Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

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"This tendency to deify the powers of Nature is due partly to a
clear atmosphere and sunny climate, which incline a people to
live much in the open air in close communion with all that Nature
offers to charm the senses and excite the imagination; partly to
the character of the people, and partly to the poets who in early
times wrought these legendary tales into works which are read with
increased delight in ages when science and method have banished
the simple faith which procured acceptance for these legends.

"Among the Greeks all these conditions were found existing. They
lived, so to say, out-of-doors; their powers of observation were
extremely quick, and their imagination singularly vivid; and their
ancient poems are the most noble specimens of the old legendary
tales that have been preserved in any country."

This tendency of the Grecian mind is also very happily set forth
in the following lines by PROFESSOR BLACKIE:

The old Greek men, the old Greek men--
No blinking fools were they,
But with a free and broad-eyed ken
Looked forth on glorious day.
They looked on the sun in their cloudless sky,
And they saw that his light was fair;
And they said that the round, full-beaming eye
Of a blazing GOD was there!

They looked on the vast spread Earth, and saw
The various fashioned forms, with awe
Of green and creeping life,
And said, "In every moving form,
With buoyant breath and pulses warm,
In flowery crowns and veined leaves,
A GODDESS dwells, whose bosom heaves
With organizing strife."

They looked and saw the billowy sea,
With its boundless rush of water's free,
Belting the firm earth, far and wide,
With the flow of its deep, untainted tide;
And wondering viewed, in its clear blue flood,
A quick and scaly-glancing brood,
Sporting innumerous in the deep
With dart, and plunge, and airy leap;
And said, "Full sure a GOD doth reign
King of this watery, wide domain,
And rides in a car of cerulean hue
O'er bounding billows of green and blue;
And in one hand a three-pronged spear
He holds, the sceptre of his fear,
And with the other shakes the reins
Of his steeds, with foamy, flowing manes,
And coures o'er the brine;
And when he lifts his trident mace,
Broad Ocean crisps his darkling face,
And mutters wrath divine;
The big waves rush with hissing crest,
And beat the shore with ample breast,
And shake the toppling cliff:

A wrathful god has roused the wave--
Vain is all pilot's skill to save,
And lo! a deep, black-throated grave
Ingulfs the reeling skiff."
Anon the flood less fiercely flows,
The rifted cloud blue ether shows,
The windy buffets cease;
Poseidon chafes his heart no more,
His voice constrains the billows' roar,
And men may sail in peace.

[Footnote: Pos-ei'don, another name for Neptune, the sea-god.]

In the old oak a Dryad dwelt;
The fingers of a nymph were felt
In the fine-rippled flood;
At drowsy noon, when all was still,
Faunus lay sleeping on the hill,
And strange and bright-eyed gamesome creatures,
With hairy limbs and goat-like features,
Peered from the prickly wood.

[Footnote: The Sa'tyrs.]

Thus every power that zones the sphere
With forms of beauty and of fear,
In starry sky, on grassy ground,
And in the fishy brine profound,
Were, to the hoar Pelasgic men
That peopled erst each Grecian glen,
GODS--or the actions of a god:
Gods were in every sight and sound
And every spot was hallowed ground
Where these far-wandering patriarchs trod.

But all this fairy world has passed away, to live only as shadows
in the realms of fancy and of song. SCHILLER gives expression to
the poet's lament in the following lines:

Art thou, fair world, no more?
Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face!
Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore
Can we the footsteps of sweet Fable trace!
The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;
Vainly we search the earth, of gods bereft;
Where once the warm and living shapes were rife
Shadows alone are left.

