harmony interpenetrates all productions, in which the freedom of Greece is self-conscious, and in which she has made visible to herself her being. Consequently her view of the world is just the midway ground on which beauty commences its true life and breaks open its serene dominion; the intermediate realm, that is, of free vitality, which is not merely a fact at once immediate and natural, but one which is the creation of a spiritual point of view revealed by art, the realm, that is, of a culture of reflection, and at the same time of an absence of reflection, which neither isolates the individual nor on the other hand is competent to bring back again its negativity, pain, and unhappiness to a positive unity and reconciliation--a realm, however, which, just as in the case of Life itself, is at the same time only a point of passage, however true it be that it scales at this point the summit of beauty, and in the form of its plastic individuality is so spiritually concrete and rich, that all tones have their interplay within it, and also, too, that which is for its own standpoint what lies behind it, albeit it is no longer present as an absolute and unqualified principle, is nevertheless felt as that which accompanies it--a kind of background to it. In this sense the Greek nation has also, in the representation of its gods, made its spirit visible to the perceptions and the imaginative consciousness, and bestowed on them, by means of art a determinate existence, which is entirely conformable with their true content. By virtue of this homogeneous form, which is alike consistent with the fundamental notion of Greek art and Greek mythology, art became in Greece the highest expression for the Absolute, and Greek religion is the religion of art itself, whereas romantic art, which appeared later, although it is undoubtedly art, suggests a more exalted form of consciousness than art is in a position to supply.
3. In establishing the position, as we have just done, on the one hand, that essentially free individuality is the content of classical art, and, on the other, that a like freedom is the equally requisite determinant of the form, we have already assumed that the entire blending of both together, however much it may be presented in the immediate form, is nevertheless no original unity such as Nature's, but is necessarily an _artificial_ association made possible by the subjective spirit. Classical art, in so far as its content and its form is spontaneity[134], originates in the freedom of the Spirit that is clear to itself. And for this reason also we may say that in the _third_ place the artist occupies a position different from that of his predecessors. That is to say his production declares itself as the spontaneous _product_ of a man in the full possession of his senses[135], who as truly _knows_ what he wills as he is _able_ to accomplish such a purpose; who is consequently obscure to himself neither in respect to the significance and substantive content of that which he has resolved to make visible in the form of art, nor finds himself hindered by any defects of technique from executing the result aimed after.
(_a_) If we look more closely at this change in the position of the artist we shall in the first place find this freedom announced to us relatively to the _content_ in this way, that he does not feel compelled to seek for it with the restless process of symbolical fermentation. Symbolic art remains the captive of its travail to bring to birth and make clear its form to its own vision, and this embodiment is itself only the original form[136], that is, on the one side Being in the immediate guise of Nature, and on the other the ideal abstraction of the universal, unity, conversion, change, becoming, origination, and passing away. In this original form of the artistic process, however, art does not come to its rightful possessions. Consequently, these representations of symbolic art, which should be expositions of content, remain still themselves riddles and problems, and merely testify to the struggle after clarity and the effort of Spirit, which on and on seeks to discover without obtaining the rest and repose of discovery. In contrast to this troublous search the content must for the classic artist be presented him as something _already there_ in the sense that as a thing essentially positive, as belief, popular opinion, or as an actual event either of myth or tradition, it is determined for his imagination in all its essential character. Relatively to this objectively determined material the artist is placed in the freer relation that he does not himself undertake the process of production and fermentation, and pass no further than the impulse after the real significances of his art, but rather that for him a completely explicit and unfolded content lies before him which he accepts and freely reproduces from himself. The Greek artists received their material from the popular religion in which already that which had been brought over to Greece from the Orient had begun to receive a form of its own. Pheidias borrowed his Zeus from Homer, and other tragedians also did not create the fundamental groundwork of that they represented. In the same way the artists of Christianity, Dante and Raphael, have only reclothed what was already to hand in the doctrines of their faith and their religious conceptions. This is also, it is true, from a certain point of view in like manner the case in the art of the Sublime, but with this difference, that here the relation to the content, as the _one_ substance, does not permit subjectivity to come by its just claims, and allows to it no self-substantive finality. The comparative form of art, on the other hand, no doubt starts with the selection of significances as images which it makes use of, but this initiative of selection remains at the disposition of _subjective_ caprice, and on its part dispenses with all substantive individuality, which constitutes the notion of classical art, and for this reason must rest with the personality which creates it.
