WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 51 



a truth which affects the monotheistic element, that in the person of Zeus lies 

 the background of the Hellenic polytheism, rather than the polytheistic per- 

 sonages to whom it has been applied. A consciousness of this, no doubt, led the 

 early mythological interpreters of this school to apply the principle of Euhemerus 

 largely to the Old Testament, in such a way only as to recognise the venerable 

 Hebrew patriarchs under various masks of old Pelasgic gods or demigods. 



XXXIII. For the Phoenician influence on the formation of the early Greek 

 theology there is much more to be said. We can, indeed, scarcely imagine a 

 race of such distinguished merchants and navigators, commanding the Greek 

 seas in the early ages of EurojDean civilisation, without supposing some such 

 contagion and ingrafting of religious ideas, as the genius of polytheism was on 

 all occasions prone to invite. We shall, therefore, be disposed to receive 

 favourably any distinct proof, or even probable indication, of the derivation of 

 Greek gods from a Phoenician source ; but we must bear in mind at the same 

 time, that the Phoenicians were known to the Greeks as mere traders, with 

 temporary settlements on the coast of the Mediterranean, and that their 

 character, as exhibited in the Odyssey, was by no means possessed of such 

 attractions as might aid to allure the Greeks to the adoption of any of their 

 peculiar objects of worship. 



XXXIV. The last source of Greek myths, for which a strong claim has 

 recently been put forth by a German of distinguished talent, taste, and 

 learning in this country, is Sanscrit. And here at last some people seem to 

 think, that with all certainty we have got at the true source of the many- winding 

 mythological Nile. But after looking into this matter with all possible care, 

 and with no prejudice whatever (for nothing would please me so much as to 

 catch the infant Mercury in the bosom of a cloud, floating over the shining 

 peak of the Hindoo Koosh, or to hook Proteus in one of his many forms at the 

 mouth of the Ganges), I must -honestly confess, that hitherto the interpreters 

 of Hellenic myths from Sanscrit roots and Vedic similes have inspired me 

 rather with distrust than with confidence. The principal characters of the 

 Hellenic Pantheon tell their own story, to a poetical eye, more obviously and 

 effectively than with the help of a Sanscrit root ; and those few of them which 

 are more doubtful, such as Hermes and Athena, seem to be precisely those in 

 which the Sanscritizing mythologers have most egregiously failed. I consider, 

 therefore, that, while the Vedic mythology, preferably to any other polytheistic 

 system, presents an ample field from which some of the Hellenic legends may 

 be aptly illustrated, and a few, perhaps, correctly interpreted, the attempt to 

 explain the great and prominent phenomena of the Greek Pantheon, by an 

 ingenious application of a few favourite physical ideas variously impersonated 



