Myths of Greece and Rome, H. A. Guerber [best ebook reader txt] 📗
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The name of Ixion has been identified with the Sanskrit word Akshanah, denoting one who is bound to a wheel, and has been proved akin “to the Greek axôn, the Latin axis, and the English axle.” This whirling wheel of fire is the bright orb of day, to which he was bound by order of Jupiter (the sky) because he dared insult Juno (the queen of the blue air); while Dia, his wife, is the dawn, the counterpart of Europa, Coronis, Daphne, Procris, Eurydice, and Venus, in the foregoing illustrations.
One of the greatest of all the solar heroes is doubtless the demigod Hercules, born at Argos (a word signifying “brightness”) from the sky (Jupiter) and the dawn (Alcmene), who, in early infancy, throttles the serpents of darkness, and who, with untiring strength and patience, plods through life, never resting, and always on his journey performing twelve great tasks, interpreted to represent either the twelve signs of the Zodiac, or the twelve months of the solar year, or the twelve hours of daylight.
Like Apollo and Cadmus, Hercules is forced to labor for mankind against his will. We see him early in life united to Megara, and, like Tantalus, slaying his own offspring in a sudden fit of madness. He loves and is soon forced to leave Iole, the violet-colored clouds. He performs great deeds, slays innumerable demons of drought and darkness on his way, and visits the enchanted land of the Hesperides,—a symbol of the western sky and clouds at sunset.
The main part of his life is spent with Deianeira (“the destroying spouse”), a personification of the daylight; but toward the end of his career he again encounters Iole, now the beautiful twilight. It is then that Deianeira (the daylight), jealous of her rival’s charms, sends him the bloody Nessus robe, which he has no sooner donned, than he tears it from his bleeding limbs, ascends the burning pile, and ends his career in one grand blaze,—the emblem of the sun setting in a framework of flaming crimson clouds.
Like all solar heroes, he too has unerring poisoned weapons (“the word ios, ‘a spear,’ is the same in sound as the word ios, ‘poison’”), of which he is shorn only at death.
Perseus also belongs to this category of myths. Danae, his mother, either the earth (dano means “burnt earth”) or the dawn, a daughter of Acrisius (darkness), is born in Argos (brightness). Loved by Jupiter, the all-embracing sky, she gives birth to the golden-haired Perseus, a personification of the radiant orb of day; and he, like many another solar hero, is cast adrift immediately after his birth, owing to an ominous prophecy that he will slay the darkness from which he originally sprang.
As soon as Perseus attains manhood, he is forced to journey against his will into the distant land of the mists (the Grææ), and conquer the terrible Medusa, “the starlit night, solemn in its beauty, but doomed to die when the sun rises.” He accomplishes this by means of his irresistible sword, the piercing rays of the sun, and then passes on to encounter the monster of drought, and to marry Andromeda, another personification of the dawn, the offspring of Celeus and Cassiopeia, who also represent night and darkness.
In company with Andromeda, Perseus, whose name also signifies “the destroyer,” revisits his native land, and fulfills the prophecy by slaying Acrisius (the darkness), whence he originally sprang.
In the Athenian solar myth, Theseus is the sun, born of Ægeus (the sea, derived from aisso, “to move quickly like the waves”) and Æthra (the pure air). He lingers in his birthplace, Trœzene, until he has acquired strength enough to wield his invincible sword, then journeys onward in search of his father, performing countless great deeds for the benefit of mankind. He slays the Minotaur, the terrible monster of darkness, and carries off the dawn (Ariadne); whom he is, however, forced to abandon shortly after on the Island of Naxos.
In his subsequent career we find him the involuntary cause of his father’s death, then warring against the Centaurs (personifications of the clouds, through which the victorious sun is sometimes forced to fight his way), then again plunging for a short space of time into the depths of Tartarus, whence he emerges once more; and finally we see him uniting his fate to Phædra (the twilight), a sister of the beautiful dawn he loved in his youth. He ends his eventful career by being hurled headlong from a cliff into the sea,—an emblem of the sun, which often seems to plunge into the waves at eventide.
In the story of the Argonautic expedition we have Athamas, who marries Nephele (the mist). Their children are Phryxus and Helle (the cold and warm air, or personifications of the clouds), carried off to the far east by the ram—whose golden fleece was but an emblem of the rays of the sun—to enable them to escape from the baleful influence of their stepmother Ino (the broad daylight), who would fain encompass their destruction.
Helle, an emblem of the condensation of vapor, falls from her exalted seat into the sea, where she is lost. The ship Argo “is a symbol of the earth as a parent, which contains in itself the germs of all living things.” Its crew is composed mainly of solar heroes, all in quest of the golden fleece (the rays of the sun), which Jason recovers by the aid of Medea (the dawn), after slaying the dragon (the demon of drought). Æetes, Medea’s father, is a personification of the darkness, which vainly attempts to recover his children, the dawn and light (?), after they have been borne away by the all-conquering sun.
