Io was the daughter of Inachus, the son of Oceanus and Tethys. Jupiter, a personage, in reality a sect, loved Io, and maintained an amorous intercourse with her, till discovered by Juno, when the goddess metamorphosed the unhappy damsel into a cow. The afflicted creature, after long and painful wanderings, at last found refuge in Egypt, where she regained her human form, and was there worshipped in the person of Isis, the goddess of general adoration in that country.e It is impossible to imagine that this history is other than a fable figuratively representing real events; events, however, not of ordinary life, but relating to religion and the worship of the gods. Adultery is generally used in our sacred Scriptures to signify dissent from the lawful and established mode of worship of the true God. In the fable the adultery of Jupiter signifies a change of religious principle in his votaries, who transferred their worship from the female principle of nature personified in Juno, to a worship somehow different, that of the female principle personified in Io. It may be supposed that this difference consisted in nothing else than the worship of a different image. This change may be supposed to have been followed by violent persecutions, in which the votaries of Io were driven to flight, and compelled by their adversaries to adopt an image in the form of a cow. The fury of persecution continued till the vaccine goddess found safe refuge in Egypt, where at length the human form was restored to her, under which she continued to receive peaceably the reverence of her votaries. Conjecture might spin out a long commentary on the history of Io; but it may be sufficient to observe that the virgin Io stolen by the Phoenicians and carried into Egypt was none other than an image, but that the father of history, (first given by him in a plain narrative) influenced by that awe with which he is often • Hygin. Fab. 145. Isaiah v. 7. Jer. iii. 6. Ovid. Metam. lib. i. c. 11, 14. found to treat subjects connected with religion, dared not expressly and directly to declare in opposition to figurative language when sanctioned by popular opinion. The history of Io exhibits the high importance attached to images, and the eager, often the violent, means used to obtain them. That the Helen stolen by the Trojan Paris was an image, and not a real person, is certain, notwithstanding the living scenes described with the sublimity and beauty of the verse of the Iliad. The fable of her birth, which relates that she was born from an egg, renders it impossible to suppose that she was a mortal, but a personage symbolically significant of certain powers existent in the created world, which all nations figuratively signified by the productive egg. When very young she was stolen from the temple of Diana by Theseus, that is, very soon after her image had been set up in the place. This event evidently belongs rather to an image than a girl or child. The many princes desiring to wed her, that is, to have her image set up and worshipped in the temples of their cities, all engaged to defend her image wherever she might choose to wed, that is, to be permanently placed. Her choice (by which we understand the priests who ministered at her shrine) fixed upon Sparta, then governed by Menelaus. From that city the idle vanity of the Trojan prince bore her image away secretly, which however he was not able to take to Troy, but it was detained in Egypt, as a prize taken from the robber. After the Greeks had vindicated the national honour by the destruction of Troy, the image was given up by the Egyptians as a matter of right, and brought back to Menelaus and Sparta. In after times, according to Euripides, she was placed with her brothers Castor and Pollux among the stars of heaven, the region whither all the obsolete gods of Greece were usually placed, and where they were formed into constellations, distinguished by names now little known, except to the practical astronomer. Helen became a goddess.-Euripid. Orestes. v. 1650. h Ibid. v. 1646. According to a tale recited by Pausanias, the image of Helen had been worshipped at Rhodes, whither it had been introduced by Polyxo, an Argive woman married to Tlepolemus the king of the island. He dying, the queen attributed his death to the goddess Helen neglecting to afford the protection sought. The queen sent women servants habited as furies, who seized the goddess while under the rite of being washed, and hanged her on a tree, which, even in the time of the antiquary, was called the tree of Helen. It being utterly improbable that Helen the queen of Sparta could have been thus treated in person, it must be presumed that the outrage was practised on her image seized while taken from her temple to some stream to be washed by her ministering priests. Ablution was a rite commonly practised on sacred images. Images, according to the authority cited by Saint Augustine of Hippo, acquired after due rites of