teries, such, for example, as the tale of Dionysus
Zagreus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was
acquainted with local legends current both at Krete and at Delphi, for
he mentions both the mountain-cave in Krete wherein the newly-born Zeus
was hidden, and the stone near the Delphian temple--the identical stone
which Kronos had swallowed--placed by Zeus himself as a sign and marvel
to mortal men. Both these monuments, which the poet expressly refers to,
and had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and explanatory
local legends, current probably among the priests of Krete and Delphi."

(1) Timaeeus, 41; Republic, 377.

All these circumstances appear to be good evidence of the great
antiquity of the legends recorded by Hesiod. In the first place, arguing
merely a priori, it is extremely improbable that in the brief interval
between the date of the comparatively pure and noble mythology of the
Iliad and the much ruder Theogony of Hesiod men INVENTED stories like
the mutilation of Uranus, and the swallowing of his offspring by Cronus.
The former legend is almost exactly parallel, as has already been
shown, to the myth of Papa and Rangi in New Zealand. The later has
its parallels among the savage Bushmen and Australians. It is highly
improbable that men in an age so civilised as that of Homer invented
myths as hideous as those of the lowest savages. But if we take these
myths to be, not new inventions, but the sacred stories of local
priesthoods, their antiquity is probably incalculable. The sacred
stories, as we know from Pausanias, Herodotus and from all the writers
who touch on the subject of the mysteries, were myths communicated
by the priests to the initiated. Plato speaks of such myths in the
Republic, 378: "If there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a
very few might hear them in a mystery, and then let them sacrifice, not
a common pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; this would have the
effect of very greatly diminishing the number of the hearers". This is
an amusing example of a plan for veiling the horrors of myth. The pig
was the animal usually offered to Demeter, the goddess of the Eleusinian
mysteries. Plato proposes to substitute some "unprocurable" beast,
perhaps a giraffe or an elephant.

To Hesiod, then, we must turn for what is the earliest complete
literary form of the Greek cosmogonic myth. Hesiod begins, like the
New Zealanders, with "the august ra