' LIBRARY OF THE \\ 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS V 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAICN 
 
 292 
 
 B87a 
 
 1913 
 

 The person charging this material is re¬ 
 sponsible for its return to the library from 
 which it was withdrawn on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 
 are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
 result in dismissal from the University. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 JUN 101973 
 
 ml 2$ m 
 
 JUL 9 
 
 HAY 2 8 J9?£ 
 
 \<\1Z 
 
 8 193 
 
 10V 2 8 li 
 
 V\W 1- 
 
 
 ib4 
 
 
 
 MOV 21 
 
 HAS 2 2 137$ OCT 2 7 
 MAR 2 2 II7S 
 
 APR 1 4 jog 
 
 APR 9 1991 
 
 ffcC 04^ . 
 
 NOVlf!0t 19821 
 
 APR 2 8 1990 
 
 fllW 0 1 v99li 
 OCt 2P2D0E 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/ageoffableorstor00bulf_1 
 
JOVE (JUPITER). 
 
 Museum at Naples. Excavated from Pompeii in iSlS. 
 
THE AGE OF FABLE 
 
 OR 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS BULFINCH 
 
 REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1913, 
 
 By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE 
 
 No new edition of Bulfinch’s classic work can be con¬ 
 sidered complete without some notice of the American 
 scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care 
 it stands as a perpetual monument. “The Age of Fable”r 
 has come to be ranked with older books like “Pilgrim’s 
 Progress,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Arabian Nights,” 
 “Robinson Crusoe,” and five or six other productions of 
 world-wide renown as a work with which every one 
 must claim some acquaintance before his education can 
 be called really complete. Many readers of the present 
 edition will probably recall coming in contact with the 
 work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt 
 discover from a fresh perusal the source of numerous 
 bits of knowledge that have remained stored in their 
 minds since those early years. Yet to the majority of 
 this great circle of readers and students the name Bul- 
 finch in itself has no significance. 
 
 Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where 
 he was born in 1796. His boyhood was spent in that 
 city, and he prepared for college in the Boston schools. 
 He finished his scholastic training at Harvard College, 
 and after taking his degree was for a period a teacher 
 in his home city. For a long time later in life he was 
 employed as an accountant in the Boston Merchants’ 
 Bank. His leisure time he used for further pursuit of 
 the classical studies which he had begun at Harvard, 
 and his chief pleasure in life lay in writing out the re¬ 
 sults of his reading, in simple, condensed form for young 
 or busy readers. The plan he followed in this work, to 
 give it the greatest possible usefulness, is set forth in 
 the Author’s Preface. 
 
 • • • 
 
 m 
 
AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
 
 If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful 
 but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to 
 raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claim 
 to the appellation. But if that which tends to make us 
 happier and better can be called useful, then we claim 
 that epithet for our subject. For Mythology is the 
 handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best 
 allies of virtue and promoters of happiness. 
 
 Without a knowledge of mythology much of the ele¬ 
 gant literature of our own language cannot be under¬ 
 stood and appreciated. When Byron calls Rome “the 
 Niobe of nations/’ or says of Venice, “She looks a Sea- 
 Cybele fresh from ocean,” he calls up to the mind of 
 one familiar with our subject, illustrations more vivid 
 and striking than the pencil could furnish, but which 
 are lost to the reader ignorant of mythology. Milton 
 abounds in similar allusions. The short poem “Comus” 
 contains more than thirty such, and the ode “On the 
 Morning of the Nativity” half as many. Through 
 “Paradise Lost” they are scattered profusely. This is 
 one reason why we often hear persons by no means il¬ 
 literate say that they cannot enjoy Milton. But were 
 these persons to add to their more solid acquirements the 
 easy learning of this little volume, much of the poetry 
 of Milton which has appeared to them “harsh and 
 crabbed” would be found “musical as is Apollo’s lute.” 
 Our citations, taken from more than twenty-five poets, 
 from Spenser to Longfellow, will show how general has 
 been the practice of borrowing illustrations from myth¬ 
 ology. 
 
 The prose writers also avail themselves of the same 
 source of elegant and suggestive illustration. One can 
 hardly take up a number of the “Edinburgh” or “Quar- 
 
VI 
 
 AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
 
 terly Review” without meeting with instances. In Ma¬ 
 caulay’s article on Milton there are twenty such. 
 
 But how is mythology to be taught to one who does 
 not learn it through the medium of the languages of 
 Greece and Rome? To devote study to a species of learn¬ 
 ing which relates wholly to false marvels and obsolete 
 faiths is not to be expected of the general reader in a 
 practical age like this. The time even of the young is 
 claimed by so many sciences of facts and things that 
 little can be spared for set treatises on a science of mere 
 fancy. 
 
 But may not the requisite knowledge of the subject be 
 acquired by reading the ancient poets in translations? 
 We reply, the field is too extensive for a preparatory 
 course; and these very translations require some pre¬ 
 vious knowledge of the subject to make them intelli¬ 
 gible. Let any one who doubts it read the first page 
 of the “yEneid,” and see what he can make of “the hatred 
 of Juno,” the “decree of the Parcse,” the “judgment of 
 Paris,” and the “honors of Ganymede,” without this 
 knowledge. 
 
 Shall we be told that answers to such queries may 
 be found in notes, or by a reference to the Classical 
 Dictionary? We reply, the interruption of one’s read¬ 
 ing by either process is so annoying that most readers 
 prefer to let an allusion pass unapprehended rather than 
 submit to it. Moreover, such sources give us only the 
 dry facts without any of the charm of the original nar¬ 
 rative; and what is a poetical myth when stripped of 
 its poetry? The story of Ceyx and Halcyone, which 
 fills a chapter in our book, occupies but eight lines 
 in the best (Smith’s) Classical Dictionary; and so of 
 others. 
 
 Our work is an attempt to solve this problem, by 
 telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to 
 make them a source of amusement. We have endeav¬ 
 ored to tell them correctly, according to the ancient 
 authorities, so that when the reader finds them referred 
 to he may not be at a loss to recognize the reference. 
 Thus we hope to teach mythology not as a study, but as 
 a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm 
 
AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
 
 • • 
 Vll 
 
 of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge 
 of an important branch of education. The index at the 
 end will adapt it to the purposes of reference, and make 
 it a Classical Dictionary for the parlor. 
 
 Most of the classical legends in “Stories of Gods and 
 Heroes” are derived from Ovid and Virg il. They are 
 not literally translated, for, in the author’s opinion, 
 poetry translated into literal prose is very unattractive 
 reading. Neither are they in verse, as well for other 
 reasons as from a conviction that to translate faithfully 
 under all the embarrassments of rhyme and measure is 
 impossible. The attempt has been made to tell the stories 
 in prose, preserving so much of the poetry as resides in 
 the thoughts and is separable from the language itself, 
 and omitting those amplifications which are not suited to 
 the altered form. 
 
 The Northern mythological s tories _are. xopiecLwilh 
 some abridgment-tom Mallet’s “Northern Antiquities .” 
 These chapters, with those on Oriental and Egyptian 
 mythology, seemed necessary to complete the subject, 
 though it is believed these topics have not usually 
 been presented in the same volume with the classical 
 fables. 
 
 The poetical citations so freely introduced are ex¬ 
 pected to answer several valuable purposes. They will 
 tend to fix in memory the leading fact of each story, they 
 will help to the attainment of a correct pronunciation of 
 the proper names, and they will enrich the memory with 
 many gems of poetry, some of them such as are most 
 frequently quoted or alluded to in reading and con¬ 
 versation. 
 
 Having chosen mythology as connected with litera¬ 
 ture for our province, we have endeavored to omit noth¬ 
 ing which the reader of elegant literature is likely to 
 find occasion for. Such stories and parts of stories as 
 are offensive to pure taste and good morals are not given. 
 But such stories are not often referred to, and if they 
 occasionally should be, the English reader need feel 
 no mortification in confessing his ignorance of them. 
 
 Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theolo¬ 
 gian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of 
 
Vlll 
 
 AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
 
 English literature, of either sex, who wishes to com¬ 
 prehend the allusions so frequently made by public 
 speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which 
 occur in polite conversation. 
 
 In the “Stories of Gods and Heroes” the compiler has 
 endeavored to impart the pleasures of classical learning 
 to the English reader, by presenting the stories of Pagan 
 mythology in a form adapted to modern taste. In “King 
 Arthur and His Knights” and “The Mabinogeon” the 
 attempt has been made to treat in the same way the 
 stories of the second “age of fable,” the age which 
 witnessed the dawn of the several states of Modem 
 Europe. 
 
 It is believed that this presentation of a literature 
 which held unrivalled sway over the imaginations of 
 our ancestors, for many centuries, will not be without 
 benefit to the reader, in addition to the amusement it 
 may afford. The tales, though not to be trusted for 
 their facts, are worthy of all credit as pictures of man¬ 
 ners; and it is beginning to be held that the manners 
 and modes of thinking of an age are a more important 
 part of its history than the conflicts of its peoples, gen¬ 
 erally leading to no result. Besides this, the literature 
 of romance is a treasure-house of poetical material, to 
 which modern poets frequently resort. The Italian poets, 
 Dante and Ariosto, the English, Spenser, Scott, and Ten¬ 
 nyson, and our own Longfellow and Lowell, are ex¬ 
 amples of this. 
 
 These legends are so connected with each other, so 
 consistently adapted to a group of characters strongly 
 individualized in Arthur, Launcelot, and their compeers, 
 and so lighted up by the fires of imagination and inven¬ 
 tion, that they seem as well adapted to the poet’s pur¬ 
 pose as the legends of the Greek and Roman mythology. 
 And if every well-educated young person is expected to 
 know the story of the Golden Fleece, why is the quest 
 of the Sangreal less worthy of his acquaintance? Or if 
 an allusion to the shield of Achilles ought not to pass 
 
AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 unapprehended, why should one to Excalibar, the famous 
 sword of Arthur?— 
 
 “Of Arthur, who, to upper light restored, 
 
 With that terrific sword, 
 
 Which yet he brandishes for future war, 
 
 Shall lift his country’s fame above the polar star .” 1 
 
 It is an additional recommendation of our subject, that 
 it tends to cherish in our minds the idea of the source 
 from which we sprung. We are entitled to our full 
 share in the glories and recollections of the land of our 
 forefathers, down to the time of colonization thence. 
 The associations which spring from this source must be 
 fruitful of good influences; among which not the least 
 valuable is the increased enjoyment which such associ¬ 
 ations afford to the American traveller when he visits 
 England, and sets his foot upon any of her renowned 
 localities. 
 
 The legends of Charlemagne and his peers are neces-f 
 sary to complete the subject. J 
 
 In an age when intellectual darkness enveloped West¬ 
 ern Europe, a constellation of brilliant writers arose in 
 Italy. Of these, Pulci (born in 1432), Boiardo (1434) 
 and Ariosto (1474) took for their subjects the romantic 
 fables which had for many ages been transmitted in the 
 lays of bards and the legends of monkish chroniclers. 
 These fables they arranged in order, adorned with the 
 embellishments of fancy, amplified from their own in¬ 
 vention, and stamped with immortality. It may safely 1 
 be asserted that as long as civilization shall endure these 
 productions will retain their place among the most cher¬ 
 ished creations of human genius. 
 
 In “Stories of Gods and Heroes,” “King Arthur anc' 
 His Knights” and “The Mabinogeon” the aim has beer 
 to supply to the modem reader such knowledge of the 
 fables of classical and mediaeval literature as is needed to 
 render intelligible the allusions which occur in reading 
 and conversation. The “Legends of Charlemagne” is 
 
 1 Wordsworth. 
 
X 
 
 AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
 
 intended to carry out the same design. Like the earlier 
 portions of the work, it aspires to a higher character 
 than that of a piece of mere amusement. It claims to be 
 useful, in acquainting its readers with the subjects of 
 the productions of the great poets of Italy. Some 
 knowledge of these is expected of every well-educated 
 young person. 
 
 In reading these romances, we cannot fail to observe 
 how the primitive inventions have been used, again and 
 again, by successive generations of fabulists. The Siren 
 of Ulysses is the prototype of the Siren of Orlando, and 
 the character of Circe reappears in Alcina. The foun¬ 
 tains of Love and Hatred may be traced to the story of 
 Cupid and Psyche; and similar effects produced by a 
 magic draught appear in the tale of Tristram and Isoude, 
 and, substituting a flower for the draught, in Shakspeare’s 
 “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” There are many other 
 instances of the same kind which the reader will rec¬ 
 ognize without our assistance. 
 
 The sources whence we derive these stories are, first, 
 the Italian poets named above; next, the “Romans de 
 Chevalerie” of the Comte de Tressan; lastly, certain 
 German collections of popular tales. Some chapters 
 have been borrowed from Leigh Hunt’s Translations 
 from the Italian Poets. It seemed unnecessary to do 
 over again what he had already done so well; yet, on 
 the other hand, those stories could not be omitted from 
 the series without leaving it incomplete. 
 
 Thomas Bulfinch. 
 

 
\ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Introduction. I 
 
 II. Prometheus and Pandora.12 
 
 III. Apollo and Daphne — Pyramus and This- 
 
 be — Cephalus and Procris .... 19 
 
 IV. Juno and her Rivals, Io and Callisto — 
 
 Diana and Actaeon — Eatona and the 
 Rustics.28 
 
 V. Phaeton.38 
 
 VI. Midas — Baucis and Philemon .... 46 
 
 VII. Proserpine — Glaucus and Scylla ... 52 
 
 VIII. Pygmalion — Dryope — Venus and Ado¬ 
 nis— Apollo and Hyacinthus ... 62 
 
 IX. Ceyx and Halcyone.69 
 
 X. Vertumnus and Pomona — Iphis and 
 
 Anaxarete.76 
 
 XI. Cupid and Psyche.80 
 
 XII. Cadmus — The Myrmidons.91 
 
 XIII. Nisus and Scylla — Echo and Narcissus 
 
 — Clytie — Hero and Leander ... 98 
 
 XIV. Minerva and Arachne — Niobe . . ^ 107 
 
 XV. The Grsese and Gorgons — Perseus and 
 
 Medusa — Atlas — Andromeda . . . 115 
 
 XVI. Monsters: Giants — Sphinx — Pegasus 
 and Chimaera — Centaurs — Griffin — 
 Pygmies.122 
 
 XVII. The Golden Fleece — Medea .... 129 
 
 XVIII. Meleager and Atalanta.138 
 
 XIX. Hercules — Hebe and Ganymede . . . 143 
 
 xi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 PAG8 
 
 Theseus and Daedalus — Castor and Pol¬ 
 lux— Festivals and Games . . . . 150 
 
 Bacchus and Ariadne.160 
 
 The Rural Deities — The Dryads and 
 Erisichthon — Rhoecus — Water Deities 
 — Camenae — Winds.166 
 
 Achelous and Hercules — Admetus and 
 
 Alcestis — Antigone — Penelope . . 177 
 
 Orpheus and Eurydice — Aristaeus — 
 Amphion — Linus — Thamyris — Mar- 
 syas — Melampus — Musaeus . . . 185 
 
 Arion — Ibycus — Simonides — Sappho . 194 
 
 Endymion — Orion — Aurora and Titho- 
 nus — Acis and Galatea.204 
 
 The Trojan War.211 
 
 The Fall of Troy — Return of the Greeks 
 
 — Orestes and Electra.227 
 
 Adventures of Ulysses — The Lotus-eaters 
 
 — The Cyclopes — Circe — Sirens — 
 
 Scylla and Charybdis — Calypso . . 236 
 
 The Phaeacians — Fate of the Suitors . . 247 
 
 Adventures of Eneas— The Harpies — 
 
 Dido — Palinurus.258 
 
 The Infernal Regions — The Sibyl . . 266 
 
 .Eneas in Italy — Camilla — Evander — 
 
 Nisus and Euryalus — Mezentius — 
 
 Turnus.276 
 
 Pythagoras — Egyptian Deities — Oracles 288 
 
 Origin of Mythology—Statues of Gods 
 and Goddesses — Poets of Mythology . 300 
 
 Monsters (modern) — The Phoenix — 
 Basilisk — Unicorn — Salamander . . 310 
 
 Eastern Mythology — Zoroaster — Hindu 
 Mythology — Castes — Buddha — The 
 Grand Lama — Prester John. . . . 318 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XXXVIII. Northern Mythology — Valhalla — The 
 Valkyrior. 
 
 XXXIX. Thor’s Visit to Jotunheim. 
 
 XT. The Death of Baldur— The Elves — 
 Runic Letters — Skalds — Iceland — 
 Teutonic Mythology — The Nibelun- 
 gen Lied — Wagner’s Nibelungen Ring 
 
 XLI. The Druids — Iona. 
 
 Proverbial Expressions. 
 
 List oe Illustrative Passages Quoted erom the 
 Poets . 
 
 Index and Dictionary.. 
 
 • • • 
 
 xm 
 
 PAGE 
 
 328 
 
 337 
 
 343 
 
 358 
 
 367 
 
 369 
 
 371 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
to 
 
 Q 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 fx< 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 W 
 
 o 
 
 co 
 
 W 
 
 Q 
 
 W 
 
 M 
 
 H 
 
 c 
 
 d> 
 
 s 
 
 a 
 
 W 
 
 H 
 
 oo 
 
 <L> 
 
 u. 
 
 <U 
 
 o 
 
 a; 
 
 +■> 
 
 a> 
 
 § 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 
 s 
 
 5 
 
 43 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 t 3 a 
 -a & 
 3 3 
 
 o w 
 «- 
 a 
 « 
 H 
 
 Pk 
 
 £> 
 
 0) 
 
 3 
 
 >. 
 
 m 
 
 O 
 
 S 
 
 43 
 
 G 
 
 E 
 
 li¬ 
 
 ft! 
 
 W 
 
 H 
 
 *-4 
 
 Pk 
 
 £> 
 
 <L> 
 
 ,G 
 
 H 
 
 G 
 
 W 
 
 H 
 
 HH 
 
 Ov 
 
 £3 
 
 <n 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 o 
 
 <u 
 
 a 
 
 J 3 
 
 H 
 
 m 
 
 <D 
 
 03 
 
 G 
 
 -S 
 
 <u 
 
 G 
 
 Z 3 
 
 as 
 
 G 
 oJ>—» 
 
 & =<-i 
 
 -i° 
 
 CO co 
 <r* co 
 ^ a> 
 
 •O 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 00 
 
 <U 
 
 4-» 
 
 OMh 
 _ i-* 
 
 G « 
 
 Ph-G 
 
 H 
 
 01 
 iH 
 
 & o 
 
 L-sa 
 w 
 
 «i 
 
 G 3 
 
 H 
 
STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The religions of ancient Greece and Rome are ex¬ 
 tinct. The so-called divinities of Olympus have not a 
 single worshipper among living men. They belong now 
 not to the department of theology, but to those of liter¬ 
 ature and taste. There they still hold their place, and 
 will continue to hold it, for they are too closely con¬ 
 nected with the finest productions of poetry and art, 
 both ancient and modern, to pass into oblivion. 
 
 We propose to tell the stories relating to them which 
 have come down to us from the ancients, and which are 
 alluded to by modern poets, essayists, and orators. Our 
 readers may thus at the same time be entertained by 
 the most charming fictions which fancy has ever created, 
 and put in possession of information indispensable to 
 every one who would read with intelligence the elegant 
 literature of his own day. 
 
 In order to understand these stories, it will be neces¬ 
 sary to acquaint ourselves with the ideas of the structure 
 of the universe which prevailed among the Greeks— 
 the people from whom the Romans, and other nations 
 through them, received their science and religion. 
 
 The Greeks believed the earth to be flat and cir¬ 
 cular, their own country occupying the middle of it, the 
 central point being either Mount Olympus, the abode 
 of the gods, or Delphi, so famous for its oracle. 
 
 The circular disk of the earth was crossed from west 
 to east and divided into two equal parts by the Sea, 
 as they called the Mediterranean, and its continuation 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 the Euxine, the only seas with which they were ac¬ 
 quainted. 
 
 Around the earth flowed the River Ocean, its course 
 being from south to north on the western side of the 
 earth, and in a contrary direction on the eastern side. 
 It flowed in a steady, equable current, unvexed by storm 
 or tempest. The sea, and all the rivers on earth, re¬ 
 ceived their waters from it. 
 
 The northern portion of the earth was supposed to 
 be inhabited by a happy race named the Hyperboreans, 
 dwelling in everlasting bliss and spring beyond the lofty 
 mountains whose caverns were supposed to send forth 
 the piercing blasts of the north wind, which chilled the 
 people of Hellas (Greece). Their country was inac¬ 
 cessible by land or sea. They lived exempt from dis¬ 
 ease or old age, from toils and warfare. Moore has 
 given us the “Song of a Hyperborean,” beginning 
 
 “I come from a land in the sun-bright deep, 
 
 Where golden gardens glow, 
 
 Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep, 
 
 Their conch shells never blow.” 
 
 On the south side of the earth, close to the stream 
 of Ocean, dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the 
 Hyperboreans. They were named the ^Ethiopians. The 
 gods favored them so highly that they were wont to 
 leave at times their Olympian abodes and go to share 
 their sacrifices and banquets. 
 
 On the western margin of the earth, by the stream of 
 Ocean, lay a happy place named the Elysian Plain, 
 whither mortals favored by the gods were transported 
 without tasting of death, to enjoy an immortality of 
 bliss. This happy region was also called the “Fortunate 
 Fields,” and the “Isles of the Blessed.” 
 
 We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew 
 little of any real people except those to the east and 
 south of their own country, or near the coast of the 
 Mediterranean. Their imagination meantime peopled 
 the western portion of this sea with giants, monsters, 
 and enchantresses; while they placed around the disk 
 of the earth, which they probably regarded as of no 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 3 
 
 great width, nations enjoying the peculiar favor of the 
 gods, and blessed with happiness and longevity. 
 
 The Dawn, the Sun, and the Moon were supposed 
 to rise out of the Ocean, on the eastern side, and to 
 drive through the air, giving light to gods and men. 
 The stars, also, except those forming the Wain or Bear, 
 and others near them, rose out of and sank into the 
 stream of Ocean. There the sun-god embarked in a 
 winged boat, which conveyed him round by the north¬ 
 ern part of the earth, back to his place of rising in the 
 east. Milton alludes to this in his “Comus”: 
 
 “Now the gilded car of day 
 His golden axle doth allay 
 In the steep Atlantic stream, 
 
 And the slope Sun his upward beam 
 Shoots against the dusky pole, 
 
 Pacing towards the other goal 
 Of his chamber in the east/' 
 
 The abode of the gods was on the summit of Mount 
 Olympus, in Thessaly. A gate of clouds, kept by the 
 goddesses named the Seasons, opened to permit the pas¬ 
 sage of the Celestials to earth, and to receive them on 
 their return. The gods had their separate dwellings; but 
 all, when summoned, repaired to the palace of Jupiter, 
 as did also those deities whose usual abode was the 
 earth, the waters, or the underworld. It was also in 
 the great hall of the palace of the Olympian king that 
 the gods feasted each day on ambrosia and nectar, their 
 food and drink, the latter being handed round by the 
 lovely goddess Hebe. Here they conversed of the af- ( , 
 fairs of heaven and earth; and as they quaffed their 
 nectar, Apollo, the god of music, delighted them with the 
 tones of his lyre, to which the Muses sang in responsive 
 strains. When the sun was set, the gods retired to sleep 
 in their respective dwellings. 
 
 The following lines from the “Odyssey” will show 
 how Homer conceived of Olympus: 
 
 “So saying, Minerva, goddess azure-eyed, 
 
 Rose to Olympus, the reputed seat 
 Eternal of the gods, which never storms 
 
4 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Disturb, rains drench, or snow invades, but calm 
 The expanse and cloudless shines with purest day. 
 
 There the inhabitants divine rejoice 
 
 Forever.” Cowper. 
 
 The robes and other parts of the dress of the god¬ 
 desses were woven by Minerva and the Graces and 
 everything of a more solid nature was formed of the 
 various metals. Vulcan was architect, smith, armorer, 
 chariot builder, and artist of all work in Olympus. He 
 built of brass the houses of the gods; he made for them 
 the golden shoes with which they trod the air or the 
 water, and moved from place to place with the speed 
 of the wind, or even of thought. He also shod with 
 brass the celestial steeds, which whirled the chariots of 
 the gods through the air, or along the surface of the 
 sea. He was able to bestow on his workmanship self- 
 motion, so that the tripods (chairs and tables) could 
 move of themselves in and out of the celestial hall. He 
 even endowed with intelligence the golden handmaidens 
 whom he made to wait on himself. 
 
 Jupiter, or Jove (Zeus 1 ), though called the father of 
 gods and men, had himself a beginning. Saturn (Cro¬ 
 nos) was his father, and Rhea (Ops) his mother. Sat¬ 
 urn and Rhea were of the race of Titans, who were 
 the children of Earth and Heaven, which sprang from 
 Chaos, of which we shall give a further account in our 
 next chapter. 
 
 There is another cosmogony, or account of the crea¬ 
 tion, according to which Earth, Erebus, and Love were 
 the first of beings. Love (Eros) issued from the egg 
 of Night, which floated on Chaos. By his arrows and 
 torch he pierced and vivified all things, producing life 
 and joy. 
 
 Saturn and Rhea were not the only Titans. There 
 were others, whose names were Oceanus, Hyperion, 
 Iapetus, and Ophion, males; and Themis, Mnemosyne, 
 Eurynome, females. They are spoken of as the elder 
 gods, whose dominion was afterwards transferred to 
 others. Saturn yielded to Jupiter, Oceanus to Nep- 
 
 1 The names included in parentheses are the Greek, the others being the 
 Roman or Latin names. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 5 
 
 tune, Hyperion to Apollo. Hyperion was the father 
 of the Sun, Moon, and Dawn. He is therefore the 
 original sun-god, and is painted with the splendor and 
 beauty which were afterwards bestowed on Apollo. 
 
 “Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself.” 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Ophion and Eurynome ruled over Olympus till they 
 were dethroned by Saturn and Rhea. Milton alludes 
 to them in “Paradise Lost/’ He says the heathens seem 
 to have had some knowledge of the temptation and fall 
 of man. 
 
 “And fabled how the serpent, whom they called 
 Ophion, with Eurynome, (the wide- 
 Encroaching Eve perhaps,) had first the rule 
 Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven.” 
 
 The representations given of Saturn are not very 
 consistent; for on the one hand his reign is said to have 
 been the golden age of innocence and purity, and on the 
 other he is described as a monster who devoured his 
 children . 1 Jupiter, however, escaped this fate, and when 
 grown up espoused Metis (Prudence), who adminis¬ 
 tered a draught to Saturn which caused him to disgorge 
 his children. Jupiter, with his brothers and sisters, now 
 rebelled against their father Saturn and his brothers 
 the Titans; vanquished them, and imprisoned some of 
 them in Tartarus, inflicting other penalties on others. 
 Atlas was condemned to bear up the heavens on his 
 shoulders. 
 
 On the dethronement of Saturn, Jupiter with his 
 brothers Neptune (Poseidon) and Pluto (Dis) divided 
 his dominions. Jupiter’s portion was the heavens, Nep¬ 
 tune’s the ocean, and Pluto’s the realms of the dead. 
 Earth and Olympus were common property. Jupiter 
 was king of gods and men. The thunder was his weap¬ 
 on, and he bore a shield called JEgis, made for him by 
 
 1 This inconsistency arises from considering the Saturn of the Romans 
 the same with the Grecian deity Cronos (Time), which, as it brings 
 an end to all things which have had a beginning, may be said to devour 
 its own offspring. 
 
6 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Vulcan. The eagle was his favorite bird, and bore his 
 thunderbolts. 
 
 Juno (Hera) was the wife of Jupiter, and queen of 
 the gods. Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, was her 
 attendant and messenger. The peacock was her favorite 
 bird. 
 
 Vulcan (Hephsestos), the celestial artist, was the son 
 of Jupiter and Juno. He was born lame, and his 
 mother was so displeased at the sight of him that she 
 flung him out of heaven. Other accounts say that 
 Jupiter kicked him out for taking part with his mother 
 in a quarrel which occurred between them. Vulcan’s 
 lameness, according to this account, was the consequence 
 of his fall. He was a whole day falling, and at last 
 alighted in the island of Lemnos, which was thence¬ 
 forth sacred to him. Milton alludes to this story in 
 “Paradise Lost,” Book I.: 
 
 “ . . . From morn 
 
 To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
 
 A summer’s day; and with the setting sun 
 Dropped from the zenith, like a falling star, 
 
 On Lemnos, the ^Egean isle.” 
 
 Mars (Ares), the god of war, was the son of 
 Jupiter and Juno. 
 
 Phoebus Apollo, the god of archery, prophecy, and 
 music, was the son of Jupiter and Latona, and brother 
 of Diana (Artemis). He was god of the sun, as Diana, 
 his sister, was the goddess of the moon. 
 
 Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love and beauty, 
 was the daughter of Jupiter and Dione. Others say 
 that Venus sprang from the foam of the sea. The zephyr 
 wafted her along the waves to the Isle of Cyprus, where 
 she was received and attired by the Seasons, and then 
 led to the assembly of the gods. All were charmed 
 with her beauty, and each one demanded her for his 
 wife. Jupiter gave her to Vulcan, in gratitude for the 
 service he had rendered in forging thunderbolts. So 
 the most beautiful of the goddesses became the wife of 
 the most ill-favored of gods. Venus possessed an em¬ 
 broidered girdle called Cestus, which had the power of 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 7 
 
 inspiring love. Her favorite birds were swans and 
 doves, and the plants sacred to her were the rose and 
 the myrtle. 
 
 Cupid (Eros), the god of love, was the son of Venus. 
 He was her constant companion; and, armed with bow 
 and arrows, he shot the darts of desire into the bosoms 
 of both gods and men. There was a deity named An- 
 teros, who was sometimes represented as the avenger 
 of slighted love, and sometimes as the symbol of re¬ 
 ciprocal affection. The following legend is told of him: 
 
 Venus, complaining to Themis that her son Eros con¬ 
 tinued always a child, was told by her that it was be¬ 
 cause he was solitary, and that if he had a brother he 
 would grow apace. Anteros was soon afterwards born, 
 and Eros immediately was seen to increase rapidly in 
 size and strength. 
 
 Minerva (Pallas, Athene), the goddess of wisdom, 
 was the offspring of Jupiter, without a mother. She 
 sprang forth from his head completely armed. Her 
 favorite bird was the owl, and the plant sacred to her 
 the olive. 
 
 Byron, in “Childe Harold,” alludes to the birth of 
 Minerva thus: 
 
 “Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, 
 
 And Freedom find no champion and no child, 
 
 Such as Columbia saw arise, when she 
 Sprang forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? 
 
 Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, 
 
 Deep in the unpruned forest, ’midst the roar 
 Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 
 On infant Washington? Has earth no more 
 Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?” 
 
 Mercury (Hermes) was the son of Jupiter and Maia. 
 He presided over commerce, wrestling, and other gym¬ 
 nastic exercises, even over thieving, and everything, in 
 short, which required skill and dexterity. He was the 
 messenger of Jupiter, and wore a winged cap and winged 
 shoes. He bore in his hand a rod entwined with two 
 serpents, called the caduceus. 
 
 Mercury is said to have invented the lyre. He 
 found, one day, a tortoise, of which he took the shell, 
 
8 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 made holes in the opposite edges of it, and drew cords 
 of linen through them, and the instrument was com¬ 
 plete. The cords were nine, in honor of the nine Muses. 
 Mercury gave the lyre to Apollo, and received from 
 him in exchange the caduceus . 1 
 
 Ceres (Demeter) was the daughter of Saturn and 
 Rhea. She had a daughter named Proserpine (Per¬ 
 sephone), who became the wife of Pluto, and queen 
 of the realms of the dead. Ceres presided over agri¬ 
 culture. 
 
 Bacchus (Dionysus), the god of wine, was the son 
 of Jupiter and Semele. He represents not only the in¬ 
 toxicating power of wine, but its social and beneficent 
 influences likewise, so that he is viewed as the pro¬ 
 moter of civilization, and a lawgiver and lover of peace. 
 
 The Muses were the daughters of Jupiter and Mne¬ 
 mosyne (Memory). They presided over song, and 
 prompted the memory. They were nine in number, 
 to each of whom was assigned the presidence over 
 some particular department of literature, art, or science. 
 Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Clio of history, 
 Euterpe of lyric poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Terp¬ 
 sichore of choral dance and song, Erato of love poetry, 
 Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of astronomy, 
 Thalia of comedy. 
 
 The Graces were goddesses presiding over the ban¬ 
 quet, the dance, and all social enjoyments and elegant 
 arts. They were three in number. Their names were 
 Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia. 
 
 Spenser describes the office of the Graces thus: 
 
 “These three on men all gracious gifts bestow 
 Which deck the body or adorn the mind, 
 
 To make them lovely or well-favored show; 
 
 As comely carriage, entertainment kind, 
 
 Sweet semblance, friendly offices that bind, 
 
 And all the complements of courtesy; 
 
 1 From this origin of the instrument, the word “shell” is often used as 
 synonymous with “lyre,” and figuratively for music and poetry. Thus 
 Gray, in his ode on the “Progress of Poesy,” says: 
 
 “O Sovereign of the willing Soul, 
 
 Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, 
 
 Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares 
 
 And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.” 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 9 
 
 They teach us how to each degree and kind 
 We should ourselves demean, to low, to high, 
 
 To friends, to foes; which skill men call Civility.” 
 
 The Fates were also three—Clotho, Lachesis, and 
 Atropos. Their office was to spin the thread of human 
 destiny, and they were armed with shears, with which 
 they cut it off when they pleased. They were the 
 daughters of Themis (Law), who sits by Jove on his 
 throne to give him counsel. 
 
 The Erinnyes, or Furies, were three goddesses who 
 punished by their secret stings the crimes of those who 
 escaped or defied public justice. The heads of the 
 Furies were wreathed with serpents, and their whole 
 appearance was terrific and appalling. Their names 
 were Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. They were also 
 called Eumenides. 
 
 Nemesis was also an avenging goddess. She repre¬ 
 sents the righteous anger of the gods, particularly 
 towards the proud and insolent. 
 
 Pan was the god of flocks and shepherds. His fa¬ 
 vorite residence was in Arcadia. 
 
 The Satyrs were deities of the woods and fields. 
 They were conceived to be covered with bristly hair, 
 their heads decorated with short, sprouting horns, and 
 their feet like goats’ feet. 
 
 Momus was the god of laughter, and Plutus the god 
 of wealth. 
 
