XI. MYTHS OF THE LESSER DIVINITIES OF HEAVEN…

XI. MYTHS OF THE LESSER DIVINITIES OF HEAVEN

=122. Myths of Stars and Winds.= The tales of Stars and Winds and the other lesser powers of the celestial regions are closely interwoven. That the winds which sweep heaven should kiss the stars is easy to understand. The stories of Aurora (Eos) and of Aura, of Phosphor and of Halcyone, form, therefore, a ready sequence.

=123. Cephalus and Procris.=[163] Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, fell in love with Cephalus, a young huntsman. She stole him away, lavished her love upon him, tried to content him, but in vain. He cared for his young wife Procris more than for the goddess. Finally, Aurora dismissed him in displeasure, saying, "Go, ungrateful mortal, keep thy wife; but thou shalt one day be sorry that thou didst ever see her again."

Cephalus returned and was as happy as before in his wife. She, being a favorite of Diana, had received from her for the chase a dog and a javelin, which she handed over to her husband. Of the dog it is told that when about to catch the swiftest fox in the country, he was changed with his victim into stone. For the heavenly powers, who had made both and rejoiced in the speed of both, were not willing that either should conquer. The javelin was destined to a sad office. It appears that Cephalus, when weary of the chase, was wont to stretch himself in a certain shady nook to enjoy the breeze. Sometimes he would say aloud, "Come, gentle Aura, sweet goddess of the breeze, come and allay the heat that burns me." Some one, foolishly believing that he addressed a maiden, told the secret to Procris. Hoping against hope, she stole out after him the next morning and concealed herself in the place which the informer had indicated. Cephalus, when tired with sport, stretched himself on the green bank and summoned fair Aura as usual. Suddenly he heard, or thought he heard, a sound as of a sob in the bushes. Supposing it to proceed from some wild animal, he threw his javelin at the spot. A cry told him that the weapon had too surely met its mark. He rushed to the place and raised his wounded Procris from the earth. She, at last, opened her feeble eyes and forced herself to utter these words: "I implore thee, if thou hast ever loved me, if I have ever deserved kindness at thy hands, my husband, grant me this last request; marry not that odious Breeze!" So saying, she expired in her lover's arms.

=124. Dobson's The Death of= =Procris.= A different version of the story is given in the following:

Procris, the nymph, had wedded Cephalus;-- He, till the spring had warmed to slow-winged days Heavy with June, untired and amorous, Named her his love; but now, in unknown ways, His heart was gone; and evermore his gaze Turned from her own, and even farther ranged His woodland war; while she, in dull amaze, Beholding with the hours her husband changed, Sighed for his lost caress, by some hard god estranged.

So, on a day, she rose and found him not. Alone, with wet, sad eye, she watched the shade Brighten below a soft-rayed sun that shot Arrows of light through all the deep-leaved glade; Then, with weak hands, she knotted up the braid Of her brown hair, and o'er her shoulders cast Her crimson weed; with faltering fingers made Her golden girdle's clasp to join, and past Down to the trackless wood, full pale and overcast.

And all day long her slight spear devious flew, And harmless swerved her arrows from their aim, For ever, as the ivory bow she drew, Before her ran the still unwounded game. Then, at the last, a hunter's cry there came, And, lo! a hart that panted with the chase. Thereat her cheek was lightened as with flame, And swift she gat her to a leafy place, Thinking, "I yet may chance unseen to see his face."

Leaping he went, this hunter Cephalus, Bent in his hand his cornel bow he bare, Supple he was, round-limbed and vigorous, Fleet as his dogs, a lean Laconian pair. He, when he spied the brown of Procris' hair Move in the covert, deeming that apart Some fawn lay hidden, loosed an arrow there; Nor cared to turn and seek the speeded dart, Bounding above the fern, fast following up the hart.

But Procris lay among the white wind-flowers, Shot in the throat. From out the little wound The slow blood drained, as drops in autumn showers Drip from the leaves upon the sodden ground. None saw her die but Lelaps, the swift hound, That watched her dumbly with a wistful fear, Till, at the dawn, the hornèd wood-men found And bore her gently on a sylvan bier, To lie beside the sea,--with many an uncouth tear.

=125. Ceyx and Halcyone.= The son of Aurora and Cephalus was Phosphor, the Star of Morning. His son Ceyx, king of Trachis in Thessaly, had married Halcyone, daughter of Æolus.[164] Their reign was happy until the brother of Ceyx met his death. The direful prodigies that followed this event made Ceyx feel that the gods were hostile to him. He thought best therefore to make a voyage to Claros in Ionia to consult the oracle of Apollo. In spite of his wife's entreaties (for as daughter of the god of winds she knew how dreadful a thing a storm at sea was), Ceyx set sail. He was shipwrecked and drowned. His last prayer was that the waves might bear his body to the sight of Halcyone, and that it might receive burial at her hands.

In the meanwhile, Halcyone counted the days till her husband's promised return. To all the gods she offered frequent incense, but more than all to Juno. The goddess, at last, could not bear to be further pleaded with for one already dead. Calling Iris, she enjoined her to approach the drowsy dwelling of Somnus and bid him send a vision to Halcyone in the form of Ceyx, to reveal the sad event.

Iris puts on her robe of many colors, and tinging the sky with her bow, seeks the cave near the Cimmerian country, which is the abode of the dull god, Somnus. Here Ph[oe]bus dare not come. Clouds and shadows are exhaled from the ground, and the light glimmers faintly. The cock never there calls aloud to Aurora, nor watchdog nor goose disturbs the silence. No wild beast, nor cattle, nor branch moved with the wind, nor sound of human conversation breaks the stillness. From the bottom of the rock the river Lethe flows, and by its murmur invites to sleep. Poppies grow before the door of the cave, from whose juices Night distills slumbers which she scatters over the darkened earth. There is no gate to creak on its hinges, nor any watchman. In the midst, on a couch of black ebony adorned with black plumes and black curtains the god reclines, his limbs relaxed in sleep. Around him lie dreams, resembling all various forms, as many as the harvest bears stalks, or the forest leaves, or the seashore sand grains.

Brushing away the dreams that hovered around her, Iris lit up the cave and delivered her message to the god, who, scarce opening his eyes, had great difficulty in shaking himself free from himself.

Then Iris hasted away from the drowsiness creeping over her, and returned by her bow as she had come. But Somnus called one of his sons, Morpheus, the most expert in counterfeiting forms of men, to perform the command of Iris; then laid his head on his pillow and yielded himself again to grateful repose.

Morpheus flew on silent wings to the Hæmonian city, where he assumed the form of Ceyx. Pale like a dead man, naked and dripping, he stood before the couch of the wretched wife and told her that the winds of the Ægean had sunk his ship, that he was dead.

Weeping and groaning, Halcyone sprang from sleep and, with the dawn, hastening to the seashore, descried an indistinct object washed to and fro by the waves. As it floated nearer she recognized the body of her husband. In despair, leaping from the mole, she was changed instantly to a bird, and poured forth a song of grief as she flew. By the mercy of the gods Ceyx was likewise transformed. For seven days before and seven days after the winter solstice, Jove forbids the winds to blow. Then Halcyone broods over her nest; then the way is safe to seafarers. Æolus confines the winds that his grandchildren may have peace.

=126. Aurora and Tithonus.=[165] Aurora seems frequently to have been inspired with the love of mortals. Her greatest favorite, and almost her latest, was Tithonus, son of Laomedon, king of Troy. She stole him away and prevailed on Jupiter to grant him immortality; but forgetting to have youth joined in the gift, after some time she began to discern, to her great mortification, that he was growing old. When his hair was white she left his society; but he still had the range of her palace, lived on ambrosial food, and was clad in celestial raiment. In time he lost the power of using his limbs; and then she shut him up in his chamber, whence his feeble voice might at times be heard. Finally, she turned him into a grasshopper.

=127. Tennyson's Tithonus.= The following is, according to a fine poetic conception, the lament of the old man when but a white-haired shadow:

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapors weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream The ever silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man-- So glorious in his beauty and thy choice, Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd To his great heart none other than a God! I ask'd thee, "Give me immortality." Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile, Like wealthy men who care not how they give; But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills, And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me, And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love, Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now, Close over us, the silver star, thy guide, Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes A glimpse of that dark world where I was born. Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure, And bosom beating with a heart renew'd. Thy cheek begins to redden thro' the gloom, Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine, Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes, And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.

Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful In silence, then before thine answer given Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek. Why wilt them ever scare me with thy tears, And make me tremble lest a saying learnt In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true? "The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."

Ay me! ay me! with what another heart In days far-off, and with what other eyes I used to watch--if I be he that watched-- The lucid outline forming round thee; saw The dim curls kindle into sunny rings; Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd all Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay, Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm With kisses balmier than half-opening buds Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss'd Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet, Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.

Yet hold me not forever in thine East: How can my nature longer mix with thine? Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam Floats up from those dim fields about the homes Of happy men that have the power to die, And grassy barrows of the happier dead. Release me, and restore me to the ground; Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave: Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn; I earth in earth forget these empty courts, And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

=128. Memnon=, the son of Aurora and Tithonus, was king of the Æthiopians. He went with warriors to assist his kindred in the Trojan War, and was received by King Priam with honor. He fought bravely, slew Antilochus, the brave son of Nestor, and held the Greeks at bay until Achilles appeared. Before that hero he fell.

Then Aurora, seeing her son's fate, directed his brothers, the Winds, to convey his body to the banks of the river Æsepus in Mysia. In the evening Aurora, accompanied by the Hours and the Pleiads, bewept her son. Night spread the heaven with clouds; all nature mourned for the offspring of the Dawn. The Æthiopians raised his tomb on the banks of the stream in the grove of the Nymphs, and Jupiter caused the sparks and cinders of his funeral pile to be turned into birds, which, dividing into two flocks, fought over the pile till they fell into the flame. Every year at the anniversary of his death they celebrated his obsequies in like manner. Aurora remained inconsolable. The dewdrops are her tears.[166]

The kinship of Memnon to the Dawn is certified even after his death. On the banks of the Nile are two colossal statues, one of which is called Memnon's; and it was said that when the first rays of morning fell upon this statue, a sound like the snapping of a harp-string issued therefrom.[167]

So to the sacred Sun in Memnon's fane Spontaneous concords choired the matin strain; Touched by his orient beam responsive rings The living lyre and vibrates all its strings; Accordant aisles the tender tones prolong, And holy echoes swell the adoring song.[168]

FOOTNOTES:

[163] Ovid, Metam. 7, 394 et seq.

[164] Ovid, Metam. 11, 583-748.

[165] Homeric Hymn to Venus; Horace, Odes, 1, 22; 2, 16; Apollodorus, 3, 12, § 4.

[166] Ovid, Metam. 13, 622, etc. Odyssey, 4, 188; 11, 522. Pindar, Pyth. 6, 30.

[167] Pausanias, 1, 42, § 2.

[168] Darwin, Botanic Garden.

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XII. MYTHS OF THE LESSER DIVINITIES OF EARTH, ETC

=129. Pan, and the Personification of Nature.= It was a pleasing trait in the old paganism that it loved to trace in every operation of nature the agency of deity. The imagination of the Greeks peopled the regions of earth and sea with divinities, to whose agency it attributed the phenomena that our philosophy ascribes to the operation of natural law. So Pan, the god of woods and fields,[169] whose name seemed to signify all, came to be considered a symbol of the universe and a personification of Nature. "Universal Pan," says Milton in his description of the creation:

Universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring.

Later, Pan came to be regarded as a representative of all the Greek gods and of paganism itself. Indeed, according to an early Christian tradition, when the heavenly host announced to the shepherds the birth of Christ, a deep groan, heard through the isles of Greece, told that great Pan was dead, that the dynasty of Olympus was dethroned, and the several deities sent wandering in cold and darkness.

The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.[170]

Many a poet has lamented the change. For even if the head did profit for a time by the revolt against the divine prerogative of nature, it is more than possible that the heart lost in due proportion.

His sorrow at this loss of imaginative sympathy among the moderns Wordsworth expresses in the sonnet, already cited, beginning "The world is too much with us." Schiller, also, by his poem, The Gods of Greece, has immortalized his sorrow for the decadence of the ancient mythology.

Ah, the beauteous world while yet ye ruled it,-- Yet--by gladsome touches of the hand; Ah, the joyous hearts that still ye governed, Gods of Beauty, ye, of Fable-land! Then, ah, then, the mysteries resplendent Triumphed.--Other was it then, I ween, When thy shrines were odorous with garlands, Thou, of Amathus the queen.

Then the gracious veil, of fancy woven, Fell in folds about the fact uncouth; Through the universe life flowed in fullness, What we feel not now was felt in sooth: Man ascribed nobility to Nature, Rendered love unto the earth he trod, Everywhere his eye, illuminated, Saw the footprints of a God. * * * * * Lovely world, where art thou? Turn, oh, turn thee, Fairest blossom-tide of Nature's spring! Only in the poet's realm of wonder Liv'st thou, still,--a fable vanishing. Reft of life the meadows lie deserted; Ne'er a godhead can my fancy see: Ah, if only of those living colors Lingered yet the ghost with me![171] * * * * *

It was the poem from which these stanzas are taken that provoked the well-known reply of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, contained in The Dead Pan. Her argument may be gathered from the following stanzas:

By your beauty which confesses Some chief Beauty conquering you, By our grand heroic guesses Through your falsehood at the True, We will weep not! earth shall roll Heir to each god's aureole, And Pan is dead.

Earth outgrows the mythic fancies Sung beside her in her youth; And those debonair romances Sound but dull beside the truth. Ph[oe]bus' chariot course is run! Look up, poets, to the sun! Pan, Pan is dead.

=130. Stedman's Pan in Wall Street.=[172] That Pan, however, is not yet dead but alive even in the practical atmosphere of our western world, the poem here appended, written by one of our recently deceased American poets, would indicate.

Just where the Treasury's marble front Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations; Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont To throng for trade and last quotations; Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter chimes, serenely tolled From Trinity's undaunted steeple,--

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain Sound high above the modern clamor, Above the cries of greed and gain, The curbstone war, the auction's hammer; And swift, on Music's misty ways, It led, from all this strife for millions, To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it still'd the multitude, And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar: One hand a droning organ play'd, The other held a Pan's pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

'T was Pan himself had wandered here, A-strolling through the sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had cross'd the seas,-- From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,--to these Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head: But--hidden thus--there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread, His gnarlèd horns were somewhere sprouting; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, Were cross'd, as on some frieze you see them. And trousers, patched of divers hues, Conceal'd his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound, And o'er his mouth their changes shifted, And with his goat's-eyes looked around Where'er the passing current drifted; And soon, as on Trinacrian hills The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, Even now the tradesmen from their tills, With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

The bulls and bears together drew From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true, Came beasts from every wooded valley; The random passers stay'd to list,-- A boxer Ægon, rough and merry,-- Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst With Naïs at the Brooklyn Ferry.

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long In tatter'd cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,-- A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus stagger'd out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up "Yankee Doodle Dandy!"

A newsboy and a peanut girl Like little Fauns began to caper: His hair was all in tangled curl, Her tawny legs were bare and taper. And still the gathering larger grew, And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.

O heart of Nature! beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,-- Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,-- Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I,--but among us trod A man in blue with legal baton; And scoff'd the vagrant demigod, And push'd him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry-- "Great Pan is dead!"--and all the people Went on their ways:--and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple.

=131. Other Lesser Gods of Earth.= Of the company of the lesser gods of earth, besides Pan, were the Sileni, the Sylvans, the Fauns, and the Satyrs, all male; the Oreads and the Dryads or Hamadryads, female. To these may be added the Naiads, for, although they dwelt in the streams, their association with the deities of earth was intimate. Of the nymphs, the Oreads and the Naiads were immortal. The love of Pan for Syrinx has already been mentioned, and his musical contest with Apollo. Of Silenus we have seen something in the adventures of Bacchus. What kind of existence the Satyr enjoyed is conveyed in the following soliloquy:

The trunk of this tree, Dusky-leaved, shaggy-rooted, Is a pillow well suited To a hybrid like me, Goat-bearded, goat-footed; For the boughs of the glade Meet above me, and throw A cool, pleasant shade On the greenness below; Dusky and brown'd Close the leaves all around; And yet, all the while, Thro' the boughs I can see A star, with a smile, Looking at me....

Why, all day long, I run about With a madcap throng, And laugh and shout. Silenus grips My ears, and strides On my shaggy hips, And up and down In an ivy crown Tipsily rides; And when in doze His eyelids close, Off he tumbles, and I Can his wine-skin steal, I drink--and feel The grass roll--sea high; Then with shouts and yells, Down mossy dells, I stagger after The wood-nymphs fleet, Who with mocking laughter And smiles retreat; And just as I clasp A yielding waist, With a cry embraced, --Gush! it melts from my grasp Into water cool, And--bubble! trouble! Seeing double! I stumble and gasp In some icy pool![173]

=132. Echo and Narcissus.=[174] Echo was a beautiful Oread, fond of the woods and hills, a favorite of Diana, whom she attended in the chase. But by her chatter she came under the displeasure of Juno, who condemned her to the loss of voice save for purposes of reply.

Subsequently having fallen in love with Narcissus, the beautiful son of the river-god Cephissus, Echo found it impossible to express her regard for him in any way but by mimicking what he said; and what he said, unfortunately, did not always convey her sentiments. When, however, he once called across the hills to her, "Let us join one another," the maid, answering with all her heart, hastened to the spot, ready to throw her arms about his neck. He started back, exclaiming, "Hands off! I would rather die than thou shouldst have me!" "Have me," said she; but in vain. From that time forth she lived in caves and among mountain cliffs, and faded away till there was nothing left of her but her voice. But through his future fortunes she was constant to her cruel lover.

This Narcissus was the embodiment of self-conceit. He shunned the rest of the nymphs as he had shunned Echo. One maiden, however, uttered a prayer that he might some time or other feel what it was to love and meet no return of affection. The avenging goddess heard. Narcissus, stooping over a river brink, fell in love with his own image in the water. He talked to it, tried to embrace it, languished for it, and pined until he died. Indeed, even after death, it is said that when his shade passed the Stygian river it leaned over the boat to catch a look of itself in the waters. The nymphs mourned for Narcissus, especially the water-nymphs; and when they smote their breasts, Echo smote hers also. They prepared a funeral pile and would have burned the body, but it was nowhere to be found. In its place had sprung up a flower, purple within and surrounded with white leaves, which bears the name and preserves the memory of the son of Cephissus.

