PROKRIS AND EÔS. II. 241 these gifts she returns to Kephalos, who after seeing her success in CHAP. the chase longs to possess them. But they can be yielded only in return for his love, and thus Prokris brings home to him the wrong done to herself, and Eôs is for the time discomfited. But Prokris still fears the jealousy of Eôs and watches Kephalos as he goes forth to hunt, until, as one day she lurked among the thick bushes, the unerring dart of Artemis hurled by Kephalos brings the life of the gentle Prokris to an end. This myth explains itself. Kephalos is the head of the sun, and Kephalos loves Prokris,-in other words, the sun loves the dew. But Eôs also loves Kephalos, i.e. the dawn loves the sun, and thus at once we have the groundwork for her envy of Prokris. So again when we are told that, though Prokris breaks her faith, yet her love is still given to the same Kephalos, different though he may appear, we have here only a myth formed from phrases which told how the dew seems to reflect many suns which are yet the same sun. The gifts of Artemis are the rays which flash from each dewdrop, and which Prokris is described as being obliged to yield up to Kephalos, who slays her as unwittingly as Phoibos causes the death of Daphnê or Alpheios that of Arethousa. The spot where she dies is a thicket, in which the last dewdrops would linger before the approach of the midday heats. Tithonos. The various incidents belonging to the life of Eôs are so trans- Eôs and parent that the legend can scarcely be said to be a myth at all. Her name is, as we have seen, that of the Vedic dawn-goddess Ushas, and she is a daughter of Hyperion (the soaring sun) and of Euryphassa (the broad shining), and a sister of the sun and moon (Helios and Selênê). If Ovid calls her a child of Pallas, this is only saying again that she is the offspring of the dawn. Like Phoibos and Heraklês, she has many loves; but from all she is daily parted. Every morning she leaves the couch of Tithônos,' and drawn by the gleaming steeds Lampos and Phaëthôn, rises into heaven to announce to the gods and to mortal men the coming of the sun. In the Odyssey she closes, as she began, the day. Her love, which is given to Tithônos and Kephalos, is granted also to Orîôn (the sun in his character as the hunting and far-shooting god), whom according to one version she conveys to Delos, the bright land, but who in another is slain by the arrow of Artemis. She also carries to the home of the gods the the body of her father, who has been slain by the peasants and thrown into the well Anygros (the parched). Her grief leads her to hang herself on a tree under which he was buried, a myth which suggests a comparison with that 2 BOOK II. Hêbê and Ganymêdês. The story of Dido and Anna. beautiful Kleitos. Her children are born in many lands. As united with Astraios, the starry, she is the mother of Zephyros, Boreas, and Notos, the breezes or winds of morning, and of Heôsphoros, the light-bringer. Another son of Eôs is Phaëthôn, of whom mythographers spoke as the luckless son of Helios, but who is really the same being with his father. Finally, she is the mother of Memnôn, the chieftain from the glistening land of the Aithiopians (Ethiopians), who falls by the spear of Antilochos, and on whose death she weeps tears of morning dew, and obtains from Zeus the boon that he shall rise again to renewed and endless life. Another form of Eôs is the beautiful Hêbê, ever young, on whom is bestowed without any drawback the youthfulness of the maimed Hephaistos. She is the daughter necessarily of Zeus and Hêrê. Like the Vedic Ahanâ or Ushas she can make the old young again, and she ministers to the gods the life-giving nectar and ambrosia. But Hêbê, though the bride of the deified Heraklês, or the mother of his children Alexiarês and Anikêtos, the invincible deliverers, remains little more than a name. She is Ganymêdê, the brilliant; and thus what Iris is to Hermes, that is Hêbê to Ganymêdês, the lovely Trojan youth who is borne away on the eagle's wing to the Olympian heaven, where he also became the immortal cup-bearer of the gods. Thus in both alike we see the morning light carried up into heaven on the wings of the sunlit cloud.1 The same story of unrequited love which has been embodied in the myths of Ariadnê and Medeia, of Selênê and Echo, meets us again in the legends which the Latin poets modified to suit their own traditions, or their prejudices and fancies. But although Virgil has chosen to mix up the story of Dido with that of Æneas (Aineias), he has introduced into it little