CHAP. (3) Alle gery ap pied to heroic myths. Uranos and Cronos, and we are still far from having exhausted the resources of the Stoic explanations of mythology. The most important attempts of this kind have, however, been sufficiently noticed. Besides the stories of the Gods, the stories of the heroes attracted considerable attention in the Stoic School. The persons of Hercules and Ulysses were specially singled out, for the sake of illustrating the ideal of the wise man. But here, too, various modes of interpretation meet and cross. According to Cornutus, the God Hercules must be distinguished from the hero of the same name-the God being nothing less than Reason, ruling in the world without a superior; and the grammarian makes every effort to unlock with this key his history and attributes. Nevertheless, with all his respect for 1 Besides the etymologies of olpards in Germ. e. 1, and the observation of Plut. Pl. i. 6. 9. that heaven is the father of all things, because of its fertilising rains, and earth the mother. because she brings forth everything, the words in Cie. N. D. ii. 24, 63, deserve notice. It is there said: Uranos is the Ether, and was deprived of his vitality, because he did not need it for the work of begetting things. Crons is Time, and asumes his children, just as Time does portions of time. Crans was bound by Zeus, the unmeasured ecurse of time having been bound by the courses of the stars. A second explanation is given by Corn. 7, 21. after making rain attempts at etymological interpretations of Cronos and Rhea Cronos stanis for the order of nature, making for the too-violent atmosphere currents an earth, by diminishing the vapour-masses; and be is bound by Zens, to represent that change in nature is limited. Men, Sat. i. 8. gives another explanation: Before the separation of elements, time was not; after the seeds of all things hai flowed from hearen down to the earth in sufficient quantity, azi the elements ha loome into belag. the process came to an end, and the different sexes were left to proparate animal life. * Sen. Benef. i. 13, 3. Cleanthes,' he could not accept that Stoic's explanation of the twelve labours of Hercules. Heraclitus has probably recorded the chief points in this explanation. Hercules is a teacher of mankind, initiated into the heavenly wisdom. He overcomes the wild boar, the lion, and the bull, i.e. the lusts and passions of men; he drives away the deer, i.e. cowardice; he purifies the stall of Augeas from filth, i.e. he purifies the life of men from extravagances; he frightens away the birds, i.e. empty hopes; and burns to ashes the many-headed hydra of pleasure. He brings the keeper of the nether world to light, with his three heads-these heads representing the three chief divisions of philosophy. In the same way, the wounding of Here and Hades by Hercules is explained. Here, the Goddess of the air, represents the fog of ignorance, the three-barbed arrow undeniably (so thought the Stoics) pointing to philosophy, with its threefold division, in its heavenly flight. The laying prostrate of Hades by that arrow implies that philosophy has access even to things most secret.2 The Odyssey is explained by Heraclitus in the same strain; nor does it appear that Heraclitus was the first to do so.3 Ulysses is described as a pattern of all virtues, and an enemy of all vices. He flees from the country of the Lotophagi, i.e. from wicked pleasures; he stays the wild rage of the Cyclops; he calms the winds, having Pers. Sat. v. 63. introduction, expressly refers to 2 Heraclit. c. 33, who, in the SоkiμάтαTоL ΣTWÏKŵv. 