BOOK religion and mythology on that of the Greek world was far more direct and important than any that came from Egypt.

II.

'The ocean

stream.

Danaos and Aigyptos.

In his later and more definite functions as the god of the waters, Poseidon is still the lord only of the troubled sea:1 and there remains a being far more ancient and more majestic, the tranquil Okeanos, whose slow and deep-rolling stream no storm can ever ruffle. He dwells in the far west, where are the sources of all things. From him flow all rivers and all the tossing floods, all fountains and all wells. Nay, he is himself the spring of all existence, whether to the gods or to men. He is therefore with Têthys his wife the guardian of Hêrê, while Zeus is busy warring with the Titans. His children are recounted in numbers which denote infinity; and the Hesiodic Theogony which calls him a son of Ouranos and Gaia gives him three thousand daughters who dwell in the lakes and fountains of the earth, and three thousand sons who inhabit the murmuring streams," and seems also to point dimly to the source of the Ocean itself."

SECTION III.-THE RIVERS AND FOUNTAINS.

If in the legend of Danaos and Aigyptos with their fifty sons and fifty daughters we put aside the name Belos and possibly that of Aigyptos as not less distinctly foreign than the Semitic Melikertes, Kadmos, and Agênor in the Boiotian mythology, there remains in the whole list of names on either side scarcely a name which is not purely Greek or Aryan. Doubtless when at a comparatively late time the myths were systematically arranged, this singular story was dovetailed into the cycle of stories which began with the love of Zeus for the Inachian Iô; and when Iô was further identified with Isis, a wide door was opened for the introduction of purely foreign elements into myths of strictly Aryan origin. Nor would it be prudent to deny that for such identifications there may not, in some cases, have been at the least a plausible ground. Iô was the horned maiden, and her calf-child was Epaphos; but the Egyptian worshipped Apis, and had

1 The Latin Neptunus is (if we regard the name as Aryan, and therefore as akin to the Greek νίπτω, νέφος, vepéλn, L. nebula, &c.) the god only of the cloud as the source of moisture and water, and therefore not a god of the sea at all, although Virgil chose to gather round him all the myths which were attached to the Hellenised Poseidôn; but Mr. Isaac Taylor (Etruscan Researches, 139) identifies it with the Etruscan Nethunus, for which he claims

FOREIGN NAMES IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

483

VI.

Isis as his horned maiden. There was nothing here which might CHAP. not have grown up independently in Egypt and in Greece: nor is any hypothesis of borrowing needed to account for the similarity of myths suggested by the horns of the new moon. The mischief began with the notion that the whole Greek mythology not merely exhibited certain points of likeness or contact with that of Semitic or other alien tribes, but was directly borrowed from it; and when for this portentous fact no evidence was demanded or furnished beyond the impudent assertions of Egyptian priests, there was obviously no limit and no difficulty in making any one Greek god the counterpart of a deity in the mythology of Egypt. Hence, speaking generally, we are fully justified in sweeping away all such statements as groundless fabrications. Nay more, when Herodotos tells us that Danaos and Lynkeus were natives of Chemmis, and that the Egyptians trace from them the genealogy of Perseus, the periodical appearance of whose gigantic slipper caused infinite joy in Egypt, we cannot be sure that his informers even knew the names which the historian puts into their mouths. In all probability, the points of likeness were supplied by Herodotos himself, although doubtless the Egyptians said all that they could to strengthen his fixed idea that Egypt was the source of the mythology and religion, the art and science of Greece; nor does the appearance of a solitary sandal lead us necessarily to suppose that the being who wore it was in any way akin to the Argive hero who receives two sandals from the Ocean nymphs.

daughters.

Hence it is possible or likely that the names Belos and Aigyptos Their may have been late importations into a purely native myth, while the sons and wanderings of Danaos and Aigyptos with their sons and daughters have just as much and as little value as the pilgrimage of Iô. In the form thus assigned to it, the legend runs that Libya, the daughter of Epaphos the calf-child of Iô, became the bride of Poseidon and the mother of Agenor and Belos. Of these the former is placed in Phoinikia, and takes his place in the purely solar myth of Têlephassa, Kadmos, and Eurôpê: the latter remains in Libya, and marrying Anchirrhoê (the mighty stream), a daughter of the Nile, becomes the father of the twins Danaos and Aigyptos, whose lives exhibit not much more harmony and concord than those of many other pairs of twins in Aryan story. These sons of Belos marry many wives, and while Aigyptos has fifty sons, Danaos has fifty daughters, numbers which must be compared with the fifty daughters of Nereus or the fifty children of Endymion and Asterodia. The action of the story begins with the tyranny of Aigyptos and his sons over Danaos and his daughters. By the aid of Athênê, Danaos builds a fifty-oared

II.

BOOK vessel, and departing with his children, comes first to the Rhodian Lindos, then to Argos, where they disembark near Lernai during a time of terrible drought caused by the wrath of Poseidon. He at once sends his daughters to seek for water; and Amymonê (the blameless), chancing to hit a Satyr while aiming at a stag, is rescued from his hot pursuit by Poseidôn whose bride she becomes and who calls up for her the never-failing fountain of Lernai. But Aigyptos and his sons waste little time in following them. At first they exhibit all their old vehemence and ferocity, but presently changing their tone, they make proposals to marry, each, one of the fifty Danaides.1 The proffer is accepted in apparent friendship; but on the day of the wedding Danaos places a dagger in the hands of each maiden, and charges her to smite her husband before the day again breaks upon the earth. His bidding is obeyed by all except Hypermnestra (the overloving or gentle), who prefers to be thought weak and wavering rather than to be a murderess. All the others cut off the heads of the sons of Aigyptos, and bury them in the marshland of Lernai, while they placed their bodies at the gates of the city. From this crime they were purified by Athênê and Hermes at the bidding of Zeus, who thus showed his approval of their deed. Nevertheless, the story grew up that in the world of the dead the guilty daughters of Danaos were condemned to pour water everlastingly into sieves.

