Bulfinchs Mythology | Page 5

Ransom Sent to
Achilles.-- Achilles Grants Priam's Request.-- Hector's Funeral
Solemnities.



Chapter XXI
Achilles Captivated by Polyxena.-- Achilles' Claim.-- Bestowal of
Achilles' Armor.-- The Hyacinth.-- Arrows of Hercules.-- Death of
Paris.-- Celebrated Statue of Minerva.-- Wooden Horse.-- Greeks
Pretend to Abandon the Siege.-- Sea Serpents.-- Laocoon.-- Troy
subdued.-- Helen and Menelaus.-- Nepenthe.-- Agamemnon's
Misfortunes.-- Orestes.-- Electra.-- Site of the City of Troy

Chapter XXII
The Odyssey.-- The Wanderings of Ulysses.-- Country of the
Cyclops.-- The Island of Aeolus.-- The Barbarous Tribe of
Laestrygonians.-- Circe.-- The Sirens.-- Scylla and Charybdis.-- Cattle
of Hyperion.-- Ulysses's Raft.-- Calypso Entertains Ulysses.--
Telemachus and Mentor Escape from Calypso's Isle



Chapter XXIII
Ulysses Abandons the Raft.-- The Country of the Phaeacians.--
Nausicaa's Dream.-- A Game of Ball.-- Ulysses's Dilemma.--
Nausicaa's Courage.-- The Palace of Alcinous.-- Skill of the Phaeacian
Women.-- Hospitality to Ulysses.-- Demodocus, the Blind Bard.-- Gifts
to Ulysses



Chapter XXV
Virgil's Description of the Region of the Dead.-- Descend into Hades.--
The Black River and Ferryman.-- Cape Palinurus.-- The Three-Headed
Dog.-- Regions of Sadness.-- Shades of Grecian and Trojan Warriors.--
Judgment Hall of Rhadamanthus.-- The Elysian Fields.-- Aeneas Meets
His Father.-- Anchises Explains the Plan of Creation.-- Transmigration
of Souls.-- Egyptian Name of Hades.-- Location of Elysium.--
Prophetic Power of the Sibyl.-- Legend of the Nine Books
Stories of Gods and Heroes.

Chapter I
Introduction
The literature of our time, as of all the centuries of Christendom, is full
of allusions to the gods and goddesses of the Greeks and Romans.
Occasionally, and, in modern days, more often, it contains allusions to
the worship and the superstitions of the northern nations of Europe. The
object of this book is to teach readers who are not yet familiar with the
writers of Greece and Rome, or the ballads or legends of the
Scandinavians, enough of the stories which form what is called their
mythology, to make those allusions intelligible which one meets every
day, even in the authors of our own time.
The Greeks and Romans both belong to the same race or stock. It is
generally known in our time as the Aryan family of mankind; and so
far as we know its history, the Greeks and Romans descended from the
tribes which emigrated from the high table- lands of Northern India.
Other tribes emigrated in different directions from the same centre, so
that traces of the Aryan language are found in the islands of the Pacific
ocean.
The people of this race, who moved westward, seem to have had a
special fondness for open air nature, and a willingness to personify the
powers of nature. They were glad to live in the open air, and they
specially encouraged the virtues which an open-air people prize. Thus
no Roman was thought manly who could not swim, and every Greek
exercised in the athletic sports of the palaestra.
The Romans and Grecian and German divisions of this great race are
those with which we have most to do in history and in literature. Our
own English language is made up of the dialects of different tribes,
many of whom agreed in their use of words which they had derived
from our Aryan ancestry. Thus our substantive verb I AM appears in
the original Sanscrit of the Aryans as ESMI, and m for ME (MOI), or
the first person singular, is found in all the verbal inflections. The
Greek form of the same verb was ESMI, which became ASMI, and in

Latin the first and last vowels have disappeared, the verb is SUM.
Similar relationships are traced in the numerals, and throughout all the
languages of these nations.
The Romans, like the Etruscans who came before them, were neither
poetical nor imaginative in temperament. Their activity ran in practical
directions. They therefore invented few, if any stories, of the gods
whom they worshipped with fixed rites. Mr. Macaulay speaks of these
gods as "the sober abstractions of the Roman pantheon." We owe most
of the stories of the ancient mythology to the wit and fancy of the
Greeks, more playful and imaginative, who seized from Egypt and
from the East such legends as pleased them, and adapted them in their
own way. It often happens that such stories, resembling each other in
their foundation, are found in the Greek and Roman authors in several
different forms.
To understand these stories, we will here first acquaint ourselves with
the ideas of the structure of the universe, which the poets and others
held, and which will form the scenery, so to speak, of the narratives.
The Greek poets believed the earth to be flat and circular, their own
country occupying the middle of it, the central point being either Mount
Olympus, the abode of the gods, or Delphi, so famous for its