Asia, and Tyche, and Ocyröe:
    And Styx, the chief of oceanic streams.
      The daughters these of Tethys and of Ocean,
    The eldest-born: for more untold remain:
    Three-thousand graceful Oceanides
    [185]Long-stepping tread the earth: or far and wide
    Dispersed, they haunt [186]the glassy depth of lakes,
    A glorious sisterhood of goddess birth.
    As many rivers also, yet untold,
    Rushing with hollow-dashing echoes, rose
    From awful Tethys: but their every name
    Is not for mortal man to memorate,
    Arduous; yet known to all the borderers round.
      Now Thia, yielding to Hyperion’s arms,
    Bare the great Sun and the refulgent Moon:
    And Morn, that scatters wide the rosy light
    To men that walk the earth, and deathless gods
    Whose mansion is yon ample firmament.
      Eurybia, noble goddess, blending love
    With Crius, gave the great Astræus birth,
    Pallas the god, and Perses, wise in lore.
      The Morning to Astræus bare the Winds
    Of spirit untamed: [187]East, West, and South, and North
    Cleaving his rapid course: a goddess thus
    Embracing with a god. Last, Lucifer
    Sprang radiant from the dawn-appearing Morn:
    And all the glittering stars that gird the heaven.
      Styx, ocean-nymph, with Pallas mingling love,
    Bare Victory, whose feet are beautiful
    In palaces: and Zeal, and Strength, and Force,
    Illustrious children. [188]Not apart from Jove
    Their mansion is: nor is there seat, or way,
    But he before them in his glory sits
    Or passes forth: and where the Thunderer is,
    Their place is found for ever. So devised
    The nymph of Ocean, the eternal Styx:
    What time the Lightning-sender call’d from heaven,
    And summon’d all th’ immortal deities
    To broad Olympus’ top: then thus he spake:
    “Hear all ye gods! That god who wars with me
    Against the Titans, shall retain the gifts
    Which Saturn gave, and honours heretofore
    His portion midst th’ immortals: and whoe’er
    Unhonour’d and ungifted has repined
    Under Saturnian sway, the same shall rise,
    “As just it is, to honours and rewards.”
      Then first of every power eternal Styx,
    Sway’d by the careful counsels of her sire,
    Stood on Olympus, and her sons beside:
    Her Jove received with honour, and endow’d
    With goodly gifts: ordain’d her the great oath
    Of deities: her sons for evermore
    Indwellers with himself. Alike to all,
    Even as he pledged that sacred word, the god
    Perform’d; so reigns he, strong in power and might.
      Now Phœbe sought the love-delighting couch
    Of Cœus: so within a god’s embrace
    Conceived the goddess. Then arose to life
    The azure-robed Latona: ever mild:
    Gracious to man and to immortal gods:
    Mild from the first beginning of the world:
    Gentlest of all within th’ Olympian courts.
      Anon she bare [189]Asteria, blest in fame:
    Whom Perses to his spacious palace led,
    That he might call her spouse: and [190]she conceived
    With Hecaté. Her o’er all others Jove
    Hath honour’d, and endow’d with splendid gifts:
    With power on earth and o’er the untill’d sea:
    Nor less her glory from the starry heaven,
    Chief honour’d by immortals: and if one
    Of earthly men performing the due rite
    Of victim divination, would appease
    The gods above, he calls on Hecaté:
    To him, whose prayer the goddess gracious hears,
    High honour comes spontaneous, and to him
    She yields all affluence; for the power is hers.
    Whatever gods, the sons of heaven and earth,
    Shared honour at the hands of Jove, o’er all
    [191]Her wide allotment stands: nor whatsoe’er
    Of rank she held, midst the old Titan gods,
    Has Saturn’s son invaded or deprived;
    As was the ancient heritage of power
    So hers remains: e’en from the first of things.
    Nor is [192]her solitary birth reproach:
    Nor less, though singly born, her rank and power
    In heaven and earth and main, but higher meed
    Of glory, since her honour is from Jove.
    She, in the greatness of her power, is nigh
    With aid to whom she lists: whoe’er she wills
    O’er the great council of the people shines:
    And when the mailed men arise to wage
    Destroying battle, she to whom she lists
    Is present, yielding victory and fame;
    And on the judgment-seat with awful kings
    She sits; and when in the gymnastic strife
    Men struggle, the propitious goddess comes
    Present with aid: then easily the man,
    Conqueror in hardiment and strength, obtains
    The graceful wreath, and glad-triumphing sheds
    [193]A gleam of glory o’er his parents’ days.
    She, as she lists, is nigh to charioteers
    Who strive with steeds: and voyagers who cleave
    Through the blue watery vast th’ untractable way.
    They call upon the name of Hecaté
    With vows: and his, loud-sounding god of waves,
    Earth-shaker Neptune. Easily at will
    The glorious goddess yields the woodland prey
    Abundant: easily, while scarce they start
    On the mock’d vision, snatches them in flight.
    She too with Hermes is propitious found
    To herd and fold: and bids increase the droves
    Innumerable of goats and woolly flocks,
    And swells their numbers or their numbers thins.
    And thus, although her mother’s lonely child,
    She midst th’ immortals shares all attributes.
    Her Jove appointed nursing-mother bland
    Of babes, who after her to morn’s broad light
    Should lift the tender lid: so from the first
    The foster-nurse of babes: her honours these.
      Embraced by Saturn, Rhea gave to light
    Illustrious children. [194]Golden-sandal’d Juno,
    [195]Ceres, and Vesta: [196]Pluto strong, who dwells
    In mansions under earth: of ruthless heart;
    [197]Earth-shaker Neptune, loud with dashing waves:
    And [198]Jupiter th’ all-wise: the sire of gods
    And men; beneath whose crashing thunder-peal
    The wide earth rocks in elemental war.
    But them, as issuing from the sacred womb
    They touch’d the mother’s knees, did Saturn huge
    Devour: revolving in his troubled thought
    Lest other one of beings heavenly-born
    Usurp the kingly honours. For from earth
    And starry heaven the rumour met his ear,
    That it was doom’d by Fate, strong though he were,
    [199]To his own son he should bow down his strength.
    Jove’s wisdom this fulfill’d. No blind design
    He therefore cherish’d, and in crooked craft
    Devour’d his children. But on Rhea prey’d
    Never-forgotten anguish. When the time
    Was full, and Jove, the sire of gods and men,
    Came to the birth, her parents she besought,
    Earth and starr’d Heaven, that they should counsel yield
    How secretly the babe may spring to life:
    And how the father’s furies ’gainst his race
    In subtlety devour’d may meet revenge:
    They to their daughter listen’d and complied:
    Unfolding what the Fates had sure decreed
    Of kingly Saturn and his dauntless son:
    And her they sent to Lyctus: to the clime
    Of fallow’d Crete. Now when her time was come,
    The birth of Jove her youngest-born, vast Earth
    Took to herself the mighty babe, to rear
    With nurturing softness in the spacious isle
    Of Crete. So came she then, transporting him
    With the swift shades of night, to Lyctus first:
    And thence, upbearing in her arms, conceal’d
    Beneath the sacred ground, in sunless cave,
    Where shagg’d with thickening woods th’ Egæan mount
    Impends. Then swathing an enormous stone
    She placed it in the hands of Heaven’s huge son,
    The ancient king of gods: that stone he snatch’d;
    And in his ravening breast convey’d away:
    Wretch! nor bethought him that the stone supplied
    His own son’s place; survivor in its room,
    Unconquer’d and unharm’d: the same, who soon
    Subduing him with mightiness of arm,
    Should drive him from his state, and reign himself
    King of immortals. Swiftly grew the strength
    And hardy limbs of that same kingly babe:
    And when the great year had fulfill’d its round,
    Gigantic Saturn, wily as he was,
    Yet foil’d by Earth’s considerate craft, and quell’d
    By his son’s arts and strength, released his race:
    The stone he first disgorged, the last devour’d:
    This Jove on earth’s broad surface firmly fix’d
    At Pythos the divine, in the deep cleft
    Of high Parnassus: [200]to succeeding times
    A monument, and miracle to man.
    The brethren of his father too he loosed,
    Whom Heaven, their sire, had in his frenzy bound:
    They the good deed in grateful memory bore:
    And gave the thunder, and the burning bolt,
    And lightning, which vast Earth had heretofore
    Hid in her central caves. In these confides
    The god, and reigns o’er deities and men.
      Iäpetus ascends the bed of love
    With Clýmene, fair-ankled ocean-nymph:
    She brought forth Atlas: her undaunted son:
    Glorying Menœtius and Prometheus vers’d
    In changeful turns and shifting subtleties:
    And Epimetheus of unwary mind:
    Who from old time became an evil curse
    To man’s inventive race; for he received
    The clay-form’d virgin-woman sent from Jove.
    All-seeing Jove struck with his smouldering flash
    Haughty Menœtius, and cast down to hell;
    Shameless in crime and arrogant in strength.
    Atlas, enforced by stern necessity,
    [201]Props the broad heaven: on earth’s far borders, where
    Full opposite th’ Hesperian virgins sing
    With shrill sweet voice, he rears his head and hands
    Aye unfatiguable: Heaven’s counsellor
    So doom’d his lot. But with enduring chains
    [202]He bound Prometheus, train’d in shifting wiles,
    With galling shackles fixing him aloft
    Midway a column. Down he sent from high
    His eagle hovering on expanded wings:
    She gorged his liver: still beneath her beak
    Immortal; for it sprang with life, and grew
    In the night-season, and repair’d the waste
    Of what the wide-wing’d bird devour’d by day.
    But her the fair Alcmena’s hardy son
    Slew; from Prometheus drove the cruel plague,
    And freed him from his pangs. Olympian Jove,
    Who reigns on high, consented to the deed;
    That thence yet higher glory might arise,
    O’er peopled earth, to Hercules of Thebes:
    And in his honour, Jove now made to cease
    The wrath he felt before; ’gainst him who strove
    In wisdom e’en with Saturn’s mighty son.
      Of yore when strife arose for sacrifice,
    Twixt gods and men, within Mecona’s walls,
    Prometheus wilful [203]parted a huge ox
    And set before the god: so tempting him
    With purpose to deceive: for here he laid
    The unctuous substance, entrails, and the flesh
    Close cover’d with the belly of the hide:
    There the white bones he craftily disposed;
    And with the marrowy substance wrapt them round.
    Then spake the father of the gods and men:
    “Son of Iäpetus!” thou famous god!
    How partial, friend! are thy divided shares!”
    So in rebuke spoke Jupiter: whose thoughts
    Of wisdom perish not. Then answer’d him
    Wily Prometheus, with a laugh suppress’d,
    And well remembering his insidious fraud:
    “Hail glorious Jove! thou mightiest of the gods
    Who shall endure for ever: choose the one
    Which now the spirit in thy breast persuades.”
    He spoke, revolving treachery. Jove, whose thoughts
    Of wisdom perish never, knew the guile,
    Not unforewarn’d: and straight his soul devised
    Evil to mortals, that should surely be:
    He raised the snowy portion with his hands,
    And felt his spirit wroth: yea, anger seiz’d
    His spirit, when he saw the whitening bones
    O’erlaid with cunning artifice: and thence,
    E’en from that hour, the dwellers upon earth
    Consume the whitening bones, when climbs the smoke
    Wreath’d from their flaming altars. Then again
    Cloud-gatherer Jove with indignation spake:
    “Son of Iäpetus! of all most wise!
    Still, friend! rememberest thou thy arts of guile?”
    So spake, incensed, the god, whose wisdom yields
    To no decay: and from that very hour,
    Remembering still the treachery, he denied
    The strength of indefatigable fire
    To all the dwellers upon earth. But him
    Benevolent Prometheus did beguile:
    For in a hollow reed he stole from high
    The far-seen splendour of unwearied flame.
    Then deep resentment stung the Thunderer’s soul;
    And his heart chafed in anger, when he saw
    The fire far-gleaming in the midst of men.
    And for the flame restored, he straight devised
    A mischief to mankind. At Jove’s behest
    Famed Vulcan fashion’d from the yielding clay
    A bashful virgin’s likeness: and the maid
    Of azure eyes, Minerva, round her waist
    Clasp’d the broad zone, and dress’d her limbs in robe
    Of flowing whiteness; placed upon her head
    A wondrous veil of variegated threads;
    Entwined amidst her hair delicious wreaths
    Of verdant herbage and fresh-blooming flowers;
    And set a golden mitre on her brow;
    Which Vulcan framed, and with adorning hands
    Wrought, at the pleasure of his father Jove.
    Rich-labour’d figures, marvellous to sight,
    Enchased the border: forms of beasts that range
    The earth, and fishes of the rolling deep:
    Of these innumerable he there had graven;
    And exquisite the beauty of his art
    Shone in these wonders, like to animals
    Moving in breath, with vocal sounds of life.
    Now when his plastic hand instead of good
    Had framed this beauteous bane, he led her forth
    Where were the other gods and mingled men.
    She went exulting in her graced array,
    Which Pallas, daughter of a mighty sire,
    Known by her eyes of azure, had bestow’d.
    On gods and men in that same moment seiz’d
    The ravishment of wonder, when they saw
    The deep deceit, th’ inextricable snare.
    From her the sex of tender woman springs:
    [204]Pernicious is the race: the woman tribe
    Dwell upon earth, a mighty bane to men:
    No mates for wasting want, but luxury:
    And as within the close-roof’d hive, the drones,
    Helpers of sloth, are pamper’d by the bees;
    These all the day, till sinks the ruddy sun,
    Haste on the wing, “their murmuring labours ply,”
    And still cement the white and waxen comb:
    Those lurk within the cover’d hive, and reap
    With glutted maw the fruits of others’ toil;
    Such evil did the Thunderer send to man
    In woman’s form, and so he gave the sex,
    Ill helpmates of intolerable toils.
    Yet more of ill instead of good he gave:
    The man who shunning wedlock thinks to shun
    The vexing cares that haunt the woman-state,
    And lonely waxes old, shall feel the want
    Of one to foster his declining years:
    Though not his life be needy, yet his death
    Shall scatter his possessions to strange heirs,
    And aliens from his blood. Or if his lot
    Be marriage, and his spouse of modest fame,
    Congenial to his heart, e’en then shall ill
    For ever struggle with the partial good,
    And cling to his condition. But the man,
    Who gains the woman of injurious kind,
    Lives bearing in his secret soul and heart
    Inevitable sorrow: ills so deep
    As all the balms of medicine cannot cure.
    Therefore it is not lawful to elude
    The eye of Heaven, nor mock th’ Omniscient Mind.
    For not Prometheus, the benevolent,
    Could shun Heaven’s heavy wrath: and vain were all
    His arts of various wisdom: vain to ’scape
    Necessity, or loose the mighty chain.
      When Heaven their sire ’gainst Cottus, Briareus,
    And Gyges, felt his moody anger chafe
    Within him, sore amazed with that their strength
    Immeasurable, their aspect fierce, and bulk
    Gigantic, with a chain of iron force
    He bound them down; and fix’d their dwelling-place
    Beneath the spacious ground: beneath the ground
    They dwelt in pain and durance: in th’ abyss
    There sitting, where earth’s utmost bound’ries end.
    Full long oppress’d with mighty grief of heart
    They brooded o’er their woes: but them did Jove
    Saturnian, and those other deathless gods
    Whom fair-hair’d Rhea bare to Saturn’s love,
    By policy of Earth, lead forth again
    To light. For she successive all things told:
    How with the giant brethren they should win
    Conquest and splendid glory. Long they fought
    With toil soul-harrowing: they the deities
    Titanic and Saturnian: each to each
    Opposed, in valour of promiscuous war.
    From Othrys’ lofty summit warr’d [205]the host
    Of glorious Titans: from Olympus they,
    The band of gift-dispensing deities
    Whom fair-hair’d Rhea bore to Saturn’s love.
    So waged they war soul-harrowing: each with each
    Ten years and more the furious battle join’d,
    Unintermitted: nor to either host
    Was issue of stern strife or end: alike
    Did either stretch the limit of the war.
      But now when Jove had set before his powers
    All things befitting; the repast of gods;
    The nectar and ambrosia, in each breast
    Th’ heroic spirit kindled: and now all
    With nectar and with sweet ambrosia fill’d,
    Thus spake the father of the gods and men:
    “Hear me! illustrious race of Earth and Heaven!
    That what the spirit in my bosom prompts
    I now may utter. Long, and day by day,
    Confronting each the other, we have fought
    For conquest and dominion: Titan gods,
    And we the seed of Saturn. Still do ye,
    Fronting the Titans in funereal war,
    Show mighty strength: invulnerable hands:
    Remembering that mild friendship, and those pangs
    Remembering, when ye trod the upward way
    Back to the light: and by our counsels broke
    “The burthening chain, and left the murky gloom.”
      He spake: and Cottus brave of soul replied:
    “Oh Jove august! not darkly hast thou said:
    Nor know we not how excellent thou art
    In counsel and in knowledge: thou hast been
    Deliverer of immortals from a curse
    Of horror: by thy wisdom have we risen,
    Oh kingly son of Saturn! from dark gloom
    And bitter bonds, unhoping of relief.
    Then with persisting spirit and device
    Of prudent warfare, shall we still assert
    Thy empire midst the fearful fray, and still
    In hardy conflict brave the Titan foe.”
      He said: the gods, the givers of all good,
    Heard with acclaim: nor ever till that hour
    So burn’d each breast with ardour to destroy.
    All on that day stirr’d up the mighty strife,
    Female and male: Titanic gods, and sons
    And daughters of old Saturn; and that band
    Of giant brethren, whom, from forth th’ abyss
    Of darkness under earth, deliverer Jove
    Sent up to light: grim forms and strong, with force
    Gigantic: arms of hundred-handed gripe
    Burst from their shoulders: fifty heads up-sprang,
    Cresting their muscular limbs. They thus opposed
    In dreadful conflict ’gainst the Titans stood,
    In all their sinewy hands [206]wielding aloft
    Precipitous rocks. On th’ other side, alert
    The Titan phalanx closed: then hands of strength
    Join’d prowess, and show’d forth the works of war.
    Th’ immeasurable sea tremendous dash’d
    With roaring; earth re-echoed; the broad heaven
    Groan’d shattering: vast Olympus reel’d throughout
    Down to its rooted base beneath the rush
    Of those immortals: the [207]dark chasm of hell
    Was shaken with the trembling, with the tramp
    Of hollow footsteps and strong battle-strokes,
    And measureless uproar of wild pursuit.
    So they against each other through the air
    Hurl’d intermix’d their weapons, scattering groans
    Where’er they fell. The voice of armies rose
    With rallying shout through the starr’d firmament,
    And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts
    Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove
    Curb down his force; but sudden in his soul
    There grew dilated strength, and it was fill’d
