BOOK II. Heraklės and Echidna. and then appears again with its lustre dimmed, as if through grief for the lover of Eôs or of Daphnê, who has gone away. But the shades of night grow deeper, and with it deepens the tumult and rage of the black vapours which hurry to seize their prey; and the ending of the web which the suitors compel Penelopê to finish is the closing in of the night when the beautiful cirri clouds are shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Then follows the weary strife in which the suitors seek to overcome the obstinacy of Penelopê, and which corresponds to the terrible struggle which precedes the recovery of Helen from the thief who has stolen her away. But like the Panis, and Paris, and Vritra, the suitors bring about their own destruction. "I do not know that Indra is to be subdued," says Saramâ, "for it is he himself that subdues; you Panis will lie prostrate, killed by Indra." So too Penelopê can point to a weapon which none of the suitors can wield, and which shall bring them to death if ever the chief returns to his home. In the house of Odysseus there may be servants and handmaids who cast in their lot with the suitors, as Saramâ proved faithless when she accepted the milk offered to her by the Panis; and for these there is a penalty in store, like the blow of Indra which punished Saramâ for her faithlessness.1 Finally, by his victory, Odysseus rescues Penelopê and his wealth from the hands of his enemies, who are smitten down by his unerring arrows, as Vritra is slain by the irresistible spear of Indra. The wealth of the Ithakan chieftain has assumed a different form from that of the cows of Saramâ: but there are other myths in which the cattle of Indra reappear as in the Vedic hymns. Heraklês has more than once to search, like Phoibos, for stolen cows, or sometimes horses, and each time they are found hidden away in the secret dwelling of the robber. In the story of Echidna we have not only the cattle and the cave, but the very name of the throttling snake Ahi, the epithet by which the Hindu specially sought to express his hatred for the serpent Vritra. Accordingly in the Hesiodic Theogony Echidna is the parent of all the monsters who represent the cloudenemy of Indra. Night and day follow or produce each other, and as Phoibos is the child of Lêtô, so is he in his turn the father of the night which is his deadliest enemy. The black darkness follows the beautiful twilight, and thus in the Hesiodic version Echidna is the daughter of Chrysâôr, the lord of the golden sword and of the beautiful Kallirhoê. But although her offspring may cause disgust 1 As in the case of Saramâ, so in that of Penelopê, there are two versions of the myth, one representing her as incorruptible, the other as faithless. Ac cording to the latter, she became the mother of Pan either by Hermes or by all the suitors. THE CROSSING OF THE OCEAN STREAM. 543 Her X. and dread, she herself retains some portion of her parents' beauty. CHAP. Like the French Melusina, from the waist upwards she is a beautiful maiden,1 the rest of her body being that of a huge snake. abode, according to Hesiod, is among the Arimoi, where Typhôeus slumbers, or according to Herodotos, far away in the icy Scythia. Among her children, of some of whom Typhâôn, "the terrible and wanton wind," is the father, are the dogs Orthros and Kerberos, the Lernaian Hydra, the Chimaira, and the deadly Phix or Sphinx which brings drought and plague on Thebes. But whether in Hesiod, Apollodoros, or Herodotos, the story of Echidna is interwined with that of Geryones, who like herself is not only a child of Chrysâôr and Kallirhoê, but a monster, who has the bodies of three men united at the waist. This being lived in Erytheia, the red land, which, in some versions, was on the coast of Epeiros, in others, near Gadeira or Gades beyond the Pillars of Heraklês. In either case, he abode in the western regions, and there kept his herds of red oxen. In other words, the myth of Geryones exhibits a fiery and stormy sunset, in which the red or purple oxen are the flaming clouds which gather in the western horizon. These herds are guarded by the shepherd Eurytion and the two-headed dog Orthros, the offspring of Echidna and Typhon. These herds Heraklês is charged to bring to Eurystheus, and accordingly he journeys westward, receiving from Helios the golden cup in which Helios himself journeys every night from the west to the east. Having slain Orthros and Eurytion, Heraklês has a final struggle with Geryones, in which he wins a victory answering to that of Indra over Vritra; and placing the purple oxen in the golden cup he conveys them across the Ocean stream, and begins his journey westward. The stories of Alebion and Derkynos, and again of Eryx, as noted by Apollodoros, are only fresh versions of