GREECE AND ROME

...a violent plunderer? You would call him like a wolf... Does a deceiver delight in having stolen something through hidden frauds? He is equated with a fox. Does one who is intemperate in anger roar? He is believed to possess the spirit of a lion. So it happens that whoever, having abandoned integrity, has ceased to be a human, since he cannot transform into a divine state, turns into a beast."Original: "uiolentus ereptor? lupi similem dixeris . . . Insidiator occultis surripuisse fraudibus gaudet? Uulpeculis exæquatur. Iræ intemperans fremit? leonis animum gestare credatur. . . . Ita sit, ut qui, probitate deserta, homo esse desierit, cum in diuinam conditionem transire non possit, uertatur in belluam." This legendary power of metamorphosis seems to be closely connected with the animal disguises ritually worn by the priest when engaged in his worship. The custom is of the remotest antiquity, for such masked men are found even among the Paleolithic drawings in France, the animal represented being the original totem of the tribe. Often the god himself was adored under an animal form, a variant which, although continually met with, is perhaps most generally known as having shaped the representation of the deities of Egypt and the Nile. This ritual disguise offers, no doubt—at least in part—an explanation of the innumerable myths of the Greek pantheon which tell how Zeus enjoyed Europa as a bull, Leda as a swan, Asterie as an eagle, and Deois as a speckled serpent; how Poseidon as a bull seduced Arne, and as a ram seduced Theophane; how Cronus as a horse mated with Philyra and begat the centaur Chiron; and a thousand ancient legends more.

The power of transforming men into beasts particularly occurs in the legend of Circe, which, with the story of the enchantress MedeaA powerful sorceress in Greek mythology.—whom Diodorus calls Hecate’s own daughter—is amongst the earliest Greek sagas. Even so revolutionary a commentator as Kirchhoff, who puts forward the view that the Odyssey is mainly made up of large late additions by a compiler from a number of early poems—a nucleus which he calls the "Elder Odyssey"—is of the opinion that this "Elder Odyssey" contains material of an almost primitive date, and to this kernel belong the adventures of Odysseus with Circe. A very close analogy may be found in the Indian collection of Somadeva, which, although as a whole belonging to the thirteenth century A.D., comprises myths that have descended from the remotest antiquity. Here the witch, after changing a company into four-footed beasts, is vanquished by a magical formula in the mouth of a young traveler, whom she then admits to her bed.

Number six of the eight epics which made up the Trojan cycle was known as the Nostoi, the history of the return home...