 ROMAN DIVINITIES 
 
 The preceding are Grecian divinities, though received 
 also by the Romans. Those which follow are peculiar 
 to Roman mythology: 
 
 Saturn was an ancient Italian deity. It was at¬ 
 tempted to identify him with the Grecian god Cronos, 
 and fabled that after his dethronement by Jupiter he 
 fled to Italy, where he reigned during what was called 
 the Golden Age. In memory of his beneficent do¬ 
 minion, the feast of Saturnalia was held every year in 
 the winter season. Then all public business was sus¬ 
 pended, declarations of war and criminal executions 
 
10 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 were postponed, friends made presents to one another, 
 and the slaves were indulged with great liberties. A. 
 feast was given them at which they sat at table, while 
 their masters served them, to show the natural equality 
 of men, and that all things belonged equally to all, in 
 the reign of Saturn. 
 
 Faunus , 1 the grandson of Saturn, was worshipped as 
 the god of fields and shepherds, and also as a pro¬ 
 phetic god. His name in the plural, Fauns, expressed 
 a class of gamesome deities, like the Satyrs of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 Quirinus was a war god, said to be no other than 
 Romulus, the founder of Rome, exalted after his death 
 to a place among the gods. 
 
 Bellona, a war goddess. 
 
 Terminus, the god of landmarks. His statue was a 
 rude stone or post, set in the ground to mark the boun¬ 
 daries of fields. 
 
 Pales, the goddess presiding over cattle and pas¬ 
 tures. 
 
 Pomona presided over fruit trees. 
 
 Flora, the goddess of flowers. 
 
 Lucina, the goddess of childbirth. 
 
 Vesta (the Hestia of the Greeks) was a deity pre¬ 
 siding over the public and private hearth. A sacred 
 fire, tended by six virgin priestesses called Vestals, 
 flamed in her temple. As the safety of the city was 
 held to be connected with its conservation, the neglect 
 of the virgins, if they let it go out, was severely pun¬ 
 ished, and the fire was rekindled from the rays of the 
 sun. 
 
 Liber is the Latin name of Bacchus; and Mulciber 
 of Vulcan. 
 
 Janus was the porter of heaven. He opens the year, 
 the first month being named after him. He is the 
 guardian deity of gates, on which account he is com¬ 
 monly represented with two heads, because every door 
 looks two ways. His temples at Rome were numer¬ 
 ous. In war time the gates of the principal one were 
 always open. In peace they were closed; but they 
 
 1 There was also a goddess called Fauna, or Bona Dea. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 11 
 
 were shut only once between the reign of Numa and 
 that of Augustus. 
 
 The Penates were the gods who were supposed to 
 attend to the welfare and prosperity of the family. 
 Their name is derived from Penus, the pantry, which 
 was sacred to them. Every master of a family was 
 the priest to the Penates of his own house. 
 
 The Lares, or Lars, were also household gods, but 
 differed from the Penates in being regarded as the dei¬ 
 fied spirits of mortals. The family Lars were held to 
 be the souls of the ancestors, who watched over and 
 protected their descendants. The words Lemur and 
 Larva more nearly correspond to our word Ghost. 
 
 The Romans believed that every man had his Genius, 
 and every woman her Juno: that is, a spirit who had 
 given them being, and was regarded as their protector 
 through life. On their birthdays men made offerings 
 to their Genius, women to their Juno. 
 
 A modern poet thus alludes to some of the Roman 
 gods: 
 
 “Pomona loves the orchard, 
 
 And Liber loves the vine, 
 
 And Pales loves the straw-built shed 
 Warm with the breath of kine; 
 
 And Venus loves the whisper 
 Of plighted youth and maid, 
 
 In April’s ivory moonlight, 
 
 Beneath the chestnut shade.” 
 
 — Macaulay, “Prophecy of Capys.” 
 
 N.B.—It is to be observed that in proper names the 
 final e and es are to be sounded. Thus Cybele and 
 Penates are words of three syllables. But Proserpine 
 and Thebes are exceptions, and to be pronounced as 
 English words. In the Index at the close of the vol¬ 
 ume we shall mark the accented syllable in all words 
 which appear to require it. 
 
12 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA 
 
 The creation of the world is a problem naturally 
 fitted to excite the liveliest interest of man, its inhabi¬ 
 tant. The ancient pagans, not having the information 
 on the subject which we derive from the pages of Scrip¬ 
 ture, had their own way of telling the story, which is 
 as follows: 
 
 Before earth and sea and heaven were created, all 
 things wore one aspect, to which we give the name of 
 Chaos—a confused and shapeless mass, nothing but 
 dead weight, in which, however, slumbered the seeds of 
 things. Earth, sea, and air were all mixed up together; 
 so the earth was not solid, the sea was not fluid, and 
 the air was not transparent. God and Nature at last 
 interposed, and put an end to this discord, separating 
 earth from sea, and heaven from both. The fiery part, 
 being the lightest, sprang up, and formed the skies; the 
 air was next in weight and place. The earth, being 
 heavier, sank below; and the water took the lowest place, 
 and buoyed up the earth. 
 
 Here some god—it is not known which—gave his 
 good offices in arranging and disposing the earth. He 
 appointed rivers and bays their places, raised mountains, 
 scooped out valleys, distributed woods, fountains, fertile 
 fields, and stony plains. The air being cleared, the stars 
 began to appear, fishes took possession of the sea, birds 
 of the air, and four-footed beasts of the land. 
 
 But a nobler animal was wanted, and Man was made. 
 It is not known whether the creator made him of divine 
 materials, or whether in the earth, so lately separated 
 from heaven, there lurked still some heavenly seeds. 
 Prometheus took some of this earth, and kneading 
 it up with water, made man in the image of the gods. 
 He gave him an upright stature, so that while all other 
 animals turn their faces downward, and look to the 
 earth, he raises his to heaven, and gazes on the stars. 
 
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA 
 
 13 
 
 Prometheus was one of the Titans, a gigantic race, 
 who inhabited the earth before the creation of man. 
 To him and his brother Epimetheus was committed 
 the office of making man, and providing him and all 
 other animals with the faculties necessary for their 
 preservation. Epimetheus undertook to do this, and 
 Prometheus was to overlook his work, when it was 
 done. Epimetheus accordingly proceeded to bestow 
 upon the different animals the various gifts of courage, 
 strength, swiftness, sagacity; wings to one, claws to an¬ 
 other, a shelly covering to a third, etc. But when man 
 came to be provided for, who was to be superior to 
 all other animals, Epimetheus had been so prodigal of 
 his resources that he had nothing left to bestow upon 
 him. In his perplexity he resorted to his brother 
 Prometheus, who, with the aid of Minerva, went up 
 to heaven, and lighted his torch at the chariot of the 
 sun, and brought down fire to man. With this gift 
 man was more than a match for all other animals. It 
 enabled him to make weapons wherewith to subdue 
 them; tools with which to cultivate the earth; to warm 
 his dwelling, so as to be comparatively independent of 
 climate; and finally to introduce the arts and to coin 
 money, the means of trade and commerce. 
 
 Woman was not yet made. The story (absurd 
 enough!) is that Jupiter made her, and sent her to 
 Prometheus and his brother, to punish them for their 
 presumption in stealing fire from heaven; and man, 
 for accepting the gift. The first woman was named 
 Pandora. She was made in heaven, every god con¬ 
 tributing something to perfect her. Venus gave her 
 beauty, Mercury persuasion, Apollo music, etc. Thus 
 equipped, she was conveyed to earth, and presented to 
 Epimetheus, who gladly accepted her, though cautioned 
 by his brother to beware of Jupiter and his gifts. 
 Epimetheus had in his house a jar, in which were kept 
 certain noxious articles, for which, in fitting man for 
 his new abode, he had had no occasion. Pandora was 
 seized with an eager curiosity to know what this jar 
 contained; and one day she slipped off the cover and 
 looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of 
 
14 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 plagues for hapless man,—such as gout, rheumatism, 
 and colic for his body, and envy, spite, and revenge for 
 his mind,—and scattered themselves far and wide. 
 Pandora hastened to replace the lid! but, alas! the whole 
 contents of the jar had escaped, one thing only ex¬ 
 cepted, which lay at the bottom, and that was hope . 
 So we see at this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope 
 never entirely leaves us; and while we have that, no 
 amount of other ills can make us completely wretched. 
 
 Another story is that Pandora was sent in good faith, 
 by Jupiter, to bless man; that she was furnished with 
 a box, containing her marriage presents, into which 
 every god had put some blessing. She opened the box 
 incautiously, and the blessings all escaped, hope only ex¬ 
 cepted. This story seems more probable than the for¬ 
 mer; for how could hope, so precious a jewel as it is, 
 have been kept in a jar full of all manner of evils, as 
 in the former statement? 
 
 The world being thus furnished with inhabitants, the 
 first age was an age of innocence and happiness, called 
 the Golden Age. Truth and right prevailed, though not 
 enforced by law, nor was there any magistrate to 
 threaten or punish. The forest had not yet been robbed 
 of its trees to furnish timbers for vessels, nor had men 
 built fortifications round their towns. There were no 
 such things as swords, spears, or helmets. The earth 
 brought forth all things necessary for man, without his 
 labor in ploughing or sowing. Perpetual spring reigned, 
 flowers sprang up without seed, the rivers flowed with 
 milk and wine, and yellow honey distilled from the oaks. 
 
 Then succeeded the Silver Age, inferior to the golden, 
 but better than that of brass. Jupiter shortened the 
 spring, and divided the year into seasons. Then, first, 
 men had to endure the extremes of heat and cold, and 
 houses became necessary. Caves were the first dwell¬ 
 ings, and leafy coverts of the woods, and huts woven 
 of twigs. Crops would no longer grow without plant¬ 
 ing. The farmer was obliged to sow the seed and the 
 tolling ox to draw the plough. 
 
 Next came the Brazen Age, more savage of temper, 
 and readier to the strife of arms, yet not altogether 
 
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA 
 
 15 
 
 wicked. The hardest and worst was the Iron Age. 
 Crime burst in like a flood; modesty, truth, and honor 
 fled. In their places came fraud and cunning, violence, 
 and the wicked love of gain. Then seamen spread sails 
 to the wind, and the trees were torn from the moun¬ 
 tains to serve for keels to ships, and vex the face of 
 ocean. The earth, which till now had been cultivated 
 in common, began to be divided off into possessions. 
 Men were not satisfied with what the surface produced, 
 but must dig into its bowels, and draw forth from 
 thence the ores of metals. Mischievous iron, and more 
 mischievous gold, were produced. War sprang up, 
 using both as weapons; the guest was not safe in his 
 friend’s house; and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law, 
 brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, could not trust 
 one another. Sons wished their fathers dead, that they 
 might come to the inheritance; family love lay pros¬ 
 trate. The earth was wet with slaughter, and the gods 
 abandoned it, one by one, till Astraea 1 alone was left, 
 and finally she also took her departure. 
 
 Jupiter, seeing this state of things, burned with anger. 
 He summoned the gods to council. They obeyed the 
 call, and took the road to the palace of heaven. The 
 road, which any one may see in a clear night, stretches 
 across the face of the sky, and is called the Milky Way. 
 Along the road stand the palaces of the illustrious gods; 
 the common people of the skies live apart, on either 
 side. Jupiter addressed the assembly. He set forth 
 the frightful condition of things on the earth, and closed 
 by announcing his intention to destroy the whole of its 
 inhabitants, and provide a new race, unlike the first, 
 
 1 The goddess of innocence and purity. After leaving earth, she was 
 placed among the stars, where she became the constellation Virgo—the 
 Virgin. Themis (Justice) was the mother of Astraea. She is represented 
 as holding aloft a pair of scales, in which she weighs the claims of oppos¬ 
 ing parties. 
 
 It was a favorite idea of the old poets that these goddesses would 
 one day return, and bring back the Golden Age. Even in a Christian 
 hymn, the “Messiah” of Pope, this idea occurs: 
 
 “All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail, 
 
 Returning Justice lift aloft her scale. 
 
 Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, 
 
 And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.” 
 
 See, also, Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity,” stanzas xiv. and xv. 
 
16 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 who would be more worthy of life, and much better 
 worshippers of the gods. So saying he took a thunder¬ 
 bolt, and was about to launch it at the world, and 
 destroy it by burning; but recollecting the danger that 
 such a conflagration might set heaven itself on fire, he 
 changed his plan, and resolved to drown it. The north 
 wind, which scatters the clouds, was chained up; the 
 south was sent out, and soon covered all the face of 
 heaven with a cloak of pitchy darkness. The clouds, 
 driven together, resound with a crash; torrents of rain 
 fall; the crops are laid low; the year’s labor of the 
 husbandman perishes in an hour. Jupiter, not satisfied 
 with his own waters, calls on his brother Neptune to 
 aid him with his. He lets loose the rivers, and pours 
 them over the land. At the same time, he heaves the 
 land with an earthquake, and brings in the reflux of 
 the ocean over the shores. Flocks, herds, men, and 
 houses are swept away, and temples, with their sacred 
 enclosures, profaned. If any edifice remained stand¬ 
 ing, it was overwhelmed, and its turrets lay hid beneath 
 the waves. Now all was sea, sea without shore. Here 
 and there an individual remained on a projecting hill¬ 
 top, and a few, in boats, pulled the oar where they had 
 lately driven the plough. The fishes swim among the 
 tree-tops; the anchor is let down into a garden. Where 
 the graceful lambs played but now, unwieldy sea calves 
 gambol. The wolf swims among the sheep, the yellow 
 lions and tigers struggle in the water. The strength 
 of the wild boar serves him not, nor his swiftness the 
 stag. The birds fall with weary wing into the water,] 
 having found no land for a resting-place. Those living 
 beings whom the water spared fell a prey to hunger. 
 
 Parnassus alone, of all the mountains, overtopped 
 the waves; and there Deucalion, and his wife Pyrrha, 
 of the race of Prometheus, found refuge—he a just 
 man, and she a faithful worshipper of the gods. Jupi¬ 
 ter, when he saw none left alive but this pair, and re¬ 
 membered their harmless lives and pious demeanor, 
 ordered the north winds to drive away the clouds, and 
 disclose the skies to earth, and earth to the skies. 
 Neptune also directed Triton to blow on his shell, and 
 
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA 
 
 17 
 
 sound a retreat to the waters. The waters obeyed, and 
 the sea returned to its shores, and the rivers to their 
 channels. Then Deucalion thus addressed Pyrrha: “O 
 wife, only surviving woman, joined to me first by the 
 ties of kindred and marriage, and now by a common 
 danger, would that we possessed the power of our an¬ 
 cestor Prometheus, and could renew the race as he at 
 first made it! But as we cannot, let us seek yonder 
 temple, and inquire of the gods what remains for us to 
 do.” They entered the temple, deformed as it was with 
 slime, and approached the altar, where no fire burned. 
 There they fell prostrate on the earth, and prayed 
 the goddess to inform them how they might retrieve 
 their miserable affairs. The oracle answered, “Depart 
 from the temple with head veiled and garments un¬ 
 bound, and cast behind you the bones of your mother.” 
 They heard the words with astonishment. Pyrrha first 
 broke silence: “We cannot obey; we dare not profane 
 the remains of our parents.” They sought the thick¬ 
 est shades of the wood, and revolved the oracle in 
 their minds. At length Deucalion spoke: “Either my 
 sagacity deceives me, or the command is one we may 
 obey without impiety. The earth is the great parent 
 of all; the stones are her bones; these we may cast 
 behind us; and I think this is what the oracle means. 
 At least, it will do no harm to try.” They veiled their 
 faces, unbound their garments, and picked up stones, 
 and cast them behind them. The stones (wonderful 
 to relate) began to grow soft, and assume shape. By 
 degrees, they put on a rude resemblance to the human 
 form, like a block half-finished in the hands of the 
 sculptor. The moisture and slime that were about them 
 became flesh; the stony part became bones; the veins 
 remained veins, retaining their name, only changing 
 their use. Those thrown by the hand of the man be¬ 
 came men, and those by the woman became women. 
 It was a hard race, and well adapted to labor, as we find 
 ourselves to be at this day, giving plain indications of 
 our origin. 
 
 The comparison of Eve to Pandora is too obvious to 
 
IS 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 have escaped Milton, who introduces it in Book IV. of 
 “Paradise Lost”: 
 
 “More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods 
 Endowed with all their gifts; and O, too like 
 In sad event, when to the unwiser son 
 Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she insnared 
 Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged 
 On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire.” 
 
 Prometheus and Epimetheus were sons of Iapetus, 
 which Milton changes to Japhet. 
 
 Prometheus has been a favorite subject with the poets. 
 He is represented as the friend of mankind, who inter¬ 
 posed in their behalf when Jove was incensed against 
 them, and who taught them civilization and the arts. 
 But as, in so doing, he transgressed the will of Jupiter, 
 he drew down on himself the anger of the ruler of 
 gods and men. Jupiter had him chained to a rock on 
 Mount Caucasus, where a vulture preyed on his liver, 
 which was renewed as fast as devoured. This state 
 of torment might have been brought to an end at any 
 time by Prometheus, if he had been willing to submit 
 to his oppressor; for he possessed a secret which in¬ 
 volved the stability of Jove’s throne, and if he would 
 have revealed it, he might have been at once taken into 
 favor. But that he disdained to do. He has there¬ 
 fore become the symbol of magnanimous endurance of 
 unmerited suffering, and strength of will resisting op¬ 
 pression. 
 
 Byron and Shelley have both treated this theme. The 
 following are Byron’s lines: 
 
 “Titan! to whose immortal eyes 
 The sufferings of mortality, 
 
 Seen in their sad reality, 
 
 Were not as things that gods despise; 
 What was thy pity’s recompense? 
 
 A silent suffering, and intense; 
 
 The rock, the vulture, and the chain; 
 All that the proud can feel of pain; 
 The agony they do not show; 
 
 The suffocating sense of woe. 
 
APOLLO AND DAPHNE 
 
 19 
 
 “Thy godlike crime was to be kind; 
 
 To render with thy precepts less 
 The sum of human wretchedness, 
 
 And strengthen man with his own mind. 
 
 And, baffled as thou wert from high, 
 
 Still, in thy patient energy 
 In the endurance and repulse 
 Of thine impenetrable spirit, 
 
 Which earth and heaven could not convulse, 
 
 A mighty lesson we inherit.” 
 
 Byron also employs the same allusion, in his “Ode 
 to Napoleon Bonaparte”: 
 
 “Or, like the thief of fire from heaven, 
 
 Wilt thou withstand the shock? 
 
 And share with him—the un forgiven— 
 
 His vulture and his rock?” 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 APOLLO AND DAPHNE—PYRAMUS AND THISBE 
 CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS 
 
 The slime with which the earth was covered by the 
 waters of the flood produced an excessive fertility, 
 which called forth every variety of production, both bad 
 and good. Among the rest, Python, an enormous ser¬ 
 pent, crept forth, the terror of the people, and lurked 
 in the caves of Mount Parnassus. Apollo slew him 
 with his arrows—weapons which he had not before 
 used against any but feeble animals, hares, wild goats, 
 and such game. In commemoration of this illustrious 
 conquest he instituted the Pythian games, in which the 
 victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot, or in the 
 chariot race was crowned with a wreath of beech 
 leaves; for the laurel was not yet adopted by Apollo 
 as his own tree. 
 
 The famous statue of Apollo called the Belvedere 
 represents the god after this victory over the serpent 
 Python. To this Byron alludes in his “Childe Harold,” 
 tv., 261; 
 
20 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 “ . . . The lord of the unerring bow, 
 
 The god of life, and poetry, and light, 
 
 The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow 
 All radiant from his triumph in the fight. 
 
 The shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright 
 With an immortal’s vengeance; in his eye 
 And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might 
 And majesty flash their full lightnings by, 
 
 Developing in that one glance the Deity.” 
 
 APOLLO AND DAPHNE 
 
 Daphne was Apollo’s first love. It was not brought 
 about by accident, but by the malice of Cupid. Apollo 
 saw the boy playing with his bow and arrows; and 
 being himself elated with his recent victory over Python, 
 he said to him, “What have you to do with warlike 
 weapons, saucy boy? Leave them for hands worthy 
 of them. Behold the conquest I have won by means 
 of them over the vast serpent who stretched his 
 poisonous body over acres of the plain! Be content 
 with your torch, child, and kindle up your flames, as 
 you call them, where you will, but presume not to 
 meddle with my weapons.” Venus’s boy heard these 
 words, and rejoined, “Your arrows may strike all things 
 else, Apollo, but mine shall strike you.” So saying, 
 he took his stand on a rock of Parnassus, and drew 
 from his quiver two arrows of different workmanship, 
 one to excite love, the other to repel it. The former 
 was of gold and sharp pointed, the latter blunt and 
 tipped with lead. With the leaden shaft he struck the 
 nymph Daphne, the daughter of the river god Peneus, 
 and with the golden one Apollo, through the heart. 
 Forthwith the god was seized with love for the maiden, 
 and she abhorred the thought of loving. Her delight 
 was in woodland sports and in the spoils of the chase. 
 Many lovers sought her, but she spurned them all, 
 ranging the woods, and taking no thought of Cupid nor 
 of Hymen. Her father often said to her, “Daughter, 
 you owe me a son-in-law; you owe me grandchildren.” 
 She, hating the thought of marriage as a crime, with 
 her beautiful face tinged all over with blushes, threw 
 Ler arms around her father’s neck, and said, “Dearest 
 
 7 i 
 
APOLLO AND DAPHNE 
 
 21 
 
 father, grant me this favor, that I may always remain 
 unmarried, like Diana.” He consented, but at the same 
 time said, “Your own face will forbid it.” 
 
 Apollo loved her, and longed to obtain her; and he 
 who gives oracles to all the world was not wise enough 
 to look into his own fortunes. He saw her hair 
 flung loose over her shoulders, and said, “If so charm¬ 
 ing in disorder, what would it be if arranged?” He 
 saw her eyes bright as stars; he saw her lips, and 
 was not satisfied with only seeing them. He admired 
 her hands and arms, naked to the shoulder, and what¬ 
 ever was hidden from view he imagined more beau¬ 
 tiful still. He followed her; she fled, swifter than 
 the wind, and delayed not a moment at his entreaties. 
 “Stay,” said he, “daughter of Peneus; I am not a foe. 
 Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove 
 the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. You make 
 me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt your¬ 
 self on these stones, and I should be the cause. Pray 
 run slower, and I will follow slower. I am no clown, 
 no rude peasant. Jupiter is my father, and I am lord 
 of Delphos and Tenedos, and know all things, present 
 and future. I am the god of song and the lyi^e. My 
 arrows fly true to the mark; but, alas! an arrow more 
 fatal than mine has pierced my heart! I am the god 
 of medicine, and know the virtues of all healing plants. 
 Alas! I suffer a malady that no balm can cure! 
 
 The nymph continued her flight, and left his plea 
 half uttered. And even as she fled she charmed him. 
 The wind blew her garments, and her unbound hair 
 streamed loose behind her. The god grew impatient 
 to find his wooings thrown away, and, sped by Cupid, 
 gained upon her in the race. It was like a hound 
 pursuing a hare, with open jaws ready to seize, while 
 the feebler animal darts forward, slipping from the very 
 grasp. So flew the god and the virgin—he on the wings 
 of love, and she on those of fear. The pursuer is the 
 more rapid, however, and gains upon her, and his pant¬ 
 ing breath blows upon her hair. Her strength begins 
 to fail, and, ready to sink, she calls upon her father, 
 the river god: “Help me, Peneus! open the earth to en- 
 
22 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 close me, or change my form, which has brought me 
 into this danger!” Scarcely had she spoken, when a 
 stiffness seized all her limbs; her bosom began to be 
 enclosed in a tender bark; her hair became leaves; her 
 arms became branches; her foot stuck fast in the 
 ground, as a root; her face became a tree-top, retain- 
 ing nothing of its former self but its beauty. Apollo 
 stood amazed. He touched the stem, and felt the flesh 
 tremble under the new bark. He embraced the branches, 
 and lavished kisses on the wood. The branches shrank 
 from his lips. “Since you cannot be my wife,” said 
 he, “you shall assuredly be my tree. I will wear you 
 for my crown; I will decorate with you my harp and 
 my quiver; and when the great Roman conquerors 
 lead up the triumphal pomp to the Capitol, you shall 
 be woven into wreaths for their brows. And, as eternal 
 youth is mine, you also shall be always green, and your 
 leaf know no decay.” The nymph, now changed into a 
 Laurel tree, bowed its head in grateful acknowledg¬ 
 ment. 
 
 That Apollo should be the god both of music and 
 poetry will not appear strange, but that medicine should 
 also be assigned to his province, may. The poet Arm¬ 
 strong, himself a physician, thus accounts for it: 
 
 “Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, 
 
 Expels diseases, softens every pain; 
 
 And hence the wise of ancient days adored 
 One power of physic, melody, and song.” 
 
 The story of Apollo and Daphne is often alluded to 
 by the poets. Waller applies it to the case of one 
 whose amatory verses, though they did not soften the 
 heart of his mistress, yet won for the poet wide-spread 
 .fame: 
 
 “Yet what he sung in his immortal strain, 
 
 Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain. 
 
 All but the nymph that should redress his wrong, 
 Attend his passion and approve his song. 
 
 Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise, 
 
 He caught at love and filled his arms with bays.” 
 
PYRAMUS AND THISBE 
 
 23 
 
 The following stanza from Shelley’s “Adonais” al¬ 
 ludes to Byron’s early quarrel with the reviewers: 
 
 “The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; 
 
 The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; 
 
 The vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true, 
 
 Who feed where Desolation first has fed, 
 
 And whose wings rain contagion : how they fled, 
 
 When like Apollo, from his golden bow, 
 
 The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 
 
 And smiled! The spoilers tempt no second blow; 
 
 They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as they .go.” 
 
 PYRAMUS AND THISBE 
 
 Pyramus was the handsomest youth, and Thisbe the 
 fairest maiden, in all Babylonia, where Semiramis 
 reigned. Their parents occupied adjoining houses; and 
 neighborhood brought the young people together, and 
 acquaintance ripened into love. They would gladly 
 have married, but their parents forbade. One thing, 
 however, they could not forbid—that love should glow 
 with equal ardor in the bosoms of both. They con¬ 
 versed by signs and glances, and the fire burned more 
 intensely for being covered up. In the wall that parted 
 the two houses there was a crack, caused by some fault 
 in the structure. No one had remarked it before, but 
 the lovers discovered it. What will not love discover! 
 It afforded a passage to the voice; and tender mes¬ 
 sages used to pass backward and forward through the 
 gap. As they stood, Pyramus on this side, Thisbe on 
 that, their breaths would mingle. “Cruel wall,” they 
 said, “why do you keep two lovers apart? But we 1 
 will not be ungrateful. We owe you, we confess, the 
 privilege of transmitting loving words to willing ears.” 
 Such words they uttered on different sides of the wall; 
 and when night came and they must say farewell, they 
 pressed their lips upon the wall, she on her side, he 
 on his, as they could come no nearer. 
 
 Next morning, when Aurora had put out the stars, 
 and the sun had melted the frost from the grass, they 
 met at the accustomed spot. Then, after lamenting 
 their hard fate, they agreed that next night, when all 
 
24 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 was still, they would slip away from watchful eyes, 
 leave their dwellings and walk out into the fields; and 
 to insure a meeting, repair to a well-known edifice 
 standing without the city’s bounds, called the Tomb of 
 Ninus, and that the one who Same first should await 
 the other at the foot of a certain tree. It was a white 
 mulberry tree, and stood near a cool spring. All was 
 agreed on, and they waited impatiently for the sun to 
 go down beneath the waters and night to rise up from 
 them. Then cautiously Thisbe stole forth, unobserved 
 by the family, her head covered with a veil, made her 
 way to the monument and sat down under the tree. 
 As she sat alone in the dim light of the evening she 
 descried a lioness, her jaws reeking with recent slaugh¬ 
 ter, approaching the fountain to slake her thirst. Thisbe 
 fled at the sight, and sought refuge in the hollow of 
 a rock. As she fled she dropped her veil. The lioness 
 after drinking at the spring turned to retreat to the 
 woods, and seeing the veil on the ground, tossed and 
 rent it with her bloody mouth. 
 
 Pyramus, having been delayed, now approached the 
 place of meeting. He saw in the sand the footsteps 
 of the lion, and the color fled from his cheeks at the 
 sight. Presently he found the veil all rent and bloody. 
 “O hapless girl,” said he, “I have been the cause of 
 thy death! Thou, more worthy of life than I, hast 
 fallen the first victim. I will follow. I am the guilty 
 cause, in tempting thee forth to a place of such peril, 
 and not being myself on the spot to guard thee. Come 
 forth, ye lions, from the rocks, and tear this guilty body 
 with your teeth.” He took up the veil, carried it with 
 him to the appointed tree, and covered it with kisses 
 and with tears. “My blood also shall stain your tex¬ 
 ture,” said he, and drawing his sword plunged it into 
 his heart. The blood spurted from the wound, and 
 tinged the white mulberries of the tree all red; and 
 sinking into the earth reached the roots, so that the 
 red color mounted through the trunk to the fruit. 
 
 By this time Thisbe, still trembling with fear, yet 
 wishing not to disappoint her lover, stepped cautiously 
 forth, looking anxiously for the youth, eager to tell him 
 
PYRAMUS AND THISBE 
 
 25 
 
 the danger she had escaped. When she came to the 
 spot and saw the changed color of the mulberries she 
 doubted whether it was the same place. While she 
 hesitated she saw the form of one struggling in the 
 agonies of death. She started back, a shudder ran 
 through her frame as a ripple on the face of the still 
 water when a sudden breeze sweeps over it. But as 
 soon as she recognized her lover, she screamed and 
 beat her breast, embracing the lifeless body, pouring 
 tears into its wounds, and imprinting kisses on the cold 
 lips. “O Pyramus,” she cried, “what has done this? 
 Answer me, Pyramus; it is your own Thisbe that speaks. 
 Hear me, dearest, and lift that drooping head!” At 
 the name of Thisbe Pyramus opened his eyes, then 
 closed them again. She saw her veil stained with blood 
 and the scabbard empty of its sword. “Thy own hand 
 has slain thee, and for my sake,” she said. “I too can 
 be brave for once, and my love is as strong as thine. 
 I will follow thee in death, for I have been the cause; 
 and death which alone could part us shall not prevent 
 my joining thee. And ye, unhappy parents of us both, 
 deny us not our united request. As love and death have 
 joined us, let one tomb contain us. And thou, tree, 
 retain the marks of slaughter. Let thy berries still serve 
 for memorials of our blood.” So saying she plunged 
 the sword into her breast. Her parents ratified her 
 wish, the gods also ratified it. The two bodies were 
 buried in one sepulchre, and the tree ever after brought 
 forth purple berries, as it does to this day. 
 
 Moore, in the “Sylph’s Ball,” speaking of Davy’s 
 Safety Lamp, is reminded of the wall that separated 
 Thisbe and her lover: 
 
 “O for that Lamp’s metallic gauze, 
 
 That curtain of protecting wire, 
 
 Which Davy delicately draws 
 Around illicit, dangerous fire! 
 
 The wall he sets ’twixt Flame and Air, 
 
 (Like that which barred young Thisbe’s bliss,) 
 Through whose small holes this dangerous pair 
 May see each other, but not kiss.” 
 
26 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 In Mickle’s translation of the “Lusiad” occurs the 
 following allusion to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, 
 and the metamorphosis of the mulberries. The poet is 
 describing the Island of Love: 
 
 . . here each gift Pomona’s hand bestows 
 In cultured garden, free uncultured flows, 
 
 The flavor sweeter and the hue more fair 
 Than e’er was fostered by the hand of care. 
 
 The cherry here in shining crimson glows, 
 
 And stained with lovers’ blood, in pendent rows, 
 
 The mulberries o’erload the bending boughs.” 
 
 If any of our young readers can be so hard-hearted 
 as to enjoy a laugh at the expense of poor Pyramus 
 and Thisbe, they may find an opportunity by turning 
 to Shakspeare’s play of the “Midsummer Night’s 
 Dream,” where it is most amusingly burlesqued. 
 
 CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS 
 
 Cephalus was a beautiful youth and fond of manly 
 sports. He would rise before the dawn to pursue the 
 chase. Aurora saw him when she first looked forth, 
 fell in love with him, and stole him away. But Cephalus 
 was just married to a charming wife whom he devotedly 
 loved. Her name was Procris. She was a favorite 
 of Diana, the goddess of hunting, who had given her 
 a dog which could outrun every rival, and a javelin 
 which would never fail of its mark; and Procris gave 
 these presents to her husband. Cephalus was so happy 
 in his wife that he resisted all the entreaties of Aurora, 
 and she finally dismissed him in displeasure, saying, 
 “Go, ungrateful mortal, keep your wife, whom, if I am 
 not much mistaken, you will one day be very sorry you 
 ever saw again.” 
 
 Cephalus returned, and was as happy as ever in his 
 wife and his woodland sports. Now it happened some 
 angry deity had sent a ravenous fox to annoy the coun¬ 
 try; and the hunters turned out in great strength to 
 capture it. Their efforts were all in vain; no dog could 
 run it down; and at last they came to Cephalus to bor¬ 
 row his famous dog, whose name was Lelaps. No 
 
CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS 
 
 27 
 
 sooner was the dog let loose than he darted off, quicker 
 than their eye could follow him. If they had not seen 
 his footprints in the sand they would have thought he 
 flew. Cephalus and others stood on a hill and saw the 
 race. The fox tried every art; he ran in a circle and 
 turned on his track, the dog close upon him, with open 
 jaws, snapping at his heels, but biting only the air. 
 Cephalus was about to use his javelin, when suddenly he 
 saw both dog and game stop instantly. The heavenly 
 powers who had given both were not willing that either 
 should conquer. In the very attitude of life and action 
 they were turned into stone. So lifelike and natural did 
 they look, you would have thought, as you looked at 
 them, that one was going to bark, the other to leap for¬ 
 ward. 
 
