characterized as the great inspiration of Mazdeism for the world; "for Ahuramazda is Light, and Light is Truth." Accordingly the hymns attributed to Zoroaster are, it has been truly said, "marked by a solemn earnestness, an awe-struck sense of the deep issues of right and wrong, which contrast with the delight in nature, the vivid imaginativeness, the playful fancy of the Vedic poems."

"There is a terrible consciousness of the conflict going on between Good and Evil, and of the power of both.' The following passages, with reference to purity, taken from the Zendavesta, are very striking. "Thus, O holy Zoroaster, does the law of the Lord take away all the evil thoughts, words, and deeds of a pure man, even as the strong swift wind clears the sky." "Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good-that purity gained by the law of the Lord, to him who cleanseth his own self with good thoughts, words, and works." "But at the bottom of Zoroaster's religion was the poison-root of a Dual-Divinity;" and, as has been truly said, anything approaching the idea of two gods in the universe leads immediately to gross superstition and wild mythology; the unity and grandeur of a pure religion are lost." Accordingly, "Mazdeism, as a power, died at length completely away, and only holds sway now over a few thousands of human beings.

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Some conceptions inherent in the religion of the Zendavesta entering into Judaism, through its contact with Persia at the time of the Captivity, and passing thence into some phases of Christianity, have deeply coloured the poetry of modern Europe, notably that of Dante and Milton, a subject which, at a subsequent period, will again come under our consideration.

1

"The Sacred Poetry of Early Religions," Dean Church. 2 "The Unknown God," C. L. Brace.

HELLAS.

HOMER.

THE affinity between the languages of the Indian and the Hellenic branches of the Aryas, together with the elements common to their respective mythologies, have led me to dwell at some length upon the Vedic Hymns, one of the earliest fountains of song accessible to us.

The sacred lays of which tradition tells, as sung to the Hellenes by legendary bards, may have been echoes of those to which their progenitors had listened before their departure from the common Aryan home.

Orpheus, the most illustrious of these ancient minstrels, the reputed author of the sacred or sacerdotal hymn, being the Hellenic form for the Indian Ribhu; "the Ribhus figuring in the Indian hymns as great artificers, the first men who were made immortal." i

Various Epic poems, anterior to Homer, were known to the ancients, which, in addition to the existing Homeric poems, were, as early as the seventh century B.C., attributed to him. Of these all have perished, except the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," which are characterized by Mr. Grote as those two unrivalled diamonds, whose brightness, dimming all the rest, has alone sufficed to confer imperishable glory even upon the earliest phase of Grecian life."

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Into the so-called Homeric question as to the date and authorship of the Homeric poems, together with the various theories which have arisen both in Germany and

1 Homer, R. C. Jebb.

England, as to their growth and development, I shall not enter. Irrespective of their origin, the deepest interest attaches to the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," as exhibiting the earliest European stage, accessible to us through literature, of Humanity's grand onward march, which, under the guidance of the poets, it is my purpose to follow through successive ages down to the present time.

Wonderful indeed, and deserving of careful study, is the spectacle presented to our imagination by the picture of the prehistoric Hellenes, as delineated in these ancient poems. If we glance first at the Homeric theology, we find the great Nature-powers, derived from various sources, the impersonations of which in the Vedic Mythology are scarcely recognizable as distinct personalities, metamorphosed into the Hierarchy of the Olympian Deities, every member of which is a living individuality, endowed with special characteristics.

Of these wonderful transformations a few examples must suffice. The undivided Aryas, we are told, had two names for the vault of heaven; Dyaus, the bright sky of day, which has been identified with the Homeric Zeus, the head of the Olympian Hierarchy; and Varuna, the overarching canopy of night, worshipped in the torrid East, among other impersonations of the great Nature-powers, as a supreme deity, and who re-appears in the Olympian system in the subordinate form of Uranus. The elemental character of Pallas Athene is universally recognized by scholars, among whom Profs. Max Müller and Welcker identify her respectively with the Dawn and the Ether, while by others she is regarded as the deified impersonation of the Lightning. The Hellenic Demeter has been identified with the Dyâvâ Mâter, the mother, corresponding to the Dyaus Pitar, the father, of Sanskrit mythology. Among the remaining deities of Olympus, also impersonations of the great Nature-powers, some, as we learn from the cuneiform tablets and from other sources, are of Syrian and Babylonian origin, and were introduced into Hellas, for

the most part, by the Phoenicians. Thus Apollo and Dionysus have been traced respectively to the Syrian and the Assyrian Sun-god. Istar, originally the Accadian impersonation of the evening star, after a variety of transformations, appears in the Homeric mythology under her twofold aspect as Artemis, "the arrowpouring goddess," the ministress of death, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and of love; while Adar, originally a solar deity, regarded by the Assyrians as the warrior and champion of the gods, is connected with. the Ares of Hellenic mythology."

Blending the Nature-worship of the Aryas with the religious conceptions of the various populations with whom the Hellenes had become associated, including ideas derived not only from Babylonian, Assyrian, and Phoenician, but also from Egyptian sources, the poet has combined these diversified elements into his grand Hierarchy of the Olympian divinities, wherein we see reflected the political system of the prehistoric age.

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This transformation of physical into humanized deities, reflected in Hellenic mythology as the dethronement of the Titans, impersonating the elemental forces. of Nature, to make way for the Olympians, has been compared by Welcker to the mysterious process by which the chrysalis passes into its more perfect_form.. "The Nature-god," he says, became enveloped in a web of mythical fable, and emerged as a divine, humanized personality." "For the principle which lies. at the root of this metamorphosis, he points to the gradual development of human nature, to the growing consciousness of freewill, accompanied by the recognition of mind as a higher manifestation of deity than any material phenomena, and consequently of man as the true Shekinah.”2

Involved in this process was the investiture of these

1 "The Hibbert Lectures." 1887. A. H. Sayce.

2 I quote from the Introduction to my translation of the Eschylean Trilogy.

C

ideal personalities with the special attributes, qualities, and functions which harmonized with the Nature-power from which they had severally emerged, and of which they were the deified impersonations. Thus Apollo, "the far-darter," "the Sun in human limbs arrayed,' was worshipped by the imaginative Hellenes, as "the god of life, of poetry, and light," the leader of the Muses, and the guardian of the sacred oracles.

Thus also Artemis-derived originally, as we have seen, from the Accadian Istar-the Moon-goddess, Apollo's sister, and like him an arrow-pouring deity, was arrayed by the Hellenes in an appropriate human form, armed with quiver and bow; while when regarded from a moral point of view, she became the special patroness of Chastity; how potent was the influence attributed to her under this character, appears from the drama of Euripides, where she is represented as the object of passionate devotion to Hippolytus.

Thus, as before observed, every Olympian divinity became the typical embodiment of some special function or attribute of humanity, in harmony with the Naturepowers whence they were derived, while, at the same time, as living personalities, they were endowed with special characteristics. This ascription of will, of distinct personality to the impersonations of the great Nature-powers-who, in the Vedas, while invested with certain moral attributes, being without definite individuality, vanished, lost in one all-embracing system of Pantheism-constitutes a further stage in the development of the religious idea. Nevertheless, this transformation of elemental into humanized divinities was accompanied by very serious drawbacks.

On the first transference of human passion and emotion, together with the conditions of human existence, to the super-mundane sphere, the very conception of divine existence, as absolved from restraint, would tend to the deification of human infirmity, together with the higher attributes of humanity. Of this we have a memorable example in the Homeric Zeus,