who, taking mortal form, had been born a mortal child, it was with no blinder faith than that which, in the Middle Age, accepted the miracles of birds singing the praises of God, and of flowers spontaneously opening to adore him; with no more childish reverence than that the pious Roman Catholic exhibits to-day, as he gazes upon the beautiful procession of the Holy Infant carried on high in a crib (præsepe) through the splendid nave of Sta. Maria Maggiore, on Christmas Eve, in Rome, the symbol now, as the mythological child was so long ago in Crete, of the yearly revival of nature and the regeneration of human life.

But when the rest of the Greeks had outgrown this limitation of the conception of Zeus to physical nature, it is as little surprising that they rejected the myth of the death of Zeus as that the Cretans adopted the doctrine of Euhemerus, though the real doctrine of that philosopher probably did not go so far as was asserted in ancient times. An acute French writer, the Abbé Foucher, maintains that he was in no sense an atheist, but, as appears from a passage in his writings preserved by Eusebius, merely made a distinction between the two classes. of gods, the one eternal and immortal, such as the sun, moon, stars, winds, and all things of an ethereal nature; the other born of the earth, who had attained divine honors through the service they had done mankind, such as Hercules, Bacchus, and the rest, of which terrestrial gods the histories on the one hand, and the mythologies on the other, gave diverse accounts. It was with this passage, moreover, preserved by Sextus Empiricus, that the work of Euhemerus, "surnamed the Atheist," probably opened. "When men lived without law and order, those among them who excelled in bodily strength and in intelligence compelled the others to defer to their will. And, in order to conciliate the admiration and respect of their fellows, they attributed to themselves superior and divine power; whence it came that several of them were regarded and honored as gods."

The writings of Euhemerus, of course, made a great noise. Ennius translated them into Latin, and Varro, the most learned of the Romans, adopted the principles they taught; and the

Church Fathers naturally made frequent use of them in exposing the absurdities of the pagan mythology. But Euhemerus was probably no more an atheist than Anaxagoras and Socrates, who recognized the same distinction between immortal gods, divine by nature (so to speak), and deified heroes, a distinction, moreover, which was admitted by the Neo-Platonists, and openly professed by the Stoics. Cicero says of the system of Euhemerus, that it supposes the immortality of the soul; and that great men would not have been deified after their death, if there had not already been a belief that the souls of men subsisting after death were eternal and perfect beings.

Uranus, obliged for some reason to expatriate himself from Egypt or Phoenicia, took refuge in Crete. His civilizing arts softened the people he found there; and, Kronos (Saturn) following in his footsteps, the inhabitants were so enchanted with the sweet life thus opened to them, that they adored the latter as a god, and called his reign the age of gold. The end of it, however, did not correspond with the beginning; for Titan, his brother, had consented to give place to him, only on condition that he should not bring up a son, in order that at Saturn's death the empire might revert to the former. Saturn, therefore, faithful to his oath, devoured his children; that is, slew them as fast as they were born. But Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto escaped his cruelty; Ops, or Rhea, their mother, having deceived her husband, and secreted them among the rocks of Mount Ida. Titan, believing that he had been deceived, seized his brother and threw him into prison. Jupiter, however, as soon as he was grown up, delivered his father, and re-established him upon his throne. But, Saturn having soon afterwards begun to entertain projects hostile to his son, the latter banished him, and Saturn went to the coasts of Hesperia (the West), and spread abroad there the arts of Crete; whence the fable that Jupiter had driven out his father, and relegated him to Tartarus; that is, the Western regions of Europe, which, in their ignorance, the Greeks believed to be the realm of darkness. The Titans thereupon. claimed their rights, but Jupiter overcame them, and drove

them to the caverns of the mountains; which gave rise to the fable, that Jupiter had plunged them into the abysses of the sea, and kept them there by the weight of enormous mountains.

Jupiter's subjects afterwards began to be unquiet. The passions of men broke loose, and, finding that they needed to be restrained by force, he established penal laws; whence the fable that Astrea had quitted the earth, and that Themis had taken her place. The silver age then began, and the blessings which Crete enjoyed became noised abroad. Other Hellenic countries desired to participate in them. Yielding, therefore, to the universal request, Jupiter travelled through Greece, and was everywhere received as a god, establishing salutary laws and correcting abuses. Being accompanied in his travels by his family, Juno conceived an affection for Argos; Apollo settled at Delphi, where he became famous for his skill in divination; Neptune taught the Greeks navigation, Mars war, Mercury eloquence; Plato instituted funeral rites; Ceres introduced agriculture; and so on. At length Jupiter returned to Crete, and died there; and on his tomb they inscribed these words, Tov Aids rágos (Tomb of Jupiter), or, according to Euhemerus, O Zevs rov Koórov (Zeus, the son of Kronos). All his legitimate children having been left in Greece, Crete was devised to Minos his son by Europa, daughter of a king of Sidon, whom he had carried off in a maritime expedition to that country.

