The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911)

Part 2 — COMMENTARY[422] (continued 2)

Reading edition

Interpretative. Max Müller derives Niobe from the root snu, or snigh, from which come the words for snow in the Indo-European languages. In Latin and Greek, the stem is Niv, hence Nib, Niobe. The myth, therefore, would signify the melting of snow and the destruction of its icy offspring under the rays of the spring sun (Sci. Relig. 372). According to Homer (Iliad, 24, 611), there were six sons and six daughters. After their death no one could bury them, since all who looked on them were turned to stone. The burial was, accordingly, performed on the tenth day after the massacre, by Jupiter and the other gods. This petrifaction of the onlookers may indicate the operation of the frost. Cox says that Niobe, the snow, compares her golden-tinted, wintry mists or clouds with the splendor of the sun and moon. Others look upon the myth as significant of the withering of spring vegetation under the heats of summer (Preller). The latter explanation is as satisfactory, for spring is the child of winter (Niobe).

Illustrative. Pope, Dunciad, 2, 311; Lewis Morris, Niobe on Sipylus (Songs Unsung); Byron's noble stanza on fallen Rome, "The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe," etc. (Childe Harold, 4, 79); W. S. Landor, Niobe; Frederick Tennyson, Niobe. On Tantalus, see Lewis Morris, Tantalus, in The Epic of Hades. On Sir Richard Blackmore, a physician and poor poet, Thomas Moore writes the following stanza:

'T was in his carriage the sublime Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme, And, if the wits don't do him wrong, 'Twixt death and epics passed his time, Scribbling and killing all day long; Like Phœbus in his car at ease, Now warbling forth a lofty song, Now murdering the young Niobes.

In Art. The restoration of the statue of Niobe, Mount Sipylus; of extreme antiquity. The St. Petersburg relief (Fig. 61, in text) is probably the best group. Figs. 60 and 62 are from the ancient marbles in the Uffizi, Florence. The fragments of the latter group were discovered in 1583 near the Porta San Giovanni, Rome. The figure of the mother, clasping the little girl who has run to her in terror, is one of the most admired of the ancient statues. It ranks with the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere among the masterpieces of art. The following is a translation of a Greek epigram supposed to relate to this statue:

To stone the gods have changed her, but in vain; The sculptor's art has made her breathe again.

There is also a fine figure of a daughter of Niobe in the Vatican, Rome; and there are figures in the Louvre. Reinach in his Apollo attributes the originals to Scopas.

79. Interpretative. The month in which the festival of Linus took place was called the Lambs' Month: the days were the Lambs' Days, on one of which was a massacre of dogs. According to some, Linus was a minstrel, son of Apollo and the Muse Urania, and the teacher of Orpheus and Hercules.

80. Centaurs. Monsters represented as men from the head to the loins, while the remainder of the body was that of a horse. Centaurs are the only monsters of antiquity to which any good traits were assigned. They were admitted to the companionship of men. Chiron was the wisest and justest of the Centaurs. At his death he was placed by Jupiter among the stars as the constellation Sagittarius (the Archer). Messenia: in the Peloponnesus. Æsculapius: there were numerous oracles of Æsculapius, but the most celebrated was at Epidaurus. Here the sick sought responses and the recovery of their health by sleeping in the temple. It has been inferred from the accounts that have come down to us that the treatment of the sick resembled what is now called animal magnetism or mesmerism.

Serpents were sacred to Æsculapius, probably because of a superstition that those animals have a faculty of renewing their youth by a change of skin. The worship of Æsculapius was introduced into Rome in a time of great sickness. An embassy, sent to the temple of Epidaurus to entreat the aid of the god, was propitiously received; and on the return of the ship Æsculapius accompanied it in the form of a serpent. Arriving in the river Tiber, the serpent glided from the vessel and took possession of an island, upon which a temple was soon erected to his honor.

Interpretative. The healing powers of nature may be here symbolized. But it is more likely that the family of Asclepiadæ (a medical clan) invented Asklepios as at once their ancestor and the son of the god of healing, Apollo.

Illustrative. Milton, Paradise Lost, 9, 506; Shakespeare, Pericles, III, ii; Merry Wives, II, iii.

In Art. Æsculapius (sculpture), Vatican; also the statue in the Uffizi, Florence (text, Fig. 63). Thorwaldsen's (sculpture) Hygea (Health) and Æsculapius, Copenhagen.

81. Interpretative. Perhaps the unceasing and unvarying round of the sun led to the conception of him as a servant. Max Müller cites the Peruvian Inca who said that if the sun were free, like fire, he would visit new parts of the heavens. "He is," said the Inca, "like a tied beast who goes ever round and round in the same track" (Chips, etc., 2, 113). Nearly all Greek heroes had to undergo servitude,—Hercules, Perseus, etc. No stories are more beautiful or more lofty than those which express the hope, innate in the human heart, that somewhere and at some time some god has lived as a man among men and for the good of men. Such stories are not confined to the Greeks or the Hebrews.

Illustrative. R. Browning, Apollo and the Fates; Edith M. Thomas, Apollo the Shepherd; Emma Lazarus, Admetus; W. M. W. Call, Admetus.

83. Textual. Alcestis was a daughter of the Pelias who was killed at the instigation of Medea (167). In that affair Alcestis took no part. For her family, see Table G. She was held in the highest honor in Greek fable, and ranked with Penelope and Laodamia, the latter of whom was her niece. To explain the myth as a physical allegory would be easy, but is it not more likely that the idea of substitution finds expression in the myth?—that idea of atonement by sacrifice, which is suggested in the words of Œdipus at Colonus (185), "For one soul working in the strength of love Is mightier than ten thousand to atone." Koré (the daughter of Ceres): Proserpina. Larissa: a city of Thessaly, on the river Peneüs.

Illustrative. Milton's sonnet, On his Deceased Wife:

Methought I saw my late espousèd saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

Chaucer, Legende of Good Women, 208 et seq.; Court of Love (?), 100 et seq.

Poems. Robert Browning's noble poem, Balaustion's Adventure, purports to be a paraphrase of the Alcestis of Euripides, but while it maintains the classical spirit, it is in execution an original poem. The Love of Alcestis, by William Morris; Mrs. Hemans, The Alcestis of Alfieri, and The Death Song of Alcestis; W. S. Landor, Hercules, Pluto, Alcestis, and Admetus; Alcestis: F. T. Palgrave, W. M. W. Call, John Todhunter (a drama).

In Art. Fig. 64, in text, Naples Museum; also the relief on a Roman sarcophagus in the Vatican.

84. Textual. This Laomedon was descended, through Dardanus (the forefather of the Trojan race), from Jupiter and the Pleiad Electra. For further information about him, see 119, 161, and Table I.

Interpretative. Apollo evidently fulfills, under Laomedon, his function as god of colonization.

85-86. Textual. For Pan, see 43; for Tmolus, 76. Peneüs: a river in Thessaly, which rises in Mount Pindus and flows through the wooded valley of Tempe. Dædal: variously adorned, variegated. Midas was king of Phrygia (see 113).

Illustrative. The story of King Midas has been told by others with some variations. Dryden, in the Wife of Bath's Tale, makes Midas' queen the betrayer of the secret:

This Midas knew, and durst communicate To none but to his wife his ears of state.

87. Illustrative. M. Arnold, Empedocles (Song of Callicles); L. Morris, Marsyas, in The Epic of Hades; Edith M. Thomas, Marsyas; E. Lee-Hamilton, Apollo and Marsyas.

In Art. Raphael's drawing, Apollo and Marsyas (Museum, Venice); Bordone's Apollo, Marsyas, and Midas (Dresden); the Græco-Roman sculpture, Marsyas (Louvre); Marsyas (or Dancing Faun), in the Lateran, Rome.

89. Textual. Daphne was a sister of Cyrene, another sweetheart of Apollo's (145). Delphi, in Phocis, and Tenedos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor, near Troy, were celebrated for their temples of Apollo. The latter temple was sacred to Apollo Smintheus, the Mouse-Apollo, probably because he had rid that country of mice as St. Patrick rid Ireland of snakes and toads. Dido: queen of Carthage (252), whose lover, Æneas, sailed away from her.

Interpretative. Max Müller's explanation is poetic though not philologically probable. "Daphne, or Ahanâ, means the Dawn. There is first the appearance of the dawn in the eastern sky, then the rising of the sun as if hurrying after his bride, then the gradual fading away of the bright dawn at the touch of the fiery rays of the sun, and at last her death or disappearance in the lap of her mother, the earth." The word Daphne also means, in Greek, a laurel; hence the legend that Daphne was changed into a laurel tree (Sci. Relig., 378, 379). Others construe Daphne as the lightning. It is, however, very probable that the Greeks of the myth-making age, finding certain plants and flowers sacred to Apollo, would invent stories to explain why he preferred the laurel, the hyacinth, the sunflower, etc. "Such myths of metamorphoses" are, as Mr. Lang says, "an universal growth of savage fancy, and spring from a want of a sense of difference between men and things" (Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 206).

Illustrative. Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, II, ii; Taming of the Shrew, Induction ii; Troilus and Cressida, I, i; Milton, Comus, 59, 662; Hymn on the Nativity, II. 176-180, Vacation, 33-40; Paradise Lost, 4, 268-275; Paradise Regained, 2, 187; Lord de Tabley (Wm. Lancaster), Daphne, "All day long, In devious forest, Grove, and fountain side, The god had sought his Daphne," etc.; Lyly, King Mydas; Apollo's Song to Daphne; Frederick Tennyson, Daphne. Waller applies this story to the case of one whose amatory verses, though they did not soften the heart of his mistress, yet won for the poet widespread fame:

Yet what he sung in his immortal strain, Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain. All but the nymph that should redress his wrong, Attend his passion and approve his song. Like Phœbus thus, acquiring unsought praise, He caught at love and filled his arms with bays.

In Art. Fig. 67, in text; Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, in the Villa Borghese, Rome (see text, opp. p. 112). Painting: G. F. Watts' Daphne.

91. Illustrative. Hood, Flowers, "I will not have the mad Clytia, Whose head is turned by the sun," etc.; W. W. Story, Clytie; Mrs. A. Fields, Clytia. The so-called bust of Clytie (discovered not long ago) is possibly a representation of Isis.

