Along with this reaction against the Orientalizing school, which could see in Greece nothing but a deformed copy of Eastern wisdom, went another reaction against the conception of Greek mythology on which the labors of the Orientalizing school had been based. Key after key had been applied to Greek mythology, and all in vain; the lock had refused to turn. The light which had been supposed to come from the East had turned out to be but a will-o'-the-wisp; neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the Egyptian hieroglyphics had solved the problem presented by the Greek myths. And the Greek scholar, in despair, had come to the conclusion that the problem was insoluble; all that he could do was to accept the facts as they were set before him, to classify and repeat the wondrous tales of the Greek poets, but to leave their origin unexplained. This is practically the position of Grote; he is content to show that all the parts of a myth hang closely together, and that any attempt to extract history or philosophy from it must be arbitrary and futile. To deprive a myth of its kernel and soul, and call the dry husk that is left a historical fact, is to mistake the conditions of the problem and the nature of mythology.
It was at this point that the science of comparative mythology stepped in. Grote had shown that we cannot look for history in mythology, but he had given up the discovery of the origin of this mythology as a hopeless task. The same comparative method, however, which has forced nature to disclose her secrets has also penetrated to the sources of mythology itself. The Greek myths, like the myths of the other nations of the world, are the forgotten and misinterpreted records of the beliefs of primitive man, and of his earliest attempts to explain the phenomena of nature. Restore the original meaning of the language wherein the myth is clothed, and the origin of the myth is found. Myths, in fact, are the words of a dead language to which a wrong sense has been given by a false method of decipherment. A myth, rightly explained, will tell us the beliefs, the feelings, and the knowledge of those among whom it first grew up; for the evidences and monuments of history we must look elsewhere.
But there is an old proverb that "there is no smoke without fire." The war of Troy or the beleaguerment of Thebes may be but a repetition of the time-worn story of the battle waged by the bright powers of day round the battlements of heaven; but there must have been some reason why this story should have been specially localized in the Troad and at Thebes. Most of the Greek myths have a background in space and time; and for this background there must be some historical cause. The cause, however, if it is to be discovered at all, must be discovered by means of those evidences which will alone satisfy the critical historian. The localization of a myth is merely an indication or sign-post pointing out the direction in which he is to look for his facts. If Greek warriors had never fought in the plains of Troy, we may be pretty sure that the poems of Homer would not have brought Akhilles and Agamemnon under the walls of Ilium. If Phœnician traders had exercised no influence on primeval Greece, Greek legend would have contained no references to them.
But even the myth itself, when rightly questioned, may be made to yield some of the facts upon which the conclusions of the historian are based. We now know fairly well what ideas, usages, and proper names have an Aryan stamp upon them, and what, on the other hand, belong rather to the Semitic world. Now there is a certain portion of Greek mythology which bears but little relationship to the mythology of the kindred Aryan tribes, while it connects itself very closely with the beliefs and practices of the Semitic race. Human sacrifice is very possibly one of these, and it is noticeable that two at least of the legends which speak of human sacrifice - those of Athatnas and Busiris - are associated, the one with the Phœnicians of Thebes, the other with the Phœnicians of the Egyptian Delta. The whole cycle of myths grouped about the name of Herakles points as clearly to a Semitic source as does the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis; and the extravagant lamentations that accompanied the worship of the Akhæn Demeter (Herod. v. 61) come as certainly from the East as the olive, the pomegranate, and the myrtle, the sacred symbols of Athena, of Hera, and of Aphrodite.[1]
Comparative mythology has thus given us a juster appreciation of the historical inferences we may draw from the legends of prehistoric Greece, and has led us back to a recognition of the important part played by the Phœnicians in the heroic age. Greek culture, it is true, was not the mere copy of that of Semitic Asia, as
- ↑ See E. Curtius: Die griechische Götterlehre vom geschichtlichen Standpunkt, in Preussische Jahrbücher, xxxvi. pp. 1-17. 1875.