The Latin poet OV'ID, who lived at the time of the Christian era,
has collected from the fictions of the early Greeks and Oriental
nations, and woven into one continuous history, the pagan accounts
of the Creation, embracing a description of the primeval world,
and the early changes it underwent, followed by a history of the
four eras or ages of primitive mankind, the deluge of Deuca'lion,
and then onward down to the time of Augustus Caesar. This great
work of the pagan poet, called The Metamorphoses, is not only the
most curious and valuable record extant of ancient mythology, but
some have thought they discovered, in every story it contains, a
moral allegory; while others have attempted to trace in it the
whole history of the Old Testament, and types of the miracles and
sufferings of our Savior. But, however little of truth there may
be in the last of these suppositions, the beautiful and impressive
account of the Creation given by this poet, of the Four Ages of
man's history which followed, and of the Deluge, coincides in so
many remarkable respects with the Bible narrative, and with
geological and other records, that we give it here as a specimen
of Grecian fable that contains some traces of true history. The
translation is by Dryden:

Account of the Creation.

Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature--if a face--
Rather, a rude and indigested mass;
A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,
Of jarring elements, and CHAOS named.

No sun was lighted up the world to view,
Nor moon did yet her blunted horns renew,
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky,
Nor, poised, did on her own foundations lie,
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was impressed;
All were confused, and each disturbed the rest.

Thus disembroiled they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace,
And foes are sundered by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky;
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire,
Whose atoms from inactive earth retire;
Earth sinks beneath and draws a numerous throng
Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the god--whatever god was he--
Had formed the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round;
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs and standing lakes,
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some parts in earth are swallowed up; the most,
In ample oceans disembogued, are lost.
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods Jove fills the vacant sky;
New herds of beasts sends the plains to share;
New colonies of birds to people air;
And to their cozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest;
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy.
Thus while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.

FOUR AGES OF MAN.

The poet now describes the Ages, or various epochs in the
civilization of the human race. The first is the Golden Age, a
period of patriarchal simplicity, when Earth yielded her fruits
spontaneously, and spring was eternal.

The GOLDEN AGE was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear.
His words were simple and his soul sincere;
Needless were written laws where none oppressed;
The law of man was written on his breast.
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard,
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.

No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound;
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound;
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow;
The flowers, unsown, in fields and meadows reigned,
And western winds immortal spring maintained.

The next; or the Silver Age, was marked by the change of seasons,
and the division and cultivation of lands.

Succeeding times a SILVER AGE behold,
Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear,
And spring was but a season of the year;
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow,
The wings of wind were clogged with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driven,
Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses then were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds.
Then ploughs for seed the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labored first beneath the yoke.

Then followed the Brazen Age, which was an epoch of war and
violence.

To this came next in course the BRAZEN AGE;
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet.

According to He'siod, the next age is the Heroic, in which the
world began to aspire toward better things; but OVID omits this
altogether, and gives, as the fourth and last, the Iron Age, also
called the Plutonian Age, full of all sorts of hardships and
wickedness. His description of it is as follows:

Hard steel succeeded then,
And stubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, Modesty, and Shame the world forsook;
Fraud, Avarice, and Force their places took.
Then sails were spread to every wind that blew;
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:
Trees rudely hollowed did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph plough'd the watery plain.
Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone required to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share;
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digged from her entrails first the precious ore;
(Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid),
And that alluring ill to sight displayed:
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold;
And double death did wretched man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed.
Now (brandished weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands:
No rights of hospitality remain;
The guest by him who harbored him is slain;
The son-in-law pursues the father's life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife;
The step-dame poison for the son prepares,
The son inquires into his father's years.
Faith flies, and Piety in exile mourns;
And Justice, here oppressed, to heaven returns.

The Scriptures assert that the wickedness of mankind was the cause
of the Noachian flood, or deluge. So, also, we find that, in Grecian
mythology, like causes led to the deluge of Deuca'lion. Therefore,
before giving Ovid's account of this latter event, we give, from
Hesiod, a curious account of

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO THE WORLD.

