HERCULES AND HERCULUS. X. 547 mouth; in other words, the darkness of the storm-cloud is pierced CHAP. by the lightning. Then follows the death of the monster, to whose carcase the poet applies an epithet which links this myth with the legend of the Chimaira slain by Bellerophôn and thus connects it again with that of Vritra.1 Recaranus. But we have here to meet the difficulty noticed by Niebuhr. Sancus or Whatever is to be said of the name Cacus, it is clear that the name Hercules cannot have been contained in the original Latin story. There was indeed a Latin god Herculus, but, like the Lares worshipped by the Arval Brotherhood, he was strictly a god of the country and the guardian of fences and landmarks. He is known. as the Rustic, Domestic, or Genial Hercules, a name which points. to an old verb hercere, herciscere, akin to arcere, and the Greek elpyew; but this very fact precludes the idea that the Latin Hercules, of which the old form Herclus, Herculus, survives in the exclamation Mehercule, Mehercle, is identical with the Greek Herakles. But the god who overcame Cacus must have had the characteristics of the Greek Herakles and the Vedic Indra; and hence when the Roman became acquainted with the Greek hero, whose name so closely resembled that of one amongst his own ancient gods, he attributed to his own Hercules the deeds which were rightly told of the son of Alkmênê, and doubtless also of the god into whose place he was thus intruded. The god thus displaced was, in M. Bréal's judgment, the deity known as Sancus or Recaranus. The former, answering to Zeus Pistios of the Greek and the Dius Fidius of the Latins, imparted to the Ara Maxima the peculiar sanction which rendered all oaths there taken inviolable. The name Recaranus, which is actually 1 "Villosa setis Pectora semiferi."En. viii. 267. 2 In this case the name, as M. Bréal remarks, should begin with s, as in the change of the aspirated Greek numeral into the Latin sex, septem, of erouai into sequor, &c.-Hercule et Cacus, 52. M. Bréal further remarks (and great stress must be laid upon his words) that Herakles, like Perseus, Theseus, Achilleus, and the rest, is in the Greek mythology strictly not a god. Though the son of Zeus himself, he is doomed to toil, weariness, and death; and the only offset to his short career on earth is the assurance that when his journey here is done he shall enter the halls of Olympos, there to live in everlasting youth. But it is most doubtful whether the Latin mythology knew anything of heroes in the Greek sense of the word. "L'esprit à la fois net et abstrait du Romain ne Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 57. The II. BOOK given by Aurelius Victor as that of the slayer of Cacus,' must in M. Bréal's judgment be referred to the root cri, or kri, which has furnished to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin a large number of words denoting the ideas of creation and power. M. Bréal cites from Festus the word cerus as an epithet of Janus,' and connects with it the Greek Kronos and the Kêres, who have power over the life and death of men. If then Caranus, or Garanus, is the maker, Recaranus must be the god who makes again, or who, like Dahanâ, renders all things young; and thus Recaranus would denote the Re-creator, and so the Recuperator or recoverer of the cattle stolen by Cacus, Geryon, or Vritra. When, however, the Roman, becoming acquainted with Greek myths, found the word Alexikakos among the epithets of Herakles, he naturally came to regard Recaranus as only another name for that hero. But the quantity of the name Cacus leaves no room for this identification. The first syllable is long, and the word, given by Diodoros under the form Kakios, and reappearing in the Prænestine Cæculus, leads M. Bréal to the conclusion that the true Latin form was Cæcius, as Saturnus answers to Saturnus. What then is Cæcius? The idea of the being who bears this name is clearly that of the Sanskrit Vritra, the being who steals the beautiful clouds and blots out the light from the sky. Such is Paris; such also is Typhon; and the latter word suggests to M. Bréal a comparison of Cacus with Cæcus, the blind or eyeless being. But in a proverb cited by Aulus Gellius from Aristotle, a being of this name is mentioned as possessing the power of drawing the clouds towards him; and thus we have in M. Bréal's judgment 4 ing fertility and wealth, as in " semen: " Orig. Gen. Rom. vi. "Recaranus 2 "Duonus cerus es, duonus Ianus." The name is found on a cup preserved in the Gregorian museum at Rome and inscribed " Ceri Poculom." 