    With his omnipotence: [208]his whole of might
    Broke from him, and the godhead rush’d abroad.
    The vaulted sky, the mount Olympus, flash’d
    With his continual presence; for he pass’d
    Incessant forth, and lighten’d where he trod.
    Thrown from his nervous grasp the lightnings flew
    Reiterated swift; the whirling flash
    Cast sacred splendour, and the thunderbolt
    Fell. Then on every side the foodful earth
    Roar’d in the burning flame, and far and near
    The trackless depth of forests crash’d with fire.
    Yea—the broad earth burn’d red, the floods of Nile
    Glow’d, and the desert waters of the sea.
    Round and around the Titans’ earthy forms
    Roll’d the hot vapour, and on fiery surge
    Stream’d upward, swathing in one boundless blaze
    The purer air of heaven. Keen rush’d the light
    In quivering splendour from the writhen flash:
    Strong though they were, intolerable smote
    Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare
    Scorch’d up their blasted vision. [209]Through the void
    Of Erebus, the preternatural flame
    Spread, mingling fire with darkness. But to see
    With human eye and hear with ear of man
    Had been, as on a time [210]the heaven and earth
    Met hurtling in mid-air: as nether earth
    Crash’d from the centre, and the wreck of heaven
    Fell ruining from high. Not less, when gods
    Grappled with gods, the shout and clang of arms
    Commingled, and the tumult roar’d from heaven.
    Shrill rush’d the hollow winds, and roused throughout
    A shaking and a gathering dark of dust;
    Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air,
    Hot thunderbolts and flames, the fiery darts
    Of Jove: and in the midst of either host
    They bore upon their blast the cry confused
    Of battle, and the shouting. For the din
    Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife
    Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof
    Wreak’d there its deeds, till weary sank the fight.
    But first, array’d in battle, front to front,
    Full long they stood, and bore the brunt of war.
    Amid the foremost, towering in the van,
    [211]The war-unsated Gyges, Briareus,
    And Cottus, bitterest conflict waged: for they
    Successive thrice a hundred rocks in air
    Hurl’d from their sinewy grasp: with missile storm
    [212]The Titan host o’ershadowing, them they drove,
    Vain-glorious as they were, with hands of strength
    O’ercoming them, beneath th’ expanse of earth
    And bound with galling chains: [213]so far beneath
    This earth, as earth is distant from the sky:
    So deep the space to darksome Tartarus.
    A brazen anvil rushing from the sky
    Through thrice three days would toss in airy whirl,
    Nor touch this earth, till the tenth sun arose:
    Or down earth’s chasm precipitate revolve,
    Nor till the tenth sun rose attain [214]the verge
    Of Tartarus. A fence of massive brass
    Is forged around: around the pass is roll’d
    A night of triple darkness; and above
    Impend the roots of earth and barren sea.
    There the Titanic gods in murkiest gloom
    Lie hidden: such the cloud-assembler’s will:
    There in a place of darkness, where vast earth
    Has end: from thence no egress open lies:
    Neptune’s huge hand has closed with brazen gates
    The mouth: a wall environs every side.
    There Gyges, Cottus, high-souled Briareus,
    Dwell vigilant: the faithful sentinels
    Of Ægis-bearer Jove. Successive there
    The dusky Earth, and darksome Tartarus,
    The sterile Ocean, and the starry Heaven,
    [215]Arise and end, their source and boundary.
    [216]A drear and ghastly wilderness, abhorr’d
    E’en by the gods; a vast vacuity:
    Might none the space of one slow-circling year
    Touch the firm soil, that portal enter’d once,
    [217]But him the whirls of vexing hurricanes
    Toss to and fro. E’en by immortals loathed
    This prodigy of horror. There too stand
    The mansions drear of gloomy Night, o’erspread
    With blackening vapours: and before the doors
    Atlas upholding heaven his forehead rears,
    And indefatigable hands. There Night
    And Day, near passing, mutual greeting still
    Exchange, [218]alternate as they glide athwart
    The brazen threshold vast. This enters, that
    Forth issues; nor the two can one abode
    At once constrain. This passes forth and roams
    The round of earth; that in the mansion waits,
    Till the due season of her travel come.
    Lo! from the one the far-discerning light
    Beams upon earthly dwellers; but a cloud
    Of pitchy blackness veils the other round:
    Pernicious Night: aye-leading in her hand
    [219]Sleep, Death’s half-brother: sons of gloomy Night
    There hold they habitation, Death and Sleep;
    Dread deities: [220]nor them the shining Sun
    E’er with his beam contemplates, when he climbs
    The cope of heaven, or when from heaven descends.
    Of these the one glides gentle o’er the space
    Of earth and broad expanse of ocean waves,
    Placid to man. The other has a heart
    Of iron; yea, the heart within his breast
    Is brass, unpitying: whom of men he grasps
    Stern he retains: e’en [221]to immortal gods
    A foe. The hollow-sounding palaces
    Of Pluto strong the subterranean god,
    [222]And stern Prosérpina, there full in front
    Ascend: a grisly dog, implacable,
    Holds watch before the gates: a stratagem
    Is his, malicious: them who enter there,
    With tail and bended ears he fawning soothes:
    But suffers not that they with backward step
    Repass: whoe’er would issue from the gates
    Of Pluto strong and stern Prosérpina,
    For them with marking eye he lurks; on them
    Springs from his couch, and pitiless devours.
      There, odious to immortals, dreadful Styx
    Inhabits: refluent Ocean’s eldest-born:
    She from the gods apart for ever dwells
    In far-re-echoing mansions, [223]with arch’d roofs
    Of loftiest rock o’erhung: and all around
    The silver columns lean upon the skies.
      Swift-footed Iris, nymph of Thaumas born,
    Takes with no frequent embassy her way
    O’er the broad main’s expanse, when haply strife
    Be risen, and midst the gods dissension sown:
    And if there be among th’ Olympian race
    Who falsehood utters, [224]Jove sends Iris down
    To bring the great oath in a golden ewer:
    The far-famed water, from steep, sky-capt rock
    Distilling in cold stream. Beneath wide Earth
    Abundant from [225]the sacred river-head,
    Through shades of blackest night, the Stygian horn
    Of ocean flows: a tenth of all the streams
    To the dread oath allotted. In nine streams
    Circling the round of earth and the broad seas,
    With silver whirlpools twined in many a maze,
    It falls into the deep: one stream alone
    Flows from the rock; a mighty bane to gods.
    Who of immortals, that inhabit still
    Olympus top’d with snow, [226]libation pours
    And is forsworn, he one whole year entire
    Lies reft of breath: nor yet approaches once
    The nectar’d and ambrosial sweet repast:
    But still reclines on the spread festive couch
    Mute, breathless; and a mortal lethargy
    O’erwhelms him: but, his malady absolved
    With the great round of the revolving year,
    More ills on ills afflictive seize: nine years
    From ever-living deities remote
    His lot is cast: in council nor in feast
    Once joins he, till nine years entire are full:
    The tenth again he mingles with the blest
    Societies, who fill th’ Olympian courts.
    So great an oath the deities of heaven
    Decreed the water of eternal Styx,
    The ancient stream; that sweeps with wandering waves
    A rugged region: where of dusky Earth,
    And darksome Tartarus, and Ocean waste,
    And starry Heaven, the source and boundary
    Successive rise and end: a dreary wild
    And ghastly: e’en by deities abhorr’d.
      There gates resplendent rise; the threshold brass;
    Immoveable; on deep foundations fix’d;
    Self-framed. Before them the Titanic gods
    Abide, without th’ assembly of the Blest,
    Beyond the gulf of darkness. There beneath
    The ocean-roots, th’ auxiliaries renown’d
    Of Jove who rolls the hollow-pealing thunder,
    Cottus and Gyges in near mansions dwell:
    But He that shakes the shores with dashing surge
    Hailing him son, gave Briareus as bride
    Cymopolía; prize of brave desert.
      But now when Jupiter from all the heaven
    Had cast the Titans forth, huge Earth embraced
    By Tartarus, through balmy Venus’ aid,
    [227]Her youngest-born Typhœus bore; whose hands
    Of strength are fitted to stupendous deeds:
    And indefatigable are the feet
    Of the strong god: and from his shoulders rise
    A hundred snaky heads of dragon growth,
    Horrible, quivering with their blackening tongues:
    In each amazing head, from eyes that roll’d
    Within their sockets, fire shone sparkling: fire
    Blazed from each head, the whilst he roll’d his glance
    Glaring around him. In those fearful heads
    Were voices of all sound, miraculous:
    Now utter’d they distinguishable tones
    Meet for the ear of gods: now the deep cry
    Of a wild-bellowing bull untamed in strength:
    And now the roaring of a lion, fierce
    In spirit: and anon the yell of whelps
    Strange to the ear: and now the monster hiss’d,
    That the high mountains echoed back the sound.
    Then had a dread event that fatal day
    Inevitable fall’n, and he had ruled
    O’er mortals and immortals; but the Sire
    Of gods and men the peril instant knew
    Intuitive; and vehement and strong
    He thunder’d: instantaneous all around
    Earth reel’d with horrible crash: the firmament
    Of high heaven roar’d: the streams of Nile, the sea,
    And uttermost caverns. While the king in wrath
    Uprose, [228]beneath his everlasting feet
    The great Olympus trembled, and earth groan’d.
    From either god a burning radiance caught
    The darkly azured ocean: from the flash
    Of lightnings, and that monster’s darted flame,
    Hot thunderbolts, and blasts of fiery winds.
    Earth, air, sea, glow’d: the billows, heaved on high,
    Foam’d round the shores, and dash’d on every side
    Beneath the rush of gods. Concussion wild
    And unappeasable uprose: aghast
    The gloomy monarch of th’ infernal dead
    Shudder’d: the sub-tartarean Titans heard
    E’en where they stood, with Saturn in the midst:
    They heard appall’d the unextinguish’d rage
    Of tumult, and the din of dreadful war.
    But now when Jove had gather’d all his strength,
    And grasp’d his weapons, bolts, and bickering flames,
    He from the mount Olympus’ topmost ridge
    Leap’d at a bound, and smote him: hiss’d at once
    The horrible monster’s heads enormous, scorch’d
    In one conflagrant blaze. When thus the god
    Had quell’d him, thunder-smitten, mangled, prone,
    He fell: earth groan’d and shook beneath his weight.
    Flame from [229]the lightning-stricken deity
    Flash’d, midst the mountain-hollows, rugged, dark,
    Where he fell smitten. Broad earth glow’d intense
    From that unbounded vapour, and dissolv’d:
    As fusile tin by art of youths above
    The wide-brimm’d vase up-bubbling foams with heat;
    Or iron, hardest of the mine, subdued
    By burning flame amidst [230]the woody dales
    Melts in the sacred caves beneath the hands
    Of Vulcan, so earth melted in the glare
    Of blazing fire. He down wide Hell’s abyss
    His victim hurl’d in bitterness of soul.
    [231]Lo! from Typhœus is the strength of winds
    Moist-blowing: save the South, North, East, and West:
    [232]These born from gods, a blessing great to man:
    Those, unavailing gusts, o’er the waste sea
    Breathe barren: with sore peril fraught to man:
    In whirlpool rage fall black upon the deep:
    Now here, now there, they rush with stormy gale,
    Scatter the rolling barks, and whelm in death
    The mariner: an evil succourless
    To men, who midst the ocean-ways their blast
    Encounter. They again o’er all th’ expanse
    Of flowery earth the pleasant works of man
    Despoil, and fill the blacken’d air with cloud
    Of eddying dust and hollow rustlings drear.
      Now had the blessed Powers of Heaven fulfill’d
    Their toils, for meed of glory ’gainst the gods
    Titanic striving in their strength: and now,
    Earth-counsell’d, they exhort Olympian Jove,
    Of wide beholding eyes, to regal sway
    And empire o’er immortals: he to them
    Due honours portion’d with an equal hand.
      First as a bride the Monarch of the gods
    [233]Led Metis: her o’er deities and men
    Vers’d in all knowledge. But when now the time
    Was full, that she should bear [234]the blue-eyed maid
    Minerva, he with treacheries of smooth speech
    Beguiled her thought, and hid his spouse away
    In his own breast: so Earth and starry Heaven
    Had counsell’d: him they both advising warn’d
    Lest, in the place of Jove, another seize
    The kingly honour o’er immortal gods.
    For so the Fates had destined, that from her
    An offspring should be born, of wisest strain.
    First the Tritonian virgin azure-eyed:
    Of equal might and prudence with her sire:
    And then a son, king over gods and men,
    Had she brought forth, invincible of soul,
    But Jove in his own breast before that hour
    Deposited the goddess: evermore
    So warning him of evil and of good.
      Next led he shining Themis: and she bare
    Order, and Justice, and the blooming Peace,
    The Hours by name: who perfect all the works
    Of human kind: and Destinies, whom Jove
    All-wise array’d with honour: Lachesis,
    Clotho, and Atropos: who deal to men
    The dole of good or ill. To him anon
    Old Ocean’s daughter, amiablest of mien,
    Eurynome, [235]brought the three Graces forth
    Beauteous of cheek: Euphrosyne, Aglaia,
    And Thália blithe: their eye-lids, as they gaze,
    Drop love, unnerving: and beneath the shade
    Of their arch’d brows they steal the sidelong glance
    Of sweetness. To the couch anon he came
    Of many-nurturing Ceres: Proserpine
    The snowy-arm’d she bare: her gloomy Dis
    Snatch’d from her mother, and all-prudent Jove
    Consign’d the prize. Next loved he the fair-hair’d
    Mnemosyne: from her the Muses nine
    Are born: their brows with golden fillets wreath’d;
    Whom feasts delight, and rapture sweet of song.
      In mingled joy with ægis-wielding Jove
    Latona bore [236]the arrow-shooting Dian,
    And Phœbus, loveliest of the heavenly tribe.
      He last the blooming Juno led as bride:
    And she, embracing with the king of gods
    And men, bore Mars, and [237]Hebe, and Lucina.
      He from his head disclosed himself to birth
    The blue-eyed maid, Tritonian [238]Pallas; fierce,
    Rousing the war-field’s tumult; unsubdued;
    Leader of armies; awful: whom delight
    The shout of battle and the shock of war.
      Without th’ embrace of love did Juno bear
    [239]Illustrious Vulcan, o’er celestials graced
    With arts: and strove contending with her spouse
    Emulous. From the god of sounding waves,
    Shaker of earth, and Amphitrite, sprang
    [240]Sea-potent Triton huge: beneath the deep
    He dwells in golden edifice, a god
    Of awful might. Now [241]Venus gave to Mars,
    Breaker of shields, a dreadful offspring: Fear,
    And Consternation: they confound, in rout
    Of horrid war, the phalanx dense of men,
    With city-spoiler Mars. [242]Harmonia last
    She bare, whom generous Cadmus clasp’d as bride.
      Daughter of Atlas, Maia bore to Jove
    [243]The glorious Hermes, herald of the gods;
    The sacred couch ascending. [244]Semele,
    Daughter of Cadmus, melting in embrace
    With Jove, gave jocund Bacchus to the light:
    A mortal an immortal: now alike
    Immortal deities. Alcmena bare
    Strong Hercules: dissolving in embrace
    With the cloud-gatherer Jove. The crippled god,
    In arts illustrious, Vulcan, as his bride
    The gay Aglaia led, the youngest Grace.
    [245]Bacchus of golden hair, his blooming spouse
    Daughter of Minos, Ariadne clasp’d
    With yellow tresses. Her Saturnian Jove
    Immortal made, and fearless of decay.
      Fair-limb’d [246]Alcmena’s valiant son, achieved
    His agonizing labours, Hebe led
    A bashful bride, the daughter of great Jove
    And Juno golden-sandal’d, on the mount
    Olympus top’d with snow. Thrice blest who thus,
    A mighty task accomplish’d, midst the gods
    Uninjur’d dwells, and free from withering age
    For evermore. Perseis, ocean-nymph
    Illustrious, to th’ unwearied Sun produced
    Circe and king Æetes. By the will
    Of Heaven, Æetes, boasting for his sire
    The world-enlightning Sun, Idya led
    Cheek-blooming, nymph of ocean’s perfect stream:
    And she, to love by balmy Venus’ aid
    Subdued, [247]Medea beauteous-ankled bare.
      And now farewell, ye heavenly habitants!
    Ye islands, and ye continents of earth!
    And thou, oh main! of briny wave profound!
    Oh sweet of speech, Olympian Muses! born
    From ægis-wielding Jove! sing now the tribe
    Of goddesses; whoe’er, by mortals clasp’d
    In love, have borne a race resembling gods.
      Ceres, divinest goddess, in soft joy
    Blends with Iäsius brave, in the rich tract
    Of Crete, whose fallow’d glebe thrice-till’d abounds;
    And [248]Plutus bare, all-bountiful, who roams
    Earth, and th’ expanded surface of the sea:
    And him that meets him on his way, whose hands
    He grasps, him gifts he with abundant gold,
    And large felicity. Harmonia, born
    Of lovely Venus, gave to Cadmus’ love
    Ino and Semele: and fair of cheek
    Agave, and Autonöe, the bride
    Of Aristæus with the clustering locks;
    And Polydorus, born in towery Thebes.
      Aurora to Tithonus Memnon bare,
    The brazen-helm’d, the Æthiopian king,
    And king Emathion: and to Cephalus
    Bare she a son illustrious, Phäethon,
    Gallantly brave, a mortal like to gods:
    Whom, while a youth, e’en in the tender flower
    Of glorious prime, a boy, and vers’d alone
    In what a boy may know, love’s amorous queen
    Snatch’d with swift rape away: in her blest fane
    Appointing him her nightly-serving priest;
    The heavenly dæmon of her sanctuary.
    [249]Jason Æsonides, by heaven’s high will,
    Bore from Æetes, foster-son of Jove,
    His daughter: those afflictive toils achieved,
    Which Pelias, mighty monarch, bold in wrong,
    Unrighteous, violent of deed, imposed:
    And much-enduring reach’d th’ Iolchian coast,
    Wafting in winged bark the jet-eyed maid,
    His blooming spouse. She yielding thus in love
    To Jason, shepherd of his people, bare
    Medeus, whom the son of Philyra,
    [250]Sage Chiron, midst the mountain-solitudes
    Train’d up to man: thus were high Jove’s designs
    Fulfill’d. Now Psamathe, the goddess famed,
    Who sprang from ancient Nereus of the sea,
    Bare Phocus; through the lovely Venus’ aid
    By Æacus embraced. To Peleus’ arms
    Resign’d, the silver-footed Thetis bare
    Achilles lion-hearted: cleaving fierce
    The ranks of men. Wreath’d Cytherea bare
    Æneas: blending in ecstatic love
    With brave Anchises on the verdant top
    Of Ida, wood-embosom’d, many-valed.
      Now [251]Circe, from the Sun Hyperion-born
    Descended, with the much-enduring man
    Ulysses blending love, Latinus bare,
    And Agrius, brave and blameless: far they left
    Their native seats in Circe’s hallow’d isles,
    And o’er the wide-famed Tyrrhene tribes held sway.
      Calypso, noble midst the goddess race,
    Clasp’d wise Ulysses: and from rapturous love
    Nausithous and Nausinous gave to day.
      Lo! these were they, who yielding to embrace
    Of mortal men, themselves immortal, gave
    A race resembling gods. Oh now the tribe
    Of gentle women sing! Olympian maids!
    Ye Muses, born from ægis-bearer Jove!