the myth of the Panis, while the final incident of the gadfly sent by Hêrê to scatter the herds reproduces the legend of the same gadfly as sent to torment the heifer Iô. The myth as related by Herodotos has a greater interest, although he starts with speaking of oxen and ends with a story of stolen horses. Here the events occur in the wintry Scythian land, where Heraklês coming himself with his lionskin goes to sleep, and his horses straying away are caught by Echidna and imprisoned in her cave. Thither Heraklês comes in search of them, and her reply to his question is that the animals cannot be restored to him until he should have sojourned with her for a time. Heraklês must fare as Odysseus fared in the palace of Kirkê and the cave of Kalypso; and Echidna becomes 1 Hes. Theog. 297. a ii. 5, 10. ? Max Müller, Chips, ii. 184. BOOK Orthros. Typhon. the mother of three sons, whose strength is to be tested by the same ordeal to which Theseus and Sigurd are compelled to submit. He only of the three shall remain in the land who can brace around his body the girdle of Heraklês and stretch his bow. To the girdle is attached a golden phial or cup, of which we have already traced the history. As the name Ahi reappears in that of Echidna, so that of Vritra is reproduced in Orthros, who in the Hesiodic Theogony is simply a hound sprung from Echidna and Geryones, but in Apollodoros becomes a dog with two heads, as Kerberos appears with three, although in Hesiod his heads are not less than fifty in number. It must, however, be noted that Orthros is sometimes himself called Kerberos. He is thus the being who, like Vritra, hides away the light or the glistening cows of the sun; but the time specially assigned to him as to the Asvins is that which marks the first faint streak of dawn, the time in which darkness is still supreme although its reign is drawing towards its close. It was at this time that Hermes, having toiled all night in the kindled forests, returned home gently to lay himself down like a child in his cradle, as the soft breeze of morning follows the gale which may have raged through the night. This Orthros, who with Kerberos answers seemingly to the two dogs of Yama, is slain by Heraklês, as Vritra is killed by Indra, who thus obtains the name of Vritrahan,-a name which must have assumed in Greek the form Orthrophôn. Nor is the name of Kerberos, who, armed with serpents for his mane and tail, has sometimes even a hundred heads, wanting in the Veda, which exhibits it under the form Sarvarî, an epithet for the night, meaning originally dark or pale. Kerberos is thus "the dog of night, watching the path to the lower world." " 8 The same terrible enemy of the powers of light appears again under the names Typhon, and Typhôeus, which denote the smoke. and flames vomited out by Vritra, Geryon, or Cacus,-in other words, the lightning flashes which precede the fall of the pent-up rain. This being is in the Hesiodic Theogony the father of all the dreadful winds which bring mischief and ruin to mortals, destroying ships at sea and houses and crops on land. By this dreadful hurricane, deiròr ißpior aveμov, Echidna becomes the mother of Kerberos, the Lernaian Hydra, the Chimaira, the Sphinx, and the Nemean Lion, all of them representing under different forms the dark powers who struggle with and are conquered by the lord of day, and whose mightiest hosts are seen in the armies of the Titans leagued against 1 Max Müller, Chips, ii. 185. 2 Ib. 183. • Theog. 869. THE STOLEN CATTLE. 545 X. the Kronid Zeus. Of these beings it is enough to say that later my- CHAP. thologists arranged their names and their functions almost at their will. Among the former appear some, as Hyperion and Phoibe, which are elsewhere mere names for the sun and moon; and in this its later form the myth is little more than an attempt to explain how it was that Kronos, time, was not able to devour and destroy all his children. With this insatiable parent Zeus must be inevitably engaged in an internecine war, the issue of which could not be doubtful. The thunder-bolts by which Indra overwhelms his foe reappear in the Greek myth as the Kyklôpes and the Hekatoncheires or hundredhanded beings whom on the advice of Gaia the king of the blue heaven summons from the depths of Tartaros into which Kronos and his associates are hurled. This struggle is, indeed, reproduced in myth after myth. The enemies who had assailed Ouranos are seen once more in the Gigantes or earth-born beings who league themselves against all the gods. These giants are mentioned in Hesiod merely as children sprung from Gaia along with the Erinyes after the mutilation of Ouranos. Elsewhere they are a horrible race destroyed for their impiety, fearful in aspect, and like Echidna and Ahi, with snaky bodies.1 Against these foes even Zeus himself is powerless unless he can gain the help of the mortal Herakles, and the latter in his turn can prevail over Alkyoneus only by taking him away from his own soil, from which, like Antaios, he rises with renewed strength after every downfall. When at length the struggle is ended, the giants are imprisoned, like the Titans, beneath the islands of the sea, SECTION II.