93. Textual. Elis: northwestern part of the Peloponnesus. Alpheüs: a river of Elis flowing to the Mediterranean. The river Alpheüs does in fact disappear under ground, in part of its course, finding its way through subterranean channels, till it again appears on the surface. It was said that the Sicilian fountain Arethusa was the same stream, which, after passing under the sea, came up again in Sicily. Hence the story ran that a cup thrown into the Alpheüs appeared again in the Arethusa. It is, possibly, this fable of the underground course of Alpheüs that Coleridge has in mind in his dream of Kubla Khan:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea.

In one of Moore's juvenile poems he alludes to the practice of throwing garlands or other light objects on the stream of Alpheüs, to be carried downward by it, and afterward reproduced at its emerging, "as an offering To lay at Arethusa's feet."

The Acroceraunian Mountains are in Epirus in the northern part of Greece. It is hardly necessary to point out that a river Arethusa arising there could not possibly be approached by an Alpheüs of the Peloponnesus. Such a criticism of Shelley's sparkling verses would however be pedantic rather than just. Probably Shelley uses the word Acroceraunian as synonymous with steep, dangerous. If so, he had the practice of Ovid behind him (Remedium Amoris, 739). Mount Erymanthus: between Arcadia and Achaia. The Dorian deep: the Peloponnesus was inhabited by descendants of the fabulous Dorus. Enna: a city in the center of Sicily. Ortygia: an island on which part of the city of Syracuse is built.

Illustrative. Milton, Arcades, 30; Lycidas, 132; Margaret J. Preston, The Flight of Arethusa; Keats, Endymion, Bk. 2, "On either side out-gushed, with misty spray, A copious spring."

95. See genealogical table E for Actæon. In this myth Preller finds another allegory of the baleful influence of the dog days upon those exposed to the heat. Cox's theory that here we have large masses of cloud which, having dared to look upon the clear sky, are torn to pieces and scattered by the winds, is principally instructive as illustrating how far afield theorists have gone, and how easy it is to invent ingenious explanations.

Illustrative. Shakespeare, Merry Wives, II, i; III, ii; Titus Andronicus, II, iii; Shelley, Adonais, 31, "Midst others of less note, came one frail Form," etc., a touching allusion to himself; A. H. Clough, Actæon; L. Morris, Actæon (Epic of Hades).

96. Chios: an island in the Ægean. Lemnos: another island in the Ægean, where Vulcan had a forge.

Interpretative. The ancients were wont to glorify in fable constellations of remarkable brilliancy or form. The heavenly adventures of Orion are sufficiently explained by the text.

Illustrative. Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 3, 31; Milton, Paradise Lost, 1, 299, "Natheless he so endured," etc.; Longfellow, Occultation of Orion; R. H. Horne, Orion; Charles Tennyson Turner, Orion (a sonnet).

97. Electra. See genealogical table I. See same table for Merope, the mother of Glaucus and grandmother of Bellerophon (155).

Illustrative. Pleiads: Milton, Paradise Lost, 7, 374; Pope, Spring, 102; Mrs. Hemans has verses on the same subject; Byron, "Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below."

In modern sculpture, The Lost Pleiad of Randolph Rogers is famous; in painting, the Pleiades of Elihu Vedder (Fig. 72, in text).

98. Mount Latmos: in Caria. Diana is sometimes called Phœbe, the shining one. For the descendants of Endymion, the Ætolians, etc., see Table I.

Interpretative. According to the simplest explanation of the Endymion myth, the hero is the setting sun on whom the upward rising moon delights to gaze. His fifty children by Selene would then be the fifty months of the Olympiad, or Greek period of four years. Some, however, consider him to be a personification of sleep, the king whose influence comes over one in the cool caves of Latmos, "the Mount of Oblivion"; others, the growth of vegetation under the dewy moonlight; still others, euhemeristically, a young hunter, who under the moonlight followed the chase, but in the daytime slept.

Illustrative. The Endymion of Keats. Fletcher, in the Faithful Shepherdess, tells, "How the pale Phœbe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion," etc. Young, Night Thoughts, "So Cynthia, poets feign, In shadows veiled, ... Her shepherd cheered"; Spenser, Epithalamion, "The Latmian Shepherd," etc.; Marvel, Songs on Lord Fauconberg and the Lady Mary Cromwell (chorus, Endymion and Laura); O. W. Holmes, Metrical Essays, "And, Night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay."

Poems. Besides Keats' the most important are by Lowell, Longfellow, Clough (Epi Latmo, and Selene), T. B. Read, Buchanan, L. Morris (Epic of Hades). John Lyly's prose drama, Endymion, contains quaint and delicate songs.

In Art. Fig. 73, in text; Diana and the sleeping Endymion (Vatican).

Paintings. Carracci's fresco, Diana embracing Endymion (Farnese Palace, Rome); Guercino's Sleeping Endymion; G. F. Watts' Endymion.

100. Textual. Paphos and Amathus: towns in Cyprus, of which the former contained a temple to Venus. Cnidos (Cnidus or Gnidus): a town in Caria, where stood a famous statue of Venus, attributed to Praxiteles. Cytherea: Venus, an adjective derived from her island Cythera in the Ægean Sea. Acheron, and Persephone or Proserpine: see 44-48. The wind-flower of the Greeks was of bloody hue, like that of the pomegranate. It is said the wind blows the blossoms open, and afterwards scatters the petals.

Interpretative. Among the Pœnicians Venus is known as Astarte, among the Assyrians as Istar. The Adonis of this story is the Phœnician Adon, or the Hebrew Adonai, 'Lord.' The myth derives its origin from the Babylonian worship of Thammuz or Adon, who represents the verdure of spring, and whom his mistress, the goddess of fertility, seeks, after his death, in the lower regions. With their departure all birth and fruitage cease on the earth; but when he has been revived by sprinkling of water, and restored to his mistress and to earth, all nature again rejoices. The myth is akin to those of Linus, Hyacinthus, and Narcissus. Mannhardt (Wald-und Feld-kulte, 274), cited by Roscher, supplies the following characteristics common to such religious rites in various lands: (1) The spring is personified as a beautiful youth who is represented by an image surrounded by quickly fading flowers from the "garden of Adonis." (2) He comes in the early year and is beloved by a goddess of vegetation, goddess sometimes of the moon, sometimes of the star of Love. (3) In midsummer he dies, and during autumn and winter inhabits the underworld. (4) His burial is attended with lamentations, his resurrection with festivals. (5) These events take place in midsummer and in spring. (6) The image and the Adonis plants are thrown into water. (7) Sham marriages are celebrated between pairs of worshipers.

Illustrative. The realistic Idyl XV of Theocritus contains a typical Psalm of Adonis, sung at Alexandria, for his resurrection. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis; Taming of the Shrew, Induction ii; 1 Henry VI, I, vi. In Milton, Comus, 998:

Beds of hyacinth and roses, Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound, In slumber soft, and on the ground Sadly sits th' Assyrian queen.

Drummond, The Statue of Adonis; Pope, Summer, 61; Winter, 24; Miscel. 7, 10; Moral Essays, 3, 73; Dunciad, 5, 202. See C. S. Calverley, Death of Adonis (Theocritus); L. Morris, Adonis (Epic of Hades).

In Art. Fig. 74, in text, from a Roman sarcophagus. The Dying Adonis, (sculpture), Michelangelo; the Adonis of Thorwaldsen in the Glyptothek, Munich.

101-102. Textual. Psyche does not eat anything in Hades, because, by accepting the hospitality of Proserpina, she would become an inmate of her household. The scene with the lamp and knife probably indicates the infringement of some ancient matrimonial custom. Erebus: the land of darkness, Hades. For Zephyr, Acheron, Cerberus, Charon, etc., see Index.

Interpretative. The fable of Cupid and Psyche is usually regarded as allegorical. The Greek name for butterfly is Psyche, and the same word means the soul. There is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as that of the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb in which it has lain, after a dull, groveling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which is purified by sufferings and misfortunes, and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness. It is probable that the story allegorizes a philosophical conception concerning three stages of the soul's life: first, a former existence of bliss; second, an earthly existence of trial; third, a heavenly future of fruition. Cox, by his usual method, finds here a myth of the search for the Sun (Eros) by the Dawn (Psyche). Many of the incidents of the story will be found in modern fairy tales and romances, such as Beauty and the Beast, Grimm's Twelve Brothers; the Gaelic stories: The Three Daughters of King O'Hara; Fair, Brown, and Trembling; The Daughter of the Skies; and the Norse tale—East of the Sun and West of the Moon. See Cox 1, 403-411.

Illustrative. Thomas Moore, Cupid and Psyche; Mrs. Browning, Psyche, Paraphrase on Apuleius; L. Morris, in The Epic of Hades; Frederick Tennyson, Psyche; Robert Bridges, Eros and Psyche. Most important is W. H. Pater's Marius the Epicurean, which contains the story as given by Apuleius.

In Art. Psyche is represented as a maiden with the wings of a butterfly, in the different situations described in the allegory. The Græco-Roman sculpture of Cupid and Psyche, in the Capitol at Rome, is of surpassing beauty; so also is Canova's Cupid and Psyche.

Paintings. Raphael's frescoes in the Farnesina Villa, twelve in number, illustrating the story; François Gérard's Cupid and Psyche; Paul Thumann's nine illustrations of the story (see Figs. 75, 76, in text); R. Beyschlag's Psyche with the Urn, Psyche Grieving, and Psyche and Pan; W. Kray's Psyche and Zephyr; Psyche: by A. de Curzon; by G. F. Watts, a series of three illustrations by H. Bates. The Charon and Psyche of E. Neide is a sentimental, simpering conception. A. Zick also has a Psyche.

103. According to another tradition, Atalanta's love was Milanion. The nuptial vow was ratified by Hera (Juno). This, the Bœotian, Atalanta is sometimes identified with the Arcadian Atalanta of the Calydonian Hunt. (See 168 and Table D). It is better to discriminate between them. The genealogy of this Atalanta will be seen in Tables G and I.

Illustrative. W. Morris, Atalanta's Race (Earthly Paradise); Moore, Rhymes on the Road, on Alpine Scenery,—an allusion to Hippomenes.

In Art. Painting by E. J. Poynter, Atalanta's Race (Fig. 78, in text); and Guido Reni's brilliant picture of the same subject.

