II. BOOK beings of the same kind, he is sprung from the earth or the waters, as a son whether of Poseidôn and Euryalê, or of Oinopion. He grows up a mighty hunter, the cloud ranging in wild freedom over hills and valleys. At Chios he sees the beautiful Aerô, but when he seeks to make her his bride, he is blinded by her father, who, on the advice of Dionysos, comes upon him in his sleep. Orîon is now told that he may yet recover his sight if he would go to the east and look toward the rising sun. Thither he is led by the help of Hephaistos, who sends Kedalion as his guide. On his return he vainly tries to seize and punish the man who had blinded him, and then wandering onwards meets and is loved by Artemis. It is but the story of the beautiful cloud left in darkness when the sun goes down, but recovering its brilliance when he rises again in the east. Of his death many stories were told. In the Odyssey he is slain in Ortygia, the dawn land, by Artemis, who is jealous of her rival Eôs. In another version Artemis slays him unwittingly, having aimed at a mark on the sea which Phoibos had declared that she could not hit. This mark was the head of Orion, who had been swimming in the waters; in other words, of the vapour as it begins to rise from the surface of the sea. But so nearly is he akin to the powers of light, that Asklêpios seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus-a myth which points to the blotting out of the sun from the sky by the thundercloud, just as he was rekindling the faded vapours which lie motionless on the horizon. Seirios. Like Andromeda, Ariadnê, and other mythical beings, Orion was after his death placed among the constellations, and his hound became the dog-star Seirios, who marks the time of yearly drought. He is thus the deadly star' who burns up the fields of Aristaios and destroys his bees, and is stayed from his ravages only by the moistening heaven.' This, however, is but one of the countless myths springing from old phrases which spoke of the madness of the sun, who destroys his own children, the fruits of his bride the earth. The word Seirios itself springs from the same root 1 οὔλιος ἀστήρι 2 Zeus ixμaîos. Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 358. THE DANCERS OF THE SKY. with the Sanskrit Sûrya and the Greek Helios, Hêrê, and Herakles; and with Archilochos and Suidas it was still a mere name for the sun.1 291 СНАР. VII. chînes and The characteristics of the Phaiakians and their ships The Telcarry us to other myths of the clouds and the light. As Kourêtes. roaming over hill and dale, as visiting every corn-field and seeing all the works of men, and as endowed with powers of thought, these mysterious vessels are possessed in some measure of the wisdom of Phoibos himself. The kindred Telchînes and Kourêtes, the unwearied dancers who move across the skies, have the power also of changing their forms at will. If we put these attributes together, we at once have the wise yet treacherous, and the capricious yet truthful Proteus, the Farmer Weathersky of Teutonic tales. This strange being is the old man of the sea, who reappears in the voyages of Sindbad. He is necessarily a subject, some said a son, of Poseidôn; and he lives not far from the river Aigyptos, a phrase akin to the myth of the Aithiopian Memnôn. Huge flocks of seals sport around him in the waters, like clouds gambolling in the heavens; and when the heat is greatest he raises himself from the deeps and takes his rest on the sea-shore-the repose of the cloud armies which hang round the heaven in the hot noon-tide. It is at this time that Virgil represents Aristaios as fettering the old man by the advice of his mother Arethousa. The attempt is followed by many changes of form; and Proteus 3 becomes first a fire, then a snake, and passes through other changes before he is compelled to return to his proper form. In Proteus, the king of Egypt, we have one of those persons In support of his assertion that Seirios was a name for any glittering orb or star, Preller quotes Hesychios: Σειρίου κυνὸς δίκην Σοφοκλῆς τὸν ἀστρῷον κύνα, ὁ δὲ ̓Αρχίλοχος τὸν ἥλιον, Ίβυκος δὲ πάντα τὰ ἄστρα, and adds 'Suidas kennt die Form Seir für Sonne. Arat. Phoin. 