Note 962 — Chapter XVI · GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES. (continued 2)

Palæphat. Narrat. 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 21, 29. Two short treatises on the same subject as this of Palæphatus, are printed along with it, both in the collection of Gale and of Westermann; the one, Heracliti de Incredibilibus, the other Anonymi de Incredibilibus. They both profess to interpret some of the extraordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not unlike that of Palæphatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan, surrounded with abominable parasites: she ensnared and ruined the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent enough to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) Atlas was a great astronomer: Pasiphaê fell in love with a youth named Taurus; the monster called the Chimæra was in reality a ferocious queen, who had two brothers called Leo and Drako; the ram which carried Phryxus and Hellê across the Ægean was a boatman named Krias (Heraclit. c. 2, 6, 15, 24).

A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout the Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without specification of their authors.

Theôn considers such resolution of fable into plausible history as a proof of surpassing ingenuity (Progymnasmata, cap. 6, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. Græc. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors, too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes in controverting, the probability of the ancient mythes. See the Progymnasmata of Nicolaus—Κατασκευὴ ὅτι εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην, Ἀνασκευὴ ὅτι οὐκ εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor. i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful mode of handling.

Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs, Sphinxes, Centaurs, etc. as realities; he treats them as products of the monstrous, incestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man, which he contrasts with the simple and moderate passions of animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990).