104. Textual and Illustrative. The story of Hero and Leander is the subject of a romantic poem by Musæus, a grammarian of Alexandria, who lived in the fifth century A.D. This author, in distinction from the mythical poet of the same name, is styled the Pseudo-Musæus. The epyllion has been translated by Sir Robert Stapylton, Sir Edwin Arnold, and others. The feat of swimming the Hellespont was performed by Lord Byron. The distance in the narrowest part is not more than a mile, but there is a constant dangerous current setting out from the Sea of Marmora into the Archipelago. For an allusion to the story see Byron, Bride of Abydos, Canto II. For Byron's statement concerning the breadth of the water see footnote to "Stanzas written after swimming from Sestos to Abydos."

Poems. Hero and Leander: by Leigh Hunt, by Tom Hood, by Moore; sonnet by D. G. Rossetti, Hero's Lamp (House of Life); a poem not in later editions of Tennyson, Hero to Leander, 1830; Chapman's continuation of Marlowe's Hero and Leander.

Paintings. G. von Bodenhausen; F. Keller (Fig. 79, in text).

105. Interpretative. Another illustration of the vivifying influence of love. Preller deems Pygmalion's story nearly akin to the Adonis myth. He regards the festival of Venus, during which the statue of Galatea (or passive love) receives life, as the usual Adonis-festival.

Table G. The Connections of Atalanta the Bœotian

Illustrative. Thomson, Castle of Indolence, 2, 12; R. Buchanan, Pygmalion the Sculptor; Morris, and Lang, as in text; Pygmalion: by T. L. Beddoes, by W. C. Bennett. The seventeenth-century satirist, Marston, wrote a Pygmalion, of no great worth. Frederick Tennyson, Pygmalion (in Daphne and other Poems); Arthur Henry Hallam, Lines spoken in the Character of Pygmalion; Thomas Woolner, Pygmalion.

In Art. The Pygmalion series of four scenes, by E. Burne-Jones.

106. Textual. Semiramis: wife of King Ninus and the queen of Assyria. Famous for her administrative and military ability. A mythical character with features of historic probability.

Illustrative. Chaucer, Thisbe, the Martyr of Babylon (Legende of Good Women). Allusions in Surrey, Of the Death of Sir Thomas Wyatt; Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii; V, i; Merchant of Venice, V, i. Moore, in the Sylph's Ball, draws a comparison between Thisbe's wall and the gauze of Davy's safety lamp. Mickle's translation of the Lusiad (Island of Love).

In Art. Burne-Jones' three paintings, Cupid, Pyramus, and Thisbe (Fig. 80, in text); E. J. Paupion's painting, Thisbe.

107. Textual. Lesbos and Chios: islands in the Ægean. For Sappho see 298 (3).

Illustrative. The second lyric of Sappho, beginning "Like to the gods he seems to me, The man that sits reclined by thee," has been translated by Phillips, by Fawkes, and by recent poets. The reference is probably to Phaon. Allusions in Pope, Moral Essays, 3, 121; 2, 24; Prologue to Satires, 309, 101; Byron's Isles of Greece, already referred to. Compare the translation in Catullus, LI.

Poems on Sappho or on Phaon: Charles Kingsley, Sappho; Buchanan, Sappho on the Leucadian Rock; Landor,—Sappho, Alcæus, Anacreon, and Phaon; Frederick Tennyson, Kleïs or the Return (in the Isles of Greece). See also Lyly's amusing prose drama, Sappho and Phao.

109. Textual. Mount Cyllene: between Arcadia and Achæa. Pierian Mountains: in Macedonia, directly north of Thessaly; the birthplace of the Muses. Pylos: an ancient city of Elis.

Interpretative. On the supposition that the herds of Apollo are the bright rays of the sun, a plausible physical explanation of the relations of Mercury (Hermes) to Apollo is the following from Max Müller: "Hermes is the god of the twilight, who betrays his equivocal nature by stealing, though only in fun, the herds of Apollo, but restoring them without the violent combat that (in the analogous Indian story) is waged for the herds between Indra, the bright god, and Vala, the robber. In India the dawn brings the light; in Greece the twilight itself is supposed to have stolen it, or to hold back the light, and Hermes, the twilight, surrenders the booty when challenged by the sun-god Apollo" (Lect. on Lang., 2 Ser., 521-522). Hermes is connected by Professor Müller with the Vedic god Sarameya, son of the twilight. Mercury, or Hermes, as morning or as evening twilight, loves the Dew, is herald of the gods, is spy of the night, is sender of sleep and dreams, is accompanied by the cock, herald of dawn, is the guide of the departed on their last journey. To the conception of twilight, Cox adds that of motion, and explains Hermes as the air in motion that springs up with the dawn, gains rapidly in force, sweeps before it the clouds (here the cattle of Apollo), makes soft music through the trees (lyre), etc. Other theorists make Hermes the Divine Activity, the god of the ether, of clouds, of storm, etc. Though the explanations of Professor Müller and the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox are more satisfactory here than usual, Roscher's the swift wind is scientifically preferable.

Illustrative. See Shelley, Homeric Hymn to Mercury, on which the text of this section is based, and passages in Prometheus Unbound; Keats, Ode to Maia.

In Art. The intent of the disguise in Fig. 81 (text) is to deceive Demeter with a sham sacrifice.

110-112. Textual. See Table E, for Bacchus, Pentheus, etc. Nysa "has been identified as a mountain in Thrace, in Bœotia, in Arabia, India, Libya; and Naxos, as a town in Caria or the Caucasus, and as an island in the Nile." Thebes: the capital of Bœotia. Mæonia: Lydia, in Asia Minor. Dia: Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades Islands in the Ægean. Mount Cithæron: in Bœotia. The Thyrsus was a wand, wreathed with ivy and surmounted by a pine cone, carried by Bacchus and his votaries. Mænads and Bacchantes were female followers of Bacchus. Bacchanal is a general term for his devotees.

Interpretative. "Bacchus (Dionysus) is regarded by many as the spiritual form of the new vernal life, the sap and pulse of vegetation and of the new-born year, especially as manifest in the vine and juice of the grape."—Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 221 (from Preller 1, 554). The Hyades (rain-stars), that nurtured the deity, perhaps symbolize the rains that nourish sprouting vegetation. He became identified very soon with the spirituous effects of the vine. His sufferings may typify the "ruin of the summer year at the hands of storm and winter," or, perhaps, the agony of the bleeding grapes in the wine press. The orgies would, according to this theory, be a survival of the ungoverned actions of savages when celebrating a festival in honor of the deity of plenty, of harvest home, and of intoxication. But in cultivated Greece, Dionysus, in spite of the surviving orgiastic ceremonies, is a poetic incarnation of blithe, changeable, spirited youth. See Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 221-241. That Rhea taught him would account for the Oriental nature of his rites; for Rhea is an Eastern deity by origin. The opposition of Pentheus would indicate the reluctance with which the Greeks adopted his doctrine and ceremonial. The Dionysiac worship came from Thrace, a barbarous clime;—but wandering, like the springtide, over the earth, Bacchus conquered each nation in turn. It is probable that the Dionysus-Iacchus cult was one of evangelical enthusiasm and individual cleansing from sin, of ideals in this life and of personal immortality in the next. By introducing it into Greece, Pisistratus reformed the exclusive ritual of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Of the Festivals of Dionysus, the more important in Attica were the Lesser Dionysia, in December; the Lenæa, in January; the Anthesteria, or spring festival, in February; and the Great Dionysia, in March. These all, in greater or less degree, witnessed of the culture and the glories of the vine, and of the reawakening of the spirits of vegetation. They were celebrated, as the case might be, with a sacrifice of a victim in reminiscence of the blood by which the spirits of the departed were supposed to be nourished, with processions of women, profusion of flowers, orgiastic songs and dances, or dramatic representations.

Illustrative. Bacchus: Milton, Comus, 46. Pentheus: Landor, The Last Fruit of an Old Tree; H. H. Milman, The Bacchanals of Euripides; Calverley's and Lang's translations of Theocritus, Idyl XXVI; Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne: The Vengeance of Bacchus; B. W. Procter, Bacchanalian Song. Naxos: Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 275.

In Art. Figs. 31, 82-87, 143, in text.

113. Textual. Hesperides, see Index. River Pactolus: in Lydia. Midas: the son of one Gordius, who from a farmer had become king of Phrygia, because he happened to fulfill a prophecy by entering the public square of some city just as the people were casting about for a king. He tied his wagon in the temple of the prophetic deity with the celebrated Gordian Knot, which none but the future lord of Asia might undo. Alexander the Great undid the knot with his sword.

Interpretative. An ingenious, but not highly probable, theory explains the golden touch of Midas as the rising sun that gilds all things, and his bathing in Pactolus as the quenching of the sun's splendor in the western ocean. Midas is fabled to have been the son of the "great mother," Cybele, whose worship in Phrygia was closely related to that of Bacchus or Dionysus. The Sileni were there regarded as tutelary genii of the rivers and springs, promoting fertility of the soil. Marsyas, an inspired musician in the service of Cybele, was naturally associated in fable with Midas. The ass being the favorite animal of Silenus, the ass's ears of Midas merely symbolize his fondness for and devotion to such habits as were attributed to the Sileni. The ass, by the way, was reverenced in Phrygia; the acquisition of ass's ears may therefore have been originally a glory, not a disgrace.

Illustrative. John Lyly, Play of Mydas, especially the song, "Sing to Apollo, god of day"; Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III, ii (casket scene); Pope, Dunciad, 3, 342; Prologue to Satires, 82; Swift, The Fable of Midas; J. G. Saxe, The Choice of King Midas (a travesty). Gordian Knot: Henry V, I, i; Cymbeline, II, ii; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 348; Vacation, 90. Pactolus: Pope, Spring, 61; allusions also to the sisters of Phaëthon. Silenus, by W. S. Landor.

114-117. Textual. Mount Eryx, the vale of Enna, and Cyane are in Sicily. Eleusis: in Attica. For Arethusa see Index.

