The scientific study of mythology commenced with the ancient nations who produced it, specially with the acute and speculative Greeks. The great mass of the Greek people, indeed—ot whom we have a characteristic type in the traveler Pausanias—accepted their oldest legends, in the mass, as divine and human facts; but so early as the time of Euri pides, or even before his day in the case of the Sicilians, Epicharmus and Empedocles, we find that philosophers and poets had begun to identify Jove with the upper sky, Apollo with the sun, Juno with the nether atmosphere, and so forth; that is, they inter preted their mythology as a theology and poetry of nature. This, indeed, may be regarded as the prevalent view among all the more reflective and philosophical heathens (who were not, like Xenophon. orthodox believers) up from the age of Pericles, 4ri0 n.c., to the establishment of Christianity. Bat there was an altogether opposite view, which arose at a Ater period. under less genial circumstances, and exercised no small influence both on Greek and Roman writers. This view was first prominently put forth by Euhe merns, Messeniau, in the time of the first Ptolemies, and consisted in the flat prosaic assertion, that the gods, equally with the heroes, were originally men, and all the tales about them only human facts sublimed and elevated by the imagination of pious devotees. This view seemed..to derive strong support from the known stories about the birth and death of the gods, specially of Jove in Crete; and the growing skeptical ten dencies of the scientific school at Alexandria, were of course favorable to the promulga tion of such views. The work of Euhemerus accordingly obtained a wide circulation; and having been translated into Latin, went to nourish that crass form of religious skepticism which was one of the most notable symptoms of the decline o. Roman genius at. the time of the emperors. Historians, like Diodorus, gladly adopted an interpretation of the popular mythology which promised to swell their stores of reliable material; the myths accordingly were coolly emptied of the poetic soul which inspired them, and the early traditions of the heroic ages were set forth as plain history, with a grave sobriety equally opposed to sound criticism, natural piety, and good taste.
In modern times, the Greek mythology has again formed the basis of much specula tion on the character of myths and the general law s of mythical interpretation. The first tendency of modern Christian scholars, following the track long before taken by the fathers, was to refer all Greek mythology to a corruption of Old Testament doctrine and history. Of this system of interpreting myths, we have examples in Vossius, in the learned and fanciful works of Bryant and Faber, and very recently, though with more pious and poetic feeling, in Gladstone. But the Germans, who have taken the lead here, as in other regions of combined research and speculation, have long ago given up this ground as untenable, and have introduced the rational method of interpreting every system of mytlikin.the'Brat place; ttccdrding to the peettliar laws traceable in its own genius and growth. Ground was brokm in this department by Heyne, whose Lave been tested, corrected, and enlarged by a great number of learned, ingenious, and philosophical writers among his own countrymen, specially by Mittman'', Voss, Creuzer, MUller, Weicker, Gerhard, and Preller. The general tendency of the Germans
is to start—as Wordsworth does hi his Excursion, book iv.—from the position of a devout imaginative contemplation of nature, in which the myths originated, and to trace the working out of those ideas, in different places and at different times, with the most critical research, and the most vivid reconstruction. If in this work they have given birth to a large mass of ingenious nonsense and brilliant guess-wo•k, there has not been wanting among them abundance of sober judgment and sound sense to counteract ,uch extravagances. It inav be noticed, however, as characteristic of then over specu lative intellect, that they have a tendency to bring the sway of theological and physical symbols down into a region of what appears to be plain historical fact; so that Achilles becomes a water-god, Pelens a mud-god, and the whole of the Iliad, according to Forch hammer, a poetical geology of Thessaly and the Troad 1 Going to the opposite extreme from Euhemerus, they have denied the existence even of deified heroes: all the heroes of Greek tradition, according to Uschold, are only degraded gods; and generally in German writers, a preference of transcendental to simple and obvious explanations of myths is noticeable. Creuzer, some of whose views had been anticipated by Blackwell, in Scot land, is especially remarkable for the high. ground of religious and philosophical concep tion on which he has placed the interpretation of myths; and he was also the first who directed attention to the oriental element in Greek mythology—not, indeed, with suffi cient discrimination in many cases, but to the great enrichment of mythological material, and the enlargement of philosophical survey. In the most recent times, by uniting the excursive method of Creuzer with the correction supplied by the more critical method of 0. Miiller and his successors, the science of comparative mythology has been launched into existence; and specially the comparison of the earliest Greek mythology with the sacred legends of the Hindus, has been ably advocated by Max Muller in the ()Void Esseys (1850). In France, the views of Euhemerus were propounded by Barrier (1739). By the British scholars, mythology is a field that has been very scantily cultivated. Besides those already named, Payne Knight, Mackay, Grote in the first volumes of his history, and Keightley are the only names of any note, and their works can in nowise compete in originality, extent of research, iu discriminating criticism, or in largeness of view. with the productions of the German school. The best for common purposes is Keightley; the most original. Payne Knight. Recently, G. W. Cox, in a work on Aryan mythology, has pushed the sanscritising tendencies of Max Milner to an extreme which to most minds seems absurd. On the special mythologies of India, home, Greece, etc., information will be found under the heads of the respective countries to which they belong. The more important mythological personages are noticed under their own name;; Sec BACCHUS, JUPITER, HERCULES, etc.