Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES
- Contents
- PART I LEGENDARY GREECE
- CHAPTER I Legends respecting the Gods
- CHAPTER II Legends relating to Heroes and Men
- CHAPTER III Legend of the Iapetids
- CHAPTER IV Heroic Legends.—Genealogy of Argus
- CHAPTER V Deucaliôn, Hellên, and Sons of Hellên
- CHAPTER VI The Æolids, or Sons and Daughters of Æolus
- CHAPTER VII The Pelopids
- CHAPTER VIII Laconian and Messenian Genealogies
- CHAPTER IX Arcadian Genealogy
- CHAPTER X Æacus and his Descendants.—Ægina, Salamis and Phthia
- CHAPTER XI Attic Legends and Genealogies
- CHAPTER XII Cretan Legends.—Minôs and his Family
- CHAPTER XIII Argonautic Expedition
- CHAPTER XIV Legends of Thêbes
- CHAPTER XV Legend of Troy
- CHAPTER XVI Grecian Mythes, as understood, felt and interpreted by the Greeks themselves
- CHAPTER XVII The Grecian Mythical Vein compared with that of Modern Europe
- Plate section
CHAPTER XVII - The Grecian Mythical Vein compared with that of Modern Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES
- Contents
- PART I LEGENDARY GREECE
- CHAPTER I Legends respecting the Gods
- CHAPTER II Legends relating to Heroes and Men
- CHAPTER III Legend of the Iapetids
- CHAPTER IV Heroic Legends.—Genealogy of Argus
- CHAPTER V Deucaliôn, Hellên, and Sons of Hellên
- CHAPTER VI The Æolids, or Sons and Daughters of Æolus
- CHAPTER VII The Pelopids
- CHAPTER VIII Laconian and Messenian Genealogies
- CHAPTER IX Arcadian Genealogy
- CHAPTER X Æacus and his Descendants.—Ægina, Salamis and Phthia
- CHAPTER XI Attic Legends and Genealogies
- CHAPTER XII Cretan Legends.—Minôs and his Family
- CHAPTER XIII Argonautic Expedition
- CHAPTER XIV Legends of Thêbes
- CHAPTER XV Legend of Troy
- CHAPTER XVI Grecian Mythes, as understood, felt and interpreted by the Greeks themselves
- CHAPTER XVII The Grecian Mythical Vein compared with that of Modern Europe
- Plate section
Summary
Mȗθος—Sage—an universal manifestation of the human mind.
I have already remarked that the existence of that popular narrative talk, which the Germans express by the significant word Sage or Volks-Sage, in a greater or less degree of perfection or development, is a phænomenon common to almost all stages of society and to almost all quarters of the globe. It is the natural effusion of the unlettered, imaginative and believing man, and its maximum of influence belongs to an early state of the human mind; for the multiplication of recorded facts, the diffusion of positive science, and the formation of a critical standard of belief, tend to discredit its dignity and to repress its easy and abundant flow. It supplies to the poet both materials to recombine and adorn, and a basis as well as a stimulus for further inventions of his own; and this at a time when the poet is religious teacher, historian, and philosopher, all in one—not, as he becomes at a more advanced period, the mere purveyor of avowed, though interesting fiction.
Analogy of the Germans and Celts with the Greeks.
Such popular stories, and such historical songs (meaning by historical simply that which is accepted as history) are found in most quarters of the globe, and especially among the Teutonic and Celtic populations of early Europe. The old Go thic songs were cast into a continuous history by the historian Ablavius; and the poems of the Germans respecting Tuisto the earth-born god, his son Mannus, and his descendants the eponyms of the various German tribes, as they are briefly described by Tacitus, remind us of Hesiod, or Eumêlus, or the Homeric hymns.
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- Information
- A History of Greece , pp. 613 - 649Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010