Читать книгу The Mythology of Greece and Rome, With Special Reference to Its Use in Art онлайн

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ssss1. The German word “sage” (legend) is really only a translation of the Greek word “mythos,” and is often used in that sense. But lately the custom has tacitly sprung up of employing the term “mythos” when speaking of the life or actions of the gods, and “sage” when speaking of those of heroes.

A large proportion of these myths are due to men’s observations of Nature, and her various active and creative forces, which appeared to their lively Southern fancy as manifestations of single supernatural beings. These were regarded, now as friendly, now as hostile, to man; and men therefore strove as eagerly to gain their favour as to appease their wrath. Of the appearance of the deities who thus manifested themselves in the workings of nature, men necessarily formed at first very crude and fantastic ideas. But later, when men emerged from the simple conditions of the early patriarchal epoch, and began to dwell in regular political communities, they gradually ceased to regard the gods as mere personifications of natural forces. They began to regard them as beings acting in accordance with unchangeable moral laws, and endowed with forms similar to those of men (Anthropomorphism). They brought the gods into connection with each other by means of genealogies in a great measure artificial, and built up a vast political system, which has its centre in Zeus, the “father of gods and men.”