It appears from the legend that, during a controversy between
the gods and men, Pro-me'theus, [Footnote: In most Greek proper
names ending in 'eus', the 'eus' is pronounced in one syllable;
as Or'pheus, pronounced Or'phuse.] who is said to have surpassed
all his fellow-men in intellectual vigor and sagacity, stole fire
from the skies, and, concealing it in a hollow staff, brought it
to man. Jupiter, angry at the theft of that which had been reserved
from mortals for wise purposes, resolved to punish Prometheus, and
through him all mankind, to show that it was not given to man to
elude the wisdom of the gods. He therefore caused Vulcan to form
an image of air and water, to give it human voice and strength,
and make it assume the form of a beautiful woman, like the immortal
goddesses themselves. Minerva endowed this new creation with
artistic skill, Venus gave her the witchery of beauty, Mercury
inspired her with an artful disposition, and the Graces added
all their charms. But we append the following extracts from the
beautifully written account by Hesiod, beginning with the command
which Jupiter gave to Vulcan, the fire-god:

Thus spoke the sire, whom heaven and earth obey,
And bade the fire-god mould his plastic clay;
In-breathe the human voice within her breast;
With firm-strung nerves th'elastic limbs invest;
Her aspect fair as goddesses above--
A virgin's likeness, with the brows of love.

He bade Minerva teach the skill that dyes
The wool with color's as the shuttle flies:
He called the magic of Love's charming queen
To breathe around a witchery of mien;
Then plant the rankling stings of keen desire
And cares that trick the limbs with pranked attire:
Bade Her'mes [Footnote: Mercury.] last impart the Craft refined
Of thievish manners, and a shameless mind.

He gives command--the inferior powers obey--
The crippled artist [Footnote: Vulcan.] moulds the tempered clay:
A maid's coy image rose at Jove's behest;
Minerva clasped the zone, diffused too vest;
Adored Persuasion and the Graces young
Her tapered limbs with golden jewels hung;
Round her smooth brow the beauteous-tressed Hours
A garland twined of Spring's purpureal flowers.

The whole attire Minerva's graceful art
Disposed, adjusted, formed to every part;
And last, the winged herald [Footnote: Mercury.] of the skies,
Slayers of Argus, gave the gift of lies--
Gave trickish manners, honeyed words instilled,
As he that rolls the deepening thunder willed:
Then by the feathered messenger of Heaven
The name PANDO'RA to the maid was given;
For all the gods conferred a gifted grace
To crown this mischief of the mortal race.

Thus furnished, Pandora was brought as a gift from Jupiter to
the dwelling of Ep-i-me'theus, the brother of Prometheus; and
the former, dazzled by her charms, received her in spite of the
warnings of his sagacious brother, and made her his wife.

The sire commands the winged herald bear
The finished nymph, th' inextricable snare.
To Epimetheus was the present brought:
Prometheus' warning vanished from his thought--
That he disdain each offering of the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man arise.
But he received, and, conscious, knew too late
Th' insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.

In the dwelling of Epimetheus stood a closed casket, which he
had been forbidden to open; but Pandora, disregarding the
injunction, raised the lid; when lo! to her consternation, all
the evils hitherto unknown to mortals poured out, and spread
themselves over the earth. In terror at the sight of these monsters,
Pandora shut down the lid just in time to prevent the escape of
Hope, which thus remained to man, his chief support and consolation
amid the trials of his pilgrimage.

On earth, of yore, the sons of men abode
From evil free, and labor's galling load;
Free from diseases that; with racking rage,
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery's pressure turns the temples gray.
The Woman's hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid--she scatters ill in air.

Hope sole remained within, nor took her flight--
Beneath the vessel's verge concealed from light;
Issued the rest, in quick dispersion buried,
And woes innumerous roamed the breathing world:
With ills the land is full, with ills the sea;
Diseases haunt our frail humanity;
Self-wandering through the noon, at night they glide
Voiceless--a voice the power all-wise denied:
Know, then, this awful truth: it is not given
To elude the wisdom of omniscient Heaven.
--Trans. by ELTON.