FOOTNOTES

[142] _They lightly leap in dance._] This representation of the Muses is
taken from the ancient custom of dancing round the altar during sacrifice.

[143] _In springs that gush’d fresh from the courser’s hoof._] Hippos was
an Ægyptian title of the sun. This ancient term became obsolete, and was
misapplied by the Greeks, who uniformly applied it to horses. Hippocrene
was a sacred fountain denominated from the god of light, who was the
patron of verse and science. But by the Greeks it was referred to an
animal, and supposed to have been produced by the hoof of a horse. Other
nations, says Athanasius, reverenced rivers and fountains: but above all
people in the world the Ægyptians held them in the highest honour, and
esteemed them as divine. From hence the custom passed westward to Greece,
Italy, and the extremities of Europe. One reason for holding waters
so sacred arose from a notion that they were gifted with supernatural
powers. BRYANT.

[144] _Sire of prophecy._] Phœbus is thought to be derived from Φαος
βιου, light of life: but the Greeks always associated with the name the
_prophetic_ attribute of Apollo: hence they formed from it the word
φοιβαζω, to _prophecy_: as βακχευν, to celebrate orgies or madden, is
formed from βακχος: like the _debacchor_ of the Latins. Lycophron, v. 6:

    Δαφιηφαγων φοιβαζεν εκ λαιμων οπα.

    From foaming mouth with laurel fed
    She pour’d the voice of prophecy.

[145] _And Venus twinkling bland her tremulous lids._] Ελικοβλεφαρος
is explained by Guietus _arcuatis superciliis_: so Creech, in his
translation of a chapter of Plutarch’s Morals, where the verse is quoted;

    And Venus beauteous with her bending brows.

But the Greek for an eyebrow is οφρυς. Robinson more properly interprets
it _orbiculatis palpebris_, with semicircular eye-lids: after the old
scholiast; who conceives it a metaphor drawn from ελιξ: the bending
tendril of ivy or the vine. Le Clerc explains it _volubilibus palpebris_:
and is supported by Grævius, who quotes Petronius in illustration of the
peculiar propriety of the epithet as applied to Venus:

      Blandos oculos et inquietos,
    Et quadam propriâ notâ loquaces.

      Soft and ever restless eyes,
    Still talkative, with language all their own.

Ελισσω is _circumvolvo_, to roll about.

[146] _Ye fleshly appetites._] This degrading address seems to betray a
modern hand. If the proem be genuine, the shepherd’s occupation must have
degenerated in the time of Hesiod from its ancient honourable character.
But it is not likely that an agricultural poet should speak of husbandmen
in these debasing terms. Le Clerc’s apology, that revilings such as
these belong to the manners of primeval simplicity, does not appear very
satisfactory. The poet, whoever he was, meant the address, probably, as
an exhortation to higher pursuits.

[147] _A laurel-bough._] Salmasius observes that they who aspired to
skill in divination, chewed the leaf of the laurel. Its poisonous
quality produced a preternatural action on the nerves, and a convulsion
and frothing at the mouth, favourable to the idea of being possessed
or inspired. As poets feigned a kind of divination, and a knowledge
of supernatural things, the laurel was equally a symbol of poesy and
prophecy: and held sacred to Phœbus, the god of verse and divination. We
find from Pausanias that those poets who did not play on the lyre held a
laurel-bough in their hand, during their public recitations, as the badge
of their profession. Hence probably the term “rhapsodist:” επι ραβδω
αδειν, “_to sing to the branch_.” and a rhapsody seems to have designated
such a portion of verses as the bard would recite at one time. Salmasius
seems therefore mistaken in deriving the word from ραπτειν τας ωδας,
_stitching together songs_: in allusion to the centos which the Homeric
rhapsodists were accustomed to recite from the works of Homer: although
the derivation appears countenanced by Pindar’s expression of ραπτων
επεων αοιδοι, _singers of tissued verses_.

[148] _This tale of oaks._] This seems to have been a proverbial
expression to signify any idle tale or preamble. The Scholiasts
illustrate it from Odyssey xvii. 163, where Penelope asks Ulysses, whom
she does not yet recognise, “whence he is?” and observes,

    Thou comest not from some ancient oak or rock:

in allusion to the fable of men born from trees: originating, possibly,
in children being found exposed in hollow trees and cavities of rocks.
But there is another passage in Homer more to the purpose, Il. xx. 126:

    It is no time from oak or hollow rock
    With him to parley, as a nymph and swain,
    A nymph and swain soft parley mutual hold.