consecration all the powers of the gods they represented, and, among others, the power of doing either good or ill at pleasure. Helen, says Pausanias, was an inmate of the family of Achilles. The hero, being about to sail to Himera in Sicily, was told by the goddess to inform the blind poet Stesichorus that the loss of his eyes was owing to her anger. The poet wrote a palinode, and regained his sight. That Helen could be an inmate of the family of Achilles in any other form than that of a statue, it is difficult to imagine. The poet Stesichorus was not born till about seven centuries after the age of the hero of the war at Troy. The Thessalian king may have been a descendant of the leader of the Myrmidons, but the Helen of his household could not have been other than an image of the fabled wife of Menelaus, and must have been a household image from the time when such an image was first set up at Sparta. i Pausan. lib. iii. c. 19, s. 10. * Ibid. lib. iii. c. 19, s. 11. Suidas, ad voc. Stesichorus. The rape of Helen was therefore most assuredly the theft of an image, and not of a woman. Pausanias cites an instance of a similar act having been committed by a slave in Crete, who stole a sacred image of Diana. This shews that such acts might be of common occurrence. from the Treasury of Acrisius has been noticed in a former page. The rape of Europa, the same personage as the Celtic Ket, was an act of the same kind exactly. The same may be affirmed of the object of the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts, who bore away triumphantly the Golden Fleece. These outrages were supposed to affect the national honour, and were followed by war and reprisals. The war of Troy was one instance, and Herodotus states, that the deadly enmity existing between the Greeks and the Barbarians or Foreigners of Western Asia originated in the abduction of images practised on both sides. These facts shew the importance attached to images held sacred, and constitute an important portion of their history. m Images being regarded thus as real gods, religious worship was paid to them with all the solemnities due to the real person of the god himself. The image was addressed in solemn prayer, usually offered during the performance of the rites of sacrifice. Hymns expressive of praise were chanted to the sound of such kinds of musical instruments as were suitable to the occasion and the character of the god. Processions were had in which the image itself was occasionally borne in a state indicative of preeminence of powers, and assembled crowds indulged in all the extravagance of joy. Such were the public rites of worship performed either at stated festivals or on occasions which might seem to demand extraordinary worship. On ordinary occasions the votary bowed before the image, or kneeled in prayer: to touch it was an act of worship; to kiss (most probably) the foot, was an act of zealous adoration: a rite which, in the dark ages of 1 Pausan. lib. iii. c. 18, s. 3. m Herodot. lib. i. c. 4. Europe, the Pope of Rome, claiming the character of God's vicegerent upon earth, assumed to himself. The image remained in its temple or shrine, unless when removed to be borne in procession or on a visit to other images of the gods. Frequently, perhaps daily, the image was bathed in holy water, improved by perfumes. In India the holy water of the Ganges is deemed to be most efficient for the purpose. Lamps were kept burning continually at the shrines. Flowers in the form of garlands and of crowns, or simply scattered, were supplied in abundance. At Chæronea in Boeotia all kinds of meats and viands were placed on tables before the image. The apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon shews that in many instances it was maintained that the god himself feasted upon and consumed these dainties. No instance however is now known in which such pretence is alleged: but still in Indian Asia these offerings are made, and are generally left to be eaten by birds and beasts, which is held to be the same as if consumed by the deity himself. n It is obvious to remark that these honours are only due to the image after the rites of consecration have been duly performed, and the spirit of the god has been brought into the figure. As the divine spirit was supposed to have been introduced by the performance of certain acts, so also it was believed that the indwelling spirit might by certain acts be expelled from the image. Any act of gross outrage and indignity might have that effect. To besmear the image with impure and offensive materials might so offend the spirit of the god as to induce it to desert the image, and render purification and renewed rites of consecration indispensably necessary; but whenever the image became mutilated by violence in even the slightest degree, the mischief was held to be beyond remedy: no repair, however artfully wrought, could ever render it an abode fit for the n Pausan. lib. ix. c. 40, s. 6. |