=133. Echo, Pan, Lyde, and the Satyr.= Another interesting episode in the life of Echo is given by Moschus:[175]

Pan loved his neighbor Echo; Echo loved A gamesome Satyr; he, by her unmoved, Loved only Lyde; thus through Echo, Pan, Lyde, and Satyr, Love his circle ran. Thus all, while their true lovers' hearts they grieved, Were scorned in turn, and what they gave received. O all Love's scorners, learn this lesson true: Be kind to love, that he be kind to you.

=134. The Naiads.= These nymphs guarded streams and fountains of fresh water and, like the Naiad who speaks in the following verses, kept them sacred for Diana or some other divinity.

Dian white-arm'd has given me this cool shrine Deep in the bosom of a wood of pine: The silver-sparkling showers That hive me in, the flowers That prink my fountain's brim, are hers and mine; And when the days are mild and fair, And grass is springing, buds are blowing, Sweet it is, 'mid waters flowing, Here to sit and know no care, 'Mid the waters flowing, flowing, flowing, Combing my yellow, yellow hair.

The ounce and panther down the mountain side Creep thro' dark greenness in the eventide; And at the fountain's brink Casting great shades, they drink, Gazing upon me, tame and sapphire-eyed; For, awed by my pale face, whose light Gleameth thro' sedge and lilies yellow They, lapping at my fountain mellow, Harm not the lamb that in affright Throws in the pool so mellow, mellow, mellow, Its shadow small and dusky-white.

Oft do the fauns and satyrs, flusht with play, Come to my coolness in the hot noonday. Nay, once indeed, I vow By Dian's truthful brow, The great god Pan himself did pass this way, And, all in festal oak-leaves clad, His limbs among these lilies throwing, Watch'd the silver waters flowing, Listen'd to their music glad, Saw and heard them flowing, flowing, flowing, And ah! his face was worn and sad!

Mild joys like silvery waters fall; But it is sweetest, sweetest far of all, In the calm summer night, When the tree-tops look white, To be exhaled in dew at Dian's call, Among my sister-clouds to move Over the darkness, earth bedimming, Milky-robed thro' heaven swimming, Floating round the stars above, Swimming proudly, swimming proudly, swimming, And waiting on the Moon I love.

So tenderly I keep this cool, green shrine, Deep in the bosom of a wood of pine; Faithful thro' shade and sun, That service due and done May haply earn for me a place divine Among the white-robed deities That thread thro' starry paths, attending My sweet Lady, calmly wending Thro' the silence of the skies, Changing in hues of beauty never ending, Drinking the light of Dian's eyes.[176]

=135. The Dryads=, or =Hamadryads=, assumed at times the forms of peasant girls, shepherdesses, or followers of the hunt. But they were believed to perish with certain trees which had been their abode and with which they had come into existence. Wantonly to destroy a tree was therefore an impious act, sometimes severely punished, as in the cases of Erysichthon and Dryope.

=136. Erysichthon=,[177] a despiser of the gods, presumed to violate with the ax a grove sacred to Ceres. A venerable oak, whereon votive tablets had often been hung inscribed with the gratitude of mortals to the nymph of the tree,--an oak round which the Dryads hand in hand had often danced,--he ordered his servants to fell. When he saw them hesitate, he snatched an ax from one, and boasting that he cared not whether it were a tree beloved of the goddess or not, addressed himself to the task. The oak seemed to shudder and utter a groan. When the first blow fell upon the trunk, blood flowed from the wound. Warned by a bystander to desist, Erysichthon slew him; warned by a voice from the nymph of the tree, he redoubled his blows and brought down the oak. The Dryads invoked punishment upon Erysichthon.

The goddess Ceres, whom they had supplicated, nodded her assent. She dispatched an Oread to ice-clad Scythia, where Cold abides, and Fear and Shuddering and Famine. At Mount Caucasus, the Oread stayed the dragons of Ceres that drew her chariot; for afar off she beheld Famine, forespent with hunger, pulling up with teeth and claws the scanty herbage from a stony field. To her the nymph delivered the commands of Ceres, then returned in haste to Thessaly, for she herself began to be an hungered.

The orders of Ceres were executed by Famine, who, speeding through the air, entered the dwelling of Erysichthon and, as he slept, enfolded him with her wings and breathed herself into him. In his dreams the caitiff craved food; and when he awoke, his hunger raged. The more he ate, the more he craved, till, in default of money, he sold his daughter into slavery for edibles. Neptune, however, rescued the girl by changing her into a fisherman; and in that form she assured the slave-owner that she had seen no woman or other person, except herself, thereabouts. Then, resuming her own appearance, she was again and again sold by her father; while by Neptune's favor she became on each occasion a different animal, and so regained her home. Finally, increasing demands of hunger compelled the father to devour his own limbs; and in due time he finished himself off.

=137. Dryope=, the wife of Andræmon, purposing with her sister Iole to gather flowers for the altars of the nymphs, plucked the purple blossoms of a lotus plant that grew near the water, and offered them to her child. Iole, about to do the same thing, perceived that the stem of the plant was bleeding. Indeed, the plant was none other than a nymph, Lotis, who, escaping from a base pursuer, had been thus transformed.

Dryope would have hastened from the spot, but the displeasure of the nymph had fallen upon her. While protesting her innocence, she began to put forth branches and leaves. Praying her husband to see that no violence was done to her, to remind their child that every flower or bush might be a goddess in disguise, to bring him often to be nursed under her branches, and to teach him to say "My mother lies hid under this bark,"--the luckless woman assumed the shape of a lotus.

=138. Rh[oe]cus.=[178] The Hamadryads could appreciate services as well as punish injuries.

Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, As full of freedom, youth, and beauty still, As the immortal freshness of that grace Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze.[179]

Rh[oe]cus, happening to see an oak just ready to fall, propped it up. The nymph, who had been on the point of perishing with the tree, expressed her gratitude to him and bade him ask what reward he would. Rh[oe]cus boldly asked her love, and the nymph yielded to his desire. At the same time charging him to be mindful and constant, she promised to expect him an hour before sunset and, meanwhile, to communicate with him by means of her messenger,--a bee:

Now, in those days of simpleness and faith, Men did not think that happy things were dreams Because they overstepped the narrow bourn Of likelihood, but reverently deemed Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful To be the guerdon of a daring heart. So Rh[oe]cus made no doubt that he was blest, And all along unto the city's gate Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked, The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont, And he could scarce believe he had not wings, Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange.

But the day was past its noon. Joining some comrades over the dice, Rh[oe]cus forgot all else. A bee buzzed about his ear. Impatiently he brushed it aside:

Then through the window flew the wounded bee, And Rh[oe]cus, tracking him with angry eyes, Saw a sharp mountain peak of Thessaly Against the red disk of the setting sun,-- And instantly the blood sank from his heart....

... Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree, And, listening fearfully, he heard once more The low voice murmur, "Rh[oe]cus!" close at hand: Whereat he looked around him, but could see Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the oak. Then sighed the voice, "O Rh[oe]cus! nevermore Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, Me, who would fain have blessed thee with a love More ripe and bounteous than ever yet Filled up with nectar any mortal heart: But thou didst scorn my humble messenger And sent'st him back to me with bruisèd wings. We spirits only show to gentle eyes, We ever ask an undivided love, And he who scorns the least of Nature's works Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. Farewell! for thou canst never see me more."

Then Rh[oe]cus beat his breast, and groaned aloud, And cried, "Be pitiful! forgive me yet This once, and I shall never need it more!" "Alas!" the voice returned, "'tis thou art blind, Not I unmerciful; I can forgive, But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes; Only the soul hath power o'er itself." With that again there murmured, "Nevermore!" And Rh[oe]cus after heard no other sound, Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, Like the long surf upon a distant shore, Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. The night had gathered round him: o'er the plain The city sparkled with its thousand lights, And sounds of revel fell upon his ear Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky, With all its bright sublimity of stars, Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze: Beauty was all around him and delight, But from that eve he was alone on earth.

According to the older tradition, the nymph deprived Rh[oe]cus of his physical sight; but the superior insight of Lowell's interpretation is evident.

=139. Pomona and Vertumnus.=[180] Pomona was a Hamadryad of Roman mythology, guardian especially of the apple orchards, but presiding also over other fruits. "Bear me, Pomona," sings one of our poets,--

Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves, To where the lemon and the piercing lime, With the deep orange, glowing through the green, Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined Beneath the spreading tamarind that shakes, Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.[181]

This nymph had scorned the offers of love made her by Pan, Sylvanus, and innumerable Fauns and Satyrs. Vertumnus, too, she had time and again refused. But he, the deity of gardens and of the changing seasons, unwearied, wooed her in as many guises as his seasons themselves could assume. Now as a reaper, now as haymaker, now as plowman, now as vinedresser, now as apple-picker, now as fisherman, now as soldier,--all to no avail. Finally, as an old woman, he came to her, admired her fruit, admired especially the luxuriance of her grapes, descanted on the dependence of the luxuriant vine, close by, upon the elm to which it was clinging; advised Pomona, likewise, to choose some youth--say, for instance, the young Vertumnus--about whom to twine her arms. Then he told how the worthy Iphis, spurned by Anaxarete, had hanged himself to her gatepost; and how the gods had turned the hard-hearted virgin to stone even as she gazed on her lover's funeral. "Consider these things, dearest child," said the seeming old woman, "lay aside thy scorn and thy delays, and accept a lover. So may neither the vernal frosts blight thy young fruits, nor furious winds scatter thy blossoms!"

When Vertumnus had thus spoken, he dropped his disguise and stood before Pomona in his proper person,--a comely youth. Such wooing, of course, could not but win its just reward.

=140. The Cranes of Ibycus=.[182] The Furies, called also Diræ (the terrible ones), Erinyes (the persecutors, or the angered ones), and finally, by way of euphemism, Eumenides (the well-meaning), though they were spirits of the underworld, visited earth to punish filial disobedience, irreverence to old age, perjury, murder, treachery to guests, even unkindness toward beggars. They avenged the ghosts of such as, dying violent deaths, possessed on earth no representatives either by law or by kindred to avenge them. Therefore, as we shall see, they persecuted Orestes, who had slain his mother. Therefore, like the accusing voice of conscience, they marshaled to punishment the murderers of Ibycus.

This poet, beloved of Apollo, was, while journeying to the musical contest of the Isthmus at Corinth, attacked by two robbers in the Corinthian grove of Neptune. Overcome by them, he commended his cause as he fell to a flock of cranes that happened to be screaming hoarsely overhead. But when his body was found, all Greece, then gathered at the festival, demanded vengeance on the murderer.

Soon afterward, the vast assemblage in the amphitheater sat listening to a play in which the Chorus personated the Furies. The Choristers, clad in black, bore in their fleshless hands torches blazing with a pitchy flame. Advancing with measured step, they formed ranks in the orchestra. Their cheeks were bloodless, and in place of hair writhing serpents curled around their brows. Forming a circle, these awful beings sang their hymn. High it swelled, overpowering the sound of the instruments:

"Happy the man whose heart is pure from guilt and crime! Him we avengers touch not; he treads the path of life secure from us. But woe! woe! to him who has done the deed of secret murder. We, the fearful brood of Night, fasten ourselves upon him, soul and flesh. Thinks he by flight to escape us? Fly we still faster in pursuit, twine our snakes around his feet, and bring him to the ground. Unwearied we pursue; no pity checks our course; still on, still on to the end of life, we give no peace, no rest."

Stillness like the stillness of death sat over the assembly. Suddenly a cry burst from one of the uppermost benches,--"Lo, comrade, the avengers of Ibycus!" A flock of cranes crossed the sky. "The murderer has informed against himself," shouted the assemblage. The inference was correct. The criminals, straightway seized, confessed the crime and suffered the penalty.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] His name is not derived from the Greek p[=a]n, all, but from the root p[)a], to feed, to pasture (i.e. the flocks and herds).

[170] Milton, Hymn on the Nativity.

[171] Translated by C. M. Gayley.

[172] By Edmund Clarence Stedman.

[173] From The Satyr, by Robert Buchanan.

[174] Ovid, Metam. 3, 339-510.

[175] Idyl VI (Lang's translation). For Moschus, see Commentary, § 298.

[176] From The Naiad, by Robert Buchanan.

[177] Ovid, Metam. 8, 738-884.

[178] See note (Scholium) on the Argonautics of Apollonius, B 477. Keil's edition, p. 415, l. 32.

[179] J. R. Lowell, Rh[oe]cus. The student should read the whole poem.

[180] Ovid, Metam. 14, 623-771.

[181] Thomson, Seasons.

[182] Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4. 33, 71; and Statius, Silvæ, 5. 3, 152.

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XIII. MYTHS OF LESSER DIVINITIES OF THE WATERS

=141. Galatea and Polyphemus.= The water-gods may be roughly classed as dwellers in the sea and dwellers in the streams. Of the former, daughters of Nereus and Doris, none was fairer than Galatea, sister of Amphitrite and Thetis. She loved Acis, the son of Faunus by a Naiad, and was loved in return; but her happiness was disturbed and finally ruined by the persistent and jealous attentions of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

For the first time in his life the Cyclops began to care for his appearance; he harrowed his coarse locks with a currycomb, mowed his beard with a sickle, and, looking into the sea when it was calm, soliloquized, "Beautiful seems my beard, beautiful my one eye,--as I count beauty,--and the sea reflects the gleam of my teeth whiter than the Parian stone."[183]

... He loved, not with apples, not roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy; and all things else he held but trifles by the way. Many a time from the green pastures would his ewes stray back, self-shepherded, to the fold. But he was singing of Galatea; and pining in his place, he sat by the seaweed of the beach from the dawn of day with the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty Cypris' sending,--the wound of her arrow in his heart!

Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff and looking to the deep, 'twas thus he would sing:

"Oh, milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More white than is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb art thou, than the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened grape! Here dost thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses me, and home straightway dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go, fleeing me like an ewe that has seen the gray wolf. I fell in love with thee, maiden, I, on the day when first thou camest, with my mother, and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from the hill, and I was thy guide on the way. But to leave loving thee when once I had seen thee, neither afterward, nor now at all, have I the strength, even from that hour. But to thee all this is as nothing, by Zeus, nay, nothing at all!

"I know, thou gracious maiden, why it is that thou dost shun me. It is all for the shaggy brow that spans my forehead, from this to the other ear, one long, unbroken eyebrow. And but one eye is on my forehead, and broad is the nose that overhangs my lip. Yet I (even such as thou seest me) feed a thousand cattle, and from these I draw and drink the best milk in the world. And cheese I never lack, in summer time or autumn, nay, nor in the dead of winter, but my baskets are always overladen.

"Also I am skilled in piping, as none other of the Cyclopes here, and of thee, my love, my sweet apple, and of myself, too, I sing, many a time, deep in the night. And for thee I tend eleven fawns, all crescent browed, and four young whelps of the bear. Nay, come thou to me and thou shalt lack nothing that now thou hast....

"But if thou dost refuse because my body seems shaggy and rough, well, I have faggots of oak-wood, and beneath the ashes is fire unwearied, and I would endure to let thee burn my very soul, and this my one eye, the dearest thing that is mine.

"Ah me, that my mother bore me not a finny thing, so would I have gone down to thee, and kissed thy hand, if thy lips thou would not suffer me to kiss! And I would have brought thee either white lilies or the soft poppy with its scarlet petals. Nay, these are summer's flowers, and those are flowers of winter, so I could not have brought thee them all at one time.

"Now, verily, maiden, now and here will I learn to swim, if perchance some stranger come hither, sailing with his ship, that I may see why it is so dear to thee to have thy dwelling in the deep. Come forth, Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I that sit here have forgotten, the homeward way!...

"Oh, Cyclops, Cyclops, whither are thy wits wandering? Ah, that thou wouldst go and weave thy wickerwork and gather broken boughs to carry to thy lambs: in faith, if thou didst this, far wiser wouldst thou be!

"Milk the ewe that thou hast; why pursue the thing that shuns thee? Thou wilt find, perchance, another, and a fairer, Galatea. Many be the girls that bid me stay with them, and softly they all laugh, if perchance I answer them. On land it is plain that I, too, seem to be somebody!"[184]

Having, one day, in such wise sung, Polyphemus wandered, beside himself for passion, into the woods. On a sudden he came in sight of Galatea and Acis in the hollow of a rock, where they had hearkened to the strains of the Cyclops. The monster, infuriate, crying that this should be the last of their love-meetings, overwhelmed his rival with a tremendous rock. Purple blood spirted from under the stone, by degrees grew paler, and finally became the stream that still bears the name of the unfortunate youth. But Galatea remained inconsolable.[185]

=142. Glaucus and Scylla.=[186] Another deity of the sea was Glaucus, the son of that Sisyphus who was punished in Hades for his treachery to the gods. Glaucus had been a comely young fisherman; but having noticed that a certain herb revived fishes after they were brought to land, he ate of it and suffered metamorphosis into something new and strange, half man, half fish, and after the fashion of a sea-god. Of his experience during this "sea change" the following is an account:

I plunged for life or death. To interknit One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff Might seem a work of pain; so not enough Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt, And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt Whole days and days in sheer astonishment; Forgetful utterly of self-intent, Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow. Then like a new-fledged bird that first doth show His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill, I tried in fear the pinions of my will. 'Twas freedom! and at once I visited The ceaseless wonders of this ocean bed.[187]

He became guardian of fishes and divers and of those who go down to the sea in ships. Later, being infatuated of the fair virgin Scylla (daughter of the sea-god Phorcys and granddaughter of Pontus), he paid his court to her, but the maiden rejected him. Whereupon, in desperation, Glaucus sought the aid of Circe, an enchantress. She, because she coveted for herself the handsome sea-green god, transformed her rival into a monster hideously fashioned of serpents and barking dogs.[188] In this shape Scylla thereafter infested the shore of Sicily and worked evil to mariners,[189] till finally she was petrified as a reef, none the less perilous to all seafarers.

A modern version of the fate of Glaucus and Scylla is given by Keats in the Endymion. Glaucus consents to Circe's blandishments for a season, but becoming disgusted with her treachery and cruelty, he endeavors to escape from her. The attempt proving unsuccessful, he is brought back and sentenced to pass a thousand years in decrepitude and pain. Consequently, returning to the sea, he there discovers the body of Scylla, whom the goddess has not transformed, but drowned, and learns that if he passes his thousand years in collecting the bodies of drowned lovers, a youth beloved of the gods will, in time, appear and help him. This prophecy is fulfilled by Endymion, who aids in restoring Glaucus to youth, and Scylla and the drowned lovers to life.