                                       COWPER.

Mr. Bryant explains this passage in Homer by the traditionary reverence
paid to caverns: which in the first ages were deemed oracular temples:
whence persons entered into compacts under rocks and oaks as places of
security. But surely there is no need to go back to the first ages, or to
dive into traditional superstitions for the solution of a circumstance so
extremely obvious, as that of two lovers conversing in the shade. Harmer
in his “Illustrations of the Classics,” vol. iii. of his “Observations
on Scripture,” renders απο δρυος, _on account of_ an oak: instead of
_from an oak_: “when people meet each other on account of some rock or
some tree which they happen upon in travelling.” But the alteration is
quite unnecessary: the word _from_ perhaps indicates that one is resting
under the tree, while the other is passing by. The adage in Hesiod is
expressed “_around_ an oak:” which implies a _number_ of persons. The
rock associated with the oak marks the peculiar climate of Greece and
the East. The shade cast by a rock is described by Eastern travellers as
singularly cool.

[149] _Pieria’s groves._] The Pierians were celebrated for their skill in
music and poetry. Hence Pieria came to be regarded as the birth place of
the Muses. BRYANT.

[150] _Bare the nine maids._] The origin of verse itself, which is to
be sought in the necessity of some mechanical help for the memory at an
æra when letters were not invented, and every thing depended on oral
tradition, obviously accounts for the fiction of memory being the mother
of the Muses. But there is a farther reason. The ancient temples were the
depositaries of all traditionary knowledge. We are told by Homer that
the voice of the Syrens was enchanting, but their knowledge of the past
equally so. The Syrens appear to have been merely priestesses of one of
this description of temples, which stood in Sicily, and was erected on
the sea-shore, answering also the purpose of a lighthouse. The rites
of the temple consisted partly of hymns chanted by young and beautiful
women to the sound of harps and flutes: and it was their office to
entangle by their allurements such strangers as touched upon the coast:
who were instantly seized by the priests and sacrificed to the solar
god. The Syrens are described as the daughters of Calliope, Melpomene,
and Terpsichore; three of the Muses: they were in fact the same with the
Muses. These temples were sacred colleges: sciences were taught there: in
particular music and astronomy. The transition was easy from the young
priestesses of these temples, to blooming goddesses who presided over
history, poetry, &c. See the “Analysis of Ancient Mythology.”

[151] _Soothing eloquence._] This passage is exactly similar to one in
the Odyssey, b. viii.:

                                        Jove
    Crowns him with eloquence: his hearers charm’d
    Behold him, while with unassuming tone
    He bears the prize of fluent speech from all;
    And when he walks the city, as they pass,
    All turn and gaze, as they had pass’d a god.

                                         COWPER.

[152] _The great assembly._] The ancient Grecian princes, as Dionysius
of Halicarnassus remarks, were not absolute like the Asiatic monarchs:
their power being limited by laws and established customs:” and this is
perfectly consonant to the higher authority of Homer. The poet himself
appears a warm friend to monarchical rule, and takes every opportunity
zealously to inculcate loyalty. “The government of many is bad: let
there be one chief, one king.” It is, however, sufficiently evident
that the poet means here to speak of executive government only: “Let
there be one chief, one king,” he says: but he adds, “to whom Jupiter
has intrusted the sceptre and the laws, _that by them he may govern_.”
Accordingly in every Grecian government which he has occasion to enlarge
upon, he plainly discovers to us strong principles of republican rule.
Not only the council of principal men, but the assembly of the people
also is familiar to him. The name _agora_ signifying a place of meeting,
and the verb formed from it to express haranguing in assemblies of the
people, were already in common use; and to be a good public speaker
was esteemed among the highest qualifications a man could possess. In
the government of Phæacia, as described in the Odyssey, the mixture of
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy is not less clearly marked than in
the British constitution. One chief, twelve peers (all honoured, like
the chief, with the title which we translate _king_), and the assembly
of the people, shared the supreme authority. The universal and undoubted
prerogatives of kings were religious supremacy and military command.
They often also exercised judicial power. But in all civil concerns
their authority appears very limited. Every thing, indeed, that remains
concerning government in the oldest Grecian poets and historians, tends
to demonstrate that the general spirit of it among the early Greeks was
nearly the same as among our Teutonic ancestors. The ordinary business
of the community was directed by the chiefs. Concerning extraordinary
matters and more essential interests, the multitude claimed a right to be
consulted. MITFORD, History of Greece, i. 3.

[153] _Harpers and men of song._] Singer was a common name among the
Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and other ancient people, for poet and musician;
employments which were then inseparable: as no poetry was written but
to be sung; and little or no music composed, but as an accompaniment to
poetry. BURNEY, History of Music, 312.

[154]

                                    _Is there one_
    _Who hides some fresh grief._]

This whole passage is found among the fragments attributed to Homer.
This sentiment of the power of poesy and the subjects chosen by the bard
is entirely in the spirit of antiquity, when mythology and heroism were
the favourite themes. Achilles is described by Homer as diverting the
uneasiness of his mind by warlike odes which he accompanied on the lyre,
Il. ix. 189:

                            Arriving soon
    Among the Myrmidons, their chief they found
    Soothing his sorrows with the silver-framed
    Harmonious lyre, spoil taken when he took
    Æetion’s city: with that lyre his cares
    He soothed, and glorious heroes were his theme.

                                            COWPER.

[155] _The servant of the Muse._] Laws were always promulgated in verse,
and often publicly sung; a practice which remained in many places long
after letters were become common: morality was taught: history was
delivered in verse. Lawgivers, philosophers, historians, all who would
apply their experience or their genius to the instruction and amusement
of others, were necessarily poets. The character of poet was therefore
a character of dignity: an opinion even of sacredness became attached
to it: a poetical genius was esteemed an effect of divine inspiration
and a mark of divine favour: and the poet, who moreover carried with
him instruction and entertainment, not to be obtained without him, was
a privileged person, enjoying by a kind of prescription the rights of
universal hospitality. MITFORD.

Yet in the vulgar tradition, Homer is represented as a mere
ballad-singing mendicant! and whoever attempts to refute, by the light of
historic evidence and of reason, this or similar absurdities of modern
ignorance, when sanctioned by popular prejudice, must expect to be set
down as a dealer in paradoxes.

[156] _First of all beings Chaos was._] The ancients were in general
materialists, and thought the world eternal. But the mundane system, or
at least the history of the world, they supposed to commence from the
deluge. The confusion which prevailed at the deluge is often represented
as the chaotic state of nature: for the earth was hid, and the heavens
obscured, and all the elements in disorder. BRYANT.

[157] _Or in the dark abysses of the ground._] Tartarus is considered by
Brucker in his epitome of the Theogony (Historia Critica Philosophiæ,
tom. 1.) as the third birth. Tartarus is, indeed, after introduced as a
person, but in the singular number: the word is here used in the plural,
and I conceive it to mean simply the cavities of the earth, and to be
connected with the preceding sentence.

[158] _The Cyclops brethren._] Thucydides acquaints us concerning the
Cyclopes, that they were the most ancient inhabitants of Sicily, but
that he could not find out their race. Strabo places them near Ætna and
Icontina, and supposes that they once ruled over that part of the island;
and it is certain that a people called Cyclopians did possess that
province. It is generally agreed by writers upon the subject, that they
were of a size superior to the common race of mankind. Among the many
tribes of the Amonians who went abroad, were to be found people who were
styled Anakim; and were descended from the sons of Anak: so that this
history, though carried to a great excess, was probably founded in truth.
They were particularly famous for architecture; and in all parts whither
they came, they erected noble structures, which were remarkable for their
height and beauty: and were often dedicated to the chief deity, the sun,
under the name of Elorus and P’Elorus. People were so struck with their
grandeur, that they called every thing great or stupendous Pelorian
(πελωρος, huge): and when they described the Cyclopians as a lofty
towering race, they came at last to borrow their ideas of this people
from the towers to which they alluded. They supposed them in height to
reach the clouds, and in bulk equal to the promontories on which these
edifices were founded. As these buildings were often-times light-houses,
and had in their upper story one round casement, “like an Argolick
buckler or the moon,” by which they afforded light in the night-season,
the Greeks made this a characteristic of the people. They supposed this
aperture to have been an eye, which was fiery and glaring, and placed
in the middle of their foreheads. What confirmed the mistake was the
representation of an eye, which was often engraved over the entrance of
these temples: the chief deity of Ægypt being elegantly represented by
the symbol of an eye, which was intended to signify the superintendency
of Providence. The notion of the Cyclopes framing the thunder and
lightning for Jupiter, arose chiefly from the Cyclopians engraving
hieroglyphics of this sort upon the temples of the deity. The poets
considered them merely in the capacity of blacksmiths, and condemned them
to the anvil. BRYANT.

The proximity of Ætna doubtless had its share in this delusion, Virg. Æn.
viii. 417:

                              Deep below
    In hollow caves the fires of Ætna glow.
    The Cyclops here their heavy hammers deal:
    Loud strokes and hissings of tormented steel
    Are heard around: the boiling waters roar,
    And smoky flames through fuming tunnels soar.
    Hither the father of the fire by night,
    Through the brown air precipitates his flight:
    On their eternal anvils here he found
    The brethren beating, and the blows go round.

                                          DRYDEN.

[159] _He took the sickle._] In a fragment of Sanchoniatho, the Phœnician
philosopher, translated by Philo the Jew, is recorded this very history
of Uranus and Cronus, or Saturn. De Gebelin, in his “Monde Primitif,”
resolves it, according to his system, into the invention of reaping,
which he supposes Saturn to personify. But Saturn is often represented
with a ship, as well as a sickle; which has no reference to agriculture.
The explanation may, however, be correct, if we consider Saturn not as
a mere figurative prosopopœia of reaping, but as the real person who
restored the labours of harvest; in the same manner as his Greek name
Cronus, which some have thought to intimate a personification of Time,
points out very significantly the person who began the new æra of time:
the great father of the post-diluvian world. The type of the ship on
the ancient coins of Saturn is an apposite emblem of the ark: and the
concealment of the children of Heaven in a cavern seems an obscure
remnant of the same tradition.

[160] _The foam-born goddess._] The name of the Dove among the ancient
Amonians was Iön and Iönah. This term is often found compounded, and
expressed Ad-Iönah, queen dove: from which title another deity, Adiona,
was constituted. This mode of idolatry must have been very ancient, as
it is mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and is one species of
false worship, which Moses forbade by name. According to our method of
rendering the Hebrew term it is called Idione. This Idione or Adione
was the Dione of the Greeks: the deity who was sometimes looked upon as
the mother of Venus: at other times as Venus herself: and styled Venus
Dionæa. Venus was no other than the ancient Iönah: and we shall find in
her history numberless circumstances relating to the Noachic dove, and
to the deluge. We are told, when the waters covered the earth, that the
dove came back to Noah, having roamed over a vast uninterrupted ocean,
and found no rest for the sole of her foot. But upon being sent forth a
second time by the patriarch, in order to form a judgment of the state
of the earth, she returned to the ark in the evening, and “Lo! in her
mouth was an olive leaf plucked off.” From hence Noah conceived his first
hopes of the waters being assuaged, and the elements reduced to order.
He likewise began to foresee the change that was to happen in the earth:
that seed-time and harvest would be renewed, and the ground restored to
its pristine fecundity. In the hieroglyphical sculptures and paintings
where this history was represented, the dove was depicted hovering over
the face of the deep. Hence it is that Dione, or Venus, is said to have
risen from the sea. Hence it is, also, that she is said to preside over
waters, to appease the troubled ocean, and to cause by her presence a
universal calm: that to her were owing the fruits of the earth, and
the flowers of the field were renewed by her influence. The address of
Lucretius to this goddess is founded on traditions, which manifestly
allude to the history above mentioned. BRYANT.

[161] _Love track’d her steps._] What the Greeks called Iris, was
expressed Eiras by the Ægyptians. The Greeks out of Eiras formed Eros,
a god of love, whom they annexed to Venus, and made her son: and
finding that the bow was his symbol, instead of the iris they gave him
a material bow, with the addition of a quiver and arrows. The bows of
Apollo and Diana were formed from the same original. After the descent
from the ark the first wonderful occurrence was the bow in the clouds,
and the covenant of which it was made an emblem. At this season another
æra began. The earth was supposed to be renewed, and Time to return to
a second infancy. They therefore formed an emblem of a child with the
rainbow, to denote this renovation in the world, and called him Eros,
or Divine Love. But however like a child he might be expressed, the
more early mythologists esteemed him the most ancient of the gods; and
Lucian, with great humour, makes Jupiter very much puzzled to account
for the appearance of this infant deity. “Why thou urchin,” says the
father of the gods, “how came you with that little childish face, when I
know you to be as old as Iapetus?” The Greek and Roman poets reduced the
character of this deity to that of a wanton, mischievous pigmy: but he
was otherwise esteemed of old. He is styled by Plato a mighty god; and
it is said that Eros was the cause of the greatest blessings to mankind.
BRYANT.

[162] _Virgin whisperings._] These attributes of Venus suggest a
comparison with the properties of her cestus as described by Homer:

      It was an ambush of sweet snares: replete
    With love, desire, soft intercourse of hearts,
    And music of resistless whisper’d sounds,
    Which from the wisest steal their best resolves.

                                             COWPER.

[163] _Then bare she Momus._] Hesiod has truly painted the nature
of detraction (Momus) in describing it as born from Night. The same
origin is given to Care: because all anxieties are increased in the
night-season: whence Night is styled by Ovid, “the mighty nurse of
Cares.” LE CLERC.

[164] _Th’ Hesperian maids._] The ancient temples in which the sun was
adored often stood within enclosures of large extent. Some of them were
beautifully planted, and ornamented with pavilions and fountains. Places
of this nature are alluded to under the description of the gardens of
the Hesperides and Alcinous. They were also regal edifices: and termed
Tor-chom and Tar-chon; which signified a regal tower, and was of old
a high place or temple of Cham. By a corruption it was in later times
rendered Trachon. The term was still further sophisticated by the
Greeks, and expressed Drachon. The situation of these buildings on a
high eminence, and the reverence in which they were held, made them be
looked upon as places of great security. On these accounts they were
the repositories of much treasure. When the Greeks understood that in
these temples the people worshipped a serpent-deity, they concluded that
Trachon was a serpent: hence the name Draco came to be appropriated to
that imaginary animal. Hence also arose the notion of treasures being
guarded by dragons, and of the gardens of the Hesperides being under the
protection of a serpent. BRYANT.