Glauce (the broad daylight) next charms Jason; and the poisoned robe which causes her death is woven by Medea, now the evening twilight, who mounts her dragon car and flies to the far east, forsaking her husband (the sun) in his old age, when he is about to sink into the sleep of death.
Meleager is also a solar hero. After joining the Argonautic expedition, and wandering far and wide, he returns home, slays the boar (or drought fiend), loves, but parts from, Atalanta (the dawn maiden), and is finally slain by his own mother, who casts into the flames the brand upon which his existence depends.
In the Theban solar myth, Laius (derived from the same root as “Leto” and “Latmus”) is the emblem of darkness, who, after marrying Jocasta (like Iole, a personification of the violet-tinted clouds of dawn), becomes the father of Œdipus, doomed by fate to be the murderer of his father. Early in life Œdipus is exposed on the barren hillside to perish,—an emblem of the horizontal rays of the rising sun, which seem to lie for a while upon the mountain slopes, ere they rise to begin their journey.
He too, like Cadmus, Apollo, Hercules, Perseus, Theseus, and Jason, is forced to wander far from home, and, after a prolonged journey, encounters and slays Laius (the darkness), from whom he derived his existence, and kills the dread monster of drought, the Sphinx, whose very name means “one who binds fast,”—a creature who had imprisoned the rain in the clouds, and thus caused great distress.
Urged on by unrelenting fate, he marries his own mother, Jocasta, now the violet-tinted twilight, and ends his life amid lightning flashes and rolls of thunder, after being accompanied to the end of his course by Antigone (“the pale light which springs up opposite the sun at his setting”). This story—which at first was merely intended to signify that the sun (Œdipus) must slay the darkness (Laius) and linger for a while beside the violet-colored clouds (Jocasta)—having lost its physical meaning, the Thebans added the tragic sequel, for it seemed but poetic justice that the author of such crimes should receive signal punishment.
As the Eumenides, or Erinnyes, were at first merely the searching light of day, from which nothing can be hidden, they came gradually to be considered the detectives and avengers of crime, and were therefore said to take possession of a criminal at the end of his course, and hurry him down into darkness to inflict horrible torments upon him.
In the story of Bellerophon, although the name originally came from Bellero (some “power of darkness, drought, winter, or moral evil”) and from phon or phontes (a word derived from the Sanskrit han-tâ, “the killer”), the Greeks, having forgotten the signification of the first part of the word, declared this hero was the murderer of Bellero, his brother, for which involuntary crime he was driven from home, and forced to wander about in search of shelter.
We find this hero, although enticed by Anteia (the dawn), virtuously hastening away, then sent against his will to fight the Chimæra (the monster of drought), whom he overcomes, thanks to his weapon and to Pegasus (the clouds), born from the mist of the sea, beneath whose hoofs fresh fountains were wont to spring.
Bellerophon, after many journeys, is finally united to Philonoe, a personification of the twilight, and ends his career by being hurled from the zenith into utter darkness by one of Jupiter’s deadly thunderbolts.
“The fall of Bellerophon is the rapid descent of the sun toward evening, and the Alein plain is that broad expanse of somber light through which the sun sometimes seems to travel sullenly and alone to his setting.”
In the story of the Trojan war there are several sun myths; for Paris, Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Achilles have equal claims to be considered personifications of the sun. They love Œnone, Helen, Clytæmnestra, Briseis, various impersonations of the dawn, and forsake, or are forsaken by, their ladyloves, whom they meet again at the end of their career: for Paris sees Œnone, and expires with her on the burning pile; Menelaus recovers Helen, with whom he vanishes in the far west; Agamemnon rejoins Clytæmnestra, and dies by her hand in a bloody bath; while Achilles, after a period of sullen gloom, meets with an untimely death shortly after recovering the beautiful Briseis.
Like Perseus and Œdipus, Paris is exposed in early infancy, and lives to fulfill his destiny, and cause, though indirectly, the death of his parents.
In this myth, Helen (the beautiful dawn or twilight), whose name corresponds phonetically with the Sanskrit Sarama, born of the sky (Jupiter) and of the night (Leda, derived from the same root as “Leto,” “Latmus,” and “Laius”), is carried away by Paris, whom some mythologists identify with the Hindoo Panis (or “night demons”) instead of the sun. In this character he entices away the fickle twilight (Helen) during her husband’s temporary absence, and bears her off to the far east, where, after struggling for a while to retain possession of her and her treasures, he is finally forced to relinquish her, and she returns to her husband and her allegiance.
The siege of Troy has thus been interpreted to signify “a repetition of the daily siege of the east by the solar powers, that every evening are robbed of their brightest treasures in the west.”
Achilles, like several of his brother heroes, “fights in no quarrel of his own; his wrath is the sun hiding his face behind the clouds; the Myrmidons are his attendant beams, who no longer appear when the sun is hidden; Patroclus is the feeble reflection of the sun’s splendor, and stands to him in precisely the same relation as Phaeton to Helios,” and, like him, meets with an early death.
In the story of Ulysses we find a reproduction of the story of Hercules and
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