-time. 



ORACLES. 



A distinguishing characteristic that continually 

 meets us in the history of the Greeks, is their 

 anxiety to penetrate the future, and their un- 

 willingness to commence any enterprise without 

 ascertaining that the gods were propitious to it 

 The divine will was supposed to be announced by 

 visions, dreams, and various omens as thunder, 

 lightning, eclipses, the flight or the notes of birds, 

 the entrails of sacrificial victims, but especially 

 by oracles. The most ancient of these oracles 

 was that of Dodona, in Epeirus, where Jupiter 

 announced his will by the whistling of the wind 

 through lofty trees. This oracle was after- 

 wards superseded to a great extent by the one at 



