Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. On the Determination of the Age of a Mythus from the Mention of it in Authors. By the exposition in the preceding chapter, I have also sought to obviate the tendency to confound the literary aids to a knowledge of the mythus with its sources properly so called; which is one of the most dangerous errors in this study, inasmuch as it defeats investigation beforehand. For on this tendency is founded the notion, that in the history of Greek mythi nothing more is required, than to point out in what poet or author a mythus first appears, and to determine its age accordingly. This notion is seldom so roundly expressed, but it evidently lies at the bottom of many mythological investigations; and, in particular, is frequently employed in order to separate Homeric and post-Homeric mythology. But, in the first place, this method can never yield a scientific connexion, as, on the one hand, the most important literary sources of the mythus have been lost: for where are to be found the ante-Homeric Hymns, Argonautics, Heracleas, Iliads?those lays, each of which had in its day the highest renown?1 Where that long succession of poets who followed Homer in the epos? And as, on the other hand, the great mass of mythi have only come to us through compilers, without any information as to the poet who 1 Od., viii. 74. Comp., i. 351. first treated them. But, in the second place, even if we were in possession of the most complete mythic literature, both in prose and poetry, we should still be unable to determine how far any writer's knowledge of mythi extended. For we certainly cannot, in all cases, infer ignorance from silence. I am touching upon a question which, although it is of great importance and calls loudly for an answer, has usually been cunningly evaded; and the assumpt...