or nothing which is not found in the myth as related by Justin. In fact, the story of Aphroditê or Daphnê is twice told in the life of Dido, for the Sichæus or Acerbas whose death she bewails is the Adonis who, like Sichæus, is slain by the dark being or power of night. As the Panis look greedily on the cattle of Indra, Pygmalion covets the vast treasures which Sichæus possesses with Tantalos, Sisyphos, Helen and Brynhild, or Ixiôn; and thus is the husband of Dido murdered, her first and, according to the version of Justin, her only love, and his wealth is in the hands of his destroyer. But the idea of dwelling with Pygmalion is as hateful 1 For Slavonic versions of this myth see Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 171. 2 The antagonism between Pygmalion and Sichaeus answers to that of Sat-Osiris and Typhon. "The one who is slain signifies the pure, Zakkai,” and Pohem Elyon, the murderer of the Most High.' -Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, ii. 289. DIDO AND ANNA. II. 243 to her as Paris became to the Helen whom he had stolen with her CHAP, treasures. As faithful to the memory of her lost love as is Saramâ to Indra, Dido pretends to listen to the traitor, while she makes ready for flight. In her new home another suitor appears in the Libyan Hiarbas, who repeats the importunities of the Ithakan suitors, until Dido, wearied out, promises to do as he wishes; but having made a huge pile for the offering of a hecatomb, she slays herself upon it, declaring that now she is going, as her people and the Libyans desired it, to her husband. The version of Virgil differs from this in little more than a name. Æneas is only another form of the bright being with whom Dido would willingly have dwelt for ever; but he is the sun-god who cannot pause to bestow on her his love, or who must hasten away after a brief mockery of gladness. In the former case, the myth answers to the legends of Adonis, Endymiôn, or Narkissos; in the latter the desertion of Dido is but the desertion of Prokris, Ariadnê, or Korônis; and the Tyrian Elissa dies, like Heraklês, amid the flames of a fiery sunset. The same story is repeated yet again in the myth of Anna, the sister of Dido, whom Latin tradition identified with the goddess Anna Perenna.1 After her sister's death Anna follows Æneas to Italy, where, though she is kindly received by him, she finds in Lavinia a Prokris, whom she, like Eôs, must regard with deadly jealousy. But her arms are turned not upon her rival but upon herself; and the second woman who has lavished her affections on Æneas casts herself into the same Numician stream in which Æneas afterwards disappears from the sight of men. The same repetitions mark the story of Æneas, who, although fighting (reluctantly, as some versions have it) on the side of the thief who steals Helen, is yet a being like the Lykian Sarpêdôn or the Aithiopian Memnôn. Like them, he is the child not of a mortal mother, but of the brilliant goddess of the dawn, and in the Trojan army he plays the part of Achilleus in the Achaian host. Like the son of Thetis, he is the possessor of immortal horses, and like him 'This name was naturally referred to the words annus and perennis by a people who had retained the mere name without its meaning. Hence the goddess became to the Latins the bestower of fruitful seasons; but the false etymology of the prayer, ut annare perennareque commode liceat," happened to correspond with the original force of the name, if Anna Perenna be the Sanskrit Apnapurna, who is described as "of ruddy complexion, her robe of various colours, a crescent on her fore head: She gives subsistence; she is BOOK Hêr and he is at feud with the king, for Priam fails to do him honour, as Agamemnon heaps disgrace on Achilleus. From the flames of the ruined Ilion he escapes bearing on his shoulders his father Anchises, the aged man who, while yet he had the youth and beauty of Tithônos, had been the darling of Aphroditê. His wife Creusa (Kreiousa, a name answering to that of Euryanassa, the wide-ruling, and being simply the feminine form of Kreôn or Kreiôn) comes behind him like the twilight following the sun who is hastening on into the land of night. But the twilight must vanish before the sun can be seen again, and Creusa dies or disappears, like Hellê,-the converse of the myth of Hêrô and Leiandros (Leander). But Æneas, like Heraklês, has other loves before him; and the fortunes of Dido and Anna are brought before us again in the legend of the Italian Lavinia. She too is the bright Helen for whom kings and nations