=143. Nisus and Scylla.=[190] The daughter of Phorcys is frequently confounded with another Scylla, daughter of King Nisus of Megara. Scylla of Megara betrayed her father to his enemy, Minos II of Crete, with whom, although the kings were at war, she had fallen violently in love. It seems that Nisus had on his head a purple lock of hair, upon which depended his fortune and his life. This lock his daughter clipped and conveyed to Minos. But recoiling from the treacherous gift, that king, after he had conquered Megara, bound Scylla to the rudder of his ship and so dragged her through the waves toward Crete. The girl was ultimately transformed into the monster of the barking dogs, or, according to another authority, into a bird continually the prey of the sea eagle, whose form her father Nisus had assumed.

=144. Leucothea.=[191] Another sea change was that of Ino, the daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas, who, flying from her frantic husband, sprang, with her child Melicertes in her arms, from a cliff into the sea. The gods, out of compassion, made her a goddess of the sea under the name of Leucothea, and her son a god under that of Palæmon. Both were held powerful to save from shipwreck and were invoked by sailors. Palæmon was usually represented as riding on a dolphin. In his honor the Isthmian games were celebrated. By the Romans he was called Portumnus, and had jurisdiction of ports and shores.

=145. Proteus and Aristæus.=[192] Though Aristæus, the lover of Eurydice, was son of Apollo and guardian himself of herds and flocks, protector of vine and olive, and keeper of bees, still he was son of Cyrene, a water-nymph, and his most interesting adventure brought him into contact with another deity of the sea.

His bees having perished, Aristæus resorted for aid to his mother. She, surrounded by her maidens in the crystalline abode under her river, overheard his complaints and ordered that he should be brought into her presence. The stream at her command opened itself and let him enter, while it stood heaped like a mountain on either side. Cyrene and her nymphs, having poured out libations to Neptune, gave the youth to eat and listened to his complaint, then informed him that an aged prophet named Proteus, who dwelt in the sea and pastured the sea calves of Neptune, could explain the cause of the mortality among the bees and how to remedy it; but that the wizard would have to be chained and compelled to answer, and that even when chained, he would try to escape by assuming a series of dreadful forms. "Still, thou hast but to keep him fast bound," concluded Cyrene, "and at last, when he finds his arts of no avail, he will obey thy behest." The nymph then sprinkled her son with nectar, whereupon an unusual vigor filled his frame and courage his heart.

Cyrene led her son to the prophet's cave, which was in the island of Pharos, or of Carpathos,[193] and concealed him. At noon issued Proteus from the water, followed by his herd of sea calves, which spread themselves along the shore. He, too, stretched himself on the floor of the cave and went to sleep. Aristæus immediately clapped fetters on him and shouted at the top of his voice. Proteus, finding himself captured, resorted to his craft, becoming first a fire, then a flood, then a horrible wild beast, in rapid succession; nor did he succumb till all schemes had failed to set him free. Then he resumed his old form and, in response to the questioning of Aristæus, said: "Thou receivest the merited reward of thy deed, by which Eurydice met her death. To avenge her, the nymphs have sent this destruction on thy bees. Their anger thou must appease. Four bulls shalt thou select, of perfect form and size, and four cows of equal beauty; and four altars shalt thou build to the nymphs, and shalt sacrifice the animals, leaving their carcasses in the leafy grove. To Orpheus and Eurydice thou shalt pay such funeral honors as may allay their resentment. Returning after nine days, examine the bodies of the cattle slain and see what has befallen." Aristæus faithfully obeyed these directions. Returning to the grove on the ninth day he found that a swarm of bees had taken possession of one of the carcasses and were pursuing their labors there as in a hive.[194]

=146. Acheloüs and Hercules.=[195] A similar contest took place between Hercules and the river-god Acheloüs. The cause of the strife was Dejanira of Calydon, whom both heroes loved. Hercules boasted his divine descent. Acheloüs, not content with advancing his claim as lord of the mightiest and most ancient river of Greece, insinuated suspicions with regard to the value of Hercules' pretensions. Then began a mighty struggle. Finding he was no match for Hercules in the wrestler's art, Acheloüs glided away in the form of a serpent. Hercules, remarking that it was the labor of his infancy to strangle snakes,[196] clasped the neck of Acheloüs and choked him. Then Acheloüs assumed the seeming of a bull. Whereupon Hercules, seizing him by the horns, dragged his head to the ground, overthrew him, and rent one horn away. This trophy the Naiads consecrated and filled with flowers for the goddess of Plenty, who, adopting it as her symbol, named it Cornucopia.

=147. Milton's Sabrina Fair.= No writer in modern times has made more graceful poetic use of the divinities of the streams than has Milton. The following song, chanted by a Spirit in invocation of "the gentle nymph" (of the poet's invention) "that with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream," is but one refrain of many caught by the poet from the far-echoing chorus of classical verse:

Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; Listen for dear honor's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen and save.

Listen and appear to us In name of great Oceanus. By th' earth-shaking Neptune's mace, And Tethys' grave, majestic pace, By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look, And the Carpathian wizard's hook, By scaly Triton's winding shell, And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell, By Leucothea's lovely hands, And her son that rules the strands, By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet, And the songs of Sirens sweet, By dead Parthenope's[1] dear tomb And fair Ligea's[197] golden comb, Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks, Sleeking her soft, alluring locks, By all the nymphs that nightly dance Upon thy streams with wily glance; Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head From thy coral-paven bed, And bridle in thy headlong wave, Till thou our summons answered have. Listen and save.[198]

FOOTNOTES:

[183] Theocritus, Idyl VI. See Andrew Lang's translation.

[184] Theocritus, Idyl XI (Lang's translation).

[185] Ovid, Metam. 13, 750-867.

[186] Ovid, Metam. 13, 898; 14, 74; Tibullus, 3, 4-89.

[187] From Keats' Endymion.

[188] §§ 50, 52, and Commentary.

[189] See §§ 239, 250, Adventures of Ulysses and Æneas.

[190] Apollodorus, 3, 15, § 8.

[191] Ovid, Metam. 4, 432-542.

[192] Cf. Odyssey, 4, 410; Ovid, Fasti, 1, 369; Virgil, Georgics, 4, 317.

[193] Cf. § 147, Milton's Carpathian Wizard.

[194] See Commentary.

[195] Ovid, Metam. 9, 1-100.

[196] § 156.

[197] See Commentary.

[198] Milton, Comus, 859-889.

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Chapter XIV

MYTHS OF THE OLDER HEROES: THE HOUSE OF DANAÜS, AND ITS CONNECTIONS

=148. The Older and the Younger Heroes.= We have already narrated the adventures of certain demigods and heroes, such as Prometheus, Deucalion, Cadmus, Amphion, Orpheus. Others of importance were Perseus, Hercules, Minos, [OE]dipus, Theseus, Jason, Meleager, Peleus, Pelops, Castor and Pollux. These and their contemporaries may be called the Older Heroes. They are renowned either for individual exploits or for the part played by them in one or more of three great expeditions,--the War against Laomedon of Troy, the Voyage for the Golden Fleece, and the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar.

The Younger Heroes were of a later generation, which was concerned in four important enterprises,--the War of the Seven against Thebes, the Trojan War, the Wanderings of Ulysses, and the Adventures of Æneas.

The exploits of the Older Heroes may be arranged in respect of their probable sequence in time, and of their grouping according to families of heroes. If we observe the principle of genealogy, one race, that of Inachus of Argos, attracts our notice in the heroes descended from Pelasgus,[199] Belus, and Agenor. The family of Belus gives us the famous House of Danaüs, the family of Agenor the Houses of Minos and Labdacus. Another race, that of Deucalion, gives us the heroes of the Hellenic branch, most notably those descended from Æolus. With these families most of the Older Heroes are, by blood or by adventure, to some extent connected. Bearing this fact in mind and at the same time observing the chronological sequence of adventures, we obtain an arrangement of myths as illustrating the races, families, or houses--(1) of Danaüs of Argos, (2) of Æolus of Thessaly, (3) of Ætolus, (4) of Minos of Crete, (5) of Cecrops and of Erichthonius of Attica, (6) of Labdacus of Thebes.[200]

=149. The Genealogy of Danaüs.= As the Hellenes, in the north, traced their descent from Deucalion and Pyrrha of Thessaly, so the Pelasgic races of the south from the river-god Inachus, son of Oceanus. The son of Inachus, Phoroneus, lived in the Peloponnesus and founded the town of Argos. This Phoroneus conferred upon the Argives the benefits attributed by other Greeks to Prometheus. He was succeeded by his son Pelasgus, from whom a division of the Greek people derive their name. With the love of Jupiter for the sister of Phoroneus, the fair Io, we are already acquainted. Her son was Epaphus, king of Egypt, from whom were descended (1) Agenor of Ph[oe]nicia, father of Europa and Cadmus, and (2) Belus of Egypt, father of Ægyptus and Danaüs. To the family of Agenor we shall return in the history of Minos, son of Europa, and of [OE]dipus, descendant of Cadmus.

=150. The Danaïds.=[201] Ægyptus and his fifty sons drove Danaüs and his fifty daughters back to Argos, the ancestral home of the race. Finally, a reconciliation was arranged by means of a fiftyfold marriage between the sons of Ægyptus and the Danaïds. But in accordance with a treacherous command of Danaüs, all his daughters save Hypermnestra slew their husbands on the wedding night. For this crime the forty-nine Danaïds were condemned to spend eternity in Tartarus, trying to fill with water a vessel full of holes. From Hypermnestra and her husband, Lynceus, was sprung the royal house of Argos. Their son was Abas, their grandson, Acrisius,--of whom the following narrative is told.

=151. The Doom of King Acrisius.=[202] The daughter of Acrisius was Danaë, of surpassing loveliness. In consequence of an oracle which had prophesied that the son of Danaë would be the means of his grandfather's death, the hapless girl was shut in an underground chamber, that no man might love or wed her. But Jupiter, distilling himself into a shower of gold, flooded the girl's prison, wooed, and won her. Their son was Perseus. King Acrisius, in dismay, ordered mother and child to be boxed up in a chest and set adrift on the sea. The two unfortunates were, however, rescued at Seriphus by a fisherman, who conveyed the mother and infant to Polydectes, king of the country, by whom they were treated at first with kindness, but afterwards with cruelty.

=152. Perseus and Medusa.=[203] When Perseus was grown up, Polydectes sent him to attempt the conquest of the Gorgon Medusa,[204] a terrible monster who had laid waste the country. She had once been a maiden whose hair was her chief glory, but as she dared to vie in beauty with Minerva, the goddess deprived her of her charms and changed her ringlets into hissing serpents. She became a monster of so frightful an aspect that no living thing could behold her without being turned into stone. All around the cavern where she dwelt might be seen the stony figures of men and animals that had chanced to catch a glimpse of her and had been petrified at the sight. Perseus, favored by Minerva and Mercury, set out against the Gorgon, and approached first the cave of the three Grææ:

There sat the crones that had the single eye, Clad in blue sweeping cloak and snow-white gown; While o'er their backs their straight white hair hung down In long thin locks; dreadful their faces were, Carved all about with wrinkles of despair; And as they sat they crooned a dreary song, Complaining that their lives should last so long, In that sad place that no one came anear, In that wan place desert of hope and fear; And singing, still they rocked their bodies bent, And ever each to each the eye they sent.[205]

Snatching the eye, Perseus compelled the Grææ, as the price of its restoration, to tell him how he might obtain the helmet of Hades that renders its wearer invisible, and the winged shoes and pouch that were necessary. With this outfit, to which Minerva added her shield and Mercury his knife, Perseus sped to the hall of the Gorgons. In silence sat two of the sisters,--

But a third woman paced about the hall, And ever turned her head from wall to wall And moaned aloud, and shrieked in her despair; Because the golden tresses of her hair Were moved by writhing snakes from side to side, That in their writhing oftentimes would glide On to her breast, or shuddering shoulders white; Or, falling down, the hideous things would light Upon her feet, and crawling thence would twine Their slimy folds about her ankles fine.[206]

This was Medusa. Her, while she was praying the gods to end her misery, or, as some say, while she was sleeping, Perseus approached, and, guided by her image reflected in the bright shield which he bore, cut off her head, and so ended her miserable existence. Thus are described the horror and the grace of her features in death:

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine; Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; Its horror and its beauty are divine. Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, The agonies of anguish and of death.

Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone; Whereon the lineaments of that dead face Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace; 'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain.[207]...

=153. Perseus and Atlas.= From the body of Medusa sprang the winged horse Pegasus, of whose rider, Bellerophon, we shall presently be informed.

After the slaughter of Medusa, Perseus, bearing with him the head of the Gorgon, flew far and wide, over land and sea. As night came on, he reached the western limit of the earth, and would gladly have rested till morning. Here was the realm of Atlas, whose bulk surpassed that of all other men. He was rich in flocks and herds, but his chief pride was his garden of the Hesperides, whose fruit was of gold, hanging from golden branches, half hid with golden leaves. Perseus said to him, "I come as a guest. If thou holdest in honor illustrious descent, I claim Jupiter for my father; if mighty deeds, I plead the conquest of the Gorgon. I seek rest and food." But Atlas, remembering an ancient prophecy that had warned him against a son of Jove who should one day rob him of his golden apples, attempted to thrust the youth out. Whereupon Perseus, finding the giant too strong for him, held up the Gorgon's head. Atlas, with all his bulk, was changed into stone. His beard and hair became forests, his arms and shoulders cliffs, his head a summit, and his bones rocks. Each part increased in mass till the giant became the mountain upon whose shoulders rests heaven with all its stars.

=154. Perseus and Andromeda.= On his way back to Seriphus, the Gorgon-slayer arrived at the country of the Æthiopians, over whom Cepheus was king. His wife was Cassiopea--

That starred Æthiope queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.[208]

These nymphs had consequently sent a sea monster to ravage the coast. To appease the deities, Cepheus was directed by the oracle to devote his daughter Andromeda to the ravening maw of the prodigy. As Perseus looked down from his aërial height, he beheld the virgin chained to a rock. Drawing nearer he pitied, then comforted her, and sought the reason of her disgrace. At first from modesty she was silent; but when he repeated his questions, for fear she might be thought guilty of some offense which she dared not tell, she disclosed her name and that of her country, and her mother's pride of beauty. Before she had done speaking, a sound was heard upon the water, and the monster appeared. The virgin shrieked; the father and mother, who had now arrived, poured forth lamentations and threw their arms about the victim. But the hero himself undertook to slay the monster, on condition that, if the maiden were rescued by his valor, she should be his reward. The parents consented. Perseus embraced his promised bride; then--

Loosing his arms from her waist he flew upward, awaiting the sea beast. Onward it came from the southward, as bulky and black as a galley, Lazily coasting along, as the fish fled leaping before it; Lazily breasting the ripple, and watching by sand bar and headland, Listening for laughter of maidens at bleaching, or song of the fisher, Children at play on the pebbles, or cattle that passed on the sand hills. Rolling and dripping it came, where bedded in glistening purple Cold on the cold seaweeds lay the long white sides of the maiden, Trembling, her face in her hands, and her tresses afloat on the water.[209]

The youth darted down upon the back of the monster and plunged his sword into its shoulder, then eluded its furious attack by means of his wings. Wherever he could find a passage for his sword, he plunged it between the scales of flank and side. The wings of the hero were finally drenched and unmanageable with the blood and water that the brute spouted. Then alighting on a rock and holding by a projection, he gave the monster his deathblow.

The joyful parents, with Perseus and Andromeda, repaired to the palace, where a banquet was opened for them. But in the midst of the festivities a noise was heard of warlike clamor, and Phineus, who had formerly been betrothed to the bride, burst in, demanding her for his own. In vain, Cepheus remonstrated that all such engagements had been dissolved by the sentence of death passed upon Andromeda, and that if Phineus had actually loved the girl, he would have tried to rescue her. Phineus and his adherents, persisting in their intent, attacked the wedding party and would have broken it up with most admired disorder, but

Mid the fabled Libyan bridal stood Perseus in stern tranquillity of wrath, Half stood, half floated on his ankle plumes Out-swelling, while the bright face on his shield Looked into stone the raging fray.[210]

Leaving Phineus and his fellows in merited petrifaction, and conveying Andromeda to Seriphus, the hero there turned into stone Polydectes and his court, because the tyrant had rendered Danaë's life intolerable with his attentions. Perseus then restored to their owners the charmed helmet, the winged shoes, and the pouch in which he had conveyed the Gorgon's head. The head itself he bestowed upon Minerva, who bore it afterward upon her ægis or shield. Of that Gorgon shield no simpler moral interpretation can be framed than the following:

What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe![211]

With his mother and his wife Perseus returned to Argos to seek his grandfather. But Acrisius, still fearing his doom, had retired to Larissa in Thessaly. Thither Perseus followed him, and found him presiding over certain funeral games. As luck would have it, the hero took part in the quoit throwing, and hurled a quoit far beyond the mark. The disk, falling upon his grandfather's foot, brought about the old man's death, and in that way the prophecy was fulfilled. Of Perseus and Andromeda three sons were born, through one of whom, Electryon, they became grandparents of the famous Alcmene, sweetheart of Jove and mother of Hercules.

=155. Bellerophon and the Chimæra.=[212] The horse Pegasus, which sprang from the Gorgon's blood, found a master in Bellerophon of Corinth. This youth was of the Hellenic branch of the Greek nation, being descended from Sisyphus and through him from Æolus, the son of Hellen.[213] His adventures should therefore be recited with those of Jason and other descendants of Æolus in the next chapter, but that they follow so closely on those of Perseus. His father, Glaucus, king of Corinth, is frequently identified with Glaucus the fisherman. This Glaucus of Corinth was noted for his love of horse racing, his fashion of feeding his mares on human flesh, and his destruction by the fury of his horses; for having upset his chariot, they tore their master to pieces. As to his son, Bellerophon, the following is related:

In Lycia a monster, breathing fire, made great havoc. The fore part of his body was a compound of the lion and the goat; the hind part was a dragon's. The king, Iobates, sought a hero to destroy this Chimæra, as it was called. At that time Bellerophon arrived at his court. The gallant youth brought letters from Pr[oe]tus, the son-in-law of Iobates, recommending Bellerophon in the warmest terms as an unconquerable hero, but adding a request to his father-in-law to put him to death. For Pr[oe]tus, suspecting that his wife Antea looked with too great favor on the young warrior, schemed thus to destroy him.

