VER. 7.—Peleus' godlike son.

Aios Axelles. I have no doubt P., if he had any thoughts at all on such matters, imagined that he had improved on Ch. by changing "godlike" into "great." V. also, and D. have "edel," which corresponds to our word "noble ;" but the Germans must have been led into the use of this word from a convenience of rhythm, as it is quite contrary to the philosophical principles of translation established in their practice to substitute general modern epithets for ancient ones having a special significance. That dios, dvTi0eos, Deios, and all such, are characteristic expressions, and strongly tinged with the peculiar colour of ancient Greek religious sentiment, cannot be doubted. The ancient Hellenes had souls deeply pervaded with the true feeling, so beautifully expressed by the apostle James, that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." For which reason all men of great endowments and extraordinary accomplishments are, in their language, most justly and significantly named "godlike" or "divine," as reflecting somewhat of the divine glory, in the splendour of their personal excellence. And as not only men, but the whole creation, is, justly considered, as only one great and magnificent exhibition of this excellence, therefore the pious phraseology of the Homeric age calls the earth "sacred," and the sea "divine" (ver. 141, infra), and views all terrestrial beauty and power as merely the outward expression of one internal, all-pervading divine activity. To transmute these phrases into the stale epithets of modern conversation, is to present the coin with the image and superscription erased, in which condition, indeed, it may be equally valuable to the Jew and the goldsmith, but is utterly devoid of significance to the numismatist and the archæologist. The occasional use of such epithets by the moderns-as when Spenser (F. Q. 111. 5. 32) talks of "divine tobacco"-is quite a different thing from the engrained habit of thought which the Hellenic phraseology indi

cates.

VER. 9.-Latona's son.

The universal opinion of the ancients, that is, of all those who reflected on such matters, with regard to this god, is, that he was "the Sun," or at least, to use the language of Preller, "the glorious, awe-inspiring, and divine element of Light." This traditional view of his nature was rudely disturbed by no less notable a champion than Otfried Müller; but, as is wont to be the case in such outbursts of revolutionary negation, the highest German authorities on this subject-Welcker, Preller, and Gerhard—have now returned, with one consenting voice, to the old orthodox belief. This belief stands upon the surest grounds. As a starting-point, we may assume as certain, what the philosophy of Plato (Crat. 397 D) divined, and the poetic instinct of Wordsworth (Excurs. IV.) recognised, that the most ancient Greeks worshipped the sun, the moon, the sea, the earth, and the sky, and other elemental aspects and powers, like all the "barbarians." This being so, and it being manifest that the original elemental welkin was, in the anthromorphic period, represented by Jove, the original ocean by Neptune, the original earth by Ceres, and so on, a presumption arises that such striking and significant heavenly powers as the sun and moon must also have undergone a similar transmutation, and are to be sought for among some of the twelve greater deities recognised in after times both by Greece and Rome. This natural, and, in the particular case of Greece, almost necessary presumption, is changed into fact when we discover that there is not a single attribute of Apollo, which may not be explained in the most obvious way, by assuming the sun, or the gladdening and vivifying power of light, as the original significance of his godhead. And not only so, but his names and titles, and the seasons of the year when his feasts were observed, and other pregnant facts, all tally most exactly with this theory. The Doric people of the island of Thera, for instance, worshipped him as aiyλýrns (Str. x. 484 c), that is, the glancer, while in Chios he was known as the Pavaîos, or shiner (Hesy.) The same is the signification of the familiar word Þoiẞos,

which the lexicographers explain by λaunpós and άyvós, that is, bright, clear, and which (v and B being cognate letters) is manifestly connected with φαύω, an old form of φαίνω, of which φαύσις (Gen. i. 15, oi o') is a remnant. His most familiar character in Homer, that of an archer-god (ἑκατήβολος, ἕκατος, εκάεργος), who shoots his arrows from afar, is the necessary consequence of an anthropomorphic conception of the powerful influence of the sun in hot countries. "The sun of Greece," says an intelligent modern traveller, "pierces the air with rays so keen and penetrating, that you understand at once the ancient metaphor, which likened them to the darts of Apollo. It is no longer the weak wavering radiance of the North, but a quiver full of arrows from an immortal bow" (Mount Athos. By G. F. Bowen; London, 1852). In fact, there is no Hellenic god whose original elemental nature shines more distinctly at once, and more poetically, through his anthropomorphic disguise, than his physical significance speaks through Apollo. For the proof, see Welck. g. 7.; Prell. Myth.; Gerhard's Myth.