(_b_) The more, however, an explicitly unfolded content is present for the artist in popular beliefs, myth, and other actual facts, the more his energy is concentrated upon the object of endowing such a content with the _external embodiment_ of art fitting to it. While in this respect symbolic art dissipates its resources in a thousand forms, and with unbridled imaginative power lays about it for material that it fails either to measure or define in order to adapt forms that are never really conformable to the significance it is seeking after, the classical artist in this respect is possessed of an aim that is at once resolute and definite. That is to say, the free form is with the content itself defined through that content, and is essentially pertinent to such content, so that the artist only appears to execute what is already accordant with the fundamental conception of what is presented him. While, therefore, the symbolic artist strives in his imagination, to suit the form to significance or _vice versa_, the classic artist _adapts_ significance to plastic shape by means of the process of freeing the external phenomena which are already presented from that part of them which is merely an incidental product. In this activity, however, although all that is purely his caprice is excluded, his productive power not merely follows or is not merely limited to a bare type, but is at the same time _creative_ throughout the whole.
Art which, to start with, is forced to seek out and discover its true form neglects for that reason the very aspect of form; but where, on the contrary, the building up of form is made the essential interest and the main task there we find the content also receives its plastic shape by imperceptible degrees through the process of the reproduction, precisely as we have hitherto found in a general way that form and content proceed hand in hand during the process, wherein they are completed. In this respect the classic artist elaborates the result also where it is a religious world that is presented him; he throughout develops in the free and buoyant medium of his art the material and mythological ideas which he receives.
(_c_) The same applies to the technique of art. In the case of the classic artist the ingredients must be already to hand; the sensuous material through which the artist labours must already be disengaged from all brittleness and extreme stubbornness, and yield directly to the aims of the artist, in order that the content, conformably to the notion of the classic type, may make its free and unfettered way through this external medium. To classical art, consequently, belongs from the first a high level of technical ability, which has subjected the sensuous material to an apt subservience. Such a technical perfection, if it is really to carry out all that is required of Spirit and its conceptions, is presupposed by the complete elaboration of all that pertains to craftsmanship in art, that is, in especial degree of that which makes itself visible within the plastic forms of the religion to which we now refer. The religious view of things, such as the Egyptian, for example, discovers, that is, definite external forms, idols, colossal constructions whose type remains fixed, and, further, in the usual similarity of forms and shapes, supplies a considerable field for elaboration in the treatment of it by the steadily progressive executive powers. This adaptability to the talents of the craftsman must already have been presented in that which is of an inferior and distorted type before the genius of classical beauty can associate these powers of mechanical facility with the forms of technical perfection. Then, at last, when that which is purely mechanical work is confronted with no further insuperable difficulty, is art enabled to proceed in the elaboration of a form, the practice in working out which is at the same time an elaboration which is in the closest relationship to the progressive advance of both content and form.
So far as the _division_ of classical art is concerned it is usual in the more general sense of the term to call every complete work of art classic, whatever the particular character it may otherwise carry, whether symbolic or romantic. We have no doubt thus accepted it in the particular sense of art perfection, but with this important qualification, that this perfection must be based on the thorough interpenetration of ideal and free individuality and external definition. We consequently differentiate the classic form expressly from the symbolic and romantic, whose beauty in content and form is entirely of another kind. And along with the classic, regarded in its usual and more indefinite significance, we have as little to do here at this early stage with the particular arts in which the classical ideal is represented, as, for example, sculpture, the Epic, definite forms of lyrical poetry and specific types of tragedy and comedy. These particular types of art, although classic art is imprinted upon them, will be first discussed in the third portion of the division of our subject in the explication of the several arts and their grades[137].
What we approach more immediately now is the classic in the sense we have secured for the term, and as bases of our subdivision we can only therefore seek out the grades of evolution, which proceed from this notion of the classical ideal itself. The essential phases of this development are as follows.
The _first_ point to which we would direct our attention is this, that the classical type of art is not to be apprehended as was the case with the symbolic type as immediately primary, as art's _commencement_, but, on the contrary, as its _result._ We have evolved it, consequently, in the first instance from the course of the symbolic modes of representation, which it presupposes. The essential feature on which this process turned was the concentration of content in the elucidation of an essentially self-conscious individuality, which can neither employ for its expression the mere natural form, whether it be that of the elements or animals, nor the defective and confused personification of the human figure with it, but receives its expression in the animation of the human body permeated throughout with the breath of Spirit. Inasmuch, then, as the essence of freedom consists in this, to be that which it is through its own resources, that which in the first place appeared purely as the presupposition and condition of its origin outside the sphere of classical art must take its place within the circle peculiar to the same in order to make really visible the true content and the genuine form by means of the subjection of what is unconformable to and the negation of the Ideal. This process of conformation through negation, this process by means of which, whether we view it relatively to content or form, the genuine type of classical beauty begets itself from its own substance is consequently our point of departure, and we shall treat of that in our _first_ chapter.