Interpretative. The Italian goddess Ceres assumed the attributes of the Greek Demeter in 496 B.C. Proserpine signifies the seed-corn which, when cast into the ground, lies there concealed,—is carried off by the god of the underworld; when the corn reappears, Proserpine is restored to her mother. Spring leads her back to the light of day. The following, from Aubrey De Vere's Introduction to his Search for Proserpine, is suggestive: "Of all the beautiful fictions of Greek Mythology, there are few more exquisite than the story of Proserpine, and none deeper in symbolical meaning. Considering the fable with reference to the physical world, Bacon says, in his Wisdom of the Ancients, that by the Rape of Proserpine is signified the disappearance of flowers at the end of the year, when the vital juices are, as it were, drawn down to the central darkness, and held there in bondage. Following up this view of the subject, the Search of her Mother, sad and unavailing as it was, would seem no unfit emblem of Autumn and the restless melancholy of the season; while the hope with which the Goddess was finally cheered may perhaps remind us of that unexpected return of fine weather which occurs so frequently, like an omen of Spring, just before Winter closes in. The fable has, however, its moral significance also, being connected with that great mystery of Joy and Grief, of Life and Death, which pressed so heavily on the mind of Pagan Greece, and imparts to the whole of her mythology a profound interest, spiritual as well as philosophical. It was the restoration of Man, not of flowers, the victory over Death, not over Winter, with which that high Intelligence felt itself to be really concerned." In Greece two kinds of Festivals, the Eleusinia and the Thesmophoria, were held in honor of Demeter and Persephone. The former was divided into the lesser, celebrated in February, and the greater (lasting nine days), in September. Distinction must be made between the Festivals and the Mysteries of Eleusis. In the Festivals all classes might participate. Those of the Spring represented the restoration of Persephone to her mother; those of the Autumn the rape of Persephone. An image of the youthful Iacchus (Bacchus) headed the procession in its march toward Eleusis. At that place and in the neighborhood were enacted in realistic fashion the wanderings and the sufferings of Demeter, the scenes in the house of Celeus, and finally the successful conclusion of the search for Persephone. The Mysteries of Eleusis were witnessed only by the initiated, and were invested with a veil of secrecy which has never been fully withdrawn. The initiates passed through certain symbolic ceremonies from one degree of mystic enlightenment to another till the highest was attained. The Lesser Mysteries were an introduction to the Greater; and it is known that the rites involved partook of the nature of purification from passion, crime, and the various degradations of human existence. By pious contemplation of the dramatic scenes presenting the sorrows of Demeter, and by participation in sacramental rites, it is probable that the initiated were instructed in the nature of life and death, and consoled with the hope of immortality (Preller). On the development of the Eleusinian Mysteries from the savage to the civilized ceremonial, see Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 275, and Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 133.

The Thesmophoria were celebrated by married women in honor of Ceres (Demeter), and referred to institutions of married life.

That Proserpine should be under bonds to the underworld because she had partaken of food in Hades accords with a superstition not peculiar to the Greeks, but to be "found in New Zealand, Melanesia, Scotland, Finland, and among the Ojibbeways" (Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 273).

Illustrative. Aubrey De Vere, as above; B. W. Procter, The Rape of Proserpine; R. H. Stoddard, The Search for Persephone; G. Meredith, The Appeasement of Demeter; Tennyson, Demeter and Persephone; Dora Greenwell, Demeter and Cora; T. L. Beddoes, Song of the Stygian Naiades; A. C. Swinburne, Song to Proserpine. See also notes under Persephone, 44, Demeter and Pluto. Eleusis: Schiller, Festival of Eleusis, translated by N. L. Frothingham; At Eleusis, by Swinburne. See, for poetical reference, Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 269, "Not that fair field Of Enna," etc.; Hood, Ode to Melancholy:

Forgive if somewhile I forget, In woe to come the present bliss; As frighted Proserpine let fall Her flowers at the sight of Dis.

In Art. Bernini's Pluto and Proserpine (sculpture); P. Schobelt's Rape of Proserpine (picture). Eleusinian relief: Demeter, Cora, Triptolemus (Athens); and other figures, as in text.

118. Textual. Tænarus: in Laconia. For the crime of Tantalus, see 78. In Hades he stood up to his neck in water which receded when he would drink; grapes hanging above his head withdrew when he would pluck them; while a great rock was forever just about to fall upon him. Ixion, for an insult to Juno, was lashed with serpents or brazen bands to an ever-revolving wheel. Sisyphus, for his treachery to the gods, vainly rolled a stone toward the top of a hill (see 255). For the Danaïds, see 150; Cerberus, 44, 255. The Dynast's bond: the contract with Pluto, who was Dynast or tyrant of Hades. Ferry-guard: Charon. Strymon and Hebrus: rivers of Thrace. Libethra: a city on the side of Mount Olympus, between Thessaly and Macedonia.

Interpretative. The loss of Eurydice may signify (like the death of Adonis and the rape of Proserpine) the departure of spring. Max Müller, however, identifies Orpheus with the Sanskrit Arbhu, used as a name for the Sun (Chips, etc., 2, 127). According to this explanation the Sun follows Eurydice, "the wide-spreading flush of the dawn who has been stung by the serpent of night," into the regions of darkness. There he recovers Eurydice, but while he looks back upon her she fades before his gaze, as the mists of morning vanish before the glory of the rising sun (Cox). It might be more consistent to construe Eurydice as the twilight, first, of evening which is slain by night, then, of morning which is dissipated by sunrise. Cox finds in the music of Orpheus the delicious strains of the breezes which accompany sunrise and sunset. The story should be compared with that of Apollo and Daphne, and of Mercury and Apollo. The Irish tale, The Three Daughters of King O'Hara, reverses the relation of Orpheus and Eurydice. See Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, Boston, 1890.

Illustrative. Orpheus: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, III, ii; Merchant of Venice, V, i; Henry VIII, III, i (song); Milton, Lycidas, 58; L'Allegro, 145; Il Penseroso, 105; Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (Eurydice); Summer, 81; Southey, Thalaba (The Nightingale's Song over the Grave of Orpheus).

Poems. Wordsworth, The Power of Music; Shelley, Orpheus, a fragment; Browning, Eurydice and Orpheus; Wm. Morris, Orpheus and the Sirens (Life and Death of Jason); L. Morris, Orpheus, Eurydice (Epic of Hades); Lowell, Eurydice; E. Dowden, Eurydice; W.B. Scott, Eurydice; E.W. Gosse, The Waking of Eurydice; R. Buchanan, Orpheus, the Musician; J.G. Saxe, Travesty of Orpheus and Eurydice. On Tantalus and Sisyphus, see Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 5, 31-35; L. Morris, Epic of Hades.

In Art. A Relief on a tombstone in the National Museum, Naples, of Mercury, Orpheus, and Eurydice. There is also a copy in Paris of the marble in the Villa Albani, Rome. (See Fig. 94, text.) Paintings: Fig. 93, in text, by Sir Frederick Leighton; by Robert Beyschlag; by G.F. Watts; The Story of Orpheus, a series of ten paintings, by E. Burne-Jones.

119-120. Textual. Troy: the capital of Troas in Asia Minor, situated between the rivers Scamander and Simois. Famous for the siege conducted by the Greeks under Agamemnon, Menelaüs, etc. (See Chap. XXII.) Amymone: a fountain of Argolis. Enipeus: a river of Macedonia.

Interpretative. The monsters that wreak the vengeance of Neptune are, of course, his destructive storms and lashing waves.

121. For genealogy of Pelops, etc., see Tables F and I. For the misfortunes of the Pelopidæ, see 193.

Illustrative in Art. Pelops and Hippodamia; vase pictures (Monuments inédits, Rome, and Paris). East pediment, Temple of Zeus, Olympia.

123-124. Textual. Cephalus, the son of Mercury (Hermes) and Herse, is irretrievably confounded with Cephalus, the son of Deïon and grandson of Æolus I. The former should, strictly, be regarded as the lover of Aurora (Eos); the latter is the husband of Procris, and the great-grandfather of Ulysses. (See Tables H, I, and O (4).)

Interpretative. Procris is the dewdrop (from Greek Prōx, 'dew') which reflects the shining rays of the sun. The "head of the day," or the rising sun, Cephalus, is also wooed by Aurora, the Dawn, but flies from her. The Sun slays the dew with the same gleaming darts that the dew reflects, or gives back to him. According to Preller, Cephalus is the morning-star beloved alike by Procris, the moon, and by Aurora, the dawn. The concealment of Procris in the forest and her death would, then, signify the paling of the moon before the approaching day. Hardly so probable as the former explanation.

Illustrative. Aurora: Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 2, 7; 1, 4, 16; Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii; Romeo and Juliet, I, i; Milton, Paradise Lost, 5, 6, "Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime Advancing," etc.; L'Allegro, 19; Landor, Gebir, "Now to Aurora borne by dappled steeds, The sacred gates of orient pearl and gold ... Expanded slow," etc. Cephalus and Procris: in Moore, Legendary Ballads; Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, "Shafalus and Procrus"; A. Dobson, The Death of Procris.

In Art. Aurora: Figs. 97 and 99, as in text; paintings, by Guido Reni, as Fig. 98 in text, and by J.L. Hamon, and Guercino. Procris and Cephalus, by Turner. L'Aurore et Céphale, painted by P. Guérin, 1810, engraved by F. Forster, 1821.

125. Textual. Cimmerian country: a fabulous land in the far west, near Hades; or, perhaps, in the north, for the people dwell by the ocean that is never visited by sunlight (Odyssey, 11, 14-19). Other sons of Somnus are Icelus, who personates birds, beasts, and serpents, and Phantasus, who assumes the forms of rocks, streams, and other inanimate things.

The accompanying table will indicate the connections and descendants of Aurora.

Interpretative. According to one account, Ceyx and Halcyone, by likening their wedded happiness to that of Jupiter and Juno, incurred the displeasure of the gods. The myth springs from observation of the habits of the Halcyone-bird, which nests on the strand and is frequently bereft of its young by the winter waves. The comparison with the glory of Jupiter and Juno is suggested by the splendid iris hues of the birds. Halcyone days have become proverbial as seasons of calm. Æolus I, the son of Hellen, is here identified with Æolus III, the king of the winds. According to Diodorus, the latter is a descendant, in the fifth generation, of the former. (See Genealogical Table I.)

Illustrative. Chaucer, The Dethe of Blaunche; E. W. Gosse, Alcyone (a sonnet in dialogue); F. Tennyson, Halcyone; Edith M. Thomas, The Kingfisher; Margaret J. Preston, Alcyone. Morpheus: see Milton, Il Penseroso; Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia's Day.