331: Es pa páxiσta 'Okéa σeipidel, καί μιν καλέουσ ̓ ἄνθρωποι Σείριον. Gr. Myth. i. 355. So with the fairy in the Ballad of I quit my body when I please, We can inhabit at our ease In either earth or air. Our shapes and size we can convert The sequel of the ballad specifies all the Like the Rakshas in the story of BOOK II. of whom the Euemerists availed themselves to escape from the necessity of believing the incredible tale of Troy. According to one version of the story, Paris came to Egypt with Helen in the course of his homeward wanderings from Sparta. It was easy to say that the real Helen went no further, and that the Helen seen in Ilion was only a phantom with which Proteus cheated the senses of Paris and his countrymen. It is enough to remark that of such a tale the poets of our Iliad and Odyssey know nothing; and that the Egyptian Proteus is none other than the son of Poseidôn, gifted with more than the wisdom of Hermes, CHAPTER VIII. THE EARTH. SECTION I.—DIONYSOS. THE Homeric hymn tells the simple tale how Dionysos in the first bloom of youth was sitting on a jutting rock by the sea-shore, a purple robe thrown over his shoulders and his golden locks streaming from his head, when he was seized by some Tyrrhenian mariners who had seen him as they were sailing by. These men placed him on board their vessel and strongly bound him, but the chains snapped like twigs and fell from his hands and feet, while he sat smiling on them with his deep blue eyes. The helmsman at once saw the folly of his comrades, and bade them let him go lest the god, for such he must be, should do them some harm. His words fell on unheeding ears, and they declared that they would take him away to Kypros, Egypt, or the Hyperborean land. But no sooner had they taken to their oars than a purple stream flowed along the decks, and the air was filled with its fragrance. Then the vine-plant shot up the masts, and its branches laden with rosy fruit hung from the yardarms, mingled with clustering ivy, while the oar pegs were all wreathed in glistening garlands. The sailors now beseech Medeides, the steersman, to bring the ship to shore; but it is too late. For Dionysos now took the forms of a lion and a bear, and thus rushing upon them drove the cruel mariners into the sea, where they became dolphins, while the good steersman was crowned with honour and glory. The captivity of Dionysos. and Za In this story we have clearly the manifestation of that Dionysos power which ripens the fruits of the earth, and more espe- greos. cially the vine, in the several stages from its germ to its II. BOOK maturity. The fearful power displayed by the god is the influence which the grape exercises on man. Its juice may flow as a quiet stream, filling the air with sweet odours, but as men drink of it its aspect is changed, and it becomes like a wild beast urging them to their destruction. But the penalty thus inflicted upon the Tyrrhenian mariners is strictly for their evil treatment of the god, whose character is merely jovial, and by no means designedly malignant. Nor is the god himself invested with the majesty of the supreme Zeus, or of Phoibos or Poseidôn, although the helmsman says that either of these gods may possibly have taken the form of the youthful Dionysos. But before we find ourselves in historical Hellas a complete change has taken place. Dionysos is now the horned Zagreos after his death and resurrection, and the myth of the son of Semelê is anticipated or repeated by the legend of this child of Persephonê, whom his father Zeus places beside him on his throne. In this, as in other cases, the jealousy of Hêrê is roused, and at her instigation the Titans slay Zagreos, and cutting up his limbs, leave only his heart, which Athênê carries to Zeus. This heart is given to Semelê, who thus becomes the mother of Dionysos. This slaughter and cutting up of Zagreos is only another form of the rape of Persephonê herself. It is the stripping off of leaves and fruits in the gloomy autumn which leaves only the heart or trunk of the tree to give birth to the foliage of the coming year, and the resurrection of Zagreos is the return of Persephonê to her mother Dêmêtêr. Henceforth with Dêmêtêr, who really is his mother also, Dionysos becomes a deity of the first rank; and into his mythology are introduced a number of foreign elements, pointing to the comparatively recent influence exercised by Egypt and Syria on the popular Hellenic religion. The opposition of the Thrakian Lykourgos and the Theban Pentheus to the frenzied rites thus foisted on the cultus of Dionysos is among the few indications of historical facts exhibited in Hellenic mythology. Dionysos the Wanderer. 1 In the Homeric hymn the Tyrrhenian mariners avow their intention of taking Dionysos to Egypt, or Ethiopia, or the Hyperborean land; and this idea of change of abode becomes 1 Grote, Hist, Greece, i. 31. |