Why Odin Was Given Antenor's Place As Leader Of The Trojan Emigration

: MEDIAEVAL MIGRATION SAGAS.
: Teutonic Mythology

So long as the Franks were the only ones of the Teutons who claimed

Trojan descent, it was sufficient that the Teutonic-Trojan immigration

had the father of a Frankish chief as its leader. But in the same degree

as the belief in a Trojan descent spread among the other Teutonic tribes

and assumed the character of a statement equally important to all the

Teutonic tribes, the idea would naturally present itself that the leader
< r /> of the great immigration was a person of general Teutonic importance.

There was no lack of names to choose from. Most conspicuous was the

mythical Teutonic patriarch, whom Tacitus speaks of and calls Mannus

(Germania, 2), the grandson of the goddess Jord (Earth). There can be

no doubt that he still was remembered by this (Mann) or some other name

(for nearly all Teutonic mythic persons have several names), since he

reappears in the beginning of the fourteenth century in Heinrich

Frauenlob as Mennor, the patriarch of the German people and German

tongue.[5] But Mannus had to yield to another universal Teutonic mythic

character, Odin, and for reasons which we shall now present.



As Christianity was gradually introduced among the Teutonic peoples, the

question confronted them, what manner of beings those gods had been in

whom they and their ancestors so long had believed. Their Christian

teachers had two answers, and both were easily reconcilable. The common

answer, and that usually given to the converted masses, was that the

gods of their ancestors were demons, evil spirits, who ensnared men in

superstition in order to become worshipped as divine beings. The other

answer, which was better calculated to please the noble-born Teutonic

families, who thought themselves descended from the gods, was that these

divinities were originally human persons--kings, chiefs, legislators,

who, endowed with higher wisdom and secret knowledge, made use of these

to make people believe that they were gods, and worship them as such.

Both answers could, as stated, easily be reconciled with each other, for

it was evident that when these proud and deceitful rulers died, their

unhappy spirits joined the ranks of evil demons, and as demons they

continued to deceive the people, in order to maintain through all ages a

worship hostile to the true religion. Both sides of this view we find

current among the Teutonic races through the whole middle age. The one

which particularly presents the old gods as evil demons is found in

popular traditions from this epoch. The other, which presents the old

gods as mortals, as chiefs and lawmakers with magic power, is more

commonly reflected in the Teutonic chronicles, and was regarded among

the scholars as the scientific view.



Thus it followed of necessity that Odin, the chief of the Teutonic gods,

and from whom their royal houses were fond of tracing their descent,

also must have been a wise king of antiquity and skilled in the magic

arts, and information was of course sought with the greatest interest in

regard to the place where he had reigned, and in regard to his origin.

There were two sources of investigation in reference to this matter. One

source was the treasure of mythic songs and traditions of their own

race. But what might be history in these seemed to the students so

involved in superstition and fancy, that not much information seemed

obtainable from them. But there was also another source, which in regard

to historical trustworthiness seemed incomparably better, and that was

the Latin literature to be found in the libraries of the convents.



During centuries when the Teutons had employed no other art than poetry

for preserving the memory of the life and deeds of their ancestors, the

Romans, as we know, had had parchment and papyrus to write on, and had

kept systematic annals extending centuries back. Consequently this

source must be more reliable. But what had this source--what had the

Roman annals or the Roman literature in general to tell about Odin?

Absolutely nothing, it would seem, inasmuch as the name Odin, or Wodan,

does not occur in any of the authors of the ancient literature. But this

was only an apparent obstacle. The ancient king of our race, Odin, they

said, has had many names--one name among one people, and another among

another, and there can be no doubt that he is the same person as the

Romans called Mercury and the Greeks Hermes.



The evidence of the correctness of identifying Odin with Mercury and

Hermes the scholars might have found in Tacitus' work on Germany, where

it is stated in the ninth chapter that the chief god of the Germans is

the same as Mercury among the Romans. But Tacitus was almost unknown in

the convents and schools of this period of the middle age. They could

not use this proof, but they had another and completely compensating

evidence of the assertion.



Originally the Romans did not divide time into weeks of seven days.