In the _second_ chapter, on the other hand, we have reached by means of this process the true Ideal of the classical type of art. We find here as the central fact the fair and novel world of the gods of Greece, which it will be incumbent on us to develop exhaustively from within, both in its aspects of spiritual individualization, and those which are related to the bodily form with which such individuality is immediately associated.
In the _third_ place, however, the notion of classical art implies conversely, along with this becoming of the beauty which springs from itself, also the dissolution of that creation, which will carry us into a further sphere, namely, that of the romantic type of art. The gods and human individuals of classic beauty just as they rise so, too, pass away once more from the art-consciousness, which in part turns round in opposition to the aspect of Nature that still persists, in which Greek art, in fact, had elaborated itself in the full perfection of beauty, in part transcends an undeific[138], defective, and vulgar mode of reality in order to reveal that which is false and purely negative therein. In this dissolution, whose artistic activity we shall take as the material of our third chapter, the specific phases in the process, which created the truly classical type in that harmony presented by the perfect fusion of immediate beauty, fall apart. The ideal essence is made explicit on the one side in its independence of the external mode of its existence on the other. Subjectivity withdraws into itself, for the reason that it fails now to find an adequate realization in the forms hitherto employed, and is constrained to enlarge itself with the fuller content of a new spiritual world of absolute freedom and infinity, looking about for novel means of expressing this profounder grasp of its substance.
[Footnote 121: The central point, that is, in the entire evolution of the types of art, classical art being intermediate between symbolic and romantic art and in a certain sense marking a point of culmination.]
[Footnote 122: _Zu ihrem Inneren_, _i. e._, that which unites it as a whole rather than is the purely external form. The Inward of man is the notion of man, not the mere fact that he has a head and arms, etc.]
[Footnote 123: The "Nature-existence," as Hegel calls it.]
[Footnote 124: _Die Natur ist freilich heraus._ Nature is there explicitly before us, but not all that is implied in Nature is made explicit in the material world.]
[Footnote 125: _Sinnlichkeitslos_, "senseless" as devoid of or abstracted from all sense.]
[Footnote 126: _Auf ihr festes Maas zurückgeführt._ To their own proper standard or measure that strictly applies to them.]
[Footnote 127: I think this must be the meaning of _nützlich_ here. But the passage is not an easy one.]
[Footnote 128: That is, the comparative type of art discussed at the conclusion of the preceding section.]
[Footnote 129: That is, the Inward or ideal principle and the natural externality.]
[Footnote 130: _Selbstständigkeit._ Self-consistency or independence are perhaps better words here.]
[Footnote 131: That is, I suppose, the causal necessity as part of natural evolution.]
[Footnote 132: _Bis zur zeitlichen gänzlichen Äußerlichkeit._] [Footnote 133: These words contain no doubt the epitome of Hegel's "Philosophy of Religion" and are involved in its difficulties.
The reference to the historical facts of Christianity under ideal conceptions is obvious. I have translated the words _das Moment des Natürlichen_..._zwar vorhanden seyn_ as a phasal moment of "a process," but I am well aware that no mere amplification of this sort can in itself make the words clear.]
[Footnote 135: _Des besonnenen Menschen_, _i.e._, the man of clear intelligence, sound sense, as we say.]
[Footnote 136: The words _dieser Gehalt ist selber nur der Erste_ would seem to refer back to the expressions _Keine Erste und somit natürliche Einheit._ But the sense is not very clear.]
[Footnote 137: _Deren Gattungen,_ their specific types.]
[Footnote 138: _Entgöttert_--a mode from which the Divine is removed.]
CHAPTER I THE COMING INTO BEING OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL In the notion of free Spirit is contained immediately that aspect of the process of intelligence we may describe as self-introspection, return upon the self, of being explicit as an object existing for the self and in a determinate place, although this penetration into the realm of subjectivity, as we have already observed, does not either necessarily proceed to the length of making the subject essentially self-substantive in its negative aspect as against all that is concrete in Spirit and presented us as the stability of Nature, nor to that absolute reconciliation which constitutes, the freedom of the infinite subjectivity in truth. With the freedom of Spirit, however, in whatever form it may appear, is generally associated the elimination of that which is purely natural, regarded as that which is the Other in contrast to Spirit. Spirit must in the first instance essentially withdraw itself from Nature, uplift itself over, her boundaries and overcome them, ere it can prevail with unfettered movement within those bounds as within an element that is opposed to it, and can build itself up in a positive mode of existence truly indicative of its own freedom.
