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No character of primeval Greek tradition has been a greater favourite with modern poets than the hero of the well known play of Æschylus. The common conception of him, however, made fashionable by Shelley and Byron, as the representative of freedom in contest with despotism, is quite modern; and Gœthe is nearer the depth of the old myth, when, in his beautiful lyric, he represents the Titan as the impersonation of that indefatigable endurance in man, which conquers the earth by skilful labour, in opposition to and in despite of those terrible influences of the wild elemental powers of Nature, which, to the Greek imagination, were concentrated in the person of Jove. On the apparent impiety of the position of Prometheus, as against the Olympian, see my Essay in Classical Museum, Vol. v., p. l. 1848.

The beautiful and significant local myth embodied in this ballad, conveys a grand lesson in political economy, to all nations who, in the pursuit of wealth by manufactures, commerce, or otherwise, may be tempted to neglect the fundamental interests of landed property, and the rights of the honest food-producing labourers who till the soil. It were well for modern Greece, at the present hour, if it could be brought to understand, and practically to strive after, the realization of this great principle. A people consisting of mere merchants, without any root in the native soil, can never become a nation. The contest between Pallas and Poseidon was represented on the posterior pediment of the Parthenon. Pausanias, i. 24, 5. To the English people, as the conservators of the Elgin marbles, the whole subject possesses a peculiar interest.

This famous Corinthian legend has also become, in a manner, the property of the British nation, by the labours of Sir Charles Fellowes, and the existence of a “Xanthian Chamber” in the British Museum. Ephyre is the old name for Corinth. That Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, should appear as the special protector of a homicide, will appear strange to no thinker; for, in those wild days of imperfect and partial law, feuds were always arising, and murders everywhere committed, and Furies invoked and feared by persons of the most reputable character. The scenery of the pass of Tretus, as given in p. 42, will be found described in Colonel Mure's two admirable volumes, entitled a Tour in Greece. The purification from the guilt of manslaughter by blood of swine (p.43), is according to the well known tradition of the ancient poets. On Xanthus, its topography and antiquities, besides the works of Sir Charles Fellows, the reader may consult the two volumes of travels in Lycia, by the late Professor Edward Forbes, and Colonel Spratt.

This subject has been as great a favourite with modern poets as the Prometheus. Gœthe's play of this name is, by many, and for very good reasons, accounted his masterpiece. The sacrifice of the Argive princess, besides its general human interest, is a striking testimony to the fact, that even among the most cultivated people of the ancient world, human sacrifice prevailed at an early period of their history. There are certain principles in the human heart, which, at a certain stage of civilization, seem to make such a practice a sort of moral necessity. The idea of the substitution of the stag by Diana, in order to save the virgin's life, and the conveyance of the destined victim of a bloody devotion to the barbarous service of a grim idol in the Crimea, was an after-thought—one of those beautiful lies with which the legendary lore of old Hellas is replete. Æschylus, as is well known, in his sublime description of the sacrifice, in the opening chorus of the Agamemnon, altogether disregards the posterior fiction. How closely I have followed this great master in the closing stanzas of the ballad, will be obvious to the scholar.

In this lyric I have endeavoured to represent the very stupid and comfortless doctrine of the Greeks, with regard to the state of human souls after death. The Greeks believed in a heaven and a hell; but only for the few: heaven for the very good, and hell for the very bad; but the shades of the millions of common mortals were left floating about in a lethargic inane sort of Limbo, not at all enviable. On this subject, there is an excellent essay by Archbishop Whately, in his discourses on some characteristic points of Christianity. The student may also consult my essay on the Theology of Homer, Proposition xix. Classical Museum, Vol. vii. 1850.

This most beautiful legend of the Dionysiac series, embodies a principle more Christian than Hellenic, but which belongs so essentially to the moral nature of man, that it is not possible for any religious mythology altogether to exclude it: the principle that I mean may be called the consecration of sorrow. Christian legends containing this moral, of which the number is very great, always represent suffering as the road to glory, and the cave of despair as the propylaea of the temple of celestial bliss. The Hellenic legend has been a favourite subject with modern painters and sculptors; and the travelled reader will scarcely require to be told that the concluding part of this ballad (pp. 90, 91) is only a verbal paraphrase of the well known statue of Ariadne by Dannecker, exhibited as one of the lions of Frankfort.

The occupation of watching the vineyards, in which the father of tragedy is here represented as engaged, when the first inspiration came to his soul by the Epiphany of the patron god of the “goat song,” is often alluded to by ancient writers. See Song of Solomon, i. 6. The works of the poet alluded to in the ballad, are the Agamemnon, the Choephorœ, the Furies, the Seven against Thebes, and the Prometheus Bound, being five out of the seven extant. The allusion to Homer, in p. 112, is with reference to a well known saying of the bard, reported by Athenæus (viii. p. 348), that his numerous tragedies were only “slices from the great banquet of Homeric dainties.”

In this ballad an attempt has been made to unite the descriptions of this great naval combat, given by Herodotus and Æschylus. The tragic writer was a soldier, and present at the battle, which circumstance makes his testimony, as given in “the Persians,” peculiarly valuable. The concluding part of this ballad is a sort of lyrical epitome of that very singular, and in some respects altogether unique remnant of the lost riches of tragic art in Athens.

This piece was composed while I was residing in Castleton of Braemar, a once remote region, but now visited by all the world, as the summer retreat of our well-beloved Queen. This circumstance will explain the topographical allusions that occur in the poem. The ant-hills described in p. 146, are very common in the forests of Invercauld and Ballochbuie, and often strike eyes unaccustomed to sylvan sights, with considerable astonishment.

The striking contrast between rest and motion, permanence and mutability, eternity and time, being and becoming, which the phenomena of the universe present, could not fail to occupy, at a very early period, the subtle minds of the early Greek speculators. In Heraclitus, popularly known to the million as the weeping philosopher, we have the type of a class of men appearing in all ages of the world, who, losing their hold of the great central unity of self-consistent mind, which makes the world a world, and reason reasonable, give themselves up to the contemplation of the ever-shifting phases of ephemeral finitudes, which overwhelm the senses, and practically believe only in the idea of Change. Such a view of things, when it becomes a habit, leads to universal scepticism and shallow sophistry of that kind which became afterwards so rank in Athens, and required all the diligence of such master workmen as Socrates and Plato, to weed it out. Modern Sensationalism, issuing from the cold Rationalism of Locke, has produced similar results, for which a Scotsman does not require to seek far.

Though Socrates, in several places of Plato, expresses his dissatisfaction with the doctrine of νους, as taught by Anaxagoras, the friend of Pericles, there can be no doubt that, in comparison with those who preceded him, the philosopher of Clazomenæ is fully entitled to the proud position given him by Aristotle, and which has been asserted in the present sonnet.

This very remarkable history of the conversion of this father of the old Academy, from a licentious to a saintly life, will be found in Valerius Maximus, Lib. vi., c. 9, and in Diogenes Laertius. Those who wish to know where the Christian Church was before Christ (as we talk of “Reformers before the Reformation”), must search in the lives of the old Greek philosophers, who were not mere talkers and speculators, but men of character, and action, and exhibiting in many cases a self-control and self-denial, and a plain godly simplicity of life, which might shame not a few British Christians, who contrive in a very questionable sort of way to unite the worship of God with that of Mammon. A Socrates and a Polemo would not have sinned after this fashion.