Note 52 — Chapter XIX · THE EXCURSION

‘It was only in after-ages, when the size of men was greatly decreased, that the bodies of those heroes, if they happened to be discovered, were, as was natural, admired and exactly measured. Such a thing happened in Laconia, where the body of Orestes was discovered, and found to be of length seven cubits, that is, ten feet and a half. The story is most pleasantly told by Herodotus, and is to this effect: The Lacedemonians were engaged in a war with the Tegeatae, a people of Arcadia, in which they were unsuccessful. They consulted the oracle at Delphi, what they should do in order to be more successful. The oracle answered ‘That they must bring to Sparta the bones of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon.’ But these bones they could not find, and therefore they sent again to the oracle to inquire where Orestes lay buried. The god answered in hexameter verse, but so obscurely and enigmatically that they could not understand what he meant. They went about inquiring everywhere for the bones of Orestes, till at last a wise man among them, called by Herodotus Liches, found them out, partly by good fortune, and partly by good understanding; for, happening to come one day to a smith’s shop in the country of the Tegeatae, with whom at that time there was a truce and intercourse betwixt the two nations, he looked at the operations of the smith, and seemed to admire them very much; which the smith observing, stopped his work, and, “Stranger,” says he, “you that seem to admire so much the working of iron would have wondered much more if you had seen what I saw lately; for, as I was digging for a well in this court here, I fell upon a coffin that was seven cubits long; but believing that there never were at any time bigger men than the present, I opened the coffin, and found there a dead body as long as the coffin, which having measured I again buried.” Hearing this, the Spartan conjectured that the words of the oracle would apply to a smith’s shop, and to the operations there performed; but taking care not to make this discovery to the smith, he prevailed on him, with much difficulty, to give him a lease of the court; which having obtained, he opened the coffin, and carried the bones to Sparta. After which, says our author, the Spartans were upon every occasion superior in fight to the Tegeatae.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 146.

‘The most of our philosophers at present are, I believe, of the opinion of the smith in Herodotus, who might be excused for having that opinion at a time when perhaps no other heroic body had been discovered. But in later times, I believe there was not the most vulgar man in Greece, who did not believe that those heroes were very much superior, both in mind and body, to the men of after-times. Indeed, they were not considered as mere men, but as something betwixt gods and men, and had heroic honours paid them, which were next to the divine. On the stage they were represented as of extraordinary size, both as to length and breadth; for the actor was not only raised upon very high shoes, which they called cothurns, but he was put into a case that swelled his size prodigiously (and I have somewhere read a very ridiculous story of one of them, who, coming upon the stage, fell and broke his case, so that all the trash with which it was stuffed, came out and was scattered upon the stage in the view of the whole people). This accounts for the high style of ancient tragedy, in which the heroes speak a language so uncommon, that, if I considered them as men nowise superior to us, I should think it little better than fustian, and should be apt to apply to it what Falstaff says to Pistol: “Pr’ythee, Pistol, speak like a man of this world.” And I apply the same observation to Homer’s poems. If I considered his heroes as no more than men of this world, I should consider the things he relates of them as quite ridiculous; but believing them to be men very much superior to us, I read Homer with the highest admiration, not only as a poet, but as the historian of the noblest race of men that ever existed. Thus, by having right notions of the superiority of men in former times, we both improve our philosophy of man and our taste in poetry.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 150.