If we further ask for a closer definition of the object through the transcendence of which Spirit attains to its self-substantive form in classical art we shall find this object is not Nature merely as such, but rather a Nature that is already throughout suffused with the significations of Spirit, in other words the symbolic type of art, which made use of the immediately natural form as a means of expressing the Absolute, its artistic consciousness either seeing in animals and so forth the presence of gods, or striving vainly under false modes toward the true unity of the spiritual and the natural. It is through the removal and reformation of this defective association that the Ideal for the first time presents itself as the Ideal, and is forced to develop consequently this process of transcendence within its own sphere as a phase of its own necessary evolution. Such a consideration at once enables us to dispose of the question whether the Greeks received this religion from extraneous sources or no. We have already seen that subordinate conceptions are necessarily presupposed in the very notion of classical art. These, in so far as they in truth appear and are presented as factors of human history, are, as opposed to the higher form, which strives to pass beyond them, the actual starting-point of the new self-evolving art. And this is so, though in the particular case of Greek mythology there is not throughout historical evidence for these preliminary data. The relation, however, of the Greek spirit to these presupposed data is essentially a relation of construction and in the first instance of transformation. If this were not so the conceptions and forms of the same had remained as they were. It is true that Herodotus says, in a passage already cited, of Homer and Hesiod, that they had created their gods for the Greeks, but he also speaks expressly of particular gods, how this or that one was Egyptian or some other form: the poetic activity does not therefore exclude the reception of material from other sources, but merely suggests an essential transformation. For the Greeks possessed mythological conceptions before the time in which Herodotus places those original poets.
If we inquire further into the more obvious aspects of this necessary transformation of that which is undoubtedly involved with, but at first still alien from, the Ideal, we find it set before us in naïve form as content of mythology itself. The main fact of Greek theology is this, that it creates itself and constitutes itself from that which has gone before, which takes its place in the origins and process of its own generic history. Incidental to this origination, in so far as the gods are taken to be spiritual individualities in determinate bodily shape, we find, on the one hand, that Spirit, instead of giving visibility to its essence in that which is purely vital and animal, regards life rather as an attribute which is insufficient[139], as its unhappiness and death, and, on the other, that it is in the living thing that it triumphs over the elements of Nature and its confused reproduction.
Conversely, however, it is equally necessary for the Ideal of the classic gods, not merely to stand over against Nature and its elemental powers as individual spirit in its finite and abstract seclusion, but to possess itself the elements of the universal natural life notionally as a phasal moment in the vital constitution of Spirit. As the essence of the gods is essentially _universal_, and in this very universality they are defined as individuals, it follows also that the aspect of their bodily presence must essentially include at the same time the natural as the essential and wide-reaching power of Nature, and as vital activity intertwined with spirituality itself.
In this respect we may differentiate the process of embodiment followed by the classical art-form under the following points of view.
The _first_ concerns the degradation of that which is purely animal, and the removal of the same from the sphere of free and pure Beauty.
The _second_ more important aspect is related to the elemental itself, in the first instance conceived as gods put before us as powers of Nature, through whose conquest alone the genuine race of gods can attain to undisputed mastery, that is in the war between the ancient and new gods. But this negative tendency becomes, then, in the _third_ place, after Spirit has secured its free right, to the same extent once again an affirmative force, and elemental Nature constitutes an aspect of godhead permeated with individualized spirituality in order to re-establish even the animal organism, though here only of an attributive and external sign. Following the above points of view we will now, if still at no great length, endeavour to emphasize the more definite traits, which here come under consideration.