126-127. Interpretative. Tithonus may be the day in its ever-recurring circuit of morning freshness, noon heat, final withering and decay (Preller); or the gray glimmer of the heavens overspread by the first ruddy flush of morning (Welcker); or, as a solar myth, the sun in his setting and waning,—Tithonus meaning, by derivation, the illuminator (Max Müller). The sleep of Tithonus in his ocean-bed, and his transformation into a grasshopper, would then typify the presumable weariness and weakness of the sun at night.

Illustrative. Spenser, Epithalamion; Faerie Queene, 1, 11, 51.

128. Textual. Mysia: province of Asia Minor, south of the Propontis, or Sea of Marmora. There is some doubt about the identification of the existing statue with that described by the ancients, and the mysterious sounds are still more doubtful. Yet there is not wanting modern testimony to their being still audible. It has been suggested that sounds produced by confined air making its escape from crevices or caverns in the rocks may have given some ground for the story. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, a traveler of the highest authority, examined the statue itself, and discovered that it was hollow, and that "in the lap of the statue is a stone, which, on being struck, emits a metallic sound that might still be made use of to deceive a visitor who was predisposed to believe its powers."

Table H. The Ancient Race of Luminaries and Winds

Hyperion =Thea +— Helios | =Perseïs | +— Æetes | | =Hecate | | +— Medea | | +— Absyrtus | +— Circe +— Selene (Diana) | =Endymion +— Eos (Aurora) =Astræus +— Zephyrus W. Winds +— Boreas N. " +— Notus S. " +— Eurus E. " =Cephalus +— Phosphor (Morning Star) +— Ceyx =Halcyone =Tithonus +— Memnon Hermes =Herse +— Cephalus =Eos (Aurora) +— Phosphor (Morning Star) (see above) Æolus I +— Halcyone =Ceyx

Interpretative. Memnon is generally represented as of dark features, lighted with the animation of glorious youth. He is king of the mythical Æthiopians who lived in the land of gloaming, where east and west met, and whose name signifies "dark splendor." His birth in this borderland of light and darkness signifies either his existence as king of an eastern land or his identity with the young sun, and strengthens the theory according to which his father Tithonus is the gray glimmer of the morning heavens. The flocks of birds have been explained as the glowing clouds that meet in battle over the body of the dead sun.

Illustrative. Milton, Il Penseroso; Drummond, Summons to Love, "Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed"; Akenside, Pleasures of the Imagination (analogy between Memnonian music and spiritual appreciation of truth); Landor, Miscellaneous Poems, 59, "Exposed and lonely genius stands, Like Memnon in the Egyptian sands," etc.

In Art. Fig. 101, from a vase in the Louvre.

129-130. Textual. Doric pillar: the three styles of pillars in Greek architecture were Dorian, Ionic, Corinthian (see English Dictionary). Trinacria: Sicily, from its three promontories. Ægon and Daphnis: idyllic names of Sicilian shepherds (see Idyls of Theocritus and Virgil's Eclogues). Naïs: a water-nymph. For Cyclops, Galatea, Silenus, Fauns, Arethusa, see Index. Compare, with the conception of Stedman's poem, Wordsworth's Power of Music.

Illustrative. Ben Jonson, Pan's anniversary; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4. 266, 707; Paradise Regained, 2, 190; Comus, 176, 268; Pope, Autumn, 81; Windsor Forest, 37, 183; Summer, 50; Dunciad, 3, 110; Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, "Fair Tempe! haunt beloved of sylvan Powers," etc.; On Leaving Holland, 1, 2. Poems: Fletcher, Song of the Priest of Pan, and Song of Pan (in The Faithful Shepherdess); Landor, Pan and Pitys, "Pan led me to a wood the other day," etc.; Landor, Cupid and Pan; R. Buchanan, Pan; Browning, Pan and Luna; Swinburne, Pan and Thalassius; Hon. Roden Noël, Pan, in the Modern Faust. Of course Mrs. Browning's Dead Pan cannot be appreciated unless read as a whole; nor Schiller's Gods of Greece.

131. Fauns. Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 708; 10. 573, 597; 11. 472, 788; Paradise Regained, 2, 257; Mrs. Browning, Flush or Faunus (sonnet). Dryads: Pope, Moral Essays, 4, 94; Winter, 12; Collins, The Passions; Keats, Nightingale, Psyche. Satyrs: Milton, Lycidas; Dryden, Mrs. Anne Killigrew, 6; Hawthorne, Marble Faun.

In Art. Fauns (sculpture): The Barberini Faun (Munich); the Drunken Faun, Sleeping Faun, Faun and Bacchus, and Dancing Faun (National Museum, Naples); the Dancing Faun (Lateran, Rome); the so-called Faun of Praxiteles or Marble Faun (Fig. 106 in text—a Satyr—best copy in the Capitoline, Rome). Pan and Apollo: Græco-Roman sculpture (Museum, Naples). Pan: Fig. 102, in text; and Fig. 103, from an original perhaps of the School of Scopas or Praxiteles (Florence). Silenus and Bacchus (Glyptothek, Munich). Nymphs (pictures): Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, and Nymphs; Burne-Jones, Nymphs; Giorgione, Nymphs pursued by a Satyr. Satyrs: Michelangelo (picture) (Uffizi, Florence), Mask of a Satyr; Rubens, Satyrs (Munich); Satyrs (sculpture), relief from theater of Dionysus; Satyr playing a flute (Vatican); and Figs. 103, 104, and 106-108 in the text.

132-133. Textual. Cephissus: four rivers in Phocis, Attica, and Argolis bear this name. The most famous runs near Athens.

Illustrative. Echo: Chaucer, Romaunt of the Rose, 1468 et seq.; Spenser, Prothalamion; Milton, Comus, 237; Collins, The Passions. Poems: L. Morris (Epic of Hades), Narcissus; Goldsmith, On a Beautiful Youth, etc.; Cowper, On an Ugly Fellow; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 449-470 (illus.); and Comus. In Art: Narcissus (sculpture), and Fig. 109, in text (Museum, Naples).

137. Dryope (poem), by W. S. Landor.

138. Rhœcus. Poems by Landor, The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.

139. Pomona. Phillips, a poem on Cider. See Index. In Art: the painting by J. E. Millais.

Interpretative. The various guises and transformations of Vertumnus signify the succession of the seasons and the changing characteristics of each. The name itself implies turning, or change.

140. Textual. In order to understand the story of Ibycus, it is necessary to remember, first, that the theaters of the ancients were immense fabrics, capable of containing from ten to thirty thousand spectators, and as they were used only on festal occasions and admission was free to all, they were usually filled. They were without roofs and open to the sky, and performances were in the daytime. Secondly, that the appalling representation of the Furies is not exaggerated in the story. It is fabled that Æschylus, the tragic poet, having on one occasion represented the Furies in a chorus of fifty performers, the terror of the spectators was such that many fainted and were thrown into convulsions, and the magistrates forbade a like representation for the future (Pollux, 4, 110). Usually the chorus in a single tragedy consisted of only fifteen performers.

Illustrative. On the Furies see C. 49. On Ibycus see translation of Schiller's Cranes of Ibycus, by E. A. Bowring.

141. Textual. The adventures of the water-divinities turn largely on the idea of metamorphosis, which would readily be suggested to the imaginative mind by contemplation of the ever-changing aspect of fountain, stream, lake, or ocean. For genealogies of water-deities, see Table C.

Interpretative. The Cyclops, Polyphemus, does not possess much in common with Steropes, Brontes, and Arges, the offspring of Uranus and Gæa, save his one eye and his monstrous size. The sons of Gæa are personifications of thunder and lightning; Polyphemus is the heavy vapor that rolls its clouds along the hillside. The clouds are the sheep that he pastures; the sun glowering through the vapor is his single eye (Cox). More probably he is a mere giant of folklore.

Illustrative. John Gay, Song of Polypheme (in Acis and Galatea); A. Dobson, A Tale of Polypheme; R. Buchanan, Polypheme's Passion; Shelley, The Cyclops of Euripides; Translations of Theocritus by Mrs. Browning and by Calverley; J. S. Blackie, Galatea; B. W. Procter, The Death of Acis. See also on the Cyclops, Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, IV, iii; Hamlet, II, ii.

In Art. Fig. 112, text; Carracci's frescoes in the Farnese Palace, Rome, of Polyphemus, Acis and Galatea; Claude Lorrain's painting, Evening, Acis and Galatea; Raphael's Triumph of Galatea.

142. Textual. For descent of Glaucus, see Tables G and I. For Scylla's descent, see Table C. See Keats, Endymion, Bk. 3.

Interpretative. Glaucus is explained by some as the calm gleaming sea; by others, as the angry sea that reflects the lowering heavens (see Roscher, p. 1690). Scylla is a personification of treacherous currents and shallows among jagged cliffs and hidden rocks.

144. For genealogy of Ino, see Table E. "Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed The Earth" (Milton, Paradise Lost, 11, 135).

145. Cyrene was sister to Daphne. Honey must first have been known as a wild product, the bees building their structures in hollow trees, or holes in the rocks, or any similar cavity that chance offered. Thus occasionally the carcass of a dead animal would be occupied by the bees for that purpose. It was no doubt from some such incident that the superstition arose that bees were engendered by the decaying flesh of the animal. Virgil assigns to Proteus the isle of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes; Homer, the isle of Pharus, near the river Nile.

Illustrative. See C. 50. Proteus, a poem by R. Buchanan. On Aristæus, Cowper's Task, comparison of the ice-palace of Empress Anne of Russia with Cyrene's palace. Milton probably thought of Cyrene in describing Sabrina (Comus). He calls Proteus "the Carpathian Wizard."

146-147. Textual. Acheloüs: the largest river in Greece, rose in Mount Lacmon, flowed between Acarnania and Ætolia, and emptied into the Ionian Sea. It was honored over all Greece. Calydon: a city of Ætolia, famed for the Calydonian Hunt. Parthenope, see 238. Ligea (Ligeia): the shrill-sounding maiden; here a Siren; sometimes a Dryad.

Interpretative. Even among the ancients such stories as this were explained on a physical basis: the river Acheloüs flows through the realm of Dejanira, hence Acheloüs loves Dejanira. When the river winds it is a snake, when it roars it is a bull, when it overflows its banks it puts forth new horns. Hercules is supposed to have regulated the course of the stream by confining it within a new and suitable channel. At the same time the old channel, redeemed from the stream, subjected to cultivation, and blossoming with flowers, might well be called a horn of plenty. There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia. Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter, breaking off one of the horns of the goat, gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might wish.