Iobates accordingly determined to send Bellerophon against the Chimæra. Bellerophon accepted the proposal, but before proceeding to the combat, consulted the soothsayer Polyidus, who counseled him to procure, if possible, the horse Pegasus for the conflict. Now this horse had been caught and tamed by Minerva and by her presented to the Muses. Polyidus, therefore, directed Bellerophon to pass the night in the temple of Minerva. While he slept, Minerva brought him a golden bridle. When he awoke, she showed him Pegasus drinking at the well of Pirene. At sight of the bridle, the winged steed came willingly and suffered himself to be taken. Bellerophon mounted him, sped through the air, found the Chimæra, and gained an easy victory.

After the conquest of this monster, Bellerophon was subjected to further trials and labors by his unfriendly host, but by the aid of Pegasus he triumphed over all. At length Iobates, seeing that the hero was beloved of the gods, gave him his daughter in marriage and made him his successor on the throne. It is said that Bellerophon, by his pride and presumption, drew upon himself the anger of the Olympians; that he even attempted to fly to heaven on his winged steed; but the king of gods and men sent a gadfly, which, stinging Pegasus, caused him to throw his rider, who wandered ever after lame, blind, and lonely through the Aleian field, and perished miserably.

=156. Hercules (Heracles): His Youth.=[214] Alcmene, daughter of Electryon and granddaughter of Perseus and Andromeda, was beloved of Jupiter. Their son, the mighty Hercules, born in Thebes, became the national hero of Greece. Juno, always hostile to the offspring of her husband by mortal mothers, declared war against Hercules from his birth. She sent two serpents to destroy him as he lay in his cradle, but the precocious infant strangled them with his hands. In his youth he passed for the son of his stepfather Amphitryon, king of Thebes, grandson of Perseus and Andromeda, and son of Alcæus. Hence his patronymic, Alcides. Rhadamanthus trained him in wisdom and virtue, Linus in music. Unfortunately the latter attempted one day to chastise Hercules; whereupon the pupil killed the master with a lute. After this melancholy breach of discipline, the youth was rusticated,--sent off to the mountains, where among the herdsmen and the cattle he grew to mighty stature, slew the Thespian lion, and performed various deeds of valor. To him, while still a youth, appeared, according to one story, two women at a meeting of the ways,--Pleasure and Duty. The gifts offered by Duty were the "Choice of Hercules." Soon afterward he contended with none other than Apollo for the tripod of Delphi; but reconciliation was effected between the combatants by the gods of Olympus, and from that day forth Apollo and Hercules remained true friends, each respecting the prowess of the other. Returning to Thebes, the hero aided his half brother Iphicles and his reputed father Amphitryon in throwing off the yoke of the city of Orchomenus, and was rewarded with the hand of the princess Megara. A few years later, while in the very pride of his manhood, he was driven insane by the implacable Juno. In his madness he slew his children, and would have slain Amphitryon, also, had not Minerva knocked him over with a stone and plunged him into a deep sleep, from which he awoke in his right mind. Next, for expiation of the bloodshed, he was rendered subject to his cousin Eurystheus and compelled to perform his commands. This humiliation, Juno, of course, had decreed.

=157. His Labors.= Eurystheus enjoined upon the hero a succession of desperate undertakings, which are called the twelve "Labors of Hercules." The first was the combat with the lion that infested the valley of Nemea, the skin of which Hercules was ordered to bring to Mycenæ. After using in vain his club and arrows against the lion, Hercules strangled the animal with his hands and returned, carrying its carcass on his shoulders; but Eurystheus, frightened at the sight and at this proof of the prodigious strength of the hero, ordered him to deliver the account of his exploits, in future, outside the town.

His second labor was the slaughter of the Hydra, a water serpent that ravaged the country of Argos and dwelt in a swamp near the well of Amymone. It had nine heads, of which the middle one was immortal. Hercules struck off the heads with his club; but in the place of each dispatched, two new ones appeared. At last, with the assistance of his faithful nephew Iolaüs, he burned away the other heads of the Hydra and buried the ninth, which was immortal, under a rock.

His third labor was the capture of a boar that haunted Mount Erymanthus in Arcadia. The adventure was, in itself, successful. But on the same journey Hercules made the friendship of the centaur Pholus, who, receiving him hospitably, poured out for him without stint the choicest wine that the centaurs possessed. As a consequence, Hercules became involved in a broil with the other centaurs of the mountain. Unfortunately his friend Pholus, drawing one of the arrows of Hercules from a brother centaur, wounded himself therewith and died of the poison.

The fourth labor of Hercules was the capture of a wonderful stag of golden antlers and brazen hoofs, that ranged the hills of Cerynea, between Arcadia and Achaia.

His fifth labor was the destruction of the Stymphalian birds, which with cruel beaks and sharp talons harassed the inhabitants of the valley of Stymphalus, devouring many of them.

His sixth labor was the cleaning of the Augean stables. Augeas, king of Elis, had a herd of three thousand oxen, whose stalls had not been cleansed for thirty years. Hercules, bringing the rivers Alpheüs and Peneüs through them, purified them thoroughly in one day.

His seventh labor was the overthrow of the Cretan bull,--an awful but beautiful brute, at once a gift and a curse bestowed by Neptune upon Minos of Crete.[215] This monster Hercules brought to Mycenæ.

His eighth labor was the removal of the horses of Diomedes, king of Thrace. These horses subsisted on human flesh, were swift and fearful. Diomedes, attempting to retain them, was killed by Hercules and given to the horses to devour. They were then delivered to Eurystheus; but, escaping, they roamed the hills of Arcadia, till the wild beasts of Apollo tore them to pieces.

His ninth labor was of a more delicate character. Admeta, the daughter of Eurystheus, desired the girdle of the queen of the Amazons, and Eurystheus ordered Hercules to get it. The Amazons were a nation dominated by warlike women, and in their hands were many cities. It was their custom to bring up only the female children, whom they hardened by martial discipline; the boys were either dispatched to the neighboring nations or put to death. Hippolyta, the queen, received Hercules kindly and consented to yield him the girdle; but Juno, taking the form of an Amazon, persuaded the people that the strangers were carrying off their queen. They instantly armed and beset the ship. Whereupon Hercules, thinking that Hippolyta had acted treacherously, slew her and, taking her girdle, made sail homeward.

The tenth task enjoined upon him was to capture for Eurystheus the oxen of Geryon, a monster with three bodies, who dwelt in the island Erythea (the red),--so called because it lay in the west, under the rays of the setting sun. This description is thought to apply to Spain, of which Geryon was king. After traversing various countries, Hercules reached at length the frontiers of Libya and Europe, where he raised the two mountains of Abyla and Calpe as monuments of his progress,--the Pillars of Hercules; or, according to another account, rent one mountain into two and left half on each side, forming the Strait of Gibraltar. The oxen were guarded by the giant Eurytion and his two-headed dog, but Hercules killed the warders and conveyed the oxen in safety to Eurystheus.

One of the most difficult labors was the eleventh,--the robbery of the golden apples of the Hesperides. Hercules did not know where to find them; but after various adventures, arrived at Mount Atlas in Africa. Since Atlas was the father of the Hesperides, Hercules thought he might through him obtain the apples. The hero, accordingly, taking the burden of the heavens on his own shoulders,[216] sent Atlas to seek the apples. The giant returned with them and proposed to take them himself to Eurystheus. "Even so," said Hercules; "but, pray, hold this load for me a moment, while I procure a pad to ease my shoulders." Unsuspectingly the giant resumed the burden of the heavens. Hercules took the apples.

His twelfth exploit was to fetch Cerberus from the lower world. To this end he descended into Hades, accompanied by Mercury and Minerva. There he obtained permission from Pluto to carry Cerberus to the upper air, provided he could do it without the use of weapons. In spite of the monster's struggling he seized him, held him fast, carried him to Eurystheus, and afterward restored him to the lower regions. While in Hades, Hercules also obtained the liberty of Theseus, his admirer and imitator, who had been detained there for an attempt at abducting Proserpine.[217]

After his return from Hades to his native Thebes, he renounced his wife Megara, for, having slain his children by her in his fit of madness, he looked upon the marriage as displeasing to the gods.

Two other exploits not recorded among the twelve labors are the victories over Antæus and Cacus. Antæus, the son of Poseidon and Gæa, was a giant and wrestler whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth. He compelled all strangers who came to his country to wrestle with him, on condition that if conquered, they should suffer death.

Hercules encountered him and, finding that it was of no avail to throw him,--for he always rose with renewed strength from every fall,--lifted him up from the earth and strangled him in the air.

Later writers tell of an army of Pygmies which, finding Hercules asleep after his defeat of Antæus, made preparations to attack him, as if they were about to attack a city. But the hero, awakening, laughed at the little warriors, wrapped some of them up in his lion's skin, and carried them to Eurystheus.

Cacus was a giant who inhabited a cave on Mount Aventine and plundered the surrounding country. When Hercules was driving home the oxen of Geryon, Cacus stole part of the cattle while the hero slept. That their footprints might not indicate where they had been driven, he dragged them backward by their tails to his cave. Hercules was deceived by the stratagem and would have failed to find his oxen, had it not happened that while he was driving the remainder of the herd past the cave where the stolen ones were concealed, those within, beginning to low, discovered themselves to him. Hercules promptly dispatched the thief.

Through most of these expeditions Hercules was attended by Iolaüs, his devoted friend, the son of his half brother Iphicles.

=158. His Later Exploits.= On the later exploits of the hero we can dwell but briefly. Having, in a fit of madness, killed his friend Iphitus, he was condemned for the offense to spend three years as the slave of Queen Omphale. He lived effeminately, wearing at times the dress of a woman and spinning wool with the handmaidens of Omphale, while the queen wore his lion's skin. But during this period he contrived to engage in about as many adventures as would fill the life of an ordinary hero. He rescued Daphnis from Lityerses and threw the bloodthirsty king[218] into the river Mæander; he discovered the body of Icarus[219] and buried it; he joined the company of Argonauts, who were on their way to Colchis to secure the golden fleece, and he captured the thievish gnomes, called Cercopes. Two of these grotesque rascals had made off with the weapons of Hercules while he was sleeping. When he had caught them he strapped them, knees upward, to a yoke and so bore them away. Their drollery, however, regained them their liberty. It is said that some of them having once deceived Jupiter were changed to apes.

=159. The Loss of Hylas.=[220] In the Argonautic adventure Hercules was attended by a lad, Hylas, whom he tenderly loved and on whose account he deserted the expedition in Mysia; for Hylas had been stolen by the Naiads.

... Never was Heracles apart from Hylas, not when midnoon was high in heaven, not when Dawn with her white horses speeds upwards to the dwelling of Zeus, not when the twittering nestlings look towards the perch, while their mother flaps her wings above the smoke-browned beam; and all this that the lad might be fashioned to his mind, and might drive a straight furrow, and come to the true measure of man....

And Hylas of the yellow hair, with a vessel of bronze in his hand, went to draw water against supper-time for Heracles himself and the steadfast Telamon, for these comrades twain supped ever at one table. Soon was he ware of a spring in a hollow land, and the rushes grew thickly round it, and dark swallowwort, and green maidenhair, and blooming parsley, and deer grass spreading through the marshy land. In the midst of the water the nymphs were arranging their dances,--the sleepless nymphs, dread goddesses of the country people, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia, with her April eyes. And now the boy was holding out the wide-mouthed pitcher to the water, intent on dipping it; but the nymphs all clung to his hand, for love of the Argive lad had fluttered the soft hearts of all of them. Then down he sank into the black water, headlong all, as when a star shoots flaming from the sky, plumb in the deep it falls; and a mate shouts out to the seamen, "Up with the gear, my lads, the wind is fair for sailing."

Then the nymphs held the weeping boy on their laps, and with gentle words were striving to comfort him. But the son of Amphitryon was troubled about the lad, and went forth, carrying his bended bow in Scythian fashion, and the club that is ever grasped in his right hand. Thrice he shouted, "Hylas!" as loud as his deep throat could call, and thrice again the boy heard him, and thrice came his voice from the water, and, hard by though he was, he seemed very far away. And as when a bearded lion, a ravening lion on the hills, hears the bleating of a fawn afar off and rushes forth from his lair to seize it, his readiest meal, even so the mighty Heracles, in longing for the lad, sped through the trackless briars and ranged over much country.

Reckless are lovers: great toils did Heracles bear, in hills and thickets wandering; and Jason's quest was all postponed to this....

Thus loveliest Hylas is numbered with the Blessed; but for a runaway they girded at Heracles--the heroes--because he roamed from Argo of the sixty oarsmen. But on foot he came to Colchis and inhospitable Phasis.

=160. The Rescue of Daphnis.=[221] Daphnis was the ideal Sicilian shepherd and to him was ascribed the invention of pastoral story and song. His father was Hermes (Mercury); his mother, a nymph who laid him when an infant in a charming valley in a laurel grove from which he received his name,[222] and on account of which Apollo loved him and endowed him with the gift of idyllic verse. He was brought up by nymphs and shepherds, and, avoiding the noisy haunts of men, he tended his flocks on Mount Ætna, winter and summer. He loved a maiden named Piplea, but she was borne away by robbers. He followed them to Phrygia, and there found his sweetheart in the power of the king of that realm, Lityerses. This Lityerses had a pleasant custom of making strangers try a contest with him in reaping corn. If he overcame them, he cut off their heads in the evening and concealed their bodies in the sheaves, singing a comfortable song meanwhile. In order to win back Piplea, Daphnis entered upon the reaping contest with the king and made himself comfortable, too, by singing a harvest song meanwhile. But Lityerses surpassed him at the work and was about to put him to death, singing no doubt a comfortable song of the reaper, Death, meanwhile,--when suddenly Hercules appeared upon the scene. He doesn't seem to have spent much time singing: he assured Daphnis of his head by cutting off that of the pleasant king; and then he threw the body into the river Mæander. Daphnis regained his Piplea and one would suppose that they lived happy ever after. Another story, unfortunately, relates events in which Piplea's name does not occur. A Naiad fell in love with the handsome shepherd and made him promise eternal fidelity to her, threatening him with blindness if he violated his vow. It was hard for poor Daphnis, for nearly every lass he met made love to him. At last a princess intoxicated him and he forgot his vow. Immediately the Naiad showed the quality of her love by striking him blind. He consoled himself for a while by singing his songs and playing the flute as he wandered from place to place. Then weary, he called on his father for aid. Mercury accordingly transported him to heaven and caused a well to gush forth on the spot from which he ascended. Here the Sicilians offered yearly sacrifice in his honor.

Theocritus gives us a Lityerses song as he undoubtedly used to hear it sung by the harvesters of the country-side in Sicily:[223]

Demeter, rich in fruit and rich in grain, may this corn be easy to win and fruitful exceedingly! Bind, ye binders, the sheaves, lest the wayfarer should cry, "Men of straw were the workers here; aye, and their hire was wasted!" See that the cut stubble faces the North wind, or the West;--'tis thus that the grain waxes richest. They that thresh corn should shun the noonday sleep; at noon the chaff parts easiest from the straw. As for the reapers, let them begin when the crested lark is waking, and cease when he sleeps, but take holiday in the heat. Lads, the frog has a jolly life: he is not cumbered about a butler to his drink; for he has liquor by him unstinted! Boil the lentils better, thou miserly steward; take heed lest thou chop thy fingers, when thou'rt splitting cummin seed.

When Matthew Arnold is writing of the death of his dear friend, the poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, who died in Italy,[224] he says:

And now in happier air, Wandering with the great Mother's train divine.... Within a folding of the Apennine,

Thou hearest the immortal chants of old! Putting his sickle to the perilous grain In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, For thee the Lityerses song again Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing; Sings his Sicilian fold, His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes:-- And how a call celestial round him rang, And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang,-- And all the marvel of the golden skies!

=161. The Expedition against Laomedon.= After his servitude under Omphale was ended, Hercules sailed with eighteen ships against Troy. For Laomedon, king of that realm, had refused to give Hercules the horses of Neptune, which he had promised in gratitude for the rescue of his daughter Hesione from the sea-monster.[225] The hero, overcoming Troy, placed a son of Laomedon, Priam, upon the throne, and gave Hesione to Telamon, who, with Peleus, Oïcles, and other Greek heroes, had accompanied him. Also worthy of mention among the exploits of Hercules were his successful expeditions against Pylos and Sparta, his victory over the giants, his struggle with Death for the body and life of Alcestis,[226] and his delivery, according to prophecy, of Prometheus, who until that time had remained in chains upon the Caucasian Mountains.[227]

=162. The Death of Hercules.= Finally, the hero married Dejanira, daughter of [OE]neus of Calydon and sister of Meleager of the Calydonian hunt. With her he lived three prosperous years. But on one occasion, as they journeyed together, they came to a river across which the centaur Nessus carried travelers for a stated fee. Hercules proceeded to ford the river and gave Dejanira to Nessus to be carried across. Nessus, however, attempted to make off with her; whereupon Hercules, hearing her cries, shot an arrow into his heart. The centaur, as he died, bade Dejanira take a portion of his blood and keep it, saying that it might be used as a charm to preserve the love of her husband. Dejanira did so. Before long, jealous of Hercules' fondness for Iole of [OE]chalia, a captive maiden, she steeped a sacrificial robe of her husband's in the blood of Nessus. As soon as the garment became warm on the body of Hercules, the poison penetrated his limbs. In his frenzy he seized Lichas, who had brought him the fatal robe, and hurled him into the sea; then tried to wrench off the garment, but it stuck to his flesh and tore away whole pieces of his body.

Alcides, from [OE]chalia crowned With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore, Through pain, up by the roots Thessalian pines, And Lichas from the top of [OE]ta threw Into the Euboic Sea.[228]

In this state he embarked on board a ship and was conveyed home. Dejanira, on seeing what she had unwittingly done, hanged herself. Hercules, prepared to die, ascended Mount [OE]ta, where he built a funeral pile of trees, gave his bow and arrows to Philoctetes,[229] and laid himself upon the pile, his head resting on his club and his lion's skin spread over him. With a countenance as serene as if he were taking his place at a festal board, he commanded Philoctetes to apply the torch. The flames spread apace, and soon invested the whole mass.[230]

The gods themselves grieved to see the champion of the earth so brought to his end. But Jupiter took care that only his mother's part in him should perish by the flames. The immortal element, derived from Jupiter himself, was translated to heaven; and by the consent of the gods--even of reluctant Juno--Hercules was admitted as a deity to the ranks of the immortals. The white-armed queen of heaven was finally reconciled to the offspring of Alcmene. She adopted him for her son and gave him in marriage her daughter Hebe.

