work of mercy, 12 is the warrior, the brute rather than the ideal hero. There are, fortunately, other images to instruct us in the purposes of the warfare and the objects of the preparation which characterize the heroic age.

It would be absurd, indeed, to represent the heroes or the succeeding kings as having been conscious of making straight the ways of their posterity. But the legends which describe their actions seem to have described their aspirations likewise; and it is a harmless concession to give these a place in history, if not as realities, at least as illustrations of the character and the freedom of the Greeks. It is impossible, however, to separate the legends into any chronological order, or to sift their grain of fact from the fables through which they relate the achievements of their heroes.

14

was

Hercules, sprung from the loins of Jupiter, 13 believed by many to have preferred, of his own accord, the path which virtue beckoned him to pursue. Others credited the story of his father's oath in heaven, by which Eurystheus, the king of Argos, obtained the mastery over the hero, whose labors were therefore involuntary. But he was also, of his own will, a laborer, or rather a warrior; the stormer of cities, the conqueror of armies, and the protector of the weak who obeyed, as brave who followed him. 15

12 Iliad, VI. 62.

13 So late as within the century before the Trojan war. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, Vol. I. pp. 78, 139.

he was the hero of the If these various traditions

14 See Xenoph., Memorab., II. 1, 21 et seq.

15 See Grote's History of Greece, Vol. I. p. 128.

be susceptible of interpretation upon any single principle, they may be resolved into the glorification of force, though not carried so far as to be extravagant. The hero was received amongst the immortals, and the cup-bearer of Olympus, the daughter of Juno herself, became his bride; but the gods were wont to jeer at him, as if the strength by which he had wrought his famous deeds were not mistaken for the acme of human power.

The voyage of the Argonauts under their hero Jason, typifies the adventure of their times, and is the first visible introduction of another occupation. besides that of warfare amongst the Greeks. Nevertheless, the Argonauts were any thing but simple mariners. The birds, whose flight they followed across the Euxine, led them, indeed, to the golden fleece they sought; but battles were fought and crimes committed before the voyagers returned. Such an expedition, however conducted, beyond the seas, could not fail of being imitated and surpassed.

The legend of Esculapius chronicles the earliest science in Greece; and though he was but the beginner of its pursuit, his success in healing the broken limb and the fevered frame immediately proved so great as to provoke the fury of the gods of heaven and hell,16 enraged that a mortal should dare to play the giver of immortality. He was struck dead in consequence; but the deities themselves consented to his reception in heaven, while

16 Diod. Sic., IV. 71. Apollodorus, Bibliothec., III. 10. 4.

men, remembering his peaceful toils and benevolent deeds, declared he was the son of Apollo, the lord of light and life upon the earth.

Still another degree of heroism is portrayed under the name of Eacus, the king of Egina, who was designated by the oracle of Delphi, in a season of dreadful drought, as the only man whose supplications could avert the punishment which the crimes of his countrymen deserved." Eacus prayed, and the drought was arrested. While the nation rejoiced over their relief, the king built a temple to the Grecian Jupiter on the mountain where it was said he had stood to pray; 18 and when he died, he was himself venerated as the son of the god to whom. his temple had been reared.19 Such was the piety of Eacus and of his times.

The island of a hundred cities,20 as Crete was called of old, was inhabited by various barbarian tribes. Warriors or pirates, according to their position on the coast or in the interior, they were so much divided, not only from one another, but amongst themselves, that violence and hostility were habitual with all. It was over one or several of these rude and severed races that Minos of Cnossus obtained rule by overthrowing his brother," and then

17 Diod. Sic., IV. 61.

18 Mount Panhellenius, now Oros, of Ægina. Pausan., II. 30.

19 He was made one of the three judges in Hades.

"Judicantem vidimus acum."

Horat., Carm., II. 13. 22.

20 Iliad, II. 649.

21 Herod., I. 173. Minos was of the third generation before the Trojan war. Ibid., VII. 171.

by conquests on sea and shore.22 His renown as a hero, in after times, proceeded chiefly from his dominion over the Grecian seas,23 and from the check he was thus enabled to put on the piracies and murderous expeditions that had become so frequent, not only from Crete, but from many other points, as to render it necessary to build towns far from the coasts,24 on which there was no safety against marauding strangers. As a king, the fame of Minos was equally brilliant; he was the first to reform the wanton customs of the Cretans in their relations to one another; the first to encourage colonization and civilized commerce; 25 above all, the first to give his subjects some simple laws,26 of which it would be vain to seek even the outlines. So much, however, was not supposed to be done by means of human authority alone; and they who regarded Minos as having been the hero of order amongst their ancestors, declared he must have been the son, or, at least, the friend of Jupiter.27

Contemporary with Minos, his rival, indeed, and conqueror,28 was Theseus of Athens. He was de

22 Herod., I. 171.

generally considered as the greatest

23 Aristot., Pol., II. 7. 2. He- of all Roman historians. His hisrod., III. 122.

24 Thucyd., I. 7.

25 Ibid., I. 4.

26 Tacit., Ann., III. 26. So Ubbo Emmius, in his treatise "Respublica Græcorum," styles Minos the legislator rex. Cap. III.

Tacitus, born near the beginning of Nero's reign, about A. D. 60, is

tories of the imperial times will, however, assist us only incidentally in these volumes.

27 Odyssey, XIX. 179.

28 Unless we give Minos a grandson, to be the contemporary of Theseus and the feeder of the Minotaur with boys and girls from Athens. Theseus was born in the generation

scribed, not as having had pretensions to divinity of race or knowledge, but as having trusted in himself and in the designs whose execution may safely be pronounced to have been the beginning of Athenian glory. We need not here recall him as the imitator of Hercules, the victor of the Amazons, or even as the deliverer of his country from shameful tribute to Crete, but simply mention the heroism, uncertainly as it is ascribed to him, of having founded the commonalty of Athens.

It is with great doubt that any details of this "marvellous great enterprise," as the wondering Plutarch described it, after an interval of thirteen centuries, are now to be accepted; but the account 29 we have, though it be ever so unreal in many particulars, is sufficiently trustworthy to illustrate the union which was, at some time or other, accomplished amongst the Athenians. Each town of Attica once had its Prytaneum, or tribunal where justice was administered, and the assemblies or festivals of the neighbouring inhabitants were held. It was the civil, just as the temple was the religious, sanctuary; and so long as one remained to every different settlement, the division of Attica was irremediable, in consequence, not only of independent, but of conflicting interests. It would have been more consonant with the old royalties of Greece, that a separate

following that of Minos, before the Trojan War. Clinton, Fast. Hell., Vol. I. p. 64, note 7.

good old biographer; and in the history of Thucydides, II. 15. Pausanias (I. 3. 2) confesses to the ex

29 In the Life of Theseus by the aggerations concerning the hero.