148. (5)

Table I. The Race of Iapetus, Deucalion, Atlas, and Hellen

Illustrative. The name Amalthea is given also to the mother of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 275:

That Nyseian isle, Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove, Hid Amalthea, and her florid son, Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye.

See also Milton, Paradise Regained, 2, 356.

148. For the general genealogy of the race of Inachus, see Table D. For the general race of Iapetus, Deucalion, Hellen, Æolus, Ætolus, etc., see below, Table I (based in part on the table given in Roscher, article Deukalion). For the descendants of Agenor, see Table E. For the houses of Minos and of Labdacus, see Tables L and N. For the descendants of Belus (house of Danaüs), see Tables I and J; of Cecrops and Erechtheus, Table M.

(1) The race of Inachus| +——————————————-+———————————-+ | | | The descendants of Pelasgus, of Belus, of Agenor | | House of Danaüs Houses of Minos and Labdacus (2) The race of Deucalion (Table G), and of his son, Hellen | The descendants of Æolus, of Dorus, of Xuthus, | | | (Achæans and Ionians) The descendants of Endymion, Perieres, Deïon, Sisyphus, Cretheus, Athamas (3) The descendants of Ætolus, son of Endymion (Table K) | Houses of Porthaon and Thestius (4) The race of Cecrops | The descendants of Erichthonius | House of Pandion and Ægeus

149-154. Textual. Seriphus: an island of the Ægean.

The House of Danaüs is as follows:

Table J. The House of Danaüs

Interpretative. While Danaüs is, in fact, a native mythical hero of Argos, the story of his arrival from Egypt is probably an attempt to explain the influence of Egyptian civilization upon the Greeks. The name Danaüs means drought, and may refer to the frequently dry condition of the soil of Argos. The fifty daughters of Danaüs would then be the nymphs of the many springs which in season refresh the land of Argolis. Their suitors, the fifty sons of Ægyptus, would be the streams of Argolis that in the rainy months threaten to overflow their banks. But the springs by vanishing during the hot weather deprive the streams of water and consequently of life. That is to say, when the sources (Danaïds) choose to stop supplies, the heads of the streams (the fifty youths of Argolis) are cut off. The reference to Ægyptus and the sons of Ægyptus would indicate a reminiscence of the Nile and its tributaries, alternately overflowing and exhausted. The unsuccessful toil of the Danaïds in Tartarus may have been suggested by the sandy nature of the Argive soil, and the leaky nature of the springs, now high, now low. Or it may typify, simply, any incessant, fruitless labor. The name Hypermnestra signifies constancy and love. Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, has been regarded as the dry earth, which under the rains of the golden springtime bursts into verdure and bloom; or as the dark depths of the earth; or as the dawn, from which, shot through with the golden rays of heaven, the youthful Sun is born.[428] Advocates of the last theory would understand the voyage of Danaë and Perseus as the tossing of the sunbeams on the waters of the eastern horizon. The young Sun would next overcome the Gray-women, forms of the gloaming, and then slay with his sword of light the black cloud of the heavenly vault, the Gorgon, whose aspect is night and death.

The Grææ and the Gorgons may, with greater probability, be taken as personifications of the hidden horrors of the unknown night-enveloped ocean and the misty horizon whence storms come. In that case the Grææ will be the gray clouds, and their one tooth (or one eye) the harmless gleam of the lightning; the Gorgons will be the heavy thunderclouds, and their petrifying gaze the swift and fatal lightning flash.

But there are still others who find in the Gorgon Medusa the wan visage of the moon, empress of the night, slain by the splendor of morning. The sandals of Hermes have, accordingly, been explained as the morning breeze, or even as the chariot of the sun. The invisible helmet may be the clouds under which the sun disappears. Compare the cloak of darkness in the Three Daughters of King O'Hara; and the Sword of Sharpness in the Weaver's Son and the Giant of White Hill (Curtin, Myths of Ireland).

Andromeda is variously deciphered: the tender dawn, which a storm-cloud would obscure and devour; the moon, which darkness, as a dragon, threatens to swallow; or some historic character that has passed into myth. Compare the contests of Perseus and the Dragon, Apollo and Pytho, Hercules and the Serpents, Cadmus and the Dragon of Mars, St. George and the Dragon, Siegfried and the Worm (Fafnir). For a Gaelic Andromeda and Perseus, see The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin (Curtin, Myths of Ireland).

Perseus' flight to the Gardens of the Hesperides suggests, naturally, the circuit of the sun toward the flushing western horizon; and, of course, he would here behold the giant Atlas, who, stationed where heaven and earth meet, sustains upon his shoulders the celestial vault.

The Doom of Acrisius reminds one of that of Hyacinthus. The quoit suggests the rays of the sun, and the name Acrisius may be construed to mean the "confused or gloomy heavens" (Roscher, Preller, Müller, etc.).

Illustrative. "The starred Æthiope queen": Cassiopea (Cassiepea, or Cassiope) became a constellation. The sea-nymphs, however, had her placed in a part of the heavens near the pole, where she is half the time held with her head downward to teach her humility.

Danaë. Tennyson, Princess, "Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me." Translations of Simonides' Lament of Danaë, by W. C. Bryant and by J. H. Frere. Danaïd: Chaucer, Legende of Good Women, 2561 (Hypermnestra and Lynceus).

Gorgons and Medusa. Spenser, Epithalamion, "And stand astonished like to those which read Medusa's mazeful head"; Milton, Paradise Lost, 2. 611, 628; Comus (on Ægis and Gorgon); Drummond, The Statue of Medusa; Gray, Hymn to Adversity; Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health; D. G. Rossetti, Aspecta Medusa; L. Morris, in The Epic of Hades; Thomas Gordon Hake, The Infant Medusa (a sonnet); E. Lee-Hamilton, The New Medusa; Lady Charlotte Elliot, Medusa.

Andromeda. Milton, Paradise Lost, 3, 559 (the constellation); L. Morris in The Epic of Hades; W. Morris, Doom of King Acrisius; E. Dowden, Andromeda (The Heroines).

Atlas. Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI, 5, 1; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 987; 11, 402, comparison of Satan and Atlas.

In Art. Fig. 116, in text: vase in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Titian's painting, Danaë and the Shower of Gold; Correggio's Danaë. Ancient sculpture: a Danaïd in the Vatican; the Danaïds on an altar in the Vatican (Fig. 115, in text).

Perseus and Andromeda. Figs. 119-121, and opp. p. 212, in text; painting by Rubens (Berlin). Sculpture: Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus (Loggia de' Lanzi, Florence), and Perseus saving Andromeda; Canova's Perseus (Vatican).

Medusa. Græco-Roman sculpture: Head of Dying Medusa (Villa Ludovisi, Rome); the beautiful Medusa Rondanini in the Glyptothek, Munich (Figs. 117 and 118, text); numerous illustrations of abhorrent Gorgons in Roscher, p. 1707 et seq., from vases, seals, marbles, etc.

Modern Painting. Leonardo da Vinci, Head of Medusa.

155. Textual. The descent of Bellerophon is as follows. (See also Table I.)

Lycia: in Asia Minor. The fountain Hippocrene, on the Muses' mountain, Helicon, was opened by a kick from the hoof of Pegasus. This horse belongs to the Muses, and has from time immemorial been ridden by the poets. From the story of Bellerophon being unconsciously the bearer of his own death-warrant, the expression "Bellerophontic letters" arose, to describe any species of communication which a person is made the bearer of, containing matter prejudicial to himself. Aleian field: a district in Cilicia (Asia Minor).

Interpretative. Bellerophon is either "he who appears in the clouds," or "he who slays the cloudy monster." In either sense we have another sun-myth and sun-hero. He is the son of Glaucus, who, whether he be descended from Sisyphus or from Neptune, is undoubtedly a sea-god. His horse, sprung from Medusa, the thundercloud, when she falls under the sword of the sun, is Pegasus, the rain-cloud. In his contest with the Chimæra we have a repetition of the combat of Perseus and the sea monster. Bellerophon is a heavenly knight errant who slays the powers of storm and darkness. The earth, struck by his horse's hoof, bubbles into springs (Rapp in Roscher, and Max Müller). At the end of the day, falling from heaven, this knight of the sun walks in melancholy the pale fields of the twilight.

Illustrative. Wm. Morris, Bellerophon in Argos and in Lycia (Earthly Paradise); Longfellow, Pegasus in Pound; Bowring's translation of Schiller's Pegasus in Harness. Milton (Bellerophon and Pegasus), Paradise Lost, 7, 1; Spenser, "Then whoso will with virtuous wing assay To mount to heaven, on Pegasus must ride, And with sweet Poet's verse be glorified"; also Faerie Queene, 1, 9, 21; Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, IV, iv; 1 Henry IV, IV, i; Henry V, III, vii; Pope, Essay on Criticism, 150; Dunciad, 3, 162; Burns, To John Taylor; Young's Night Thoughts, Vol. 2 (on Bellerophontic letters). Hippocrene: Keats, To a Nightingale.

In Art. Bellerophon and Pegasus, vase picture (Monuments inédits, etc., Rome and Paris, 1839-1874); ancient relief, Fig. 122, in text.

156-162. For genealogy of Hercules, see Table J. Rhadamanthus: brother of Minos. (See Index.) Thespiæ and Orchomenos: towns of Bœotia. Nemea: in Argolis, near Mycenæ. Stymphalian lake: in Arcadia.