 Cephalus, though he had lost his dog, still contin¬ 
 ued to take delight in the chase. He would go out at 
 early morning, ranging the woods and hills unaccom¬ 
 panied by any one, needing no help, for his javelin was a 
 sure weapon in all cases. Fatigued with hunting, when 
 the sun got high he would seek a shady nook where a 
 cool stream flowed, and, stretched on the grass, with his 
 garments thrown aside, would enjoy the breeze. Some¬ 
 times he would say aloud, “Come, sweet breeze, come 
 and fan my breast, come and allay the heat that burns 
 me.” Some one passing by one day heard him talking in 
 this way to the air, and, foolishly believing that he was 
 talking to some maiden, went and told the secret to 
 Procris, Cephalus’s wife. Love is credulous. Procris, 
 at the sudden shock, fainted away. Presently re¬ 
 covering, she said, “It cannot be true; I will not be¬ 
 lieve it unless I myself am a witness to it.” So she 
 waited, with anxious heart, till the next morning, when 
 Cephalus went to hunt as usual. Then she stole out 
 after him, and concealed herself in the place where the 
 informer directed her. Cephalus came as he was wont 
 when tired with sport, and stretched himself on the 
 green bank, saying, “Come, sweet breeze, come and 
 fan me; you know how I love you! you make the groves 
 and my solitary rambles delightful.” He was running 
 on in this way when he heard, or thought he heard, a 
 
28 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 sound as of a sob in the bushes. Supposing it some 
 wild animal, he threw his javelin at the spot. A cry 
 from his beloved Procris told him that the weapon had 
 too surely met its mark. Pie rushed to the place, and 
 found her bleeding, and with sinking strength endeav¬ 
 oring to draw forth from the wound the javelin, her 
 own gift. Cephalus raised her from the earth, strove 
 to stanch the blood, and called her to revive and not to 
 leave him miserable, to reproach himself with her death. 
 She opened her feeble eyes, and forced herself to utter 
 these few words: “I implore you, if you have ever loved 
 me, if I have ever deserved kindness at your hands, my 
 husband, grant me this last request; do not marry that 
 odious Breeze!” This disclosed the whole mystery: but 
 alas! what advantage to disclose it now! She died; but 
 her face wore a calm expression, and she looked pity¬ 
 ingly and forgivingly on her husband when he made her 
 understand the truth. 
 
 Moore, in his “Legendary Ballads,” has one oa 
 Cephalus and Procris, beginning thus: 
 
 “A hunter once in a grove reclined, 
 
 To shun the noon’s bright eye, 
 
 And oft he wooed the wandering wind 
 To cool his brow with its sigh. 
 
 While mute lay even the wild bee’s hum, 
 
 Nor breath could stir the aspen’s hair, 
 
 His song was still, ‘Sweet Air, O come!’ 
 
 While Echo answered, ‘Come, sweet Air!’” 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 JUNO AND HER RIVALS, 10 AND CALLISTO-DIANA AND 
 
 ACTION—LATONA AND THE RUSTICS 
 
 Juno one day perceived it suddenly grow dark, and 
 immediately suspected that her husband had raised a 
 cloud to hide some of his doings that would not bear 
 the light. She brushed away the cloud, and saw her 
 husband on the banks of a glassy river, with a beautiful 
 
JUNO AND HER RIVALS 
 
 29 
 
 heifer standing near him. Juno suspected the heifer’s 
 form concealed some fair nymph of mortal mould—as 
 was, indeed the case; for it was Io, the daughter of 
 the river god Inachus, whom Jupiter had been flirting 
 with, and, when he became aware of the approach of his 
 wife, had changed into that form. 
 
 Juno joined her husband, and noticing the heifer 
 praised its beauty, and asked whose it was, and of what 
 herd. Jupiter, to stop questions, replied that it was a 
 fresh creation from the earth. Juno asked to have it as 
 a gift. What could Jupiter do? He was loath to give 
 his mistress to his wife; yet how refuse so trifling 
 a present as a simple heifer? He could not, without 
 exciting suspicion; so he consented. The goddess was 
 not yet relieved of her suspicions; so she delivered the 
 heifer to Argus, to be strictly watched. 
 
 Now Argus had a hundred eyes in his head, and never 
 went to sleep with more than two at a time* so that he 
 kept watch of Io constantly. He suffered her to feed 
 through the day, and at night tied her up with a vile 
 rope round her neck. She would have stretched out her 
 arms to implore freedom of Argus, but she had no arms 
 to stretch out, and her voice was a bellow that fright¬ 
 ened even herself. She saw her father and her sisters, 
 went near them, and suffered them to pat her back, and 
 heard them admire her beauty. Her father reached her 
 a tuft of grass, and she licked the outstretched hand. 
 She longed to make herself known to him, and would 
 have uttered her wish; but, alas! words were wanting. 
 At length she bethought herself of writing, and inscribed 
 her name—it was a short one—with her hoof on the 
 sand. Inachus recognized it, and discovering that his 
 daughter, whom he had long sought in vain, was hidden 
 under this disguise, mourned over her, and, embracing 
 her white neck, exclaimed, “Alas! my daughter, it would 
 have been a less grief to have lost you altogether!” 
 While he thus lamented, Argus, observing, came and 
 drove her away, and took his seat on a high bank, from 
 whence he could see all around in every direction. 
 
 Jupiter was troubled at beholding the sufferings of his 
 mistress, and calling Mercury told him to go and despatch 
 
30 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Argus. Mercury made haste, put his winged slippers on 
 his feet, and cap on his head, took his sleep-producing 
 wand, and leaped down from the heavenly towers to the 
 earth. There he laid aside his wings, and kept only his 
 wand, with which he presented himself as a shepherd 
 driving his flock. As he strolled on he blew upon his 
 pipes. These were what are called the Syrinx or Pandean 
 pipes. Argus listened with delight, for he had never seen 
 the instrument before. “Young man,” said he, “come 
 and take a seat by me on this stone. There is no better 
 place for your flocks to graze in than hereabouts, and 
 here is a pleasant shade such as shepherds love.” Mercury 
 sat down, talked, and told stories till it grew late, and 
 played upon his pipes his most soothing strains, hoping 
 to lull the watchful eyes to sleep, but all in vain; for 
 Argus still contrived to keep some of his eyes open 
 though he shut the rest. 
 
 Among other stories, Mercury told him how the instru¬ 
 ment on which he played was invented. “There was a 
 certain nymph, whose name was Syrinx, who was much 
 beloved by the satyrs and spirits of the wood; but she 
 would have none of them, but was a faithful worshipper 
 of Diana, and followed the chase. You would have 
 thought it was Diana herself, had you seen her in her 
 hunting dress, only that her bow was of horn and Diana’s 
 of silver. One day, as she was returning from the chase. 
 Pan met her, told her just this, and added more of the 
 same sort. She ran away, without stopping to hear his 
 compliments, and he pursued till she came to the bank of 
 the river, where he overtook her, and she had only time to 
 call for help on her friends the water nymphs. They 
 heard and consented. Pan threw his arms around what 
 he supposed to be the form of the nymph, and found he 
 embraced only a tuft of reeds! As he breathed a sigh, 
 the air sounded through the reeds, and produced a plain¬ 
 tive melody. The god, charmed with the novelty and with 
 the sweetness of the music, said, ‘Thus, then, at least, 
 you shall be mine/ And he took some of the reeds, and 
 placing them together, of unequal lengths, side by side, 
 made an instrument which he called Syrinx, in honor of 
 the nymph.” Before Mercury had finished his story he 
 
CALLISTO 
 
 31 
 
 saw Argus’s eyes all asleep. As his head nodded forward 
 on his breast, Mercury with one stroke cut his neck 
 through, and tumbled his head down the rocks. O hap¬ 
 less Argus! the light of your hundred eyes is quenched 
 at once! Juno took them and put them as ornaments 
 on the tail of her peacock, where they remain to this day. 
 
 But the vengeance of Juno was not yet satiated. She 
 sent a gadfly to torment Io, who fled over the whole 
 world from its pursuit. She swam through the Ionian 
 sea, which derived its name from her, then roamed over 
 the plains of Illyria, ascended Mount Haemus, and crossed 
 the Thracian strait, thence named the Bosphorus (cow- 
 ford), rambled on through Scythia, and the country of 
 the Cimmerians, and arrived at last on the banks of the 
 Nile. At length Jupiter interceded for her, and upon 
 his promising not to pay her any more attentions Juno 
 consented to restore her to her form. It was curious to 
 see her gradually recover her former self. The coarse 
 hairs fell from her body, her horns shrank up, her eyes 
 grew narrower, her mouth shorter; hands and fingers 
 came instead of hoofs to her forefeet; in fine there was 
 nothing left of the heifer, except her beauty. At first she 
 was afraid to speak, for fear she should low, but grad¬ 
 ually she recovered her confidence and was restored to 
 her father and sisters. 
 
 In a poem dedicated to Leigh Hunt, by Keats, the fol¬ 
 lowing allusion to the story of Pan and Syrinx occurs: 
 
 “So did he feel who pulled the bough aside, 
 
 That we might look into a forest wide, 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 Telling us how fair trembling Syrinx fled 
 Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. 
 
 Poor nymph—poor Pan—how he did weep to find 
 Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind 
 Along the reedy stream; a half-heard strain. 
 
 Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain/' 
 
 CALLISTO 
 
 Callisto was another maiden who excited the jealousy 
 of Juno, and the goddess changed her into a bear. “I 
 
32 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 will take away,” said she, “that beauty with which you 
 have captivated my husband.” Down fell Callisto on her 
 hands and knees; she tried to stretch out her arms in 
 supplication—they were already beginning to be covered 
 with black hair. Her hands grew rounded, became armed 
 with crooked claws, and served for feet; her mouth, 
 which Jove used to praise for its beauty, became a horrid 
 pair of jaws; her voice, which if unchanged would have 
 moved the heart to pity, became a growl, more fit to 
 inspire terror. Yet her former disposition remained, 
 and with continual groaning, she bemoaned her fate, and 
 stood upright as well as she could, lifting up her paws 
 to beg for mercy, and felt that Jove was unkind, though 
 she could not tell him so. Ah, how often, afraid to stay 
 in the woods all night alone, she wandered about the 
 neighborhood of her former haunts; how often, fright¬ 
 ened by the dogs, did she, so lately a huntress, fly in 
 terror from the hunters! Often she fled from the wild 
 beasts, forgetting that she was now a wild beast herself; 
 and, bear as she was, was afraid of the bears. 
 
 One day a youth espied her as he was hunting. She 
 saw him and recognized him as her own son, now grown 
 a young man. She stopped and felt inclined to embrace 
 him. As she was about to approach, he, alarmed, raised 
 his hunting spear, and was on the point of transfixing 
 her, when Jupiter, beholding, arrested the crime, and 
 snatching away both of them, placed them in the heavens 
 as the Great and Little Bear. 
 
 Juno was in a rage to see her rival so set in honor, and 
 hastened to ancient Tethys and Oceanus, the powers of 
 ocean, and in answer to their inquiries thus told the cause 
 of her coming: “Do you ask why I, the queen of the 
 gods, have left the heavenly plains and sought your 
 depths? Learn that I am supplanted in heaven—my 
 place is given to another. You will hardly believe me; 
 but look when night darkens the world, and you shall see 
 the two of whom I have so much reason to complain 
 exalted to the heavens, in that part where the circle is the 
 smallest, in the neighborhood of the pole. Why should 
 any one hereafter tremble at the thought of offending 
 Juno, when such rewards are the consequence of my dis- 
 
HERMES. 
 
 Museum at Olympus. Discovered May 8, tS77 
 
CALLISTO 
 
 33 
 
 pleasure ? See what I have been able to effect! I forbade 
 her to wear the human form—she is placed among the 
 stars! So do my punishments result—such is the extent 
 of my power! Better that she should have resumed her 
 former shape, as I permitted Io to do. Perhaps he means 
 to marry her, and put me away! But you, my foster- 
 parents, if you feel for me, and see with displeasure this 
 unworthy treatment of me, show it, I beseech you, by 
 forbidding this guilty couple from coming into your 
 waters.” The powers of the ocean assented, and conse¬ 
 quently the two constellations of the Great and Little 
 Bear move round and round in heaven, but never sink, 
 as the other stars do, beneath the ocean. 
 
 Milton alludes to the fact that the constellation of the 
 Bear never sets, when he says: 
 
 “Let my lamp at midnight hour 
 Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
 
 Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,” etc. 
 
 And Prometheus, in J. R. Lowell’s poem, says: 
 
 “One after one the stars have risen and set, 
 
 Sparkling upon the hoar frost of my chain; 
 
 The Bear that prowled all night about the fold 
 Of the North-star, hath shrunk into his den, 
 
 Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn.” 
 
 The last star in the tail of the Little Bear is the Pole- 
 star, called also the Cynosure. Milton says: 
 
 “Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures 
 While the landscape round it measures. 
 
 • ••»••• 
 
 Towers and battlements it sees 
 Bosomed high in tufted trees, 
 
 Where perhaps some beauty lies 
 The Cynosure of neighboring eyes.” 
 
 The reference here is both to the Pole-star as the guide 
 of mariners, and to the magnetic attraction of the North. 
 He calls it also the “Star of Arcady,” because Callisto’s 
 
34 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 boy was named Areas, and they lived in Arcadia. In 
 “Comus,” the brother, benighted in the woods, says: 
 
 . . Some gentle taper! 
 
 Though a rush candle, from the wicker hole 
 
 Of some clay habitation, visit us 
 
 With thy long levelled rule of streaming light, 
 
 And thou shalt be our star of Arcady, 
 
 Or Tyrian Cynosure.” 
 
 DIANA AND ACTION 
 
 Thus in two instances we have seen Juno’s severity 
 to her rivals; now let us learn how a virgin goddess pun¬ 
 ished an invader of her privacy. 
 
 It was midday, and the sun stood equally distant from 
 either goal, when young Actseon, son of King Cadmus, 
 thus addressed the youths who with him were hunting 
 the stag in the mountains: 
 
 “Friends, our nets and our weapons are wet with the 
 blood of our victims; we have had sport enough for one 
 day, and to-morrow we can renew our labors. Now, 
 while Phoebus parches the earth, let us put by our imple¬ 
 ments and indulge ourselves with rest.” 
 
 There was a valley thick enclosed with cypresses and 
 pines, sacred to the huntress queen, Diana. In the ex¬ 
 tremity of the valley was a cave, not adorned with art, 
 but nature had counterfeited art in its construction, for 
 she had turned the arch of its roof with stones as deli¬ 
 cately fitted as if by the hand of man. A fountain burst 
 out from one side, whose open basin was bounded by a 
 grassy rim. Here the goddess of the woods used to come 
 when weary with hunting and lave her virgin limbs in 
 the sparkling water. 
 
 One day, having repaired thither with her nymphs, she 
 handed her javelin, her quiver, and her bow to one, her 
 robe to another, while a third unbound the sandals from 
 her feet. Then Crocale, the most skilful of them, ar¬ 
 ranged her hair, and Nephele, Hyale, and the rest drew 
 water in capacious urns. While the goddess was thus 
 employed in the labors of the toilet, behold Actseon, hav¬ 
 ing quitted his companions, and rambling without any 
 
DIANA AND ACTION 
 
 35 
 
 especial object, came to the place, led thither by his 
 destiny. As he presented himself at the entrance of the 
 cave, the nymphs, seeing a man, screamed and rushed 
 towards the goddess to hide her with their bodies. But 
 she was taller than the rest and overtopped them all by 
 a head. Such a color as tinges the clouds at sunset or 
 at dawn came over the countenance of Diana thus taken 
 by surprise. Surrounded as she was by her nymphs, she 
 yet turned half away, and sought with a sudden impulse 
 for her arrows. As they were not at hand, she dashed 
 the water into the face of the intruder, adding these 
 words: “Now go and tell, if you can, that you have 
 seen Diana unapparelled.” Immediately a pair of branch¬ 
 ing stag’s horns grew out of his head, his neck gained in 
 length, his ears grew sharp-pointed, his hands became 
 feet, his arms long legs, his body was covered with a 
 hairy spotted hide. Fear took the place of his former 
 boldness, and the hero fled. He could not but admire his 
 own speed; but when he saw his horns in the water, “Ah, 
 wretched me !” he would have said, but no sound followed 
 the effort. He groaned, and tears flowed down the face 
 which had taken the place of his own. Yet his conscious¬ 
 ness remained. What shall he do ?—go home to seek the 
 palace, or lie hid in the woods ? The latter he was afraid, 
 the former he was ashamed, to do. While he hesitated 
 the dogs saw him. First Melampus, a Spartan dog, gave 
 the signal with his bark, then Pamphagus, Dorceus, Le- 
 laps, Theron, Nape, Tigris, and all the rest, rushed after 
 him swifter than the wind. Over rocks and cliffs, through 
 mountain gorges that seemed impracticable, he fled and 
 they followed. Where he had often chased the stag and 
 cheered on his pack, his pack now chased him, cheered 
 on by his huntsmen. He longed to cry out, “I am Ac- 
 taeon; recognize your master!” but the words came not 
 at his will. The air resounded with the bark of the dogs. 
 Presently one fastened on his back, another seized his 
 shoulder. While they held their master, the rest of the 
 pack came up and buried their teeth in his flesh. He 
 groaned,—not in a human voice, yet certainly not in a 
 stag’s,—and falling on his knees, raised his eyes, and 
 would have raised his arms in supplication, if he had had 
 
36 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 them. His friends and fellow-huntsmen cheered on the 
 dogs, and looked everywhere for Actseon, calling on him 
 to join the sport. At the sound of his name he turned 
 his head, and heard them regret that he should be away. 
 He earnestly wished he was. He would have been well 
 pleased to see the exploits of his dogs, but to feel them 
 was too much. They were all around him, rending and 
 tearing; and it was not till they had torn his life out that 
 the anger of Diana was satisfied. 
 
 In Shelley’s poem “Adonais” is the following allusion 
 to the story of Actaeon: 
 
 "’Midst others of less note came one frail form, 
 
 A phantom among men: companionless 
 As the last cloud of an expiring storm, 
 
 Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, 
 
 Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, 
 
 Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
 
 With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness; 
 
 And his own Thoughts, along that rugged way, 
 
 Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.” 
 
 Stanza 31. 
 
 The allusion is probably to Shelley himsejf. 
 
 LATONA AND THE RUSTICS 
 
 Some thought the goddess in this instance more severe 
 than was just, while others praised her conduct as strictly 
 consistent with her virgin dignity. As usual, the recent 
 event brought older ones to mind, and one of the by¬ 
 standers told this story: “Some countrymen of Lycia 
 once insulted the goddess Latona, but not with impunity. 
 When I was young, my father, who had grown too old 
 for active labors, sent me to Lycia to drive thence some 
 choice oxen, and there I saw the very pond and marsh 
 where the wonder happened. Near by stood an ancient 
 altar, black with the smoke of sacrifice and almost buried 
 among the reeds. I inquired whose altar it might be, 
 whether of Faunus or the Naiads, or some god of the 
 neighboring mountain, and one of the country people 
 replied, ‘No mountain or river god possesses this altar, 
 
LATONA AND THE RUSTICS 
 
 37 
 
 but she whom royal Juno in her jealousy drove from land 
 to land, denying her any spot of earth whereon to rear 
 her twins. Bearing in her arms the infant deities, Latona 
 reached this land, weary with her burden and parched 
 with thirst. By chance she espied on the bottom of the 
 valley this pond of clear water, where the country people 
 were at work gathering willows and osiers. The goddess 
 approached, and kneeling on the bank would have slaked 
 her thirst in the cool stream, but the rustics forbade her. 
 ‘Why do you refuse me water?’ said she; ‘water is 
 free to all. Nature allows no one to claim as property 
 the sunshine, the air, or the water. I come to take my 
 share of the common blessing. Yet I ask it of you as a 
 favor. I have no intention of washing my limbs in it, 
 weary though they be, but only to quench my thirst. My 
 mouth is so dry that I can hardly speak. A draught of 
 water would be nectar to me; it would revive me, and I 
 would own myself indebted to you for life itself. Let 
 these infants move your pity, who stretch out their little 
 arms as if to plead for me;’ and the children, as it 
 happened, were stretching out their arms. 
 
 “Who would not have been moved with these gentle 
 words of the goddess? But these clowns persisted in 
 their rudeness; they even added jeers and threats of vio¬ 
 lence if she did not leave the place. Nor was this all. 
 They waded into the pond and stirred up the mud with 
 their feet, so as to make the water unfit to drink. Latona 
 was so angry that she ceased to mind her thirst. She 
 no longer supplicated the clowns, but lifting her hands to 
 heaven exclaimed, ‘May they never quit that pool, but 
 pass their lives there!’ And it came to pass accordingly. 
 They now live in the water, sometimes totally submerged, 
 then raising their heads above the surface or swimming 
 upon it. Sometimes they come out upon the bank, but 
 soon leap back again into the water. They still use their 
 base voices in railing, and though they have the water 
 all to themselves, are not ashamed to croak in the midst 
 of it. Their voices are harsh, their throats bloated, their 
 mouths have become stretched by constant railing, their 
 necks have shrunk up and disappeared, and their heads 
 are joined to their bodies. Their backs are green, their 
 
38 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 disproportioned bellies white, and in short they are now 
 frogs, and dwell in the slimy pool.” 
 
 This story explains the allusion in one of Milton’s 
 sonnets, “On the detraction which followed upon his 
 writing certain treatises.” 
 
 “I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs 
 By the known laws of ancient liberty, 
 
 When straight a barbarous noise environs me 
 Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs. 
 
 As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs 
 Railed at Latona’s twin-born progeny, 
 
 Which after held the sun and moon in fee.” 
 
 The persecution which Latona experienced from Juno 
 is alluded to in the story. The tradition was that the 
 future mother of Apollo and Diana, flying from the wrath 
 of Juno, besought all the islands of the Higean to afford 
 her a place of rest, but all feared too much the potent 
 queen of heaven to assist her rival. Delos alone consent¬ 
 ed to become the birthplace of the future deities. Delos 
 was then a floating island; but when Latona arrived there, 
 Jupiter fastened it with adamantine chains to the bottom 
 of the sea, that it might be a secure resting-place for his 
 beloved. Byron alludes to Delos in his “Don Juan”: 
 
 “The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece! 
 
 Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
 
 Where grew the arts of war and peace, 
 
 Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!” 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PHAETON 
 
 Phaeton was the son of Apollo and the nymph Cly- 
 mene. One day a schoolfellow laughed at the idea of 
 his being the son of the god, and Phaeton went in rage 
 and shame and reported it to his mother. “If,” said he, 
 “I am indeed of heavenly birth, give me, mother, some 
 
PHAETON 
 
 39 
 
 proof of it, and establish my claim to the honor.” Cly- 
 mene stretched forth her hands towards the skies, and 
 said, “I call to witness the Sun which looks down upon 
 us, that I have told you the truth. If I speak falsely, 
 let this be the last time I behold his light. But it needs 
 not much labor to go and inquire for yourself; the land 
 whence the Sun rises lies next to ours. Go and demand 
 of him whether he will own you as a son.” Phaeton 
 heard with delight. He travelled to India, which lies 
 directly in the regions of sunrise; and, full of hope and 
 pride, approached the goal whence his parent begins his 
 course. 
 
 The palace of the Sun stood reared aloft on columns, 
 glittering with gold and precious stones, while polished 
 ivory formed the ceilings, and silver the doors. The 
 workmanship surpassed the material ; 1 for upon the 
 walls Vulcan had represented earth, sea, and skies, with 
 their inhabitants. In the sea were the nymphs, some 
 sporting in the waves, some riding on the backs of fishes, 
 while others sat upon the rocks and dried their sea-green 
 hair. Their faces were not all alike, nor yet unlike,— 
 but such as sisters' ought to be . 1 The earth had its towns 
 and forests and rivers and rustic divinities. Over all was 
 carved the likeness of the glorious heaven; and on the 
 silver doors the twelve signs of the zodiac, six on each 
 side. 
 
 Clymene’s son advanced up the steep ascent, and 
 entered the halls of his disputed father. He approached 
 the paternal presence, but stopped at a distance, for the 
 light was more than he could bear. Phoebus, arrayed 
 in a purple vesture, sat on a throne, which glittered as 
 with diamonds. On his right hand and his left stood the 
 Day, the Month, and the Year, and, at regular intervals, 
 the Hours. Spring stood with her head crowned with 
 flowers, and Summer, with garment cast aside, and a 
 garland formed of spears of ripened grain, and Autumn, 
 with his feet stained with grape-juice, and icy Winter, 
 with his hair stiffened with hoar frost. Surrounded by 
 these attendants, the Sun, with the eye that sees every¬ 
 thing, beheld the youth dazzled with the novelty and 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
40 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 splendor of the scene, and inquired the purpose of his 
 errand. The youth replied, “O light of the boundless 
 world, Phoebus, my father,—if you permit me to use that 
 name,—give me some proof, I beseech you, by which I 
 may be known as yours.” He ceased; and his father, 
 laying aside the beams that shone all around his head, 
 bade him approach, and embracing him, said, “My son, 
 you deserve not to be disowned, and I confirm what your 
 mother has told you. To put an end to your doubts, ask 
 what you will, the gift shall be yours. I call to witness 
 that dreadful lake, which I never saw, but which we gods 
 swear by in our most solemn engagements.” Phaeton 
 immediately asked to be permitted for one day to drive 
 the chariot of the sun. The father repented of his 
 promise; thrice and four times he shook his radiant head 
 in warning. “I have spoken rashly,” said he; “this only 
 request I would fain deny. I beg you to withdraw it. 
 It is not a safe boon, nor one, my Phaeton, suited to your 
 youth and strength. Your lot is mortal, and you ask what 
 is beyond a mortal’s power. In your ignorance you aspire 
 to do that which not even the gods themselves may do. 
 None but myself may drive the flaming car of day. Not 
 even Jupiter, whose terrible right arm hurls the thunder¬ 
 bolts. The first part of the way is steep, and such as 
 the horses when fresh in the morning can hardly climb; 
 the middle is high up in the heavens, whence I myself 
 can scarcely, without alarm, look down and behold the 
 earth and sea stretched beneath me. The last part of the 
 road descends rapidly, and requires most careful driving. 
 Tethys, who is waiting to receive me, often trembles for 
 me lest I should fall headlong. Add to all this, the heaven 
 is all the time turning round and carrying the stars with 
 it. I have to be perpetually on my guard lest that move¬ 
 ment, which sweeps everything else along, should hurry 
 me also away. Suppose I should lend you the chariot, 
 what would you do ? Could you keep your course while 
 the sphere was revolving under you ? Perhaps you think 
 that there are forests and cities, the abodes of gods, and 
 palaces and temples on the way. On the contrary, the 
 road is through the midst of frightful monsters. You 
 pass by the horns of the Bull, in front of the Archer, and 
 
PHAETON 
 
 41 
 
 near the Lion’s jaws, and where the Scorpion stretches 
 its arms in one direction and the Crab in another. Nor 
 will you find it easy to guide those horses, with their 
 breasts full of fire that they breathe forth from their 
 mouths and nostrils. I can scarcely govern them myself, 
 when they are unruly and resist the reins. Beware, my 
 son, lest I be the donor of a fatal gift; recall your request 
 while yet you may. Do you ask me for a proof that you 
 are sprung from my blood? I give you a proof in my 
 fears for you. Look at my face—I would that you could 
 look into my breast, you would there see all a father’s 
 anxiety. Finally,” he continued, “look round the world 
 and choose whatever you will of what earth or sea con¬ 
 tains most precious—ask it and fear no refusal. This 
 only I pray you not to urge. It is not honor, but destruc¬ 
 tion you seek. Why do you hang round my neck and still 
 entreat me? You shall have it if you persist,—the oath 
 is sworn and must be kept,—but I beg you to choose more 
 wisely.” 
 
 He ended; but the youth rejected all admonition and 
 held to his demand. So, having resisted as long as he 
 could, Phoebus at last led the way to where stood the lofty 
 chariot. 
 
 It was of gold, the gift of Vulcan; the axle was of gold, 
 the pole and wheels of gold, the spokes of silver. Along 
 the seat were rows of chrysolites and diamonds which 
 reflected all around the brightness of the sun. While 
 the daring youth gazed in admiration, the early Dawn 
 threw open the purple doors of the east, and showed the 
 pathway strewn with roses. The stars withdrew, mar¬ 
 shalled by the Day-star, which last of all retired also. 
 The father, when he saw the earth beginning to glow, and 
 the Moon preparing to retire, ordered the Hours to har¬ 
 ness up the horses. They obeyed, and led forth from the 
 lofty stalls the steeds full fed with ambrosia, and attached 
 the reins. Then the father bathed the face of his son 
 with a powerful unguent, and made him capable of en¬ 
 during the brightness of the flame. He set the rays on 
 his head, and, with a foreboding sigh, said, “If, my son, 
 you will in this at least heed my advice, spare the whip 
 and hold tight the reins. They go fast enough of their 
 
42 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 own accord; the labor is to hold them in. You are not 
 to take the straight road directly between the five circles, 
 but turn off to the left. Keep within the limit of the 
 middle zone, and avoid the northern and the southern 
 alike. You will see the marks of the wheels, and they 
 will serve to guide you. And, that the skies and the earth 
 may each receive their due share of heat, go not too high, 
 or you will burn the heavenly dwellings, nor too low, or 
 you will set the earth on fire; the middle course is safest 
 and best . 1 And now I leave you to your chance, which I 
 hope will plan better for you than you have done for 
 yourself. Night is passing out of the western gates and 
 we can delay no longer. Take the reins; but if at last 
 your heart fails you, and you will benefit by my advice, 
 Istay where you are in safety, and suffer me to light and 
 warm the earth.” The agile youth sprang into the chariot, 
 stood erect, and grasped the reins with delight, pouring 
 out thanks to his reluctant parent. 
 
 Meanwhile the horses fill the air with their snortings 
 and fiery breath, and stamp the ground impatient. Now 
 the bars are let down, and the boundless plain of the 
 universe lies open before them. They dart forward and 
 cleave the opposing clouds, and outrun the morning 
 breezes which started from the same eastern goal. The 
 steeds soon perceived that the load they drew was lighter 
 than usual; and as a ship without ballast is tossed hither 
 and thither on the sea, so the chariot, without its accus¬ 
 tomed weight, was dashed about as if empty. They rush 
 headlong and leave the travelled road. He is alarmed, 
 and knows not how to guide them; nor, if he knew, has 
 he the power. Then, for the first time, the Great and 
 Little Bear were scorched with heat, and would fain, 
 if it were possible, have plunged into the water; and the 
 Serpent which lies coiled up round the north pole, torpid 
 and harmless, grew warm, and with warmth felt its rage 
 revive. Bootes, they say, fled away, though encumbered 
 with his plough, and all unused to rapid motion. 
 
 When hapless Phaeton looked down upon the earth, 
 now spreading in vast extent beneath him, he grew pale 
 and his knees shook with terror. In spite of the glare 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
PHAETON 
 
 43 
 
 all around him, the sight of his eyes grew dim. He 
 wished he had never touched his father’s horses, never 
 learned his parentage, never prevailed in his request. He 
 is borne along like a vessel that flies before a tempest, 
 when the pilot can do no more and betakes himself to his 
 prayers. What shall he do ? Much of the heavenly road 
 is left behind, but more remains before. He turns his 
 eyes from one direction to the other; now to the goal 
 whence he began his course, now to the realms of sunset 
 which he is not destined to reach. He loses his self-com¬ 
 mand, and knows not what to do,—whether to draw tight 
 the reins or throw them loose; he forgets the names of 
 the horses. He sees with terror the monstrous forms 
 scattered over the surface of heaven. Here the Scor¬ 
 pion extended his two great arms, with his tail and 
 crooked claws stretching over two signs of the zodiac. 
 When the boy beheld him, reeking with poison and men¬ 
 acing with his fangs, his courage failed, and the reins 
 fell from his hands. The horses, when they felt them 
 loose on their backs, dashed headlong, and unrestrained 
 went off into unknown regions of the sky, in among the 
 stars, hurling the chariot over pathless places, now up in 
 high heaven, now down almost to the earth. The moon 
 saw with astonishment her brother’s chariot running be¬ 
 neath her own. The clouds begin to smoke, and the 
 mountain tops take fire; the fields are parched with heat, 
 the plants wither, the trees with their leafy branches burn, 
 the harvest is ablaze! But these are small things. Great 
 cities perished, with their walls and towers; whole nations 
 with their people were consumed to ashes! The forest- 
 clad mountains burned, Athos and Taurus and Tmolus 
 and CEte; Ida, once celebrated for fountains, but now all 
 dry; the Muses’ mountain Helicon, and Hsemus; iEtna, 
 with fires within and without, and Parnassus, with his 
 two peaks, and Rhodope, forced at last to part with his 
 snowy crown. Her cold climate was no protection to 
 Scythia, Caucasus burned, and Ossa and Pindus, and, 
 greater than both, Olympus; the Alps high in air, and the 
 Apennines crowned with clouds. 
 
 Then Phaeton beheld the world on fire, and felt the 
 heat intolerable. The air he breathed was like the air 
 
44 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 of a furnace and full of burning ashes, and the smoke 
 was of a pitchy darkness. He dashed forward he knew 
 not whither. Then, it is believed, the people of Ethiopia 
 became black by the blood being forced so suddenly to 
 the surface, and the Libyan desert was dried up to the 
 condition in which it remains to this day. The Nymphs 
 of the fountains, with dishevelled hair, mourned their 
 waters, nor were the rivers safe beneath their banks: 
 Tanais smoked, and Caicus, Xanthus, and Meander; 
 Babylonian Euphrates and Ganges, Tagus with golden 
 sands, and Cayster where the swans resort. Nile fled 
 away and hid his head in the desert, and there it still 
 remains concealed. Where he used to discharge his 
 waters through seven mouths into the sea, there seven 
 dry channels alone remained. The earth cracked open, 
 and through the chinks light broke into Tartarus, and 
 frightened the king of shadows and his queen. The sea 
 shrank up. Where before was water, it became a dry 
 plain; and the mountains that lie beneath the waves lifted 
 up their heads and became islands. The fishes sought 
 the lowest depths, and the dolphins no longer ventured as 
 usual to sport on the surface. Even Nereus, and his wife 
 Doris, with the Nereids, their daughters, sought the deep¬ 
 est caves for refuge. Thrice Neptune essayed to raise 
 his head above the surface, and thrice was driven back 
 by the heat. Earth, surrounded as she was by waters, 
 yet with head and shoulders bare, screening her face with 
 her hand, looked up to heaven, and with a husky voice 
 called on Jupiter: 
 
 “O ruler of the gods, if I have deserved this treatment, 
 and it is your will that I perish with fire, why withhold 
 your thunderbolts? Let me at least fall by your hand. 
 Is this the reward of my fertility, of my obedient service? 
 Is it for this that I have supplied herbage for cattle, and 
 fruits for men, and frankincense for your altars? But 
 if I am unworthy of regard, what has my brother Ocean 
 done to deserve such a fate? If neither of us can excite 
 your pity, think, I pray you, of your own heaven, and 
 behold how both the poles are smoking which sustain 
 your palace, which must fall if they be destroyed. Atlas 
 faints, and scarce holds up his burden. If sea, earth, 
 
PHAETON 45 
 
 and heaven perish, we fall into ancient Chaos. Save what 
 yet remains to us from the devouring flame. O, take 
 thought for our deliverance in this awful moment!” 
 