3 κῆρες θανάτοιο. The words κύριος and kоipavos have passed into the notion of mastery from the obvious fact that he who has made a thing must have power over it. So kрaivew is to decree, because an effectual command can be given only by him who has a constraining authority, i.e. who can make others do his bidding. If this can be established (and the affinity of Cacus, Cæcius, Kakios, and the Greek Kakías seems to leave no room for doubt), the word Cacus is at once accounted for. Cæcus is one of many words in which the negative is expressed by the particle ha denoting the number 1, which Bopp discovers in the Gothic haihs=cæcus, blind, hanfs, one-handed, halts, lame, halbs, half. Cæcus, then, is made up of this pri vative particle, and iha or aiha, auge, the eye. The second compound of halts is found in the English phrase "lithe of limb." Cf. Kokalos and Cocles, pp. 328, 329; and calebs. 5 κάκ' ἐφ ̓ αὑτὸν ἕλκων, ὡς ὁ Καικίας vépos a proverb applied to a man who is his own enemy. -Bréal, ib. 111; Maury, Croyances, &c., 177. BELLEROS AND HIPPONOÖS. 549 X. the explanation of an incident which, translated into the conditions CHAP. of human life, becomes a clumsy stratagem. In storms, when contrary currents are blowing at different elevations, the clouds may often appear from the earth to be going against or right towards the wind. Then it is that Cacus is drawing the cattle of Herakles by their tails towards his cave. SECTION III.—BELLEROPHÔN. monster Virgil notes especially the rough and shaggy (villosa) breast of The the monster Cacus: and this epithet carries us to the names of similar Belleros. beings in the mythology of other Aryan tribes. That the root var, to hide or cover, has furnished names for Varuna the brooding heaven, as well as for Vritra, the enemy who hides away or imprisons the rain, we have already seen. We may follow Professor Max Müller as he traces the root further through the Sanskrit ura in urabhra, a ram (in other words, the wool-bearer), to ûrnâ, wool, the Greek epos and ep-cov, in ûrnâyu, a goat and a spider (the Greek ȧp-áxvý), the one as supplying wool, the other as appearing to weave it, to Aurnavâbha, the wool-provider, one of the enemies slain by Indra, the Russian vòlna, the Gothic vulla, the English wool, the Latin villus and vellus, and the English fleece. But as in Varuņa the idea of covering gives place to that of guarding or shielding, so úranah is a ram, but urânah is a protector. The meaning of the word is further modified from hairiness or woolliness into that of mere roughness, and the term varvara was applied by the Aryan invaders to the negro-like aboriginal tribes, whom the Greeks would have termed barbarians. That this last word can be referred to no other root is further proved by comparison of the Sanskrit lomasya with the Greek daσurns, words in which the shagginess of hair furnishes a metaphor denoting roughness of pronunciation. But the Sanskrit varvara transliterated into Greek would yield the word Belleros: and thus we retain some notion of a being of whom the Greek myth gives otherwise no account whatever. The invention of a noble Corinthian of this name, to serve as the victim of Hipponoös the son of Glaukos, is on a par with the explanations given by mythographers for such names as Pan, Odysseus, Oidipous, or Aias. Belleros then is some shaggy or hairy monster, slain by the hero named from this exploit, 1 It is needless for me to do more than refer the reader to Professor Max Müller's chapter on Bellerophon (Chips, vol. ii.), where he will find the subject treated at length and most convincingly. BOOK II. Leophon tes. -in short, another Cacus, or Ahi, or Vritra; and as Indra is Vritrahan, the slayer of Indra, so is Bellerophôn the slayer of Belleros.1 Although no mythical being is actually found bearing this name in the Rig Veda, yet the black cloud is one of the chief enemies (dasas) of Indra. This cloud is sometimes called the black skin, sometimes the rain-giving and fertilising skin, while the demon of the cloud appears as a ram, or a shaggy and hairy creature, with ninety-nine arms, or, if we give him one more limb, as Briareos. This wool- or fleece-covered animal is therefore reproduced not only in the monster Belleros, but in the Chimaira which Hipponoös is said to have slain, a being, like Geryon, Kerberos, Orthros, and Echidna, of a double or triple body. In the Chimaira the fore-part is that of a lion, the middle that of a goat, while the hinder-part, like that of his mother Echidna and all other cognate beings, is the tail of a fish or serpent. The death of Vritra or the wool-weaver (Aurnavâbha) is followed by the loosening or the downfall of the rain; but although it is not said that this is the effect of the slaughter of Chimaira, the idea of rain or moisture as repressed by the monster is not absent from the myth of Bellerophôn. His victory is won by means of Pêgasos, the winged horse, whom he finds feeding by