Deep degraded to a coward's slave, Endless contests bore Alcides brave, Through the thorny path of suffering led; Slew the Hydra, crushed the lion's might, Threw himself, to bring his friend to light, Living, in the skiff that bears the dead. All the torments, every toil of earth, Juno's hatred on him could impose, Well he bore them, from his fated birth To life's grandly mournful close.

Till the god, the earthly part forsaken, From the man in flames asunder taken, Drank the heavenly ether's purer breath. Joyous in the new unwonted lightness, Soared he upwards to celestial brightness, Earth's dark heavy burden lost in death. High Olympus gives harmonious greeting To the hall where reigns his sire adored; Youth's bright goddess, with a blush at meeting, Gives the nectar to her lord.[231]

In the tragedy called The Maidens of Trachis, Sophocles describes this hero as "The noblest man of all the earth, of whom thou ne'er shalt see the like again." To some of us the manner of his earthly end may seem unworthy; but the Greek poets teach that, in the unabated vigor of one's powers, serenely to meet and accept one's doom is the happiest death. This view is well expressed by Matthew Arnold in the following fragment of a Greek chorus sung with reference to the death of Hercules:

O frivolous mind of man, Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts! Though man bewails you not, How I bewail you!...

For you will not put on New hearts with the inquirer's holy robe, And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end Of toil and dolor untold, The Gods have said that repose At last shall descend undisturb'd-- Him you expect to behold In an easy old age, in a happy home; No end but this you praise.

But him, on whom, in the prime Of life, with vigor undimm'd, With unspent mind, and a soul Unworn, undebased, undecay'd, Mournfully grating, the gates Of the city of death have forever closed-- Him, I count him, well-starr'd.[232]

Here we take leave for a time of the descendants of Inachus. We shall revert to them in the stories of Minos of Crete and of the house of Labdacus.

FOOTNOTES:

[199] § 21, and Commentary, § 57.

[200] For references to genealogical tables, see Commentary, § 148.

[201] Apollodorus, 2, 1, § 5, etc.; Pausanias; Ovid, Heroides, 14; Horace, Odes, 3; 11; 23.

[202] Simonides of Ceos, also Apollodorus, Pausanias, and Hyginus (Fables).

[203] Ovid, Metam. 4, 608-739; 5, 1-249.

[204] For Gorgons and Grææ, see § 52.

[205] William Morris, The Doom of King Acrisius, in The Earthly Paradise.

[206] William Morris, The Doom of King Acrisius, in The Earthly Paradise.

[207] From Shelley's lines On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.

[208] Milton, Il Penseroso, l. 19.

[209] From Charles Kingsley's Andromeda.

[210] Milman, Samor.

[211] Milton, Comus.

[212] Iliad, 6, 155-202; Apollodorus, 1, 9, § 3; Horace, Odes, 4; 11; 26.

[213] See Commentary, §§ 103, 155.

[214] Authorities are Homer,--Iliad and Odyssey; Theocritus 24; 25, etc.; Apollodorus, 2, 4, § 7, etc.; Sophocles, Women of Trachis; Euripides, Hercules Furens; Ovid, Metam. 9, 102-272; Seneca,--Hercules Furens and [OE]tæus; Hyginus, etc.

[215] § 172.

[216] Atlas and the heavens, § 153.

[217] § 180.

[218] § 160.

[219] § 173.

[220] Theocritus. Idyl XIII (Lang's translation).

[221] Theocritus, Idyl X, 41, and the Scholia; Virgil, Bucol. 5; 8; 10; and Comments.

[222] See the story of Daphne.

[223] Theocritus, Idyl X (Lang's translation).

[224] Thyrsis.

[225] § 119.

[226] § 83.

[227] § 15.

[228] Milton.

[229] See § 220. According to Sophocles, Philoctetes' father P[oe]as applied the torch.

[230] See the spirited poems, Deïaneira and Herakles, in the classical, but too little read, Epic of Hades, by Lewis Morris.

[231] Schiller's Ideal and Life. Translated by S. G. Bulfinch, brother of Thomas Bulfinch.

[232] From Fragment of Chorus of a "Dejaneira."

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XV. THE FAMILY OF ÆOLUS

=163. Descendants of Deucalion.= Athamas, brother of Sisyphus, was descended from Æolus, whose father, Hellen, was the son of Deucalion of Thessaly. Athamas had by his wife Nephele two children, Phrixus and Helle. After a time, growing indifferent to his wife, Athamas put her away and took Ino, the daughter of Cadmus. The unfortunate sequel of this second marriage we have already seen.[233]

Nephele, apprehending danger to her children from the influence of their stepmother, took measures to put them out of her reach. Mercury gave her a ram with a golden fleece, on which she set the two children. Vaulting into the air, the animal took his course to the east; but when he was crossing the strait that divides Europe and Asia, the girl Helle fell from his back into the sea, which from her was afterward called the Hellespont--now the Dardanelles. The ram safely landed the boy Phrixus in Colchis, where he was hospitably received by Æetes, the king of that country. Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Jupiter, but the fleece he gave to Æetes, who placed it in a consecrated grove under the care of a sleepless dragon.[234]

=164. The Quest of the Golden Fleece.=[235] Another realm in Thessaly, near to that of Athamas, was ruled over by his nephew Æson. Æson, although he had a son Jason, surrendered the crown to a half brother, Pelias,[236] on condition that he should hold it only during the minority of the lad. This young Jason was, by the way, a second cousin of Bellerophon and of the Atalanta who ran against Hippomenes, and a first cousin of Admetus, the husband of Alcestis.[237] When, however, Jason, being grown up, came to demand the crown, his uncle Pelias with wily intent suggested to him the glorious quest of the golden fleece. Jason, pleased with the thought, forthwith made preparations for the expedition. At that time the only species of navigation known to the Greeks consisted of small boats or canoes hollowed out from trunks of trees; when, accordingly, Jason employed Argus to build a vessel capable of containing fifty men, it was considered a gigantic undertaking. The vessel was named Argo, probably after its builder. Jason soon found himself at the head of a bold band of comrades, many of whom afterward were renowned among the heroes and demigods of Greece.

From every region of Ægea's shore The brave assembled; those illustrious twins Castor and Pollux; Orpheus, tuneful bard; Zetes and Calaïs, as the wind in speed; Strong Hercules and many a chief renowned. On deep Iolcos' sandy shore they thronged, Gleaming in armor, ardent of exploits,-- And soon, the laurel cord and the huge stone Uplifting to the deck, unmoored the bark; Whose keel of wondrous length the skillful hand Of Argus fashioned for the proud attempt; And in the extended keel a lofty mast Upraised, and sails full swelling; to the chiefs Unwonted objects. Now first, now they learned Their bolder steerage over ocean wave, Led by the golden stars, as Chiron's art Had marked the sphere celestial.[238]

Theseus, Meleager, Peleus, and Nestor were also among these Argonauts, or sailors of the Argo. The ship with her crew of heroes left the shores of Thessaly, and touching at the island of Lemnos, thence crossed to Mysia and thence to Thrace. Here they found the sage Phineus, who instructed the Argonauts how they might pass the Symplegades, or Clashing Islands, at the entrance of the Euxine Sea. When they reached these islands they, accordingly, let go a dove, which took her way between the rocks and passed in safety, only losing some feathers of her tail. Jason and his men, seizing the favorable moment of the rebound, plied their oars with vigor and passed safe through, though the islands closed behind them and actually grazed the stern of the vessel. They then rowed along the shore till they arrived at the eastern end of the sea, and so landed in the kingdom of Colchis.

Jason made known his message to the Colchian king, Æetes, who consented to give up the golden fleece on certain conditions, namely, that Jason should yoke to the plow two fire-breathing bulls with brazen feet, and that he then should sow the teeth of the dragon that Cadmus had slain. Jason, although it was well known that a crop of armed men would spring up from the teeth, destined to turn their weapons against their producer, accepted the conditions, and a time was set for the undertaking. The hero, however, wisely spent the interval in wooing Medea, the daughter of Æetes; and with such success that they plighted troth before the altar of Hecate. The princess then furnished her hero with a charm which should aid him in the contest to come.

Accordingly, when the momentous day was arrived, Jason with calmness encountered the fire-breathing monsters and speedily yoked them to the plow. The Colchians stood in amazement; the Greeks shouted for joy. Next, the hero proceeded to sow the dragon's teeth and plow them in. Up sprang, according to prediction, the crop of armed men, brandished aloft their weapons, and rushed upon Jason. The Greeks trembled for their hero. Medea herself grew pale with fear. The hero himself for a time, with sword and shield, kept his assailants at bay; but he surely would have been overwhelmed by the numbers, had he not resorted to a charm which Medea had taught him: seizing a stone, he threw it in the midst of his foes. Immediately they turned their arms against one another, and soon there was not one of the dragon's brood alive.

It remained only to lull to sleep the dragon that guarded the fleece. This was done by scattering over him a few drops of a preparation which, again, Medea had supplied. Jason then seized the fleece, and, with his friends and his sweetheart accompanying, hastened to the vessel. It is said that, in order to delay the pursuit of her father Æetes, Medea tore to pieces her young brother Absyrtus and strewed fragments of him along the line of their flight. The ruse succeeded.

=165. The Return of the Argonauts.= On their way home the Argonauts beat a devious course, sailing after other dangers had been overcome, by the island that the Sirens infested. And here the heroes would have hung their halsers and remained, had not Orpheus vanquished the seductive strains of the sea-muses with his own more melodious and persuasive song.[239]

Oh, happy seafarers are ye And surely all your ills are past, And toil upon the land and sea, Since ye are brought to us at last;

chanted the Sirens, promising long rest and the kingdoms of sleep.

But now, but now, when ye have lain Asleep with us a little while Beneath the washing of the main, How calm shall be your waking smile!

Then Orpheus replied, encouraging his men:

A little more, a little more, O carriers of the Golden Fleece! A little labor with the oar, Before we reach the land of Greece.

E'en now, perchance, faint rumors reach Men's ears of this our victory, And draw them down upon the beach To gaze across the empty sea.

Again the Sirens:

Alas! and will ye stop your ears, In vain desire to do aught, And wish to live 'mid cares and fears, Until the last fear makes you nought?

But Orpheus, reminding the rowers of home and love and joy:

Is not the May-time now on earth, When close against the city wall The folks are singing in their mirth, While on their heads the May flowers fall?

carried them past triumphant.

The Argonauts arrived safe in Thessaly. Jason delivered the fleece to Pelias, and dedicated the Argo to Neptune.

=166. Medea and Æson.=[240] Medea's career as a sorceress was, by no means, completed. At Jason's request she undertook next to restore his aged father Æson to the vigor of youth. To the full moon she addressed her incantations, to the stars, to Hecate, to Tellus, the goddess of the earth. In a chariot borne aloft by dragons she traversed the fields of air to regions where flourished potent plants, which only she knew how to select. Nine nights she employed in her search, and during that period shunned all intercourse with mortals.

Next she erected two altars, the one to Hecate, the other to Hebe, and sacrificed a black sheep,--pouring libations of milk and wine. She implored Pluto and his stolen bride to spare the old man's life. Then she directed that Æson be led forth; and throwing him into a deep sleep, she laid him on a bed of herbs, like one dead. No eye profane looked upon her mysteries. With streaming hair thrice she moved round the altars, dipped flaming twigs in the blood, and laid them thereon to burn. Meanwhile, the caldron with its contents was preparing. In it she put magic herbs, with seeds and flowers of acrid juice, stones from the distant East, and sand from the shore of all-surrounding ocean, hoar-frost gathered by moonlight, a screech owl's head and wings, and the entrails of a wolf. She added fragments of the shells of tortoises and the liver of stags--animals tenacious of life--and the head and beak of a crow, which outlives nine generations of men. These, with many other things "without a name," she boiled together for her purposed work, stirring them with a dry olive branch. The branch, when taken out, instantly was green and erelong was covered with leaves and a plentiful growth of young olives; and as the liquor boiled and bubbled and sometimes bubbled over, the grass wherever the sprinklings fell leaped into verdure like that of spring.

Seeing that all was ready, Medea cut the throat of the old man, let out his blood, and poured into his mouth and his wound the juices of her caldron. As soon as he had completely imbibed them, his hair and beard lost their whiteness and assumed the color of youth; his paleness and emaciation were gone; his veins were full of blood, his limbs of vigor and robustness; and Æson, on awakening, found himself forty years younger.

=167. Pelias.=[241] In another instance, Medea made her arts the instrument of revenge. Pelias, the usurping uncle of Jason, still kept him out of his heritage. But the daughters of Pelias wished Medea to restore their father also to youth. Medea simulated consent, but prepared her caldron for him in a new and singular way. She put in only water and a few simple herbs. In the night she persuaded the daughters of Pelias to kill him. They at first hesitated to strike, but Medea chiding their irresolution, they turned away their faces and, giving random blows, smote him with their weapons. Starting from his sleep, the old man cried out, "My daughters, would you kill your father?" Whereat their hearts failed them, and the weapons fell from their hands. Medea, however, struck the fatal blow.

They placed him in the caldron, but, as might be expected, with no success. Medea herself had taken care to escape before they discovered the treachery. She had, however, little profit of the fruits of her crime. Jason, for whom she had sacrificed so much, put her away, for he wished to marry Creüsa, princess of Corinth. Whereupon Medea, enraged at his ingratitude, called on the gods for vengeance; then, sending a poisoned robe as a gift to the bride, killing her own children, and setting fire to the palace, she mounted her serpent-drawn chariot and fled to Athens. There she married King Ægeus, the father of Theseus; and we shall meet her again when we come to the adventures of that hero.[242]

The incantation of Medea readily suggests that of the witches in Macbeth:

Round about the caldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw.-- Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmèd pot.... Fillet of a fenny snake In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,-- For a charm of powerful trouble Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.... Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digged i' the dark.... Make the gruel thick and slab.[243]

FOOTNOTES:

[233] § 144.

[234] Apollodorus, 1, 9, § 1; Apollonius Rhodius, 1, 927.

[235] Ovid, Metam. 6, 667; 7, 143. The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes.

[236] See § 120.

[237] See Table G, Commentary, § 103.

[238] Dyer, The Fleece.

[239] William Morris, Life and Death of Jason.

[240] Ovid, Metam. 7, 143-293.

[241] Ovid, Metam. 7, 297-353.

[242] § 176.

[243] Macbeth, IV, i. Consult.

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XVI. THE FAMILY OF ÆTOLUS AND ITS CONNECTIONS

=168. The Calydonian Hunt.=[244] One of the heroes of the Argonautic expedition had been Meleager, a son of [OE]neus and Althæa, rulers of Calydon in Ætolia. His parents were cousins, descended from a son of Endymion named Ætolus, who had colonized that realm. By ties of kinship and marriage they were allied with many historic figures. Their daughter Dejanira had become, as we have already noted, the wife of Hercules; while Leda, the sister of Althæa, was mother of Castor and Pollux,[245] and of Clytemnestra and Helen, intimately concerned in the Trojan War.

When her son Meleager was born, Althæa had beheld the three Destinies, who, as they spun their fatal thread, foretold that the life of the child should last no longer than a certain brand then burning upon the hearth. Althæa seized and quenched the brand, and carefully preserved it while Meleager grew to boyhood, youth, and man's estate. It chanced, then, that [OE]neus, offering sacrifices to the gods, omitted to pay due honors to Diana; wherefore she, indignant at the neglect, sent a boar of enormous size to lay waste the fields of Calydon. Meleager called on the heroes of Greece to join in a hunt for the ravenous monster. Theseus and his friend Pirithoüs,[246] Jason, Peleus the father of Achilles, Telamon the father of Ajax, Nestor, then a youth, but who in his age bore arms with Achilles and Ajax in the Trojan War,[247]--these and many more joined in the enterprise. With them came, also, Atalanta, the daughter of Iasius, of the race of Callisto,--

Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled, Fair as the snow and footed as the wind.[248]

A buckle of polished gold confined her vest, an ivory quiver hung on her left shoulder, and her left hand bore the bow. Her face blended feminine beauty with the graces of martial youth. Meleager saw and, with chivalric reverence, somewhat thus addressed her:

For thy name's sake and awe toward thy chaste head, O holiest Atalanta! no man dares Praise thee, though fairer than whom all men praise, And godlike for thy grace of hallowed hair And holy habit of thine eyes, and feet That make the blown foam neither swift nor white, Though the wind winnow and whirl it; yet we praise Gods, found because of thee adorable And for thy sake praiseworthiest from all men: Thee therefore we praise also, thee as these, Pure, and a light lit at the hands of gods.[249]

But there was no time then for love; on to the hunt they pushed. To the hunt went also Plexippus and Toxeus, brothers of Queen Althæa, braggarts, envious of Meleager. Speedily the hunters drew near the monster's lair. They stretched strong nets from tree to tree; they uncoupled their dogs; they sought the footprints of their quarry in the grass. From the wood was a descent to marshy ground. Here the boar, as he lay among the reeds, heard the shouts of his pursuers and rushed forth against them. One and another is thrown down and slain. Jason, Nestor, Telamon open the attack, but in vain.