1. THE DEGRADATION OF ANIMALISM[140] Among the Indians and Egyptians, among Asiatics generally we find animalism, or at any rate specific kinds of animals regarded as sacred and worshipped, because in them the Divine itself is taken to be visible to sense. The animal form is consequently also a main feature of their artistic representations, albeit they are in addition merely used as symbolic and in association with human forms, in the stage previous to that where we find the human, and only the human, apprehended by consciousness as that which is alone true. It is only in virtue of the self-consciousness of the spiritual that the respect for the obscure and gloomy ideality of animal life disappears. This has already taken place among the ancient Hebrews who regard, as we have already observed, the whole of Nature neither as symbol nor as the presence of God, and attach to external objects merely the powers and vitality which in fact dwell within them. At the same time there still remains even among them, if in accidental fashion, at least a vestige of reverence for the living thing as such. We may illustrate this with the fact that Moses forbids the use of animal blood as food for the reason that life is centred in the blood. Man, however, is really under a necessity to eat that which is his natural food. The next step which we must draw attention to in this passage to classical art consists in lowering the high worth and position of what is animal, and making this degradation itself the content of religious conceptions and artistic productions. And illustrative of this we find abundant examples from which I shall merely offer the following selections.
(_a_) We find that among the Greeks certain animals appear conspicuous among others, as the snake, for example, is presented us in the sacrifices of Homer as an exceptionally beloved genius[141], and before all others it is this species which is offered to one god, while others are appropriated to some other. We find, further that the hare, which runs across the way, birds observed in their flight to right hand or left, and entrails are investigated as fruitful in prophetic significance. All this, it is true, indicates a real reverence for the animal type, since the gods communicate through them and speak to men by means of omens. If we look at the heart of the matter, however, we shall find these to be merely isolated revelations, suggestive of superstition no doubt, but merely momentary hints of the Divine. On the other hand, it is an important fact that animals are sacrificed and the sacrificial flesh eaten. Among the Indians sacred animals are on the contrary preserved alive as such, and taken care of, and among the Egyptians they are even preserved after their death. For the Greek it is the sacrifice which is sacred. In the sacrifice man demonstrates that he is willing to give up a consecrated thing to his gods, and to deprive himself wholly of the use of the same. And in this connection we may observe a characteristic trait in the Greek rite, among which people the sacrifice was observed as at the same time a hospitable feast[142], only a part of the same being dedicate to the gods, that is, the portion which it was assumed they alone could enjoy, while the Greek himself retained and feasted upon the flesh. Out of this circumstance originated a mythical tale in Greece. The ancient Greeks, it is said, sacrificed with the greatest solemnity to the gods, and suffered the entirety of the sacrificial animal to be consumed in the flames. Not even the poorer suppliants dared contest this great waste.
So Prometheus endeavoured to obtain by request from Zeus, that they were merely under an obligation to sacrifice a portion, and could devote the remainder to their own uses. He slew two oxen, burnt the liver of both, converted, however, all the bones into one, the flesh into the remaining hide of the animals, and presented Zeus the choice.
Zeus, deceived by appearances, selected the bones because they were a larger portion and left the flesh in this way for human consumption.
For this reason, when the flesh of sacrificial animals was consumed, the remaining portions, which were devoted to the gods, were burnt up in the same fire. Zeus, however, took away fire from men because by so doing he made it impossible for them to celebrate their feast. Little help the ruse gave him. Prometheus robbed him of the fire and in the excess of his joy flew back faster than he sped thither; for which cause, so the tale goes, the bringer of good news invariably brings "speed" with him. In this way the Greeks have directed attention to this progress in human culture and preserved and reclothed the same in myth for the mind.
(_b_) We may connect with the above as a similar example of a yet further degradation of animalism the traditions of famous _huntings_, such as we find ascribed to heroes, and handed down as sacred to grateful memory. In these the slaying of animals which appear as injurious foes, such as the strangling of the Numean lion by Heracles, the slaying of the Lernean hydra, the hunting of the Caledonian boar are set forth as something famous, by means of which the heroes contended for godlike rank, whereas the Hindoos punished with death as a crime the slaughter of certain animals. Unquestionably there is a further interplay of symbolism in deeds of this kind or they lie at the base of them. In the case of Hercules there is the fact of the sun and its course, so that such heroic actions supply an essential aspect of symbolical interpretation. These myths are, however, at the same time accepted in their express significance as beneficial hunts and were consciously recognized as such by the Greeks. We must here again in a similar relation recall certain fables of Aesop, especially those already referred to of the dung beetle. The dung beetle, that primitive Egyptian symbol, in whose balls of dung the Egyptians or the interpreters of their religious conceptions saw the world balls, comes in Aesop again before Jupiter, and with the important change that the eagle does not respect his protector the hare. Aristophanes, on the other hand, has wholly made fun of him.