the fountain or waters (y) of Peirênê; and from its back, as he soars aloft in the air, Hipponoös pours down his deadly arrows on the offspring of Echidna, as Indra from his chariot in the heaven hurls his lance against the gloomy Vritra. But Vritra, Ahi, the Panis and the other dark beings are all of them enemies (dasas) of the gods, and he who destroys them is dasyuhan, the slayer of the dasas-a name which transliterated into Greek would yield Leophontes. This epithet is applied to Hipponoös as well as that of Bellerophôn; and it is clear that he cannot be so called as killing lions, for he would then be Leontophontes. Nor is it easy to connect this Leo or Deo, of which he is the conqueror, with anything but the Sanskrit dasa, which reappears in We may trace the root in the Sanskrit han, the Greek póvos, and the English bane. The precise Greek equivalent for Vritrahan would be Orthrophon, a word which is not actually found, although Herakles is really Orthrophontes, the slayer of the shaggy hound Orthros. 2 Max Müller, Chips, ii. 180. It is possible that the introduction of the word Chimaira into this myth may be the result of a confusion like those already noticed between Arkshas and Rikshas, Leukos and Lukos, &c. At the least, Chimaira is a name not for goats of any age, but only for those which are one year old. The older goats are called Aiges. Theokr. i. 6. A Chimaira, then, is strictly a winterling (.e. a yearling), just as the Latin bimus or trimus (bi-himus, hiems), denotes things of two or three winters old. But the sun is the slayer of winter; and hence the creature which he slays would be the Chimaira. LAIOS AND THE SPHINX. X. 551 dâsapati, the Greek Despotês, or lord of subjects, in other words, CHAP. of conquered enemies.1 In the Theban legend this foe is reproduced as Laios, who is doomed, like Akrisios, to perish by the hand of his child, as the night must give place to the day. SECTION IV.-THE THEBAN MYTH. The close affinity of the Theban Sphinx with the Ahi, the The throttling snake, is manifest from its name, which belongs to the Sphinx. same root with the verb opíyyw, to bind tight, to squeeze, and so to choke. In the Hesiodic Theogony this word is given under the form Phix, and points to the connexion between the words σφίγγω, πήγνυμι, and the Latin figo, to fix or fasten. If the Thebans derived this name from the mount Phikion, their mistake was but a repetition of the process which traced the surnames of Phoibos to the island of Delos and the country of Lykia. The Sphinx, then, like Vritra and the Panis, is a being who imprisons the rain in hidden dungeons. Like them, she takes her seat on a rock, and there she utters her dark sayings, and destroys the men who cannot expound them. In Hesiod, she is a daughter of Orthros and Chimaira, who with her mother Echidna exhibits the same composite form which reappears in the Sphinx. In the Sphinx the head of a woman is combined with the body of a beast, having like Typhon the claws of the lion, the wings of the bird, and the serpent's tail and in Apollodoros Typhon is himself her father. It is, of course, possible that the so-called Egyptian Sphinx may be an expression for the same idea 1 With this we must compare not only the Greek λaós, λews, people, but the adjective dhïos, hostile. This word Professor Max Müller (Chips, ii. 187) traces to the root das, to perish, although he adds that, "in its frequent application to fire the adjective daïos might well be referred to the root dú, to burn." The difference in meaning between them is not greater than that which separates Varuna from Vritra, or Uranah from Urânah. Laios, in the opinion both of Professor Müller and of M. Bréal, is an exact equivalent of the Sanskrit Dasyu. To the assertion of M. Comparetti that an Aryan d never appears in Greek as 7, Professor Müller replies by saying that the instances in support of his own position were supplied by Ahrens, "De Dialecto Doricâ," who cites λávn = δάφνη, Ολυσσεύς = Οδυσσεύς, and λίσκος Slokos.-Chips, ii. 168. He adds (186) a large number of instances in which the same word in Latin exists under both forms, as impedimenta, impelimenta; præsidium, præsilium ; considium, consilium; dingua (Goth. tuggô), and lingua, &c. Professor Curtius, when he speaks of the transition of & into a as unheard of in Greek, must, in Professor Müller's opinion, be speaking of classical Greek, and not of the Greek dialects, "which are nevertheless of the greatest importance in the interpretation of the names of local gods and heroes, and in the explanation of local legends." But if we sought for a Greek equivalent to the Latin lavo, we might look for a form de Fw, not less than for Aouw; and we find both, as in 7. ii. 471, ὅτε γλάγος ἄγγεα δεύει. 3 iii. 5, 8. |