ON THE DIVINITIES OF THE ANCIENTS.

To a person inquiring into the manners and customs of ancient nations, the religion which they professed and the gods which they worshipped will always appear objects of the greatest curiosity. And this will not be wondered at when we remember how intimately the religion of a State must necessarily be connected with its civil policy. In former times, when ignorance and superstition flourished side by side, the aid of a divinity was required for the carrying into effect of the most frivolous designs. No poem could succeed until the Muses were called upon in a well-rounded hexameter, no war could prosper until Mars was propitiated by a sufficiency of roast beef. The ancients appear to have had some faint idea of the ubiquity of the Deity; but, not comprehending how such a faculty had been vested in a single divinity, they formed to themselves a set of superior powers, calculated to attend upon every emergency, from Jupiter, the god of thunder, to Tussis, the god of coughing. It is therefore evident that the consideration of the religious ideas of the ancients must be inseparably united with the study of the other parts of their history.

In the remarks which I am about to make upon this subject, I must request that one or two preliminaries may be kept in mind. First, that the characters of the constant supporters of the Etonian may not be implicated in the blunders of an occasional correspondent; and, secondly, that I may not be understood as endeavouring to compose a regular essay or treatise upon the topic which is before me. I have no more the inclination than I have the ability to attempt such a task. The observations which I shall have occasion to make will be merely the unripe fruit of an hour of leisure; merely a few unconnected hints, thrown out at random for your amusement, Mr. Editor, and that of my fellow-citizens. If they are pleased with them, they will thank me, and I am sufficiently repaid: if not—n’importe—they will at least give me credit for good intentions.[Pg 161]

The first point which I shall notice is the opinion which the ancients entertained of the power and authority of their heavenly rulers. And as the study of fallen religions is principally useful as it shows to us the superiority of that religion which can never fall, let us first see upon what footing Christianity stands in this respect. In my eyes, and in the eyes of every one upon whom the light of revelation has dawned, the mention of a God presupposes an idea of infinite, irresistible, indisputable power. One cannot form the most remote conception of a deity whose powers or existence should be in any way limited. One of the distinguishing attributes of Christianity is that with its God nothing is impossible. He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Can we say the same of the gods of the heathen—“the gods of wood and stone, the work of men’s hands?”

Alas! alas! They raised ghosts, and they raised tempests; they scolded, and they thundered; they drank nectar, and drove doves: but when anything serious was to be done—when a battle was to be decided, or an empire overthrown, they were frequently as powerless to slay or to save as the sceptre which they wielded or the cloud which they bestrode. Let us call before us some of the most formidable, and examine into their pretensions to Olympus.

Come down, then, Jupiter, from the little pedestal on which I have placed your plaster effigy! Come down, father of men and gods, counsel-giving, wide-thundering, cloud-compelling! Come down, thou who overthrowest the Titans and abusest thy wife; thou who art so fond of the voice of prayer and the smoke of hecatombs; thou who hast so many epithets and so many sons; thou who governest Olympus and meritest Bridewell! Where are thy frowns and thy nods? thy muscles and thy sinews? thy darts and thy decrees? Where are the looks which appal—the blows which destroy? Where is the unbroken chain—the insatiable vulture? Where are the Cyclopes who forge the lightning, and the poets who forge the Cyclopes? Alas! Jupiter, amidst all thy terrors, in heaven or on Ida, in feasting or in wrath, in poetry or in prose, thou wert a quack, Jupiter, a most contemptible quack; so utterly destitute of everything that could ensure respect; so miserably deficient in everything that could inspire fear; such a pitiful compound of ignorance[Pg 162] and knowledge, of strength and imbecility, of vanity and vice—that if the days of thy sovereignty could return again—if thou couldst again be fed upon sacrifice and flattery, I swear by thine own beard I would as soon be an Irus as a Jupiter.

