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Hesiod, in his Theogony, gives a different account, and makes Chaos the eldest of beings; though he assigns to Love neither father nor superior; which circumstance is particularly mentioned by Phædrus, in Plato's Banquet, as being observable not only in Hesiod, but in all other writers both of verse and prose: and on the same occasion he cites a line from Parmenides, in which Love is expressly stiled the eldest of all the gods. Yet Aristophanes, in The Birds, affirms, that “Chaos, and Night, and Erebus, and Tartarus, were “first; and that Love was produced from an egg, which the sable-winged night deposited in the immense bosom of Erebus.” But it must be observed, that the Love designed by this comic poet was always distinguished from the other, from that original and self-existent being the ΤΟ ΟΝ or ΑΓΑΘΟΝ of Plato, and meant only the ΑΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΟΣ or second person of the old Græcian trinity; to whom is inscribed an hymn among those which pass under the name of Orpheus, where he is called Protogonos, or the first-begotten, is said to have been born of an egg, and is represented as the principal or origin of all these external appearances of nature. In the fragments of Orpheus, collected by Henry Stephens, he is named Phanes, the discoverer or discloser; who unfolded the ideas of the supreme intelligence, and exposed them to the perception of inferior beings in this visible frame of the world; as Macrobius, and Proclus, and Athenagoras all agree to interpret the several passages of Orpheus which they have preserved.

But the Love designed in our text, is the one self-existent and infinite mind, whom if the generality of ancient mythologists have not introduced or truly described in accounting for the production of the world and its appearances; yet, to a modern poet, it can be no objection that he hath ventured to differ from them in this particular; though, in other respects, he professeth to imitate their manner and conform to their opinions. For, in these great points of natural theology, they differ no less remarkably among themselves; and are perpetually confounding the philosophical relations of things with the traditionary circumstances of mythic history: upon which very account, Callimachus, in his hymn to Jupiter, declareth his dissent from them concerning even an article of the national creed; adding, that the ancient bards were by no means to be depended on. And yet in the exordium of the old Argonautic poem, ascribed to Orpheus, it is said, that “Love, whom mortals in later times call Phanes, was the father of the eternally-begotten Night;” who is generally represented by these mythological poets, as being herself the parent of all things; and who, in the Indigitamenta, or Orphic Hymns, is said to be the same with Cypris, or Love itself. Moreover, in the body of this Argonautic poem, where the personated Orpheus introduceth himself singing to his lyre in reply to Chiron, he celebrateth “the obscure memory of Chaos, and the natures which it contained within itself in a state of perpetual vicissitude; how the heaven had its boundary determined; the generation of the earth; the depth of the ocean; and also the sapient Love, the most ancient, the self-sufficient; with all the beings which he produced when he separated one thing from another.” Which noble passage is more directly to Aristotle's purpose in the first book of his metaphysics than any of those which he has there quoted, to shew that the ancient poets and mythologists agreed with Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the other more sober philosophers, in that natural anticipation and common notion of mankind concerning the necessity of mind and reason to account for the connexion, motion, and good order of the world. For, though neither this poem, nor the hymns which pass under the same name, are, it should seem, the work of the real Orpheus; yet beyond all question, they are very ancient. The hymns, more particularly, are allowed to be older than the invasion of Greece by Xerxes; and were probably a sett of public and solemn forms of devotion: as appears by a passage in one of them, which Demosthenes hath almost literally cited in his first oration against Aristogiton, as the saying of Orpheus, the founder of their most holy mysteries. On this account, they are of higher authority than any other mythological work now extant, the Theogony of Hesiod himself not excepted. The poetry of them is often extremely noble; and the mysterious air which prevails in them, together with its delightful impression upon the mind, cannot be better expressed than in that remarkable description with which they inspired the German editor Eschenbach, when he accidentally met with them at Leipsic: “Thesaurum me reperisse credidi, says he, & profecto thesaurum reperi. Incredibile dictu quo me sacro horrore asslaverint indigitamenta ista deorum: nam et tempus ad illorum lectionem eligere cogebar, quod vel solum horrorem incutere animo potest, nocturnum; cum enim totam diem consumserim in contemplando urbis splendore, & in adeundis, quibus scatet urbs illa, viris doctis; sola nox restabat, quam Orpheo consecrare potui. In abyssum quendam mysteriorum venerandæ antiquitatis descendere videbar, quotiescunque silente mundo, solis vigilantibus astris et luna, μελανηφατους istos hymnos ad manus sumsi.”