 Thus spoke Earth, and overcome with heat and thirst, 
 could say no more. Then Jupiter omnipotent, calling to 
 witness all the gods, including him who had lent the 
 chariot, and showing them that all was lost unless speedy 
 remedy were applied, mounted the lofty tower from 
 whence he diffuses clouds over the earth, and hurls the 
 forked lightnings. But at that time not a cloud was to 
 be found to interpose for a screen to earth, nor was a 
 shower remaining unexhausted. He thundered, and 
 brandishing a lightning bolt in his right hand launched 
 it against the charioteer, and struck him at the same mo¬ 
 ment from his seat and from existence! Phaeton, with 
 his hair on fire, fell headlong, like a shooting star which 
 marks the heavens with its brightness as it falls, and 
 Eridanus, the great river, received him and cooled his 
 burning frame. The Italian Naiads reared a tomb for 
 him, and inscribed these words upon the stone: 
 
 “Driver of Phoebus’ chariot, Phaeton, 
 
 Struck by Jove’s thunder, rests beneath this stone. 
 
 He could not rule his father’s car of fire, 
 
 Yet was it much so nobly to aspire.” 1 
 
 His sisters, the Heliades, as they lamented his fate, 
 were turned into poplar trees, on the banks of the river, 
 and their tears, which continued to flow, became amber 
 as they dropped into the stream. 
 
 Milman, in his poem of “Samor,” makes the following 
 allusion to Phaeton’s story: 
 
 “As when the palsied universe aghast 
 Lay . . . mute and still, 
 
 When drove, so poets sing, the Sun-bom youth 
 Devious through Heaven’s affrighted signs his sire’s 
 Ill-granted chariot. Him the Thunderer hurled 
 From th’ empyrean headlong to the gulf 
 Of the half-parched Eridanus, where weep 
 Even now the sister trees their amber tears 
 O’er Phaeton untimely dead.” 
 
 In the beautiful lines of Walter Savage Landor, de- 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
46 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 scriptive of the Sea-shell, there is an allusion to the Sun’s 
 palace and chariot. The water-nymph says: 
 
 "... I have sinuous shells of pearly hue 
 Within, and things that lustre have imbibed 
 In the sun’s palace porch, where when unyoked 
 His chariot wheel stands midway on the wave. 
 
 Shake one and it awakens; then apply 
 Its polished lip to your attentive ear, 
 
 And it remembers its august abodes, 
 
 And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.” 
 
 — Gebir, Book I. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MIDAS—BAUCIS AND PHILEMON 
 
 Bacchus, on a certain occasion, found his old school¬ 
 master and foster-father, Silenus, missing. The old man 
 had been drinking, and in that state wandered away, and 
 was found by some peasants, who carried him to their 
 king, Midas. Midas recognized him, and treated him 
 hospitably, entertaining him for ten days and nights with 
 an unceasing round of jollity. On the eleventh day he 
 brought Silenus back, and restored him in safety to his 
 pupil. Whereupon Bacchus offered Midas his choice 
 of a reward, whatever he might wish. He asked that 
 whatever he might touch should be changed into gold. 
 Bacchus consented, though sorry that he had not made a 
 better choice. Midas went his way, rejoicing in his new- 
 acquired power, which he hastened to put to the test. 
 He could scarce believe his eyes when he found a twig 
 of an oak, which he plucked from the branch, become 
 gold in his hand. He took up a stone; it changed to gold. 
 He touched a sod; it did the same. He took an apple 
 from the tree; you would have thought he had robbed 
 the garden of the Hesperides. His joy knew no bounds, 
 and as soon as he got home, he ordered the servants to 
 set a splendid repast on the table. Then he found to his 
 dismay that whether he touched bread, it hardened in his 
 
MIDAS 
 
 47 
 
 hand; or put a morsel to his lips, it defied his teeth. He 
 took a glass of wine, but it flowed down his throat like 
 melted gold. 
 
 In consternation at the unprecedented affliction, he 
 strove to divest himself of his power; he hated the gift 
 he had lately coveted. But all in vain; starvation seemed 
 to await him. He raised his arms, all shining with gold, 
 in prayer to Bacchus, begging to be delivered from his 
 glittering destruction. Bacchus, merciful deity, heard and 
 consented. ‘‘Go,” said he, '‘to the River Pactolus, trace 
 the stream to its fountain-head, there plunge your head 
 and body in, and wash away your fault and its pun¬ 
 ishment/’ He did so, and scarce had he touched the 
 waters before the gold-creating power passed into them, 
 and the river-sands became changed into gold, as they 
 remain to this day. 
 
 Thenceforth Midas, hating wealth and splendor, dwelt 
 in the country, and became a worshipper of Pan, the 
 god of the fields. On a certain occasion Pan had the 
 temerity to compare his music with that of Apollo, and 
 to challenge the god of the lyre to a trial of skill. The 
 challenge was accepted, and Tmolus, the mountain god, 
 was chosen umpire. The senior took his seat, and cleared 
 away the trees from his ears to listen. At a given signal 
 Pan blew on his pipes, and with his rustic melody gave 
 great satisfaction to himself and his faithful follower 
 Midas, who happened to be present. Then Tmolus turned 
 his head toward the Sun-god, and all his trees turned with 
 him. Apollo rose, his brow wreathed with Parnassian 
 laurel, while his robe of Tyrian purple swept the ground. 
 In his left hand he held the lyre, and with his right hand 
 struck the strings. Ravished with the harmony, Tmolus 
 at once awarded the victory to the god of the lyre, and 
 all but Midas acquiesced in the judgment. He dissented, 
 and questioned the justice of the award. Apollo would 
 not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any longer to 
 wear the human form, but caused them to increase in 
 length, grow hairy, within and without, and movable on 
 their roots; in short, to be on the perfect pattern of those 
 of an ass. 
 
 Mortified enough was King Midas at this mishap; but 
 
48 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 he consoled himself with the thought that it was possible 
 to hide his misfortune, which he attempted to do by means 
 of an ample turban or head-dress. But his hair-dresser 
 of course knew the secret. He was charged not to men¬ 
 tion it, and threatened with dire punishment if he pre¬ 
 sumed to disobey. But he found it too much for his 
 discretion to keep such a secret; so he went out into the 
 meadow, dug a hole in the ground, and stooping down, 
 whispered the story, and covered it up. Before long a 
 thick bed of reeds sprang up in the meadow, and as soon 
 as it had gained its growth, began whispering the story, 
 and has continued to do so, from that day to this, every 
 time a breeze passes over the place. 
 
 The story of King Midas has been told by others with 
 some variations. Dryden, in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale,” 
 makes Midas’s queen the betrayer of the secret: 
 
 “This Midas knew, and durst communicate 
 To none but to his wife his ears of state/' 
 
 Midas was king of Phrygia. He was the son of Gor¬ 
 dius, a poor countryman, who was taken by the people 
 and made king, in obedience to the command of the 
 oracle, which had said that their future king should come 
 in a wagon. While the people were deliberating, Gor¬ 
 dius with his wife and son came driving his wagon into 
 the public square. 
 
 Gordius, being rfiade king, dedicated his wagon to the 
 deity of the oracle, and tied it up in its place with a fast 
 knot. This was the celebrated Gordian knot, which, in 
 after times it was said, whoever should untie should be¬ 
 come lord of all Asia. Many tried to untie it, but none 
 succeeded, till Alexander the Great, in his career of con¬ 
 quest, came to Phrygia. He tried his skill with as ill suc¬ 
 cess as others, till growing impatient he drew his sword 
 and cut the knot. When he afterwards succeeded in 
 subjecting all Asia to his sway, people began to think that 
 he had complied with the terms of the oracle according 
 to its true meaning. 
 
BAUCIS AND PHILEMON 
 
 49 
 
 BAUCIS AND PHILEMON 
 
 On a certain hill in Phrygia stands a linden tree and 
 an oak, enclosed by a low wall. Not far from the spot 
 is a marsh, formerly good habitable land, but now in¬ 
 dented with pools, the resort of fen-birds and cormorants. 
 Once on a time Jupiter, in human shape, visited this 
 country, and with him his son Mercury (he of the ca- 
 duceus), without his wings. They presented themselves, 
 as weary travellers, at many a door, seeking rest and 
 shelter, but found all closed, for it was late, and the in¬ 
 hospitable inhabitants would not rouse themselves to open 
 for their reception. At last a humble mansion received 
 them, a small thatched cottage, where Baucis, a pious old 
 dame, and her husband Philemon, united when young, 
 had grown old together. Not ashamed of their poverty, 
 they made it endurable by moderate desires and kind dis¬ 
 positions. One need not look there for master or for 
 servant; they two were the whole household, master and 
 servant alike. When the two heavenly guests crossed 
 the humble threshold, and bowed their heads to pass 
 under the low door, the old man placed a seat, on which 
 Baucis, bustling and attentive, spread a cloth, and begged 
 them to sit down. Then she raked out the coals from the 
 ashes, and kindled up a fire, fed it with leaves and dry 
 bark, and with her scanty breath blew it into a flame. 
 She brought out of a corner split sticks and dry branches, 
 broke them up, and placed them under the small kettle. 
 Her husband collected some pot-herbs in the garden, and 
 she shred them from the stalks, and prepared them for 
 the pot. He reached down with a forked stick a flitch of 
 bacon hanging in the chimney, cut a small piece, and put 
 it in the pot to boil with the herbs, setting away the rest 
 for another time. A beechen bowl was filled with warm 
 water, that their guests might wash. While all was do¬ 
 ing, they beguiled the time with conversation. 
 
 On the bench designed for the guests was laid a cush¬ 
 ion stuffed with sea-weed; and a cloth, only produced 
 on great occasions, but ancient and coarse enough, was 
 spread over that. The old lady, with her apron on, with 
 trembling hand set the table. One leg was shorter than 
 
DO 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 the rest, but a piece of slate put under restored the level. 
 When fixed, she rubbed the table down with some sweet¬ 
 smelling herbs. Upon it she set some of chaste Minerva’s 
 olives, some cornel berries preserved in vinegar, and 
 added radishes and cheese, with eggs lightly cooked in 
 the ashes. All were served in earthen dishes, and an 
 earthenware pitcher, with wooden cups, stood beside 
 them. When all was ready, the stew, smoking hot, was 
 set on the table. Some wine, not of the oldest, was 
 added; and for dessert, apples and wild honey; and over 
 and above all, friendly faces, and simple but hearty 
 welcome. 
 
 Now while the repast proceeded, the old folks were 
 astonished to see that the wine, as fast as it was poured 
 out, renewed itself in the pitcher, of its own accord. 
 Struck with terror, Baucis and Philemon recognized their 
 heavenly guests, fell on their knees, and with clasped 
 hands implored forgiveness for their poor entertain¬ 
 ment. There was an old goose, which they kept as the 
 guardian of their humble cottage; and they bethought 
 them to make this a sacrifice in honor of their guests. 
 But the goose, too nimble, with the aid of feet and wings, 
 for the old folks, eluded their pursuit, and at last took 
 shelter between the gods themselves. They forbade it to 
 be slain; and spoke in these words: “We are gods. This 
 inhospitable village shall pay the penalty of its impiety; 
 you alone shall go free from the chastisement. Quit 
 your house, and come with us to the top of yonder hill.” 
 They hastened to obey, and, staff in hand, labored up the 
 steep ascent. They had reached to within an arrow’s 
 flight of the top, when turning their eyes below, they 
 beheld all the country sunk in a lake, only their own 
 house left standing. While they gazed with wonder at 
 the sight, and lamented the fate of their neighbors, that 
 old house of theirs was changed into a temple . Col¬ 
 umns took the place of the corner posts, the thatch grew 
 yellow and appeared a gilded roof, the floors became 
 marble, the doors were enriched with carving and orna¬ 
 ments of gold. Then spoke Jupiter in benignant accents: 
 “Excellent old man, and woman worthy of such a hus¬ 
 band, speak, tell us your wishes; what favor have you 
 
BAUCIS AND PHILEMON 
 
 51 
 
 to ask of us?” Philemon took counsel with Baucis a 
 few moments; then declared to the gods their united 
 wish. “We ask to be priests and guardians of this your 
 temple; and since here we have passed our lives in love 
 and concord, we wish that one and the same hour may 
 take us both from life, that I may not live to see her 
 grave, nor be laid in my own by her.” Their prayer was 
 granted. They were the keepers of the temple as long 
 as they lived. When grown very old, as they stood one 
 day before the steps of the sacred edifice, and were telling 
 the story of the place, Baucis saw Philemon begin to 
 put forth leaves, and old Philemon saw Baucis changing 
 in like manner. And now a leafy crown had grown 
 over their heads, while exchanging parting words, as 
 long as they could speak. “Farewell, dear spouse,” they 
 said, together, and at the same moment the bark closed 
 over their mouths. The Tyanean shepherd still shows 
 the two trees, standing side by side, made out of the 
 two good old people. 
 
 The story of Baucis and Philemon has been imitated 
 by Swift, in a* burlesque style, the actors in the change 
 being two wandering saints, and the house being changed 
 into a church, of which Philemon is made the parson. 
 The following may serve as a specimen: 
 
 “They scarce had spoke, when, fair and soft, 
 
 The roof began to mount aloft; 
 
 Aloft rose every beam and rafter; 
 
 The heavy wall climbed slowly after. 
 
 The chimney widened and grew higher* 
 
 Became a steeple with a spire. 
 
 The kettle to the top was hoist. 
 
 And there stood fastened to a joist, 
 
 But with the upside down, to show 
 Its inclination for below; 
 
 In vain, for a superior force, 
 
 Applied at bottom, stops its course; 
 
 Doomed ever in suspense to dwell, 
 
 ’Tis now no kettle, but a bell. 
 
 A wooden jack, which had almost 
 Lost by disuse the art to roast, 
 
 A sudden alteration feels. 
 
 Increased by new intestine wheels; 
 
 And, what exalts the wonder more, 
 
52 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 The number made the motion slower; 
 
 The flier, though’t had leaden feet, 
 
 Turned round so quick you scarce could see’t; 
 But slackened by some secret power, 
 
 Now hardly moves an inch, an hour. 
 
 The jack and chimney, near allied, 
 
 Had never left each other’s side: 
 
 The chimney to a steeple grown, 
 
 The jack would not be left alone; 
 
 But up against the steeple reared, 
 
 Became a clock, and still adhered; 
 
 And still its love to household cares 
 By a shrill voice at noon declares, 
 
 Warning the cook-maid not to burn 
 That roast meat which it cannot turn; 
 
 The groaning chair began to crawl, 
 
 Like a huge snail, along the wall; 
 
 There stuck aloft in public view, 
 
 And with small change, a pulpit grew. 
 
 A bedstead of the antique mode, 
 
 Compact of timber many a load, 
 
 Such as our ancestors did use, 
 
 Was metamorphosed into pews, 
 
 Which still their ancient nature keep 
 By lodging folks disposed to sleep.” 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PROSERPINE-GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA 
 
 When Jupiter and his brothers had defeated the 
 Titans and banished them to Tartarus, a new enemy- 
 rose up against the gods. They were the giants Typhon, 
 Briareus, Enceladus, and others. Some of them had a 
 hundred arms, others breathed out fire. They were 
 finally subdued and buried alive under Mount iEtna, 
 where they still sometimes struggle to get loose, and 
 shake the whole island with earthquakes. Their breath 
 comes up through the mountain, and is what men call 
 the eruption of the volcano. 
 
 The fall of these monsters shook the earth, so that 
 Pluto was alarmed, and feared that his kingdom would 
 be laid open to the light of day. Under this apprehen¬ 
 sion, he mounted his chariot, drawn by black horses, 
 
PROSERPINE 
 
 53 
 
 and took a circuit of inspection to satisfy himself of 
 the extent of the damage. While he was thus engaged, 
 Venus, who was sitting on Mount Eryx playing with 
 her boy Cupid, espied him, and said, “My son, take your 
 darts with which you conquer all, even Jove himself, 
 and send one into the breast of yonder dark monarch, 
 who rules the realm of Tartarus. Why should he alone 
 escape? Seize the opportunity to extend your empire 
 and mine. Do you not see that even in heaven some 
 despise our power? Minerva the wise, and Diana the 
 huntress, defy us; and there is that daughter of Ceres, 
 who threatens to follow their example. Now do you, 
 if you have any regard for your own interest or mine, 
 join these two in one.” The boy unbound his quiver, 
 and selected his sharpest and truest arrow; then straining 
 the bow against his knee, he attached the string, and, 
 having made ready, shot the arrow with its barbed point 
 right into the heart of Pluto. 
 
 In the vale of Enna there is a lake embowered in 
 woods, which screen it from the fervid rays of the sun, 
 while the moist ground is covered with flowers, and 
 Spring reigns perpetual. Here Proserpine was playing 
 with her companions, gathering lilies and violets, and 
 filling her basket and her apron with them, when Pluto 
 saw her, loved her, and carried her off. She screamed 
 for help to her mother and companions; and when in 
 her fright she dropped the corners of her apron and 
 let the flowers fall, childlike she felt the loss of them 
 as an addition to her grief. The ravisher urged on his 
 steeds, calling them each by name, and throwing loose 
 over their heads and necks his iron-colored reins. When 
 he reached the River Cyane, and it opposed his passage, 
 he struck the river-bank with his trident, and the earth 
 opened and gave him a passage to Tartarus. 
 
 Ceres sought her daughter all the world over. Bright¬ 
 haired Aurora, when she came forth in the morning, 
 and Hesperus when he led out the stars in the evening, 
 found her still busy in the search. But it was all un¬ 
 availing. At length, weary and sad, she sat down upon 
 a stone, and continued sitting nine days and nights, in 
 the open air, under the sunlight and moonlight and fall- 
 
54 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 ing showers. It was where now stands the city of 
 Eleusis, then the home of an old man named Celeus. 
 He was out in the field, gathering acorns and black¬ 
 berries, and sticks for his fire. His little girl was driving 
 home their two goats, and as she passed the goddess, 
 who appeared in the guise of an old woman, she said 
 to her, “Mother,”—and the name was sweet to the ears 
 of Ceres,—“why do you sit here alone upon the rocks?” 
 The old man also stopped, though his load was heavy, 
 and begged her to come into his cottage, such as it was. 
 She declined, and he urged her. “Go in peace,” she 
 replied, “and be happy in your daughter; I have lost 
 mine.” As she spoke, tears—or something like tears, 
 for the gods never weep—fell down her cheeks upon 
 her bosom. The compassionate old man and his child 
 wept with her. Then said he, “Come with us, and de¬ 
 spise not our humble roof; so may your daughter be 
 restored to you in safety.” “Lead on,” said she, “I can¬ 
 not resist that appeal!” So she rose from the stone 
 and went with them. As they walked he told her that 
 his only son, a little boy, lay very sick, feverish, and 
 sleepless. She stooped and gathered some poppies. As 
 they entered the cottage, they found all in great distress, 
 for the boy seemed past hope of recovery. Metanira, 
 his mother, received her kindly, and the goddess stooped 
 and kissed the lips of the sick child. Instantly the pale¬ 
 ness left his face, and healthy vigor returned to his body. 
 The whole family were delighted—that is, the father, 
 mother, and little girl, for they were all; they had no 
 servants. They spread the table, and put upon it curds 
 and cream, apples, and honey in the comb. While they 
 ate, Ceres mingled poppy juice in the milk of the boy. 
 When night came and all was still, she arose, and taking 
 the sleeping boy, moulded his limbs with her hands, and 
 uttered over him three times a solemn charm, then went 
 and laid him in the ashes. His mother, who had been 
 watching what her guest was doing, sprang forward with 
 a cry and snatched the child from the fire. Then Ceres 
 assumed her own form, and a divine splendor shone all 
 around. While they were overcome with astonishment, 
 she said, “Mother, you have been cruel in your fondness 
 
PROSERPINE 
 
 55 
 
 to your son. I would have made him immortal, but you 
 have frustrated my attempt. Nevertheless, he shall be 
 great and useful. He'shall teach men the use of the 
 plough, and the rewards which labor can win from the 
 cultivated soil.” So saying, she wrapped a cloud about 
 her, and mounting her chariot rode away. 
 
 Ceres continued her search for her daughter, passing 
 from land to land, and across seas and rivers, till at 
 length she returned to Sicily, whence she at first set out, 
 and stood by the banks of the River Cyane, where Pluto 
 made himself a passage with his prize to his own do¬ 
 minions. The river nymph would have told the goddess 
 all she had witnessed, but dared not, for fear of Pluto; 
 so she only ventured to take up the girdle which Proser¬ 
 pine had dropped in her flight, and waft it to the feet 
 of the mother. Ceres, seeing this, was no longer in 
 doubt of her loss, but she did not yet know the cause, 
 and laid the blame on the innocent land. “Ungrateful 
 soil,” said she, “which I have endowed with fertility 
 and clothed with herbage and nourishing grain, no more 
 shall you enjoy my favors.” Then the cattle died, the 
 plough broke in the furrow, the seed failed to come up; 
 there was too much sun, there was too much rain; the 
 birds stole the seeds—thistles and brambles were the 
 only growth. Seeing this, the fountain Arethusa inter¬ 
 ceded for the land. “Goddess,” said she, “blame not the 
 land; it opened unwillingly to yield a passage to your 
 daughter. I can tell you of her fate, for I have seen 
 her. This is not my native country; I came hither from 
 Elis. I was a woodland nymph, and delighted in the 
 chase. They praised my beauty, but I cared nothing 
 for it, and rather boasted of my hunting exploits. One 
 day I was returning from the wood, heated with exer¬ 
 cise, when I came to a stream silently flowing, so clear 
 that you might count the pebbles on the bottom. The 
 willows shaded it, and the grassy bank sloped down to 
 the water’s edge. I approached, I touched the water 
 with my foot. I stepped in knee-deep, and not content 
 with that, I laid my garments on the willows and went 
 in. While I sported in the water, I heard an indistinct 
 murmur coming up as out of the depths of the stream; 
 
56 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 and made haste to escape to the nearest bank. The 
 voice said, ‘Why do you fly, Arethusa? I am Alpheus, 
 the god of this stream.’ I ran, he pursued; he was not 
 more swift than I, but he was stronger, and gained upon 
 me, as my strength failed. At last, exhausted, I cried 
 for help to Diana. ‘Help me, goddess! help your vo¬ 
 tary !’ The goddess heard, and wrapped me suddenly in 
 a thick cloud. The river god looked now this way and 
 now that, and twice came close to me, but could not 
 find me. ‘Arethusa! Arethusa!’ he cried. Oh, how I 
 trembled,—like a lamb that hears the wolf growling out¬ 
 side the fold. A cold sweat came over me, my hair 
 flowed down in streams; where my foot stood there was 
 a pool. In short, in less time than it takes to tell it I 
 became a fountain. But in this form Alpheus knew me 
 and attempted to mingle his stream with mine. Diana 
 cleft the ground, and I, endeavoring to escape him, 
 plunged into the cavern, and through the bowels of 
 the earth came out here in Sicily. While I passed 
 through the lower parts of the earth, I saw your Proser¬ 
 pine. She was sad, but no longer showing alarm in her 
 countenance. Her look was such as became a queen— 
 the queen of Erebus; the powerful bride of the monarch 
 of the realms of the dead.” 
 
 When Ceres heard this, she stood for a while like one 
 stupefied; then turned her chariot towards heaven, and 
 hastened to present herself before the throne of Jove. 
 She told the story of her bereavement, and implored 
 Jupiter to interfere to procure the restitution of her 
 daughter. Jupiter consented on one condition, namely, 
 that Proserpine should not during her stay in the lower 
 world have taken any food; otherwise, the Fates for¬ 
 bade her release. Accordingly, Mercury was sent, ac¬ 
 companied by Spring, to demand Proserpine of Pluto. 
 The wily monarch consented; but, alas! the maiden had 
 taken a pomegranate which Pluto offered her, and had 
 sucked the sweet pulp from a few of the seeds. This 
 was enough to prevent her complete release; but a com¬ 
 promise was made, by which she was to pass half the 
 time with her mother, and the rest with her husband 
 Pluto. 
 
PROSERPINE 
 
 57 
 
 Ceres allowed herself to be pacified with this arrange¬ 
 ment, and restored the earth to her favor. Now she 
 remembered Celeus and his family, and her promise to 
 his infant son Triptolemus. When the boy grew up, 
 she taught him the use of the plough, and how to sow 
 the seed. She took him in her chariot, drawn by winged 
 dragons, through all the countries of the earth, imparting 
 to mankind valuable grains, and the knowledge of agri¬ 
 culture. After his return, Triptolemus built a magnifi¬ 
 cent temple to Ceres in Eleusis, and established the 
 worship of the goddess, under the name of the Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries, which, in the splendor and solemnity 
 of their observance, surpassed all other religious cele¬ 
 brations among the Greeks. 
 
 There can be little doubt of this story of Ceres and 
 Proserpine being an allegory. Proserpine signifies the 
 seed-corn which when cast into the ground lies there 
 concealed—that is, she is carried off by the god of the 
 underworld. It reappears—that is, Proserpine is re¬ 
 stored to her mother. Spring leads her back to the light 
 of day. 
 
 Milton alludes to the story of Proserpine in “Paradise 
 Lost/’ Book IV.: 
 
 “. . . Not that fair field 
 Of Enna where Proserpine gathering flowers, 
 
 Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 
 Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain 
 To seek her through the world,— 
 
 . . . might with this Paradise 
 Of Eden strive.” 
 
 Hood, in his “Ode to Melancholy,” uses the same 
 allusion very beautifully: 
 
 “Forgive, if somewhile I forget, 
 
 In woe to come the present bliss; 
 
 As frighted Proserpine let fall 
 Her flowers at the sight of Dis.” 
 
 The River Alpheus does in fact disappear under¬ 
 ground, in part of its course, finding its way through 
 
58 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 subterranean channels till it again appears on the sur¬ 
 face. It was said that the Sicilian fountain Arethusa 
 was the same stream, which, after passing under the 
 sea, came up again in Sicily. Hence the story ran that 
 a cup thrown into the Alpheus appeared again in Are¬ 
 thusa. It is this fable of the underground course of 
 Alpheus that Coleridge alludes to in his poem of “Kubla 
 Khan”: 
 
 “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree, 
 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man, 
 
 Down to a sunless sea.” 
 
 In one of Moore’s juvenile poems he thus alludes to 
 the same story, and to the practice of throwing garlands 
 or other light objects on his stream to be carried down¬ 
 ward by it, and afterwards reproduced at its emerging: 
 
 “O my beloved, how divinely sweet 
 Is the pure joy when kindred spirits meet! 
 
 Like him the river god, whose waters flow, 
 
 With love their only light, through caves below, 
 
 Wafting in triumph all the flowery braids 
 And festal rings, with which Olympic maids 
 Have decked his current, as an offering meet 
 To lay at Arethusa’s shining feet. 
 
 Think, when he meets at last his fountain bride, 
 
 What perfect love must thrill the blended tide! 
 
 Each lost in each, till mingling into one, 
 
 Their lot the same for shadow or for sun, 
 
 A type of true love, to the deep they run.” 
 
 The following extract from Moore’s “Rhymes on the 
 Road” gives an account of a celebrated picture by Al- 
 bano, at Milan, called a Dance of Loves: 
 
 “’Tis for the theft of Enna’s flower from earth 
 These urchins celebrate their dance of mirth, 
 
 Round the green tree, like fays upon a heath;— 
 
 Those that are nearest linked in order bright, 
 
 Cheek after cheek, like rosebuds in a wreath; 
 
 And those more distant showing from beneath 
 The others’ wings their little eyes of light. 
 
 While see! among the clouds, their eldest brother, 
 
 But just flown up, tells with a smile of bliss, 
 
 This prank of Pluto to his charmed mother. 
 
 Who turns to greet the tidings with a kiss.” 
 
GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA 
 
 59 
 
 GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA 
 
 Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his 
 nets to land, and had taken a great many fishes of vari¬ 
 ous kinds. So he emptied his net, and proceeded to 
 sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood 
 was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, unin¬ 
 habited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, nor ever 
 visited by any but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, 
 which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and 
 move their fins as if they were in the water; and while 
 he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to 
 the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not 
 know what to make of this, whether some god had done 
 it or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb 
 has such a power ?” he exclaimed; and gathering some 
 of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant 
 reached his palate when he found himself agitated with 
 a longing desire for the water. He could no longer 
 restrain himself, but bidding farewell to earth, he 
 plunged into the stream. The gods of the water re¬ 
 ceived him graciously, and admitted him to the honor 
 of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus 
 and Tethys, the sovereigns of the sea, that all that was 
 mortal in him should be washed away. A hundred 
 rivers poured their waters over him. Then he lost all 
 sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When 
 he recovered, he found himself changed in form and 
 mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him 
 on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had 
 been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. 
 The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his 
 appearance, and he fancied himself rather a good-looking 
 personage. 
 
 One day Glaucus saw the beautiful maiden Scylla, the 
 favorite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, 
 and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her 
 limbs in the clear water. He fell in love with her, and 
 showing himself on the surface, spoke to her, saying 
 such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; 
 for she turned to run immediately on the sight of him, 
 
60 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. 
 Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was 
 a god or a sea animal, and observed with wonder his 
 shape and color. Glaucus partly emerging from the 
 water, and supporting himself against a rock, said, 
 “Maiden, I am no monster, nor a sea animal, but a god; 
 and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. 
 Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; 
 but now I belong wholly to it.” Then he told the story 
 of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to 
 his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this 
 if it fails to move your heart?” He was going on in 
 this strain, but Scylla turned and hastened away. 
 
 Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to con¬ 
 sult the enchantress Circe. Accordingly he repaired to 
 her island—the same where afterwards Ulysses landed, 
 as we shall see in one of our later stories. After mutual 
 salutations, he said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you 
 alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of herbs 
 I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my 
 change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell 
 you how I have sued and promised to her, and how 
 scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use 
 your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more pre¬ 
 vailing, not to cure me of my love,—for that I do not 
 wish,—but to make her share it and yield me a like re¬ 
 turn.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible 
 to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better 
 pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, 
 instead of having to seek in vain. Be not diffident, know 
 your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess 
 though I be, and learned in the virtues of plants and 
 spells, should not know how to refuse you. If she 
 scorns you scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet 
 you half way, and thus make a due return to both at 
 once.” To these words Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall 
 trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and sea-weed on 
 the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, 
 and her alone.” 
 
 The goddess was indignant, but she could not punish 
 him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too 
 
GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA 
 
 61 
 
 I 
 
 well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor 
 Scylla. She took plants of poisonous powers and 
 mixed them together, with incantations and charms. 
 Then she passed through the crowd of gambolling 
 beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast 
 of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on 
 the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of 
 the day, to breathe the air of the sea, and to bathe in its 
 waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mix¬ 
 ture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. 
 Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to 
 her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of 
 serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At 
 first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, 
 and tried to run from them, and to drive them away; but 
 as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried 
 to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the 
 yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to 
 the spot. Her temper grew as ugly as her form, and she 
 took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came 
 within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the com¬ 
 panions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of 
 .Ttneas, till at last she was turned into a rock, and as such 
 still continues to be a terror to mariners. 
 
 Keats, in his “Endymion,” has given a new version of 
 the ending of “Glaucus and Scylla/’ Glaucus consents 
 to Circe’s blandishments, till he by chance is witness to 
 her transactions with her beasts . 1 Disgusted with her 
 treachery and cruelty, he tries to escape from her, but 
 is taken and brought back, when with reproaches she 
 banishes him, sentencing him to pass a thousand years 
 in decrepitude and pain. He returns to the sea, and 
 there finds the body of Scylla, whom the goddess has 
 not transformed but drowned. Glaucus learns that his 
 destiny is that, if he passes his thousand years in 
 collecting all the bodies of drowned lovers, a youth be¬ 
 loved of the gods will appear and help him. Endymion 
 fulfils this prophecy, and aids in restoring Glaucus to 
 youth, and Scylla and all the drowned lovers to life. 
 
 1 See page 241. 
 
62 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 The following is Glaucus’s account of his feelings 
 after his “sea-change”: 
 
 “I plunged for life or death. To interknit 
 One’s senses with so dense a breathing stuff 
 Might seem a work of pain; so not enough 
 Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt, 
 
 And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt 
 Whole days and days in sheer astonishment; 
 
 Forgetful utterly of self-intent, 
 
 Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow. 
 
 Then like a new-fledged bird that first doth show 
 His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill, 
 
 I tried in fear the pinions of my will. 
 
 ’Twas freedom! and at once I visited 
 
 The ceaseless wonders of this ocean-bed,” etc. 
 
 — Keats. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PYGMALION—DRYOPE—VENUS AND ADONIS—APOLLO AND 
 
 HYACINTHUS 
 
 Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that 
 he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live 
 unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with 
 wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no 
 living woman came anywhere near it. It was indeed 
 the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be 
 alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. 
 His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its 
 product looked like the workmanship of nature. Pyg¬ 
 malion admired his own work, and at last fell in love 
 with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he laid his 
 hand upon it as if to assure himself whether it were 
 living or not, and could not even then believe that it 
 was only ivory. He caressed it, and gave it presents 
 such as young girls love,—bright shells and polished 
 Stones, little birds and flowers of various hues, beads 
 and amber. He put raiment on its limbs, and jewels on 
 its fingers, and a necklace about its neck. To the ears 
 he hung earrings and strings of pearls upon the breast. 
 Her dress became her, and she looked not less charming 
 
PYGMALION 
 
 63 
 
 than when unattired. He laid her on a couch spread 
 with cloths of Tyrian dye, and called her his wife, and 
 put her head upon a pillow of the softest feathers, as if 
 she could enjoy their softness. 
 
 The festival of Venus was at hand—a festival cele¬ 
 brated with great pomp at Cyprus. Victims were 
 offered, the altars smoked, and the odor of incense filled 
 the air. When Pygmalion had performed his part in the 
 solemnities, he stood before the altar and timidly said, 
 “Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, 
 for my wife”—he dared not say “my ivory virgin,” but 
 said instead—“one like my ivory virgin.” Venus, who 
 was present at the festival, heard him and knew the 
 thought he would have uttered; and as an omen of her 
 favor, caused the flame on the altar to shoot up thrice 
 in a fiery point into the air. When he returned home, 
 he went to see his statue, and leaning over the couch, 
 gave a kiss to the mouth. It seemed to be warm. He 
 pressed its lips again, he laid his hand upon the limbs; 
 the ivory felt soft to his touch and yielded to his fingers 
 like the wax of Hymettus. While he stands astonished 
 and glad, though doubting, and fears he may be mis¬ 
 taken, again and again with a lover’s ardor he touches 
 the object of his hopes. It was indeed alive! The veins 
 when pressed yielded to the finger and again resumed 
 their roundness. Then at last the votary of Venus 
 found words to thank the goddess, and pressed his lips 
 upon lips as real as his own. The virgin felt the kisses 
 and blushed, and opening her timid eyes to the light, 
 fixed them at the same moment on her lover. Venus 
 blessed the nuptials she had formed, and from this union 
 Paphos was born, from whom the city, sacred to Venus, 
 received its name. 
 