Such, according to the Abbé Foucher, is the explanation of the myths given by the Euhemerists; and it is evident, as the Abbé remarks, that from the time of Cadmus the Greeks were persuaded that Greece was originally inhabited by gods; or rather, as Cicero says, that mankind had peopled the heavens with gods, the greatest of whom did but leave earth to inhabit Olympus. The Cretans, as we have seen, held on to this original belief that the gods were men; and therefore, in showing the burial-place of Jupiter, were so far from being "liars," that they were quite remarkable for their adherence to the truth. The allegorists attempted to confute them, by pretending that the tomb ascribed to Jupiter was originally

the burial-place of Minos, the inscription having been at first, Τοῦ Μινῶος τοῦ Διὸς τάφος (The tomb of Minos, the son of Jupiter); but that, in course of time, the two first words were effaced, leaving "the tomb of Jupiter;" whence the legend of his burial in Crete. But this assertion is destitute of proof, besides being contradicted by the immemorial traditions of the island. The Cretans, it is said, were liars (semper mendaces). Perhaps they were in those degenerate days, when the universal corruption of the ancient world was blighting the conscience alike of Roman and Greek; but the early wonderful development of law, art, and religion in Crete, forbids the attaching of that stigma to them at any other than a very late period, when it made little difference what particular epithet was employed to designate them or anybody else. And, moreover, however mendacious a people may be, they are not apt to lie against their own interest and without motive, as the Cretans would have done if this particular charge of falsehood about Jupiter's burial-place could be sustained against them; for it was to their honor to have had for a king one who was recognized by all Hellas as supreme over heaven and earth. Hence, as the Abbé Foucher says, to have lied to a purpose, they ought to have proclaimed, that, after having governed them for a time, Jupiter had been ravished into heaven, as the Romans asserted was the case with Romulus. But the Cretans, faithful to the truth, preferred rather to make the humiliating avowal that their protecting god had not been able to save himself from death and the corruption of the grave.

"Zeus shall not thunder any more, because he has long been dead," was the scoffing interpretation by Lucian of the inscription on the tomb of the god. And Lucian was right, though he meant only to be witty. The true Zeus, the majestic conception of the one Supreme Being who presides over nature and the course of time, ruling the winds and the waves and the spirit of man, did die in Crete, as it passed on to Greece. Yet how pure the Cretan conception of Zeus originally was, is proved by the head of him which Captain Spratt obtained in the island, and which, according to that

writer, was not only remarkable for its majesty and benignity and serenity of expression, but for its striking resemblance to the head of Christ in Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper; with the difference only that the great Italian artist's representation of Christ is the youthful presentment of the Greek conception of Zeus.

We have thus been at some pains to look a little into a charge that is sometimes brought against the Cretans, because it makes part of the general charge of worthlessness that is sometimes brought against the whole Greek race in modern times, especially at critical moments like the present, when the struggle so long deferred for the liberation of the whole Greek race seems impending.

Of the ancient history of Crete, however, we have no time to say any thing, nor to allude to the question whether its famous institutions came from Sparta or served as a model for the Spartan, which they so much resembled. The Cretans are found, all along the course of ancient history, taking part in the great Hellenic festivals, and carrying off prizes at the Olympic and Nemean games. The most ancient combat indeed was said to be that in which a prize was offered to one who should be adjudged to have chanted best the hymn to Apollo; and it was taken by Chrysothemis of Crete. Herodotus records the bravery of the Cretan soldiers whom Idomeneus conducted to Troy; and his comrade Meriones won the first prize in archery, at the funeral games in honor of Patroclus. The flourishing period of Crete, however, so long preceded the great struggle of Greece with Asia, that the island plays no part in that memorable drama. Civil dissension had done its ruinous work among its inhabitants; and they were only too ready, when the Oracle at Delphi bade them give no aid to the Greeks in the contest with Xerxes, to heed its voice and fold their arms.

Yet, with all their faults and vices, the Cretans have in all ages shown a wonderful degree of vitality and courage. The various states of Crete were so isolated, that even the names of the months were different in the different cities; yet, when assailed by foreign enemies, they so laid aside their domestic

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