(_c_) _Thirdly_, the degradation of the animal is directly indicated in many of the tales of metamorphosis as Ovid has delineated them for us in detail with grace and talent and fine traits of feeling and intuition, but also composed in a rambling way without their great and commanding ideal significance, treating them merely as the sport of mythos and external fact and failing to recognize a deeper significance. Such a deeper significance is, however, there, and we will consequently, now we mention the subject, make further allusion to it. For the most part the particular narratives are if we look at this material, quaint and primitive, not so much on account of the depraved condition of the culture, but rather, as in the Nibelungenlied, on account of the condition of a still raw nature. As far as the thirteenth book, according to their content, they are older than the Homeric tales; add to this they are a medley of cosmogony and heterogeneous elements of Phoenician, Phrygian, Egyptian symbolism, treated no doubt in a human way, but in such wise that the uncouth stock still remains, whereas the metamorphoses which enumerate tales of a later period subsequent to the Trojan war, although their material is also borrowed from fabulous times, clash awkwardly with the names of Ajax and Aeneas.
(_α_) Generally speaking, we may regard the metamorphoses as a contrast to the conception and worship implied in animalism. Looked at from the ethical side of Spirit they include essentially the negative attitude toward Nature, making the animal and other inorganic forms a phase of human degradation. Consequently, if among the Egyptians the gods of Nature's elements are exalted and made vital in animals, here conversely, as we have already intimated, the natural form appears before us as an easier or difficult lapse and a monstrous crime, as the existence of an ungod-like, unfortunate thing, and as the embodiment of pain, in which the human is no longer able to remain self-contained.
For this reason they have not the significance of the migration of souls in the Egyptian sense of that expression; this is a migration which does not imply guilt, but rather is on the contrary, if we take the case of the passage of the human soul into the animal, regarded as an exaltation.
As a whole, however, this is no severely exclusive circle of myths, however different the objects of Nature may be, into which that which is spiritual is banished. A few examples will sufficiently elucidate the point.
Among the Egyptians the wolf plays a part of great importance, as, for example, in the case where Osiris appears as beneficent protector of his son Horus in the latter's conflict with Typhon, and in a whole series of Egyptian coins is represented as the assister of Horus. And speaking generally the association of the wolf and the sun-god is a primitive one. In the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, on the other hand, the conversion of Lycaon into the form of a wolf is presented us as a punishment for his impiety. After the subjugation of the giants, we are told[143], and after the annihilation of their bodily shapes the Earth, warmed by the blood of its sons which had been scattered in all directions, revitalized the warm blood, and, in order that no vestige of the former wild stock should remain, brought into being a race of men. Yet for all that was this after-birth contemptuous of the gods, eager for savage deeds and murder. Then Jupiter called the gods into conclave with a view to destroy this mortal race. He informed them how Lycaon had cunningly formed stratagems against himself, the wielder of the lightning and their sovereign lord. When, such is the story, the worthlessness of the times was apparent to him, he descended from Olympus, and came to Arcadia. "I furnished signs," the narration continues, "that a god had drawn nigh and the people began to supplicate." First, to make merry over these pious prayers was Lycaon, who forthwith cried out: "I will make experiment whether this indeed be a god or mortality, and the truth shall not remain in doubt." "He made preparation," continued Jupiter, "to slay me when oppressed with slumber; he was possessed with the passion for discovering the truth.
And not contented with this, he made an incision with his sword in the throat of a goat of Molassian pedigree and boiled as to one part the only partially dead members; and as to the rest baked them on the fire, and placed both portions before me to eat. Wherefore I, with avenging flame, have laid his homestead in ashes. Affrighted he fled forth from thence, and when he reached the silent field he broke forth: in howls and strove in vain to utter speech. With rage in his jaws and in the eagerness of his animal lust for murder he turned against the cattle, and rejoices even now in their blood; his garments have become the hairy hide, and his arms have turned into thighs. He is a wolf, and preserves the signs of the primitive shape."
The tale of Procne, who was changed into a swallow, sets before us the gravity of the committed abomination with a like emphasis. When, so the tale runs[144], Procne begs of her husband, Tereus--she happened at the time to stand in his favour--that he will, forthwith let her go to see her sister or suffer her sister to visit her, Tereus hastens to launch his vessel on the sea and quickly reaches the harbour of Piraeus with his seamanship. He, however, barely catches sight of Philomela before he is violently enamoured of her. At his departure Pandion, the father, binds him on oath to protect her with the love of a father, and to send back as soon as possible the alleviation of his old age. The voyage, however, is hardly over when the barbarous man deprives her--pale,