eaten out of house and home by the expenses of his kennel.

Now, that under the glamour of myth and legend some substratum of
historical fact may lie, is a proposition rendered extremely
probable by the modern investigations into the workings of the
mythopoeic spirit in post-Christian times. Charlemagne and Roland,
St. Francis and William Tell, are none the less real personages
because their histories are filled with much that is fictitious and
incredible, but in all cases what is essentially necessary is some
external corroboration, such as is afforded by the mention of
Roland and Roncesvalles in the chronicles of England, or (in the
sphere of Greek legend) by the excavations of Hissarlik. But to
rob a mythical narrative of its kernel of supernatural elements,
and to present the dry husk thus obtained as historical fact, is,
as has been well said, to mistake entirely the true method of
investigation and to identify plausibility with truth.

And as regards the critical point urged by Palaiphatos, Strabo, and
Polybius, that pure invention on Homer's part is inconceivable, we
may without scruple allow it, for myths, like constitutions, grow
gradually, and are not formed in a day. But between a poet's
deliberate creation and historical accuracy there is a wide field
of the mythopoeic faculty.

This Euhemeristic theory was welcomed as an essentially
philosophical and critical method by the unscientific Romans, to
whom it was introduced by the poet Ennius, that pioneer of
cosmopolitan Hellenicism, and it continued to characterise the tone
of ancient thought on the question of the treatment of mythology
till the rise of Christianity, when it was turned by such writers