 Schiller, in his poem the “Ideals,” applies this tale of 
 Pygmalion to the love of nature in a youthful heart. 
 The following translation is furnished by a friend: 
 
 “As once with prayers in passion flowing, 
 
 Pygmalion embraced the stone, 
 
 Till from the frozen marble glowing, 
 
 The light of feeling o’er him shone, 
 
64 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 So did I clasp with young devotion 
 Bright nature to a poet’s heart; 
 
 Till breath and warmth and vital motion 
 Seemed through the statue form to dart. 
 
 “And then, in all my ardor sharing, 
 
 The silent form expression found; 
 
 Returned my kiss of youthful daring, 
 
 And understood my heart's quick sound. 
 
 Then lived for me the bright creation, 
 
 The silver rill with song was rife; 
 
 The trees, the roses shared sensation, 
 
 An echo of my boundless life/' 
 
 —5-. G. B. 
 
 DRYOPE 
 
 Dryope and Iole were sisters. The former was the 
 wife of Andraemon, beloved by her husband, and happy 
 in the birth of her first child. One day the sisters 
 strolled to the bank of a stream that sloped gradually 
 down to the water’s edge, while the upland was over¬ 
 grown with myrtles. They were intending to gather 
 flowers for forming garlands for the altars of the 
 nymphs, and Dryope carried her child at her bosom, 
 precious burden, and nursed him as she walked. Near 
 the water grew a lotus plant, full of purple flowers. 
 Dryope gathered some and offered them to the baby, and 
 Iole was about to do the same, when she perceived blood 
 dropping from the places where her sister had broken 
 them off the stem. The plant was no other than the 
 nymph Lotis, who, running from a base pursuer, had 
 been changed into this form. This they learned from 
 the country people when it was too late. 
 
 Dryope, horror-struck when she perceived what she 
 had done, would gladly have hastened from the spot, 
 but found her feet rooted to the ground. She tried to 
 pull them away, but moved nothing but her upper limbs. 
 The woodiness crept upward, and by degrees invested 
 her body. In anguish she attempted to tear her hair, but 
 found her hands filled with leaves. The infant felt his 
 mother’s bosom begin to harden, and the milk cease to 
 flow. Iole looked on at the sad fate of her sister, and 
 could render no assistance. She embraced the growing 
 
VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 65 
 
 trunk, as if she would hold back the advancing wood, 
 and would gladly have been enveloped in the same bark. 
 At this moment Andrsemon, the husband of Dryope, 
 with her father, approached; and when they asked for 
 Dryope, Iole pointed them to the new-formed lotus. 
 They embraced the trunk of the yet warm tree, and 
 showered their kisses on its leaves. 
 
 Now there was nothing left of Dryope but her face. 
 Her tears still flowed and fell on her leaves, and while 
 she could she spoke. “I am not guilty. I deserve not 
 this fate. I have injured no one. If I speak falsely, 
 may my foliage perish with drought and my trunk be 
 cut down and burned. Take this infant and give it to a 
 nurse. Let it often be brought and nursed under my 
 branches, and play in my shade; and when he is old 
 enough to talk, let him be taught to call me mother, and 
 to say with sadness, ‘My mother lies hid under this bark/ 
 But bid him be careful of river banks, and beware how 
 he plucks flowers, remembering that every bush he sees 
 may be a goddess in disguise. Farewell, dear husband, 
 and sister, and father. If you retain any love for me, 
 let not the axe wound me, nor the flocks bite and tear 
 my branches. Since I cannot stoop to you, climb up 
 hither and kiss me; and while my lips continue to feel, 
 lift up my child that I may kiss him. I can speak no 
 more, for already the bark advances up my neck, and 
 will soon shoot over me. You need not close my eyes, 
 the bark will close them without your aid.” Then the 
 lips ceased to move, and life was extinct; but the 
 branches retained for some time longer the vital heat. 
 
 Keats, in “Endymion,” alludes to Dryope thus: 
 
 “She took a lute from which there pulsing came 
 A lively prelude, fashioning the way 
 In which her voice should wander. ’T was a lay 
 More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild 
 Than Dryope’s lone lulling of her child;” etc. 
 
 VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 Venus, playing one day with her boy Cupid, wounded 
 her bosom with one of his arrows. She pushed him 
 
66 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 away, but the wound was deeper than she thought. Be¬ 
 fore it healed she beheld Adonis, and was captivated with 
 him. She no longer took any interest in her favor¬ 
 ite resorts—Paphos, and Cnidos, and Amathos, rich in 
 metals. She absented herself even from heaven, for 
 Adonis was dearer to her than heaven. Him she 
 followed and bore him company. She who used to 
 love to recline in the shade, with no care but to culti¬ 
 vate her charms, now rambles through the woods and 
 over the hills, dressed like the huntress Diana; and calls 
 her dogs, and chases hares and stags, or other game 
 that it is safe to hunt, but keeps clear of the wolves and 
 bears, reeking with the slaughter of the herd. She 
 charged Adonis, too, to beware of such dangerous ani¬ 
 mals. “Be brave towards the timid,” said she; “courage 
 against the courageous is not safe. Beware how you 
 expose yourself to danger and put my happiness to risk. 
 Attack not the beasts that Nature has armed with weap¬ 
 ons. I do not value your glory so high as to consent to 
 purchase it by such exposure. Your youth, and the 
 beauty that charms Venus, will not touch the hearts of 
 lions and bristly boars. Think of their terrible claws 
 and prodigious strength! I hate the whole race of them. 
 Do you ask me why?” Then she told him the story of 
 Atalanta and Hippomenes, who were changed into lions 
 for their ingratitude to her. 
 
 Having given him this warning, she mounted her 
 chariot drawn by swans, and drove away through the 
 air. But Adonis was too noble to heed such counsels. 
 The dogs had roused a wild boar from his lair, and the 
 youth threw his spear and wounded the animal with a 
 sidelong stroke. The beast drew out the weapon with 
 his jaws, and rushed after Adonis, who turned and ran; 
 but the boar overtook him, and buried his tusks in his 
 side, and stretched him dying upon the plain. 
 
 Venus, in her swan-drawn chariot, had not yet 
 reached Cyprus, when she heard coming up through mid¬ 
 air the groans of her beloved, and turned her white¬ 
 winged coursers back to earth. As she drew near and 
 saw from on high his lifeless body bathed in blood, she 
 alighted and, bending over it, beat her breast and tore 
 
APOLLO AND HYACINTHUS 
 
 67 
 
 her hair. Reproaching the Fates, she said, “Yet theirs 
 shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of my 
 grief shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my 
 Adonis, and of my lamentations shall be annually re¬ 
 newed. Your blood shall be changed into a flower; that 
 consolation none can envy me.” Thus speaking, she 
 sprinkled nectar on the blood; and as they mingled, 
 bubbles rose as in a pool on which raindrops fall, and 
 in an hour’s time there sprang up a flower of bloody hue 
 like that of the pomegranate. But it is short-lived. It 
 is said the wind blows the blossoms open, and after¬ 
 wards blows the petals away; so it is called Anemone, or 
 Wind Flower, from the cause which assists equally in its 
 production and its decay. 
 
 Milton alludes to the story of Venus and Adonis in 
 his “Comus”: 
 
 “Beds of hyacinth and roses 
 Where young Adonis oft reposes, 
 
 Waxing well of his deep wound 
 In slumber soft, and on the ground 
 Sadly sits th’ Assyrian queen;” etc. 
 
 APOLLO AND HYACINTHUS 
 
 Apollo was passionately fond of a youth named Hy- 
 acinthus. He accompanied him in his sports, carried 
 the nets when he went fishing, led the dogs when he 
 went to hunt, followed him in his excursions in the 
 mountains, and neglected for him his lyre and his ar¬ 
 rows. One day they played a game of quoits together,' 
 and Apollo, heaving aloft the discus, with strength 
 mingled with skill, sent it high and far. Hyacinthus 
 watched it as it flew, and excited with the sport ran 
 forward to seize it, eager to make his throw, when the 
 quoit bounded from the earth and struck him in the 
 forehead. He fainted and fell. The god, as pale as 
 himself, raised him and tried all his art to stanch the 
 wound and retain the flitting life, but all in vain; the 
 hurt was past the power of medicine. As when one has 
 broken the stem of a lily in the garden it hangs its head 
 
68 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 and turns its flowers to the earth, so the head of the 
 dying boy, as if too heavy for his neck, fell over on his 
 shoulder. “Thou diest, Hyacinth/’ so spoke Phoebus, 
 “robbed of thy youth by me. Thine is the suffering, 
 mine the crime. Would that I could die for thee! But 
 since that may not be, thou shalt live with me in memory 
 and in song. My lyre shall celebrate thee, my song shall 
 tell thy fate, and thou shalt become a flower inscribed 
 with my regrets.” While Apollo spoke, behold the 
 blood which had flowed on the ground and stained the 
 herbage ceased to be blood; but a flower of hue more 
 beautiful than the Tyrian sprang up, resembling the lily, 
 if it were not that this is purple and that silvery white . 1 
 And this was not enough for Phoebus; but to confer 
 still greater honor, he marked the petals with his sorrow, 
 and inscribed “Ah! ah!” upon them as we see to this 
 day. The flower bears the name of Hyacinthus, and 
 with every returning spring revives the memory of his 
 fate. 
 
 It was said that Zephyrus (the West wind), who was 
 also fond of Hyacinthus and jealous of his preference 
 of Apollo, blew the quoit out of its course to make it 
 strike Hyacinthus. Keats alludes to this in his “Endym- 
 ion,” where he describes the lookers-on at the game 
 of quoits: 
 
 “Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent 
 On either side, pitying the sad death 
 Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath 
 Of Zephyr slew him; Zephyr penitent, 
 
 Who now ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 
 
 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain” 
 
 An allusion to Hyacinthus will also be recognized 
 in Milton’s “Lycidas”: 
 
 “Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.” 
 
 1 It is evidently not our modern hyacinth that is here described. It is 
 perhaps some species of iris, or perhaps of larkspur or of pansy. 
 
CEYX AND HALCYONE 
 
 69 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CEYX AND HALCYONE: OR, THE HALCYON BIRDS 
 
 Ceyx was king of Thessaly, where he reigned in peace, 
 without violence or wrong. He was son of Hesperus, 
 the Day-star, and the glow of his beauty reminded one 
 of his father. Halcyone, the daughter of ^Eolus, was 
 his wife, and devotedly attached to him. Now Ceyx was 
 in deep affliction for the loss of his brother, and direful 
 prodigies following his brother’s death made him feel as 
 if the gods were hostile to him. He thought best, there¬ 
 fore, to make a voyage to Carlos in Ionia, to consult the 
 oracle of Apollo. But as soon as he disclosed his inten¬ 
 tion to his wife Halcyone, a shudder ran through her 
 frame, and her face grew deadly pale. “What fault of 
 mine, dearest husband, has turned your affection from 
 me? Where is that love of me that used to be uppermost 
 in your thoughts ? Have you learned to feel easy in the 
 absence of Halcyone? Would you rather have me 
 away?” She also endeavored to discourage him, by de¬ 
 scribing the violence of the winds, which she had known 
 familiarly when she lived at home in her father’s 
 house,—^Eolus being the god of the winds, and having 
 as much as he could do to restrain them. “They rush 
 together,” said she, “with such fury that fire flashes 
 from the conflict. But if you must go,” she added, 
 “dear husband, let me go with you, otherwise I shall 
 suffer not only the real evils which you must encounter, 
 but those also which my fears suggest.” 
 
 These words weighed heavily on the mind of King 
 Ceyx, and it was no less his own wish than hers to 
 take her with him, but he could not bear to expose her 
 to the dangers of the sea. He answered, therefore, con¬ 
 soling her as well as he could, and finished with these 
 words: “I promise, by the rays of my father the Day- 
 star, that if fate permits I will return before the moon 
 shall have twice rounded her orb.” When he had thus 
 spoken, he ordered the vessel to be drawn out of the 
 
70 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 shiphouse, and the oars and sails to be put aboard. 
 When Halcyone saw these preparations she shuddered, 
 as if with a presentiment of evil. With tears and sobs 
 she said farewell, and then fell senseless to the ground. 
 
 Ceyx would still have lingered, but now the young 
 men grasped their oars and pulled vigorously through 
 the waves, with long and measured strokes. Halcyone 
 raised her streaming eyes, and saw her husband stand¬ 
 ing on the deck, waving his hand to her. She answered 
 his signal till the vessel had receded so far that she 
 could no longer distinguish his form from the rest. 
 When the vessel itself could no more be seen, she 
 strained her eyes to catch the last glimmer of the sail, 
 till that too disappeared. Then, retiring to her chamber, 
 she threw herself on her solitary couch. 
 
 Meanwhile they glide out of the harbor, and the 
 breeze plays among the ropes. The seamen draw in 
 their oars, and hoist their sails. When half or less of 
 their course was passed, as night drew on, the sea be¬ 
 gan to whiten with swelling waves, and the east wind 
 to blow a gale. The master gave the word to take in 
 sail, but the storm forbade obedience, for such is the 
 roar of the winds and waves his orders are unheard. 
 The men, of their own accord, busy themselves to se¬ 
 cure the oars, to strengthen the ship, to reef the sail. 
 While they thus do what to each one seems best, the 
 storm increases. The shouting of the men, the rattling 
 of the shrouds, and the dashing of the waves, mingle 
 with the roar of the thunder. The swelling sea seems 
 lifted up to the heavens, to scatter its foam among the 
 clouds; then sinking away to the bottom assumes the 
 color of the shoal—a Stygian blackness. 
 
 The vessel shares all these changes. It seems like 
 a wild beast that rushes on the spears of the hunters. 
 Rain falls in torrents, as if the skies were coming down 
 to unite with the sea. When the lightning ceases for 
 a moment, the night seems to add its own darkness to 
 that of the storm; then comes the flash, rending the 
 darkness asunder, and lighting up all with a glare. Skill 
 fails, courage sinks, and death seems to come on every 
 wave. The men are stupefied with terror. The thought 
 
CEYX AND HALCYONE 
 
 71 
 
 of parents, and kindred, and pledges left at home, comes 
 over their minds. Ceyx thinks of Halcyone. No name 
 but hers is on his lips, and while he yearns for her, 
 he yet rejoices in her absence. Presently the mast is 
 shattered by a stroke of lightning, the rudder broken, 
 and the triumphant surge curling over looks down upon 
 the wreck, then falls, and crushes it to fragments. Some 
 of the seamen, stunned by the stroke, sink, and rise no 
 more; others cling to fragments of the wreck. Ceyx, 
 with the hand that used to grasp the sceptre, holds fast 
 to a plank, calling for help,—alas, in vain,—upon his 
 father and his father-in-law. But oftenest on his lips* 
 was the name of Halcyone. To her his thoughts cling. 
 He prays that the waves may bear his body to her sight, 
 and that it may receive burial at her hands. At length 
 the waters overwhelm him, and he sinks. The Day- 
 star looked dim that night. Since it could not leave 
 the heavens, it shrouded its face with clouds. 
 
 In the meanwhile Halcyone, ignorant of all these hor¬ 
 rors, counted the days till her husband’s promised reY 
 turn. Now she gets ready the garments which he shall 
 put on, and now what she shall wear when he arrives. 
 To all the gods she offers frequent incense, but more 
 than all to Juno. For her husband, who was no more, 
 she prayed incessantly: that he might be safe; that he 
 might come home; that he might not, in his absence, 
 see any one that he would love better than her. But 
 of all these prayers, the last was the only one destined 
 to be granted. The goddess, at length, could not bear 
 any longer to be pleaded with for one already dead, 
 and to have hands raised to her altars that ought rather 
 to be offering funeral rites. So, calling Iris, she said, 
 “Iris, my faithful messenger, go to the drowsy dwell¬ 
 ing of Somnus, and tell him to send a vision to Halcy¬ 
 one in the form of Ceyx, to make known to her the 
 event.” 
 
 Iris puts on her robe of many colors, and tingeing 
 the sky with her bow, seeks the palace of the King of 
 Sleep. Near the Cimmerian country, a mountain cave 
 is the abode of the dull god Somnus. Here Phoebus 
 dares not come, either rising, at midday, or setting. 
 
72 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Clouds and shadows are exhaled from the ground, and 
 the light glimmers faintly. The bird of dawning, with 
 crested head, never there calls aloud to Aurora, nor 
 watchful dog, nor more sagacious goose disturbs the 
 silence. No wild beast, nor cattle, nor branch moved 
 with the wind, nor sound of human conversation, breaks 
 the stillness. Silence reigns there; but from the bottom 
 of the rock the River Lethe flows, and by its murmur 
 invites to sleep. Poppies grow abundantly before the 
 door of the cave, and other herbs, from whose juices 
 Night collects slumbers, which she scatters over the 
 darkened earth. There is no gate to the mansion, to 
 creak on its hinges, nor any watchman; but in the midst 
 a couch of black ebony, adorned with black plumes and 
 black curtains. There the god reclines, his limbs re¬ 
 laxed with sleep. Around him lie dreams, resembling 
 all various forms, as many as the harvest bears stalks, 
 or the forest leaves, or the seashore sand grains. 
 
 As soon as the goddess entered and brushed away 
 the dreams that hovered around her, her brightness lit 
 up all the cave. The god, scarce opening his eyes, and 
 ever and anon dropping his beard upon his breast, at 
 last shook himself free from himself, and leaning on 
 his arm, inquired her errand,—for he knew who she was. 
 She answered, “Somnus, gentlest of the gods, tranquil¬ 
 lizer of minds and soother of care-worn hearts, Juno 
 sends you her commands that you despatch a dream to 
 Halcyone, in the city of Trachine, representing her lost 
 husband and all the events of the wreck.” 
 
 Having delivered her message, Iris hasted away, for 
 she could not longer endure the stagnant air, and as 
 she felt drowsiness creeping over her, she made her 
 escape, and returned by her bow the way she came. 
 Then Somnus called one of his numerous sons,—Mor¬ 
 pheus,—the most expert in counterfeiting forms, and 
 in imitating the walk, the countenance, and mode of 
 speaking, even the clothes and attitudes most charac¬ 
 teristic of each. But he only imitates men, leaving it 
 to another to personate birds, beasts, and serpents. Him 
 they call Icelos; and Phantasos is a third, who turns 
 himself into rocks, waters, woods, and other things with- 
 
CEYX AND HALCYONE 
 
 73 
 
 out life. These wait upon kings and great personages 
 in their sleeping hours, while others move among the 
 common people. Somnus chose, from all the brothers, 
 Morpheus, to perform the command of Iris; then laid 
 his head on his pillow and yielded himself to grateful 
 repose. 
 
 Morpheus flew, making no noise with his wings, and 
 soon came to the Hsemonian city, where, laying aside his 
 wings, he assumed the form of Ceyx. Under that form, 
 but pale like a dead man, naked, he stood before the 
 couch of the wretched wife. His beard seemed soaked 
 with water, and water trickled from his drowned locks. 
 Leaning over the bed, tears streaming from his eyes, he 
 said, “Do you recognize your Ceyx, unhappy wife, or 
 has death too much changed my visage? Behold me, 
 know me, your husband’s shade, instead of himself. 
 Your prayers, Halcyone, availed me nothing. I am 
 dead. No more deceive yourself with vain hopes of 
 my return. The stormy winds sunk my ship in the 
 SEgean Sea, waves filled my mouth while it called aloud 
 on you. No uncertain messenger tells you this, no vague 
 rumor brings it to your ears. I come in person, a 
 shipwrecked man, to tell you my fate. Arise! give me 
 tears, give me lamentations, let me not go down to Tar¬ 
 tarus unwept.” To these words Morpheus added the 
 voice, which seemed to be that of her husband; he 
 seemed to pour forth genuine tears; his hands had the 
 gestures of Ceyx. 
 
 Halcyone, weeping, groaned, and stretched out her 
 arms in her sleep, striving to embrace his body, but 
 grasping only the air. “Stay!” she cried; “whither do 
 you fly? let us go together.” Her own voice awakened 
 her. Starting up, she gazed eagerly around, to see if 
 he was still present, for the servants, alarmed by her 
 cries, had brought a light. When she found him not, 
 she smote her breast and rent her garments. She cares 
 not to unbind her hair, but tears it wildly. Her nurse 
 asks what is the cause of her grief. “Halcyone is no 
 more,” she answers, “she perished with her Ceyx. Utter 
 not words of comfort, he is shipwrecked and dead. I 
 have seen him, I have recognized him. I stretched out 
 
74 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 my hands to seize him and detain him. His shade van¬ 
 ished, but it was the true shade of my husband. Not 
 with the accustomed features, not with the beauty that 
 was his, but pale, naked, and with his hair wet with 
 sea-water, he appeared to wretched me. Here, in this 
 very spot, the sad vision stood,”—and she looked to find 
 the mark of his footsteps. “This it was, this that my 
 presaging mind foreboded, when I implored him not to 
 leave me, to trust himself to the waves. Oh, how I 
 wish, since thou wouldst go, thou hadst taken me with 
 thee! It would have been far better. Then I should 
 have had no remnant of life to spend without thee, nor 
 a separate death to die. If I could bear to live and 
 struggle to endure, I should be more cruel to myself 
 than the sea has been to me. But I will not struggle, I 
 will not be separated from thee, unhappy husband. This 
 time, at least, I will keep thee company. In death, if 
 one tomb may not include us, one epitaph shall; if I 
 may not lay my ashes with thine, my name, at least, 
 shall not be separated.” Her grief forbade more words, 
 and these were broken with tears and sobs. 
 
 It was now morning. She went to the seashore, and 
 sought the spot where she last saw him, on his departure. 
 “While he lingered here, and cast off his tacklings, he 
 gave me his last kiss.” While she reviews every object, 
 and strives to recall every incident, looking out over the 
 sea, she descries an indistinct object floating in the water. 
 At first she was in doubt what it was, but by degrees the 
 waves bore it nearer, and it was plainly the body of a 
 man. Though unknowing of whom, yet, as it was of 
 some shipwrecked one, she was deeply moved, and gave 
 it her tears, saying, “Alas! unhappy one, and unhappy, 
 if such there be, thy wife!” Borne by the waves, it 
 came nearer. As she more and more nearly views it, 
 she trembles more and more. Now, now it approaches 
 the shore. Now marks that she recognizes appear. It 
 is her husband! Stretching out her trembling hands 
 towards it, she exclaims, “O dearest husband, is it thus 
 you return to me?” 
 
 There was built out from the shore a mole, constructed 
 to break the assaults of the sea, and stem its violent 
 
CEYX AND HALCYONE 
 
 75 
 
 ingress. She leaped upon this barrier and (it was won¬ 
 derful she could do so) she flew, and striking the air 
 with wings produced on the instant, skimmed along the 
 surface of the water, an unhappy bird. As she flew, 
 her throat poured forth sounds full of grief, and like 
 the voice of one lamenting. When she touched the mute 
 and bloodless body, she enfolded its beloved limbs with 
 her new-formed wings, and tried to give kisses with 
 her horny beak. Whether Ceyx felt it, or whether it 
 was only the action of the waves, those who looked on 
 doubted, but the body seemed to raise its head. But 
 indeed he did feel it, and by the pitying gods both of 
 them were changed into birds. They mate and have 
 their young ones. For seven placid days, in winter 
 time, Halcyone broods over her nest, which floats upon 
 the sea. Then the way is safe to seamen. FEolus guards 
 the winds and keeps them from disturbing the deep. 
 The sea is given up, for the time, to his grandchildren. 
 
 The following lines from Byron’s “Bride of Abydos” 
 might seem borrowed from the concluding part of this 
 description, if it were not stated that the author derived 
 the suggestion from observing the motion of a floating 
 corpse: 
 
 “As shaken on his restless pillow, 
 
 His head heaves with the heaving billow. 
 
 That hand, whose motion is not life, 
 
 Yet feebly seems to menace strife, 
 
 Flung by the tossing tide on high, 
 
 Then levelled with the wave . . .” 
 
 Milton in his “Hymn on the Nativity,” thus alludes 
 to the fable of the Halcyon: 
 
 “But peaceful was the night 
 Wherein the Prince of light 
 
 His reign of peace upon the earth began; 
 
 The winds with wonder whist 
 Smoothly the waters kist 
 Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 
 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave 
 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.” 
 
76 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Keats, also, in “Endymion,” says: 
 
 **O magic sleep! O comfortable bird 
 That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind 
 Till it is hushed and smooth.” 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 
 
 The Hamadryads were Wood-nymphs. Pomona was 
 of this class, and no one excelled her in love of the 
 garden and the culture of fruit. She cared not for 
 forests and rivers, but loved the cultivated country, and 
 trees that bear delicious apples. Her right hand bore 
 for its weapon not a javelin, but a pruning-knife. Armed 
 with this, she busied herself at one time to repress the 
 too luxuriant growths, and curtail the branches that 
 straggled out of place; at another, to split the twig and 
 insert therein a graft, making the branch adopt a nurs¬ 
 ling not its own. She took care, too, that her favorites 
 should not suffer from drought, and led streams 
 of water by them, that the thirsty roots might drink. 
 This occupation was her pursuit, her passion; and she 
 was free from that which Venus inspires. She was 
 not without fear of the country people, and kept her 
 orchard locked, and allowed not men to enter. The 
 Fauns and Satyrs would have given all they possessed to 
 win her, and so would old Sylvanus, who looks young 
 for his years, and Pan, who wears a garland of pine 
 leaves around his head. But Vertumnus loved her best 
 of all; yet he sped no better than the rest. O how 
 often, in the disguise of a reaper, did he bring her corn 
 in a basket, and looked the very image of a reaper! 
 With a hay band tied round him, one would think he 
 had just come from turning over the grass. Sometimes 
 he would have an ox-goad in his hand, and you would 
 have said he had just unyoked his weary oxen. Now 
 he bore a pruning-hook, and personated a vine-dresser; 
 
HERCULES IN BATTLE WITH A CENTAUR 
 Florence. John of Bologna. 
 

VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 
 
 77 
 
 and again, with a ladder on his shoulder, he seemed 
 as if he was going to gather apples. Sometimes he 
 trudged along as a discharged soldier, and again he 
 bore a fishing-rod, as if going to fish. In this way he 
 gained admission to her again and again, and fed his 
 passion with the sight of her. 
 
 One day he came in the guise of an old woman, her 
 gray hair surmounted with a cap, and a staff in her 
 hand. She entered the garden and admired the fruit. 
 “It does you credit, my dear,” she said, and kissed her, 
 not exactly with an old woman’s kiss. She sat down 
 on a bank, and looked up at the branches laden with 
 fruit which hung over her. Opposite was an elm en¬ 
 twined with a vine loaded with swelling grapes. She 
 praised the tree and its associated vine, equally. “But,” 
 said she, “if the tree stood alone, and had no vine cling¬ 
 ing to it, it would have nothing to attract or offer us 
 but its useless leaves. And equally the vine, if it were 
 not twined round the elm, would lie prostrate on the 
 ground. Why will you not take a lesson from the tree 
 and the vine, and consent to unite yourself with some 
 one? I wish you would. Helen herself had not more 
 numerous suitors, nor Penelope, the wife of shrewd 
 Ulysses. Even while you spurn them, they court you,— 
 rural deities and others of every kind that frequent 
 these mountains. But if you are prudent and want to 
 make a good alliance, and will let an old woman advise 
 you,—who loves you better than you have any idea of, 
 —dismiss all the rest and accept Vertumnus, on my 
 recommendation. I know him as well as he knows him¬ 
 self. He is not a wandering deity, but belongs to these 
 mountains. Nor is he like too many of the lovers now¬ 
 adays, who love any one they happen to see; he loves 
 you, and you only. Add to this, he is young and hand¬ 
 some, and has the art of assuming any shape he pleases, 
 and can make himself just what you command him. 
 Moreover, he loves the same things that you do, de¬ 
 lights in gardening, and handles your apples with ad¬ 
 miration. But now he cares nothing for fruits nor 
 flowers, nor anything else, but only yourself. Take pity 
 on him, and fancy him speaking now with my mouth. 
 
78 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Remember that the gods punish cruelty, and that Venus 
 hates a hard heart, and will visit such offences sooner 
 or later. To prove this, let me tell you a story, which 
 is well known in Cyprus to be a fact; and I hope it 
 will have the effect to make you more merciful. 
 
 “Iphis was a young man of humble parentage, who 
 saw and loved Anaxarete, a noble lady of the ancient 
 family of Teucer. He struggled long with his passion, 
 but when he found he could not subdue it, he came a 
 suppliant to her mansion. First he told his passion to 
 her nurse, a^id begged her as she loved her foster-child 
 to favor his suit. And then he tried to win her do¬ 
 mestics to his side. Sometimes he committed his vows 
 to written tablets, and often hung at her door garlands 
 which he had moistened with his tears. He stretched 
 himself on her threshold, and uttered his complaints to 
 the cruel bolts and bars.. She was deafer than the 
 surges which rise in the November gale; harder than 
 steel from the German forges, or a rock that still clings 
 to its native cliff. She mocked and laughed at him, 
 adding cruel words to her ungentle treatment, and gave 
 not the slightest gleam of hope. 
 
 “Iphis could not any longer endure the torments of 
 hopeless love, and, standing before her doors, he spake 
 these last words: ‘Anaxarete, you have conquered, and 
 shall no longer have to bear my importunities. Enjoy 
 your triumph! Sing songs of joy, and bind your fore¬ 
 head with laurel,—you have conquered! I die; stony 
 heart, rejoice! This at least I can do to gratify you 
 and force you to praise me; and thus shall I prove 
 that the love of you left me but with life. Nor will 
 I leave it to rumor to tell you of my death. I will 
 come myself, and you shall see me die, and feast your 
 eyes on the spectacle. Yet, O ye gods, who look down 
 on mortal woes, observe my fate! I ask but this: let 
 me be remembered in coming ages, and add those years 
 to my fame which you have reft from my life.* Thus 
 he said, and, turning his pale face and weeping eyes 
 towards her mansion, he fastened a rope to the gate¬ 
 post, on which he had often hung garlands, and putting 
 his head into the noose, he murmured, ‘This garland at 
 
VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 
 
 79 
 
 least will please you, cruel girl!’ and falling hung sus¬ 
 pended with his neck broken. As he fell he struck 
 against the gate, and the sound was as the sound of a 
 groan. The servants opened the door and found him 
 dead, and with exclamations of pity raised him and 
 carried him home to his mother, for his father was 
 not living. She received the dead body of her son, and 
 folded the cold form to her bosom, while she poured 
 forth the sad words which bereaved mothers utter. The 
 mournful funeral passed through the town, and the pale 
 corpse was borne on a bier to the place of the funeral 
 pile. By chance the home of Anaxarete was on the 
 street where the procession passed, and the lamentations 
 of the mourners met the ears of her whom the avenging 
 deity had already marked for punishment. 
 
 “ ‘Let us see this sad procession/ said she, and 
 mounted to a turret, whence through an open window 
 she looked upon the funeral. Scarce had her eyes rested 
 upon the form of Iphis stretched on the bier, when 
 they began to stiffen, and the warm blood in her body 
 to become cold. Endeavoring to step back, she found 
 she could not move her feet; trying to turn away her 
 face, she tried in vain; and by degrees all her limbs 
 became stony like her heart. That you may not doubt 
 the fact, the statue still remains, and stands in the 
 temple of Venus at Salamis, in the exact form of the 
 lady. Now think of these things, my dear, and lay 
 aside your scorn and your delays, and accept a lover. 
 So may neither the vernal frosts blight your young 
 fruits, nor furious winds scatter your blossoms!” 
 
 When Vertumnus had spoken thus, he dropped the 
 disguise of an old woman, and stood before her in his 
 proper person, as a comely youth. It appeared to her 
 like the sun bursting through a cloud. He would have 
 renewed his entreaties, but there was no need; his argu¬ 
 ments and the sight of his true form prevailed, and 
 the Nymph no longer resisted, but owned a mutual 
 flame. 
 
 Pomona was the especial patroness of the Apple- 
 orchard, and as such she was invoked by Phillips, the 
 
80 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 author of a poem on Cider, in blank verse. Thomson 
 in the “Seasons” alludes to him: 
 
 “Phillips, Pomona’s bard, the second thou 
 Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse, 
 
 With British freedom, sing the British song.” 
 
 But Pomona was also regarded as presiding over 
 other fruits, and as such is invoked by Thomson: 
 
 “Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves, 
 
 To where the lemon and the piercing lime, 
 
 With the deep orange, glowing through the green, 
 
 Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined 
 Beneath the spreading tamarind, that shakes, 
 
 Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.” 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CUPID AND PSYCHE 
 
 A certain king and queen had three daughters. The 
 charms of the two elder were more than common, but 
 the beauty of the youngest was so wonderful that the 
 poverty of language is unable to express its due praise. 
 The fame of her beauty was so great that strangers 
 from neighboring countries came in crowds to enjoy 
 the sight, and looked on her with amazement, paying her 
 that homage which is due only to Venus herself. In( 
 fact Venus found her altars deserted, while men turned 
 their devotion to this young virgin. As she passed 
 along, the people sang her praises, and strewed her way 
 with chaplets and flowers. 
 
 This perversion of homage due only to the immortal 
 powers to the exaltation of a mortal gave great offence 
 to the real Venus. Shaking her ambrosial locks with 
 indignation, she exclaimed, “Am I then to be eclipsed 
 in my honors by a mortal girl? In vain then did that 
 royal shepherd, whose judgment was approved by Jove 
 himself, give me the palm of beauty over my illustrious 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE 
 
 81 
 
 rivals, Pallas and Juno. But she shall not so quietly 
 usurp my honors. I will give her cause to repent of so 
 unlawful a beauty.” 
 
 Thereupon she calls her winged son Cupid, mischiev¬ 
 ous enough in his own nature, and rouses and provokes 
 him yet more by her complaints. She points out Psyche 
 to him and says, “My dear son, punish that contumacious 
 beauty; give thy mother a revenge as sweet as her in¬ 
 juries are great; infuse into the bosom of that haughty 
 girl a passion for some low, mean, unworthy being, so 
 that she may reap a mortification as great as her present 
 exultation and triumph.” 
 
 Cupid prepared to obey the commands of his mother. 
 There are two fountains in Venus’s garden, one of 
 sweet waters, the other of bitter. Cupid filled two am¬ 
 ber vases, one from each fountain, and suspending them 
 from the top of his quiver, hastened to the chamber 
 of Psyche, whom he found asleep. He shed a few 
 drops from the bitter fountain over her lips, though the 
 sight of her almost moved him to pity; then touched 
 her side with the point of his arrow. At the touch 
 she awoke, and opened eyes upon Cupid (himself in¬ 
 visible), which so startled him that in his confusion 
 he wounded himself with his own arrow. Heedless of 
 his wound, his whole thought now was to repair the 
 mischief he had done, and he poured the balmy drops 
 of joy over all her silken ringlets. 
 
