Note 1037 — Chapter XVII · THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE.

A few words from M. Ampère to illustrate this: “C’est donc au sixième siècle que la légende se constitue: c’est alors qu’elle prend complètement le caractère naïf qui lui appartient: qu’elle est elle-même, qu’elle se sépare de toute influence étrangère. En même temps, l’ignorance devient de plus en plus grossière, et par suite la crédulité s’accroit: les calamités du temps sont plus lourdes, et l’on a un plus grand besoin de remède et de consolation.... Les récits miraculeux se substituent aux argumens de la théologie. Les miracles sont devenus la meilleure démonstration du Christianisme: c’est la seule que puissent comprendre les esprits grossiers des barbares” (c. 15. p. 373).

Again, c. 17. p. 401: “Un des caractères de la légende est de mêler constamment le puéril au grand: il faut l’avouer, elle défigure parfois un peu ces hommes d’une trempe si forte, en mettant sur leur compte des anecdotes dont le caractère n’est pas toujours sérieux; elle en a usé ainsi pour St. Columban, dont nous verrons tout à l’heure le rôle vis-à-vis de Brunehaut et des chefs Mérovingiens. La légende auroit pu se dispenser de nous apprendre, comment un jour, il se fit rapporter par un corbeau les gants qu’il avait perdus: comment, un autre jour, il empêcha la bière de couler d’un tonneau percé, et diverses merveilles, certainement indignes de sa mémoire.”

The miracle by which St. Columban employed the raven to fetch back his lost gloves, is exactly in the character of the Homeric and Hesiodic age: the earnest faith, as well as the reverential sympathy, between the Homeric man and Zeus or Athênê, is indicated by the invocation of their aid for his own sufferings of detail, and in his own need and danger. The criticism of M. Ampère, on the other hand, is analogous to that of the later pagans, after the conception of a course of nature had become established in men’s minds, so far as that exceptional interference by the gods was understood to be, comparatively speaking, rare, and only supposable upon what were called great emergences.

In the old Hesiodic legend (see above, ch. ix. p. 245), Apollo is apprized by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Korônis to him—τῷ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἄγγελος ἦλθε κόραξ, etc. (the raven appears elsewhere as companion of Apollo, Plutarch, de Isid. et Os. p. 379, Herod. iv. 5.) Pindar, in his version of the legend, eliminated the raven, without specifying how Apollo got his knowledge of the circumstance. The Scholiasts praise Pindar much for having rejected the puerile version of the story—ἐπαινεῖ τὸν Πίνδαρον ὁ Ἀρτέμων ὅτι παρακρουσάμενος τὴν περὶ τὸν κόρακα ἱστορἱαν, αὐτὸν δι᾽ ἑαυτοῦ ἐγνωκέναι φησὶ τὸν Ἀπόλλω ... χαίρειν οὖν ἐάσας τῷ τοιούτῳ μύθῳ τέλεως ὄντι ληρώδει, etc.—compare also the criticisms of the Schol. ad Soph. Œdip. Kol. 1378, on the old epic Thebaïs; and the remarks of Arrian (Exp. Al. iii. 4) on the divine interference by which Alexander and his army were enabled to find their way across the sand of the desert to the temple of Ammon.

In the eyes of M. Ampère, the recital of the biographer of St. Columban appears puerile (οὔπω ἴδον ὧδε θεοὺς ἀνάφανδρα φιλεῦντας, Odyss. iii. 221); in the eyes of that biographer, the criticism of M. Ampère would have appeared impious. When it is once conceded that phænomena are distributable under two denominations, the natural and the miraculous, it must be left to the feelings of each individual to determine what is and what is not, a suitable occasion for a miracle. Diodôrus and Pausanias differed in opinion (as stated in a previous chapter) about the death of Actæôn by his own hounds,—the former maintaining that the case was one fit for the special intervention of the goddess Artemis; the latter, that it was not so. The question is one determinable only by the religious feelings and conscience of the two dissentients: no common standard of judgment can be imposed upon them; for no reasonings derived from science or philosophy are available, inasmuch as in this case the very point in dispute is, whether the scientific point of view be admissible. Those who are disposed to adopt the supernatural belief, will find in every case the language open to them wherewith Dionysius of Halicarnassus (in recounting a miracle wrought by Vesta, in the early times of Roman history, for the purpose of rescuing an unjustly accused virgin) reproves the sceptics of his time: “It is well worth while (he observes) to recount the special manifestation (ἐπιφάνειαν) which the goddess showed to these unjustly accused virgins. For these circumstances, extraordinary as they are, have been held worthy of belief by the Romans, and historians have talked much about them. Those persons, indeed, who adopt the atheistical schemes of philosophy (if, indeed, we must call them philosophy), pulling in pieces as they do all the special manifestations (ἁπάσας διασύροντες τὰς ἐπιφανείας τῶν θεῶν) of the gods which have taken place among Greeks or barbarians, will of course turn these stories also into ridicule, ascribing them to the vain talk of men, as if none of the gods cared at all for mankind. But those who, having pushed their researches farther, believe the gods not to be indifferent to human affairs, but favorable to good men and hostile to bad—will not treat these special manifestations as more incredible than others.” (Dionys. Halic. ii. 68-69.) Plutarch, after noticing the great number of miraculous statements in circulation, expresses his anxiety to draw a line between the true and the false, but cannot find where: “excess, both of credulity and of incredulity (he tells us) in such matters is dangerous; caution, and nothing too much, is the best course.” (Camillus, c. 6.) Polybius is for granting permission to historians to recount a sufficient number of miracles to keep up a feeling of piety in the multitude, but not more: to measure out the proper quantity (he observes) is difficult, but not impossible (δυσπαράγραφός ἐστι ἡ ποσότης, οὐ μὴν ἀπαράγραφός γε, xvi. 12).