Perhaps also in these gardens was kept up the ancient Paradisiacal
tradition: as the golden apples and the dragon present an analogy with
the hieroglyphic account given by Moses of the forbidden fruit and the
serpent. This is the more probable, as it is evident this tradition
had mixed itself in the dispersed legends of pagan mythology from the
remarkable coincidence of the “serpent-woman,” considered by the Mexicans
as the mother of the human race, and ranked next to “the god of the
celestial paradise.” The Mexican temples, also, where “the great spirit,”
or sun personified, was worshipped, are described by Humboldt in his
“American Researches,” as raised in the midst of a square and walled
enclosure, which contained gardens and fountains. This mixed worship of
the Paradisiacal serpent may account for a serpent, twisted into the form
of a fillet, being made an emblem of the sun’s disk: and for snaky hair
being typical of divine wisdom: while the tresses were, at the same time,
so disposed as to figure the sun’s rays, and the human visage represented
his orb.

The Hesperian virgins seem the same with the Muses and Syrens, the
priestesses of the temple: and their singing sweetly on their watch, as
described afterwards by Hesiod, alludes to the hymns which they chanted
at the altar. They are made the daughters of Night, because the gardens
were in Afric: which, equally with Italy and Spain, was denominated
_Hesperia_ by the Greeks: and the region of the west was considered as
synonymous with Night.

[165] _Eldest of all his race._] The history of the patriarch was
recorded by the ancients through their whole theology. All the principal
deities of the sea, however diversified, have a manifest relation to him.
Noah was figured under the history of Nereus: and his character of an
unerring prophet, as well as of a just, righteous, and benevolent man, is
plainly described by Hesiod. BRYANT.

[166] _Then rose Thaumas vast._] That beautiful phenomenon in the
heavens, which we call the rainbow, was by the Ægyptians styled Thamuz,
and signified “the wonder.” The Greeks expressed it Thaumas: and hence
was derived θαυμαζω, to wonder. This Thaumas they did not immediately
appropriate to the bow: but supposed them to be two personages, and
Thaumas the parent. BRYANT.

[167] _Phorcys the mighty._] Homer calls him “the old man of the sea:”
and gives precisely the same appellation to Proteus. The character of the
latter varies only from that of Nereus in the quality of transforming
himself into sundry shapes. This may have a reference to the great
diluvian changes, varying the face of nature. The connexion of Phorcys
and Ceto favours the supposition that these three deities are one and the
same personage.

“The ark in which mankind were preserved was figured under the semblance
of a large fish. It was called Cetos.” BRYANT.

_Cetos_ is the Greek term for a whale.

[168] _Rose-arm’d Eunice._] ροδοπῃχυς, _rosy-elbow’d_: this epithet,
together with that of ροδοδακτυλος, _rosy-fingered_, was derived from
the artificial custom of staining the elbow and tops of the fingers with
rose-colour. In Dallaway’s Constantinople it is remarked of the modern
Greek girls “that the nails both of the fingers and the feet are always
stained of a rose-colour:” a curious vestige of Grecian antiquity.

[169] _Nereid nymphs._] Spenser, in his “Spousals of the Thames and
Medway,” b. 4. cant. ii. of the “Faery Queen,” has imposed on himself
a task, from which a translator would fain escape: and has transposed
into his stanzas the whole fifty Nereids of Hesiod, together with his
catalogue of Rivers.

[170] _The sister-harpies._] The harpies were priests of the sun: they
were denominated from their seat of residence, which was an oracular
temple called Harpi. The representation of them as winged animals was
only the insigne of the people, as the eagle and vulture were of the
Ægyptians. They seem to have been a set of rapacious persons, who for
their repeated acts of violence and cruelty were driven out of Bithynia,
their country. BRYANT.

[171] _The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray._] The circumstance of their
being gray seems to be explained by a passage of Æschylus, who describes
them as half-women, half-swans:

                          The Gorgonian plains
    Of Cisthine, where dwell the Phorcydes
    Swan-form’d, three ancient nymphs, one common eye
    Their portion.

                                  _Prometheus Chained._

“This history relates to an Amonian temple founded in the extreme parts
of Africa, in which there were three priestesses of Canaänitish race, who
on that account are said to be in the shape of swans: the swan being the
insigne under which their country was denoted. The notion of their having
but one eye among them took its rise from a hieroglyphic very common
in Ægypt and Canaän: this was the representation of an eye, which was
engraved on the pediment of their temples.” BRYANT.

The Gorgons were probably similar personages: they are described by
Æschylus with wings and serpentine locks: attributes apparently borrowed
from the emblematical devices in the temples of Ægypt. Gorgon was a title
of Minerva at Cyrene in Lybia.

[172]

                            _When Perseus smote_
    _Her neck._]

The island of Seriphus is represented as having once abounded with
serpents; and it is styled by Virgil in his Ciris _serpentifera_: it had
this epithet, not on account of any real serpents, but according to the
Greeks, from Medusa’s head, which was brought thither by Perseus. By this
is meant the serpent-deity, whose worship was here introduced by a people
called Peresians. It was usual with the Ægyptians to describe upon the
architrave of their temples some emblem of the deity who there presided:
among others the serpent was esteemed a most salutary emblem, and they
made use of it to signify superior skill and knowledge. A beautiful
female countenance surrounded with an assemblage of serpents was made
to denote divine wisdom. Many ancient temples were ornamented with this
curious hieroglyphic. These devices upon temples were often esteemed as
talismans, and supposed to have a hidden influence by which the building
was preserved. In the temple of Minerva, at Tigea, was some sculpture of
Medusa, which the goddess was said to have given to preserve the city
from ever being taken in war. It was probably from this opinion that
the Athenians had the head of Medusa represented on the walls of their
Acropolis; and it was the insigne of many cities, as we find from ancient
coins. Perseus was one of the most ancient heroes in the mythology of
Greece: the merit of whose supposed achievements the Helladians took to
themselves, and gave out that he was a native of Argos. Herodotus more
truly represents him as an Assyrian; by which is meant a Babylonian. Yet
he resided in Ægypt, and is said to have reigned at Memphis. To say the
truth, he was _worshipped_ at that place: for Perseus was a title of the
deity, and was no other than the Sun, the chief god of the gentile world.
His true name was Perez; rendered Peresis, Perses, and Perseus: and in
the account given of this personage we have the history of the Peresians
in their several peregrinations; who were no other than the Heliadæ and
Osirians. It is a mixed history in which their forefathers are alluded
to: particularly their great progenitor, the father of mankind. He was
supposed to have had a renewal of life: they therefore described Perseus
as enclosed in an ark and exposed in a state of childhood on the waters,
after having been conceived in a shower of gold. BRYANT.

[173] _The great Chrysaor._] Chus by the Ægyptians and Canaanites was
styled Or-chus, and Chus-or: the latter of which was expressed by the
Greeks by a word more familiar to their ear Chrusor; as if it had a
reference to gold. This name was sometimes changed into Chrusaor: and
occurs in many places where the Cuthites were known to have settled. They
were a long time in Ægypt: and we read of a Chrusaor in those parts, who
is said to have sprung from the blood of Medusa. We meet with the same
Chrusaor in the regions of Asia Minor, especially among the Carians: in
those parts he was particularly worshipped, and said to have been the
first deified mortal. The Grecians borrowed this term, and applied it
to Apollo: and from this epithet, Chrusaor, he was denominated the god
of the golden sword. This weapon was at no time ascribed to him, nor is
he ever represented with one either on a gem or marble. He is described
by Homer in the hymn to Apollo, as wishing for a harp and a bow. There
is never any mention made of a sword, nor was the term Chrusaor of
Grecian etymology. Since, then, we may be assured that Chus was the
person alluded to, we need not wonder that so many cities, where Apollo
was particularly worshipped, should be called Chruse, and Chrusopolis.
Nor is this observable in cities only, but in rivers. It was usual in
the first ages to consecrate rivers to deities, and to call them after
their names. Hence many were denominated from Chrusorus: which by the
Greeks was changed to χρυσορροας, _flowing with gold_: and from this
mistake, the Nile was called _Chrusorrhoas_, which had no pretensions to
gold. In all the places where the sons of Chus spread themselves, the
Greeks introduced some legend about gold. Hence we read of a _golden_
fleece at Colchis: _golden_ apples at the Hesperides: at Tartessus a
_golden_ cup: and at Cuma in Campania a _golden_ branch. But although
this repeated mistake arose in great measure from the term Chusus being
easily convertible into Chrusus, there was another obvious reason for
the change. Chus was by many of the Eastern nations expressed Cuth; and
his posterity, the Cuthim. This term, in the ancient Chaldaic and other
Amonian languages, signified _gold_: and hence many cities and countries
where the Cuthites settled were described as golden. BRYANT.

[174] _And Pegasus the steed._] Pegasus received its name from a
well-known emblem, the horse of Poseidon: by which we are to understand
an ark or ship. “By horses,” says Artemidorus, “the poets mean ships:”
and hence it is that Poseidon is called Hippius; for there is a strict
analogy between the poetical or winged horse on land, and a real ship in
the sea. Hence it came that Pegasus was esteemed the horse of Poseidon
(Neptune), and often named _scuphius_; a name which relates to a ship,
and shows the purport of the emblem. The ark, we know, was preserved by
divine providence from the sea, which would have overwhelmed it: and as
it was often represented under this symbol of a horse, it gave rise to
the fable of the two chief deities, Jupiter and Neptune, disputing about
horses. BRYANT.

To this we may add the still more remarkable fable of the dispute between
Neptune and Pallas: when the former produces a horse, and the latter
an olive-tree. “These notions,” observes the author of the Analysis,
“arose from emblematical descriptions of the deluge, which the Grecians
had received by tradition: but what was general they limited, and
appropriated to particular places.”

[175] _Old Nilus’ fountains._] Ωκεανου περι πηγας. Le Clerc remarks that
“this derivation is absurd: as we do not talk of the fountains of the
sea, but of rivers.” He adds, however, that “Hesiod more than once calls
the ocean the river:” and this should have led him to perceive that it is
in fact a river of which Hesiod speaks. The oceanic river was the Nile,
which in very ancient times was called the Oceanus.

[176] _Geryon rose._] One of the principal and most ancient settlements
of the Amonians upon the ocean was at Gades; where a prince was supposed
to have reigned, named Geryon. The harbour at Gades was a very fine one,
and had several tor, or towers, to direct shipping: and as it was usual
to imagine the deity to whom the temple was erected to have been the
builder, this temple was said to have been built by Hercules. All this
the Grecians took to themselves. They attributed the whole to Hercules
of Thebes: and as he was supposed to conquer wherever he came, they made
him subdue Geryon: and changing the tor or towers into so many head of
cattle, they describe him as leading them off in triumph. Tor-keren
signified a regal tower; and this being interpreted τρικαρηνος, this
personage was in consequence described with three heads. BRYANT.

Erythia, according to Pliny, is another name for Gades.

[177] _In the deep-hollow’d cavern of a rock._] It is probable that at
Arima in Cilicia there was an Ophite temple; which, like all the most
ancient temples, was a vast cavern. Some emblematical sculpture of the
serpent-deity may have given rise to the creation of this mythological
prodigy. The Hydra had, probably, a similar origin.

[178] _A whirlwind, rude and wild._] There were two distinct Typhons or
Typhaons, although they are sometimes confounded together. The one is the
same as the gigantic Typhæus, subsequently described by Hesiod: the other
the whirlwind here mentioned.

“By this Typhon was signified a mighty whirlwind, or inundation. It had
a relation to the deluge. In hieroglyphical descriptions, the dove was
represented as hovering over the mundane egg which was exposed to the
fury of Typhon: for an egg, containing in it the proper elements of life,
was thought no improper emblem of the ark, in which were preserved the
rudiments of the future world.” BRYANT.

Robinson is therefore manifestly wrong in proposing to substitute ανομον,
_lawless_, for ανεμον, _a wind_: though the reading be countenanced by
the Bodleian copy and the Florentine edition of Junta.

[179] _The fifty-headed Cerberus._] Cerberus was the name of a place,
though esteemed the dog of hell. We are told by Eusebius from Plutarch,
that Cerberus was the Sun: but the term properly signified the temple,
or place, of the Sun. The great luminary was styled by the Amonians both
Or and Abor; that is, light, and the parent of light: and Cerberus is
properly Kir-abor, the place of that deity. The same temple had different
names from the diversity of the god’s titles, who was there worshipped.
It was called Tor-caph-el; which was changed to τρικεφαλος: and Cerberus
was from hence supposed to have had three heads. BRYANT.

The poets increased the number of heads, as they seem to have thought a
multitude of heads or arras sublimely terrific. Pindar out-does Hesiod
by a whole fifty, and speaks of the _hundred-headed_ Cerberus. Εκατον τα
κεφαλον.

[180] _Chimæra, breathing fire unquenchable._] The same passage occurs
in the 6th book of the Iliad. “In Lycia was the city Phaselis, situated
upon the mountain Chimæra; which mountain was sacred to the god of fire.
Phaselis is a compound of Phi, which in the Amonian language is a mouth
or opening, and of Az-el: another name for Orus, the god of light.
Phaselis signifies a chasm of fire. The reason why this name was imposed
may be seen in the history of the place. All the country around abounded
in fiery eruptions. Chimæra is a compound of Chamur, the name of the
deity, whose altar stood towards the top of the mountain. But the most
satisfactory idea of it may be obtained from coins which were struck
in its vicinity, and particularly describe it as a hollow and inflamed
mountain.” BRYANT.

[181] _Depopulating Sphinx._] The Nile begins to rise during the fall of
the Abyssinian rains; when the sun is vertical over Æthiopia: and its
waters are at their height of inundation when the sun is in the signs Leo
and Virgo. The Ægyptians seem to have invented a colossal representation
of the two zodiacal signs, which served as a water-mark to point out
the risings of the Nile: and this biform emblem of a virgin and lion
constituted the famous ænigma.