3 c. 70-75. CHAP. XIII. XIII. СНАР. first secured a prosperous passage by his knowledge of the stars; the attractions of pleasure in the house of Circe he overcomes, penetrates into the secrets of Hades, learns from the Sirens the history of all times, saves himself from the Charybdis of profligacy and the Scylla of shamelessness, and, in abstaining from the oxen of the sun, overcomes sensuous desires. Such explanations may suffice to show how the whole burden of the myths was resolved into allegory by the Stoics, how little they were conscious of foisting in foreign elements, and how they degraded to mere symbols of philosophical ideas those very heroes on whose real existence they continually insisted. C. Pro phetic powers. The Stoic theology has engaged a good deal of our attention, not only because it is instructive to compare their views, in general and in detail, with similar views advanced nowadays, but also because it forms a very characteristic and important part of their entire system. To us, much of it appears to be an obvious and worthless trifling; but, to the Stoics, these explanations were solemnly earnest. To the Stoics, they seemed to be the only means of rescuing the people's faith, of meeting the severe charges brought against tradition and the works of the poets, on which a Greek had been fed from infancy. They could not agree to tear themselves entirely away from tradition, nor to sacrifice to it their scientific and moral convictions. Can we, 1 Conf. the way in which Hera- as to Plato's and Epicurus' atchirus, 74, 146, expresses himself tacks upon Homer. then, wonder that they attempted the impossible, and sought to unite contradictions, or that such an attempt should land them in forced and artificial methods of interpretation? CHAP. XIII. Illustrative of the attitude of the Stoics towards (1) Divination. positive religion are their views on divination. The importance attached by them to the prophetic art appears in the diligence which the chiefs of this School devoted to discussing it. The ground for the later teaching having been prepared by Zeno and Cleanthes, Chrysippus gave the finishing touch to the Stoic dogmas on this subject.2 Particular treatises respecting divination were drawn up by Sphærus, Diogenes, Antipater, and, last of all, by Posidonius. The subject was also fully treated by Boëthus, and by Panatius from a somewhat different side. The common notions as to prognostics and 1 Conf. Wachsmuth. 2 Cic. Divin. i. 3, 6. He there mentions two books of Chrysippus on divination, which are also referred to by Diog. vii. 149; Varro (in Lactant. Inst. i. 6, 9); Phot. Amphiloch. Quæst. (Montfaucon, Bibl. Coisl. p. 347); Philodemus, περὶ θεῶν διαγωγής, Vol. Herc. vi. 49, col. 7, 33; and from which Cicero has borrowed Divin. i. 38, 82; ii. 17, 41; 49, 101; 15, 35; 63, 130; and De Fato, 7. Chrysippus wrote a book, wept Xpnoμav (Cic. Divin. i. 19, 37; ii. 56, 115; 65, 134; Suid. VEOTTÓS); and one wept oveípwv (Cic. Divin. i. 20, 39; ii. 70, 144; 61, 126; 63, 130; i. 27, 56; Suid. TiμwPOûVTOS). In the former, he col lected oracular responses; in the 3 Diog. vii. 178, mentions a Boëthus, in his commentary CHAP. oracles could not commend themselves to these philosophers, and just as little could they approve of common prophecy. In a system so purely based on nature as theirs,' the supposition that God works for definite ends, after the manner of men, exceptionally announcing to one or the other a definite result-in short, the marvellous-was out of place. But to infer thence-as their opponents, the Epicureans, did that the whole art of divination is a delusion, was more than the Stoics could do. The belief in an extraordinary care of God for individual men was too comforting an idea for them to renounce; they appealed to divination as the strongest proof of the existence of Gods and the government of Providence; and they also drew the of a storm. Cic. Divin. i. 8, 14; 1 Cic. Divin. i. 52, 118: Non 2 Diogenian, in Eus. Pr. Ev. iv. 3, 5: τὸ χρειώδες αὐτῆς (divination) καὶ βιωφελές, δι' δ καὶ μάτ λιστα Χρύσιππος δοκεῖ ὑμνεῖν τὴν μaνTIKηy; and M. Aurel. ix. 27; God cares even for the wicked means of prophecies and by dreams. 3 Cic. N. D. ii. 5, 13, mentions præsensio rerum futurarum as the first and extraordinary natural phenomena - pestilence, earthquakes, monsters, meteors, &c., as the third-among the four causes from which Cleanthes deduced belief in the Gods. Ibid. 65, 165: The Stoic says of divination: Mihi videtur vel maxime confirmare, Deorum providentia consuli rebus humanis. Sext. Math. ix. 132: If there were no Gods, all the varieties of divination would be unmeaning. Cic. Divin. i. 6. |