The truth is that the religion of the ancients, as far as it can be collected from their writings, partook in no small degree of predestination. Yet it is enveloped in so much obscurity, that it is very difficult for us—nay, it might have been very difficult for them—to define where the supremacy of fate should stop and the authority of the gods commence. We find some unfortunate divinity perpetually endeavouring to overthrow some State which is destined to stand, or to destroy some hero who is destined to live; although the said divinity has an innate perception that his struggles in either instance must eventually be fruitless. I know that these ideas may be said to be founded solely on the marvellous fictions of the poets; but, let me ask, would Diomedes have ever inflicted a wound upon Mars, if Homer had seen in Mars a formidable being? or would Juno have ever strutted and stormed through the Æneid, if Virgil had cared a sixpence for her displeasure? When I see these liberties taken with the gods in writing, I feel convinced that equal liberties will be taken with them in life; when I find an immortal and an invincible being knocked on the head or run through the belly at the mercy of a terrestrial wit, I naturally conclude that in the country where such a phenomenon takes place few persons will boggle at a perjury from the apprehension of a thunder-bolt. But this is not all. There seems to have existed an idea that a time was approaching when the great offspring of Saturn would be hurled down from the seat he occupied, and subjected to an ignominious destiny, if not to utter annihilation. This is one of the most singular and unaccountable points in their system of faith. Without going into discussions, to which I am unequal, upon the origin and import of this notion, I must express my surprise at the blindness of those who dressed up a figure loaded with all these debilities as their supreme power, and installed him in the seat of universal dominion.

As I have been making allusions to the introduction of[Pg 163] the gods in the battles of the Epics, I shall proceed to say a few words upon the subject. The worthy gentry of Olympus, resembling men in their vices, their passions, their liability to pain, and their delight in carnage, made a very tolerable figure in a fair stand-up fight. Their characters could suffer very little from their making use of brazen arms, riding in wooden chariots, and wrestling with antagonists of mere flesh and blood. Mars, to be sure, would have done better if he had refrained from howling; and Juno would not have lost in dignity if she had been a little more cautious in boxing the ears of Diana. But, upon the whole, these people are very good matter for the poet; and I would as lief meet them in an hexameter as in a temple.

But it is a very different thing when the person of the only true God is to be introduced in a poem. A pigmy in poetry may trifle with the thunders of Jupiter; but a Hercules should beware how he handles the terrors of Jehovah. A rhymer may talk what nonsense he pleases of a mythology which consists of fiction and tinsel; but he should be afraid to touch upon a theme in which there is truth, and eternity, and power. It is for this reason that I can never read without disgust those passages of Tasso in which the divine agency is degraded to the level of the machinery of the poem.

When, however, the description falls into the hands of one who is able to do justice to it, see how the glories of the heathen mythology sink before the effulgence of the living God. Search the most celebrated descriptions of heathen writers; and where, in the brightest moments of inspiration, will you find a passage that can for a moment be compared with that of the Psalmist?

“The earth trembled and quaked; the very foundations of the hills shook, and were removed, because He was wrath. There went a smoke out in His presence, and a consuming fire out of His mouth, so that coals were kindled at it. He bowed the heavens also and came down, and it was dark under His feet. He rode upon the cherubims and did fly: He came flying upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; His pavilion round about Him with dark water, and thick clouds to cover Him. At[Pg 164] the brightness of his presence His clouds removed; hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered out of heaven, and the Highest gave His thunder; hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered them; He cast forth lightnings and destroyed them. The springs of waters were seen, and the foundations of the round world were discovered, at Thy chiding, Ο Lord, at the blasting of the breath of Thy displeasure.”

When I look at the famous nod of Jupiter—

I have before me a distinct image of a handsome terrible-looking man, sitting on a throne, and shaking his head; but when I read the passage which I have quoted above, I find no clear image represented; I feel only a dark and undefinable sensation of awe—a consciousness of the presence of the Deity, visible, yet clothed with darkness as with a veil.

Look now at the terrible magnificence with which Ezekiel has overshadowed the Almighty. After a gorgeous description of the attendant ministers, he says—

“And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood and had let down their wings. And above the firmament that was over their heads, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone, and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.”

My quotations are running to a great length; nevertheless I cannot refrain from transcribing the splendid description[Pg 165] of the Messiah, in which our own Milton has united the above two passages:—

After having transcribed three such passages as these, I am in no mind to return at present to the dirt and filth of Pagan superstition, and I shall hasten to a conclusion.

I have been digressing from my original proposition, until at last I have left the Divinities of the Ancients, and set to work at proving that Homer and Virgil are far inferior to David, Ezekiel, and Milton, which after all is a very easy task, and not very new. I intended to have made this a very learned paper, to have talked much of Egypt, a little of M. Belzoni, and several other matters which I have not time to enumerate. Here, however, is the fruit of my labours; I am too lazy, or too busy, to alter, or add, or erase; in thus rambling through five or six pages, instead of labouring through fifty, my time has been expended, I am sure, more pleasantly to myself, and I hope as agreeably to my readers.[Pg 166]