of Phoebus. Winged birds may easily in mythical language become winged maidens, who could show themselves in their human forms either at their will or on the ending of the enchantment under which they were held. Nay, Zeus himself, we are told, comes to Leda in the guise of a swan ; and hence from the two eggs severally sprang Kastor and Helen, Polydeukes and Klytaimnestra (Clytemnestra). If in another version the brothers are said to be the sons of Zeus, while Helen is the child of Tyndareos, we must not forget that Tyndareos is only a name for Zeus the thunderer. We are thus introduced into a world of transformations and enchantments, in which the ship and the swan are prominent forms. These images come before us in a large number of mediæval traditions, of which the story of Beatrice, Matabrune, and Helias' may be taken as a type.

Under another name the rain clouds appear as the Hyades, who are said to be the daughters of Atlas and The Hvades Æthra, the heaven and the pure air, or of Okeanos, the water, or of Erechtheus, the earth. As the nymphs of Nysa or Dodona, they are the guardians of the infant Dionysos, or the nurses of Zeus himself; and to requite them for their kindness, Dionysos makes Medeia, the wise daughter of the sun, restore them to youth when they had grown old, like the young clouds of morning which recall the vanished forms whose beauty glorified the sunset of the previous days. Their sisters are the Pleiades, whose name, indicating their kinship with vapour and water, was confused with that of the ringdove, Peleias, and so the story ran that they were changed into doves and placed among the stars. The Pleiades are generally said to be seven in number, six being visible and one invisible.

There remain in the popular traditions of the old Greeks a large number of mythical beings, whose origin it would be rash to attempt to define too sharply. Of their characteristics, some may be derived from mythical phrases Myth. of Ar. Nat. ii. 284.

MEDUSA AND PEGASUS.

221

and the Gor

Muses and the

relating to the forms, colours, and shades of clouds and mist; others clearly must come from a different source. But the names of many of these beings are mani- The Graiai festly not Greek, and almost as clearly not Aryan, gons. The while some seem to be merely Greek translitera- Pierides. tions of Semitic words. The Graiai and the Gorgons may represent only the gloaming and the night; but we have still to account for the fact, that of the three Gorgon sisters one is mortal, and that she is described as having been once beautiful, but as having become an object of horror under the ban of Athênê, who resented her rivalry. Poseidon, we are told, loved Medusa in the fair spring-time, and Medusa became the mother of Chrysaor,' and of the winged horse Pegasos, who rose through the heavens to the house of Zeus, where he bears the thunders and lightnings for the sovereign of Olympos. Here Medusa is simply another Leto, and may naturally be spoken of as mortal, since the birth of the sun must be fatal to the darkness out of which it springs. Her beauty, therefore, is that of the peaceful and moonlit night, vexed by no tempest; and it is not easy to explain the change which comes over her countenance, except by taking it as a picture of a storm. The fair face of the nightly heaven is now marred by the ghastly vapours which stream like dark serpents across it; and the horrible aspect thus imparted might well be regarded as a punishment for the presumption which dared to put her beauty into comparison with that of Athênê. That her offspring, Pegasos, was akin to cloud and vapour, is manifest not only from the name, which points to a source of waters, but from the myth that on the spot dinted by his hoof sprang the fountain Hippokrênê. He springs from the waters, as Poseidon may be taken as a god of the sea; and he is brought, as one legend went, ready saddled and bridled to Bellerophon, whom he bears in the battle with the Chimera. When the monster was killed, Bellerophon, 1 See p. 85.

it is said, sought to rise to heaven on his back, but was either thrown or fell off from giddiness, while the horse continued to soar upwards. That Bellerophon is a purely solar hero, we shall see when we come to deal with the myths of the darkness; and hence in his relations with Pegasos, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have a series of pictures representing the action of the thundercloud in reference to the sun. But Pegasos is also the horse of the Muses; and the Muses, like the clouds in many an Aryan myth, appear in the form of swans.1 Of the rivalry between the Muses and the Pierides, we are told, that when the former sang, everything became dark and gloomy, while the song of the Muses brought back light and gladness, and Helikon leaped up in its joy and rose heavenwards, until a blow from the hoof of Pegasos smote it down. If, as it would seem, the myth exhibits the contrast between the sound of the winds in fine and in stormy weather, the rivalry of the Muses and the Pierides is a myth which must be compared with the stories of Hermes, Orpheus, and Amphion.

Kallimachos, Hymn to Delos, 255.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EARTH.

Semitic mytho

IN all mythology the earth is treated as the mother or parent of all living things. Like Kronos, it may devour its children; but its powers of reproduction far Difference of exceed the sum of life which it takes away by Aryan from the death of those who have done their work. logy. In the Vedic hymns the earth is the bride of Dyaus; in the Hesiodic Theogony she is wedded to Ouranos, the Varuna of the Rig Veda, and from them proceeds the whole order of the visible and sensible Kosnos. It may seem almost a paradox to say that the thought of the earth as a producer and restorer would be more likely to lead men on to the thought of a power transcending nature, or the forces which we see at work in the outward world, than the impressions made on the human mind by the phenomena of the daily or nightly heavens; but on further thought, we can scarcely fail to see that the continuance of life on the earth, the unceasing restlessness, the perpetual change which is going on upon its surface; the sensitiveness of all vegetable and animal substances to the influences which act upon them from without, must inevitably lead men on to something more like a scheme of philosophy than any which could be furnished by mere phrases describing the phenomena of the day or the year. It does not follow that the condition of those who were thus led on should be happier than that of those who, from whatever cause, remained content with recording the impressions made upon them daily by the sights and sounds of the outward world. The

history of the Semitic nations seems to give no countenance to any such notion. The Aryan was satisfied with noting the birth of the sun from the darkness, his love for the dawn, his early separation from the bright being who had cheered him at the beginning of his career, his long toil, his fruitless labour, his battle with countless enemies, his final victory and reunion with the bright being from whom he had been parted long ago, his last sleep in the land of forgetfulness and his rising again to life and strength in the joyous regions of the dawn. The Phenician and the Canaanite could not rest here. They were themselves part of a mysterious system which whirled them through the realms of infinite space, a system characterised by an exuberance of power, by a majestic and rhythmical movement, by a force consciously exulting in the joyousness of its strength. In such notions as these we have the surest foundations of an orgiastic worship; and the worship of all the Semitic tribes was orgiastic to the core. The spirit of such a worship or ritual is beyond doubt aggressive and contagious. The enthusiasm with which it fills the worshipper will never allow him to rest in patient inactivity; and it moves him, unhappily, only in the direction of evil. It is better to praise Ushas, or Eôs, or Athênê, or the dawn, under any other name which we may assign to it, for the light, the food, and all the other blessings which it brings to us, than to lose ourselves in the labyrinth of cosmical movements, and in the idea of mystic revolutions, which may be typified by the frenzied dances of the worshippers. We may say therefore, broadly, that the Semitic deities are cosmical, while those of the Aryan nations are phenomenal; but the Semitic and Aryan tribes acted and reacted on each other, and, as we might suppose, the stronger influence was exercised by the former. Nor can we say that it was exercised without strenuous opposition. It is impossible to extract history from mythology, except in so far as the myths themselves may point to definite schemes for upsetting