Instead, they had weeks of eight days, and the farmer worked the seven

days and went on the eighth to the market. But the week of seven days

had been in existence for a very long time among certain Semitic

peoples, and already in the time of the Roman republic many Jews lived

in Rome and in Italy. Through them the week of seven days became

generally known. The Jewish custom of observing the sacredness of the

Sabbath, the first day of the week, by abstaining from all labour, could

not fail to be noticed by the strangers among whom they dwelt. The Jews

had, however, no special name for each day of the week. But the

Oriental, Egyptian, and Greek astrologers and astronomers, who in large

numbers sought their fortunes in Rome, did more than the Jews to

introduce the week of seven days among all classes of the metropolis,

and the astrologers had special names for each of the seven days of the

week. Saturday was the planet's and the planet-god Saturnus' day;

Sunday, the sun's; Monday, the moon's; Tuesday, Mars'; Wednesday,

Mercury's; Thursday, Jupiter's; Friday, Venus' day. Already in the

beginning of the empire these names of the days were quite common in

Italy. The astrological almanacs, which were circulated in the name of

the Egyptian Petosiris among all families who had the means to buy them

contributed much to bring this about. From Italy both the taste for

astrology and the adoption of the week of seven days, with the

above-mentioned names, spread not only into Spain and Gaul, but also

into those parts of Germany that were incorporated with the Roman

Empire, Germania superior and inferior, where the Romanising of the

people, with Cologne (Civitas Ubiorum) as the centre, made great

progress. Teutons who had served as officers and soldiers in the Roman

armies, and were familiar with the everyday customs of the Romans, were

to be found in various parts of the independent Teutonic territory, and

it is therefore not strange if the week of seven days, with a separate

name given to each day, was known and in use more or less extensively

throughout Teutondom even before Christianity had taken root east of the

Rhine, and long before Rome itself was converted to Christianity. But

from this introduction of the seven-day week did not follow the adoption

of the Roman names of the days. The Teutons translated the names into

their own language, and in so doing chose among their own divinities

those which most nearly corresponded to the Roman. The translation of

the names is made with a discrimination which seems to show that it was

made in the Teutonic border country, governed by the Romans, by people

who were as familiar with the Roman gods as with their own. In that

border land there must have been persons of Teutonic birth who

officiated as priests before Roman altars. The days of the sun and moon

were permitted to retain their names. They were called Sunday and

Monday. The day of the war-god Mars became the day of the war-god Tyr,

Tuesday. The day of Mercury became Odin's day, Wednesday. The day of the

lightning-armed Jupiter became the day of the thundering Thor, Thursday.

The day of the goddess of love Venus became that of the goddess of love

Freyja, Friday. Saturnus, who in astrology is a watery star, and has his

house in the sign of the waterman, was among the Romans, and before them

among the Greeks and Chaldaeans, the lord of the seventh day. Among the

North Teutons, or at least, among a part of them, his day got its name

from laug,[6] which means a bath, and it is worthy of notice in this

connection that the author of the Prose Edda's Foreword identifies

Saturnus with the sea-god Njord.



Here the Latin scholars had what seemed to them a complete proof that

the Odin of which their stories of the past had so much to tell was--and

was so recognised by their heathen ancestors--the same historical person

as the Romans worshipped by the name Mercury.



At first sight it may seem strange that Mercury and Odin were regarded

as identical. We are wont to conceive Hermes (Mercury) as the Greek

sculptors represented him, the ideal of beauty and elastic youth, while

we imagine Odin as having a contemplative, mysterious look. And while

Odin in the Teutonic mythology is the father and ruler of the gods,

Mercury in the Roman has, of course, as the son of Zeus, a high rank,

but his dignity does not exempt him from being the very busy messenger

of the gods of Olympus. But neither Greeks nor Romans nor Teutons

attached much importance to such circumstances in the specimens we have

of their comparative mythology. The Romans knew that the same god among

the same people might be represented differently, and that the local

traditions also sometimes differed in regard to the kinship and rank of

a divinity. They therefore paid more attention to what Tacitus calls

vis numinis--that is, the significance of the divinity as a symbol of

nature, or its relation to the affairs of the community and to human

culture. Mercury was the symbol of wisdom and intelligence; so was

Odin. Mercury was the god of eloquence; Odin likewise. Mercury had

introduced poetry and song among men; Odin also. Mercury had taught men

the art of writing; Odin had given them the runes. Mercury did not

hesitate to apply cunning when it was needed to secure him possession of

something that he desired; nor was Odin particularly scrupulous in

regard to the means. Mercury, with wings on his hat and on his heels,

flew over the world, and often appeared as a traveller among men; Odin,

the ruler of the wind, did the same. Mercury was the god of martial

games, and still he was not really the war-god; Odin also was the chief

of martial games and combats, but the war-god's occupation he had left

to Tyr. In all important respects Mercury and Odin, therefore, resembled

each other.



