14 Ancient History. THE DEUCALIONAL DELUGE. EUCALION, in Grecian legend, is the person specially saved at the general deluge; and he is the father of Hellen, the great eponym of the Hellenic race. The enormous iniquity, as Apollodorus says, of the then existing brazen race, or, as others say, of the fifty monstrous sons of Lycaon— provoked Zeus to send a general deluge. An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest mountain tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deucalion was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father, Prometheus, to construct. After floating for nine days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. He then prayed that men and companions might be sent to him in his solitude, when Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha, his wife, to cast stones over their heads: those cast by Pyrrha became woman, those by Deucalion And thus "the stony race of men came to tenant the soil of men. Greece." The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece: the chronologers, reckoning up by genealogies, assigned the exact date to it, and placed it at the same time as the conflagration of the world, by the rashness of Phaeton. The meteorological work ascribed to Aristotle, places Mount Pindus near Dodona, and the river Achelous: he treats it as a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the atmosphere, thus departing from the religious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece to a very late date. The Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty summit of their mountain Geranei, which had not been completely submerged ; and in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus, at Athens (according to the Parian marble, founded by Deucalion), a cavity in the earth was shown, through which it was affirmed the waters of the deluge had retired: even in the time of Pausanias, the priests poured into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey.—Abridged from Grote's Hist. Greece, vol. i. EGYPT ITS MONUMENTS AND HISTORY. Egypt has been under many dynasties, none of which sprang originally from her own soil. Indeed, to those who take pleasure in observing historical retribution, it must be a striking reflection that this country PLATO SOLD AS A SLAVE. 15 has been subject to foreign powers, or to dominant races unassimilated with the original stock, ever since the days of those mighty kings who were wont from time to time to oppress the children of Israel. It is true that subjection to a foreign race has become the normal condition of many Eastern countries; but there is, perhaps, no region in which ancient splendour and long-continued modern degradation are so harshly contrasted as in the land of the Pharaohs.—(Athenæum.) Canon Trevor puts this strikingly: "It is hardly possible to imagine a greater contrast than is presented between the Monuments and the History of Egypt. The monuments tell of a native monarchy flourishing among the great empires of the East; its kings little less than demi-gods; its priesthood endued with a sanctity revered in distant lands; its chariots and horses pouring out to battle under the banners of a thousand gods; the nations of the earth bringing tribute; and art and luxury carried to an extent only possible to a numerous population, with abundant material resources and a high mental development. On the date and duration of this splendid period the monuments are dumb. They witness what Ancient Egypt was; they know nothing of her rise, progress, or decay. Their testimony is confirmed by the position of Egypt in the Holy Scriptures, where her rulers are found showing hospitality to the father of the faithful, or reducing his descendants into bondage. Still, we only know that Egypt was a great power before Israel was a nation. It gleams out of a remote antiquity with a splendour that cannot be denied; but the splendour is a pre-historic memory, separated from authentic chronology by a gulf, which nothing but the Bible can span. All that we know of it is, that it existed before Moses, and perished about the close of the Old Testament. With the first page of secular history Ancient Egypt is already dead. The Pharaohs have become a tradition, the temples and altars are shrouded in mystery, the fleets and armies have disappeared, the people are reduced to inexorable servitude." PLATO SOLD AS A SLAVE. When Dionysius received, at Syracuse, the visit of Plato (who came to Sicily to see Mount Etna, 388 B.C.), he discoursed eloquently upon justice and virtue, enforcing his doctrine that wicked men were inevitably miserable, that true happiness belonged only to the virtuous, and that despots could not lay claim to the merit of courage. This pleased not Dionysius, who took a deep-rooted dislike to Plato, whom, according to Diodorus, the despot caused to be seized, taken to the Syracusan slave-market, and put up for sale as a slave, at the price of twenty mine; which his friends subscribed to pay, and thus released him. Plato then left Syracuse in a trireme which was about to convey home the Lacedæmonian envoy, Pollio. But Dionysius secretly entreated Pollio to cause him to be slain on the voyage-or at least to sell him as a slave. Plato was accordingly landed at Ægina, and there 16 HOW DEMOSTHENES BECAME AN ORATOR. sold; but, being re-purchased, he was sent back to Athens: but it is certain that Plato was really sold, and became for a moment a slave !— Abridged from Grote's Hist. Greece, vol. xi. HOW DEMOSTHENES BECAME AN ORATOR. Demosthenes, when a youth, corrected his defective elocution by speaking with pebbles in his mouth; he prepared himself to overcome the noise of the assembly by declaiming in stormy weather on the seashore of the Phalerum; he opened his lungs by running, and extended the power of holding breath by pronouncing sentences in marching uphill; he sometimes passed two or three months without interruption in a subterranean chamber, practising night and day, either in composition or declamation, and shaving one-half of his beard in order to disqualify himself from going abroad. In his unremitting private practice, he acquired a graceful action by keeping watch on all his movements while declaiming before a tall looking-glass. More details are given by Plutarch, from Demetrius, the Phalerean, who heard them himself from Demosthenes; and the subterranean chamber where he practised was shown at Athens, even in the time of Plutarch. THE HOMERIC POEMS. Mr. Froude, the historian, loves Homeric masterpieces; and he has traced with a fine and cunning hand the moral creed of the great poet, the state of society described by him, the power and grand simplicity of his manner, his sympathy with what is noble and beautiful. We quote his very striking reflections on the