The unformed, undigested mass of Moses and Plato: which Milton calls

Fate is the universal system of natural causes; the work of the Omnipotent Mind, or of Love: so Minucius Felix: “Quid enim aliud est fatum, quam quod de unoquoque nostrum deus fatus est.” So also Cicero, in The First Book on Divination: “Fatum autem id appello, quod Græci ΕΙΡΜΑΡΜΕΝΗΝ; id est, ordinem seriemque causarum, cum causa causæ nexa rem ex se gignat—ex quo intelligitur, ut fatum sit non id quod superstitiose, sed id quod physice dicitur causa æterna rerum.” To the same purpose is the doctrine of Hierocles, in that excellent fragment concerning Providence and Destiny. As to the three Fates, or Destinies of the poets, they represented that part of the general system of natural causes which relates to man, and to other mortal beings: for so we are told in the hymn addressed to them among the Orphic Indigitamenta, where they are called the daughters of Night (or Love), and, contrary to the vulgar notion, are distinguished by the epithets of gentle, and tender-hearted. According to Hesiod, Theog. ver. 904, they were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis: but in the Orphic Hymn to Venus, or Love, that Goddess is directly stiled the mother of Necessity, and is represented, immediately after, as governing the three Destinies, and conducting the whole system of natural causes.

Cronos, Saturn, or Time, was, according to Apollodorus, the son of Cælum and Tellus. But the author of the hymns gives it quite undisguised by mythological language, and calls him plainly the offspring of the earth and the starry heaven; that is, of Fate, as explained in the preceding note.

The known fable of Saturn devouring his children was certainly meant to imply the dissolution of natural bodies; which are produced and destroyed by Time.

Jupiter, so called by Pindar.

That Jupiter dethroned his father Saturn, is recorded by all the mythologists. Phurnutus, or Cornutus, the author of a little Greek treatise on the nature of the gods, informs us, that by Jupiter was meant the vegetable soul of the world, which restrained and prevented those uncertain alterations which Saturn, or Time, used formerly to cause in the mundane system.

Our mythology here supposeth, that before the establishment of the vital, vegetative, plastic nature (represented by Jupiter), the four elements were in a variable and unsettled condition; but afterwards, well-disposed and at peace among themselves. Tethys was the wife of the Ocean; Ops, or Rhea, the Earth; Vesta, the eldest daughter of Saturn, Fire; and the cloud-compeller, or Ζευς νεφεληγερετης, the Air: though he also represented the plastic principle of nature, as may be seen in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him.

The river-gods; who, according to Hesiod's Theogony, were the sons of Oceanus and Tethys.

The descent of the Naiads is less certain than most points of the Greek mythology. Homer, Odyss. xiii. κουραι Διος. Virgil, in The Eighth Book of the Æneid, speaks as if the Nymphs, or Naiads, were the parents of the rivers: but in this he contradicts the testimony of Hesiod, and evidently departs from the orthodox system, which representeth several nymphs as retaining to every single river. On the other hand, Callimachus, who was very learned in all the school-divinity of those times, in his hymn to Delos, maketh Peneus, the great Thessalian river-god, the father of his nymphs: and Ovid, in The Fourteenth Book of his Metamorphoses, mentions the Naiads of Latium as the immediate daughters of the neighbouring river-gods. Accordingly, the Naiads of particular rivers are occasionally, both by Ovid and Statius, called by a patronymic, from the name of the river to which they belong.

The grove of Daphne in Syria, near Antioch, was famous for its delightful fountains.

Mineral and medicinal springs. Pæon was the physician of the gods.

The Winds; who, according to Hesiod and Apollodorus, were the sons of Astræus and Aurora.

A son of Cælum and Tellus, and father of the Sun, who is thence called, by Pindar, Hyperionides. But Hyperíon is put by Homer in the same manner as here, for the Sun himself.

The state of the atmosphere with respect to rest and motion is, in several ways, affected by rivers and running streams; and that more especially in hot seasons: first, they destroy its equilibrium, by cooling those parts of it with which they are in contact; and secondly, they communicate their own motion: and the air which is thus moved by them, being left heated, is of consequence more elastic than other parts of the atmosphere, and therefore fitter to preserve and to propagate that motion.