To the scholars this must have been an additional proof that this, in

their eyes, historical chief, whom the Romans called Mercury and the

Teutons Odin, had been one and the same human person, who had lived in a

distant past, and had alike induced Greeks, Romans, and Goths to worship

him as a god. To get additional and more reliable information in regard

to this Odin-Mercury than what the Teutonic heathen traditions could

impart, it was only necessary to study and interpret correctly what

Roman history had to say about Mercury.



As is known, some mysterious documents called the Sibylline books were

preserved in Jupiter's temple, on the Capitoline Hill, in Rome. The

Roman State was the possessor, and kept the strictest watch over them,

so that their contents remained a secret to all excepting those whose

position entitled them to read them. A college of priests, men in high

standing, were appointed to guard them and to consult them when

circumstances demanded it. The common opinion that the Roman State

consulted them for information in regard to the future is incorrect.

They were consulted only to find out by what ceremonies of penance and

propitiation the wrath of the higher powers might be averted at times

when Rome was in trouble, or when prodigies of one kind or another had

excited the people and caused fears of impending misfortune. Then the

Sibylline books were produced by the properly-appointed persons, and in

some line or passage they found which divinity was angry and ought to be

propitiated. This done, they published their interpretation of the

passage, but did not make known the words or phrases of the passage, for

the text of the Sibylline books must not be known to the public. The

books were written in the Greek tongue.



The story telling how these books came into the possession of the Roman

State through a woman who sold them to Tarquin--according to one version

Tarquin the Elder, according to another Tarquin the Younger--is found in

Roman authors who were well known and read throughout the whole middle

age. The woman was a Sibylla, according to Varro the Erythreian, so

called from a Greek city in Asia Minor; according to Virgil the Cumaean,

a prophetess from Cumae in southern Italy. Both versions could easily be

harmonised, for Cumae was a Greek colony from Asia Minor; and we read in

Servius' commentaries on Virgil's poems that the Erythreian Sibylla was

by many regarded as identical with the Cumaean. From Asia Minor she was

supposed to have come to Cumae.



In western Europe the people of the middle age claimed that there were

twelve Sibyllas: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphian, the Cimmerinean,

the Erythreian, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontian or Trojan, the

Phrygian and Tiburtinian, and also the Sibylla Europa and the Sibylla

Agrippa. Authorities for the first ten of these were the Church father

Lactantius and the West Gothic historian Isodorus of Sevilla. The last

two, Europa and Agrippa, were simply added in order to make the number

of Sibyllas equal to that of the prophets and the apostles.



But the scholars of the middle ages also knew from Servius that the

Cumaean Sibylla was, in fact, the same as the Erythreian; and from the

Church father Lactantius, who was extensively read in the middle ages,

they also learned that the Erythreian was identical with the Trojan.

Thanks to Lactantius, they also thought they could determine precisely

where the Trojan Sibylla was born. Her birthplace was the town

Marpessus, near the Trojan Mount Ida. From the same Church father they

learned that the real contents of the Sibylline books had consisted of

narrations concerning Trojan events, of lives of the Trojan kings, &c.,

and also of prophecies concerning the fall of Troy and other coming

events, and that the poet Homer in his works was a mere plagiator, who

had found a copy of the books of the Sibylla, had recast and falsified

it, and published it in his own name in the form of heroic poems

concerning Troy.



This seemed to establish the fact that those books, which the woman from

Cumae had sold to the Roman king Tarquin, were written by a Sibylla who

was born in the Trojan country, and that the books which Trojan bought

off her contained accounts and prophecies--accounts especially in regard

to the Trojan chiefs and heroes afterwards glorified in Homer's poems.

As the Romans came from Troy, these chiefs and heroes were their

ancestors, and in this capacity they were entitled to the worship which

the Romans considered due to the souls of their forefathers. From a

Christian standpoint this was of course idolatry; and as the Sibyllas

were believed to have made predictions even in regard to Christ, it

might seem improper for them to promote in this manner the cause of

idolatry. But Lactantius gave a satisfactory explanation of this matter.

