The-mythology-of-ancient-greece-and-italy-thomas-keightley

ITS ORIGIN. 17
nicated by wandering minstrels and travellers from one part
of the country to another. Phoenician mariners probably in
troduced stories of the wonders of the East and of the West,
which in those remote ages they alone visited; and these sto
ries, it is likely, were detailed with the usual allowance of tra
vellers' licence. Poets, a race indigenous in the favoured
clime of Hellas, caught up the tales, and narrated them with
all the embellishments a lively fancy could bestow ; and thus
at a period long anterior to that at which her history com
mences, Greece actually abounded in a rich and luxuriant
system of legendary lore. This is proved by the poems of
Homer and Hesiod, which, exclusive of the ancient legends
they contain, make frequent allusion to others ; some of which
are related by subsequent writers, and many are altogether
fallen into oblivion.
These poems also bear evident testimony to the long pre
ceding existence of a race of poets,—a fact indeed sufficiently
evinced by the high degree of perfection in the poetic art
which they themselves exhibit. Modern mythologists have
therefore been naturally led to the supposition of there hav
ing been in ancient Greece aoedic schools, in which the verses
of preceding bards were taught, and the art of making similar
verses was acquired8. One of the ablest of our late inquirersb
is of opinion that the original seat of these schools was Pieria,
at the northern foot of Mount Olympos. He has been led
to this supposition by Heyne's remark, that Homer always
calls the Muses Olympian, which remark he extends by ob
serving that the Homeric gods are the Olympian, and no
others. In this however we can only see that, as we shall
presently show, Olympos was in the time of Homer held to
be the seat of the gods. It does not appear to us that any
one spot can be regarded as the birth-place of the Grecian
religion and mythology; they were, like the language and
manners of the people, a portion of their being; and the
* Wolf, it is well known, held this opinion. The Schools of the Prophets among
the Hebrews were evidently of the same nature.
b Volcker, Myth, der Jap. p. 5. seg. Bottiger, Ideen zur Kunat-Myth. ii. 50.
See also Miiller, Proleg. 219.
C