Pillars of Hercules. The chosen device of Charles V of Germany represented the Pillars of Hercules entwined by a scroll that bore his motto, "Plus Ultra" (still farther). This device, imprinted upon the German dollar, has been adopted as the sign of the American dollar ($). Dollar, by the way, means coin of the valley,—German Thal. The silver of the first dollars came from Joachimsthal in Bohemia, about 1518. Hesperides: the western sky at sunset. The apples may have been suggested by stories of the oranges of Spain. The Cacus myth is thoroughly latinized, but of Greek origin. The Aventine: one of the hills of Rome. Colchis: in Asia, east of the Euxine and south of Caucasus. Mysia: province of Asia Minor, north of Lydia. The river Phasis flows through Colchis into the Euxine. For genealogy of Laomedon, see Table O (5). Pylos: it is doubtful what city is intended. There were two such towns in Elis, and one in Messenia. The word means gate (see Iliad, 5, 397), and in the case of Hercules there may be some reference to his journey to the gate or Pylos of Hades. For Alcestis, see 83; for Prometheus, 15; for the family of Dejanira, Table K. Alcides: i.e. Hercules, descendant of Alcæus. Œchalia: in Thessaly or in Eubœa. Mount Œta: in Thessaly. The Pygmies: a nation of dwarfs, so called from a Greek word meaning the cubit, or measure of about thirteen inches, which was said to be the height of these people. They lived near the sources of the Nile, or, according to others, in India. Homer tells us that the cranes used to migrate every winter to the Pygmies' country, where, attacking the cornfields, they precipitated war. H. M. Stanley, in his last African expedition, discovered a race of diminutive men that correspond fairly in appearance with those mentioned by Homer. The Cercopes: the subject of a comic poem by Homer, and of numerous grotesque representations in Greek literature and sculpture.

Interpretative. All myths of the sun represent that luminary as struggling against and overcoming monsters, or performing other laborious tasks in obedience to the orders of some tyrant of inferior spirit, but of legal authority. Since the life of Hercules is composed of such tasks, it is easy to class him with other sun-heroes. But to construe his whole history and all his feats as symbolic of the sun's progress through the heavens, beginning with the labors performed in his eastern home and ending with the capture of Cerberus in the underworld beyond the west, or to construe the subjects of the twelve labors as consciously recalling the twelve signs of the Zodiac is not only unwarranted, but absurd. To some extent Hercules is a sun-hero; to some extent his adventures are fabulous history; to a greater extent both he and his adventures are the product of generations of æsthetic, but primitive and fanciful, invention. The same statement holds true of nearly all the heroes and heroic deeds of mythology. As a matter of interest, it may be noted that the serpents that attacked Hercules in his cradle are explained as powers of darkness which the sun destroys, and the cattle that he tended, as the clouds of morning. His choice between pleasure and duty at the outset of his career enforces, of course, a lesson of conduct. His lion's skin may denote the tawny cloud which the sun trails behind him as he fights his way through the vapors that he overcomes (Cox). The slaughter of the Centaurs may be the dissipation of these vapors. His insanity may denote the raging heat of the sun at noonday. The Nemean lion may be a monster of cloud or darkness; the Hydra, a cloud that confines the kindly rains, or at times covers the heavens with numerous necks and heads of vapor. The Cerynean Stag may be a golden-tinted cloud that the sun chases; and the Cattle of the Augean stables, clouds that, refusing to burst in rain, consign the earth to drought and filth. The Erymanthian boar and the Cretan bull are probably varied forms of the powers of darkness; so also the Stamphalian (Stymphalian) birds and the giant Cacus. Finally, the scene of the hero's death is a "picture of a sunset in wild confusion, the multitude of clouds hurrying hither and thither, now hiding, now revealing the mangled body of the sun." In this way Cox, and other interpreters of myth, would explain the series. But while the explanations are entertaining and poetic, their very plausibility should suggest caution in accepting them. It is not safe to construe all the details of a mythical career in terms of any one theory. The more noble side of the character of Hercules presents itself to the moral understanding, as worthy of consideration and admiration. The dramatist Euripides has portrayed him as a great-hearted hero, high-spirited and jovial, rejoicing in the vigor of manhood, comforting the downcast, wrestling with Death and overcoming him, restoring happiness where sorrow had obtained. No grander conception of manliness has in modern times found expression in poetry than that of the Hercules in Browning's transcript of Euripides, Balaustion's Adventure.

Illustrative. Lang's translation of the Lityerses song (Theocritus, Idyl X). The song, like the Linus song, is of early origin among the laborers in the field. For Hercules, see Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella; Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 11, 27; Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, II, i; III, ii; Taming of the Shrew, I, ii; Coriolanus, IV, i; Hamlet, I, ii; Much Ado About Nothing, II, i; III, iii; King John, II, i; Titus Andronicus, IV, ii; Antony and Cleopatra, IV, x; 1 Henry VI, IV, vii; Pope, Satires, 5, 17; Milton, Paradise Lost, 11, 410 (Geryon). Amazons: Shakespeare, King John, V, ii; Midsummer Night's Dream, II, ii; 1 Henry VI, I, iv; 3 Henry VI, I, iv; Pope, Rape of the Lock, 3, 67; Hylas: Pope, Autumn; Dunciad, 2, 336.

Poems. S. Rogers, on the Torso of Hercules; Browning, Balaustion's Adventure, and Aristophanes' Apology; L. Morris, Dejaneira (Epic of Hades); William Morris, The Golden Apples (Earthly Paradise); J. H. Frere's translation of Euripides' Hercules Furens, and Plumptre's, or R. Whitelaw's (1883), of Sophocles' Women of Trachis; George Cabot Lodge, Herakles. Pygmies: James Beattie, Battle of the Pygmies and the Cranes. Dejanira: Fragment of Chorus of a "Dejaneira," by M. Arnold. Hylas: Moore (song), "When Hylas was sent with his urn to the fount," etc.; Bayard Taylor, Hylas; R. C. Rogers, Hylas; translation of Theocritus, Idyl XIII, by C. S. Calverley, 1869. Daphnis: Theocritus, Idyl I. According to this, Daphnis so loves Naïs that he defies Aphrodite to make him love again. She does so, but he fights against the new passion, and dies a victim of the implacable goddess. This song is sung by Thyrsis. Also on Daphnis, read E. Gosse's poem, The Gifts of the Muses.

In Art. Fig. 65, of a statue reproducing the style of Scopas; figs. 123-129, and opp. p. 226, in text; Heracles in the eastern pediment of the Parthenon (?); the Torso Belvedere; Farnese Hercules (National Museum, Naples); Hercules in the metopes of the Temple of Silenus (Museum, Palermo); the Infant Hercules strangling a Serpent (antique sculpture), in the Uffizi at Florence; C. G. Gleyre's painting, Hercules at the Feet of Omphale (Louvre); Bandinelli (sculpture), Hercules and Cacus; Giovanni di Bologna (sculpture), Hercules and Centaur; Amazon (ancient sculpture), in the Vatican; and Figs. 162, 185 and opp. p. 306, in text; Centaur (sculpture), Capitol, Rome; the Mad Heracles, vase picture (Monuments inédits, Rome and Paris, 1839-1878).

163-167. For the descent of Jason from Deucalion, see Table G. Iolcos: a town in Thessaly. Lemnos: in the Ægean, near Tenedos. Phineus: a son of Agenor, or of Poseidon. For the family of Medea, see Table H.

Interpretative. Argo means swift, or white, or commemorates the ship-builder, or the city of Argos. The Argo-myth rests upon a mixture of traditions of the earliest seafaring and of the course of certain physical phenomena. So far as the tradition of primitive seafaring is concerned, it may refer to some half-piratical expedition, the rich spoils of which might readily be known as the Golden Fleece. So far as the physical tradition is concerned, it may refer to the course of the year (the Ram of the Golden Fleece being the fructifying clouds that come and go across the Ægean) or to the process of sunrise and sunset (?): Helle being the glimmering twilight that sinks into the sea; Phrixus (in Greek Phrixos), the radiant sunlight; the voyage of the Argo through the Symplegades, the nocturnal journey of the sun down the west; the oak with the Golden Fleece, a symbol of the sunset which the dragon of darkness guards; the fire-breathing bulls, the advent of morning; the offspring of the dragon's teeth, an image of the sunbeams leaping from eastern darkness. Medea is a typical wise-woman or witch; daughter of Hecate and granddaughter of Asteria, the starry heavens, she comes of a family skilled in magic. Her aunt Circe was even more powerful in necromancy than she. The robe of Medea is the fleece in another form. The death of Creüsa, also called Glauce, suggests that of Hercules (in the flaming sunset?). Jason is no more faithful to his sweetheart than other solar heroes—Hercules, Perseus, Apollo—are to theirs. The sun must leave the colors and glories, the twilights and the clouds of to-day, for those of to-morrow. See Roscher, pp. 530-537. The physical explanation is more than commonly plausible. But the numerous adventures of the Argonauts are certainly survivals of various local legends that have been consolidated and preserved in the artistic form of the myth. Jason, Diáson, is another Zeus, of the Ionian race, beloved by Medea, whose name, "the counseling woman," suggests a goddess. Perhaps Medea was a local Hera-Demeter, degraded to the rank of a heroine. The Symplegades may be a reminiscence of rolling and clashing icebergs; the dove incident occurs in numerous ancient stories from that of Noah down. If Medea be another personification of morning and evening twilight, then her dragons are rays of sunlight that precede her. More likely they are part of the usual equipage of a witch, symbolizing wisdom, foreknowledge, swiftness, violence, and Oriental mystery.

Illustrative. The Argo, see Theodore Martin's translation of Catullus, LXIV (Peleus and Thetis), for the memorable launch; Pope, St. Cecilia's Day. Jason: Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, i; III, ii; Æson: Merchant of Venice, V, i; Absyrtus: 2 Henry VI, V, ii. Poems: Chaucer, Legende of Good Women, 1366 (Ysiphile and Medee); W. Morris, Life and Death of Jason; Frederick Tennyson, Æson and King Athamas (in Daphne and Other Poems). Thos. Campbell's translation of the chorus in Euripides' Medea, beginning "Oh, haggard queen! to Athens dost thou guide thy glowing chariot." Translations of the Medea of Euripides have been made by Augusta Webster, 1868; by W. C. Lawton (Three Dramas of Euripides) 1889; and by Wodhull.

In Art. The terra-cotta relief (Fig. 130, text) in the British Museum; the relief from Naples, now in Vienna (Fig. 131). Figs. 132 and 133 as explained in text. Also the splendid Vengeance of Medea in the Louvre; relief on a Roman sarcophagus.

168. Textual.

Table K. The Descendants of Ætolus (Son of Endymion)

Also, in general, Table I.

For Calydon, see Index. The Arcadian Atalanta was descended from the Arcas who was son of Jupiter and Callisto. (See Table D.)

Interpretative. Atalanta is the "unwearied maiden." She is the human counterpart of the huntress Diana. The story has of course been allegorically explained, but it bears numerous marks of local and historic origin.

Illustrative. Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon; Margaret J. Preston, The Quenched Branch; Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV, II, ii; 2 Henry VI, I, i.