The Sibylla, he said, had certainly prophesied truthfully in regard to

Christ; but this she did by divine compulsion and in moments of divine

inspiration. By birth and in her sympathies she was a heathen, and when

under the spell of her genuine inspirations, she proclaimed heathen and

idolatrous doctrines.



In our critical century all this may seem like mere fancies. But careful

examinations have shown that an historical kernel is not wanting in

these representations. And the historical fact which lies back of all

this is that the Sibylline books which were preserved in Rome actually

were written in Asia Minor in the ancient Trojan territory; or, in

other words, that the oldest known collection of so-called Sibylline

oracles was made in Marpessus, near the Trojan mountain Ida, in the time

of Solon. From Marpessus the collection came to the neighbouring city

Gergis, and was preserved in the Apollo temple there; from Gergis it

came to Cumae, and from Cumae to Rome in the time of the kings. How it

came there is not known. The story about the Cumaean woman and Tarquin is

an invention, and occurs in various forms. It is also demonstrably an

invention that the Sibylline books in Rome contained accounts of the

heroes in the Trojan war. On the other hand, it is absolutely certain

that they referred to gods and to a worship which in the main were

unknown to the Romans before the Sibylline books were introduced there,

and that to these books must chiefly be attributed the remarkable change

which took place in Roman mythology during the republican centuries. The

Roman mythology, which from the beginning had but few gods of clear

identity with the Greek, was especially during this epoch enlarged, and

received gods and goddesses who were worshipped in Greece and in the

Greek and Hellenised part of Asia Minor where the Sibylline books

originated. The way this happened was that whenever the Romans in

trouble or distress consulted the Sibylline books they received the

answer that this or that Greek-Asiatic god or goddess was angry and must

be propitiated. In connection with the propitiation ceremonies the god

or goddess was received in the Roman pantheon, and sooner or later a

temple was built to him; and thus it did not take long before the

Romans appropriated the myths that were current in Greece concerning

these borrowed divinities. This explains why the Roman mythology, which

in its oldest sources is so original and so unlike the Greek, in the

golden period of Roman literature comes to us in an almost wholly Greek

attire; this explains why Roman and Greek mythology at that time might

be regarded as almost identical. Nevertheless the Romans were able even

in the later period of antiquity to discriminate between their native

gods and those introduced by the Sibylline books. The former were

worshipped according to a Roman ritual, the latter according to a Greek.

To the latter belonged Apollo, Artemis, Latona, Ceres, Hermes, Mercury,

Proserpina, Cybile, Venus, and Esculapius; and that the Sibylline books

were a Greek-Trojan work, whose original home was Asia Minor and the

Trojan territory, was well known to the Romans. When the temple of the

Capitoline Jupiter was burned down eighty-four years before Christ, the

Sibylline books were lost. But the State could not spare them. A new

collection had to be made, and this was mainly done by gathering the

oracles which could be found one by one in those places which the Trojan

or Erythreian Sibylla had visited, that is to say, in Asia Minor,

especially in Erythrae, and in Ilium, the ancient Troy.



So far as Hermes-Mercury is concerned, the Roman annals inform us that

he got his first lectisternium in the year 399 before Christ by order

from the Sibylline books. Lectisternium was a sacrifice: the image of

the god was laid on a bed with a pillow under the left arm, and beside

the image was placed a table and a meal, which as a sacrifice was

offered to the god. About one hundreds years before that time,

Hermes-Mercury had received his first temple in Rome.



Hermes-Mercury seemed, therefore, like Apollo, Venus, Esculapius, and

others, to have been a god originally unknown to the Romans, the worship

of whom the Trojan Sibylla had recommended to the Romans.



This was known to the scholars of the middle age. Now, we must bear in

mind that it was as certain to them as an undoubted scientific fact that

the gods were originally men, chiefs, and heroes, and that the deified

chief whom the Romans worshipped as Mercury, and the Greeks as Hermes,

was the same as the Teutons called Odin, and from whom distinguished

Teutonic families traced their descent. We must also remember that the

Sibylla who was supposed to have recommended the Romans to worship the

old king Odin-Mercurius was believed to have been a Trojan woman, and

that her books were thought to have contained stories about Troy's

heroes, in addition to various prophecies, and so this manner of

reasoning led to the conclusion that the gods who were introduced in

Rome through the Sibylline books were celebrated Trojans who had lived

and fought at a time preceding the fall of Troy. Another inevitable and

logical conclusion was that Odin had been a Trojan chief, and when he

appears in Teutonic mythology as the chief of gods, it seemed most

probable that he was identical with the Trojan king Priam, and that

Priam was identical with Hermes-Mercury.