Hyper

mnestra

keus.

Danaos had now to find husbands for his eight and forty daughters, and Lyn- Hypermnestra being still married to Lynkeus and Amymonê to Poseidon. This he found no easy task, but at length he succeeded through the device afterwards adopted, we are told, by Kleisthenes. There were, however, versions which spoke of them as all slain by Lynkeus, who also put Danaos himself to death. There is little that is noteworthy in the rest of the legend, unless it be the way in which he became chief in the land where the people were after him called Danaoi. The dispute for supremacy between himself and Gelanor is referred to the people, and the decision is to be given on the following day, when, before the appointed hour, a wolf rushed in upon the herd feeding before the gates and pulled down the leader. The wolf was, of course, the minister of the Lykian Apollôn; the stricken herd were the subjects of the native king, and the smitten ox was the king himself. The interpretation was obvious, and Gelanor had to give way to Danaos.

Origin of

What is the meaning and origin of this strange tale? With an the myth. ingenuity which must go far towards producing conviction, Preller

1 With this number we may compare the fifty daughters of Daksha in

Hindu mythology, and of Thestios, and the fifty sons of Pallas and Priam.

THE DANAIDES.

answers this question by a reference to the physical geography of Argolis. Not much, he thinks, can be done by referring the name Danaos to the root da, to burn, which we find in Ahanâ, Dahanâ, and Daphnê,1 as denoting the dry and waterless nature of the Argive soil. This dryness, he remarks, is only superficial, the whole territory being rich in wells or fountains which, it must be specially noted, are in the myth assigned as the works of Danaos, who causes them to be dug. These springs were the object of a special veneration, and the fifty daughters of Danaos are thus the representatives of the many Argive wells or springs, and belong strictly to the ranks of waternymphs. In the summer these springs may fail. Still later even the beds of the larger streams, as of the Inachos or the Kephisos, may be left dry, while in the rainy portion of the year these Charadrai or Cheimarrhoi, winter flowing streams, come down with great force and overflow their banks. Thus the myth resolves itself into phrases which described originally these alternations of flood and drought. The downward rush of the winter torrents is the wild pursuit of the sons of Aigyptos, who threaten to overwhelm the Danaides, or nymphs of the fountains; but as their strength begins to fail, they offer themselves as their husbands, and are taken at their word. But the time for vengeance has come; the waters of the torrents fail more and more, until their stream is even more scanty than that of the springs. In other words, they are slain by their wives, who draw or cut off the waters from their sources. These sources are the heads of the rivers, and thus it is said that the Danaides cut off their husbands' heads. A precise parallel to this myth is furnished by the Arkadian tale, which speaks of Skephros (the droughty) as slandering or reviling Leimon (the moist or watery being), and as presently slain by Leimon, who in his turn is killed by Artemis. If in place of the latter we substitute the Danaides, and for the former the sons of Aigyptos, we have at once the Argive tradition. The meaning becomes still more obvious when we mark the fact that the Danaides threw the heads into the marsh-grounds of Lernai (in other words, that there the sources of the waters were preserved according to the promise of Poseidon that that fountain should never fail), while the bodies of the sons of Aigyptos, the dry beds of the rivers, were exposed in the sight of all the people. It

The objection on the score of the quantity of the first syllable, which in Danaos is short, while in Daphne and darà úλa, wood easily inflammable, it is long, is perhaps one on which too much stress should not be laid.

? If the name Danaos itself denotes water, it must be identified with Tanais, Don, Donau, Tyne, Teign, Tone, and other forms of the Celtic and Slavonic words for a running stream.

485

CHAP.

VI.

BOOK
II.

The Lyrkeios.

may therefore well be doubted whether the name Aigyptos itself be not a word which may in its earlier form have shown its affinity with Aigai, Aigaion, Aigialos, Aigaia, and other names denoting simply the breaking or dashing of water against the shores of the sea or the banks of a river.1

But one of the Danaides refused or failed to slay her husband. The name of this son of Aigyptos is Lynkeus, a myth to which Pausanias furnishes a clue by giving its other form Lyrkeios. But Lyrkeios was the name given to the river Inachos in the earlier portion of its course, and thus this story would simply mean that although the other streams were quite dried up, the waters of the Lyrkeios did not wholly fail.2

1 Preller thinks that when the idea of a foreign origin for Aigyptos and Danaos was once suggested, the Nile with its yearly inundations and shrinkings presented an obvious point of comparison with the Cheimarrhoi or wintertorrents of the Peloponnesos. — Gr. Myth. ii. 47.

2 The head of Lynkeus (Lyrkeios), the one stream which is not dried up, answers to the neck of the Lernaian Hydra. So long as streams were supplied from the main source, Herakles

had still to struggle with the Hydra. His victory was not achieved until he had severed this neck which Hypermnestra refused to touch. The heads of the slain sons of Aigyptos are the heads which Heraklês hewed off from the Hydra's neck and thus this labour of Heraklês resolves itself into the struggle of the sun with the streams of the earth, the conquest of which is of course the setting in of thorough drought.