Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

1

never bark,' which are a thoroughly Asiatic concept; and although Apollon appears riding on a gryphon,2 it is only when his cult has been introduced by arbitrary fancy into the blessed regions of the Hyperboreans beyond the bitter north wind. Numerous Vases represent contests between the Amazons, who are said to have originally lived near the Kaukasos and migrated thence to the banks of the Thermodon in Western Pontos, and the Gryphons. But their most famous legendary foes are the one-eyed Arimaspoi, who tried to despoil them of the gold which they guarded, and who inhabited the north-east of the Herodotean world. So Milton writes,

As when a gryphon thro' the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloin'd
The hoarded gold; so eagerly the fiend.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

The Arimaspeia, an epic poem attributed to Aristeas of Prokonnesos, a poet hidden in nebulous fable, treated in three books of the affairs of the Arimaspians, with the history and geography of the Griffins, guardians of the golden harvest, and of their wars against the Arimaspians, in defence of the sacred treasure.5 The Arimaspians were described as a race of Scytho-Cyclops, or one-eyed barbarians, covered with hair; the Griffins as lions in body, with the head and wings of eagles.' The griffin has been found as an ornament in Scythian tombs, the drawing, however, being Greek. It was the special emblem of Panticapaeum [Kertch], and is often met with on the The Greek griffin is curiously like the Perse

coins.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

Herod. iv. 27.

5 Cf. Herod. iii. 116; Paus. i. 24. 6 Mure, Hist. of Greek Literature, ii. 470.

politan, and both are apparently derived from the winged lion of the Assyrians.' In Kam the Asiatic god Set, who is represented amongst other forms as a gryphon, was called Nub, or Nubti, which means the "Golden" or "Gold God." It is curious, though not conclusive, to compare this Gryphon form of Set with the Hyperborean legends of gryphons which guarded the gold.' The palace of Skylas, king of Skythia, was ornamented with gryphons carved in white marble; and gryphons are said to have been spotted like leopards, a further link between them and Dionysos. The contests of the Gryphons and Arimaspoi are also depicted on the Vases of Pantikapeion.5 In Assyria the Gryphon appears at times to have been hostile to the gods, and Canon Rawlinson observes, 'We can scarcely be mistaken in regarding as either an evil genius, or a representation of the evil principle, the monster, half-lion half-eagle, which in the Nimrod sculptures retreats from the attacks of a god, who assails him with thunderbolts.' The Gryphon thus belongs to the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates, and to the mountains of Asia; and in the example before us the Eastern god is car-drawn by the Eastern monster, who, hostile no longer, is subdued by the thunderbolts of Dionysos Pelekys. The Gryphon plays a very important rôle in heraldry and in mediaeval myth. The Kaldean dragon of the sea' is generally conceived of as a griffin.' The form of this creature, as given on the gems, is that of a griffin or dragon, generally with a head like a carnivorous animal, body covered with scales, legs terminating in claws, like an eagle, and wings on the back. Our own heraldic

1 Rawlinson, Herodotus, iii. 20. 2 Dr. Birch, in Bunsen's Egypt's Place, i. 439. Vide inf. VIII. ii. Gryphon.

Herod. iv. 79. 4 Paus. viii. 2.

6

5 Birch, Ancient Pottery, 432.

Ancient Monarchies, ii. 31. This scene is now known as Bel and the Dragon.

7 Geo. Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, 87.

[graphic][merged small]

griffins are so strikingly like the sculptures of this creature that we might almost suspect them to be copies from the Chaldean works.'1 Sir John Mandeville reports of

"Bactrie, "In this Land are many Griffins, more than in other places, and some say they have the Body before as an Eagle, and behind as a Lion, and it is true, for they are made so but the Griffin hath a body bigger than 8 Lions and stronger than 100 Eagles, for certainly he will bear to his nest flying a Horse and a Man upon his Back, or two Oxen yoked together as they go to plow, for he hath long nails upon his feet as great as horns of oxen, and of those they make Cups to drink with."'2 Sportive Hellenik art manufactured gryphon-terminated drinking

cups.

XV. On a Panther.3

XVI On the ass Eraton. The Dionysiak Ass Eraton, the Beloved, is another of the countless links between the god and the Semitic East, the animal having been in very early times unknown to the Aryans. It was introduced to the Aryans of Persia,' remarks M. Lenormant, by the Semites of Mesopotamia; thence it passed over into India, always retaining its Semitic name, proof whence it sprung. Among the Greeks the ass has been introduced by a nation speaking a Semitic tongue, probably by the Phoenicians.' The Kamic gryphon-god Set was also the ass-god.6

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »