DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0182
172
£08. When the Greeks made expeditions into distant countries,
either for plunder, trade, or conquest; and there found deilied
heroes with titles corresponding either in sound or sense to their
own, they without further inquiry concluded them to be the same ;
and adopted all the legendary tales which they found with them :
whence their own mythology, both religious and historical, was
gradually spread out into an unwieldy mass of incoherent fictions
and traditions, that no powers of ingenuity or extent ol learning
could analyse or comprehend. The heroes of the Iliad were, at a
very early period, so much the objects ot public admiration,
partly through the greatness of the war, the only one carried on
jointly by all the States of Greece prior to the Macedonian usurp-
ation, and partly through the refulgent splendor of the mighty ge-
nius by which it had been celebrated ; that the proudest princes
were ambitious of deducing their genealogies from them, and the
most powerful nations vain of any traces of connexion with them.
Many such claims and pretensions were of course fabricated, which
were as easily asserted as denied ; and as men have a natural par-
tiality for affirmatives, and nearly as strong a predilection for that
which exercises their credulity, as for that which gratifies their
vanity, we may conclude that the assertors generally prevailed.
Their tales were also rendered plausible, in many instances, by the
various traditions then circulated concerning the subsequent for-
tunes and adventures of those heroes; some of whom were said
to have been cast away in their return ; and others expelled by-
usurpers, who had taken advantage of their long absence; so that
a wandering life supported by piracy and plunder became the fate
of many.1 Inferences were likewise drawn from the slenderest
traces of verbal analogies, and the general similarity of religious
rites; which, as they co-operated in proving what men were pre-
disposed to believe, were admitted without suspicion or critical
examination.
£09. But what contributed most of all towards peopling the
coasts and islands both of the Mediterranean and adjoining ocean,
1 Strabon. lib. hi. p. 150.
£08. When the Greeks made expeditions into distant countries,
either for plunder, trade, or conquest; and there found deilied
heroes with titles corresponding either in sound or sense to their
own, they without further inquiry concluded them to be the same ;
and adopted all the legendary tales which they found with them :
whence their own mythology, both religious and historical, was
gradually spread out into an unwieldy mass of incoherent fictions
and traditions, that no powers of ingenuity or extent ol learning
could analyse or comprehend. The heroes of the Iliad were, at a
very early period, so much the objects ot public admiration,
partly through the greatness of the war, the only one carried on
jointly by all the States of Greece prior to the Macedonian usurp-
ation, and partly through the refulgent splendor of the mighty ge-
nius by which it had been celebrated ; that the proudest princes
were ambitious of deducing their genealogies from them, and the
most powerful nations vain of any traces of connexion with them.
Many such claims and pretensions were of course fabricated, which
were as easily asserted as denied ; and as men have a natural par-
tiality for affirmatives, and nearly as strong a predilection for that
which exercises their credulity, as for that which gratifies their
vanity, we may conclude that the assertors generally prevailed.
Their tales were also rendered plausible, in many instances, by the
various traditions then circulated concerning the subsequent for-
tunes and adventures of those heroes; some of whom were said
to have been cast away in their return ; and others expelled by-
usurpers, who had taken advantage of their long absence; so that
a wandering life supported by piracy and plunder became the fate
of many.1 Inferences were likewise drawn from the slenderest
traces of verbal analogies, and the general similarity of religious
rites; which, as they co-operated in proving what men were pre-
disposed to believe, were admitted without suspicion or critical
examination.
£09. But what contributed most of all towards peopling the
coasts and islands both of the Mediterranean and adjoining ocean,
1 Strabon. lib. hi. p. 150.