falling to the lot of Temenos, Sparta to the sons of Aristodemos, and Messênê to Kresphontes. Herakles and Of the Latin god Hercules it may be enough to say here that Livy tells of him a story in which, undoubtedly, he has all the characteristics of the Hellenic Herakles. But it is not less certain that the Latin Herculus or Hercules answers strictly to the Greek Zeus Herkeios, and is in short Jupiter Terminus, or the god of inclosures and boundaries. With this fact before him, Niebuhr insisted that the story must at the first have been told not of the genuine Latin Hercules, but of some god into whose place his name had been intruded, from the phonetic resemblance between it and that of the Greek Heracles. The introduction of the name is, therefore, simply a result of that wholesale system of borrowing which extended practically to the great mass of Greek mythology; but the story of Hercules and Cacus is nevertheless a Latin myth, and we shall see its importance when we deal with the traditional legends of drought and dark ness. XXXIII. The myths relating the fortunes of the Herakleids show us how easily myths might be made to go round in cycles. The children of the sun-god are expelled from their home in the west only to reappear in the dawn city of the east, from which they repeat their efforts to gain possession of their western inheritance. But the repetition seems never to have left the impression of sameness. Differences of names and of local colouring invariably sufficed to maintain the conviction that legends substantially identical were wholly independent; but we might be tempted to suppose that the faith of the Argives must have been sorely strained when they were called upon to believe that the myth of Herakles was not a reflexion of the career of his mythical ancestor Perseus. The measure of correspondence between the two may perhaps be best seen by taking the story of the latter after that of his more conspicuous descendant. But we are justified on other grounds in reversing the Argive order. Herakles is sprung from Perseus only in the mythology of Argos; and the names which occur in both the myths furnish conclusive evidence that we have in them a history of phenomena connected with the sun in its daily course, and in the revolution of the seasons. In either case we have a hero whose life, beginning in disaster, is a long series of labours undertaken at the behest of one who is in every way his inferior, and who comes triumphantly out of his fearful ordeals because he is armed with the invincible weapons of the dawn, the sun, and the winds. Like Edipus, Romulus, and a host of others, Perseus is one of the fatal children.' Akrisios, the King of Argos, was accordingly warned by the Delphian oracle Perseus and that if his daughter Danaê had a son, he would Polydektes. be slain by that child. So he shut her up in a dungeon; but Zeus entered it in the form of a golden shower, and Daniaê became the mother of Perseus. Akrisios thereon placed Danaê and her babe in a chest, which the waves of the sea carried to the island of Seriphos. There she with her child was rescued, and kindly treated by Diktys, the brother of Polydektes, king of the island. Like all other fatal children, Perseus grows up with marvellous beauty and strength. His gleaming eyes and golden hair made him like Phoebus, the lord of light; but the doom which was on him was as heavy as that of Herakles, and his troubles began through the sufferings of his mother, who refused the love of Polydektes. On this refusal the tyrant shut her up in prison, saying that she should never come out until Perseus brought back the head of Medusa, the youngest of the three Gorgon sisters, the daughters of Phorkos and Keto. Medusa, a mortal maiden, dwelt with 1 See p. 14. ? The name Diktys seems clearly to be connected with that of the Diktaian cave, see p. 36. The word Polydektes is only another form of Polydegmon, an epithet of Hades. her immortal sisters Stheino (or Stheno) and Euryale, in the distant west, far beyond the gardens of the Hesperides, where the sun never shone, and where no living thing was ever to be seen. Yearning for human love and sympathy, she visited her kinsfolk the Graiai; but they could give her no help. So when Athênê came from the Libyan land, Medusa besought her aid. But Athênê refused it, saying. that men would shrink from the dark countenance of the Gorgon; and when Medusa answered that in the light of the sun her face might be as fair as that of Athênê herself, the goddess in her anger told her that henceforth all mortal things which might look upon her face should be turned into stone. Then her countenance was changed, and her hair was turned into snakes, which coiled and twisted themselves round her temples. Perseus and Only through the aid of the gods was Perseus enabled to find her dwelling. When he slept once more upon Argive soil, Athênê stood before him, and gave him a the Gorgons. mirror in which he might see the face of Medusa reflected, and thus know where to strike, for upon Medusa herself he could not gaze and live. When he awoke he saw the mirror by his side, and knew that it was not a