In the investigation of mythological subjects no inquiry is more difficult than that which relates to their age and their origin. Other things being equal, the measure of antiquity possessed by any myth may be accepted as a presumption that its subject matter is a generally accepted belief, or else denotes a widely received experience on the part of humanity. For the very fact of our knowledge of its antiquity postulates not only the existence but the overt perhaps repeated expression of such a belief during a very long period, and in myths as in other matters we must acknowledge the operation of some such law as that called "The survival of the fittest". Another mark of a generally received myth consists in its variants. The same rudimentary conceptions are found to underlie an almost inexhaustible variety of forms. Thus most of the great myths— e.g., the solar myth-are found in the traditions of all those races which have attained sufficient culture and continuous existence to possess any traditions at all. A myth in fact may be likened to a musical theme evolved and expressed by the earliest races of the world, which their descendants have surrounded with variations and accompaniments which, while serving to elaborate, disguise more or less its original features Or it might be termed the cosmopolitan alphabet—the primary rudiments of the religious thought of humanity, for beneath the surface of all the great world-faiths may be discovered a substratum of mythology. But perhaps the most striking evidence that a myth embodies a widely accepted truth or belief is found in its ready assimilation and expression by varying, perhaps even discordant, modes of thought. Like a useful metal it is made to subserve an almost infinite variety of purposes, being taken up, reconstructed and employed by many different departments of human intellectual energy. For a myth is not, as once was supposed, a consolidated uniform tradition-a petri

fied deposit of human faith or experience-possessing always the same definite outlines and homogeneousness of substance. Nothing indeed could be more contrary to truth. A myth is a kind of molluscous versatile product of human experience and imagination. It is therefore a plastic material, capable of being moulded by any environment within which it is received. Starting into life as a crude, fanciful expression of some frequently recurring natural phenomenon, it may assume a number of subsequent Protean forms. Thus it may be held to express an historical event, a fact of natural history, a generalisation of social experience, a characteristic of some ethical law or a quality of the speculative intellect. This mobility does not of course mean that the belief expressed by the myth is necessarily true. It implies only that it has long formed a part of the intellectual or imaginative currency of mankind, and that it has thereby become invested with authority and human interest. We observe precisely the same mobility of form in other matters of profound concernment or interest for large sections of humanity, quite irrespectively of any truth they may be supposed to possess. Thus in the dogmas of any historical religion and in the fables. -themselves mythical in their origin-which form such a large portion of the early oral tradition of all ancient races, we recognise a similar susceptibility to new forms, the readiness to assume under varying circumstances diverse modes of presentation. Still less does it mean that the significance of a myth will be the same in all its stages of evolution. On the contrary, the variety of its forms will be some, albeit not infallible, testimony to a corresponding divergency in its meaning. The myth, for example, which in a primæval condition of any people has only a concrete physical significance, may with the intellectual progress of such a people attain to higher interpretations, and may become the chosen exponent of historical, scientific, or even metaphysical and spiritual truth. An obvious corollary from this premiss is that the significance of a myth, taking it as a whole, must needs be of a diversified character, even if, as is sometimes the case, the formal variation between its different stages be not very great or distinctive.

Now the myth of Prometheus exemplifies all the qualities I have just enumerated. Firstly, it is one of the most ancient in

the whole compass of Greek mythology; secondly, it is a principal member of a large class of similar myths; and, thirdly, it has entered into various provinces of Hellenic thought, and has thereby assumed a corresponding divergency of forms and meanings.

1. The antiquity of the Prometheus myth is shown, firstly, by the prominent position which it occupies in the authoritative depository of old Greek belief-the works of Hesiod. Here we find not only that the myth is already an accepted part of ancient Hellenic faith, but that it has assumed a peculiarly elaborated form, that it has become encrusted with accretions from other myths more or less related with itself. Nor is this all; we find on close examination that it goes back to a time anterior to the first settlement of the Pelasgi and other primitive Aryan tribes in Greece, nay, according to some writers to a period prior to the great Aryan migration from Central Asia. In its main outlines we undoubtedly find traces of the myth in the ancient literature of all the chief Indo-Germanic races. Its especial connection with India is marked by the Sanscrit derivation of the word Prometheus, for this, following the vicissitudes of the myth itself, is not derived, as the Hellenes thought, from Greek roots signifying" foresight," but from the Sanscrit term pramantha or pramathyus, employed to designate the primitive Indian instrument for kindling fire. Of still greater importance is the connection of the myth with Semitic legends. Its marked affinity, for example, with the Hebrew narrative of the creation has long been acknowledged by commentators of every school of thought, and is indeed too obvious to be denied. Some have attempted to account for this similarity by supposing that the myth formed part of the common tradition of the Indo-Germanic and Semitic races at a prehistoric period before they were divided, while others, with perhaps more probability, explain it by supposing that the early Pelasgian settlers in Greece may have learned the tradition from the Phoenicians. In either case the origin of the myth may be said to transcend the limits of human history. Incidentally, too, this remote antiquity seems confirmed by its

2

1Comp. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, etc., p. 18, and passim.