[182] _Tethys to Ocean brought the rivers forth._] When towers were
situated upon eminences fashioned very round, they were by the Amonians
called Tith, answering to Titthos in Greek. They were so denominated
from their resemblance to a woman’s breast, and were particularly sacred
to Orus and Osiris, the deities of light, who by the Grecians were
represented under the title of Apollo. Tethys, the ancient goddess of
the sea, was nothing else but an old tower upon a mount. On this account
it was called Tith-is, the mount of fire. Thetis seems to have been a
transposition of the same name, and was probably a Pharos, or fire-tower,
near the sea. BRYANT.

[183] _Claim the shorn locks._] It was the custom of the Greeks for adult
youths to poll their hair as an offering to Apollo and the Rivers.

[184] _And Ploto, with the bright dilated eyes._] Βοωπις, ox-eyed: that
is, with eyes artificially enlarged. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 6, speaks
of the _stibium_ or antimony as an astringent, especially as to the
eye-lid: and mentions that it was called _platyophthalmum_, eye-opener:
from its forming an ingredient in the washes of women, as it had the
effect of opening or dilating the eye by contracting the lid. The modern
Greek women retain the custom. “Of the few that I have seen with an open
veil or without one, the faces were remarkable for symmetry and brilliant
complexion: with the nose straight and small: the eyes vivacious: either
black or dark-blue: having the eyebrows, partly from nature, and as much
from art, very full, and joining over the nose. They have a custom,
too, of drawing a black line with a mixture of powder of antimony and
oil above and under the eye-lashes in order to give the eye more fire.”
DALLAWAY, Constantinople Ancient and Modern.

Strutt, in the general introduction to his “View of the Dress and Habits
of the People of England,” observes that the Moorish ladies in Barbary,
the women in Arabia Felix, and those about Aleppo continue the same
traditional custom of tinging the inside of the eye-lid. Dr. Russel
describes the operation as effected “by means of a short smooth probe of
ivory, wood, or silver; charged with a powder named the black Kohol. This
substance is a kind of lead-ore brought from Persia: and is prepared by
roasting it in a quince, an apple, or a truffle; then, adding a few drops
of oil of almonds, it is ground to a subtile powder on a marble. The
probe being first dipped in water, a little of the powder is sprinkled
on it. The middle part is then applied horizontally to the eye, and the
eye-lids being shut upon it, the probe is drawn through between them,
leaving the inside tinged, and a black rim all round the edge. The Kohol
is used likewise by the men: but not so generally by way of ornament
merely: the practice being deemed rather effeminate. It is supposed to
strengthen the sight and prevent various disorders of the eye.” NATURAL
HISTORY OF ALEPPO, vol. i. iii. 22.

Mr. Gifford, in the notes to his admirable version of Juvenal, supposes
the effeminate practice of the Roman fops to assimilate with this: in the
passage which he translates,

    Some with a tiring-pin their eye-brows dye,
    Till the full arch gives lustre to the eye.

                                   SAT. ii. 67.

Juvenal, however, mentions only the painting of the eye-brows: unless by
the epithet _tremulous_, _trementes_, which he applies to the eyes, he
means to intimate the whole operation, and the eye-ball quivering under
the application of the needle.

In the second book of Kings, ix. 30, when it is said “Jezebel painted her
face,” the Septuagint has it, “she antimonized her eyes:” Εστιμμιζατο
τους οφθαλμους αυτης.

[185] _Long-stepping tread the earth._] The Greeks, as appears from their
female epithets, were very attentive to the form of the ankle, and the
manner of walking: and a long step, no less than a well-turned ankle, as
implying a tallness of figure, was thought characteristic of graceful
beauty.

[186] _The glassy depth of lakes._] All fountains were esteemed sacred:
but especially those which had any preternatural quality and abounded
with exhalations. It was an universal notion that a divine energy
proceeded from the effluvia; and that the persons who resided in their
vicinity were gifted with a prophetic quality. Fountains of this nature,
from the divine influence with which they were supposed to abound, the
Amonians styled Ain-omphe, or oracular fountain. These terms the Greeks
contracted to _numphe_, a nymph: and supposed such a person to be an
inferior goddess who presided over waters. Hot springs were imagined to
be more immediately under the inspection of the nymphs. Another name for
these places was Ain-Ades, the fountain of Ades or the Sun; which in like
manner was changed to Naïades, a species of deities of the same class.
BRYANT.

[187] _East, West, and South, and North._] Le Clerc and the generality
of editors suppose Hesiod to omit the east-wind entirely: and consider
αργεστεω as an epithet, signifying _swift_ or _serene_: as the term
is so used by Homer. Grævius quotes a subsequent line of the Theogony
as authority for αργεστης being so used by Hesiod also: but there is
evidence for αργεστης being the name of a wind; though Aulus Gellius
and Pliny suppose it to be a west-wind, called by the Latins Caurus.
Aristotle also, as is observed by the Monthly Reviewer, describes the
αργεστης as a westerly wind, which blows from that part of the heaven
in which the sun sets at the summer solstice: and adds that by some
it is called Olympias, by others Iapyx. We see however from this very
passage of Aristotle, that the names of winds were capricious and
arbitrary: and in fact almost every district in Greece called the winds
by names different from those which the neighbouring district used. The
same critic observes that in a note to the word σκειροιν (Caurus), in
Alberti’s edition of Hesychius, an opinion is intimated that αργεστης is
properly an easterly wind, απηλιωτης ανεμος: nor can there be the least
doubt of the matter, in so far as regards Hesiod. The London Reviewer,
indeed, remarks that “the omission of the wind would be no proof of
Hesiod’s ignorance of its existence”: a similar omission occurs in the
Psalms. “Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor the west, nor yet
from the south.” But it is forgotten that Hesiod is describing the
genealogy of the winds: and it is very inconceivable that one of the four
cardinal winds should have escaped his notice. The editions of Stephens
and Trincavellus read

    Νοσφι Νοτου, Βορεω τε, και Αργεστου, Ζεφυρου τε:

instead of αργεστεω Ζεφιροιο: and I have no doubt that this is the true
reading.

[188]

                                _Not apart from Jove_
    _Their mansion is._]

So Callimachus, Hymn to Jupiter:

      No lots have made thee king above all gods:
    But works of thy own hands: thy Strength and Force,
    Whom thou hast, therefore, station’d next thy throne.

Strength and Force are introduced by Æschylus as characters, in the first
scene of his “Prometheus Chained.”

[189] _Asteria, blest in fame._] According to Callimachus Asteria was
metamorphosed into the Isle of Delos: a term which alludes to its
appearing after having been submerged in the sea: δηλος, _visible_.
Asteria is from αστηρ a star.

                        Asteria was thy name
    Of old: since like a star from heaven on high
    Thou didst leap down precipitate within
    A fathomless abyss of waters, flying
    From nuptial violence of Jove.

                                  HYMN TO DELOS.

[190]

                              _She conceived_
    _With Hecaté._]

Εκατη was a title of Diana, as εκατος of Apollo: from εκας _far off_:
alluding to the distance to which the sun and moon dart their rays. This
goddess is represented in ancient sculptures as three females joined
in one, with various attributes in their hands: this triple figure was
combined of the three characters sustained by the moon: who was Selene
or Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine in the subterranean
regions. Luna is said by Cicero to be the same as Lucina, the goddess
of child-bearing: a title given also to Diana and Juno. Hecate has also
assigned to her by Hesiod the office of foster-mother of children. This
may be explained partly by the reckoning of pregnant women being guided
by the number of lunar periods; and partly by the emblematic character of
the moon, as an object of worship.

“The moon was a type of the ark: the sacred ship of Osiris being
represented in the form of a crescent, of which the moon was made
an emblem. Selene was the reputed mother of the world, as Plutarch
confesses: which character cannot be made in any degree to correspond
with the planet. Selene was the same as Isis: the same also as Rhea,
Vesta, Cubele, and Damater, or Ceres.” BRYANT.

These female deities not only melt into each other, but at last resolve
themselves into the one Zeus: so that the lunar idolatry is absorbed
ultimately in the solar. “The patriarch had the names of Meen or Menes;
which signify a moon, and was worshipped all over the east as Deus Lunus.
Strabo mentions several temples of this lunar god in different places:
all these were dedicated to the same Arkite deity, called Lunus, Luna,
and Selene. The same deity was both masculine and feminine: what was Deus
Lunus in one country was Dea Luna in another. Meen was also one of the
most ancient titles of the Ægyptian Osiris; the same as Apollo.” BRYANT.

The sacred bull Apis is figured in the ancient coins and sculptures,
with a crescent moon upon his head instead of horns: by which the great
restorer of husbandry, Noah, was connected with the ark in which he had
been miraculously preserved; and of which the lunar crescent was an
emblem.

[191] _Her wide allotment stands._] The other gods were either celestial,
terrestrial, marine, or subterranean: but the divinity of Hecate pervaded
heaven, earth, and the abyss, from her being intermixed with Luna, Dian,
and Proserpine: and the sea, from the moon influencing the tides. She
was invoked at sacrifices, probably, as presiding over divination from
the entrails of beasts: because she was the patroness of magical rites
and incantations: from such ceremonies being performed in the secrecy
of night by the light of the moon. The Greeks, on every new moon, were
accustomed to spread a feast in the cross-ways, which was carried away by
the poor: this was called “Hecate’s supper;” and was said to have been
eaten by Hecaté. See Aristophanes, Plutus.

[192] _Her solitary birth._] This alludes to the honour and the
privileges attached by the ancients to numerous children. The moon is
said to be single in birth, as the only planet of the same apparent size
and lustre.

[193] _A gleam of glory o’er his parents’ days._] The odes of Pindar are
traditional records of the glory attached by the Greeks to the conquerors
in their games: a glory which extended to their parents and connexions,
and even to the city in which they were born. Cicero describes the return
from an Olympic victory as equivalent to a Roman triumph. The victor in
fact rode in a triumphal chariot, and entered through a breach in the
walls into the city: which Plutarch explains to signify that walls are
useless with such defenders. The same writer relates, that a Spartan
meeting Diagoras, who had been crowned in the Olympic games, and had seen
his sons and grand-children crowned after him, exclaimed, “Die Diagoras!
for thou canst not be a god.” A memorial on the gymnastic exercises of
the Greeks will be found in the “Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles Lettres,” tom. i. 286.

[194] _Golden-sandal’d Juno._] Juno was the same as Iöna: and she
was particularly styled Juno of Argus. Argus was one of the terms by
which the ark was distinguished. The Grecians called her Hera; which
was not originally a proper name, but a title: the same as Ada of the
Babylonians; and expressed “the Lady” or “Queen.” She was the same as
Luna or Selene, from her connexion with the ark; and at Samos she was
described as standing in a lunette, with the lunar emblem on her head.
She was sometimes worshipped under the symbol of an egg: so that her
history had the same reference as that of Venus. She presided equally
over the seas, which she was supposed to calm or trouble. Isis, Io, and
Ino were the same as Juno, and Venus also was the same deity under a
different title. Hence in Laconia there was an ancient statue of the
goddess styled Venus Junonia. Juno was also called Cupris, and under that
title was worshipped by the Hetrurians. As Juno was the same with Iöna we
need not wonder at the Iris being her concomitant. BRYANT.

[195] _Ceres, and Vesta._] Ceres was the deity of fire; hence at Cnidus
she was called Cura: a title of the Sun. The Roman name Ceres, expressed
by Hesychius Gerys, was by the Dorians more properly rendered Garis. It
was originally the name of a city called Charis: for many of the deities
were erroneously called by the names of the places where they were
worshipped. Charis is Char-is, the city of fire: the place where Orus and
Hephaistus were worshipped. It may after this seem extraordinary that she
should ever be esteemed the goddess of corn. This notion arose from the
Greeks not understanding their own theology. The towers of Ceres were
P’urtain or Prutaneia: so called from the fires which were perpetually
there preserved. The Grecians interpreted this _purou tameion_: and
rendered what was a temple, a granary of corn. In consequence of this,
though they did not abolish the ancient usage of the place, they made it
a repository of grain; from whence they gave largesses to the people. In
early times the corn there deposited seems to have been for the priests
or divines: but this was only a secondary use to which these places were
adapted. They were properly sacred towers, where a perpetual fire was
preserved. It was sacred to Hestia, the Vesta of the Romans, which was
only another title for Damater or Ceres: and the sacred hearth had the
same name. BRYANT.

[196] _Pluto strong._] “Some,” says Diodorus, “think that Osiris is
Serapis: others that he is Dionusus: others still that he is Pluto:
many take him for Zeus or Jupiter, and not a few for Pan.” This was an
unnecessary embarrassment, for they were all titles of the same god.
Pluto, among the best mythologists, was esteemed the same as Jupiter; and
indeed the same as Proserpine, Ceres, Hermes, Apollo, and every other
deity. BRYANT.

[197] _Earth-shaker Neptune._] The patriarch was commemorated by the
name of Poseidon. Under the character of Neptune Genesius he had a
temple in Argolis: hard by was a spot of ground called _the place of
descent_; similar to the place on mount Ararat, mentioned by Josephus;
and undoubtedly named from the same ancient history. The tradition of the
people of Argolis was, that it was so called because in this spot Danaus
made his first descent from the ship in which he came over. In Arcadia
was a temple of “Neptune _looking-out_.” Poseidon god of the sea was also
reputed the chief god, the deity of fire. This we may infer from his
priest; who was styled P’urcon. P’urcon is the lord of fire or light; and
from the name of the priest we may know the department of the god. He was
no other than the supreme deity, the Sun: from whom all may be supposed
to descend. Hence Neptune in the Orphic verses is, like Zeus or Jupiter,
styled the father of gods and men. BRYANT.

[198] _Jupiter th’ all-wise._] In the Orphic fragments both Jove and
Bacchus are identified with the Sun: which is described as the source
of all things. Hammon, the African Jupiter, is mentioned by Lucan; who
specifies his having horns. These were the lunar crescent of Apis or
Osiris, the Arkite god. The patriarch, his son Ham, and his grandson
Chus, are reciprocally mixed with each other; in the same manner as the
ark and the dove: the moon, the sun, and the typical serpent, are often
mixed and confounded in this hieroglyphical mythology.