Now, as the ancestors of the Romans were supposed to have emigrated from

Troy to Italy under the leadership of AEneas, it was necessary to assume

that the Romans were not the only Trojan emigrants, for, since the

Teutons worshipped Odin-Priamus-Hermes as their chief god, and since a

number of Teutonic families traced their descent from this Odin, the

Teutons, too, must have emigrated from Troy. But, inasmuch as the

Teutonic dialects differed greatly from the Roman language, the Trojan

Romans and the Trojan Teutons must have been separated a very long time.



They must have parted company immediately after the fall of Troy and

gone in different directions, and as the Romans had taken a southern

course on their way to Europe, the Teutons must have taken a northern.

It was also apparent to the scholars that the Romans had landed in

Europe many centuries earlier than the Teutons, for Rome had been

founded already in 754 or 753 before Christ, but of the Teutons not a

word is to be found in the annals before the period immediately

preceding the birth of Christ. Consequently, the Teutons must have made

a halt somewhere on their journey to the North. This halt must have been

of several centuries' duration, and, of course, like the Romans, they

must have founded a city, and from it ruled a territory in commemoration

of their fallen city Troy. In that age very little was known of Asia,

where this Teutonic-Trojan colony was supposed to have been situated,

but, both from Orosius and, later, from Gregorius of Tours, it was known

that our world is divided into three large divisions--Asia, Europe, and

Africa--and that Asia and Europe are divided by a river called Tanais.

And having learned from Gregorius of Tours that the Teutonic Franks were

said to have lived in Pannonia in ancient times, and having likewise

learned that the Moeotian marshes lie east of Pannonia, and that the

Tanais empties into these marshes, they had the course marked out by

which the Teutons had come to Europe--that is, by way of Tanais and the

Moeotian marshes. Not knowing anything at all of importance in regard to

Asia beyond Tanais, it was natural that they should locate the colony of

the Teutonic Trojans on the banks of this river.



I think I have now pointed out the chief threads of the web of that

scholastic romance woven out of Latin convent learning concerning a

Teutonic emigration from Troy and Asia, a web which extends from

Fredegar's Frankish chronicle, through the following chronicles of the

middle age, down into Heimskringla and the Foreword of the Younger Edda.

According to the Frankish chronicle, Gesta regum Francorum, the

emigration of the Franks from the Trojan colony near the Tanais was

thought to have occurred very late; that is, in the time of

Valentinianus I., or in other words, between 364 and 375 after Christ.

The Icelandic authors very well knew that Teutonic tribes had been far

into Europe long before that time, and the reigns they had constructed

in regard to the North indicated that they must have emigrated from the

Tanais colony long before the Franks. As the Roman attack was the cause

of the Frankish emigration, it seemed probable that these

world-conquerors had also caused the earlier emigration from Tanais;

and as Pompey's expedition to Asia was the most celebrated of all the

expeditions made by the Romans in the East--Pompey even entered

Jerusalem and visited its Temple--it was found most convenient to let

the Asas emigrate in the time of Pompey, but they left a remnant of

Teutons near the Tanais, under the rule of Odin's younger brothers Vile

and Ve, in order that this colony might continue to exist until the

emigration of the Franks took place.



Finally, it should be mentioned that the Trojan migration saga, as born

and developed in antiquity, does not indicate by a single word that

Europe was peopled later than Asia, or that it received its population

from Asia. The immigration of the Trojans to Europe was looked upon as a

return to their original homes. Dardanus, the founder of Troy, was

regarded as the leader of an emigration from Etruria to Asia (AEneid,

iii. 165 ff., Serv. Comm.). As a rule the European peoples regarded

themselves in antiquity as autochthones if they did not look upon

themselves as immigrants from regions within Europe to the territories

they inhabited in historic times.



[Footnote 5:



"Mennor der erste was genant,

Dem diutische rede got tet bekant."



Later on in this work we shall discuss the traditions of the Mannussaga

found in Scandinavia and Germany.]



[Footnote 6: Saturday is in the North called Loeverdag, Loerdag--that is,

Laugardag=bathday.--TR.]