As for yellow hair, there is no
evidence that Greeks have ever commonly possessed it; but no
other colour would do for a solar hero, and it accordingly
characterizes the entire company of them, wherever found,
while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is not
required.
A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained
during the past thirty years by the comparative study of
languages and mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to
reconsider many of his views concerning the Homeric poems, and
might perhaps have led him to cut out half or two thirds of
his book as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter on the
divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be
rewritten, and the ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation
abandoned. One can hardly preserve one's gravity when Mr.
Gladstone derives Apollo from the Hebrew Messiah, and Athene
from the Logos. To accredit Homer with an acquaintance with
the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist until the time
of Philo, and did not receive its authorized Christian form
until the middle of the second century after Christ, is
certainly a strange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be
invited to believe that the authors of the Volsunga Saga
obtained the conception of Sigurd from the "Thirty-Nine
Articles.
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