[199] _To his own son he should bow down his strength._] Although the
Romans made a distinction between Janus and Saturn they were two titles
of one and the same person. The former had the remarkable characteristic
of being the author of time, and the god of the new year: the latter also
was looked upon as the author of time, and held in his hand a serpent,
whose tail was in his mouth and formed a circle: by which emblem was
denoted the renovation of the year. On their coins they were equally
represented with keys in their hand and a ship near them. Janus was
described with two faces: the one that of an aged man; the other that of
a youthful personage. Saturn as of an uncommon age with hair white like
snow: but they had a notion that he would return to infancy. He is also
said to have destroyed all things: which however were restored with vast
increase. BRYANT.

The faces of Janus, supposed to look to the time past and that which is
to come, evidently regard the æra before the flood and that after it:
and the aged and youthful visage represent the old world and the new.
The keys may allude to the shutting up the productions of the earth,
and again opening them. The ship is the ark. The story of Saturn and
the infant Jupiter involves similar allusions. The old god devouring
his children significantly points to the destruction of the human race.
Saturn and Jupiter seem only separate personifications of the double
visage of Janus: and the infant Jupiter personifies the second infancy
of Saturn. The new order of things which took place on the renovation
of nature is typified in the dethronement of the aged monarch by his
youthful son.

[200]

                            _To succeeding times_
    _A monument._]

The stone, which Saturn was supposed to have swallowed instead of a
child, stood according to Pausanias at Delphi: it was esteemed very
sacred, and used to have libations of wine poured upon it daily: and upon
festivals was otherwise honoured. The purport of the above history I take
to have been this. It was for a long time the custom to offer children
at the altar of Saturn: but in process of time they removed it, and in
its form erected a stone pillar, before which they made their vows, and
offered sacrifices of another nature. BRYANT.

[201] _Props the broad heaven._] “This Atlas,” says Maximus Tyrius, “is a
mountain, with a cavity of a tolerable height, which the natives esteem
both as a temple and a deity: and it is the great object by which they
swear, and to which they pay their devotions.” The cave in the mountain
was certainly named Cöel, the house of god: equivalent to Cœlus of the
Romans: and this was the heaven which Atlas was supposed to support.
BRYANT.

[202] _He bound Prometheus._] Prometheus, who renewed the race of men,
was Noos, or Noah. Prometheus raised the first altar to the gods,
constructed the first ship, and transmitted to posterity many useful
inventions. He was supposed to have lived at the time of the deluge,
and to have been guardian of Ægypt at that season. He was the same as
Osiris, the great husbandman, the planter of the vine, and inventor of
the plough. Prometheus is said to have been exposed on mount Caucasus,
near Colchis, with an eagle placed over him, preying on his heart. These
strange histories are undoubtedly taken from the symbols and devices
which were carved upon the front of the ancient Amonian temples, and
especially those of Ægypt. The eagle and vulture were the insignia of
that country. We are told by Orus Apollo that a heart over burning coals
was an emblem of Ægypt. The history of Tityus, Prometheus, and many other
poetical personages was certainly taken from hieroglyphics misunderstood
and badly explained. Prometheus was worshipped by the Colchians as a
deity, and had a temple and high place upon mount Caucasus: and the
device upon the portal was Ægyptian, an eagle over a heart. BRYANT.

[203] _Parted a huge ox._] Pliny, book vii. ch. 56, speaks of Prometheus
as the first who slaughtered an ox. This traditionary circumstance is
agreeable to that passage in scriptural history, where Noah receives
the divine permission to kill animals for food: and Hesiod’s tale of
the division of the ox may be only a disfigured representation of the
first sacrifice after the flood. The affinity of Iäpetus, the father of
Prometheus, with Japhet, is very remarkable. This confusion of personages
has been already noticed as common in the ancient mythology.

[204] _Pernicious is the race._] Lord Kaimes, in his sketches of the
History of Man, i. 6. observes that in the more polished age of Greece
women were treated with but little consideration by their husbands:
and female influence was confined to the artful accomplishments of
courtezans. But it was very different at an earlier æra of society.
“Women in the Homeric age,” remarks Mr. Mitford, “enjoyed more freedom,
and communicated more in business and amusement among men, than in
after-ages has been usual in those eastern countries; far more than at
Athens, in the flourishing times of the commonwealth. Equally, indeed,
Homer’s elegant eulogies and Hesiod’s severe sarcasm prove women to have
been in their days important members of society.”

Milton has imitated this description of the infelicities supposed to
be produced by woman-kind, in a prophetic complaint, which comes with
beautiful propriety from the lips of Adam: and which his own domestic
unhappiness enabled him to express with feeling.

[205]

                                        _The host_
    _Of glorious Titans._]

The giants, whom Abydenus makes the builders of Babel, are by other
writers represented as the Titans. They are said to have received their
name from their mother Titæa: by which we are to understand that they
were denominated from their religion and place of worship. The ancient
altars consisted of a conical hill of earth, in the shape of a woman’s
breast. Titæa was one of these. It is a term compounded of Tit-aia, and
signifies literally a breast of earth. These altars were also called
Tit-an, and Tit-anis, from the great fountain of night, styled An and
Anis: hence many places were called Titanis and Titana where the worship
of the sun prevailed. By these giants and Titans are always meant the
sons of Ham and Chus. That the sons of Chus were the chief agents
both in erecting the tower of Babel, and in maintaining principles of
rebellion, is plain: for it is said of Nimrod, the son of Chus, that “the
beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” The sons of Chus would not submit
to the divine dispensation in the original disposition of the several
families: and Nimrod, who first took upon him regal state, drove Ashur
from his demesnes, and forced him to take shelter in the higher parts
of Mesopotamia. This was their first act of rebellion and apostacy.
Their second was to erect a lofty tower, as a landmark to repair to, as
a token to direct them, and prevent their being scattered abroad. It
was an idolatrous temple, erected in honour of the sun, and called the
tower of Bel: as the city, from its consecration to the sun, was named
Bel-on: the city of the solar god. Their intention was to have founded
a great, if not an universal, empire: but their purpose was defeated by
the confounding of their labial utterance. By this judgment they were
dispersed; the tower was deserted; and the city left unfinished. These
circumstances seem, in great measure, to be recorded by the gentile
writers. They add, that a war soon after commenced between the Titans and
the family of Zeuth. This was no other than the war mentioned by Moses;
which was carried on by four kings of the family of Shem against the sons
of Ham and Chus. The dispersion from Babylonia had weakened the Cuthites.
The house of Shem took advantage of their dissipation, and recovered the
land of Shinar, which had been unduly usurped by their enemies. After
this success they proceeded farther: and attacked the Titans in all their
quarters. After a contest of some time they made them tributaries: but
upon their rising in rebellion, after a space of thirteen years, the
confederates made a fresh inroad into their countries. “Twelve years
they served Chedorlaomer: and in the thirteenth they rebelled: and in
the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him,
and smote the Rephaims in Ashtaroth Karnaim;” who were no other than the
Titans. They were accordingly rendered by the Seventy, “the giant brood
of Ashtaroth:” and the valley of the Rephaim, in Samuel, is translated
“the valley of the Titans.” From the sacred historians we may then infer
that there were two periods of this war. The first, when the king of Elam
and his associates laid the Rephaim under contribution: the other, when,
upon their rebellion, they reduced them a second time to obedience. The
first part is mentioned by several ancient writers, and is said to have
lasted ten years. Hesiod takes notice of both, but makes the first rather
of longer duration:

    Ten years and more they sternly strove in arms.

In the second engagement the poet informs us that the Titans were quite
discomfited and ruined: and according to the mythology of the Greeks,
they were condemned to reside in Tartarus, at the extremity of the
known world. A large body of Titanians, after their dispersion, settled
in Mauritania: which is the region called Tartarus. The mythologists
adjudged the Titans to the realms of night merely from not attending
to the purport of the term ζοφος. This word described the West, and it
signified also darkness. From this secondary acceptation the Titans of
the West were consigned to the realms of night: being situated, with
respect to Greece towards the regions of the setting sun. BRYANT.

[206]

                                            _Wielding aloft_
    _Precipitous rocks._]

This, perhaps, suggested to Milton the arming the angels with mountains:

    They pluck’d the seated hills with all their load;
    Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
    Uplifting, bore them in their hands.

                                        PAR. LOST. vi.

[207]

                                    _The dark chasm of hell_
    _Was shaken._]

This is expanded by Milton with uncommon sublimity:

    Hell heard th’ insufferable noise: hell saw
    Heaven ruining from heaven, and would have fled
    Affrighted: but strict Fate had cast too deep
    Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound.

                                         Book vi.

[208]

                                            _His whole of might_
    _Broke from him._]

Milton attains to a higher conception of omnipotence in the passage:

    Yet half in strength he put not forth, but check’d
    His thunder in mid-volley: for he meant
    Not to destroy, but root them out of heaven.

There is, however, nothing in Milton which equals in sublimity the sudden
expansion of power in the soul of the deity: ειθαρ μεν μενεος πληντο
φρενες. The plan of the battle of angels is evidently built on that of
the battle of giants: the Messiah, like Hesiod’s Jove, coming forth to
decide the contest; and sending before him thunderbolts and plagues.
Milton’s magnificent imagery of the chariot is borrowed from the vision
of the prophet Ezekiel.

[209]

                                    _Through the void_
    _Of Erebus._]

Χαος is here only a gulf or void. Le Clerc quotes Aristophanes to show
that it is the vacuity of air: but the conflagration of air has already
been described. Grævius is undoubtedly right in interpreting it the
subterraneous abyss, or Erebus: in which sense it is afterwards used by
Hesiod; when the Titans are said to dwell “beyond the obscure chaos,” or
chasm. Virgil uses chaos in this acceptation, Æneid. vi. 205:

                    Ye silent shades!
    Oh Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!

                                      PITT.

So also Ovid, Metamorph. x. Orpheus to Pluto and Proserpine:

    I call you by those sights so full of fear:
    This chaos vast; these silent kingdoms drear!

[210]

                            _The heaven and earth_
    _Met hurtling in mid-air._]

Milton, Paradise Lost, book ii:

                  Nor was his ear less pealed
    With noises loud and ruinous ...
                        than if this frame
    Of heaven were falling, and these elements
    In mutiny had from their axle torn
    The steadfast earth.

[211] _The war-unsated Gyges._] Hesiod has confounded the history by
supposing the Giants and Titans to have been different persons. He
accordingly makes them oppose each other: and even Cottus, Briareus, and
Gyges, whom all other writers mention as Titans, are by him introduced
in opposition, and described as of another family. His description is
however much to the purpose, and the first contest and dispersion are
plainly alluded to. BRYANT.

[212] _The Titan host o’er-shadowing._] Milton, Par. Lost, b. vi.:

    Themselves invaded next and on their heads
    Main promontories flung, which in the air
    Came shadowing, and oppress’d whole legions arm’d.

[213]

                                        _So far beneath_
    _This earth._]

Virgil, Æn. vi. 577:

    The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,
    And twice as deep as earth is distant from the skies:
    The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,
    Here, singed with lightning, roll within th’ unfathom’d space.

                                                           DRYDEN.

[214]

                                    _The verge_
    _Of Tartarus._]

The ancients had a notion that the earth was a widely extended plain,
which terminated abruptly in a vast clift of immeasurable descent. At the
bottom was a chaotic pool, which so far sunk beneath the confines of the
world, that, to express the depth and distance, they imagined an anvil of
iron, tossed from the top, could not reach it in ten days. This mighty
pool was the great Atlantic ocean: and these extreme parts of the earth
were Mauritania and Iberia: for in each of these countries the Titans
resided. BRYANT.

This explains the introduction of Atlas before the gates of Tartarus:
Guietus is therefore in error when, not being able to account for this
situation of Atlas, he marks the passage as supposititious.

Milton’s classical reading appears in his admeasurement of the distance
which the rebel angels passed in their fall from heaven:

    _Nine_ days they fell: the _tenth_ the yawning gulf
    Received them.

[215] _Arise and end._] Seneca, Hercules Frantic:

    Rank with corruption’s moss the sterile vast
        Of that abyss: th’ unsightly earth is numb’d
        In its eternal barren hoariness:
            The dismal end of things:
            The limits of the world:
    Air moveless hangs with clinging weight above:
        And black night brooding sits
        Upon the lifeless universe.

[216] _A drear and ghastly wilderness._] Homer, Il. xx.:

                    A dismal wilderness
    Hoary with desolation: which the gods
    Behold, and shuddering turn their eyes away.

[217]

    _But him the whirls of vexing hurricanes_
    _Toss to and fro._]

Dante, Inferno, canto quinto:

    I venn’ in luogo d’ogni luce muto:
    Che mughia, come fa mar per tempesta,
    Se da contrarii venti se combattuto:
    La bufera infernale, che mai non resta,
      Mena gli spiriti con la sua rapina,
    Voltando et percuotendo gli molesta.

    They reach a spot, void of all ray of light,
    Which howls as seas in storms, where winds opposing fight:
    The hellish whirlwind, never resting, hurls
    The hovering spirits snatch’d upon its whirls:
    And vexing smites, and eddying turns them round.

Milton seems to have conceived from this passage of Hesiod his idea of
Satan falling down the chaotic void, book ii.:

    A vast vacuity: all unawares,
    Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
    Ten thousand fathoms deep: and to this hour
    Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance,
    The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud
    Instinct with fire and nitre hurried him
    As many miles aloft.

[218]

        _Alternate as they glide athwart_
    _The brazen threshold._]

Milton, Par. Lost, vi. 4:

                        There is a cave
    Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
    Where light and darkness in perpetual round
    Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through heaven
    Grateful vicissitude, like day and night:
    Light issues forth, and at the other door
    Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour
    To veil the heaven.

[219] _Sleep, Death’s half brother._] Virg. Æn. vi. 278:

    Here Toils and Death, and Death’s half-brother Sleep,
    Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep.

                                                  DRYDEN.

[220]

                        _Nor them the shining Sun_
    _E’er with his beam contemplates._]

Odyssey, xi. 14:

    With clouds and darkness veil’d: on whom the Sun
    Deigns not to look with his beam-darting eye:
    Or when he climbs the starry arch, or when
    Earthward he slopes again his westering wheels.

                                            COWPER.