 Psyche, henceforth frowned upon by Venus, derived 
 no benefit from all her charms. True, all eyes were 
 cast eagerly upon her, and every mouth spoke her praises; 
 but neither king, royal youth, nor plebeian presented 
 himself to demand her in marriage. Her two elder 
 sisters of moderate charms had now long been married 
 to two royal princes; but Psyche, in her lonely apart¬ 
 ment, deplored her solitude, sick of that beauty which, 
 while it procured abundance of flattery, had failed to 
 awaken love. 
 
 Her parents, afraid that they had unwittingly incurred 
 the anger of the gods, consulted the oracle of Apollo, 
 and received this answer: “The virgin is destined for 
 the bride of no mortal lover. Her future husband awaits 
 
82 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 her on the top of the mountain. He is a monster whom 
 neither gods nor men can resist.” 
 
 This dreadful decree of the oracle filled all the people 
 with dismay, and her parents abandoned themselves to 
 grief. But Psyche said, “Why, my dear parents, do 
 you now lament me? You should rather have grieved 
 when the people showered upon me undeserved honors, 
 and with one voice called me a Venus. I now perceive 
 that I am a victim to that name. I submit. Lead me 
 to that rock to which my unhappy fate has destined me.” 
 Accordingly, all things being prepared, the royal maid 
 took her place in the procession, which more resembled 
 a funeral than a nuptial pomp, and with her parents, 
 amid the lamentations of the people, ascended the moun¬ 
 tain, on the summit of which they left her alone, and 
 with sorrowful hearts returned home. 
 
 While Psyche stood on the ridge of the mountain, 
 panting with fear and with eyes full of tears, the gentle 
 Zephyr raised her from the earth and bore her with an 
 easy motion into a flowery dale. By degrees her mind 
 became composed, and she laid herself down on the 
 grassy bank to sleep. When she awoke refreshed with 
 sleep, she looked round and beheld near by a pleasant 
 grove of tall and stately trees. She entered it, and in 
 the midst discovered a fountain, sending forth clear and 
 crystal waters, and fast by, a magnificent palace whose 
 august front impressed the spectator that it was not the 
 work of mortal hands, but the happy retreat of some 
 god. Drawn by admiration and wonder, she approached 
 the building and ventured to enter. Every object she 
 met filled her with pleasure and amazement. Golden 
 pillars supported the vaulted roof, and the walls were 
 enriched with carvings and paintings representing beasts 
 of the chase and rural scenes, adapted to delight the 
 eye of the beholder. Proceeding onward, she perceived 
 that besides the apartments of state there were others 
 filled with all manner of treasures, and beautiful and 
 precious productions of nature and art. 
 
 While her eyes were thus occupied, a voice addressed 
 her, though she saw no one, uttering these words: “Sov¬ 
 ereign lady, all that you see is yours. We whose voices 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE 
 
 83 
 
 you hear are your servants and shall obey all your com¬ 
 mands with our utmost care and diligence. Retire, 
 therefore, to your chamber and repose on your bed of 
 down, and when you see fit repair to the bath. Supper 
 awaits you in the adjoining alcove when it pleases you 
 to take your seat there.” 
 
 Psyche gave ear to the admonitions of her vocal at¬ 
 tendants, and after repose and the refreshment of the 
 bath, seated herself in the alcove, where a table imme¬ 
 diately presented itself, without any visible aid from 
 waiters or servants, and covered with the greatest deli¬ 
 cacies of food and the most nectareous wines. Her ears 
 too were feasted with music from invisible performers; 
 of whom one sang, another played on the lute, and all 
 closed in the wonderful harmony of a full chorus. 
 
 She had not yet seen her destined husband. He came 
 only in the hours of darkness and fled before the dawn 
 of morning, but his accents were full of love, and in¬ 
 spired a like passion in her. She often begged him to 
 stay and let her behold him, but he would not consent. 
 On the contrary he charged her to make no attempt 
 to see him, for it was his pleasure, for the best of rea¬ 
 sons, to keep concealed. “Why should you wish to 
 behold me?” he said; “have you any doubt of my love? 
 have you any wish ungratified? If you saw me, per¬ 
 haps you would fear me, perhaps adore me, but all I 
 ask of you is to love me. I would rather you would 
 love me as an equal than adore me as a god.” 
 
 This reasoning somewhat quieted Psyche for a time, 
 and while the novelty lasted she felt quite happy. But 
 at length the thought of her parents, left in ignorance 
 of her fate, and of her sisters, precluded from sharing 
 with her the delights of her situation, preyed on her 
 mind and made her begin to feel her palace as but a 
 splendid prison. When her husband came one night, 
 she told him her distress, and at last drew from him an 
 unwilling consent that her sisters should be brought to 
 see her. 
 
 So, calling Zephyr, she acquainted him with her hus¬ 
 band's commands, and he, promptly obedient, soon 
 brought them across the mountain down to their sis- 
 
84 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 ter’s valley. They embraced her and she returned their 
 caresses. “Come/’ said Psyche, “enter with me my 
 house and refresh yourselves with whatever your sister 
 has to offer.” Then taking their hands she led them 
 into her golden palace, and committed them to the care 
 of her numerous train of attendant voices, to refresh 
 them in her baths and at her table, and to show them 
 all her treasures. The view of these celestial delights 
 caused envy to enter their bosoms, at seeing their young 
 sister possessed of such state and splendor, so much 
 exceeding their own. 
 
 They asked her numberless questions, among others 
 what sort of a person her husband was. Psyche replied 
 that he was a beautiful youth, who generally spent the 
 daytime in hunting upon the mountains. The sisters, 
 not satisfied with this reply, soon made her confess that 
 she had never seen him. Then they proceeded to fill her 
 bosom with dark suspicions. “Call to mind,” they said, 
 “the Pythian oracle that declared you destined to marry 
 a direful and tremendous monster. The inhabitants of 
 this valley say that your husband is a terrible and mon¬ 
 strous serpent, who nourishes you for a while with 
 dainties that he may by and by devour you. Take our 
 advice. Provide yourself with a lamp and a sharp knife; 
 put them in concealment that your husband may not 
 discover them, and when he is sound asleep, slip out of 
 bed, bring forth your lamp, and see for yourself whether 
 what they say is true or not. If it is, hesitate not to 
 cut off the monster’s head, and thereby recover your 
 liberty.” 
 
 Psyche resisted these persuasions as well as she could, 
 but they did not fail to have their effect on her mind, and 
 when her sisters were gone, their words and her own 
 curiosity were too strong for her to resist. So she 
 prepared her lamp and a sharp knife, and hid them out 
 of sight of her husband. When he had fallen into his 
 first sleep, she silently rose and uncovering her lamp be¬ 
 held not a hideous monster, but the most beautiful and 
 charming of the gods, with his golden ringlets wandering 
 over his snowy neck and crimson cheek, with two dewy 
 wings on his shoulders, whiter than snow, and with 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE 
 
 85 
 
 shining feathers like the tender blossoms of spring. As 
 she leaned the lamp over to have a nearer view of his 
 face a drop of burning oil fell on the shoulder of the 
 god, startled with which he opened his eyes and fixed 
 them full upon her; then, without saying one word, he 
 spread his white wings and flew out of the window. 
 Psyche, in vain endeavoring to follow him, fell from 
 the window to the ground. Cupid, beholding her as she 
 lay in the dust, stopped his flight for an instant and 
 said, “O foolish Psyche, is it thus you repay my love? 
 After having disobeyed my mother’s commands and 
 made you my wife, will you think me a monster and 
 cut off my head ? But go; return to your sisters, whose 
 advice you seem to think preferable to mine. I inflict 
 no other punishment on you than to leave you forever. 
 Love cannot dwell with suspicion.” So saying, he fled 
 away, leaving poor Psyche prostrate on the ground, fill¬ 
 ing the place with mournful lamentations. 
 
 When she had recovered some degree of composure 
 she looked around her, but the palace and gardens had 
 vanished, and she found herself in the open field not 
 far from the city where her sisters dwelt. She repaired 
 thither and told them the whole story of her misfor¬ 
 tunes, at which, pretending to grieve, those spiteful 
 creatures inwardly rejoiced. “For now,” said they, “he 
 will perhaps choose one of us.” With this idea, with¬ 
 out saying a word of her intentions, each of them rose 
 early the next morning and ascended the mountains, and 
 having reached the top, called upon Zephyr to receive 
 her and bear her to his lord; then leaping up, and not 
 being sustained by Zephyr, fell down the precipice and 
 was dashed to pieces. 
 
 Psyche meanwhile wandered day and night, without 
 food or repose, in search of her husband. Casting her 
 eyes on a lofty mountain having on its brow a mag¬ 
 nificent temple, she sighed and said to herself, “Per¬ 
 haps my love, my lord, inhabits there,” and directed her 
 steps thither. 
 
 She had no sooner entered than she saw heaps of 
 corn, some in loose ears and some in sheaves, with 
 mingled ears of barley. Scattered about, lay sickles and 
 
86 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 rakes, and all the instruments of harvest, without order, 
 as if thrown carelessly out of the weary reapers’ hands 
 in the sultry hours of the day. 
 
 This unseemly confusion the pious Psyche put an end 
 to, by separating and sorting everything to its proper 
 place and kind, believing that she ought to neglect none 
 of the gods, but endeavor by her piety to engage them 
 all in her behalf. The holy Ceres, whose temple it was, 
 finding her so religiously employed, thus spoke to her: 
 “O Psyche, truly worthy of our pity, though I cannot 
 shield you from the frowns of Venus, yet I can teach 
 you how best to allay her displeasure. Go, then, and 
 voluntarily surrender yourself to your lady and sov¬ 
 ereign, and try by modesty and submission to win her 
 forgiveness, and perhaps her favor will restore you the 
 husband you have lost.” 
 
 Psyche obeyed the commands of Ceres and took her 
 way to the temple of Venus, endeavoring to fortify her 
 mind and ruminating on what she should say and how 
 best propitiate the angry goddess, feeling that the issue 
 was doubtful and perhaps fatal. 
 
 Venus received her with angry countenance. “Most 
 undutiful and faithless of servants,” said she, “do you 
 at last remember that you really have a mistress? Or 
 have you rather come to see your sick husband, yet laid 
 up of the wound given him by his loving wife? You are 
 so ill-favored and disagreeable that the only way you 
 can merit your lover must be by dint of industry and 
 diligence. I will make trial of your housewifery.” Then 
 she ordered Psyche to be led to the storehouse of her 
 temple, where was laid up a great quantity of wheat, 
 barley, millet, vetches, beans, and lentils prepared for 
 food for her pigeons, and said, “Take and separate all 
 these grains, putting all of the same kind in a parcel 
 by themselves, and see that you get it done before even¬ 
 ing.” Then Venus departed and left her to her task. 
 
 But Psyche, in a perfect consternation at the enor¬ 
 mous work, sat stupid and silent, without moving a fin¬ 
 ger to the inextricable heap. 
 
 While she sat despairing, Cupid stirred up the little 
 ant, a native of the fields, to take compassion on her. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE 
 
 87 
 
 The leader of the ant hill, followed by whole hosts of 
 his six-legged subjects, approached the heap, and with 
 the utmost diligence, taking grain by grain, they sep¬ 
 arated the pile, sorting each kind to its parcel; and 
 when it was all done, they vanished out of sight in a 
 moment. 
 
 Venus at the approach of twilight returned from the 
 banquet of the gods, breathing odors and crowned with 
 roses. Seeing the task done, she exclaimed, “This is 
 no work of yours, wicked one, but his, whom to your 
 own and his misfortune you have enticed.” So saying, 
 she threw her a piece of black bread for her supper and 
 went away. 
 
 Next morning Venus ordered Psyche to be called 
 and said to her, “Behold yonder grove which stretches 
 along the margin of the water. There you will find 
 sheep feeding without a shepherd, with golden-shining 
 fleeces on their backs. Go, fetch me a sample of that 
 precious wool gathered from every one of their fleeces.” 
 
 Psyche obediently went to the riverside, prepared to 
 do her best to execute the command. But the river god 
 inspired the reeds with harmonious murmurs, which 
 seemed to say, “O maiden, severely tried, tempt not the 
 dangerous flood, nor venture among the formidable 
 rams on the other side, for as long as they are under 
 the influence of the rising sun, they burn with a cruel 
 rage to destroy mortals with their sharp horns or rude 
 teeth. But when the noontide sun has driven the cattle 
 to the shade, and the serene spirit of the flood has lulled 
 them to rest, you may then cross in safety, and you will 
 find the woolly gold sticking to the bushes and the 
 trunks of the trees.” 
 
 Thus the compassionate river god gave Psyche in¬ 
 structions how to accomplish her task, and by observ¬ 
 ing his directions she soon returned to Venus with her 
 arms full of the golden fleece; but she received not 
 the approbation of her implacable mistress, who said, 
 “I know very well it is by none of your own doings 
 that you have succeeded in this task, and I am not 
 satisfied yet that you have any capacity to make your¬ 
 self useful. But I have another task for you. Here, 
 
88 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 take this box and go your way to the infernal shades, 
 and give this box to Proserpine and say, ‘My mistress 
 Venus desires you to send her a little of your beauty, 
 for in tending her sick son she has lost some of her 
 own.' Be not too long on your errand, for I must paint 
 myself with it to appear at the circle of the gods and 
 goddesses this evening.” 
 
 Psyche was now satisfied that her destruction was at 
 hand, being obliged to go with her own feet directly 
 down to Erebus. Wherefore, to make no delay of what 
 was not to be avoided, she goes to the top of a high 
 tower to precipitate herself headlong, thus to descend 
 the shortest way to the shades below. But a voice from 
 the tower said to her, “Why, poor unlucky girl, dost 
 thou design to put an end to thy days in so dreadful a 
 manner? And what cowardice makes thee sink under 
 this last danger who hast been so miraculously sup¬ 
 ported in all thy former?” Then the voice told her how 
 by a certain cave she might reach the realms of Pluto, 
 and how to avoid all the dangers of the road, to pass 
 by Cerberus, the three-headed dog, and prevail on 
 Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river 
 and bring her back again. But the voice added, “When 
 Proserpine has given you the box filled with her beauty, 
 of all things this is chiefly to be observed by you, that 
 you never once open or look into the box nor allow your 
 curiosity to pry into the treasure of the beauty of the 
 goddesses.” 
 
 Psyche, encouraged by this advice, obeyed it in all 
 things, and taking heed to her ways travelled safely to 
 the kingdom of Pluto. She was admitted to the palace 
 of Proserpine, and without accepting the delicate seat 
 or delicious banquet that was offered her, but contented 
 with coarse bread for her food, she delivered her mes¬ 
 sage from Venus. Presently the box was returned to 
 her, shut and filled with the precious commodity. Then 
 she returned the way she came, and glad was she to 
 come out once more into the light of day. 
 
 But having got so far successfully through her dan¬ 
 gerous task, a longing desire seized her to examine the 
 contents of the box. “What,” said she, “shall I, the 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE 
 
 89 
 
 carrier of this divine beauty, not take the least bit to 
 put on my cheeks to appear to more advantage in the 
 eyes of my beloved husband!” So she carefully opened 
 the box, but found nothing there of any beauty at all, 
 but an infernal and truly Stygian sleep, which being 
 thus set free from its prison, took possession of her, 
 and she fell down in the midst of the road, a sleepy 
 corpse without sense or motion. 
 
 But Cupid, being now recovered from his wound, and 
 not able longer to bear the absence of his beloved 
 Psyche, slipping through the smallest crack of the win¬ 
 dow of his chamber which happened to be left open, 
 flew to the spot where Psyche lay, and gathering up the 
 sleep from her body closed it again in the box, and 
 waked Psyche with a light touch of one of his arrows. 
 “Again,” said he, “hast thou almost perished by the 
 same curiosity. But now perform exactly the task im¬ 
 posed on you by my mother, and I will take care of the 
 rest.” . 
 
 Then Cupid, as swift as lightning penetrating the 
 heights of heaven, presented himself before Jupiter with 
 his supplication. Jupiter lent a favoring ear, and plead¬ 
 ed the cause of the lovers so earnestly with Venus that 
 he won her consent. On this he sent Mercury to bring 
 Psyche up to the heavenly assembly, and when she ar¬ 
 rived, handing her a cup of ambrosia, he said, “Drink 
 this, Psyche, and be immortal; nor shall Cupid ever 
 break away from the knot in which he is tied, but these 
 nuptials shall be perpetual.” 
 
 Thus Psyche became at last united to Cupid, and in 
 due time they had a daughter bom to them whose name 
 was Pleasure. 
 
 The fable of Cupid and Psyche is usually considered 
 allegorical. The Greek name for a butterfly is Psyche, 
 and the same word means the soul. There is no illus¬ 
 tration of the immortality of the soul so striking and 
 beautiful as the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings 
 from the tomb in which it has lain, after a dull, grovel¬ 
 ling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day 
 and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions 
 
90 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which 
 is purified by sufferings and misfortunes, and is thus 
 prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happi¬ 
 ness. 
 
 In works of art Psyche is represented as a maiden 
 with the wings of a butterfly, along with Cupid, in the 
 different situations described in the allegory. 
 
 Milton alludes to the story of Cupid and Psyche in 
 the conclusion of his “Comus”: 
 
 “Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced, 
 
 Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced, 
 
 After her wandering labors long, 
 
 Till free consent the gods among 
 Make her his eternal bride; 
 
 And from her fair unspotted side 
 Two blissful twins are to be bom, 
 
 Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.” 
 
 The allegory of the story of Cupid and Psyche is well 
 presented in the beautiful lines of T. K. Harvey: 
 
 “They wove bright fables in the days of old, 
 
 When reason borrowed fancy’s painted wings; 
 
 When truth’s clear river flowed o’er sands of gold, 
 
 And told in song its high and mystic things! 
 
 And such the sweet and solemn tale of her 
 
 The pilgrim heart, to whom a dream was given, 
 
 That led her through the world,—Love’s worshipper,— 
 
 To seek on earth for him whose home was heaven! 
 
 “In the full city,—by the haunted fount,— 
 
 Through the dim grotto’s tracery of spars,— 
 
 ’Mid the pine temples, on the moonlit mount, 
 
 Where silence sits to listen to the stars; 
 
 In the deep glade where dwells the brooding dove, 
 
 The painted valley, and the scented air, 
 
 She heard far echoes of the voice of Love, 
 
 And found his footsteps’ traces everywhere. 
 
 “But nevermore they met! since doubts and fears, 
 
 Those phantom shapes that haunt and blight the earth, 
 Had come ’twixt her, a child of sin and tears, 
 
 And that bright spirit of immortal birth; 
 
 Until her pining soul and weeping eyes 
 Had learned to seek him only in the skies; 
 
 Till wings unto the weary heart were given, 
 
 And she became Love’s angel bride in heaven!” 
 
CADMUS 
 
 91 
 
 The story of Cupid and Psyche first appears in the 
 works of Apuleius, a writer of the second century of 
 our era. It is therefore of much more recent date than 
 most of the legends of the Age of Fable. It is this 
 that Keats alludes to in his '‘Ode to Psyche”: 
 
 “O latest born and loveliest vision far 
 Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! 
 
 Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-regioned star 
 Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; 
 
 Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, 
 
 Nor altar heaped with flowers; 
 
 Nor virgin choir to make delicious moan 
 Upon the midnight hours; 
 
 No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet, 
 
 From chain-swung censor teeming; 
 
 No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 
 Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming” 
 
 In Moore's “Summer Fete” a fancy ball is described, 
 in which one of the characters personated is Psyche— 
 
 “ . . . not in dark disguise to-night 
 
 Hath our young heroine veiled her light;— 
 
 For see, she walks the earth, Love’s own. 
 
 His wedded bride, by holiest vow 
 Pledged in Olympus, and made known 
 To mortals by the type which now 
 Hangs glittering on her snowy brow. 
 
 That butterfly, mysterious trinket, 
 
 Which means the soul, (though few would think it,) 
 
 And sparkling thus on brow so white 
 Tells us we’ve Psyche here to-night.” 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CADMUS—THE MYRMIDONS 
 
 Jupiter, under the disguise of a bull, had carried 
 away Europa, the daughter of Agenor, king of Phoe¬ 
 nicia. Agenor commanded his son Cadmus to go in 
 search of his sister, and not to return without her. 
 Cadmus went and sought long and far for his sister, 
 
92 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 but could not find her, and not daring to return un¬ 
 successful, consulted the oracle of Apollo to know 
 what country he should settle in. The oracle informed 
 him that he should find a cow in the field, and should 
 follow her wherever she might wander, and where she 
 stopped, should build a city and call it Thebes. Cad¬ 
 mus had hardly left the Castalian cave, from which 
 the oracle was delivered, when he saw a young cow 
 slowly walking before him. He followed her close, of¬ 
 fering at the same time his prayers to Phoebus. The 
 cow went on till she passed the shallow channel of 
 Cephisus and came out into the plain of Panope. There 
 she stood still, and raising her broad forehead to the 
 sky, filled the air with her lowings. Cadmus gave 
 thanks, and stooping down kissed the foreign soil, then 
 lifting his eyes, greeted the surrounding mountains. 
 Wishing to offer a sacrifice to Jupiter, he sent his serv¬ 
 ants to seek pure water for a libation. Near by there 
 stood an ancient grove which had never been profaned 
 by the axe, in the midst of which was a cave, thick cov¬ 
 ered with the growth of bushes, its roof forming a low 
 arch, from beneath which burst forth a fountain of 
 purest water. In the cave lurked a horrid serpent with 
 a crested head and scales glittering like gold. His eyes 
 shone like fire, his body was swollen with venom, he 
 vibrated a triple tongue, and showed a triple row of 
 teeth. No sooner had the Tyrians dipped their pitchers 
 in the fountain, and the in-gushing waters made a sound,^ 
 than the glittering serpent raised his head out of the 
 cave and uttered a fearful hiss. The vessels fell from 
 their hands, the blood left their cheeks, they trembled 
 in every limb. The serpent, twisting his scaly body 
 in a huge coil, raised his head so as to overtop the tall¬ 
 est trees, and while the Tyrians from terror could 
 neither fight nor fly, slew some with his fangs, others 
 in his folds, and others with his poisonous breath. 
 
 Cadmus, having waited for the return of his men 
 till midday, went in search of them. His covering was 
 a lion’s hide, and besides his javelin he carried in his 
 hand a lance, and in his breast a bold heart, a surer 
 reliance than either. When he entered the wood, and 
 
CADMUS 
 
 93 
 
 saw the lifeless bodies of his men, and the monster with 
 his bloody jaws, he exclaimed, “O faithful friends, I 
 will avenge you, or share your death.” So saying he 
 lifted a huge stone and threw it with all his force at 
 the serpent. Such a block would have shaken the wall 
 of a fortress, but it made no impression on the monster. 
 Cadmus next threw his javelin, which met with better 
 success, for it penetrated the serpent’s scales, and pierced 
 through to his entrails. Fierce with pain, the monster 
 turned back his head to view the wound, and attempted 
 to draw out the weapon with his mouth, but broke it off, 
 leaving the iron point rankling in his flesh. His neck 
 swelled with rage, bloody foam covered his jaws, and 
 the breath of his nostrils poisoned the air around. Now 
 he twisted himself into a circle, then stretched himself 
 out on the ground like the trunk of a fallen tree. As 
 he moved onward, Cadmus retreated before him, hold¬ 
 ing his spear opposite to the monster’s opened jaws. 
 The serpent snapped at the weapon and attempted to 
 bite its iron point. At last Cadmus, watching his chance, 
 thrust the spear at a moment when the animal’s head 
 thrown back came against the trunk of a tree, and so 
 succeeded in pinning him to its side. His weight bent 
 the tree as he struggled in the agonies of death. 
 
 While Cadmus stood over his conquered foe, contem¬ 
 plating its vast size, a voice was heard (from whence 
 he knew not, but he heard it distinctly) commanding 
 him to take the dragon’s teeth and sow them in the 
 earth. He obeyed. He made a furrow in the ground, 
 and planted the teeth, destined to produce a crop of 
 men. Scarce had he done so when the clods began to 
 move, and the points of spears to appear above the sur¬ 
 face. Next helmets with their nodding plumes came 
 up, and next the shoulders and breasts and limbs of men 
 with weapons, and in time a harvest of armed warriors. 
 Cadmus, alarmed, prepared to encounter a new enemy, 
 but one of them said to him, “Meddle not with our 
 civil war.” With that he who had spoken smote one 
 of his earth-born brothers with a sword, and he himself 
 fell pierced with an arrow from another. The latter 
 fell victim to a fourth, and in like manner the whole 
 
94 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 crowd dealt with each other till all fell, slain with mu¬ 
 tual wounds, except five survivors. One of these cast 
 away his weapons and said, “Brothers, let us live in 
 peace!” These five joined with Cadmus in building his 
 city, to which they gave the name of Thebes. 
 
 Cadmus obtained in marriage Harmonia, the daughter 
 of Venus. The gods left Olympus to honor the occa¬ 
 sion with their presence, and Vulcan presented the bride 
 with a necklace of surpassing brilliancy, his own work¬ 
 manship. But a fatality hung over the family of Cad¬ 
 mus in consequence of his killing the serpent sacred to 
 Mars. Semele and Ino, his daughters, and Actseon and 
 Pentheus, his grandchildren, all perished unhappily, and 
 Cadmus and Harmonia quitted Thebes, now grown 
 odious to them, and emigrated to the country of the 
 Enchelians, who received them with honor and made 
 Cadmus their king. But the misfortunes of their chil¬ 
 dren still weighed upon their minds; and one day Cad¬ 
 mus exclaimed, “If a serpent’s life is so dear to the 
 gods, I would I were myself a serpent.” No sooner 
 had he uttered the words than he began to change his 
 form. Harmonia beheld it and prayed to the gods to 
 let her share his fate. Both became serpents. They 
 live in the woods, but mindful of their origin, they neither 
 avoid the presence of man nor do they ever injure any 
 one. 
 
 There is a tradition that Cadmus introduced into 
 Greece the letters ©f the alphabet which were invented 
 by the Phoenicians. This is alluded to by Byron, where, 
 addressing the modern Greeks, he says: 
 
 “You have the letters Cadmus gave, 
 
 Think you he meant them for a slave?” 
 
 Milton, describing the serpent which tempted Eve, 
 is reminded of the serpents of the classical stories and 
 says: 
 
 . . . “—pleasing was his shape, 
 
 And lovely: never since of serpent kind 
 Lovelier; not those that in Illyria changed 
 Hermione and Cadmus, nor the god 
 In Epidaurus.” 
 
THE MYRMIDONS 
 
 95 
 
 For an explanation of the last allusion, see Oracle 
 of Hisculapius, p. 298. 
 
 THE MYRMIDONS 
 
 The Myrmidons were the soldiers of Achilles, in the 
 Trojan war. From them all zealous and unscrupulous 
 followers of a political chief are called by that name, 
 down to this day. But the origin of the Myrmidons 
 would not give one the idea of a fierce and bloody race, 
 but rather of a laborious and peaceful one. 
 
 Cephalus, king of Athens, arrived in the island of 
 2Egina to seek assistance of his old friend and ally 
 yEacus, the kirg, in his war with Minos, king of Crete. 
 Cephalus was most kindly received, and the desired as¬ 
 sistance readily promised. “I have people enough,” said 
 yEacus, “to protect myself and spare you such a force 
 as you need.” “I rejoice to see it,” replied Cephalus, 
 “and my wonder has been raised, I confess, to find 
 such a host of youths as I see around me, all apparently 
 of about the same age. Yet there are many individuals 
 whom I previously knew, that I look for now in vain. 
 What has become of them?” YEacus groaned, and re¬ 
 plied with a voice of sadness, “I have been intending 
 to tell you, and will now do so, without more delay, 
 that you may see how from the saddest beginning a 
 happy result sometimes flows. Those whom you for¬ 
 merly knew are now dust and ashes! A plague sent 
 by angry Juno devastate! the land. She hated it be¬ 
 cause it bore the name of one of her husband’s female 
 favorites. While the disease appeared to spring from 
 natural causes we resisted it, as we best might, by nat¬ 
 ural remedies; but it soon appeared that the pestilence 
 was too powerful for our efforts, and we yielded. At 
 the beginning the sky seemed to settle down upon the 
 earth, and thick clouds shut in the heated air. For four 
 months together a deadly south wind prevailed. The 
 disorder affected the wells and springs; thousands of 
 snakes crept over the land and shed their poison in 
 the fountains. The force of the disease was first spent 
 on the lower animals—dogs, cattle, sheep, and birds. 
 The luckless ploughman wondered to see his oxen fall 
 
96 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 in the midst of their work, and lie helpless in the un¬ 
 finished furrow. The wool fell from the bleating sheep, 
 and their bodies pined away. The horse, once foremost 
 in the race, contested the palm no more, but groaned 
 at his stall and died an inglorious death. The wild 
 boar forgot his rage, the stag his swiftness, the bears 
 no longer attacked the herds. Everything languished; 
 dead bodies lay in the roads, the fields, and the woods; 
 the air was poisoned by them. I tell you what is hardly 
 credible, but neither dogs nor birds would touch them, 
 nor starving wolves. Their decay spread the infection. 
 Next the disease attacked the country people, and then 
 the dwellers in the city. At first the cheek was flushed, 
 and the breath drawn with difficulty. The tongue grew 
 rough and swelled, and the dry mouth stood open with 
 its veins enlarged and gasped for the air. Men could 
 not bear the heat of their clothes or their beds, but 
 preferred to lie on the bare ground; and the ground 
 did not cool them, but, on the contrary, they heated the 
 spot where they lay. Nor could the physicians help, 
 for the disease attacked them also, and the contact of 
 the sick gave them infection, so that the most faithful 
 were the first victims. At last all hope of relief van¬ 
 ished, and men learned to look upon death as the only 
 deliverer from disease. Then they gave way to every 
 inclination, and cared not to ask what was expedient, 
 for nothing was expedient. All restraint laid aside, they 
 crowded around the wells and fountains and drank till 
 they died, without quenching thirst. Many had not 
 strength to get away from the water, but died in the 
 midst of the stream, and others would drink of it not¬ 
 withstanding. Such was their weariness of their sick 
 beds that some would creep forth, and if not strong 
 enough to stand, would die on the ground. They 
 seemed to hate their friends, and got away from their 
 homes, as if, not knowing the cause of their sickness, 
 they charged it on the place of their abode. Some were 
 seen tottering along the road, as long as they could stand, 
 while others sank on the earth, and turned their dying 
 eyes around to take a last look, then closed them in 
 death. 
 
THE MYRMIDONS 
 
 97 
 
 “What heart had I left me, during all this, or what 
 ought I to have had, except to hate life and wish to 
 be with my dead subjects? On all sides lay my people 
 strewn like over-ripened apples beneath the tree, or 
 acorns under the storm-shaken oak. You see yonder 
 a temple on the height. It is sacred to Jupiter. O how 
 many offered prayers there, husbands for wives, fathers 
 for sons, and died in the very act of supplication! How 
 often, while the priest made ready for sacrifice, the vic¬ 
 tim fell, struck down by disease without waiting for 
 the blow! At length all reverence for sacred things was 
 lost. Bodies were thrown out unburied, wood was 
 wanting for funeral piles, men fought with one another 
 for the possession of them. Finally there were none left 
 to mourn; sons and husbands, old men and youths, per¬ 
 ished alike unlamented. 
 
 “Standing before the altar I raised my eyes to heaven. 
 ‘O Jupiter/ I said, ‘if thou art indeed my father, and 
 art not ashamed of thy offspring, give me back my 
 people, or take me also away!’ At these words a clap 
 of thunder was heard. T accept the omen/ I cried; 
 ‘O may it be a sign of a favorable disposition towards 
 me!’ By chance there grew by the place where I stood 
 an oak with wide-spreading branches, sacred to Jupiter. 
 I observed a troop of ants busy with their labor, carry¬ 
 ing minute grains in their mouths and following one 
 another in a line up the trunk of the tree. Observing 
 their numbers with admiration, I said, ‘Give rue, O 
 father, citizens as numerous as these, and replenish my 
 empty city/ The tree shook and gave a rustling sound 
 with its branches, though no wind agitated them. I 
 trembled in everj^ limb, yet I kissed the earth and the 
 tree. I would not confess to myself that I hoped, yet 
 I did hope. Night came on and sleep took possession 
 of my frame oppressed with cares. The tree stood be¬ 
 fore me in my dreams, with its numerous branches all 
 covered with living, moving creatures. It seemed to 
 shake its limbs and throw down over the ground a mul¬ 
 titude of those industrious grain-gathering animals, 
 which appeared to gain in size, and grow larger and 
 larger, and by and by to stand erect, lay aside their 
 
98 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 superfluous legs and their black color, and finally to 
 assume the human form. Then I awoke, and my first 
 impulse was to chide the gods who had robbed me of 
 a sweet vision and given me no reality in its place. 
 Being still in the temple, my attention was caught by 
 the sound of many voices without; a sound of late un¬ 
 usual to my ears. While I began to think I was yet 
 dreaming, Telamon, my son, throwing open the temple 
 gates, exclaimed: ‘Father, approach, and behold things 
 surpassing even your hopes!’ I went forth; I saw a 
 multitude of men, such as I had seen in my dream, and 
 they were passing in procession in the same manner. 
 While I gazed with wonder and delight they approached 
 and kneeling hailed me as their king. I paid my vows 
 to Jove, and proceeded to allot the vacant city to the 
 new-born race, and to parcel out the fields among them. 
 I called them Myrmidons, from the ant (myrmex) from 
 which they sprang. You have seen these persons; their 
 dispositions resemble those which they had in their for¬ 
 mer shape. They are a diligent and industrious race, 
 eager to gain, and tenacious of their gains. Among 
 them you may recruit your forces. They will follow 
 you to the war, young in years and bold in heart/'’ 
 This description of the plague is copied by Ovid from 
 the account which Thucydides, the Greek historian, gives 
 of the plague of Athens. The historian drew from 
 life, and all the poets and writers of fiction since his 
 day, when they have had occasion to describe a simi¬ 
 lar scene, have borrowed their details from him*. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 NISUS AND SCYLLA—ECHO AND NARCISSUS—CLYTIE— 
 
 HERO AND LEANDER 
 
 NISUS AND SCYLLA 
 
 Minos, king of Crete, made war upon Megara. Nisus 
 was king of Megara, and Scylla was his daughter. The 
 
NISUS AND SCYLLA 
 
 99 
 
 siege had now lasted six months and the city still held 
 out, for it was decreed by fate that it should not be 
 taken so long as a certain purple lock, which glittered 
 among the hair of King Nisus, remained on his head. 
 There was a tower on the city walls, which overlooked 
 the plain where Minos and his army were encamped. 
 To this tower Scylla used to repair, and look abroad 
 over the tents of the hostile army. The siege had lasted 
 so long that she had learned to distinguish the persons 
 of the leaders. Minos, in particular, excited her ad¬ 
 miration. Arrayed in his helmet, and bearing his shield, 
 she admired his graceful deportment; if he threw his 
 javelin skill seemed combined with force in the dis¬ 
 charge; if he drew his bow Apollo himself could not 
 have done it more gracefully. But when he laid aside 
 his helmet, and in his purple robes bestrode his white 
 horse with its gay caparisons, and reined in its foam¬ 
 ing mouth, the daughter of Nisus was hardly mistress 
 of herself; she was almost frantic with admiration. 
 She envied the weapon that he grasped, the reins that 
 he held. She felt as if she could, if it were possible, 
 go to him through the hostile ranks; she felt an im¬ 
 pulse to cast herself down from the tower into the midst 
 of his camp, or to open the gates to him, or to do any¬ 
 thing else, so only it might gratify Minos. As she sat 
 in the tower, she talked thus with herself: “I know 
 not whether to rejoice or grieve at this sad war. I 
 grieve that Minos is our enemy; but I rejoice at any 
 cause that brings him to my sight. Perhaps he would 
 be willing to grant us peace, and receive me as a 
 hostage. I would fly down, if I could, and alight in 
 his camp, and tell him that we yield ourselves to his 
 mercy. But then, to betray my father! No! rather 
 would I never see Minos again. And yet no doubt it 
 is sometimes the best thing for a city to be conquered, 
 when the conqueror is clement and generous. Minos 
 certainly has right on his side. I think we shall be 
 conquered; and if that must be the end of it, why 
 should not love unbar the gates to him, instead of 
 leaving it to be done by war? Better spare delay and 
 slaughter if we can. And O if any one should wound 
 
100 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 or kill Minos! No one surely would have the heart 
 to do it; yet ignorantly, not knowing him, one might. 
 I will, I will surrender myself to him, with my coun¬ 
 try as a dowry, and so put an end to the war. But 
 how? The gates are guarded, and my father keeps 
 the keys; he only stands in my way. O that it might 
 please the gods to take him away! But why ask the 
 gods to do it? Another woman, loving as I do, would 
 remove with her own hands whatever stood in the way 
 of her love. And can any other woman dare more 
 than I? I would encounter fire and sword to gain 
 my object; but here there is no need of fire and sword. 
 I only need my father’s purple lock. More precious 
 than gold to me, that will give me all I wish.” 
 