With regard to the position occupied by this god in the Iliad, as a divine agent in the Trojan legends, this matter stands on a footing altogether independent of his original elemental significance. What we see of the activity of Apollo in the Iliad may no doubt in a great measure be referred to his solar character; but it does not in anywise follow that Homer at all understood his identity with that sun-god, whose separate existence he recognises (III. 277; Od. XII. 374), and from whom he keeps him as distinct as Ocean from Neptune. It is undeniable, for instance, that in warm countries, the sun is the author of agues, fevers, pestilence, in the hottest and most insalubrious season of the year, a fact which the Egyptians (Clem. Strom. v. 671 p) and the ancients generally had cause enough to recognise. That a pestilence of this kind should have arisen sometime during the ten years that the Greeks were encamped on the flat and marshy ground before Troy, was the most natural thing in the world; but we are not therefore to suppose that Apollo appears on the stage of Trojan warfare for any such reason. The consciousness that the anthro

pomorphic gods were originally elemental had evidently passed away from the mind of Greece long before the age of Homer. If the Greeks suffered from fever and pestilence before the " breezy Troy," it was, in their view, because they had in some way or other sinned against the great patron deity of the country, the natural protector of its besieged towns.-(Compare Williams' South Sea Missions, ch. iii.; Alison's Europe, 1815-52, ii. p. 208.) The worship of Apollo was dominant over the whole coast of Asia Minor, and especially in the Troad (Müller, Dor. ii. 2, 3); and it is in this character that he appears in the Iliad as the special protector of Troy. I have only further to add, that the name "Apollo," by which we designate this deity, has nothing to do with Apollyon, or áróλλvu, to destroy; for though the ancients, always fond of a play on words, sometimes pun the name of this god as a destroyer (ÆEschyl. Agam. 1045), his destructive functions were by no means so prominent as to justify the imposition of such a designation. On the contrary, the root of the epithet seems rather to lie in an old verb, ἀπέλλειν (Ε. Μ. in ἀπειλή), with which the oldest form of the name of the god, 'Améλλov, corresponds (W. g. l. i. p. 460), signifying to avert or drive away (Lat. pello). This title of averter, or ȧλeğikakos, belonged to all the gods, but especially to Apollo, who, though essentially joyous and beneficent, might in his anger scourge mankind with the most terrible calamities, plague, fever, etc., as we have seen, and as delivering from which he fell naturally to be invoked under the title of "the Averter." The people of Phigalia denominated this same god tкoupios, or "helper," because he ἐπικούριος, delivered them from the plague (Paus. vIII. 41. 5.) Welcker thinks that the title ékάepyos comes from ékás and epy in the same sense; but this seems doubtful.

VER. 14.-He on a golden staff, etc.

I incline to think that Wr., Drb., and the Germans are right in retaining the original meaning of the word σKTроv "staff," not "sceptre," as more consistent with the simplicity of the Homeric times. As to σrépa, Ch. has "crown," P. "laurel crown," Wr.

chaplet," V. "Lorbeerschmuck," Br. "wreath."

The sceptre or

staff, as the general ensign of authority among the ancients, belonged not only to kings and judges, but also to priests and diviners. So in Hades, the soul of the Theban soothsayer, Teiresias, appears to Ulysses holding "a golden staff" in his hand (Od. xi. 91); and in the Agamemnon of Eschylus, Cassandra, about to die, flings away her staff and the divining-wreath (σκῆπτρα καὶ μαντεία Téon) which she wore about her neck; on which passage, see Stanley's note. Hesychius, under the word i0vvTptov, says that the soothsayer's staff was made of laurel, as the tree sacred to Apollo, the god of divination. Poets, as being a kindred race, were honoured with the same ensign of dignity (Hes. Theog. 30). As to the σréupa, it may have been merely a laurel chaplet characteristic of the priest of Apollo, as Eust. and the schol. seem to think, or more specially a woollen wreath wound round the tips of branches, which suppliants were in the habit of holding in their hands when they claimed protection, or a combination of both. Of this custom of suppliants mention is often made in the ancient writers: see particularly sch. Supp. 22; Choëph. 1025; Eumen. 43, 44; Soph. Ed. Tyr. 3; Plutarch, Thes. 18; Plato, Republic, III. 398, compared with Suid. épíų σtéfavtes. The “infula Apollinis" was a wreath of wool which adorned the head of the priests of Apollo. Virg. Æn. II. 430; x. 538; Festus, in voce infula; Isidor. Orig. XIX. 30.

VER. 17.-Greeks with burnished greaves.

The greaves, to which this epithet refers, are constantly seen on the shins of warriors in the painted figures of Greek vases. Real greaves may be seen in the Bronze chamber of the British Museum, and other collections of the same kind.

VER. 37.-Tenedos, Chrysè, and Cilla.

Tenedos, an island twelve miles south of the mouth of the Dardanelles (Plin. N. H. v. 31), forming a natural breakwater to the coast of the Troad, south of Troy, pretty much as Kerrera does to