In Art. The Meleager (sculpture), in the Vatican; the Roman reliefs as in text. The original of Fig. 135 is in the Louvre.

169. The Merope story has been dramatized by Maffei (1713), Voltaire (1743), Alfieri (1783), and by others.

170-171. C. S. Calverley's The Sons of Leda, from Theocritus. Leda: Spenser, Prothalamion; Landor, Loss of Memory. Talus: the iron attendant of Artegal, Spenser, Faerie Queene, 5, 1, 12.

172. The Descendants of Minos I. (See also Table D.)

Table L

Europa =Jupiter +— Minos I =Itone +— Lycastus +— Minos II =Pasiphaë +— Crateus | +— Aërope | =Atreus +— Phædra | =Theseus +— Ariadne =Theseus Helios =Perseïs +— Pasiphaë | =Minos II | +— Crateus (see above) | +— Phædra (see above) | +— Ariadne (see above) +— Circe +— Æetes =Hecate +— Medea Asteria =Perses +— Hecate =Æetes +— Medea (see above)

Interpretative. Discrimination between Minos I and Minos II is made in the text, but is rarely observed. Minos, according to Preller, is the solar king and hero of Crete; his wife, Pasiphaë, is the moon (who was worshiped in Crete under the form of a cow); and the Minotaur is the lord of the starry heavens which are his labyrinth. Others make Pasiphaë, whose name means shiner upon all, the bright heaven; and Minos (in accordance with his name, the Man, par excellence), the thinker and measurer. A lawgiver on earth, the Homeric Minos readily becomes a judge in Hades. Various fanciful interpretations, such as storm cloud, sun, etc., are given of the bull. Cox explains the Minotaur as night, devouring all things. The tribute from Athens may suggest some early suzerainty in politics and religion exercised by Crete over neighboring lands. For Mæander, see Pope, Rape of the Lock, 5, 65; Dunciad, 1, 64; 3, 55.

173. Interpretative. Dædalus is a representative of the earliest technical skill, especially in wood-cutting, carving, and the plastic arts used for industrial purposes. His flight from one land to another signifies the introduction of inventions into the countries concerned. The fall of Icarus was probably invented to explain the name of the Icarian Sea.

Illustrative. Dædalus: Chaucer, Hous of Fame, 409. Icarus: Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI, IV, vi; IV, vii; 3 Henry VI, V, vi; poem on Icarus by Bayard Taylor; travesty by J. G. Saxe.

In Art. Sculpture: Fig. 138, in text: Villa Albani, Rome; Canova's Dædalus and Icarus; painting by J. M. Vien; also by A. Pisano (Campanile, Florence).

174. The descendants of Erichthonius are as follows:

Table M

Jupiter +— Tantalus +— Pelops +— Pittheus | +— Æthra | =Ægeus | +— Theseus | =Ariadne d. of Minos II | =Antiope (Hippolyta) | +— Hippolytus | =Phædra d. of Minos II +— Atreus +— Thyestes Erichthonius +— Pandion I +— Erechtheus | +— Pandion II | | +— Ægeus | | =Æthra | | +— Theseus (see above) | +— Creüsa | =Apollo | +— Ion | =Xuthus +— Procne +— Philomela +— Philomela Cecrops (see 65). According to one tradition, Cecrops was autochthonous and had one son, Erysichthon, who died without issue, and three daughters, Herse, Aglauros, and Pandrosos (personifications of Dew and its vivifying influences). According to another, he was of the line of Erichthonius, being either a son of Pandion I, or a son of Erechtheus and a grandson of Pandion I. Apollodorus makes him father of Pandion II. He was regarded as founder of the worship of Athene and of various civic institutions. He is probably a hero of the Pelasgian race. Ion. According to one tradition, the race of Erechtheus became extinct, save for Ion, a son of Apollo and Creüsa, daughter of Erechtheus. This son, having been removed at birth, was brought up in Apollo's temple at Delphi, and, in accordance with the oracle of Apollo, afterwards adopted by Creüsa and her husband Xuthus (see the Ion of Euripides). Ion founded the new dynasty of Athens. But, according to Pausanias and Apollodorus, the dynasty of Erechtheus was continued by Ægeus, who was either a son, or an adopted son, of Pandion II. By Æthra he became father of Theseus, in whose veins flowed, therefore, the blood of Pelops and of Erichthonius. Interpretative. The story of Philomela was probably invented to account for the sad song of the nightingale. With her the swallow is associated as another much loved bird of spring. Occasionally Procne is spoken of as the nightingale, and Philomela as the swallow, and Tereus as taking the form of a red-crested hoopoe. Illustrative. Chaucer, Legende of Good Women (Philomene of Athens); Milton, Il Penseroso; Richard Barnfield, Song, "As it fell upon a day"; Thomson, Hymn on the Seasons; Swinburne, Itylus; Oscar Wilde, The Burden of Itys; Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd's drama, Ion. 176-181. Trœzen: in Argolis. According to some the Amazonian wife of Theseus was Hippolyta, but her Hercules had already killed. Theseus is said to have united the several tribes of Attica into one state, of which Athens was the capital. In commemoration of this important event, he instituted the festival of Panathenæa, in honor of Athene, the patron deity of Athens. This festival differed from the other Grecian games chiefly in two particulars. It was peculiar to the Athenians, and its chief feature was a solemn procession in which the Peplus, or sacred robe of Athene, was carried to the Parthenon, and left on or before the statue of the goddess. The Peplus was covered with embroidery, worked by select virgins of the noblest families in Athens. The procession consisted of persons of all ages and both sexes. The old men carried olive branches in their hands, and the young men bore arms. The young women carried baskets on their heads, containing the sacred utensils, cakes, and all things necessary for the sacrifices. The procession formed the subject of the bas-reliefs which embellished the frieze of the temple of the Parthenon. A considerable portion of these sculptures is now in the British Museum among those known as the "Elgin Marbles." We may mention here the other celebrated national games of the Greeks. The first and most distinguished were the Olympic, founded, it was said, by Zeus himself. They were celebrated at Olympia in Elis. Vast numbers of spectators flocked to them from every part of Greece, and from Asia, Africa, and Sicily. They were repeated every fifth year in midsummer, and continued five days. They gave rise to the custom of reckoning time and dating events by Olympiads. The first Olympiad is generally considered as beginning with the year 776 B.C. The Pythian games were celebrated in the vicinity of Delphi, the Isthmian on the Corinthian isthmus, the Nemean at Nemea, a city of Argolis. The exercises in these games were chariot-racing, running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the quoit, hurling the javelin, and boxing. Besides these exercises of bodily strength and agility, there were contests in music, poetry, and eloquence. Thus these games furnished poets, musicians, and authors the best opportunities to present their productions to the public, and the fame of the victors was diffused far and wide. Interpretative. Theseus is the Attic counterpart of Hercules, not so significant in moral character, but eminent for numerous similar labors, and preëminent as the mythical statesman of Athens. His story may, with the usual perilous facility, be explained as a solar myth. Periphetes may be a storm cloud with its thunderbolts; the Marathonian Bull and the Minotaur may be forms of the power of darkness hidden in the starry labyrinth of heaven. Like Hercules, Theseus fights with the Amazons (clouds, we may suppose, in some form or other), and, like him, he descends to the underworld. Ariadne may be another twilight-sweetheart of the sun, and, like Medea and Dejanira, she must be deserted. She is either the "well-pleasing" or the "saintly." She was, presumably, a local nature-goddess of Naxos and Crete, who, in process of time, like Medea, sank to the condition of a heroine. Probably from her goddess-existence the marriage with Bacchus survived, to be incorporated later with the Attic myth of Theseus. As the female semblance of Bacchus, she appears to have been a promoter of vegetation; and, like Proserpina, she alternated between the joy of spring and the melancholy of winter. By some she is considered to be connected with star-worship as a moon-goddess. Illustrative. Chaucer, The Knight's Tale (for Theseus and Ypolita); The Hous of Fame, 407, and the Legende of Good Women, 1884, for Ariadne; Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV, i; Midsummer Night's Dream, II, ii (Hippolyta and Theseus); Shakespeare and Fletcher, Two Noble Kinsmen. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, II, ii, a tapestry is ordered to be worked illustrating Theseus' desertion of Ariadne. Landor, To Joseph Ablett, "Bacchus is coming down to drink to Ariadne's love"; Landor, Theseus, and Hippolyta; Mrs. Browning, Paraphrase on Nonnus (Bacchus and Ariadne), Paraphrase on Hesiod; Sir Theodore Martin, Catullus, LXIV. Other poems: B. W. Procter, On the Statue of Theseus; Frederick Tennyson, Ariadne (Daphne and Other Poems); Mrs. Hemans, The Shade of Theseus; R. S. Ross, Ariadne in Naxos; J. S. Blackie, Ariadne; W. M. W. Call, Ariadne; Mrs. H. H. Jackson, Ariadne's Farewell. Phædra and Hippolytus: The Hippolytus of Euripides; Swinburne, Phædra; Browning, Artemis Prologizes; M. P. Fitzgerald, The Crowned Hippolytus; A. Mary F. Robinson, The Crowned Hippolytus; L. Morris, Phædra (Epic of Hades). On Cecrops: J. S. Blackie, The Naming of Athens; Erechtheus, by A. C. Swinburne. In Art. Theseus: the original of Fig. 140, text is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; of Fig. 141 in the Naples Museum. The Battle with the Amazons frequently recurs in ancient sculpture. The sleeping Ariadne, of the Vatican, Fig. 142, text. Also the Revels as in text, Fig. 144. Modern Sculpture: the Theseus of Canova (Volksgarten, Vienna); the Ariadne of Dannecker. Paintings: Tintoretto's Ariadne and Bacchus; Teschendorff's Ariadne; Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne. 182-189. The Royal Family of Thebes.

Table N

Illustrative. Œdipus: Plumptre's translation of Œdipus the King, Œdipus Coloneus, and Antigone; Shelley, Swellfoot the Tyrant; E. Fitzgerald, The Downfall and Death of King Œdipus; Sir F. H. Doyle, Œdipus Tyrannus; Aubrey De Vere, Antigone; Emerson, The Sphinx; W. B. Scott, The Sphinx; M. Arnold, Fragment of an "Antigone." Tiresias: by Swinburne, Tennyson, and Thomas Woolner.

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · This dawn theory is certainly far-fetched.