 While she thus reasoned night came on, and soon 
 the whole palace was buried in sleep. She entered 
 her father’s bedchamber and cut off the fatal lock; 
 then passed out of the city and entered the enemy’s 
 camp. She demanded to be led to the king, and thus 
 addressed him: “I am Scylla, the daughter of Nisus. 
 I surrender to you my country and my father’s house. 
 I ask no reward but yourself; for love of you I have 
 done it. See here the purple lock! With this I give 
 you my father and his kingdom.” She held out her 
 hand with the fatal spoil. Minos shrunk back and re¬ 
 fused to touch it. “The gods destroy thee, infamous 
 woman,” he exclaimed; “disgrace of our time! May 
 neither earth nor sea yield thee a resting-place! Surely, 
 my Crete, where Jove himself was cradled, shall not 
 be polluted with such a monster!” Thus he said, and 
 gave orders that equitable terms should be allowed to 
 the conquered city, and that the fleet should immediately 
 sail from the island. 
 
 Scylla was frantic. “Ungrateful man,” she exclaimed, 
 “is it thus you leave me?—me who have given you 
 victory,—who have sacrificed for you parent and coun¬ 
 try ! I am guilty, I confess, and deserve to die, but 
 not by your hand.” As the ships left the shore, she 
 leaped into the water, and seizing the rudder of the 
 one which carried Minos, she was borne along an un¬ 
 welcome companion of their course. A sea-eagle soar- 
 
ECHO AND NARCISSUS 
 
 101 
 
 ing aloft,—it was her father who had been changed 
 into that form,—seeing her, pounced down upon her, 
 and struck her with his beak and claws. In terror 
 she let go the ship and would have fallen into the 
 water, but some pitying deity changed her into a bird. 
 The sea-eagle still cherishes the old animosity; and 
 whenever he espies her in his lofty flight you may see 
 him dart down upon her, with beak and claws, to take 
 vengeance for the ancient crime. 
 
 ECHO AND NARCISSUS 
 
 Echo was a beautiful nymph, fond of the woods and 
 hills, where she devoted herself to woodland sports. 
 She was a favorite of Diana, and attended her in the 
 chase. But Echo had one failing; she was fond of 
 talking, and whether in chat or argument, would have 
 the last word. One day Juno was seeking her husband, 
 who, she had reason to fear, was amusing himself 
 among the nymphs. Echo by her talk contrived to de¬ 
 tain the goddess till the nymphs made their escape. 
 When Juno discovered it, she passed sentence upon Echo 
 in these words: “You shall forfeit the use of that 
 tongue with which you have cheated me, except for 
 that one purpose you are so fond of— reply. You 
 shall still have the last word, but no power to speak 
 first.” 
 
 This nymph saw Narcissus, a beautiful youth, as he 
 pursued the chase upon the mountains. She loved him, 
 and followed his footsteps. O how she longed to ad¬ 
 dress him in the softest accents, and win him to con¬ 
 verse! but it was not in her power. She waited with 
 impatience for him to speak first, and had her answer 
 ready. One day the youth, being separated from his 
 companions, shouted aloud, “Who’s here?” Echo re¬ 
 plied, “Here.” Narcissus looked around, but seeing no 
 one called out, “Come.” Echo answered, “Come.” As 
 no one came, Narcissus called again, “Why do you 
 shun me?” Echo asked the same question. “Let us 
 join one another,” said the youth. The maid an¬ 
 swered with all her heart in the same words, and hast- 
 
102 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 ened to the spot, ready to throw her arms about his 
 neck. He started back, exclaiming, “Hands off! I 
 would rather die than you should have me!” “Have 
 me,” said she; but it was all in vain. He left her, 
 and she went to hide her blushes in the recesses of 
 the woods. From that time forth she lived in caves 
 and among mountain cliffs. Her form faded with grief, 
 till at last all her flesh shrank away. Her bones were 
 changed into rocks and there was nothing left of her 
 but her voice. With that she is still ready to reply to 
 any one who calls her, and keeps up her old habit of 
 having the last word. 
 
 Narcissus’s cruelty in this case was not the only in¬ 
 stance. He shunned all the rest of the nymphs, as 
 he had done poor Echo. One day a maiden who had 
 in vain endeavored to attract him uttered a prayer that 
 he might some time or other feel what it was to love 
 and meet no return of affection. The avenging god¬ 
 dess heard and granted the prayer. 
 
 There was a clear fountain, with water like silver, 
 to which the shepherds never drove their flocks, nor 
 the mountain goats resorted, nor any of the beasts of 
 the forest; neither was it defaced with fallen leaves or 
 branches; but the grass grew fresh around it, and the 
 rocks sheltered it from the sun. Hither came one day 
 the youth, fatigued with hunting, heated and thirsty. 
 He stooped down to drink, and saw his own image 
 in the water; he thought it was some beautiful water- 
 spirit living in the fountain. He stood gazing with 
 admiration at those bright eyes, those locks curled like 
 the locks of Bacchus or Apollo, the rounded cheeks, 
 the ivory neck, the parted lips, and the glow of health 
 and exercise over all. He fell in love with himself. 
 He brought his lips near to take a kiss; he plunged his 
 arms in to embrace the beloved object. It fled at the 
 touch, but returned again after a moment and renewed 
 the fascination. He could not tear himself away; he 
 lost all thought of food or rest, while he hovered over 
 the brink of the fountain gazing upon his own image. 
 He talked with the supposed spirit: “Why, beautiful 
 being, do you shun me? Surely my face is not one 
 
ECHO AND NARCISSUS 
 
 103 
 
 to repel you. The nymphs love me, and you your¬ 
 self look not indifferent upon me. When I stretch 
 forth my arms you do the same; and you smile upon 
 me and answer my beckonings with the like.” His tears 
 fell into the water and disturbed the image. As he 
 saw it depart, he exclaimed, “Stay, I entreat you! Let 
 me at least gaze upon you, if I may not touch you.” 
 With this, and much more of the same kind, he cher¬ 
 ished the flame that consumed him, so that by degrees 
 he lost his color, his vigor, and the beauty which for¬ 
 merly had so charmed the nymph Echo. She kept near 
 him, however, and when he exclaimed, “Alas! alas!” 
 she answered him with the same words. He pined 
 away and died; and when his shade passed the Stygian 
 river, it leaned over the boat to catch a look of itself 
 in the waters. The nymphs mourned for him, espe¬ 
 cially the water-nymphs; and when they smote their 
 breasts Echo smote hers also. They prepared a funeral 
 pile and would have burned the body, but it was no¬ 
 where to be found; but in its place a flower, purple 
 within, and surrounded with white leaves, which bears 
 the name and preserves the memory of Narcissus. 
 
 Milton alludes to the story of Echo and Narcissus in 
 the Lady’s song in “Comus.” She is seeking her 
 brothers in the forest, and sings to attract their at¬ 
 tention : 
 
 “Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen 
 Within thy aery shell 
 By slow Meander’s margent green, 
 
 And in the violet-embroidered vale, 
 
 Where the love-lorn nightingale 
 Nightly to thee her sad song moumeth well; 
 
 Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair 
 That likest thy Narcissus are? 
 
 O, if thou have 
 
 Hid them in some flowery cave, 
 
 Tell me but where, 
 
 Sweet queen of parly, daughter of the sphere, 
 
 So may’st thou be translated to the skies, 
 
 And give resounding grace to all heaven’s harmonies.” 
 
 Milton has imitated the story of Narcissus in the 
 account which he makes Eve give of the first sight 
 of herself reflected in the fountain: 
 
104 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 “That day I oft remember when from sleep 
 I first awaked, and found myself reposed 
 Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where 
 And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. 
 
 Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound 
 Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
 Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved 
 Pure as the expanse of heaven; I thither went 
 With unexperienced thought, and laid me down 
 On the green bank, to look into the clear 
 Smooth lake that to me seemed another sky. 
 
 As I bent down to look, just opposite 
 A shape within the watery gleam appeared, 
 
 Bending to look on me. I started back; 
 
 It started back; but pleased I soon returned, 
 
 Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks 
 Of sympathy and love. There had I fixed 
 Mine eyes till now, and pined wi vain desire, 
 
 Had not a voice thus warned me: ‘What thou seest, 
 
 What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself;’ ” etc. 
 
 —Paradise Lost, Book IV. 
 
 No one of the fables of antiquity has been oftener 
 alluded to by the poets than that of Narcissus. Here 
 are two epigrams which treat it in different ways. The 
 first is by Goldsmith: 
 
 “On a Beautiful Youth, struck Blind by Lightning 
 
 “Sure ’twas by Providence designed, 
 
 Rather in pity than in hate, 
 
 That he should be like Cupid blind, 
 
 To save him from Narcissus’ fate.” 
 
 The other is by Cowper: 
 
 “On an Ugly Fellow 
 
 “Beware, my friend, of crystal brook 
 Or fountain, lest that hideous hook, 
 
 Thy nose, thou chance to see; 
 
 Narcissus’ fate would then be thine, 
 
 And self-detested thou would’st pine, 
 
 As self-enamoured he.” 
 
 CLYTIE 
 
 Clytie was a water-nymph and in love with Apollo, 
 who made her no return. So she pined away, sitting 
 
HERO AND LEANDER 
 
 105 
 
 all day long upon the cold ground, with her unbound 
 tresses streaming over her shoulders. Nine days she 
 sat and tasted neither food nor drink, her own tears 
 and the chilly dew her only food. She gazed on the 
 sun when he rose, and as he passed through his daily 
 course to his setting; she saw no other object, her face 
 turned constantly on him. At last, they say, her limbs 
 rooted in the ground, her face became a flower 1 which 
 turns on its stem so as always to face the sun through¬ 
 out its daily course; for it retains to that extent the 
 feeling of the nymph from whom it sprang. 
 
 Hood, in his “Flowers,” thus alludes to Clytie: 
 
 “I will not have the mad Clytie, 
 
 Whose head is turned by the sun; 
 
 The tulip is a courtly quean, 
 
 Whom therefore I will shun; 
 
 The cowslip is a country wench, 
 
 The violet is a nun;— 
 
 But I will woo the dainty rose, 
 
 The queen of every one.” 
 
 The sunflower is a favorite emblem of constancy. 
 Thus Moore uses it: 
 
 “The heart that has truly loved never forgets, 
 
 But as truly loves on to the close; 
 
 As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets 
 The same look that she turned when he rose.” 
 
 HERO AND LEANDER 
 
 Leander was a youth of Abydos, a town of the 
 Asian side of the strait which separates Asia and Eu¬ 
 rope. On the opposite shore, in the town of Sestos, 
 lived the maiden Hero, a priestess of Venus. Leander 
 loved her, and used to swim the strait nightly to enjoy 
 the company of his mistress, guided by a torch which 
 she reared upon the tower for the purpose. But one 
 night a tempest arose apd the sea was rough; his 
 strength failed, and he was drowned. The waves bore 
 his body to the European shore, where Hero became 
 
 1 The sunflower. 
 
106 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 aware of his death, and in her despair cast herself 
 down from the tower into the sea and perished. 
 
 The following sonnet is by Keats: 
 
 “On a Picture of Leander 
 
 “Come hither all sweet maidens soberly, 
 
 Down looking aye, and with a chasten’d light 
 Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, 
 
 And meekly let your fair hands joined be. 
 
 As if so gentle that ye could not see, 
 
 Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright, 
 
 Sinking away to his young spirit’s night, 
 
 Sinking bewilder’d ’mid the dreary sea. 
 
 ’T is young Leander toiling to his death. 
 
 Nigh swooning he doth purse his weary lips 
 For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile. 
 
 O horrid dream! see how his body dips 
 Dead-heavy; ar-as and shoulders gleam awhile; 
 
 He’s gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!” 
 
 The story of Leander’s swimming the Hellespont was 
 looked upon as fabulous, and the feat considered 
 impossible, till Lord Byron proved its possibility by 
 performing it himself. In the “Bride of Abydos” he 
 says, 
 
 “These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne.” 
 
 The distance in the narrowest part is almost a mile, 
 and there is a constant current setting out from the 
 Sea of Marmora into the Archipelago. Since Byron’s 
 time the feat has been achieved by others; but it yet 
 remains a test of strength and skill in the art of swim¬ 
 ming sufficient to give a wide and lasting celebrity to 
 any one of our readers who may dare to make the at¬ 
 tempt and succeed in accomplishing it. 
 
 In the beginning of the second canto of the same poem, 
 Byron thus alludes to this story: 
 
 “The winds are high on Helle’s wave, 
 
 As on that night of stormiest water, 
 
 When Love, who sent, forgot to save 
 The young, the beautiful, the brave, 
 
 The lonely hope of Sestos’ daughter. 
 
MINERVA 
 
 107 
 
 O, when alone along the sky 
 The turret-torch was blazing high, 
 
 Though rising gale and breaking foam, 
 
 And shrieking sea-birds warned him home; 
 And clouds aloft and tides below, 
 
 With signs and sounds forbade to go, 
 
 He could not see, he would not hear 
 Or sound or sight foreboding fear. 
 
 His eye but saw that light of love, 
 
 The only star it hailed above; 
 
 His ear but rang with Hero’s song, 
 
 ‘Ye waves, divide not lovers long/ 
 
 That tale is old, but love anew 
 
 May nerve young hearts to prove as true/ , 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MINERVA—NIOBE 
 MINERVA 
 
 Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, was the daughter 
 of Jupiter. She was said to have leaped forth from 
 his brain, mature, and in complete armor. She presided 
 over the useful and ornamental arts, both those of men 
 —such as agriculture and navigation—and those of 
 women,—spinning, weaving, and needlework. She was 
 also a warlike divinity; but it was defensive war only 
 that she patronized, and she had no sympathy with 
 Mars’s savage love of violence and bloodshed. Athens 
 was her chosen seat, her own city, awarded to her as the 
 prize of a contest with Neptune, who also aspired to 
 it. The tale ran that in the reign of Cecrops, the first 
 king of Athens, the two deities contended for the pos¬ 
 session of the city. The gods decreed that it should 
 be awarded to that one who produced the gift most 
 useful to mortals. Neptune gave the horse; Minerva 
 produced the olive. The gods gave judgment that the 
 olive was the more useful of the two, and awarded the 
 city to the goddess; and it was named after her, Athens, 
 her name in Greek being Athene. 
 
 There was another contest, in which a mortal dared 
 
108 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 to come in competition with Minerva. That mortal was 
 Arachne, a maiden who had attained such skill in the 
 arts of weaving and embroidery that the nymphs them¬ 
 selves would leave their groves and fountains to come 
 and gaze upon her work. It was not only beautiful 
 when it was done, but beautiful also in the doing. To 
 watch her, as she took the wool in its rude state and 
 formed it into rolls, or separated it with her fingers 
 and carded it till it looked as light and soft as a cloud, 
 or twirled the spindle with skilful touch, or wove the 
 web, or, after it was woven, adorned it with her needle, 
 one would have said that Minerva herself had taught 
 her. But this she denied, and could not bear to be 
 thought a pupil even of a goddess. “Let Minerva try 
 her skill with mine,” said she; “if beaten I will pay the 
 penalty.” Minerva heard this and was displeased. She 
 assumed the form of an old woman and went and gave 
 Arachne some friendly advice. “I have had much ex¬ 
 perience,” said she, “and I hope you will not despise 
 my counsel. Challenge your fellow-mortals as you will, 
 but do not compete with a goddess. On the contrary, 
 I advise you to ask her forgiveness for what you have 
 said, and as she is merciful perhaps she will pardon 
 you.” Arachne stopped her spinning and looked at the 
 old dame with anger in her countenance. “Keep your 
 counsel,” said she, “for your daughters or handmaids; 
 for my part I know what I say, and I stand to it. I 
 am not afraid of the goddess; let her try her skill, 
 if she dare venture.” “She comes,” said Minerva; and 
 dropping her disguise stood confessed. The nymphs 
 bent low in homage, and all the bystanders paid rever¬ 
 ence. Arachne alone was unterrified. She blushed, in¬ 
 deed; a sudden color dyed her cheek, and then she grew 
 pale. But she stood to her resolve, and with a foolish 
 conceit of her own skill rushed on her fate. Minerva 
 forbore no longer nor interposed any further advice. 
 They proceed to the contest. Each takes her station 
 and attaches the web to the beam. Then the slender 
 shuttle is passed in and out among the threads. The 
 reed with its fine teeth strikes up the woof into its 
 place and compacts the web. Both work with speed; 
 
MINERVA 
 
 109 
 
 their skilful hands move rapidly, and the excitement of 
 the contest makes the labor light. Wool of Tyrian dye 
 is contrasted with that of other colors, shaded off into 
 one another so adroitly that the joining deceives the eye. 
 Like the bow, whose long arch tinges the heavens, formed 
 by sunbeams reflected from the shower, 1 in which, where 
 the colors meet they seem as one, but at a little dis¬ 
 tance from the point of contact are wholly different. 
 
 Minerva wrought on her web the scene of her con¬ 
 test with Neptune. Twelve of the heavenly powers are 
 represented, Jupiter, with august gravity, sitting in the 
 midst. Neptune, the ruler of the sea, holds his trident, 
 and appears to have just smitten the earth, from which 
 a horse has leaped forth. Minerva depicted herself 
 with helmed head, her iEgis covering her breast. Such 
 was the central circle; and in the four corners were rep¬ 
 resented incidents illustrating the displeasure of the gods 
 at such presumptuous mortals as had dared to contend 
 with them. These were meant as warnings to her rival 
 to give up the contest before it was too late. 
 
 Arachne filled her web with subjects designedly 
 chosen to exhibit the failings and errors of the gods. 
 One scene represented Leda caressing the swan, under 
 which form Jupiter had disguised himself; and another, 
 Danae, in the brazen tower in which her father had 
 imprisoned her, but where the god effected his entrance 
 in the form of a golden shower. Still another depicted 
 Europa deceived by Jupiter under the disguise of a 
 bull. Encouraged by the tameness of the animal Europa 
 ventured to mount his back, whereupon Jupiter ad¬ 
 vanced into the sea and swam with her to Crete. You 
 would have thought it was a real bull, so naturally was 
 it wrought, and so natural the water in which it swam. 
 She seemed to look with longing eyes back upon the 
 shore she was leaving, and to call to her companions for 
 help. She appeared to shudder with terror at the sight 
 of the heaving waves, and to draw back her feet from 
 the water. 
 
 Arachne filled her canvas with similar subjects, won- 
 
 1 This correct description of the rainbow is literally translated from 
 Ovid. 
 
110 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 derfully well done, but strongly marking her presump¬ 
 tion and impiety. Minerva could not forbear to admire, 
 yet felt indignant at the insult. She struck the web with 
 her shuttle and rent it in pieces; she then touched the 
 forehead of Arachne and made her feel her guilt and 
 shame. She could not endure it and went and hanged 
 herself. Minerva pitied her as she saw her suspended 
 by a rope. “Live,” she said, “guilty woman! and that 
 you may preserve the memory of this lesson, continue 
 to hang, both you and your descendants, to all future 
 times.” She sprinkled her with the juices of aconite, 
 and immediately her hair came off, and her nose and 
 ears likewise. Her form shrank up, and her head grew 
 smaller yet; her fingers cleaved to her side and served 
 for legs. All the rest of her is body, out of which she 
 spins her thread, often hanging suspended by it, in the 
 same attitude as when Minerva touched her and trans¬ 
 formed her into a spider. 
 
 Spenser tells the story of Arachne in his “Muiopot* 
 mos,” adhering very closely to his master Ovid, but 
 improving upon him in the conclusion of the story. 
 The two stanzas which follow tell what was done after 
 the goddess had depicted her creation of the olive tree: 
 
 “Amongst these leaves she made a Butterfly, 
 
 With excellent device and wondrous slight, 
 
 Fluttering among the olives wantonly, 
 
 That seemed to live, so like it was in sight; 
 
 The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie, 
 
 The silken down with which his back is dight, 
 
 His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs, 
 
 His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes .” 1 
 
 “Which when Arachne saw, as overlaid 
 And mastered with workmanship so rare, 
 
 She stood astonied long, ne aught gainsaid; 
 
 And with fast-fixed eyes on her did stare, 
 
 And by her silence, sign of one dismayed, 
 
 The victory did yield her as her share: 
 
 Yet did she inly fret and felly burn, 
 
 And all her blood to poisonous rancor turn.” 
 
 'Sir James Mackintosh says of this, “Do you think that even a Chines* 
 could paint the gay colors of a butterfly with more minute exactness than 
 the following lines: ‘The velvet nap,’ etc.?”— Life, Vol. II.» 246. 
 
NIOBE 
 
 111 
 
 And so the metamorphosis is caused by Arachne’s own 
 mortification and vexation, and not by any direct act 
 of the goddess. ' 
 
 The following specimen of old-fashioned gallantry is 
 iby Garrick: 
 
 “Upon a Lady's Embroidery 
 
 “Arachne once, as poets tell, 
 
 A goddess at her art defied, 
 
 And soon the daring mortal fell 
 The hapless victim of her pride. 
 
 “O, then beware Arachne’s fate; 
 
 Be prudent, Chloe, and submit, 
 
 For you’ll most surely meet her hate. 
 
 Who rival both her art and wit.” 
 
 Tennyson, in his “Palace of Art,” describing the 
 works of art with which the palace was adorned, thus 
 alludes to Europa: 
 
 . . sweet Europa’s mantle blew unclasped 
 From off her shoulder, backward borne, 
 
 From one hand drooped a crocus, one hand grasped 
 The mild bull’s golden horn.” 
 
 In his “Princess” there is this allusion to Danae: 
 
 “Now lies the earth all Danae to the stars, 
 
 And all thy heart lies open unto me.” 
 
 NIOBE 
 
 The fate of Arachne was noised abroad through all 
 the country, and served as a warning to all presump¬ 
 tuous mortals not to compare themselves with the divini¬ 
 ties. But one, and she a matron too, failed to learn 
 the lesson of humility. It was Niobe, the queen of 
 Thebes. She had indeed much to be proud of; but it 
 was not her husband’s fame, nor her own beauty, nor 
 their great descent, nor the power of their kingdom that 
 elated her. It was her children; and truly the happiest 
 of mothers would Niobe have been if only she had not 
 claimed to be so. It was on occasion of the annual cele- 
 
112 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 bration in honor of Latona and her offspring, Apollo 
 and Diana,—when the people of Thebes were assem¬ 
 bled, their brows crowned with laurel, bearing frankin¬ 
 cense to the altars and paying their vows,—that Niobe 
 appeared among the crowd. Her attire was splendid with 
 gold and gems, and her aspect beautiful as the face of 
 an angry woman can be. She stood and surveyed the 
 people with haughty looks. “What folly/' said she, “is 
 this!—to prefer beings whom you never saw to those 
 who stand before your eyes! Why should Latona be 
 honored with worship, and none be paid to me? My 
 father was Tantalus, who was received as a guest at the 
 table of the gods; my mother was a goddess. My hus¬ 
 band built and rules this city, Thebes, and Phrygia is 
 my paternal inheritance. Wherever I turn my eyes I 
 survey the elements of my power; nor is my form and 
 presence unworthy of a goddess. To all this let me add 
 I have seven sons and seven daughters, and look for 
 sons-in-law and daughters-in-law of pretensions worthy 
 of my alliance. Have I not cause for pride? Will you 
 prefer to me this Latona, the Titan’s daughter, with 
 her two children? I have seven times as m,any. For¬ 
 tunate indeed am I, and fortunate I shall remain! Will 
 any one deny this? My abundance is my security. I 
 feel myself too strong for Fortune to subdue. She may 
 take from me much; I shall still have much left. Were 
 I to lose some of my children, I should hardly be left 
 as poor as Latona with her two only. Away with you 
 from these solemnities,—put off the laurel from your 
 brows,—have done with this worship!” The people 
 obeyed, and left the sacred services uncompleted. 
 
 The goddess was indignant. On the Cynthian moun¬ 
 tain top where she dwelt she thus addressed her son and 
 daughter: “My children, I who have been so proud of 
 you both, and have been used to hold myself second 
 to none of the goddesses except Juno alone, begin now 
 to doubt whether I am indeed a goddess. I shall be de¬ 
 prived of my worship altogether unless you protect me.” 
 She was proceeding in this strain, but Apollo interrupted 
 her. “Say no more,” said he; “speech only delays pun¬ 
 ishment.” So said Diana also. Darting through the air, 
 
NIOBE 
 
 113 
 
 veiled in clouds, they alighted on the towers of the city. 
 Spread out before the gates was a broad plain, where 
 the youth of the city pursued their warlike sports. The 
 sons of Niobe were there with the rest,—some mounted 
 on spirited horses richly caparisoned, some driving gay 
 chariots. Ismenos, the first-born, as he guided his foam¬ 
 ing steeds, struck with an arrow from above, cried out, 
 “Ah me!” dropped the reins, and fell lifeless. Another, 
 hearing the sound of the bow,—like a boatman who sees 
 the storm gathering and makes all sail for the port,— 
 gave the reins to his horses and attempted to escape. 
 The inevitable arrow overtook him as he fled. Two 
 others, younger boys, just from their tasks, had gone to 
 the playground to have a game of wrestling. As they 
 stood breast to breast, one arrow pierced them both. 
 They uttered a cry together, together cast a parting look 
 around them, and together breathed their last. Al- 
 phenor, an elder brother, seeing them fall, hastened to 
 the spot to render assistance, and fell stricken in the 
 act of brotherly duty. One only was left, Ilioneus. He 
 raised his arms to heaven to try whether prayer might 
 not avail. “Spare me, ye gods!” he cried, addressing 
 all, in his ignorance that all needed not his intercessions; 
 and Apollo would have spared him, but the arrow had 
 already left the string, and it was too late. 
 
 The terror of the people and grief of the attendants 
 soon made Niobe acquainted with what had taken place. 
 She could hardly think it possible; she was indignant 
 that the gods had dared and amazed that they had been 
 able to do it. Her husband, Amphion, overwhelmed 
 with the blow, destroyed himself. Alas! how different 
 was this Niobe from her who had so lately driven away 
 the people from the sacred rites, and held her stately 
 course through the city, the envy of her friends, now 
 the pity even of her foes! She knelt over the lifeless 
 bodies, and kissed now one, now another of her dead 
 sons. Raising her pallid arms to heaven, “Cruel La- 
 tona,” said she, “feed full your rage with my anguish! 
 Satiate your hard heart, while I follow to the grave my 
 seven sons. Yet where is your triumph? Bereaved as 
 I am, I am still richer than you, my conqueror.” Scarce 
 
114 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 had she spoken, when the bow sounded and struck ter¬ 
 ror into all hearts except Niobe’s alone. She was brave 
 from excess of grief. The sisters stood in garments 
 of mourning over the biers of their dead brothers. One 
 fell, struck by an arrow, and died on the corpse she 
 was bewailing. Another, attempting to console her 
 mother, suddenly ceased to speak, and sank lifeless to 
 the earth. A third tried to escape by flight, a fourth by 
 concealment, another stood trembling, uncertain what 
 course to take. Six were now dead, and only one re¬ 
 mained, whom the mother held clasped in her arms, and 
 covered as it were with her whole body. “Spare me 
 one, and that the youngest! O spare me one of so 
 many!” she cried; and while she spoke, that one fell 
 dead. Desolate she sat, among sons, daughters, hus¬ 
 band, all dead, and seemed torpid with grief. The 
 breeze moved not her hair, no color was on her cheek, 
 her eyes glared fixed and immovable, there was no sign 
 of life about her. Her very tongue cleaved to the roof 
 of her mouth, and her veins ceased to convey the tide 
 of life. Her neck bent not, her arms made no gesture, 
 her foot no step. She was changed to stone, within and 
 without. Yet tears continued to flow; and borne on a 
 whirlwind to her native mountain, she still remains, a 
 mass of rock, from which a trickling stream flows, the 
 tribute of her never-ending grief. 
 
 The story of Niobe has furnished Byron with a fine 
 illustration of the fallen condition of modern Rome: 
 
 “The Niobe of nations! there she stands, 
 
 Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe; 
 
 An empty urn within her withered hands, 
 
 Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; 
 
 The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now: 
 
 The very sepulchres lie tenantless 
 Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow, 
 
 Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? 
 
 Rise with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.” 
 
 Childe Harold, IV. 79. 
 
 This affecting story has been made the subject of a 
 celebrated statue in the imperial gallery of Florence. It 
 
THE GR2EM AND THE GORGONS 
 
 115 
 
 is the principal figure of a group supposed to have been 
 originally arranged in the pediment of a temple. The 
 figure of the mother clasped by the arm of her terrified 
 child is one of the most admired of the ancient statues. 
 It ranks with the Laocoon and the Apollo among the 
 masterpieces of art. The following is a translation of 
 a Greek epigram supposed to relate to this statue: 
 
 “To stone the gods have changed her, but in vain; 
 
 The sculptor’s art lias made her breathe again.” 
 
 Tragic as is the story of Niobe, we cannot forbear 
 to smile at the use Moore has made of it in “Rhymes 
 on the Road”: 
 
 “’Twas in his carriage the sublime 
 Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme, 
 
 And, if the wits don’t do him wrong, 
 
 ’Twixt death and epics passed his time, 
 
 Scribbling and killing all day long; 
 
 Like Phoebus in his car at ease, 
 
 Now warbling forth a lofty song, 
 
 Now murdering the young Niobes.” 
 
 Sir Richard Blackmore was a physician, and at the 
 same time a very prolific and very tasteless poet, whose 
 works are now forgotten, unless when recalled to mind 
 by some wit like Moore for the sake of a joke. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE GR.E.E OR GRAY-MAIDS—PERSEUS—MEDUSA— 
 
 ATLAS-ANDROMEDA 
 
 THE GR^E-E AND THE GORGONS 
 
 The Graese were three sisters who were gray-haired 
 from their birth, whence their name. The Gorgons were 
 monstrous females with huge teeth like those of swine, 
 brazen claws, and snaky hair. None of these beings 
 
116 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 make much figure in mythology except Medusa, the Gor¬ 
 gon, whose story we shall next advert to. We mention 
 them chiefly to introduce an ingenious theory of some 
 modern writers, namely, that the Gorgons and Graeae 
 were only personifications of the terrors of the sea, 
 the former denoting the strong billows of the wide open 
 main, and the latter the white -crested waves that dash 
 against the rocks of the coast. Their names in Greek 
 signify the above epithets. 
 
 PERSEUS AND MEDUSA 
 
 Perseus was the son of Jupiter and Danae. His grand¬ 
 father Acrisius, alarmed by an oracle which had told 
 him that his daughter’s child would be the instrument of 
 his death, caused the mother and child to be shut up in 
 a chest and set adrift on the sea. The chest floated 
 towards Seriphus, where it was found by a fisherman 
 who conveyed the mother and infant to Polydectes, the 
 king of the country, by whom they were treated with 
 kindness. When Perseus was grown up Polydectes sent 
 him to attempt the conquest of Medusa, a terrible mon¬ 
 ster who had laid waste the country. She was once 
 a beautiful maiden whose hair was her chief glory, but 
 as she dared to vie in beauty with Minerva, the goddess 
 deprived her of her charms and changed her beautiful 
 ringlets into hissing serpents. She became a cruel mon¬ 
 ster of so frightful an aspect that no living thing could 
 behold her without being turned into stone. All around 
 the cavern where she dwelt might be seen the stony 
 figures of men and animals which had chanced to catch 
 a glimpse of her and had been petrified with the sight. 
 Perseus, favored by Minerva and Mercury, the former 
 of whom lent him her shield and the latter his winged 
 shoes, approached Medusa while she slept, and taking 
 care not to look directly at her, but guided by her image 
 reflected in the bright shield which he bore, he cut off 
 her head and gave it to Minerva, who fixed it in the 
 middle of her ^gis. 
 
 Milton, in his “Comus,” thus alludes to the ^Egis: 
 
PERSEUS AND ATLAS 
 
 117 
 
 “What was that snaky-headed Gorgon-shield 
 That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, 
 
 Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, 
 
 But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 
 
 And noble grace that dashed brute violence 
 With sudden adoration and blank awe!” 
 