are ready to fight and die; but although Æneas wins her, there remain yet other dangers and other enemies, and in the final strife with the Rutulians the dawn-child vanishes in the stream of Numicius, as Arethousa and Daphnê plunge into the waters from which Anadyomenê comes up in the morning. The true feeling of the people who recounted this myth is shown in the title which they accorded to him. Henceforth he is Jupiter Indiges, the father from whom they spring, and who bestows upon them all that makes life worth living for. The same story of disastrous love is presented under other names Leiandros. in the legend of Leiandros (Leander), a myth which exhibits the sun as plunging through the waters to reach the beautiful morning, who holds out her gleaming light in the east; for Hêrô (whose name is identical with that of Hêrê) is the priestess of the dawn-goddess Aphroditê, and the road which separates her lover from herself is the Hellespontos, the Lykabas or path of light, the track of Hellê the dawn-maiden. Hêrô, again, dwells in the eastern Lesbos, while Leiandros has his home in Abydos. He is thus the Phoibos Delphinios, the fish or frog-sun, who dies in the furious storm; and through grief for her lost love Hêrô casts herself into the waters, like Kephalos from the Leukadian cliff after the death of Prokris. The Brides of the Sun. Not less sad than that of Prokris or of Dido is the lot of Iolê, Iokastê, Aithra, Augê, Danaê, or Ariadnê. In the first two of these forsaken wives or desolate mothers we see the violet tints of morning, which reappear in Iamos, Iolâos, and Iasôn. From Heraklês, Iolê is parted almost at the moment when she meets him. Her beautiful form is seen near his funeral pile, as the violet-tinted clouds may be scen among the flaming vapours lit up in a blood-red sunset; and as DESERTED WIVES AND MAIDENS. II. 245 the blaze of the fire which consumes the body of Heraklês rises to the CHAP. heavens, she is left alone in her sorrow to vanish before the cheerless gloaming. The fate of Iokastê had for the Greeks of the age of Perikles a more terrible significance. She is not only the mother of Oidipous, but his wife. As his mother, she had been tortured by seeing her child torn from her arms, to be cast away on Mount Kithairôn; and the shame of finding herself his wife after his victory over the Sphinx drives her to end her misery with her own hands.1 According to the version of Hyginus, the life of Aithra (the pure air), the mother of Theseus, had the same end. Long ago she had been loved by Bellerophôn; but when he was driven from Corinth, she became the wife of the Athenian Aigeus, who left her with the infant Theseus at Troizen, having, like the father of Sigurd, placed his invincible weapons under a large stone, that his son might become possessed of them only when he had reached his full strength. Later still, the Dioskouroi, it is said, carried her away to Sparta, where she became the slave of Helen, and whence with Helen she was taken to Troy, to be brought back again through the prayers of her grandson Demophon. By the same hard fate, Augê, the (brilliant) daughter of Neaira, who, as the early morning, reappears as the mother of the nymphs Phaethousa and Lampetiê in the Odyssey, no sooner becomes the mother of Telephos (the being who shines from far) than she is deprived of her child, who is exposed on Mount Parthenion. The story of Ariadnê exhibits much the same outlines. She is the daughter of Minos, the son of Zeus, and the all-brilliant Pasiphae, who is the mother of the Minotauros, as the bright Hêrê is the mother of Typhâôn. In the slaughter of this monster she has a share corresponding to that of Medeia in the conquest of the bulls and the dragon-sprung men; like Medeia, she accompanies the conqueror, and like her she is deserted by him. Ariadnê then either slays herself, like Iokastê and Augê, Dido or Anna, or becomes the wife of Dionysos, who places her among the stars. In substance this is also the story of the Argive Danaê, who is shut up by her father Akrisios in a brazen dungeon, which Zeus enters in the form of a golden shower, as the light of morning pierces the dark chambers of the night. She thus becomes the mother of Perseus; but, as in the case of Oidipous, the oracle had foretold that if she had a son, he would become the slayer of her father Akrisios, and Akrisios, 1 Iokastê is the wife of the gloomy Laios: in other words, the dawn from which the sun is born may be regarded as the wife of the dark and cheerless night. 2 The Iron Stove of the German story. (Grimm.) |