One of the epithets of Apollo, or the Sun, in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him.

The ancient Greek name for Flora.

The mother of the first Bacchus, whose birth and education was written, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, in the old Pelasgic character, by Thymœtes, grandson to Laomedon, and contemporary with Orpheus. Thymœtes had travelled over Libya to the country which borders on the western ocean; there he saw the island of Nysa, and learned from the inhabitants, that “Ammon, king of Libya, was married in former ages to Rhea, sister of Saturn and the Titans: that he afterwards fell in love with a beautiful virgin whose name was Amalthea; had by her a son, and gave her possession of a neighbouring tract of land, wonderfully fertile; which in shape nearly resembling the horn of an ox, was thence called the Hesperian horn, and afterwards the horn of Amalthea: that fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he concealed the young Bacchus, with his mother, in the island of Nysa;” the beauty of which, Diodorus describes with great dignity and pomp of style. This fable is one of the noblest in all the ancient mythology, and seems to have made a particular impression on the imagination of Milton; the only modern poet (unless perhaps it be necessary to except Spenser) who, in these mysterious traditions of the poetic story, had a heart to feel, and words to express, the simple and solitary genius of antiquity. To raise the idea of his Paradise, he prefers it even to

The priestesses and other ministers of Bacchus; so called from Edonus, a mountain of Thrace, where his rites were celebrated.

Hermes, or Mercury, was the patron of commerce; in which benevolent character he is addressed by the author of the Indigitamenta, in these beautiful lines:

The merchants of Sidon and Tyre made frequent voyages to the coast of Cornwall, from whence they carried home great quantities of tin.

Mercury, the patron of commerce, being so greatly dependent on the good offices of the Naiads, in return obtains for them the friendship of Minerva, the goddess of war: for military power, at least the naval part of it, hath constantly followed the establishment of trade; which exemplifies the preceding observation, that “from bounty issueth power.”

Gibraltar and The Bay of Biscay.

Near this island, the Athenians obtained the victory of Salamis, over the Persian navy.

This circumstance is recorded in that passage, perhaps the most splendid among all the remains of ancient history, where Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, describes the sea-fights of Artemisium and Salamis.

A staff, or spear, wreathed round with ivy: of constant use in the bacchanalian mysteries.

An exclamation of victory and triumph, derived from Apollo's encounter with Python.

One of the summits of Parnassus, and sacred to Apollo. Near it were several fountains, said to be frequented by the Muses. Nysa, the other eminence of the same mountain, was dedicated to Bacchus.

This whole passage, concerning the effects of sacred music among the gods, is taken from Pindar's first Pythian ode.

The Phrygian music was fantastic and turbulent, and fit to excite disorderly passions.

It was the office of Minerva to be the guardian of walled cities; whence she was named ΠΟΛΙΑΣ & ΠΟΛΙΟΥΧΟΣ, and had her statues placed in their gates, being supposed to keep the keys; and on that account stiled ΚΛΗΔΟΥΧΟΣ.

Pentheus was torn in pieces by the bacchanalian priests and women, for despising their mysteries.

Of this cave Pausanias, in his Tenth Book, gives the following description: “Between Delphi and the eminences of Parnassus, is a road to the grotto of Corycium, which has its name from the nymph Corycia, and is by far the most remarkable which I have seen. One may walk a great way into it without a torch. 'Tis of a considerable height, and hath several springs within it; and yet a much greater quantity of water distills from the shell and roof, so as to be continually dropping on the ground. The people round Parnassus hold it sacred to the Corycian nymphs and to Pan.”

Delphi, the seat and oracle of Apollo, had a mountainous and rocky situation, on the skirts of Parnassus.

Cyrene was the native country of Callimachus, whose hymns are the most remarkable example of that mythological passion which is assumed in the preceding poem, and have always afforded particular pleasure to the author of it, by reason of the mysterious solemnity with which they affect the mind. On this account he was induced to attempt somewhat in the same manner; solely by way of exercise: the manner itself being now almost intirely abandoned in poetry. And as the meer genealogy, or the personal adventures of heathen gods, could have been but little interesting to a modern reader; it was therefore thought proper to select some convenient part of the history of nature, and to employ these ancient divinities as it is probable they were first employed; to wit, in personifying natural causes, and in representing the mutual agreement or opposition of the corporeal and moral powers of the world: which hath been accounted the very highest office of poetry.