-THE LATIN MYTH. and Cacus. The main features of the myths of Vritra, Geryon, and Echidna Hercules reappear in the singular Latin legend known to us as that of Hercules and Cacus. This story had undergone strange transformations before it assumed its Euemerised forms in the hands of Livy and of the Halikarnassian Dionysios, with whom even the account which he rejects as mythical has been carefully stripped of all supernatural incidents. According to Dionysios, Herakles, driving before him the oxen of Geryon, had reached the Palatine hill when, as in the myth of Echidna, he was overcome by sleep. On waking he found that some of his cattle had been stolen by some thief who had dragged them away by their tails. Doubtless Dionysios means that Herakles saw through the clumsy device, which the writer of the Homeric hymn 1 Paus. viii. 29, 3. II. BOOK discreetly avoided by making Hermes drive the cattle hither and thither, until all possibility of tracking them was lost; and with him the story goes on with a colloquy between Herakles and Cacus, who stands at the entrance of the cave and denies all knowledge of the cattle. But his guilt is proved when the lowing of the other cattle whom Herakles brings up rouses the imprisoned oxen to reply. He then slays Cacus with a blow of his club, and builds an altar to Zeus the discoverer (cupéotos) near the Porta Trigemina.1 Cacus another form of Vritra. The myth as related by Virgil and Ovid carries us back at once to the language of the Vedic hymns; and this fact, of which the poets were of course profoundly unconscious, shows the fidelity with which they adhered to the genuine tradition of the country. Here we have the deep cave of Vritra, with its huge rocks beetling over it, -the mighty mass which represents the dark thundercloud in which the waters are confined. Into this cave the rays of the sun can never enter; and here dwelt the monster, who, like Echidna, is but half a human being, and of whom the fire-god Vulcan is the father. In the lowing of the imprisoned cattle, as in the dark speech of the Sphinx, we have the rumbling of the thunder before the rain bursts from its confinement in the clouds. The hurling down of the rock by Hercules is the shattering of the castle of Vritra by the spear of Indra. No sooner is the blow struck than the horrible abyss of his dwelling is lighted up by the flames which burst from the monster's 1 Dion. H. i. 39-41. This version Dionysios rejects as fabulous "because the expedition of Herakles to drive oxen from the far west, in order to please Eurystheus, is an improbable event, not because it contravenes the order of nature."-Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, i. 289. Dionysios has no scruple in converting the myth into history by making Herakles the leader of a great army, and by stating that the stolen beasts belonged to his commissariat. Herakles is also invested by him with that high moral character on which the apologue of Prodikos is made to turn. Sir Cornewall Lewis remarks that in a legend of the Epizephyrian Lokrians "Latinus fills the place of Cacus and steals the oxen of Hercules." -Ib. 335. That the myth took a strong hold on the Latin imagination cannot be doubted. "The den of Cacus is placed in the Aventine; but the steps of Cacus were on the Palatine; they are known to Diodorus; and the latter hill is in his narrative the residence of Cacius, who with Pinarius hopitably and reverently entertains the Tirynthian hero, and is substituted for Potitius, nay, for Evander; the latter does not appear at all, nor do any Arcadians : none but natives are mentioned. So a sister of Cacus, Caca, was worshipped like Vesta, with eternal fire."-Niebuhr, History of Rome, i.: "The Aborigines and Latins." Niebuhr saw that in this legend" the worship of the Sabine Semo Sancus was transferred to the son of Alkmênê:" but he merely states the fact without attempting to account for it. The version of the legend given by Livy differs from that of Dionysios only in the description of Cacus as a shepherd. Dionysios simply speaks of him as a thief. The former ranks him with the pastoral Kylopes; the latter degrades him to the level of Sinis and Prokroustes. 2 Of Indra it is said that he has slain Ahi who was seated on the mountain summit; the word parvata being used to denote alike a hill and a cloud. -R. V. i. 32; Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 94. 3 "" 'Solis inaccessam radiis." |