A History of Pantomime | Page 7

(including our own, as did not Lilly predict the
execution of Charles I., the plague, the great fire of London, and other
events) was astrology practised. The Egyptians peopled the
constellation of the Zodiac (the first open book for mankind to read),
with Genii, and one of the twelve Zodiacal signs was Aries (the Ram).
The ram is of the same species as the goat, and the god Pan was the
Goat god, as we know. The astrologers, in their divinations and rulings
of the planets placed the various parts of the body under a planetary
influence. The head and face were assigned to the house of Aries, and
therefore the face notably for the Pantomimic Art was placed by the
ancient astrologers under the influence of this particular planet.
The heathen worship of Pan was not only known in Arcadia, but also
throughout Greece, although it did not reach Athens until after
Marathon.
Of Pan's death Plutarch tells the story that in the reign of Tiberius, one
Thamus, a pilot, visiting the islands of Paxae, was told of this god's
death. When he reached Palodes he told the news, whereupon loud and
great lamentations were heard, as of Nature herself expressing her grief.
The epoch of the story coincides with the enactment of that grim, and
the world's greatest tragedy on the hill of Golgotha, and the end, and
the beginning of a new world. Rabelais, Milton, Schiller, and also Mrs.
Browning, have allusions to this story of Plutarch's.

The ambitious family of the Titans (the bones of the "giants on the
earth" before the Deluge, gave rise to the stories of the Titans found in
caves), and their scions and coadjutors Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury,
Apollo, Diana, Bacchus, Minerva, or Pallas, Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto,
and Neptune furnish by far the greatest part of the Mythology of
Greece. Tradition says that they left Phoenicia about the time of Moses
to settle in Crete, and from thence they made their way into Greece,
which was supposed at that time to be inhabited by a race of savages.
The arts and inventions were communicated to the natives, and the
blessings of civilization in process of time inspired the inhabitants with
admiration. They, therefore, relinquished worshipping the luminary and
heavenly bodies, and transferred their devotion to their benefactors.
Then into existence sprang the most inconsistent and irreconcilable
fictions. The deified mortals, with their foibles and frailities, were
transmitted to posterity in the most glorious manner possible, and
hence accordingly, in both the Odyssey and the Iliad of Homer, we
have a strange and heterogeneous mixture of what is not only mighty in
heroes, but also that which is equally mean.
In the Grecian Mythology the labours of Hercules, the expedition of
Osiris, the wanderings and transformation of Io, the fable of the
conflagration of Phaeton, the rage of Proserpine, the wanderings of
Ceres, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus,
in fine, the ground work of Grecian Mythology is to be traced to the
East, from where also all our nursery tales, and also our popular
Pantomime subjects; (which is the subject of another chapter) perhaps,
with the exception of our own "Robinson Crusoe," originated.
The nine Muses called Pierides in Grecian Mythology were the
daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), supposed to preside
over the liberal Arts and the sciences. They were Calliope (Heroic
Poetry), Clio Euterpe (Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene
(Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of Singing and Rhetoric), Terpsichore
(Dancing), Thalia (Comedy), and Urania (Astronomy). Mount
Parnassus, Mount Helicon, and the fountains of Castalia and Aganippe
were the sacred places of the Muses.

The Eleusinian Mysteries are of a period that may be likened to the 7th
century B.C., and at these Mysteries as many as 30,000 persons, in the
time of Herodotus, assembled to witness them. The attributes of these
Grecian Mysteries, like those of the Egyptians, consisted of processions,
sacrificial offerings, purifications, dances, and all that the Mimetic and
the other Arts could convey; add to this the various coloured lights, and
the fairy-like grandeur of the whole, we have something that may be
likened to the Transformation, and other fairy-like scenes of English
Pantomimes and Extravaganzas.
At the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus, the customary sacrifice to be
offered, because it fed on vines, was the goat. The vine, ivy, laurel,
asphodel, the dolphin, lynx, tiger, and ass were all sacred to Bacchus.
The acceptable sacrifice to Venus was a dove; Jupiter, a bull; an ox of
five years old, ram or boar pig to Neptune; and Diana, a stag. At the
inception of the Bacchanalian festivals in Greece, the tragic song of the
Goat, a sacred hymn was sung, and from which rude beginning sprang
the Tragedy and Comedy of Greece. The Greeks place