dream. So with a good hope he journeyed westwards, and on the following night he saw in his sleep Hermes, the messenger of the gods, who gave him the sword which slays all mortal things on which it may fall, and bade him obtain the aid of the Graiai in his further search. When he awoke he took up the sword, and went to the land of the Graiai, where Atlas' bears up the pillars of the high heaven. There, in a cave, he found the three sisters, who had but one eye between them, which they passed from one to the other. This eye Perseus seized, and thus compelled them to guide him to the dwelling of Medusa. By their advice he went to the banks of the Ocean stream which flows round all the earth, and there the nymphs gave him › See p. 99. the helmet of Hades,' which enables the wearer to move unseen, and a bag into which he was to put Medusa's head, and the golden sandals of Hermes, which should bear him more swiftly than a dream from the pursuit of the Gorgon sisters. Thus armed, Perseus drew nigh to the dwelling of the Gorgons, and then, while the three sisters slept, the unerring sword fell, and the woeful life of Medusa was ended. On waking the two sisters saw the headless body, and rushed in mad chase after Perseus; but with the cap of Hades he went unseen, and the golden sandals bore him like a bird through the air. Onwards he went, until he heard a voice asking him whether he had brought with him the head of Medusa. It was the voice of the old man Atlas, who bore up the pillars of heaven on his shoulders, and who longed to be released from his fearful labour. On his entreaty Perseus showed him the Gorgon's face, and his rugged limbs soon grew stiff as ridges on a hill side, and his streaming hair looked like the snow which covers a mountain summit. Thence Perseus rose into the land of the Hyperboreans, who know neither day nor night, nor storm, nor sickness nor death, but live joyously among beautiful gardens where the flowers never fade. In spite of all its bliss, he could not tarry here long. He remembered his mother in her prison-house at Seriphos, and once more, on his winged sandals, he flew to the Libyan shore, where he saw a fair damsel chained on a rock, while a great dragon approached to devour her. But before he could seize his prey, the unerring sword smote him; and, taking off his cap, Perseus stood revealed before Andromeda. In a little while there was a marriage feast, where the maiden sat as his bride. But among the guests was Phineus, who 1 Aidos kuvén, Il. 5. 845. The Teutonic tarnkappe. The powers of this cap may have led to the notion which explained the name Hades from the invisible world. This explanation might suit the form Aïs, Aidos; but it is not easy to apply it to Hades, for which probably there is no Greek comparison. The name may perhaps be connected with that of Hodr, the slayer of the Teutonic sun-god Baldur. I had wished to marry Andromeda, and this man reviled the bridegroom until Perseus, unveiling the Gorgon's face, turned him and all his followers into stone. Perseus and There remained no more enemies to trouble him, and Kepheus, the father of Andromeda, would gladly have kept the hero with him; but the work of Perseus was Akrisios. not done until he had freed his mother from her prison. He must, therefore, hasten back to Seriphos, where Danaê was brought forth from her dungeon, and the glance of the Gorgon's face turned Polydektes and his abettors into stone. Thus his task was at length accomplished. The gifts of the gods were no longer needed, and so Perseus gave back to Hermes the helmet of Hades and the sword and sandals, and Athênê took the Gorgon's head and placed it upon her Ægis.1 On this follows the return of the hero with his mother to Argos, whence Akrisios, remembering the warning of the Delphian god, had fled in great fear to Larissa, where he was received by the chieftain Teutamidas. Thither also came Perseus, to take part in the great games to be held on the plain before the city. In these games Perseus was, throughout, the conqueror; but while he was throwing quoits, one turned aside and killed Akrisios. The sequel is given in two versions. In the one Perseus returns to Argos, and dies in peace; in the other, grief and shame for the death of Akrisios drive him to abandon his Argive sovereignty for that of the huge-walled Tiryns, where his kinsman Megapenthes is king. Thus, as the unwilling destroyer even of those whom he loves, as the conqueror of monstrous beasts and serpents, as toiling for 1 By the Greeks the Ægis was regarded as a buckler or shield covered with the skin of a goat, aï¿, aiyós, or a mantle of the same material, borne by the virgin-goddess Athênê. But the Iliad speaks also of Zeus Aigiochos, who was first the Storm-bringer (the idea of tempest being expressed in the word karáï¿, KaTais) and then the Ægis-bearer. The Homeric poet, M. Bréal remarks, 'semble se souvenir de la première signification, quand il nous montre, au seul mouvement du bouclier, le tonnerre qui éclat, l’Ida qui se couvre de nuages, et les hommes frappés de terreur.'—Hercule et Cacus, p. 116. Compare also the Ægis-hialm of northern myths, p. 49. |