2 This is the view of Petersen. See his article on Greek Mythology in Ersch and Gruber, Encykl., sec. i., vol. lxxxii., p. 96.

direct reference to the creation of man. This is true, no matter whether the myth be regarded as having a physical and natural or a metaphysical and moral origin, for in the first case one form of the legend makes Prometheus the creator of the first man, whom he made of clay and animated with celestial fire stolen for the purpose, while in the second he bestows on men the divine gift of reason or intelligence by the same agency of stolen fire the latter being a secondary stage in human evolution, which all ancient records represent as following closely on the creation of man.

2. But the myth of Prometheus is only one form of a somewhat large group of myths. Indeed it is a noteworthy fact in mythology that all the more significant and comprehensive myths are found in groups of greater or less extent, thus attesting, as we might indeed have anticipated, the action of a number of minds upon a phenomenon or truth-presentation possessing the same general features for all alike. We have a remarkable fact of the same kind in the linguistic syntheses which are so frequently alike in languages of varying races and of different degrees of culture. Thus the Prometheus myth is a member of what might be termed the Titanic or anti-celestial class in Greek mythology. All of these, whatever their difference of local origin, particular elaboration, etc., possess similar characteristics. This will readily be seen by a brief enumeration of the chief of them. We have, for example, the myths of Atlas the brother of Prometheus and the leader of the Titans against Zeus. He was defeated and condemned to the eternal labour of bearing the heaven on his head and hands.1 He was also gifted with especial knowledge, for, according to Homer, he knew all the depths of the ocean. The myth of Tituos is of a similar kind. Instigated by Hêrê he made an attack on Artemis or Leto (wife of Zeus), for which the indignant sovereign of gods and

1 Assuming that some of these anti-celestial, skeptical or knowledge myths may have had a metaphysical origin, the task of Atlas and the difficulty he found in discharging it may be compared with the remarkable words of Ecclesiastes, iii., 11; or with poetic utterances, such as Wordsworth's :

"The heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world".

men punished him by first killing him with his thunderbolt ("lightning-blasted in his strength," Aeschylus calls it) and then casting him into Tartaros, where his gigantic frame covered no less than nine acres of ground. Here, too, his body (for being immortal he could not die) was for ever mangled by two vultures or snakes which continually devoured it. Tuphoeus or Tuphon is the name of another monster of the same species, whose wisdom is crudely symbolised by his possession of a hundred heads. He wished to acquire, we are told, the sovereignty over gods and men, but was subdued after a fearful struggle by the thunderbolt of Zeus. Another version of the myth represents him contending with all the immortals. However, he was defeated, and, as a punishment, was buried in Tartaros under Mount Etna. Menoitios is the name of another Titan who for similar insurrection against the Olympian divinities was slain by Zeus, and was doomed to expiate his crime in Tartaros. Of a slightly different kind are the myths of Tantalos and Sisuphos. The former is said to have been the son of Zeus, and was King of Lydia, or Argos or Corinth, according to different versions of the story. He divulged the secrets which Zeus his father had imparted to him. For this he was punished by being placed in a lake, but so as to render it impossible to drink when he was thirsty-the water always receding when he stooped forward to quench his thirst. Branches laden with fruit also hung over his head, but when he stretched out his hands to clutch them they withdrew—all the while a huge stone being suspended above him, for ever threatening to crush him. Sisuphos, whose name is said to be a mocking reduplication of Sophos, was another subtle king who betrayed the designs of the gods. His punishment consisted in perpetually rolling up a hill a huge block of marble, which as perpetually rolled down again. The myth of Phaethon, though different in some points from those mentioned, yet possesses a few striking resemblances. He was the son of Helios, who attempted ambitiously to drive the chariot of his father, but proving unequal to the task was slain by Zeus. Now, without laying undue stress on these legends, or magnifying their mutual affinities, we cannot but be struck with their general resemblance to each other, and especially in those particulars in which they share the outlines of the Prometheus myth. All are legends of semi-divine