Note 945 — Chapter XVI · GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

We may here notice some particulars respecting Isokratês. He manifests entire confidence in the authenticity of the mythical genealogies and chronology; but while he treats the mythical personages as historically real, he regards them at the same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior to humanity. About Helena, Thêseus, Sarpêdôn, Cycnus, Memnôn, Achilles, etc., see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295. Bek. Helena was worshipped in his time as a goddess at Therapnæ (ib. p. 295). He recites the settlements of Danaus, Kadmus, and Pelops in Greece, as undoubted historical facts (p. 297). In his discourse called Busiris, he accuses Polykratês, the sophist, of a gross anachronism, in having placed Busiris subsequent in point of date to Orpheus and Æolus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he adds that the tale of Busiris having been slain by Hêraklês was chronologically impossible (p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops to Thêseus, he speaks with perfect historical confidence (Panathenaic. p. 349, Bek.); not less so of the adventures of Hêraklês and his mythical contemporaries, which he places in the mouth of Archidamus as a justification of the Spartan title to Messenia (Or. vi. Archidamus, p. 156, Bek.; compare Or. v. Philippus, pp. 114, 138), φάσιν, οἷς περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν πιστεύομεν, etc. He condemns the poets in strong language for the wicked and dissolute tales which they circulated respecting the gods: many of them (he says) had been punished for such blasphemies by blindness, poverty, exile, and other misfortunes (Or. xi. p. 309, Bek.).

In general, it may be said that Isokratês applies no principles of historical criticism to the mythes; he rejects such as appear to him discreditable or unworthy, and believes the rest.