CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



by a sleepless dragon. The most renowned 

 heroes of the time, including Hercules and The- 

 seus, united with Jason in the enterprise ; and the 

 adventurers were called Argonauts, after the 

 vessel which was built for it. When they arrived, 

 the king, ^Eetes, promised to give Jason the fleece 

 if he would yoke two fire-breathing oxen, with 

 brazen feet, plough with them a piece of land, sow 

 in the furrows the teeth of the dragon slain by 

 Cadmus, and vanquish the warriors that would 

 spring from this seed. Medea, the daughter of 

 ^etes, who was skilled in magical arts, when her 

 father still delayed to surrender the fleece, put the 

 dragon to sleep, seized the treasure, and set sail 

 with the adventurers, ^etes pursued them in 

 vain ; and after much circuitous voyaging, they 

 safely reached their home. 



THE SIEGE OF TROY. 



The sacred city of Ilium, or Troy, was built on 

 a plain in Asia Minor, near the shores of the 

 Hellespont. On one occasion, as Paris, the son 

 of Priam the king, was tending the sheep on 

 Mount Ida, the three goddesses, Juno, Minerva, 

 and Venus, were brought thither, that he might 

 decide a dispute that had occurred as to which 

 was the most beautiful He awarded the palm to 

 Venus, who thereupon promised him the posses- 

 sion of Helen, wife of the Spartan Menelaus, the 

 fairest of living women. Paris then visited Sparta, 

 and during a temporary absence of Menelaus, 

 Venus brought about an intrigue between Helen 

 and the guest, and they eloped, taking with them 

 a large sum of money. The king, hearing of this 

 perfidious abuse of his hospitality, hastened home ; 

 the outrage was made known throughout Greece, 

 and its princes were solicited to aid in avenging 

 it. Ten years were spent in preparing an expe- 

 dition, and ten more in besieging Troy. The god- 

 desses Juno and Minerva took an active part on 

 the side of the Greeks. Among their heroes were 

 Ajax and Diomedes, and the sagacious Nestor ; 

 while Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, and the 

 commander-in-chief, had a high reputation for 

 valour and prudence. But the most conspicuous 

 of all were Achilles and Ulysses (Odysseus). 

 Achilles was a beautiful youth, born of a goddess, 

 swift of foot, fierce in temper, and irresistible in 

 strength ; Ulysses, no less efficient from his wis- 

 dom and eloquence, and the combination of daring 

 courage with deep scheming. Among the Tro- 

 jans, the most striking hero was Hector, a son of 

 Priam, forming a well-marked contrast with his 

 effeminate brother Paris. 



Troy was to remain invincible so long as a cer- 

 tain statue of Minerva, called Palladium, remained 

 in the citadel. The daring Ulysses found means 

 to enter the city, and steal this away. Another 

 stratagem secured the victory. The Greeks, by his 

 direction, constructed a great hollow wooden horse, 

 in which they placed a hundred of their best war- 

 riors, the rest sailing away, under pretence of 

 abandoning the siege. The Trojans were sorely 

 puzzled with the great horse, which they brought 

 into the city, making a breach in the walls to 

 admit it During a night of riotous festivity, 

 the signal was given for the return of the 

 Greeks by one whom they had left for that pur- 

 pose ; the warriors rushing out of the horse, were 

 joined by the rest, and the city was overpowered. 



88 



Troy was utterly destroyed, and Helen resume 

 her union with Menelaus. 



The return of the Grecian chiefs from Tr 

 furnished poetical materials hardly less copiou; 

 than the siege itself. Many suffered shipwreck r 

 attempting to reach their homes ; and those wl 

 succeeded, found their places occupied by usurper 

 their lands overrun by enemies, or wasted by 

 neglect, their families ruined by jealousy and dis- 

 cord, and their cities distracted by faction and 

 sedition. 



How these legends of gods and heroes were 

 originated ; whether they are to be understood as 

 pure fictions, or as intended to convey certain 

 truths, are questions that have occasioned end- 

 less discussion. As early at least as the age 

 of the Homeric poems, they had come to be 

 understood in their literal sense. It was only 

 at a comparatively late period that the legends, 

 in their literal sense, began to shock the moral 

 feelings, and to appear incredible as narra- 

 tives. Attempts were then made to soften down 

 the offensive parts by allegorical interpretations, 

 and to remove the inconsistencies of the narra- 

 tives by a multitude of assumptions, as destitute 

 of evidence as the legends themselves. The 

 legends were thus rationalised and digested by 

 later Greek writers into a species of history 

 of the foretime of the Hellenic race, reaching 

 back a thousand years before the date of any 

 authentic record ; and writers on Greek affairs, 

 in modern times, long assumed the legends to be 

 based at least on matter of fact. But the essen- 

 tially fictitious or mythical character of these 

 early products of the Greek mind has of late 

 become generally recognised ; and in the great 

 work of Mr Grote on the History of Greece, 

 all attempt to extract history from the legends is 

 given up as hopeless. They are regarded by him 

 as imagined histories of the past spontaneous 

 creations of the Greek mind, by which it sought 

 to account to itself for the existing state of things. 



Other scholars are not content with this account 

 of their origin, and hold that they were intended 

 by their original utterers to express a real mean- 

 ing. Those respecting the gods were attempts to 

 describe the great appearances of nature chiefly 

 of the sun. They took their rise at a time when 

 every word was a metaphor, and were themselves 

 metaphors, no other mode of expression being then 

 possible ; but when the original and etymological 

 significance of the names came to be lost sight of, 

 the original application was forgotten, and the 

 whole seemed to be spoken of persons. Professor 

 Max Miiller gives as an illustration of the process, 

 the myth of Hellen and Pyrrha, given above. 

 Pyrrha was the most ancient name of Thessaly ; 

 to say, then, that Pyrrha was the mother of Hellen, 

 was in that age the only natural way of saying 

 that the Hellenes came originally from Thessaly ; 

 just as we still say that Italy is the mother of art. 

 When the Greeks ceased to know Thessaly under 

 the name of Pyrrha, the historical fact degenerated 

 into a myth. 



ANCIENT EPIC POETRY OF GREECE. 



Long before the period of literature, the praises 

 of the gods and the exploits of heroes were em- 

 bodied in verse, and sung from generation to gen- 

 eration. The myths passed into the verses of the 