[221]

                            _To immortal gods_
    _A foe._]

Probably from his destroying the human favourites of the gods, and the
sons of the goddesses who have descended to mortal amours: as in the
instances of Hyacinthus, the favourite of Apollo; and Memnon, the son of
Aurora; whose death and burial are described with such romantic fancy in
Quintus Calaber, Post-Homerics, or Supplemental Iliad.

[222] _And stern Prosérpina._] Many of the temples of Ceres were
dedicated to the deity under the name of Persephone or Proserpine, who
was supposed her daughter; but they were in reality the same personage.
Persephone was styled Cora; which the Greeks misinterpreted the virgin or
damsel. This was the same as Cura, a feminine title of the Sun; by which
Ceres also was called at Cnidos. However mild and gentle Proserpine may
have been represented in her virgin state by the poets, yet her tribunal
seems in many places to have been very formidable. In consequence of this
we find her, with Minos and Rhadamanthus, condemned to the shades below
as an infernal inquisitor. Nonnus says, “Proserpine armed the Furies:”
the notion of which Furies arose from the cruelties practised in the
Prutaneia, or fire-temples. They were originally only priests of fire;
but were at last ranked among the hellish tormentors. Herodotus speaks
of a Prutaneion in Achaia Pthiotic, of which he gives a fearful account.
No person, he says, ever entered the precincts, that returned: whatever
person strayed that way was immediately seized upon by the priests and
sacrificed. BRYANT.

[223]

                            _With arch’d roofs_
    _Of loftiest rock o’erhung._]

Not far from the ruins (of Nonacrum, a town of Arcadia,) is a lofty
cliff: I have seen none that ascended to such a height. A stream distils
from the declivity. This water is denominated Styx by the Greeks. It is
deadly to man and to all animals whatever. PAUSANIAS, _Arcadics_, b. viii.

Le Clerc supposes an opinion to have existed, that a person wrongfully
accused might securely drink the water of Styx: and conceives Hesiod to
mean that the gods drank of the water at the same time that they made a
libation, and if they took a false oath, were convicted by the lethargic
properties of this noxious stream.

[224] _Jove sends Iris down._] To this covenant (with Noah) Hesiod
alludes: he calls it the great oath. He says that this oath was Iris,
or the bow in the heavens; to which the deity appealed when any of the
inferior divinities were guilty of an untruth. On such an occasion the
great oath of the gods was appointed to fetch water from the extremities
of the ocean, with which those were tried who had falsified their word.
BRYANT.

The words will certainly admit of this construction; but the context
directs that the great oath be connected with the Stygian water. The
employment of Iris on the mission is still a remarkable coincidence with
the diluvian covenant.

[225] _The sacred river-head._] That is, the ocean; which probably
received this title from the Nile, a river highly venerated, being of old
called the Oceanus. Styx is said to be a horn, or branch of the ocean,
from the ancient idea that all rivers sprang from it: Homer Il. 21:

    Therefore not kingly Acheloius,
    Nor yet the strength of ocean’s vast profound:
    Although from him all rivers and all seas,
    All fountains and all wells proceed, can boast
    Comparison with Jove.

                                            COWPER.

The rivers of Earth and Orcus were believed to communicate; thus Virgil,
Æn. vi. 658, of the Elysian fields:

    In fragrant laurel groves, where Po’s vast flood
    From upper earth rolls copious through the wood.

[226]

                                      _Libation pours_
    _And is forsworn._]

It was customary to pour a libation, while taking a solemn oath. Thus in
the third Iliad:

    Then pouring from the beaker to the cups
    They fill’d them.
    All-glorious Jove, and ye, the powers of heaven!
    Whoso shall violate this contract first,
    So be their blood, their children’s and their own,
    Pour’d out, as this libation on the ground.

                                        COWPER.

[227] _Her youngest-born Typhœus._] Taph, which at times was rendered
Tuph, Toph, and Taphos, was a name current among the Amonians, by which
they called their high places. Lower Ægypt being a flat, and annually
overflowed, the natives were forced to raise the soil on which they built
their principal edifices, in order to secure them from the inundation:
and many of their sacred towers were erected on conical mounds of earth.
There were often hills of the same form constructed for religious
purposes, upon which there was no building. These were high altars; on
which they used sometimes to offer human sacrifices. Tophet, where the
Israelites made their children pass through fire to Moloch, was a mount
of this form. Those cities in Ægypt which had a high place of this sort,
and rites in consequence of it, were styled Typhonian. Many writers say
that these rites were performed to Typhon at the tomb of Osiris. Hence he
was in later times supposed to have been a person; one of immense size;
and he was also esteemed a god. But this arose from the common mistake by
which places were substituted for the deities there worshipped. Typhon
was the Tuph-on, or altar; and the offerings were made to the Sun, styled
On; the same as Osiris and Busiris. What they called his tombs were
mounds of earth raised very high: some of these had also lofty towers
adorned with pinnacles and battlements. They had also carved on them
various symbols; and particularly serpentine hieroglyphics; in memorial
of the god to whom they were sacred. In their upper story was a perpetual
fire, that was plainly seen in the night. The gigantic stature of Typhon
was borrowed from this object: and his character was formed from the
hieroglyphical representations in the temples styled Typhonian. This may
be inferred from the allegorical description of Typhœus given by Hesiod.
Typhon and Typhœus were the same personage; and the poet represents him
of a mixed form; being partly a man, and partly a monstrous dragon, whose
head consisted of an assemblage of smaller serpents: and as there was a
perpetual fire kept up in the upper story, he describes it as shining
through the apertures of the building. The tower of Babel was undoubtedly
a Tuph-on, or altar of the Sun; though generally represented as a
temple. Hesiod certainly alludes to some ancient history concerning the
demolition of Babel, when he describes Typhon or Typhœus as overthrown by
Jove. He represents him as the youngest son of Earth; as a deity of great
strength and immense stature; and adds what is very remarkable, that had
it not been for the interposition of the chief god, this dæmon would have
obtained a universal empire. BRYANT.

Equally remarkable is the diversity of voices, described as issuing
from the different heads of the giant. In the Mexican mythology a giant
builds an artificial hill, in the form of a pyramid, as a memorial of the
mountain, in whose caverns he, with six others, had taken shelter from a
deluge. This monument was to reach the clouds; but the gods destroyed it
with fire. See Humboldt’s American Researches.

[228]

                  _Beneath his everlasting feet_
    _The great Olympus trembled._]

Mr. Todd, in his notes on Milton, quotes the passage describing the
rushing of the Messiah’s chariot, as superior in grandeur to this of
Hesiod:

                  Under his burning wheels
    The steadfast empyreum shook throughout,
    All but the throne itself of God.

The majesty of Milton’s exception certainly exceeds Hesiod in loftiness
of thought: but the mere rising of Jupiter causing the mountain to
rock beneath his eternal feet, is more sublime than the shaking of the
firmament from the rolling of wheels.

[229] _The lightning-stricken deity._] Τοιο ανακτος. _King_ is merely a
title of deity, and was applied before to Prometheus.

[230] _The woody dales._] Forges were erected in woody valleys, on
account of the abundance of fuel. GUIETUS.

[231] _Lo! from Typhœus is the strength of winds._] By these are meant
the intermediary winds: with some of which it is evident that Hesiod
was acquainted, although perhaps they were not yet distinguished by
names. The ancient Greeks at first used only the four cardinal winds:
but afterwards admitted four collaterals. Vitruvius enumerates twenty
collateral winds in the Roman practice.

[232] _These born from gods._] That is, from _superior_ gods: as Aurora
and Astræus.

[233] _Led Metis._] One of the most ancient deities of the Amonians was
named Meed or Meet; by which was signified divine wisdom. It was rendered
by the Grecians Metis. It was represented under the symbol of a beautiful
female countenance surrounded with serpents. BRYANT.

The figure of wedding Wisdom occurs in “The Wisdom of Solomon,” ch. viii.
v. 2. “I loved her, and sought her out from my youth: I desired to make
her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty.”

In the Proverbs, Solomon describes Wisdom as the companion of Deity, in
the language of exquisite poetry:

“I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth
was. When there were no depths I was brought forth: when there were
no fountains abounding with water. When he prepared the heavens I
was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depths: when he
established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of
the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree: when he appointed the
foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him:
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.” Chap. viii.

[234]

                                _The blue-eyed maid_
    _Minerva._]

An-ath signified the _fountain of light_: and was abbreviated Nath
and Neith by the Ægyptians. They worshipped under this title a divine
emanation, supposed to be the goddess of Wisdom. The Athenians, who
came from Sais, in Ægypt, were denominated from this deity, whom they
expressed Athana, or in the Ionian manner, Athene. BRYANT.

Cudworth mentions Hammon and Neith as titles for one and the same deity;
and quotes Plutarch as authority that Isis and Neith were also the
same among the Ægyptians: and therefore the temple of Neith or Athene
(Minerva) at Sais, was by him called the temple of Isis. Intellectual
System, b. i. ch. 4.

[235] _Brought the three Graces forth._] As Charis was a tower sacred to
fire, some of the poets supposed a nymph of that name, who was beloved
by Vulcan. Homer speaks of her as his wife. The Graces were said to
be related to the Sun, who was, in reality, the same as Vulcan. The
Sun, among the people of the East, was called Hares, and with a strong
guttural, Chares: and his temple was styled Tor-chares: this the Greeks
expressed Tricharis; and from thence formed a notion of three Graces.
BRYANT.

[236] _The arrow-shooting Dian._] Artemis Diana and Venus Dione were in
reality the same deity, and had the same departments. This sylvan goddess
was distinguished by a crescent, as well as Juno Samia; and was an emblem
of the Arkite history, and in consequence of it was supposed to preside
over waters. BRYANT.

[237] _Hebe._] Hebe is a mere personification of youth. The poets made
her the cup-bearer of the gods, as an emblem of their immortality.

[238]

                              _Pallas; fierce,_
    _Rousing the war-field’s tumult._]

In her martial character Minerva is intended to personify the wisdom and
policy of war as opposed to brute force and animal courage; which are
represented by Mars.

[239] _Illustrious Vulcan._] The author of the New Analysis has exploded
the notion that Vulcan was the same with Tubal-cain: who is mentioned in
Genesis iv. 22, as “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron:”
for nothing of this craft was of old attached to Hephaistus or Vulcan:
who was the god of fire; that is, the Sun. Later mythologists degraded
him to a blacksmith; and placed him over the Cyclops, or Cyclopians, the
Sicilian worshippers of fire. The emblems carved in the temples led to
the idea of Vulcan and the Cyclops forging thunderbolts and weapons for
the celestial armoury.

[240] _Sea-potent Triton._] The Hetrurians erected on their shores towers
and beacons for the sake of their navigation, which they called Tor-ain:
whence they had a still farther denomination of Tor-aini (Tyrrheni).
Another name for buildings of this nature was Tirit or Turit: which
signified a tower or turret. The name of Triton is a contraction of
Tirit-on: and signifies the tower of the Sun: but a deity was framed from
it, who was supposed to have had the appearance of a man upwards, but
downwards to have been like a fish. The Hetrurians are thought to have
been the inventors of trumpets; and in their towers on the sea-coast
there were people appointed to be continually on the watch, both by
day and by night, and to give a proper signal if any thing happened
extraordinary. This was done by a blast from the trumpet. In early times,
however, these brazen instruments were but little known; and people were
obliged to use what were near at hand; the conchs of the sea: by sounding
these they gave signals from the tops of the towers when any ship
appeared: and this is the implement with which Triton is more commonly
furnished. So Amphi-tirit is merely an oracular tower, which by the poets
has been changed into Amphitrite, and made the wife of Neptune. BRYANT.

[241]

                        _Venus gave to Mars,_
    _Breaker of shields, a dreadful offspring._]

The making the goddess of Love, Concord, and Fertility, the spouse of
Mars, and the mother of Fear and Terror, is obviously of later invention
and of Grecian origin: and was, no doubt, suggested by the Rape of Helen,
which was supposed to be instigated by Venus, and which kindled the war
of Troy. See that elegant and classical poem of the sixth century: “The
Rape of Helen” of Coluthus.

[242]

                                _Harmonia last_
    _She bare, whom generous Cadmus clasp’d as bride._]

I am persuaded that no such person as Cadmus ever existed. If we consider
the whole history of this celebrated hero, we shall find that it was
impossible for any one person to have effected what he is supposed to
have performed. They were not the achievements of one person nor of one
age: the travels of Cadmus, like the expeditions of Perseus, Sesostris,
and Osiris, relate to colonies, which at different times went abroad and
were distinguished by this title. As colonies of the same denomination
went to parts of the world widely distant, their ideal chieftain, whether
Cadmus, or Bacchus, or Hercules, was supposed to have traversed the same
ground.

Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, who has been esteemed a mere woman, seems
to have been an emblem of nature, and the fostering nurse of all things.
In some of the Orphic verses she is represented not only as a deity, but
as the light of the world. She was supposed to have been a personage
from whom all knowledge was derived. On this account the books of science
were styled the books of Harmonia: as well as the books of Hermes. These
were four in number; of which Nonnus gives a curious account, and says
that they contained matter of wonderful antiquity. The first of them is
said to be coeval with the world. Hence we find that Hermon or Harmonia
was a deity to whom the first writing is ascribed. The same is said of
Hermes. The invention is also attributed to Thoth. Cadmus is said not
only to have brought letters into Greece, but to have been the inventor
of them. Whence we may fairly conclude, that under the characters of
Hermon, Hermes, Thoth, and Cadmus, one person is alluded to.

The story of Cadmus, and of the serpent with which he engaged upon
his arrival in Bœotia, relates to the Ophite worship which was there
instituted by the Cadmians. So Jason in Colchis, Apollo in Phocis,
Hercules at Lerna, engaged with serpents: all of which are histories of
the same purport, but mistaken by the latter Grecians. It is said of
Cadmus that, at the close of his life, he was, together with his wife
Harmonia, changed into a serpent of stone. This wonderful metamorphosis
is supposed to have happened at Encheliæ, a town of Illyria. The true
history is this. These two personages were here enshrined in a temple,
and worshipped under the symbol of a serpent. BRYANT.

[243] _The glorious Hermes, herald of the gods._] The Ægyptians
acknowledged two personages under the title of Hermes and Thoth. The
first was the same as Osiris; the most ancient of all the gods, and the