PROFESSOR BLACKIE has made this legend the subject of a pleasing
poem, from which we take the following extracts, beginning with
the acceptance by Epimetheus of the gift from Jupiter. The deluded
mortal exclaims--

"Bless thee, bless thee, gentle Hermes!
Once I sinned, and strove
Vainly with my haughty brother
'Gainst Olympian Jove.
Now my doubts his love hath vanquished;
Evil knows not he,
Whose free-streaming grace prepared
Such gift of gods for me.
Henceforth I and fair Pandora,
Joined in holy love,
Only one in heaven will worship--
Cloud-compelling Jove."
Thus he; and from the god received
The glorious gift of Jove,
And with fond embracement clasped her,
Thrilled by potent love;
And in loving dalliance with her
Lived from day to day,
While her bounteous smiles diffusive
Scared pale care away.

By the mountain, by the river,
'Neath the shaggy pine,
By the cool and grassy fountain
Where clear waters shine,
He with her did lightly stray,
Or softly did recline,
Drinking sweet intoxication
From that form divine.

One day, when the moon had wheeled
Four honeyed weeks away,
From her chamber came Pandora
Decked with trappings gay,
And before fond Epimetheus
Fondly she did stand,
A box all bright with lucid opal
Holding in her hand.

"Dainty box!" cried Epimetheus.
"Dainty well may't be,"
Quoth Pandora--"curious Vulcan
Framed it cunningly;
Jove bestowed it in my dowry:
Like bright Phoebus' ray
It shines without; within, what wealth
I know not to this day."

It will be observed in what follows that the poet does not strictly
adhere to the legend as given by Hesiod, in which it is stated
that Pandora, probably under the influence of curiosity, herself
raised the lid of the mysterious casket. The poet, instead,
attributes the act to Epimetheus, and so relieves Pandora of the
odium and the guilt.

"Let me see," quoth Epimetheus,
"What my touch can do!"
And swiftly to his finger's call
The box wide open flew.
O heaven! O hell! What Pandemonium
In the pouncet dwells!
How it quakes, and how it quivers;
How it seethes and swells!
Misty steams from it upwreathing,
Wave on wave is spread!
Like a charnel-vault, 'tis breathing
Vapors of the dead!
Fumes on fumes as from a throat
Of sooty Vulcan rise,
Clouds of red and blue and yellow
Blotting the fair skies!
And the air, with noisome stenches,
As from things that rot,
Chokes the breather--exhalation
From the infernal pot.
And amid the thick-curled vapors
Ghastly shapes I see
Of dire diseases, Epimetheus,
Launched on earth by thee.
A horrid crew! Some lean and dwindled,
Some with boils and blains
Blistered, some with tumors swollen,
And water in the veins;
Some with purple blotches bloated,
Some with humors flowing
Putrid, some with creeping tetter
Like a lichen growing
O'er the dry skin scaly-crusted;
Some with twisted spine
Dwarfing low with torture slow
The human form divine;
Limping some, some limbless lying;
Fever, with frantic air,
And pale consumption veiling death
With looks serenely fair.

All the troop of cureless evils,
Rushing reinless forth
From thy damned box, Pandora,
Seize the tainted earth!
And to lay the marshalled legions
Of our fiendish pains,
Hope alone, a sorry charmer,
In the box remains.
Epimetheus knew the dolors,
But he knew too late;
Jealous Jove himself, now vainly,
Would revoke the fate.
And he cursed the fair Pandora,
But he cursed in vain;
Still, to fools, the fleeting pleasure
Buys the lasting pain!

WHAT PROMETHEUS PERSONIFIED.

