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THE MYTHOLOGY

OF

THE ARYAN NATIONS.

BOOK II

CHAPTER II.-continued.

THE LIGHT.

SECTION VII.-APHRODITÊ.

CHAP.

II.

THE story told in the Hesiodic Theogony is manifestly a comparatively late form of the legend of Aphroditê. Yet it resolves itself almost at the first touch into the early myth- Birth of ical phrases. From the blood of the mutilated Ouranos Aphrodite. which fell upon the sea sprang the beautiful goddess who made Kythêra and Kypros her home, as Phoibos dwelt in Lykia and in Delos. This is but saying in other words that the morning, the child of the heaven, springs up first from the sea,' as Athênê also is born by the water-side. But as Athênê became the special embodiment of the keen wisdom which Phoibos alone shared with her, so on Aphroditê, the child of the froth or foam of the sea, was lavished all the wealth of words denoting the loveliness of the morn

We have already seen, vol. i. p. 358, that Kronos is a mere creation from the older and misunderstood epithet Kronides or Kronîôn, the ancient of days, but that when these days, or time, had come to be regarded as a person, the myth would certainly follow that he devoured his own children, as time is the devourer VOL II.

B

of the dawns. So too, as the dawn and
the morning are born from the heaven,
the mutilation of Ouranos or Kronos
would inevitably be suggested.
idea is seen in another form in the
splitting of the head of Zeus before the
birth of Athênê.

The

BOOK ing; and thus the Hesiodic poet goes on at once to say that

II.

the grass sprung up under her feet as she moved, that Erôs, Love, walked by her side, and Himeros, Longing, followed after her.1 At her birth she is not only the beautiful Anadyomene of Apelles, as the sun whom Selênê comes to greet is Endymiôn,' but she is also Enalia and Pontia, the deity of the deep sea. In our Iliad and Odyssey the myth is scarcely yet crystallised. In the former poem Aphroditê is the daughter of Zeus and Dionê, in whom was seen the mother of Dionysos after her resurrection. In the Odyssey she is the wife of Hephaistos, whose love for Arês forms the subject of the lay of Demodokos. Here she is attended by the Charites who wash her and anoint her with oil at Paphos. In the Iliad, however, the wife of Hephaistos is Charis, and thus we are brought back to the old myth in which both Charis and Aphroditê are mere names for the glistening dawn. In Charis we have simply the brilliance produced by fat or ointment, which is seen again in Liparai Athenai, the gleaming city of the morning. In the Vedic hymns this epithet has already passed from the dawn or the sun to the shining steeds which draw their chariot, and the Haris and Harits are the horses of Indra, the sun, and the dawn, as the Rohits are the horses of Agni, the fire. Thus also the single Charis of the Iliad is converted into the

Theog. 194-201.

2 The words tell each its own story, the one denoting uprising from water, as the other denotes the down-plunging into it, the root being found also in the English dive, and the German taufen.

This notion is seen in the strange myth of transformations in which to escape from Typhon in the war between Zeus and the Titans, Aphroditê, like Phoibos and Onnes, Thetis or Proteus, assumes the form of a fish. Ov. Met. v. 331. With this idea there is probably mingled in this instance that notion of the vesica piscis as the emblem of generation, and denoting the special function of Aphroditê. The same emblematical form is seen in the kestos or cestus of Aphroditê, which answers to the necklace of Harmonia or Eriphylê. This cestus has the magic power of inspiring love, and is used by Hêrê, when she wishes to prevent Zeus from marring

her designs.

5

Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 369, 375. The Latin Gratia belongs to the same root, which yields -as has been already noticed-our 'grease.' Objections founded on any supposed degrading association of ideas in this connection are themselves unworthy and trivial. Professor Müller remarks that as fat and greasy infants grow into airy fairy Lilians, so do words and ideas,' and that the Psalmist does not shrink from even bolder metaphors,' as in Psalm exxxiii. That the root which thus supplied a name for Aphroditê should also be employed to denote gracefulness or charm in general, is strictly natural. Thus the Sanskrit arka is a name not only for the sun, but also for a hymn of praise, while the cognate arkshas denoted the shining

stars.

5 Max Müller, ib. 370.

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