developed and modified by each successive poet in such a way as to embody the results of his own reflection upon the phenomena of life. Thus in Milton's works we meet with various forms of the same legend, from the primitive one to his own modification thereof.1 Myths in their primitive form probably embodied the literal beliefs of men of the earliest ages, to whose childlike minds (for example) the assumption that the storm cloud or the darkness of night was a veritable dragon that swallowed up the sun was the simplest explanation of the phenomenon of the daily disappearance of that body. But as men developed moral perceptions and æsthetic tastes, there gathered about such bits of primitive scientific explanation encrustations in the shape of additional details intended either to account for the existence of such supernatural beings as the dragon above mentioned (imaginary genealogies of the gods), or to adapt them to the uses of art (romantic fictions), or to employ them in the expression of moral ideas (symbolism). In any given age all these features of the myth were probably present, but each affected the conceptions of people of a certain type only. The uneducated classes, for instance, may have believed that the sun was an archer named Apollo, who rode daily through the heavens, and who was the son of the ruler of that region. The student of science of the same period believed that the sun was a luminous body of matter endowed in some manner with the power 1 The accounts of the various myths here given will be those employed by Milton, and it need not surprise the student to find them, in some respects, different from the accounts given in some works of general reference. of motion, and having its origin in the unknown but all-powerful source of all things. He was content to express the first fact under the image of personality, and the other under the image of parentage. The poet and moralist saw in the sun a proof of beneficent care over the universe conjoined at times with stern discipline to mankind, and seized upon the glory, the beauty, and the terror of the sun to adorn his poem or to point its moral. The events were ascribed to localities exhibiting suitable characteristics, local heroes and local legendary happenings were interwoven with the original myth, confusion of language distorted its original form, and the result is an incongruous mixture of elements, some significant of deep thought, some picturesque only, some so crude as to be uninteresting or repulsive. Ancient Cosmography. 22. The primitive Greeks conceived the sky to be a solid arch, supported in some way at the outer edge of the earth. As their knowledge of the earth's surface was limited to a circle of a few thousand miles' radius, they supposed it to be a flat, disc-like expanse of land, bounded on all sides by water. They conceived the ocean to be a stream girdling the earth, fed by the rivers flowing from the land into the great basins of the Mediterranean and the Black seas. To the overarching sky was given the name of Uranus (Heaven), to the solid disc the name Gaia, or Terra (Earth), to the ocean stream the name Oceanus. What lay below the disc they did not know, but they imagined that there lay a vast region of unbroken darkness (for they supposed the sun to rest from his labors when he reached a point below the horizon, and not to traverse the space below). To this region, employed by the gods as a dungeon, was given the name Tartarus. 23. When the idea of the continued life of man's spirit after the death of the body had developed, they conceived that above the dungeon of. Tartarus lay a sort of under world, called Hades, inhabited by the spirits of the dead, the approach to which lay through cavernous passages in the earth's surface. As the ethical conceptions of reward and punishment after death developed, the entire lower region became in thought subdivided into Elysium (the abode of the souls of the good), Tartarus, (formerly the dungeon of the gods, now used as a place of punishment for the souls of the wicked), and other regions of less importance. By successive poets imaginative details were added to this meagre account. The cavernous opening in the earth's surface through which lay one approach to Hades was said to be guarded by monstrous forms, notably by a huge three-headed dog, Cerberus, whose jaws dripped poison, whose hair was formed of snakes, whose body terminated in a dragon, and whose roar struck terror into the mind of the hearer. After passing this monster and traversing a difficult descent, the visitor would find his passage barred by the Styx, a dark and sluggish stream (or rather labyrinth of creeks and inlets) encircling nine times the realm of Hades. Other rivers channelled the abode of the dead, — Acheron (= woe), a river of muddy and bitter waters; Cocytus (= lament), a tributary of the Acheron; Phlegethon (= burn), whose banks were scorched and blackened by fire. In the portion assigned to the souls of the blessed, called Elysium, flowed the Lethe (= forget), a drink from whose waters dispelled care and destroyed all memory of the past life. Plato described the blessed ness of life in the Elysian Fields so eloquently that Cleombrotus is said to have committed suicide after reading the description, in order to enter at once upon the enjoyment of that life. The ruler of the entire space below the earth was originally Erebus, but afterward Hades (called Orcus by the Romans) assumed control there. (See 30 and 31.) 24. With the elaboration of myths Tartarus became gradually peopled with condemned souls, to invent suitable punishments for whom the poets exercised their fancy. Tantalus, King of Lydia, for example, was said to have killed his son and served his flesh as meat at a banquet at which the gods were his guests, in order to test their divinity. They were alleged to have avenged the insult by placing him in Tartarus, in the presence of a feast forever unattainable. Boughs of trees laden with fruit which hung over his head swung out of his grasp ere he could pluck; and the water in which he was plunged to his chin sank ever as he lowered his lips to drink. 25. As early man could conceive of no action except as originated and directed by an indwelling life like that which dominated his own body, the Greeks believed that in clouds, streams, trees, winds, earthquakes in fact, in all the phenomena of nature - there was manifested the volition of indwelling spirits, to which they gave appropriate names. The Romans, with like conceptions, created a mythology so similar that the poets are in the habit of using the Greek and the Roman names of most deities of natural objects interchangeably, in spite of the fact that the kindred myths of the two races often show marked differences of detail. Thus the Roman Jove, or Jupiter, is assumed to be the same deity as the Greek Zeus, not because he is identical in character or functions, but because he is associated with the same fundamental idea of domination over the elements. It is to be noted that these myths referred primarily to natural objects, and names taken from them may apply either to the natural object or to its indwelling deity. Thus Hades is a region, and also a deity ruling that region. 26. The multiplicity of natural phenomena provocative of either curiosity or delight gave abundant stimulus to the imagination of primitive man. The mightier forces of nature, such as volcanoes and earthquakes, were pictured as giants, whose brute strength, uncontrolled by intelligence or beneficent purpose, was exerted only in destruction. In sun, moon, air, clouds, and wild beasts, on the other hand, were seen the operations of deities more kindly, but still mighty and at times violent. In streams, trees, and flowers, and in the gentler animals, were seen the manifestation of life still more akin to that of man, and often capable of communion with him. In time these deities became grouped into families, and legends grew up in regard to their origin and history. As Milton often refers to these genealogies, and to incidents in these legends, we will notice the chief deities in the order that they appear in ancient cosmogony. Ancient Cosmogony. 27. In the beginning, said the Greek philosophers, matter must have existed in a confused and formless |