moral differences between the Iliad and Odyssey: "In the Iliad, in spite of the gloom of Achilles, and his complaint. of the double urn, the sense of life, on the whole, is sunny and cheerful. There is no yearning for anything beyond-nothing vague, nothing mystical. The earth, the men, the gods, have all a palpable reality about them. From first to last, we know where we are, and what we are about. In the Odyssey, we are breathing another atmosphere. The speculations on the moral mysteries of our being hang like a mist over us from the beginning to the end, and the cloud, from time to time, descends on the actors, and envelopes them in a preternatural halo. We never know as we go on, so fast we pass from one to the other, when we are among mere human beings, and when among the spiritual and mystical. Those sea-nymphs, those cannibals, those enchantresses, if intended to be real, are neither mortal nor divine; at any rate, like nothing divine which we had seen in Olympus or on the plains of Ilium; and at times there is a strangeness seen in the hero himself. Sometimes it is Ulysses painfully toiling his way home across the unknown ocean; sometimes it is we that are Ulysses, and that unknown ocean is the life across which we are wandering with too many Circes HOMER'S BATTLES, AND HIS IMITATORS. 17 and Sirens, and Isles of Error in our path. In the same spirit death is no longer the end, and on every side long vistas seem to stretch away into the infinite, peopled with shadowy forms." The candour and integrity of Homer, in an historical point of view, have been so impugned as to be set beneath the authority of Geoffrey of Monmouth. One of the latest Homeric theories is that by Mr. James Hutchinson, of Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, who points out remarkable resemblances in the Iliad of Homer and the Rámáyana of Valmiki. He contends that the rape of Helen and the siege of Troy are really but the carrying off of Sitá and the capture of Lanka done into Greek verse. He goes further, and asserts his conviction that Homer not only worshipped the same deities as the Hindus, but was himself a Hindu. Dr. August Jacob, after six years' study of the ancient Greek epics, has constructed a theory of Homer, according to which there was really a singer, or bard, named Homer, who, somewhere about the tenth century B.C., flourished on the western coast of Asia Minor, or in the islands hard by. The wrath of Achilles, and the return of Odysseus, formed the subjects of his songs, which, for a long time, were not written down, but preserved by oral tradition. But Homer had predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, who celebrated the fall of Troy. All the lays, Homeric and others, were altered from time to time; and were edited by Pisistratus, who presented them to the Athenians in the same order in which they now appear. Dr. Jacob points out the ancient songs or stories, examines the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey book by book, and makes his citations in German. HOMER'S BATTLES, AND HIS IMITATORS. The first great poet whose works have come down to us sang of war long before war became a science or a trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between two little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with implements of labour rudely turned into weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to procure good armour, horses, and chariots, and whose leisure had enabled them to practise military exercises. One such chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and courage, would, probably, be more formidable than twenty common men; and the force and dexterity with which he flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share in deciding the event of the day. Such were, probably, the Battles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer related the actions of men of a former generation, of men who sprang from the gods, and communed with the Gods face to face, one of whom could with ease hurl rocks, which two sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age Achilles, clad in celestial armour, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping C ! 18 FABULOUS CLASSIC LOCALITIES. his spear which none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking the Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, fearless, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, struck down with his right arm, foe after foe. In all rude societies, similar notions are found. There are at this day countries where the Life-guardsman, Shaw, would be considered as a much greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Buonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill with which he managed his horse and his sabre, could not believe that a man who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be the greatest soldier in Europe. Homer's description of war had, therefore, as much truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether wanting to the performances of those who, writing about battles which had scarcely anything in common with the battles of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He undertook to record in verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of the first order; and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds which these generals inflicted with their own hands. Asdrubal flings a spear which grazes the shoulder of the consul Nero; but Nero sends his spear into Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long-haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus, and Monæsus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in modern times, and continued to prevail down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers had described William turning thousands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, represented Marlborough as having won the battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in fence.-Macaulay. FABULOUS LOCALITIES OF CLASSIC HISTORY. Mr. Grote, at the opening of his valuable History of Greece, gives this very interesting précis of certain classic localities, the existence of which has been disproved by the extension of geographical discovery : 66 'Many of these fabulous localities are to be found in Homer and Hesiod, and the other Greek poets and topographers,—Erytheia, the garden of the Hesperides, the garden of Phœbus, to which Boreas trans ported the Attic maiden Orithya, the delicious country of the Hyperboreans, the Elysian plain, the floating island of Æolus, Trinakria, the country of the Ethiopians, the Læstrygones, the Cyclopes, the Lotophagi, the Sirens, the Cimmerians, and the Gorgons, &c. These are places which (to use the expression of Pindar respecting the Hyperbo |