PROFESSOR BLACKIE says, regarding Prometheus, that the common
conception of him is, that he was the representative of freedom
in contest with despotism. He thinks, however, that Goethe is
nearer the depth of the myth when, in his beautiful lyric, he
represents Prometheus as the impersonation of that indefatigable
endurance in man which conquers the earth by skilful labor, in
opposition to and despite; those terrible influences of the wild,
elemental forces of Nature which the Greeks supposed were
concentrated in the person of Jove. Accordingly, PROFESSOR BLACKIE,
in his Legend of Prometheus; represents him as proclaiming, in the
following language, his empire on the earth, in opposition to the
powers above:

"Jove rules above: Fate willed it so.
'Tis well; Prometheus rules below.
Their gusty games let wild winds play,
And clouds on clouds in thick array
Muster dark armies in the sky:
Be mine a harsher trade to ply--
This solid Earth, this rocky frame
To mould, to conquer, and to tame--
And to achieve the toilsome plan
My workman shall be MAN.

"The Earth is young. Even with these eyes
I saw the molten mountains rise
From out the seething deep, while Earth
Shook at the portent of their birth.
I saw from out the primal mud
The reptiles crawl, of dull, cold blood,
While winged lizards, with broad stare,
Peered through the raw and misty air.
Where then was Cretan Jove? Where then
This king of gods and men?

"When, naked from his mother Earth,
Weak and defenceless, man crept forth,
And on mis-tempered solitude
Of unploughed field and unclipped wood
Gazed rudely; when; with brutes, he fed
On acorns, and his stony bed
In dark, unwholesome caverns found,
No skill was then to tame the ground,
No help came then from him above--
This tyrannous, blustering Jove.

"The Earth is young. Her latest birth,
This weakling man, my craft shall girth
With cunning strength. Him I will take,
And in stern arts my scholar make.
This smoking reed, in which hold
The empyrean spark, shall mould
Rock and hard steel to use of man:
He shall be as a god to plan
And forge all things to his desire
By alchemy of fire.

"These jagged cliffs that flout the air,
Harsh granite rocks, so rudely bare,
Wise Vulcan's art and mine shall own
To piles of shapeliest beauty grown.
The steam that snorts vain strength away
Shall serve the workman's curious sway,
Like a wise child; as clouds that sail
White-winged before the summer gale,
The smoking chariot o'er the land
Shall roll at his command.

"'Blow, winds, and crack your checks!' my home
Stands firm beneath Jove's rattling dome,
This stable Earth. Here let me work!
The busy spirits that eager lurk
Within a thousand laboring breasts
Here let me rouse; and whoso rests
From labor, let him rest from life.
To 'live's to strive;' and in the strife
To move the rock and stir the clod
Man makes himself a god!"

THE PUNISHMENT OF PROMETHEUS.

Regarding the punishment of Prometheus for his daring act, the
legend states that Jupiter bound him with chains to a rock or
pillar, supposed to be in Scythia, and sent an eagle to prey
without ceasing on his liver, which grew every night as much as
it had lost during the day. After an interval of thirty thousand
years Hercules, a hero of great strength and courage, slew the
eagle and set the sufferer free. The Greek poet AES'CHYLUS, justly
styled the father of Grecian tragedy, has made the punishment of
Prometheus the basis of a drama, entitled Prometheus Bound, which
many think is this poet's masterpiece, and of which it has been
remarked:

"Nothing can be grander than the scenery in which the poet has
made his hero suffer. He is chained to a desolate and stupendous
rock at the extremity of earth's remotest wilds, frowning over
old ocean. The daughters of O-ce'a-nus, who constitute the chorus
of the tragedy, come to comfort and calm him; and even the aged
Oceanus himself, and afterward Mercury, do all they can to persuade
him to submit to his oppressor, Jupiter. But all to no purpose;
he sternly and triumphantly refuses. Meanwhile, the tempest rages,
the lightnings flash upon the rock, the sands are torn up by
whirlwinds, the seas are dashed against the sky, and all the
artillery of heaven is leveled against his bosom, while he proudly
defies the vengeance of his tyrant, and sinks into the earth to
the lower regions, calling on the Powers of Justice to avenge his
wrongs."

In trying to persuade the defiant Prometheus to relent, AEschylus
represents Mercury as thus addressing him:

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