1850.] Br&hminical Conquerors of India. 29 



the pasture to the elicitation of the productive powers of the earth. 

 Even the biblical assurance that "Noah was a husbandman" is con- 

 firmed to us by the record of the fact of his having "planted a vine- 

 yard ;" and with this license for adopting the vine-type as the index 

 to a settled and civilized existence, I need do no more than cite a 

 parallel, but more familiar, instance* in mythical lore, to prove how 



* Concurrent testimony shows us Hercules as a good type of the mythic process ; 

 he is Egyptian, Theban, Peloponnesian, and Dorian, on which three last Thirlwall 

 (Hist. Greece) is excellent : — he is Phoenician as his name, yercol * the Sinewy,' in 

 Syriac, intimates, (Bishop Cumberland's Sanchoniatho apud Eusebium,) translated 

 apKkrjs : his twelve labours have received an astronomical application to the 

 passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs : in history he is during the heroia 

 period ubiquitous, always in connection with these labours, but not with reference 

 to any astronomical application of them : he is (Sophocles' Trachinise) itoKvitovos 

 the many laboured : in the Philoctetes of the same author he is made to boast 

 painfully of his deeds, while Euripides calling him the mighty (8 k\ziv6s) speaks 

 of him (seethe speech of Lycus in the Hercules Furens) as renowned only for brute 

 force (t&Wu 5' ovSev &\Kifx.os) but famous no otherwise : the reply of Amphitryon, 

 the 1st and 2nd choruses of this play, and the boasts of Hercules himself in it, 

 exhibit the same stamp of character : all is material, as opposed to mental merit : 

 thus Aristophanes in the last Act of his play of ' cuckoo-cloud land' (Aves) makes 

 Hercules, sent on deputation from Olympus with Neptune, and a certain Triballus 

 (a barbarian god who cannot speak Greek) — a bully, a blockhead, a traitor, and a 

 glutton : F. Schlegel (I. p. 318 Geschichte A. and N. Lit.) notes Hercules' strength 

 as a comic attribute, the attribute of mere force without mind, ludicrous from its 

 unmeasured disproportioned excess : — this is a little epitome of the popular Grecian 

 view of this hero, whom I take, in connection with his labours, to be simply a 

 mythic exposition of force used for good ends: all his labours are beneficial, but he 

 is a fool only able to boast of his endurance ; but being always called in to aid the 

 weak, or put down public evils (as we hear ever so-and-so was successful with the 

 help of Hercules) I read in him and his twelve labours merely the lesson of good 

 effects in the application of animal power to benefit instead of oppress mankind, — 

 to which latter purpose it was from evil instinct, first applied. This reading of the 

 meaning of the myth of Hercules was singularly confirmed by the manner in which 

 Chev. Bunsen notes him as appearing (iEg. Stelle. I. 16, Khunsu x& v ) m nis 

 primeval form as attendant on other gods. " Out of all this" says he at the close of 

 his summary, "one sees expressed the character of the intermeddling accompany- 

 ing god, who figures now after Horus, at another time after Thotb." Will this 

 idea, carried out as respects the twelve gods of the second Egyptian Pantheon, in 

 which he first is seen, give us a fresh clue to the meaning of the twelve labours ? — 

 H. T. 