... Then all abode save one, The Arcadian Atalanta: from her side Sprang her hounds, laboring at the leash, and slipped, And plashed ear-deep with plunging feet; but she Saying, "Speed it as I send it for thy sake, Goddess," drew bow and loosed; the sudden string Rang, and sprang inward, and the waterish air Hissed, and the moist plumes of the songless reeds Moved as a wave which the wind moves no more. But the boar heaved half out of ooze and slime, His tense flank trembling round the barbèd wound, Hateful; and fiery with invasive eyes, And bristling with intolerable hair, Plunged, and the hounds clung, and green flowers and white Reddened and broke all round them where they came.[1]

It was a slight wound, but Meleager saw and joyfully proclaimed it. The attack was renewed. Peleus, Amphiaraüs, Theseus, Jason, hurled their lances. Ancæus was laid low by a mortal wound. But Meleager,--

Rock-rooted, fair with fierce and fastened lips, Clear eyes and springing muscle and shortening limb-- With chin aslant indrawn to a tightening throat, Grave, and with gathered sinews, like a god,-- Aimed on the left side his well-handled spear, Grasped where the ash was knottiest hewn, and smote, And with no missile wound, the monstrous boar Right in the hairiest hollow of his hide, Under the last rib, sheer through bulk and bone, Deep in; and deeply smitten, and to death, The heavy horror with his hanging shafts Leapt, and fell furiously, and from raging lips Foamed out the latest wrath of all his life.[250]

Then rose a shout from those around; they glorified the conqueror,--crowded to touch his hand. But he, placing his foot upon the head of the slain boar, turned to Atalanta, and bestowed on her the head and the rough hide--trophies of his success. Thereat she laughed--

Lit with a low blush to the braided hair, And rose-colored and cold like very dawn, Golden and godlike, chastely with chaste lips, A faint grave laugh; and all they held their peace, And she passed by them. Then one cried, "Lo now, Shall not the Arcadian shoot out lips at us, Saying all we were despoiled by this one girl?" And all they rode against her violently And cast the fresh crown from her hair, and now They had rent her spoil away, dishonoring her, Save that Meleager, as a tame lion chafed, Bore on them, broke them, and as fire cleaves wood, So clove and drove them, smitten in twain; but she Smote not nor heaved up hand; and this man first, Plexippus, crying out, "This for love's sake, Sweet," Drove at Meleager, who with spear straightening Pierced his cheek through; then Toxeus made for him, Dumb, but his spear shake; vain and violent words, Fruitless; for him, too, stricken through both sides The earth felt falling.... ... And these being slain, None moved, nor spake.[251]

Of this fearful sequel to the hunt, Althæa has heard nothing. As she bears thank offering to the temples for the victory of her son, the bodies of her murdered brothers meet her sight. She shrieks, and beats her breast, and hastens to change the garments of joy for those of mourning. But when the author of the deed is known, grief gives way to the stern desire of vengeance on her son. The fatal brand, which the Destinies have linked with Meleager's life, she brings forth. She commands a fire to be prepared. Four times she essays to place the brand upon the pile; four times draws back, shuddering before the destruction of her son. The feelings of the mother and the sister contend within her. Now she is pale at the thought of the purposed deed, now flushed again with anger at the violence of her offspring. Finally, the sister prevails over the mother:--turning away her face, she throws the fatal wood upon the burning pile. Meleager, absent and unconscious of the cause, feels a sudden pang. He burns; he calls upon those whom he loves, Atalanta and his mother. But speedily the brand is ashes, and the life of Meleager is breathed forth to the wandering winds.

When at last the deed was done, the mother laid violent hands upon herself.

=169. Merope.= A heroine connected by blood with Atalanta was Merope,[252] daughter of king Cypselus of Arcadia, and descended from Arcas, the son of Callisto and Jupiter. On account of her relationship to Atalanta her story may be told here, though she is not a member of the family of Ætolus. Her husband, Cresphontes the Heraclid, king of Messenia, had been slain with two of his sons by rebellious nobles; and one Polyphontes, leader of the revolt, reigned in his stead and took Merope to wife. But her third son by Cresphontes, Æpytus, had been concealed by her in Arcadia. Thence, in due season, he returned unknown to her, with the purpose of wreaking vengeance on the murderers of his sire. He pretended to have slain Æpytus, and so as a stranger won the favor of Polyphontes, but came near losing his life at his mother's hands. A recognition being happily effected, Æpytus, aided by his mother, put Polyphontes to death and took possession of the kingdom. This story has been frequently dramatized, first by Euripides in a lost play called Cresphontes, and most recently by Matthew Arnold, whose Merope is a masterpiece of classical invention and of poetic execution.

=170. Castor and Pollux.= Leda, the sister of Althæa and aunt of Meleager, bore to Tyndareus, king of Sparta, Castor and Clytemnestra. To Jove she bore Pollux and Helen. Pollux and Castor--one, the son of a god and immortal, the other, of mortal breed and destiny--are famous for their fraternal affection. Endowed with various manly virtues,--Castor a horse-tamer, Pollux a boxer,--they made all expeditions in common. Together they joined the Calydonian hunt. Together they accompanied the Argonauts. During the voyage to Colchis it is said that, a storm arising, Orpheus prayed to the Samothracian gods and played on his harp, and that when the storm ceased, stars appeared on the heads of the brothers. Hence they came to be honored as patrons of voyagers.

They rendered, indeed, noteworthy service to the Argonauts returning from Colchis with Medea and the Golden Fleece. For when the voyagers attempted a landing at Crete they were confronted by the gigantic warder of the island. This was Talus, a form of living brass, fashioned by Hephæstus (Vulcan) and presented to King Minos, about whose Cretan domain he made his rounds three times a day. Ordinarily when Talus saw voyagers nearing the coast he fired himself red-hot and embraced them as they landed. For some reason he did not welcome the Argonauts in this warm fashion, but

Whirling with resistless sway Rocks sheer uprent, repels them from the bay.[1]

Medea, objecting to the volley of stones, resorts to necromantic spells:

Thrice she applies the power of magic prayer, Thrice, hellward bending, mutters charms in air; Then, turning toward the foe, bids Mischief fly, And looks Destruction as she points her eye.[253]

Maddened, as might be surmised, by so insidious and unaccustomed a form of attack, the Man of Brass "tears up whole hills to crush his foes"; then fleeing in sudden panic, he is overcome by the stupor of the enchantment and taken captive by Castor and Pollux. He had in his body only one vein, and that plugged on the crown of his head with a nail. Medea drew out the stopper.

At a later period when Theseus and his friend Pirithoüs had carried off Helen from Sparta, the youthful heroes, Castor and Pollux, with their followers hasted to the rescue. Theseus being absent from Attica, the brothers recovered their sister. Later still, we find Castor and Pollux engaged in a combat with Idas and Lynceus of Messene, some say over the daughters of Leucippus, others, over a herd of oxen. Castor was slain; but Pollux, inconsolable for the loss of his brother, besought Jupiter to be permitted to give his own life as a ransom for him. Jupiter so far consented as to allow the two brothers to enjoy the boon of life alternately, each spending one day under the earth and the next in the heavenly abodes. According to another version, Jupiter rewarded the attachment of the brothers by placing them among the stars as Gemini, the Twins. They received heroic honors as the Tyndaridæ (sons of Tyndareus); divine honors they received under the name of Dioscuri (sons of Jove).[254]

=171. The Twin Brethren among the Romans.= In Rome they were honored with a temple in the Forum and made the patrons of knighthood because of the assistance they rendered in the battle of Lake Regillus. In the moment of dire distress they had appeared, a princely pair:

So like they were, no mortal Might one from other know; White as snow their armor was, Their steeds were white as snow. Never on earthly anvil Did such rare armor gleam, And never did such gallant steeds Drink of an earthly stream.

And all who saw them trembled, And pale grew every cheek; And Aulus the Dictator Scarce gathered voice to speak: "Say by what name men call you? What city is your home? And wherefore ride ye in such guise Before the ranks of Rome?"

"By many names," they answered,--

"By many names men call us; In many lands we dwell: Well Samothracia knows us; Cyrene knows us well; Our house in gay Tarentum Is hung each morn with flowers; High o'er the masts of Syracuse Our marble portal towers; But by the brave Eurotas Is our dear native home; And for the right we come to fight Before the ranks of Rome."

After the battle was won they were the first to bear the tidings to the city. With joy the people acclaimed them,--

But on rode these strange horsemen, With slow and lordly pace; And none who saw their bearing Durst ask their name or race. On rode they to the Forum, While laurel boughs and flowers, From housetops and from windows, Fell on their crests in showers. When they drew nigh to Vesta, They vaulted down amain, And washed their horses in the well That springs by Vesta's fane. And straight again they mounted, And rode to Vesta's door; Then, like a blast, away they passed, And no man saw them more....

And Sergius the High Pontiff Alone found voice to speak: "The gods who live forever Have fought for Rome to-day! These be the Great Twin Brethren To whom the Dorians pray. Back comes the chief in triumph Who, in the hour of fight, Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren In harness on his right. Safe comes the ship to haven, Through billows and through gales If once the Great Twin Brethren Sit shining on the sails.... Here, hard by Vesta's temple, Build we a stately dome Unto the Great Twin Brethren Who fought so well for Rome!"[255]

For many a year the procession, in which the knights, olive-wreathed and purple-robed, marched in honor of the Twin Brethren, continued to be held; and still there stand three columns of their temple above the pool of Juturna and Vesta's ruined shrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[244] Ovid, Metam. 8, 260-546.

[245] § 170.

[246] § 180.

[247] Chapter XXI.

[248] From Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.

[249] From Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.

[250] From Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.

[251] From Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.

[252] Hyginus, Fab. 184; Apollodorus, 2, 8; Pausanias, 2, 18; 4, 3, etc.; Aristotle, Poetics, 14, 9.

[253] Apollonius Rhodius, 4, 1629 (Broome's translation). See also Apollodorus, 1; 9, 26.

[254] Hyginus, Fab. 80; Ovid, Fasti, 100. Theocritus, Idyl XXII, gives a different version.

[255] Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome, The Battle of Lake Regillus.

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XVII. THE HOUSE OF MINOS

=172. Minos of Crete= was a descendant of Inachus in the sixth generation. A son of Jupiter and Europa, he was, after death, transferred, with his brother Rhadamanthus and with King Æacus, to Hades, where the three became judges of the Shades. This is the Minos mentioned by Homer and Hesiod,--the eminent lawgiver. Of his grandson, Minos II, it is related that when aiming at the crown of Crete, he boasted of his power to obtain by prayer whatever he desired, and as a test, he implored Neptune to send him a bull for sacrifice. The bull appeared, but Minos, astonished at its great beauty, declined to sacrifice the brute. Neptune, therefore incensed, drove the bull wild,--worse still, drove Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos, wild with love of it. The wonderful brute was finally caught and overcome by Hercules, who rode it through the waves to Greece. But its offspring, the Minotaur, a monster bull-headed and man-bodied, remained for many a day a terror to Crete, till finally a famous artificer, Dædalus, constructed for him a labyrinth, with passages and turnings winding in and about like the river Mæander, so that whoever was inclosed in it might by no means find his way out. The Minotaur, roaming therein, lived upon human victims. For it is said that, after Minos had subdued Megara,[256] a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens was sent every year from Athens to Crete to feed this monster; and it was not until the days of Theseus of Athens that an end was put to both tribute and Minotaur.[257]

=173. Dædalus and Icarus.=[258] Dædalus, who abetted the love of Pasiphaë for the Cretan bull, afterwards lost the favor of Minos and was imprisoned by him. Seeing no other way of escape, the artificer made, out of feathers, wings for his son Icarus and himself, which he fastened on with wax. Then poising themselves in the air, they flew away. Icarus had been warned not to approach too near the sun, and all went well till they had passed Samos and Delos on the left and Lebynthos on the right. But then the boy, exulting in his career, soared upward. The blaze of the torrid sun softened the waxen fastening of his wings. Off they came, and down the lad dropped into the sea which after him is named Icarian, even to this day.

... With melting wax and loosened strings Sunk hapless Icarus on unfaithful wings; Headlong he rushed through the affrighted air, With limbs distorted and disheveled hair; His scattered plumage danced upon the wave, And sorrowing Nereïds decked his watery grave; O'er his pale corse their pearly sea flowers shed, And strewed with crimson moss his marble bed; Struck in their coral towers the passing bell, And wide in ocean tolled his echoing knell.[259]

The story, save for its tragic conclusion, reads like a remarkable anticipation of the exploits of the Wright brothers, Blériot, and Latham with the aëroplane to-day, or of Count Zeppelin with his airships.

Dædalus, mourning his son, arrived finally in Sicily where, being kindly received by King Cocalus, he built a temple to Apollo and hung up his wings, an offering to the god. But Minos, having learned of the hiding place of the artificer, followed him to Sicily with a great fleet; and Dædalus would surely have perished, had not one of the daughters of Cocalus disposed of Minos by scalding him to death while he was bathing.

It is said that Dædalus could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. He was an apt scholar and gave striking evidences of ingenuity. Walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish, and, imitating it in iron, invented the saw. He invented, also, a pair of compasses. But Dædalus, envious of his nephew, pushed him off a tower and killed him. Minerva, however, in pity of the boy, changed him into a bird, the partridge, which bears his name.

To the descendants of Inachus we shall again return in the account of the house of Labdacus.

FOOTNOTES:

[256] § 143.

[257] § 177. Apollodorus, 3, 1, § 3; 15, § 8; Pausanias, 1, 27, § 9, etc.; Ovid, Metam. 7, 456.

[258] Virgil, Æneid, 6, 14-36; Ovid, Metam. 8, 152-259; Hyginus, Fab. 40, 44.

[259] Erasmus Darwin.

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XVIII. THE HOUSE OF CECROPS AND ERICHTHONIUS

=174. From Cecrops[260] to Philomela.= Cecrops, half-snake, half-man, came from Crete or Egypt into Attica, founded Athens, and chose Minerva rather than Neptune as its guardian. His successor was Erichthonius,[261] or Erechtheus, a snake-formed genius of the fertile soil of Attica. This Erichthonius[262] was a special ward of the goddess Minerva, who brought him up in her temple. His son Pandion had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, of whom he gave the former in marriage to Tereus, king of Thrace (or of Daulis in Phocis). This ruler, after his wife had borne him a son Itys (or Itylus), wearied of her, plucked out her tongue by the roots to insure her silence, and, pretending that she was dead, took in marriage the other sister, Philomela. Procne by means of a web, into which she wove her story, informed Philomela of the horrible truth. In revenge upon Tereus, the sisters killed Itylus and served up the child as food to the father; but the gods, in indignation, transformed Procne into a swallow, Philomela into a nightingale, forever bemoaning the murdered Itylus, and Tereus into a hawk, forever pursuing the sisters.[263]

=175. Matthew Arnold's Philomela.=

Hark! ah, the nightingale-- The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!--what pain! O wanderer from a Grecian shore, Still, after many years in distant lands, Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain-- Say, will it never heal? And can this fragrant lawn With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine, and the dew, To thy rack'd heart and brain Afford no calm?

Dost thou to-night behold, Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Dost thou again peruse, With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes, The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more assay Thy flight, and feel come over thee, Poor fugitive, the feathery change Once more, and once more seem to make resound With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale? Listen, Eugenia-- How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again--thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!

According to another version of this story, it was Philomela who was robbed of her tongue and who wove the web by means of which the queen Procne learned the truth.

=176. Theseus.=[264] A descendant of Erechtheus, or of Cecrops, was Ægeus, king of Athens. By Æthra, granddaughter of Pelops, he became the father of the Attic hero, Theseus. Ægeus, on parting from Æthra, before the birth of the child, had placed his sword and shoes under a large stone and had directed her to send the child to him if it should prove strong enough to roll away the stone and take what was under. The lad Theseus was brought up at Tr[oe]zen, of which Pittheus, Æthra's father, was king. When Æthra thought the time had come, she led Theseus to the stone. He removed it with ease and took the sword and shoes. Since at that time the roads were infested with robbers, his grandfather Pittheus pressed him earnestly to take the shorter and safer way to his father's country, by sea; but the youth, feeling in himself the spirit and soul of a hero and eager to signalize himself like Hercules, determined on the more perilous and adventurous journey by land.

His first day's journey brought him to Epidaurus, where dwelt Periphetes, a son of Vulcan. This ferocious savage always went armed with a club of iron, and all travelers stood in terror of his violence; but beneath the blows of the young hero he speedily fell.

Several similar contests with the petty tyrants and marauders of the country followed, in all of which Theseus was victorious. Most important was his slaughter of Procrustes, or the Stretcher. This giant had an iron bedstead on which he used to tie all travelers who fell into his hands. If they were shorter than the bed, he stretched them till they fitted it; if they were longer than the bed, he lopped off their limbs.

In the course of time Theseus reached Athens, but here new dangers awaited him. For Medea, the sorceress, who had fled from Corinth after her separation from Jason,[265] had become the wife of Ægeus. Knowing by her arts who the stranger was, and fearing the loss of her influence with her husband if Theseus should be acknowledged as his son, she tried to poison the youth; but the sword which he wore discovered him to his father and prevented the fatal draft. Medea fled to Asia, where the country afterwards called Media is said to have received its name from her. Theseus was acknowledged by his sire and declared successor to the throne.

=177. Theseus and= =Ariadne.=[266] Now the Athenians were at that time in deep affliction on account of the tribute of youths and maidens which they were forced to send to the Minotaur, dwelling in the labyrinth of Crete,--a penalty said to have been imposed by Minos upon the Athenians because Ægeus had sent Androgeüs, the son of Minos, against the Marathonian bull and so had brought about the young man's death.

From this calamity Theseus resolved to deliver his countrymen or to die in the attempt. He, therefore, in spite of the entreaties of his father, presented himself as champion of Athens and of her fair sons and daughters, to do battle against the Minotaur, and departed with the victims in a vessel bearing black sails, which he promised his father to change for white in the event of his returning victorious. So,--

Rather than cargo on cargo of corpses undead should be wafted[267] Over the ravening sea to the pitiless monster of Creta,-- Leaving the curvèd strand Piræan, and wooing the breezes, Theseus furrowed the deep to the dome superb of the tyrant. Then as the maid Ariadne beheld him with glances of longing,-- Princess royal of Creta Minoan, tender, sequestered,-- Locked in a mother's embrace, in seclusion virginal, fragrant, Like some myrtle set by streaming ways of Eurotas, Like to the varied tints that Spring invites with her breezes,-- Then, as with eager gaze she looked her first upon Theseus, Never a whit she lowered her eyes nor ceased to consume him, Ere to the core profound her breast with love was enkindled. --God-born boy, thou pitiless heart, provoker of madness, Mischievous, mingling care with the fleeting pleasure of mortals,-- Goddess of Golgi, thou, frequenter of coverts Idalian, In what wildering seas ye tossed the impassionate maiden Ever a-sighing,--aye for the fair-haired stranger a-sighing! Ah, what ponderous fears oppressed her languishing bosom, How, more pallid than gold her countenance flashed into whiteness, What time Theseus marched unto death or to glory undying, Manful, minded to quell the imbruted might of the monster!

