Trimalchio's dinner

21쪽

Introduction

and it also mirror forti a fondnes for allegor an apologue hereb Some truth, some faci, is photographed pon the memor through the fascinatin medium of story. Pure fiction, here re a distinctfrom religious and semi-religio us myth, firsttook on a definite hape in the east Fabie, whicli is the ne forna o stor to e found in Ver quarter of the arth, at Ver periodo history, and in the ore Of Ver race, frona Egypt to the ouili Pacific, and Domthe savage Indian of ur esteria plain tolli stili more savage Africa of the Bantu

It is probable that it is froni Asia that

the Greelas and Roman firs derived theirmodet for his form o literature, and thatit a the indus h firs evolve the Ver semous stories hicli ea the nam os Bibpat, and whicli in aster times Esop, Babrius, and haedrus made so popular in

Europe.

22쪽

6. IntroduCtion

that rose ut os humanity' ignorance in the days of it childhood. A warm os superstitions that are a uniVersal a humanlife isel ali found thei ulterance in thesella lore of Greece and Rome Man in theworid's firs centuries besere he was gatheredint tribes and clans, an die re he had legunto feel the sociat instinc Strong pon him, lived in an infinite solitude anaid the unbroken fores and illimitable deseri, illi oraly two

carried offland ad his captive, an abouthim his ferce younibrood, who threaded illi him the lair of beast in the dar jungies of the forest. In his pro und lonet iness, his Unfeltered imagination - the imaginationis child leopte the desert illi a myriadliving creatures. In the whisper of the windamong the leaves a dead os night he heard the sibilant voices of eings ho wel in the ear of the forest trees. In the alDSeem ShadoWx hoving to and D, in the

23쪽

dimi lighted glades, he a strange creatUreSwho evaded in at his approach. His dream a night were a rea to him as hallie a b day, forte hadio learnefas yet todistinguisti etween subjective and objective happenings. In flee there came to imthe fornis of thos companion who had dies; and these vision convinced him that deathis ut nother formis fleep, and oes notreatly ut an endo all. When the sever

he osse about pota his edis leaves in the delirium os disease, an strange hapeSand monstrous magesiuittedie re his sigillandirooded ove him, he remembered thema reat, an on recovering old his vision to his unquestionin fellows Thus rose theprimitive belles in wood nymplis and fountaingod desses, in auras and satyrs in gliosis and Diries, in demons an vanipires It is a subjec sor infinite regre that the classic

24쪽

8 IntroduCtion

tantalisin half limpses an vanishin suggestions of the curious and fascinating nature- myths of the common eople, and of thestorie in hicli these myths were handeddown. The writers hose Ork we no POSSCSs, the mallers of iteratur in iis con Ventional mean in g, despised these legend of the ignorant, these oldoives tales and peasant lor so that it sint here and there that e detecto trace of hat has been irrevocabi lost. Such are the stories of the

Nymplis, a for instanc that hicli telis of the love of Echo for Narcissus, and thelegendis Hylas and the Naiad s. Such againis the exquisite narrative o Cupid and Psyche Which, as reserved in Apuleius, stili egins with the good id formula, Diace pon time in a certain cit there lived aining and

25쪽

of the wonder tale in remote antiqUity. Our modern conception o a fairy seem tocontain a blending of two ancient ideas thatare qui te distinct - that of the Nymplis, and that of the Fates, o hicli ac the ord Diry V or more correctly DyV bears it nes in iis derivation through the renchfee froni theio Latin fata and the classicalfatum. The household Lir of the Roman was the Lar, ho walched ver the homeras id the Englisti Robin Good fellow, ut moreespecialty the exterior of the home, a the Penates uarde the interior. The belles in the Lares has a close connection illi ancestor WOrship since the Lares ere thesouis of the ancestor of the famil hoveringabout the famil abode illi friendly ur pose. The converse of the Lar is the Larva, the ancient prototype of Our modern nurSerybUgabo O, - a malignant spirit ho prowledabout in soni hi deous form suci, a that of Sheleton, o strilae illi madnes ali living

26쪽

Io Introduction

to asti his hand three times in resti pringWater, after hicli, talain three lacti eans into his mouili, e pronounced a formula and cast the eans pon the ground for the

Lemures oriather Up. The cerem Ony WaSended by beating together braZen esseis, and crying ut in times an exorcism to the Specti es the whole bearin a trilain resem-blance to the rite no practi sed by the

Chines at the buriat of thei dead Stillanother forni os et o fair was the Incubo, an inhabitant of the depilis of the arth, where it lived among the ein os old and silver in the ear of great ountains, iis abod bella supported by columns os asperand littering illi the precious metals TheIncubo is the mythologica ancestor of the Scandinavi an lacla airy, of the German

27쪽

Introductio II

Litti allusion is made to it in ancient literature, ut rom a passage in Petronius there Seem to have been a stor that Done could steat he hat os an Incubo the reasUre VCrwhich he walched could asily bes und panditiis myth frid a modern parallel in the German story of Jolin Dietricli hicli MissMuloc has made familia to the child renis America and Englarad. Belongin to the purei horribi are thelegend of Lamia, the traditional bugbear of

the nursery, Wh was involaesto terri' dis obedient child reia Some remnant of these tales SurViUe, and are preserve by Diodorus Siculus, Suidas, Plutarch, Strabo, and the scholiast on Aristophanes. The popularaccount malles heroo have been a Libyan

28쪽

12 Introduction

sucked. Sh ceased to e a liVing oman, and hecam a spectre of hideousi distorted face, and haVin alSO the power of takingluther eyes and then replacita them Thistale o series of tales find a gradita develop-men in a seconi stage of myth in hicli the Lamiae are spolien os in the plural, and are depicted a phantonas in the hape of omeno extraordinary beauty Who iure oun meninto thei abodes in orde to drin theirblood and consume thei flesl, These Lamiae are evidently the prototypes of the Vanapires of StaVoni and German folk-lore and the appea also in reel legend under

In fac the eleventh book of the Odysse is

29쪽

andria commentator gave to it the ille

hi or Invocation o Gliosis. ' The Greela dramatist allude continualty to the appearance of departed spiriis, an Latinliteratur is no es permeated by the fame generat belles Attius in a trikin paSSage,

shadow of thos who have died. V ne of thebes of the plays o Plautus et iis ame Mostellaria frona the ghost os a murderedman that is described in ii as avntin aliouse. In the si xth book of the Eneid many spirit pas in revie before Eneas. Roman histor also has it legend of the dead returning such a that of the apparitionwhicli appeared at id night to Brutus in histent and warned hinam his approachinideati, at Philippi, - a stor whicli possibi Suggeste lio Sir alter coit the impressive epiSOde

of the odach Glas in D Oert In Latin

30쪽

14 Introduction

prose, hoWeVer, the best specimen of the hostStory quite simple and unadorned is that whicli sintven by the ounge Plin in oneo his letters to a friend whicli contain allthe eatures of the mos modern hos tale, and has a hundred parallel in modern literature, the closest perhapsieini und in Washingtones rving's story o Dolphi figer. At these legends, tales, myths, an recordSo superstition howeVer, are the precUrSOrSand accompaniment of prose fictio ratherthan a deparimentis it They are, in their primitive forna, no conscious fictio at ali,

appear a episodes in pure fiction untii man ad ecome sophisticated by Xperi ence. ut his sophistication is found nlyaster fiction in iis literary sense has ecomedes nitet recognised as a depariment fletters. e must, here re look elsewherethan to the reside tale of the easan and the strange imagining of thes forester for