Not unaided, however, did he undertake the task; for Ariadne, apprehensive lest he might lose his way in the dædalian labyrinth, furnished him with a thread, the gift of Vulcan, which, unrolled by Theseus as he entered the maze, should enable him on his return to retrace his former path. Meanwhile--

Offering artless bribes, Ariadne invoked the Immortals, Kindled voiceless lip with unvoicèd tribute of incense, Suppliant, not in vain: for, like to an oak upon Taurus, Gnarlèd, swinging his arms,--like some cone-burthenèd pine tree Oozing the life from his bark, that, riven to heart by the whirlwind, Wholly uprooted from earth, falls prone with extravagant ruin, Perishes, dealing doom with precipitate rush of its branches,-- So was the Cretan brute by Theseus done to destruction, E'en so, tossing in vain his horns to the vacuous breezes. Then with abundant laud he turned, unscathed from the combat, Theseus,--guiding his feet unsure by the filament slender, Lest as he threaded paths circuitous, ways labyrinthine, Some perverse, perplexing, erratic alley might foil him.

Why should I tarry to tell how, quitting her sire, Ariadne Quitting the sister's arms, the infatuate gaze of the mother,-- She whose sole delight, whose life, was her desperate daughter,-- How Ariadne made less of the love of them all than of Theseus? Why should I sing how sailing they came to the beaches of Dia,-- White with the foam,--how thence, false-hearted, the lover departing Left her benighted with sleep, the Minoïd, princess of Creta?

Gazing amain from the marge of the flood-reverberant Dia, Chafing with ire, indignant, exasperate,--lo, Ariadne, Lorn Ariadne, beholds swift craft, swift lover retreating. Nor can be sure she sees what things she sees of a surety, When upspringing from sleep, she shakes off treacherous slumber, Lone beholds herself on a shore forlorn of the ocean. Carelessly hastens the youth, meantime, who, driving his oar-blades Hard in the waves, consigns void vows to the blustering breezes. But as, afar from the sedge, with sad eyes still the Minoïd Mute as a Mænad in stone unmoving stonily gazes-- Heart o'erwhelmed with woe--ah, thus, while thus she is gazing,-- Down from her yellow hair slips, sudden, the weed of the fine-spun Snood, and the vesture light of her mantle down from the shoulders Slips, and the twisted scarf encircling her womanly bosom; Stealthily gliding, slip they downward into the billow, Fall, and are tossed by the buoyant flood at the feet of the fair one. Nothing she recks of the coif, of the floating garment as little, Cares not a moment then, whose care hangs only on Theseus,-- Wretched of heart, soul-wrecked, dependent only on Theseus,-- Desperate, woe-unselfed with a cureless sorrow incessant, Frantic, bosoming torture of thorns Erycina had planted....

Then, they say, that at last, infuriate out of all measure, Once and again she poured shrill-voicèd shrieks from her bosom; Helpless, clambered steeps, sheer beetling over the surges, Whence to enrange with her eyes vast futile regions of ocean;-- Lifting the folds, soft folds of her garments, baring her ankles, Dashed into edges of upward waves that trembled before her; Uttered, anguished then, one wail, her maddest and saddest,-- Catching with tear-wet lips poor sobs that shivering choked her:-- "Thus is it far from my home, O traitor, and far from its altars-- Thus on a desert strand,--dost leave me, treacherous Theseus? Thus is it thou dost flout our vow, dost flout the Immortals,-- Carelessly homeward bearest, with baleful ballast of curses? Never, could never a plea forfend thy cruelly minded Counsel? Never a pity entreat thy bosom for shelter?... Hence, let never a maid confide in the oath of a lover, Never presume man's vows hold aught trustworthy within them! Verily, while in anguish of heart his spirit is longing, Nothing he spares to assever, nor aught makes scruple to promise: But, an his dearest desire, his nearest of heart be accorded-- Nothing he recks of affiance, and reckons perjury,--nothing.

"Oh! what lioness whelped thee? Oh! what desolate cavern? What was the sea that spawned, that spat from its churning abysses, Thee,--what wolfish Scylla, or Syrtis, or vasty Charybdis, Thee,--thus thankful for life, dear gift of living, I gave thee?... Had it not liked thee still to acknowledge vows that we plighted, Mightest thou homeward, yet, have borne me a damsel beholden, Fain to obey thy will, and to lave thy feet like a servant, Fain to bedeck thy couch with purple coverlet for thee.

"But to the hollow winds why stand repeating my quarrel,-- I, for sorrow unselfed,--they, but breezes insensate,-- Potent neither voices to hear nor words to re-echo?... Yea, but where shall I turn? Forlorn, what succor rely on? 'Haste to the Gnossian hills?' Ah, see how distantly surging Deeps forbid, distending their gulfs abhorrent before me! 'Comfort my heart, mayhap, with the loyal love of my husband?' Lo, the reluctant oar, e'en now, he plies to forsake me!-- Nought but the homeless strand of an isle remote of the ocean! No, no way of escape, where the circling sea without shore is,-- No, no counsel of flight, no hope, no sound of a mortal; All things desolate, dumb, yea, all things summoning deathward! Yet mine eyes shall not fade in death that sealeth the eyelids, Nor from the frame outworn shall fare my lingering senses, Ere, undone, from powers divine I claim retribution-- Ere I call--in the hour supreme, on the faith of Immortals!

"Come, then, Righters of Wrong, O vengeful dealers of justice, Braided with coil of the serpents, O Eumenides, ye of Brows that blazon ire exhaling aye from the bosom, Haste, oh, haste ye, hither and hear me, vehement plaining, Destitute, fired with rage, stark-blind, demented for fury!-- As with careless heart yon Theseus sailed and forgot me, So with folly of heart, may he slay himself and his household!" ... Then with a nod supreme Olympian Jupiter nodded: Quaked thereat old Earth,--quaked, shuddered the terrified waters, Ay, and the constellations in Heaven that glitter were jangled. Straightway like some cloud on the inward vision of Theseus Dropped oblivion down, enshrouding vows he had cherished, Hiding away all trace of the solemn behest of his father.

For, as was said before, Ægeus, on the departure of his son for Creta, had given him this command: "If Minerva, goddess of our city, grant thee victory over the Minotaur, hoist on thy return, when first the dear hills of Attica greet thy vision, white canvas to herald thy joy and mine, that mine eyes may see the propitious sign and know the glad day that restores thee safe to me."

... Even as clouds compelled by urgent push of the breezes Float from the brow uplift of a snow-envelopèd mountain, So from Theseus passed all prayer and behest of his father. Waited the sire meanwhile, looked out from his tower over ocean, Wasted his anxious eyes in futile labor of weeping, Waited expectant,--saw to the southward sails black-bellied-- Hurled him headlong down from the horrid steep to destruction,-- Weening hateful Fate had severed the fortune of Theseus. Theseus, then, as he paced that gloom of the home of his father, Insolent Theseus knew himself what manner of evil He with a careless heart had aforetime dealt Ariadne,-- Fixed Ariadne that still, still stared where the ship had receded,-- Wounded, revolving in heart her countless muster of sorrows.

=178. Bacchus and Ariadne.= But for the deserted daughter of Minos a happier fate was yet reserved. This island, on which she had been abandoned, was Naxos, loved and especially haunted by Bacchus, where with his train of reeling devotees he was wont to hold high carnival.

... Sweeping over the shore, lo, beautiful, blooming Iacchus,-- Chorused of Satyrs in dance and of Nysian-born Sileni,-- Seeking fair Ariadne,--afire with flame of a lover! Lightly around him leaped Bacchantès, strenuous, frenzied, Nodding their heads, "Euhoe!" to the cry, "Euhoe, O Bacchus!" Some--enwreathèd spears of Iacchus madly were waving; Some--ensanguined limbs of the bullock, quivering, brandished; Some--were twining themselves with sinuous snakes that twisted; Some--with vessels of signs mysterious, passed in procession-- Symbols profound that in vain the profane may seek to decipher; Certain struck with the palms--with tapered fingers on timbrels, Others the tenuous clash of the rounded cymbals awakened;-- Brayed with a raucous roar through the turmoil many a trumpet, Many a stridulous fife went, shrill, barbarian, shrieking.[268]

So the grieving, much-wronged Ariadne was consoled for the loss of her mortal spouse by an immortal lover. The blooming god of the vine wooed and won her. After her death, the golden crown that he had given her was transferred by him to the heavens. As it mounted the ethereal spaces, its gems, growing in brightness, became stars; and still it remains fixed, as a constellation, between the kneeling Hercules and the man that holds the serpent.

=179. The Amazons.= As king of Athens, it is said that Theseus undertook an expedition against the Amazons. Assailing them before they had recovered from the attack of Hercules, he carried off their queen Antiope; but they in turn, invading the country of Athens, penetrated into the city itself; and there was fought the final battle in which Theseus overcame them.

=180. Theseus and Pirithoüs.= A famous friendship between Theseus and Pirithoüs of Thessaly, son of Jupiter, originated in the midst of arms. Pirithoüs had made an irruption into the plain of Marathon and had carried off the herds of the king of Athens. Theseus went to repel the plunderers. The moment the Thessalian beheld him, he was seized with admiration, and stretching out his hand as a token of peace, he cried, "Be judge thyself,--what satisfaction dost thou require?"--"Thy friendship," replied the Athenian; and they swore inviolable fidelity. Their deeds corresponding to their professions, they continued true brothers in arms. When, accordingly, Pirithoüs was to marry Hippodamia, daughter of Atrax, Theseus took his friend's part in the battle that ensued between the Lapithæ (of whom Pirithoüs was king) and the Centaurs. For it happened that at the marriage feast, the Centaurs were among the guests; and one of them, Eurytion, becoming intoxicated, attempted to offer violence to the bride. Other Centaurs followed his example; combat was joined; Theseus leaped into the fray, and not a few of the guests bit the dust.

Later, each of these friends aspired to espouse a daughter of Jupiter. Theseus fixed his choice on Leda's daughter Helen, then a child, but afterwards famous as the cause of the Trojan War; and with the aid of his friend he carried her off, only, however, to restore her at very short notice. As for Pirithoüs, he aspired to the wife of the monarch of Erebus; and Theseus, though aware of the danger, accompanied the ambitious lover to the underworld. But Pluto seized and set them on an enchanted rock at his palace gate, where fixed they remained till Hercules, arriving, liberated Theseus but left Pirithoüs to his fate.

=181. Phædra and Hippolytus.= After the death of Antiope, Theseus married Phædra, sister of the deserted Ariadne, daughter of Minos. But Phædra, seeing in Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, a youth endowed with all the graces and virtues of his father and of an age corresponding to her own, loved him. When, however, he repulsed her advances, her love was changed to despair and hate. Hanging herself, she left for her husband a scroll containing false charges against Hippolytus. The infatuated husband, filled, therefore, with jealousy of his son, imprecated the vengeance of Neptune upon him. As Hippolytus one day drove his chariot along the shore, a sea monster raised himself above the waters and frightened the horses so that they ran away and dashed the chariot to pieces. Hippolytus was killed, but by Æsculapius was restored to life, and then, removed by Diana from the power of his deluded father, was placed in Italy under the protection of the nymph Egeria.

In his old age, Theseus, losing the favor of his people, retired to the court of Lycomedes, king of Scyros, who at first received him kindly, but afterwards treacherously put him to death.

FOOTNOTES:

[260] Ovid, Metam. 2, 555; Apollodorus, 3, 14, § 1; Pausanias; and Hyginus, Fab. 48.

[261] Ovid, Metam. 2, 554; 6, 676; Homer, Iliad, 2, 547; Odyssey, 7, 81; Hyginus, Poet. Astr. 2, 13.

[262] For Ruskin's interpretation, see Queen of the Air, § 38.

[263] Hyginus, Fab. 45; Apollodorus, 3, 14, § 8; Ovid, Metam. 6, 412-676. See Commentary.

[264] Ovid, Metam. 7, 350-424; Plutarch, Theseus.

[265] § 167.

[266] Odyssey, 11, 321; Plutarch, Theseus; Catullus, LXIV.

[267] Catullus, LXIV. From The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis. A Translation in Hexameters, by Charles Mills Gayley.

[268] Catullus, LXIV (Charles Mills Gayley's translation).

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XIX. THE HOUSE OF LABDACUS

=182. The Misfortunes of Thebes.= Returning to the descendants of Inachus, we find that the curse which fell upon Cadmus when he slew the dragon of Mars followed nearly every scion of his house. His daughters, Semele, Ino, Autonoë, Agave,--his grandsons, Melicertes, Actæon, Pentheus,--lived sorrowful lives or suffered violent deaths. The misfortunes of one branch of his family, sprung from his son Polydorus, remain to be told. The curse seems to have spared Polydorus himself. His son Labdacus, also, lived a quiet life as king of Thebes and left a son, Laïus, upon the throne. But erelong Laïus was warned by an oracle that there was danger to his throne and life if his son, new-born, should reach man's estate. He, therefore, committed the child to a herdsman with orders for its destruction; but the herdsman, moved with pity yet not daring entirely to disobey, pierced the child's feet, purposing to expose him to the elements on Mount Cithæron.

=183. [OE]dipus and the Sphinx.=[269] In this plight the infant was given to a tender-hearted fellow-shepherd, who carried him to King Polybus of Corinth and his queen, by whom he was adopted and called [OE]dipus, or Swollen-foot.

Many years afterward, [OE]dipus, learning from an oracle that he was destined to be the death of his father, left the realm of his reputed sire, Polybus. It happened, however, that Laïus was then driving to Delphi, accompanied only by one attendant. In a narrow road he met [OE]dipus, also in a chariot. On the refusal of the youthful stranger to leave the way at their command, the attendant killed one of his horses. [OE]dipus, consumed with rage, slew both Laïus and the attendant, and thus unknowingly fulfilled both oracles.

Shortly after this event, the city of Thebes, to which [OE]dipus had repaired, was afflicted with a monster that infested the high-road. She was called the Sphinx. She had the body of a lion and the upper part of a woman. She lay crouched on the top of a rock and, arresting all travelers who came that way, propounded to them a riddle, with the condition that those who could solve it should pass safe, but those who failed should be killed. Not one had yet succeeded in guessing it. [OE]dipus, not daunted by these alarming accounts, boldly advanced to the trial. The Sphinx asked him, "What animal is it that in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?" [OE]dipus replied, "Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and knees, in manhood walks erect, and in old age goes with the aid of a staff." The Sphinx, mortified at the collapse of her riddle, cast herself down from the rock and perished.

=184. [OE]dipus, the King.= In gratitude for their deliverance, the Thebans made [OE]dipus their king, giving him in marriage their queen, Jocasta. He, ignorant of his parentage, had already become the slayer of his father; in marrying the queen he became the husband of his mother. These horrors remained undiscovered till, after many years, Thebes being afflicted with famine and pestilence, the oracle was consulted, and, by a series of coincidences, the double crime of [OE]dipus came to light. At once, Jocasta put an end to her life by hanging herself. As for [OE]dipus, horror-struck,--

When her form He saw, poor wretch! with one wild fearful cry, The twisted rope he loosens, and she fell, Ill-starred one, on the ground. Then came a sight Most fearful. Tearing from her robe the clasps, All chased with gold, with which she decked herself, He with them struck the pupils of his eyes, With words like these: "Because they had not seen What ills he suffered, and what ills he did, They in the dark should look, in time to come, On those whom they ought never to have seen, Nor know the dear ones whom he fain had known." With suchlike wails, not once or twice alone, Raising his eyes he smote them, and the balls, All bleeding, stained his cheek.[270]

=185. [OE]dipus at Colonus.= After these sad events [OE]dipus would have left Thebes, but the oracle forbade the people to let him go. Jocasta's brother, Creon, was made regent of the realm for the two sons of [OE]dipus. But after [OE]dipus had grown content to stay, these sons of his, with Creon, thrust him into exile. Accompanied by his daughter Antigone, he went begging through the land. His other daughter, Ismene, at first stayed at home. Cursing the sons who had abandoned him, but bowing his own will in submission to the ways of God, [OE]dipus approached the hour of his death in Colonus, a village near Athens. His friend Theseus, king of Athens, comforted and sustained him to the last. Both his daughters were also with him:

And then he called his girls, and bade them fetch Clear water from the stream, and bring to him For cleansing and libation. And they went, Both of them, to yon hill we look upon, Owned by Demeter of the fair green corn, And quickly did his bidding, bathed his limbs, And clothed them in the garment that is meet. And when he had his will in all they did, And not one wish continued unfulfilled, Zeus from the dark depths thundered, and the girls Heard it, and shuddering, at their father's knees, Falling they wept; nor did they then forbear Smiting their breasts, nor groanings lengthened out; And when he heard their bitter cry, forthwith Folding his arms around them, thus he spake: "My children, on this day ye cease to have A father. All my days are spent and gone; And ye no more shall lead your wretched life, Caring for me. Hard was it, that I know, My children! Yet one word is strong to loose, Although alone, the burden of these toils, For love in larger store ye could not have From any than from him who standeth here, Of whom bereaved ye now shall live your life."[271]

There was sobbing, then silence. Then a voice called him,--and he followed. God took him from his troubles. Antigone returned to Thebes,--where, as we shall see, her sisterly fidelity showed itself as true as, aforetime, her filial affection.

Her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had meanwhile agreed to share the kingdom between them and to reign alternately year by year. The first year fell to the lot of Eteocles, who, when his time expired, refused to surrender the kingdom to his brother. Polynices, accordingly, fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, who gave him his daughter in marriage and aided him with an army to enforce his claim to the kingdom. These causes led to the celebrated expedition of the "Seven against Thebes," which furnished ample materials for the epic and tragic poets of Greece. And here the younger heroes of Greece make their appearance.

FOOTNOTES:

[269] Sophocles, [OE]dipus Rex, [OE]dipus Coloneus, Antigone; Euripides, Ph[oe]nissæ; Apollodorus, 3, 5, §§ 7, 8.

[270] Sophocles, [OE]dipus, the King (E. H. Plumptre's translation).

[271] Sophocles, [OE]dipus at Colonus, ll. 1600, etc. (E. H. Plumptre's translation).

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XX. MYTHS OF THE YOUNGER HEROES: THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

=186. Their Exploits.= The exploits of the sons and grandsons of the chieftains engaged in the Calydonian Hunt and the Quest of the Golden Fleece are narrated in four stories,--the Seven against Thebes, the Siege of Troy, the Wanderings of Ulysses, and the Adventures of Æneas.

=187. The Seven against Thebes.=[272] The allies of Adrastus and Polynices in the enterprise against Thebes were Tydeus of Calydon, half brother of Meleager, Parthenopæus of Arcadia, son of Atalanta and Mars, Capaneus of Argos, Hippomedon of Argos, and Amphiaraüs, the brother-in-law of Adrastus. Amphiaraüs opposed the expedition for, being a soothsayer, he knew that none of the leaders except Adrastus would live to return from Thebes; but on his marriage to Eriphyle, the king's sister, he had agreed that whenever he and Adrastus should differ in opinion, the decision should be left to Eriphyle. Polynices, knowing this, gave Eriphyle the necklace of Harmonia and thereby gained her to his interest. This was the selfsame necklace that Vulcan had given to Harmonia on her marriage with Cadmus; Polynices had taken it with him on his flight from Thebes. It seems to have been still fraught with the curse of the house of Cadmus. But Eriphyle could not resist so tempting a bribe. By her decision the war was resolved on, and Amphiaraüs went to his fate. He bore his part bravely in the contest, but still could not avert his destiny. While, pursued by the enemy, he was fleeing along the river, a thunderbolt launched by Jupiter opened the ground, and he, his chariot, and his charioteer were swallowed up.

It is unnecessary here to detail all the acts of heroism or atrocity which marked this contest. The fidelity, however, of Evadne stands out as an offset to the weakness of Eriphyle. Her husband, Capaneus, having in the ardor of the fight declared that he would force his way into the city in spite of Jove himself, placed a ladder against the wall and mounted; but Jupiter, offended at his impious language, struck him with a thunderbolt. When his obsequies were celebrated, Evadne cast herself on his funeral pile and perished.

It seems that early in the contest Eteocles consulted the soothsayer Tiresias as to the issue. Now, this Tiresias in his youth had by chance seen Minerva bathing, and had been deprived by her of his sight, but afterwards had obtained of her the knowledge of future events. When consulted by Eteocles, he declared that victory should fall to Thebes if Men[oe]ceus, the son of Creon, gave himself a voluntary victim. The heroic youth, learning the response, threw away his life in the first encounter.

The siege continued long, with varying success. At length both hosts agreed that the brothers should decide their quarrel by single combat. They fought, and fell each by the hand of the other. The armies then renewed the fight; and at last the invaders were forced to yield, and fled, leaving their dead unburied. Creon, the uncle of the fallen princes, now became king, caused Eteocles to be buried with distinguished honor, but suffered the body of Polynices to lie where it fell, forbidding any one, on pain of death, to give it burial.

=188. Antigone=,[273] the sister of Polynices, heard with indignation the revolting edict which, consigning her brother's body to the dogs and vultures, deprived it of the rites that were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of her affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard and to bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in the act. When Creon asked the fearless woman whether she dared disobey the laws, she answered:

Yes, for it was not Zeus who gave them forth, Nor justice, dwelling with the gods below, Who traced these laws for all the sons of men; Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough, That thou, a mortal man, should'st overpass The unwritten laws of God that know no change. They are not of to-day nor yesterday, But live forever, nor can man assign When first they sprang to being. Not through fear Of any man's resolve was I prepared Before the gods to bear the penalty Of sinning against these. That I should die I knew (how should I not?), though thy decree Had never spoken. And before my time If I shall die, I reckon this a gain; For whoso lives, as I, in many woes, How can it be but he shall gain by death? And so for me to bear this doom of thine Has nothing fearful. But, if I had left My mother's son unburied on his death, In that I should have suffered; but in this I suffer not.[274]

Creon, unyielding and unable to conceive of a law higher than that he knew, gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at nought the solemn edict of the city. Her lover, Hæmon, the son of Creon, unable to avert her fate, would not survive her, and fell by his own hand. It is only after his son's death and as he gazes upon the corpses of the lovers, that the aged Creon recognizes the insolence of his narrow judgment. And those that stand beside him say:

Man's highest blessedness In wisdom chiefly stands; And in the things that touch upon the gods, 'T is best in word or deed, To shun unholy pride; Great words of boasting bring great punishments, And so to gray-haired age Teach wisdom at the last.[275]

=189. The Epigoni.=[276] Such was the fall of the house of Labdacus. The bane of Cadmus expires with the family of [OE]dipus. But the wedding gear of Harmonia has not yet fulfilled its baleful mission. Amphiaraüs had, with his last breath, enjoined his son Alcmæon to avenge him on the faithless Eriphyle. Alcmæon engaged his word, but before accomplishing the fell purpose, he was ordered by an oracle of Delphi to conduct against Thebes a new expedition. Thereto his mother Eriphyle, influenced by Thersander, the son of Polynices, and bribed this time by the gift of Harmonia's wedding garment, impelled not only Alcmæon but her other son, Amphilochus. The descendants (Epigoni) of the former Seven thus renewed the war against Thebes. They leveled the city to the ground. Its inhabitants, counseled by Tiresias, took refuge in foreign lands. Tiresias himself perished during the flight. Alcmæon, returning to Argos, put his mother to death but, in consequence, repeated in his own experience the penalty of Orestes. The outfit of Harmonia preserved its malign influence until, at last, it was devoted to the temple at Delphi and removed from the sphere of mortal jealousies.

FOOTNOTES:

[272] Æschylus, Seven against Thebes; Euripides, Ph[oe]nissæ; Apollodorus, 3. 6 and 7; Hyginus, Fab. 69, 70; Pausanias, 8 and 9; Statius, Thebaid.

[273] Sophocles, Antigone; Euripides, Suppliants.

[274] Sophocles, Antigone, ll. 450-470 (E. H. Plumptre's translation).

[275] Sophocles, Antigone, closing chorus.

[276] Pausanias, 9, 9, §§ 2, 3; Herodotus, 5, 61; Apollodorus.

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XXI. HOUSES CONCERNED IN THE TROJAN WAR

=190. Three Families.= Before entering upon the causes of the war against Troy, we must notice the three Grecian families that were principally concerned,--those of Peleus, Atreus, and Tyndareus.

=191. Peleus=[277] was the son of Æacus and grandson of Jove. It was for his father Æacus, king of Phthia in Thessaly, that, as we have seen, an army of Myrmidons was created by Jupiter. Peleus joined the expedition of the Argonauts, and on that journey beheld and fell in love with the sea-nymph Thetis, daughter of Nereus and Doris. Such was the beauty of the nymph that Jupiter himself had sought her in marriage; but having learned from Prometheus, the Titan, that Thetis should bear a son who should be greater than his father, the Olympian desisted from his suit and decreed that Thetis should be the wife of a mortal. By the aid of Chiron, the Centaur, Peleus succeeded in winning the goddess for his bride. In this marriage, to be productive of momentous results for mortals, the immortals manifested a lively interest. They thronged with the Thessalians to the wedding in Pharsalia; they honored the wedding feast with their presence and, reclining on ivory couches, gave ear while the three Sisters of Fate, in responsive strain, chanted the fortunes of Achilles,--the future hero of the Trojan War,--the son that should spring from this union of a goddess with a mortal. The following is from a translation of the famous poem, The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis:[278]

... Now, on the day foreset, Aurora forsaking the ocean Crimsons the orient sky: all Thessaly, seeking the palace, Fares to the royal seat, in populous muster exultant, Heavy of hand with gifts, but blithesome of cheer for the joyance. Scyros behind they leave, they leave Phthiotican Tempe, Crannon's glittering domes and the battlements Larissæan, Cumber Pharsalia, throng the abodes and the streets of Pharsalus. Fields, meanwhile are untilled, grow tender the necks of the oxen, None with the curving teeth of the harrow cleareth the vineyard, None upturneth the glebe with bull and the furrowing plowshare, None with gardener's knife lets light through the branches umbrageous; Squalid the rust creeps up o'er plows forgotten of plowmen.

Bright is the palace, ay, through far retreating recesses Blazing for sheen benign of the opulent gold and the silver: Ivory gleams on the thrones, great goblets glint on the tables, Glitters the spacious home, made glad with imperial splendor,-- Ay, but most--in the hall midmost--is the couch of the goddess, Glorious, made of the tusk of the Indian elephant--polished-- Spread with a wonder of quilt empurpled with dye of the sea-shell.

On this coverlet of purple were embroidered various scenes illustrating the lessons of heroism and justice that the poet would inculcate: to the good falleth good; to the evil, evil speedily. Therefore, the story of Theseus and Ariadne, which has already been recounted, was here displayed in cunning handiwork. For Theseus, the false lover, bold of hand but bad of heart, gained by retributive justice undying ruth and misery; whereas Ariadne, the injured and innocent, restored to happiness, won no less a reward than Bacchus himself. Gorgeously woven with such antique and heroic figures was the famous quilt upon the couch of Thetis. For a season the wedding guests feasted their eyes upon it.

Then when Thessaly's youth, long gazing, had of the wonder Their content, they gan give place to the lords of Olympus. As when Zephyr awakes the recumbent billows of ocean, Roughens the placid deep with eager breath of the morning, Urges the waves, and impels, to the threshold of journeying Ph[oe]bus,-- They, at first, blown outward unroughly when Dawn is a-rising, Limp slow-footed, and loiter with laughter lightsomely plashing, But, with the freshening gale, creep quicker and thicker together, Till on horizon they float refulgent of luminous purple,-- So from the portal withdrawing the pomp Thessalian departed Faring on world-wide ways to the far-off homes of their fathers. Now when they were aloof, drew nigh from Pelion's summit Chiron bearing gifts from copses and glades of the woodland-- Gifts that the meadows yield: what flowers on Thessaly's mountains, Or, by waves of the stream, the prolific breath of the West Wind, Warming, woos to the day, all such in bunches assorted Bore he. Flattered with odors the whole house brake into laughter. Came there next Peneüs, abandoning verdurous Tempe-- Tempe embowered deep mid superimpendent forests.

And after the river-god, who bore with him nodding plane trees and lofty beeches, straight slim laurels, the lithe poplar, and the airy cypress to plant about the palace that thick foliage might give it shade, followed Prometheus, the bold and cunning of heart, wearing still the marks of his ancient punishment on the rocks of Caucasus. Finally the father of the gods himself came, with his holy spouse and his offspring,--all, save Ph[oe]bus and his one sister, who naturally looked askance upon a union to be productive of untold misfortune to their favored town of Troy.

... When now the gods had reclined their limbs on the ivory couches, Viands many and rare were heaped on the banqueting tables, Whilst the decrepit Sisters of Fate, their tottering bodies Solemnly swayed, and rehearsed their soothfast vaticination. --Lo, each tremulous frame was wrapped in robe of a whiteness, Down to the ankles that fell, with nethermost border of purple, While on ambrosial brows there rested fillets like snowflakes. They, at a task eternal their hands religiously plying, Held in the left on high, with wool enfolded, a distaff, Delicate fibers wherefrom, drawn down, were shaped by the right hand-- Shaped by fingers upturned,--but the down-turned thumb set a-whirling, Poised with perfected whorl, the industrious shaft of the spindle. Still, as they span, as they span, was the tooth kept nipping and smoothing, And to the withered lip clung morsels of wool as they smoothed it-- Filaments erstwhile rough that stood from the twist of the surface. Close at their feet, meantime, were woven baskets of wicker Guarding the soft white balls of the wool resplendent within them. Thus then, parting the strands, these Three with resonant voices Uttered, in chant divine, predestined sooth of the future-- Prophecy neither in time, nor yet in eternity, shaken.

"Thou that exaltest renown of thy name with the name of thy valor, Bulwark Emathian, blest above sires in the offspring of promise, Hear with thine ears this day what oracles fall from the Sisters Chanting the fates for thee;--but you, ye destiny-drawing Spindles, hasten the threads of the destinies set for the future!

"Rideth the orb upon high that heralds boon unto bridegrooms-- Hesperus,--cometh anon with star propitious the virgin, Speedeth thy soul to subdue--submerge it with love at the flood tide. Hasten, ye spindles, and run, yea, gallop, ye thread-running spindles!

"Erstwhile, never a home hath roofed like generous loving, Never before hath Love conjoinèd lovers so dearly,-- Never with harmony such as endureth for Thetis and Peleus. Hasten, ye spindles, and run, yea, gallop, ye thread-running spindles!

"Born unto you shall be the undaunted heart of Achilles, Aye by his brave breast known, unknown by his back to the foeman,-- Victor in onslaught, victor in devious reach of the race-course, Fleeter of foot than feet of the stag that lighten and vanish,-- Hasten, ye spindles, and run, yea, gallop, ye thread-running spindles!"

=192. Achilles, Son of Peleus.= So the sisters prophesied the future of the hero, Achilles,--from his father called Pelides; from his grandfather, Æacides. How by him the Trojans should fall, as fall the ears of corn when they are yellow before the scythe; how because of him Scamander should run red, warm with blood, choked with blind bodies, into the whirling Hellespont; how finally he himself, in his prime, should fall, and how on his tomb should be sacrificed the fair Polyxena, daughter of Priam, whom he had loved. "So," says Catullus, "sang the Fates. For those were the days before piety and righteous action were spurned by mankind, the days when Jupiter and his immortals deigned to consort with zealous man, to enjoy the sweet odor of his burnt-offering, to march beside him to battle, to swell his shout in victory and his lament in defeat, to smile on his peaceful harvests, to recline at his banquets, and to bless the weddings of fair women and goodly heroes. But now, alas," concludes Catullus, "godliness and chastity, truth, wisdom, and honor have departed from among men":

Wherefore the gods no more vouchsafe their presence to mortals, Suffer themselves no more to be touched by the ray of the morning. But there were gods in the pure,--in the golden prime of the Ages.

The hero of the Trojan War, here prophesied, =Achilles=, fleet of foot, the dauntless, the noble, the beloved of Zeus, the breaker of the ranks of men, is the ideal hero of the Greeks,--the mightiest of the Achæans far. Of his youth many interesting stories are told: how his mother, endeavoring to make him invulnerable, plunged him in the river Styx, and succeeded save with regard to his ankles by which she held him; and how he was educated in eloquence and the arts of war by his father's friend Ph[oe]nix, and by his father's other friend Chiron, the centaur, in riding and hunting and music and the art of healing. One of the most Greek-minded of our English poets, Matthew Arnold,[279] singing of a beauteous dell by Etna, tells how

In such a glen, on such a day, On Pelion, on the grassy ground, Chiron, the aged Centaur, lay, The young Achilles standing by. The Centaur taught him to explore The mountains; where the glens are dry And the tired Centaurs come to rest, And where the soaking springs abound And the straight ashes grow for spears, And where the hill goats come to feed And the sea eagles build their nest. He showed him Phthia far away. And said, "O boy, I taught this lore To Peleus, in long distant years!" He told him of the gods, the stars, The tides;--and then of mortal wars, And of the life which heroes lead Before they reach the Elysian place And rest in the immortal mead; And all the wisdom of his race.

Upon the character of Achilles, outspoken, brave, impulsive; to his friends passionately devoted, to his foes implacable; lover of war and lover of home; inordinately ambitious but submissive to divine decree;--upon this handsome, gleaming, terrible, glooming, princely warrior of his race, the poet of the Iliad delights to dwell, and the world has delighted in the portraiture from that day to this.

=193. Atreus= was the son of Pelops and Hippodamia and grandson of Tantalus, therefore great-grandson of Jove. Both by blood and by marriage he was connected with Theseus. He took to wife Aërope, granddaughter of Minos II, king of Crete, and by her had two sons, Agamemnon, the general of the Grecian army in the Trojan War, and Menelaüs, at whose solicitation the war was undertaken. Of Atreus it may be said that with cannibal atrocity like that of his grandsire, Tantalus, he on one occasion wreaked his vengeance on a brother, Thyestes, by causing him to eat the flesh of two of his own children. A son of this Thyestes, Ægisthus by name, revived in due time against Agamemnon the treacherous feud that had existed between their fathers.

=194. Tyndareus= was king of Lacedæmon (Sparta). His wife was Leda, daughter of Thestius of Calydon, and sister of Althæa, the mother of Meleager and Dejanira. To Tyndareus Leda bore Castor and Clytemnestra; to Jove she bore Pollux and Helen. The two former were mortal; the two latter, immortal. Clytemnestra was married to Agamemnon of Mycenæ, to whom she bore Electra, Iphigenia, Chrysothemis, and Orestes. Helen, the fair immediate cause of the Trojan War, became the wife of Menelaüs, who with her obtained the kingdom of Sparta.

Of the families of Peleus, Atreus, and Tyndareus, the genealogies will be found in the Commentary corresponding with these sections of the story; also the genealogy of Ulysses, one of the leaders of the Greek army during the war and the hero of the Odyssey, which narrates his subsequent adventures; and that of the royal family of Troy against whom the war was undertaken. A slight study of these family trees will reveal interesting relationships between the principal participants in the war. For instance: that the passionate Achilles and the intolerant Ajax, second only to Achilles in military prowess, are first cousins; and that the family of Ajax is connected by marriage with that of the Trojan Hector, whom he meets in combat. That Ulysses is a distant cousin of his wife Penelope and of Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon; and that he is a kinsman of Patroclus, the bosom friend of Achilles. In the family of Tyndareus we note most the tragic and romantic careers of the women,--Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband and married his cousin Ægisthus; Helen, whose beauty provoked war between her two husbands and their races; Penelope, whose fidelity to her absent lord is the marvel of the Odyssey. It will be noticed, too, that the daughter of Helen, Hermione, is strangely enough married first by the son of Achilles and, afterwards, by the son of Agamemnon, and so becomes sister-in-law to her noble cousins, Electra and Iphigenia.

The kinsmen and descendants of Peleus--Telamon, Ajax, Teucer, Achilles, Neoptolemus--are characterized by their personal valor, their intolerant and resentful temper. In the family of Atreus, the men are remarkable for their kingly attributes; the principal women for their unwavering devotion to religious duty. The members of the royal family of Troy are of richly varied and most unusual individuality: like Tithonus and Memnon, Paris, Hesione, Cassandra and Polyxena, poetic and pathetic; like Laomedon, Priam, Hector and Troilus, patriotic, persistent in the face of overwhelming odds; but all fated to a dolorous end. Of those engaged in the Trojan War, Æneas and his aged father, Anchises, beloved of Venus, are practically the only survivors to a happier day.

FOOTNOTES:

[277] Ovid, Metam. 11, 221-265; Catullus, LXIV; Hyginus, Fab. 14; Apollonius Rhodius. Argon. 1, 558; Valerius Flaccus, Argon.; Statius, Achilleid.

[278] Catullus, LXIV (Charles Mills Gayley's translation).

[279] Empedocles on Etna.

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