 Armstrong, the poet of the “Art of Preserving 
 Health/’ thus describes the effect of frost upon the 
 waters: 
 
 “Now blows the surly North and chills throughout 
 The stiffening regions, while by stronger charms 
 Than Circe e’er or fell Medea brewed, 
 
 Each brook that wont to prattle to its banks 
 Lies all bestilled and wedged betwixt its banks, 
 
 Nor moves the withered reeds . . . 
 
 The surges baited by the fierce North-east, 
 
 Tossing with fretful spleen their angry heads, 
 
 E’en in the foam of all their madness struck 
 To monumental ice. 
 
 Such execution, 
 
 So stem, so sudden, wrought the grisly aspect 
 Of terrible Medusa, 
 
 When wandering through the woods she turned to stone 
 Their savage tenants; just as the foaming Lion 
 Sprang furious on his prey, her speedier power 
 Outran his haste, 
 
 And fixed in that fierce attitude he stands 
 Like Rage in marble!” 
 
 —Imitations of Shakspeare. 
 
 PERSEUS AND ATLAS 
 
 After the slaughter of Medusa, Perseus, bearing with 
 him the head of the Gorgon, flew far and wide, over 
 land and sea. As night came on, he reached the western 
 limit of the earth, where the sun goes down. Here he 
 would gladly have rested till morning. It was the realm 
 of King Atlas, whose bulk surpassed that of all other 
 men. He was rich in flocks and herds and had no 
 neighbor or rival to dispute his state. But his chief 
 pride was in his gardens, whose fruit was of gold, hang¬ 
 ing from golden branches, half hid with golden leaves. 
 Perseus said to him, “I come as a guest. If you honor 
 illustrious descent, I claim Jupiter for my father; if 
 
118 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 mighty deeds, I plead the conquest of the Gorgon. I 
 seek rest and food.” But Atlas remembered that an an¬ 
 cient prophecy had warned him that a son of Jove should 
 one day rob him of his golden apples. So he answered, 
 '‘Begone! or neither your false claims of glory nor par¬ 
 entage shall protect you;” and he attempted to thrust 
 him out. Perseus, finding the giant too strong for him, 
 said, “Since you value my friendship so little, deign to 
 accept a present;” and turning his face away, he held 
 up the Gorgon’s head. Atlas, with all his bulk, was 
 changed into stone. His beard and hair became forests, 
 his arms and shoulders cliffs, his head a summit, and 
 his bones rocks. Each part increased in bulk till he be¬ 
 came a mountain, and (such was the pleasure of the 
 gods) heaven with all its stars rests upon his shoulders. 
 
 THE SEA-MONSTER 
 
 Perseus, continuing his flight, arrived at the country 
 of the ^Ethiopians, of which Cepheus was king. Cas¬ 
 siopeia his queen, proud of her beauty, had dared to 
 compare herself to the Sea-Nymphs, which roused their 
 indignation to such a degree that they sent a prodigious 
 sea-monster to ravage the coast. To appease the deities, 
 Cepheus was directed by the oracle to expose his 
 daughter Andromeda to be devoured by the monster. 
 As Perseus looked down from his aerial height he beheld 
 the virgin chained to a rock, and waiting the approach of 
 the serpent. She was so pale and motionless that if it 
 had not been for her flowing tears and her hair that 
 moved in the breeze, he would have taken her for a 
 marble statue. He was so startled at the sight that he al¬ 
 most forgot to wave his wings. As he hovered over her 
 he said, “O virgin, undeserving of those chains, but 
 rather of such as bind fond lovers together, tell me, I 
 beseech you, your name, and the name of your country, 
 and why you are thus bound.” At first she was silent 
 from modesty, and, if she could, would have hid her 
 face with her hands; but when he repeated his questions, 
 for fear she might be thought guilty of some fault which 
 she dared not tell, she disclosed her name and that of 
 
THE SEA-MONSTER 
 
 119 
 
 her country, and her mother's pride of beauty. Before 
 she had done speaking, a sound was heard off upon the 
 water, and the sea-monster appeared, with his head 
 raised above the surface, cleaving the waves with his 
 broad breast. The virgin shrieked, the father and mother 
 who had now arrived at the scene, wretched both, but 
 the mother more justly so, stood by, not able to afford 
 protection, but only to pour forth lamentations and to 
 embrace the victim. Then spoke Perseus: “There will 
 be time enough for tears; this hour is all we have for 
 rescue. My rank as the son of Jove and my renown as 
 the slayer of the Gorgon might make me acceptable as 
 a suitor; but I will try to win her by services rendered, 
 if the gods will only be propitious. If she be rescued by 
 my valor, I demand that she be my reward.” The par¬ 
 ents consent (how could they hesitate?) and promise a 
 royal dowry with her. 
 
 And now the monster was within the range of a stone 
 thrown by a skilful slinger, when with a sudden bound 
 the youth soared into the air. As an eagle, when from 
 his lofty flight he sees a serpent basking in the sun, 
 pounces upon him and seizes him by the neck to prevent 
 him from turning his head round and using his fangs, 
 so the youth darted down upon the back of the monster 
 and plunged his sword into its shoulder. Irritated by 
 the wound, the monster raised himself in the air, then 
 plunged into the depth; then, like a wild boar surrounded, 
 by a pack of barking dogs, turned swiftly from side to 
 side, while the youth eluded its attacks by means of his 
 wings. Wherever he can find a passage for his sword 
 between the scales he makes a wound, piercing now the 
 side, now the flank, as it slopes towards the tail. The 
 brute spouts from his nostrils water mixed with blood. 
 The wings of the hero are wet with it, and he dares no 
 longer trust to them. Alighting on a rock which rose 
 above the waves, and holding on by a projecting frag¬ 
 ment, as the monster floated near he gave him a death 
 stroke. The people who had gathered on the shore 
 shouted so that the hills reechoed the sound. The par¬ 
 ents, transported with joy, embraced their future son-in- 
 law, calling him their deliverer and the savior of their 
 
120 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 house, and the virgin, both cause and reward of the con¬ 
 test, descended from the rock. 
 
 Cassiopeia was an ^Ethiopian, and consequently, in 
 spite of her boasted beauty, black; at least so Milton 
 seems to have thought, who alludes to this story in his 
 “Penseroso,” where he addresses Melancholy as the 
 
 . . . goddess, sage and holy, 
 
 Whose saintly visage is too bright 
 To hit the sense of human sight, 
 
 And, therefore, to our weaker view 
 O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue. 
 
 Black, but such as in esteem 
 Prince Memnorfs sister might beseem, 
 
 Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 
 
 To set her beauty’s praise above 
 
 The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.” 
 
 Cassiopeia is called “the starred iEthiop queen” be¬ 
 cause after her death she was placed among the stars, 
 forming the constellation of that name. Though she 
 attained this honor, yet the Sea-Nymphs, her old ene¬ 
 mies, prevailed so far as to cause her to be placed in that 
 part of the heaven near the pole, where every night she 
 is half the time held with her head downward, to give 
 her a lesson of humility. 
 
 Memnon was an ^Ethiopian prince, of whom we 
 shall tell in a future chapter. 
 
 THE WEDDING FEAST 
 
 The joyful parents, with Perseus and Andromeda, 
 repaired to the palace, where a banquet was spread for 
 them, and all was joy and festivity. But suddenly a 
 noise was heard of warlike clamor, and Phineus, the 
 betrothed of the virgin, with a party of his adherents, 
 burst in, demanding the maiden as his own. It was in 
 vain that Cepheus remonstrated—“You should have 
 claimed her when she lay bound to the rock, the mon¬ 
 ster’s victim. The sentence of the gods dooming her to 
 such a fate dissolved all engagements, as death itself 
 
THE WEDDING FEAST 
 
 121 
 
 would have done.” Phineus made no reply, but hurled 
 his javelin at Perseus, but it missed its mark and fell 
 harmless. Perseus would have thrown his in turn, but 
 the cowardly assailant ran and took shelter behind the 
 altar. But his act was a signal for an onset by his band 
 upon the guests of Cepheus. They defended themselves 
 and a general conflict ensued, the old king retreating 
 from the scene after fruitless expostulations, calling the 
 gods to witness that he was guiltless of this outrage on 
 the rights of hospitality. 
 
 Perseus and his friends maintained for some time the 
 unequal contest; but the numbers of the assailants were 
 too great for them, and destruction seemed inevitable, 
 when a sudden thought struck Perseus,—“I will make 
 my enemy defend me.” Then with a loud voice he ex¬ 
 claimed, “If I have any friend here let him turn away 
 his eyes!” and held aloft the Gorgon’s head. “Seek not 
 to frighten us with your jugglery,” said Thescelus, and 
 raised his javelin in act to throw, and became stone in the 
 very attitude. Ampyx was about to plunge his sword 
 into the body of a prostrate foe, but his arm stiffened 
 and he could neither thrust forward nor withdraw it. 
 Another, in the midst of a vociferous challenge, stopped, 
 his mouth open, but no sound issuing. One of Perseus’s 
 friends, Aconteus, caught sight of the Gorgon and stiff¬ 
 ened like the rest. Astyages struck him with his sword, 
 but instead of wounding, it recoiled with a ringing 
 noise. 
 
 Phineus beheld this dreadful result of his unjust ag¬ 
 gression, and felt confounded. He called aloud to his 
 friends, but got no answer; he touched them and found 
 them stone. Falling on his knees and stretching out his 
 hands to Perseus, but turning his head away he begged 
 for mercy. “Take all,” said he, “give me but my life.” 
 “Base coward,” said Perseus, “thus much I will grant 
 you; no weapon shall touch you; moreover, you shall 
 be preserved in my house as a memorial of these events.” 
 So saying, he held the Gorgon’s head to the side where 
 Phineus was looking, and in the very form in which he 
 knelt, with his hands outstretched and face averted, he 
 became fixed immovably, a mass of stone! 
 
122 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 The following allusion to Perseus is from Milman’s 
 “Samor”: 
 
 “As ’mid the fabled Libyan bridal stood 
 Perseus in stern tranquillity of wrath, 
 
 Half stood, half floated on his ankle-plumes 
 Out-swelling, while the bright face on his shield 
 Looked into stone the raging fray; so rose, 
 
 But with no magic arms, wearing alone 
 Th’ appalling and control of his firm look, 
 
 The Briton Samor; at his rising awe 
 Went abroad, and the riotous hall was mute.” 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MONSTERS 
 
 GIANTS, SPHINX, PEGASUS AND CHIMvERA, CENTAURS, 
 
 GRIFFIN, AND PYGMIES 
 
 Monsters, in the language of mythology, were beings 
 of unnatural proportions or parts, usually regarded with 
 terror, as possessing immense strength and ferocity, 
 which they employed for the injury and annoyance of 
 men. Some of them were supposed to combine the mem¬ 
 bers of different animals; such were the Sphinx and 
 Chimaera; and to these all the terrible qualities of wild 
 beasts were attributed, together with human sagacity and 
 faculties. Others, as the giants, differed from men chiefly 
 in their size; and in this particular we must recognize 
 a wide distinction among them. The human giants, if 
 so they may be called, such as the Cyclopes, Antaeus, 
 Orion, and others, must be supposed not to be altogether 
 disproportioned to human beings, for they mingled in 
 love and strife with them. But the superhuman giants, 
 who warred with the gods, were of vastly larger dimen¬ 
 sions. Tityus, we are told, when stretched on the plain, 
 covered nine acres, and Enceladus required the whole of 
 Mount iEtna to be laid upon him to keep him down. 
 
 We have already spoken of the war which the giants 
 waged against the gods, and of its result. While this 
 
THE SPHINX 
 
 123 
 
 war lasted the giants proved a formidable enemy. Some 
 of them, like Briareus, had a hundred arms; others, like 
 Typhon, breathed out fire. At one time they put the gods 
 to such fear that they fled into Egypt and hid them¬ 
 selves under various forms. Jupiter took the form of a 
 ram, whence he was afterwards worshipped in Egypt as 
 the god Ammon, with curved horns. Apollo became a 
 crow, Bacchus a goat, Diana a cat, Juno a cow, Venus a 
 fish, Mercury a bird. At another time the giants at¬ 
 tempted to climb up into heaven, and for that purpose 
 took up the mountain Ossa and piled it on Pelion. 1 
 They were at last subdued by thunderbolts, which Min¬ 
 erva invented, and taught Vulcan and his Cyclopes to 
 make for Jupiter. 
 
 THE SPHINX 
 
 Laius, king of Thebes, was warned by an oracle that 
 there was danger to his throne and life if his new-born 
 son should be suffered to grow up. He therefore commit¬ 
 ted the child to the care of a herdsman with orders to de¬ 
 stroy him; but the herdsman, moved with pity, yet not 
 daring entirely to disobey, tied up the child by the feet 
 and left him hanging to the branch of a tree. In this 
 condition the infant was found by a peasant, who car¬ 
 ried him to his master and mistress, by whom he was 
 adopted and called GEdipus, or Swollen-foot. 
 
 Many years afterwards Laius being on his way to 
 Delphi, accompanied only by one attendant, met in a nar¬ 
 row road a young man also driving in a chariot. On his 
 refusal to leave the way at their command the attendant 
 killed one of his horses, and the stranger, filled with rage, 
 slew both Laius and his attendant. The young man was 
 CEdipus, who thus unknowingly became the slayer of 
 his own father. 
 
 Shortly after this event the city of Thebes was afflicted 
 with a monster which infested the highroad. It was 
 called the Sphinx. It had the body of a lion and the 
 upper part of a woman. It lay crouched on the top of 
 a rock, and arrested all travellers who came that way, 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
124 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 proposing to them a riddle, with the condition that those 
 who could solve it should pass safe, but those who 
 failed should be killed. Not one had yet succeeded 
 in solving it, and all had been slain. CEdipus was not 
 daunted by these alarming accounts, but boldly advanced 
 to the trial. The Sphinx asked him, “What animal is 
 that which in the morning gees on four feet, at noon on 
 two, and in the evening upon three?” CEdipus replied, 
 “Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and knees, in 
 manhood walks erect, and in old age with the aid of a 
 staff.” The Sphinx was so mortified at the solving of 
 her riddle that she cast herself down from the rock and 
 perished. 
 
 The gratitude of the people for their deliverance was 
 so great that they made CEdipus their king, giving him 
 in marriage their queen Jocasta. CEdipus, ignorant of 
 his parentage, had already become the slayer of his fa¬ 
 ther; in marrying the queen he became the husband of 
 his mother. These horrors remained undiscovered, till at 
 length Thebes was afflicted with famine and pestilence, 
 and the oracle being consulted, the double crime of 
 CEdipus came to light. Jocasta put an end to her own 
 life, and CEdipus, seized with madness, tore out his eyes 
 and wandered away from Thebes, dreaded and aban¬ 
 doned by all except his daughters, who faithfully ad¬ 
 hered to him, till after a tedious period of miserable 
 wandering he found the termination of his wretched 
 life. 
 
 PEGASUS AND THE CHIMERA 
 
 When Perseus cut off Medusa’s head, the blood sink¬ 
 ing into the earth produced the winged horse Pegasus. 
 Minerva caught him and tamed him and presented him 
 to the Muses. The fountain Hippocrene, on the Muses’ 
 mountain Helicon, was opened by a kick from his hoof. 
 
 The Chimsera was a fearful monster, breathing fire. 
 The fore part of its body was a compound of the lion 
 and the goat, and the hind part a dragon’s. It made 
 great havoc in Lycia, so that the king, Iobates, sought 
 for some hero to destroy it. At that time there arrived 
 at his court a gallant young warrior, whose name was 
 
PEGASUS AND THE CHUVLERA 
 
 125 
 
 Bellerophon. He brought letters from Prcetus, the son- 
 in-law of Iobates, recommending Bellerophon in the 
 warmest terms as an unconquerable hero, but added at 
 the close a request to his father-in-law to put him to 
 death. The reason was that Prcetus was jealous of him, 
 suspecting that his wife Antea looked with too much ad¬ 
 miration on the young warrior. From this instance of 
 Bellerophon being unconsciously the bearer of his own 
 death warrant, the expression “Bellerophontic letters” 
 arose, to describe any species of communication which a 
 person is made the bearer of, containing matter preju¬ 
 dicial to himself. 
 
 Iobates, on perusing the letters, was puzzled what to 
 do, not willing to violate the claims of hospitality, yet 
 wishing to oblige his son-in-law. A lucky thought oc¬ 
 curred to him, to send Bellerophon to combat with the 
 Chimaera. Bellerophon accepted the proposal, but be¬ 
 fore proceeding to the combat consulted the soothsayer 
 Polyidus, who advised him to procure if possible the 
 horse Pegasus for the conflict. For this purpose he 
 directed him to pass the night in the temple of Minerva. 
 He did so, and as he slept Minerva came to him and gave 
 him a golden bridle. When he awoke the bridle re¬ 
 mained in his hand. Minerva also showed him Pegasus 
 drinking at the well of Pirene, and at sight of the bridle 
 the winged steed came willingly and suffered himself to 
 be taken. Bellerophon mounted him, rose with him into 
 the air, soon found the Chimaera, and gained an easy 
 victory over the monster. 
 
 After the conquest of the Chimaera Bellerophon was 
 exposed to further trials and labors by his unfriendly 
 host, but by the aid of Pegasus he triumphed in them 
 all, till at length Iobates, seeing that the hero was a 
 special favorite of the gods, gave him his daughter in 
 marriage and made him his successor on the throne. At 
 last Bellerophon by his pride and presumption drew 
 upon himself the anger of the gods; it is said he even 
 attempted to fly up into heaven on his winged steed, but 
 Jupiter sent a gadfly which stung Pegasus and made 
 him throw his rider, who became lame and blind in con¬ 
 sequence. After this Bellerophon wandered lonely 
 
126 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 through the Aleian field, avoiding the paths of men, and 
 died miserably. 
 
 Milton alludes to Bellerophon in the beginning of the 
 seventh book of “Paradise Lost”: 
 
 “Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name 
 If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine 
 Following above the Olympian hill I soar, 
 
 Above the flight of Pegasean wing. 
 
 Upled by thee, 
 
 Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed, 
 
 An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air 
 (Thy tempering) ; with like safety guided down 
 Return me to my native element; 
 
 Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once 
 Bellerophon, though from a lower sphere), 
 
 Dismounted on the Aleian field I fall, 
 
 Erroneous there to wander and forlorn.” 
 
 Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” speaking of the 
 sceptic, says: 
 
 “He whose blind thought futurity denies, 
 Unconscious bears, Bellerophon, like thee 
 His own indictment; he condemns himself. 
 
 Who reads his bosom reads immortal life, 
 
 Or nature there, imposing on her sons, 
 
 Has written fables; man was made a lie.” 
 
 Vol. II., p. 12. 
 
 Pegasus, being the horse of the Muses, has always 
 been at the service of the poets. Schiller tells a pretty 
 story of his having been sold by a needy poet and put to 
 the cart and the plough. He was not fit for such service, 
 and his clownish master could make nothing of him. 
 But a youth stepped forth and asked leave to try him. 
 As soon as he was seated on his back the horse, which 
 had appeared at first vicious, and afterwards spirit- 
 broken, rose kingly, a spirit, a god, unfolded the splen¬ 
 dor of his wings, and soared towards heaven. Our own 
 poet Longfellow also records an adventure of this fa¬ 
 mous steed in his “Pegasus in Pound.” 
 
 Shakspeare alludes to Pegasus in “Henry IV.,” where 
 Vernon describes Prince Henry: 
 
THE CENTAURS 
 
 127 
 
 4< I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, 
 
 His cuishes on his thighs, gallantly armed, 
 
 Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury, 
 And vaulted with such ease into his seat, 
 
 As if an angel dropped down from the clouds, 
 To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, 
 
 And witch the world with noble horsemanship.” 
 
 THE CENTAURS 
 
 These monsters were represented as men from the 
 head to the loins, while the remainder of the body was 
 that of a horse. The ancients were too fond of a horse 
 to consider the union of his nature with man’s as form¬ 
 ing a very degraded compound, and accordingly the 
 Centaur is the only one of the fancied monsters of an¬ 
 tiquity to which any good traits are assigned. The Cen¬ 
 taurs were admitted to the companionship of man, and 
 at the marriage of Pirithous with Hippodamia they were 
 among the guests. At the feast Eurytion, one of the 
 Centaurs, becoming intoxicated with the wine, attempted 
 to offer violence to the bride; the other Centaurs fol¬ 
 lowed his example, and a dreadful conflict arose in which 
 several of them were slain. This is the celebrated battle 
 of the Lapithae and Centaurs, a favorite subject with 
 the sculptors and poets of antiquity. 
 
 But not all the Centaurs were like the rude guests of 
 Pirithous. Chiron was instructed by Apollo and Diana, 
 and was renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, 
 music, and the art of prophecy. The most distinguished 
 heroes of Grecian story were his pupils. Among the 
 ^rest the infant iEsculapius was intrusted to his charge 
 by Apollo, his father. When the sage returned to his 
 home bearing the infant, his daughter Ocyroe came 
 forth to meet him, and at sight of the child burst forth 
 into a prophetic strain (for she was a prophetess), fore¬ 
 telling the glory that he was to achieve. ^Esculapius 
 when grown up became a renowned physician, and even 
 in one instance succeeded in restoring the dead to life. 
 Pluto resented this, and Jupiter, at his request, struck 
 the bold physician with lightning, and killed him, but 
 after his death received him into the number of the gods. 
 
128 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Chiron was the wisest and justest of all the Centaurs, 
 and at his death Jupiter placed him among the stars as 
 the constellation Sagittarius. 
 
 THE PYGMIES 
 
 The Pygmies were a nation of dwarfs, so called from 
 a Greek word which means the cubit or measure of 
 about thirteen inches, which was said to be the height of 
 these people. They lived near the sources of the Nile, 
 or according to others, in India. Homer tells us that 
 the cranes used to migrate every winter to the Pygmies’ 
 country, and their appearance was the signal of bloody 
 warfare to the puny inhabitants, who had to take up 
 arms to defend their cornfields against the rapacious 
 strangers. The Pygmies and their enemies the Cranes 
 form the subject of several works of art. 
 
 Later writers tell of an army of Pygmies which find¬ 
 ing Hercules asleep made preparations to attack him, as 
 if they were about to attack a city. But the hero, 
 awaking, laughed at the little warriors, wrapped some 
 of them up in his lion’s skin, and carried them to 
 Eurystheus. 
 
 Milton uses the Pygmies for a simile, “Paradise 
 Lost,” Book I.: 
 
 . . like that Pygmaean race 
 Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves 
 Whose midnight revels by a forest side, 
 
 Or fountain, some belated peasant sees 
 
 (Or dreams he sees), while overhead the moon 
 
 Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 
 
 Wheels her pale course; they on their mirth and dance 
 
 Intent, with jocund music charm his ear. 
 
 At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.” 
 
 THE GRIFFIN, OR GRYPHON 
 
 The Griffin is a monster with the body of a lion, the 
 head and wings of an eagle, and back covered with 
 feathers. Like birds it builds its nest, and instead of an 
 egg lays an agate therein. It has long claws and talons 
 
( 
 
 THE GOLDEN FLEECE 
 
 129 
 
 of such a size that the people of that country make 
 them into drinking-cups. India was assigned as the na¬ 
 tive country of the Griffins. They found gold in the 
 mountains and built their nests of it, for which reason 
 their nests were very tempting to the hunters, and they 
 were forced to keep vigilant guard over them. Their in¬ 
 stinct led them to know where buried treasures lay, and 
 they did their best to keep plunderers at a distance. The 
 Arimaspians, among whom the Griffins flourished, were 
 a one-eyed people of Scythia. 
 
 . / 
 
 Milton borrows a simile from the Griffins, “Paradise 
 Lost/ 5 Book II.: 
 
 “As when a Gryphon through the wilderness, 
 
 With winged course, o’er hill and moory dale, 
 
 Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth 
 Hath from his wakeful custody purloined 
 His guarded gold,” etc. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE GOLDEN FLEECE—MEDEA 
 THE GOLDEN FLEECE 
 
 In very ancient times there lived in Thessaly a king 
 and queen named Athamas and Nephele. They had two 
 children, a boy and a girl. After a time Athamas grew 
 indifferent to his wife, put her away, and took another. 
 Nephele suspected danger to her children from the in¬ 
 fluence of the step-mother, and took measures to send 
 them out of her reach. Mercury assisted her, and gave 
 her a ram with a golden fleece , on which she set the two 
 children, trusting that the ram would convey them to a 
 place of safety. The ram vaulted into the air with the 
 children on his back, taking his course to the East, till 
 when crossing the strait that divides Europe and Asia, 
 the girl, whose name was Helle, fell from his back into 
 the sea, which from her was called the Hellespont,— 
 now the Dardanelles. The ram continued his career till 
 
130 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 he reached the kingdom of Colchis, on the eastern shore 
 of the Black Sea, where he safely landed the boy 
 Phryxus, who was hospitably received by ./Fetes, king 
 of the country. Phryxus sacrificed the ram to Jupiter, 
 and gave the Golden Fleece to iEetes, who placed it in 
 a consecrated grove, under the care of a sleepless 
 dragon. 
 
 There was another kingdom in Thessaly near to that 
 of Athamas, and ruled over by a relative of his. The 
 king Aison, being tired of the cares of government, sur¬ 
 rendered his crown to his brother Pelias on condition 
 that he should hold it only during the minority of Jason, 
 the son of ^son. When Jason was grown up and came 
 to demand the crown from his uncle, Pelias pretended 
 to be willing to yield it, but at the same time suggested 
 to the young man the glorious adventure of going in 
 quest of the Golden Fleece, which it was well known was 
 in the kingdom of Colchis, and was, as Pelias pretended, 
 the rightful property of their family. Jason was pleased 
 with the thought, and forthwith made preparations for 
 the expedition. At that time the only species of naviga¬ 
 tion known to the Greeks consisted of small boats or 
 canoes hollowed out from trunks of trees, so that when 
 Jason employed Argus to build him a vessel capable of 
 containing fifty men, it was considered a gigantic under¬ 
 taking. It was accomplished, however, and the vessel 
 named “Argo,” from the name of the builder. Jason 
 sent his invitation to all the adventurous young men of 
 Greece, and soon found himself at the head of a band of 
 bold youths, many of whom afterwards were renowned 
 among the heroes and demigods of Greece. Hercules, 
 Theseus, Orpheus, and Nestor were among them. They 
 are called the Argonauts, from the name of their vessel. 
 
 The “Argo” with her crew of heroes left the shores 
 of Thessaly and having touched at the Island of Lemnos, 
 thence crossed to Mysia and thence to Thrace. Here 
 they found the sage Phineus, and from him received in¬ 
 struction as to their future course. It seems the en¬ 
 trance of the Euxine Sea was impeded by two small 
 rocky islands, which floated on the surface, and in their 
 tossings and heavings occasionally came together, crush- 
 
THE GOLDEN FLEECE 
 
 131 
 
 ing and grinding to atoms any object that might be caught 
 between them. They were called the Symplegades, or 
 Clashing Islands. Phineus instructed the Argonauts 
 how to pass this dangerous strait. When they reached 
 the islands they let go a dove, which took her way be¬ 
 tween the rocks, and passed in safety, only losing some 
 feathers of her tail. Jason and his men seized the 
 favorable moment of the rebound, plied their oars with 
 vigor, and passed safe through, though the islands closed 
 behind them, and actually grazed their stern. They now 
 rowed along the shore till they arrived at the eastern 
 end of the sea, and landed at the kingdom of Colchis. 
 
 Jason made known his message to the Colchian king, 
 TLetes, who consented to give up the golden fleece if 
 Jason would yoke to the plough two fire-breathing bulls 
 with brazen feet, and sow the teeth of the dragon 
 which Cadmus had slain, and from which it was well 
 known that a crop of armed men would spring up, 
 who would turn their weapons against their producer. 
 Jason accepted the conditions, and a time was set for 
 making the experiment. Previously, however, he found 
 means to plead his cause to Medea, daughter of the king. 
 He promised her marriage, and as they stood before the 
 altar of Hecate, called the goddess to witness his oath. 
 Medea yielded, and by her aid, for she was a potent 
 sorceress, he was furnished with a charm, by which he 
 could encounter safely the breath of the fire-breathing 
 bulls and the weapons of the armed men. 
 
 At the time appointed, the people assembled at the 
 grove of Mars, and the king assumed his royal seat,' 
 while the multitude covered the hill-sides. The brazen¬ 
 footed bulls rushed in, breathing fire from their nostrils 
 that burned up the herbage as they passed. The sound 
 was like the roar of a furnace, and the smoke like that 
 of water upon quick-lime. Jason advanced boldly to 
 meet them. His friends, the chosen heroes of Greece, 
 trembled to behold him. Regardless of the burning 
 breath, he soothed their rage with his voice, patted their 
 necks with fearless hand, and adroitly slipped over them 
 the yoke, and compelled them to drag the plough. The 
 Colchians were amazed; the Greeks shouted for joy. 
 
132 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Jason next proceeded to sow the dragon’s teeth and 
 plough them in. And soon the crop of armed men 
 sprang up, and, wonderful to relate! no sooner had they 
 reached the surface than they began to brandish their 
 weapons and rush upon Jason. The Greeks trembled for 
 their hero, and even she who had provided him a way 
 of safety and taught him how to use it, Medea herself, 
 grew pale with fear. Jason for a time kept his assail¬ 
 ants at bay with his sword and shield, till, finding their 
 numbers overwhelming, he resorted to the charm which 
 Medea had taught him, seized a stone and threw it in 
 the midst of his foes. They immediately turned their 
 arms against one another, and soon there was not one 
 of the dragon’s brood left alive. The Greeks embraced 
 their hero, and Medea, if she dared, would have em¬ 
 braced him too. 
 
 It remained to lull to sleep the dragon that guarded 
 the fleece, and this was done by scattering over him a 
 few drops of a preparation which Medea had supplied. 
 At the smell he relaxed his rage, stood for a moment 
 motionless, then shut those great round eyes, that had 
 never been known to shut before, and turned over on 
 his side, fast asleep. Jason seized the fleece and with 
 his friends and Medea accompanying, hastened to their 
 vessel before yEetes the king could arrest their depart¬ 
 ure, and made the best of their way back to Thessaly, 
 where they arrived safe, and Jason delivered the fleece 
 to Pelias, and dedicated the “Argo” to Neptune. What 
 became of the fleece afterwards we do not know, but 
 perhaps it was found after all, like many other golden 
 prizes, not worth the trouble it had cost to procure it. 
 
 This is one of those mythological tales, says a late 
 writer, in which there is reason to believe that a sub¬ 
 stratum of truth exists, though overlaid by a mass of 
 fiction. It probably was the first important maritime 
 expedition, and like the first attempts of the kind of all 
 nations, as we know from history, was probably of a 
 half-piratical character. If rich spoils were the result 
 it was enough to give rise to the idea of the golden 
 fleece. 
 
THE GOLDEN FLEECE 
 
 133 
 
 Another suggestion of a learned mythologist, Bryant, 
 is that it is a corrupt tradition of the story of Noah and 
 the ark. The name “Argo” seems to countenance this, 
 and the incident of the dove is another confirmation. 
 
 Pope, in his “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day,” thus cele¬ 
 brates the launching of the ship “Argo,” and the power 
 of the music of Orpheus, whom he calls the Thracian: 
 
 “ So when the first bold vessel dared the seas, 
 
 High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain, 
 
 While Argo saw her kindred trees 
 Descend from Pelion to the main. 
 
 Transported demigods stood round, 
 
 And men grew heroes at the sound.” 
 
 In Dyer’s poem of “The Fleece” there is an account 
 of the ship “Argo” and her crew, which gives a good 
 picture of this primitive maritime adventure: 
 
 “From every region of /Egea’s shore 
 The brave assembled; those illustrious twins 
 Castor and Pollux; Orpheus, tuneful bard; 
 
 Zetes and Calais, as the wind in speed; 
 
 Strong Hercules and many a chief renowned. 
 
 On deep Iolcos’ sandy shore they thronged, 
 Gleaming in armor, ardent of exploits; 
 
 And soon, the laurel cord and the huge stone 
 Uplifting to the deck, unmoored the bark; 
 
 Whose keel of wondrous length the skilful hand 
 Of Argus fashioned for the proud attempt; 
 
 And in the extended keel a lofty mast 
 Upraised, and sails full swelling; to the chiefs 
 Unwonted objects. Now first, now they learned 
 Their bolder steerage over ocean wave, 
 
 Led by the golden stars, as Chiron’s art 
 Had marked the sphere celestial,” etc. 
 
 Hercules left the expedition at Mysia, for Hylas, a 
 youth beloved by him, having gone for water, was laid 
 hold of and kept by the nymphs of the spring, who 
 were fascinated by his beauty. Hercules went in quest 
 of the lad, and while he was absent the “Argo” put to 
 sea and left him. Moore, in one of his songs, makes 
 a beautiful allusion to this incident: 
 
134 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 “When Hylas was sent with his urn to the fount, 
 
 Through fields full of light and with heart full of play, 
 Light rambled the boy over meadow and mount, 
 
 And neglected his task for the flowers in the way. 
 
 “Thus many like me, who in youth should have tasted 
 The fountain that runs by Philosophy’s shrine, 
 
 Their time with the flowers on the margin have wasted, 
 And left their light urns all as empty as mine.” 
 
 MEDEA AND ^ESON 
 
 Amid the rejoicings for the recovery of the Golden 
 Fleece, Jason felt that one thing was wanting, the pres¬ 
 ence of Hison, his father, who was prevented by his 
 age and infirmities from taking part in them. Jason 
 said to Medea, “My spouse, would that your arts, 
 whose power I have seen so mighty for my aid, could 
 do me one further service, take some years from, my 
 life and add them to my father’s.” Medea replied, 
 “Not at such a cost shall it be done, but if my art 
 avails me, his life shall be lengthened without abridg¬ 
 ing yours.” The next full moon she issued forth alone, 
 while all creatures slept; not a breath stirred the fo¬ 
 liage, and all was still. To the stars she addressed her 
 incantations, and to the moon; to Hecate, 1 the goddess 
 of the underworld, and to Tellus the goddess of the 
 earth, by whose power plants potent for enchantment 
 are produced. She invoked the gods of the woods and 
 caverns, of mountains and valleys, of lakes and rivers, 
 of winds and vapors. While she spoke the stars shone 
 brighter, and presently a chariot descended through the 
 air, drawn by flying serpents. She ascended it, and 
 borne aloft made her way to distant regions, where po¬ 
 tent plants grew which she knew how to select for her 
 purpose. Nine nights she employed in her search, and 
 during that time came not within the doors of her pal¬ 
 ace nor under any roof, and shunned all intercourse 
 with mortals. 
 
 1 Hecate was a mysterious divinity sometimes identified with Diana and 
 sometimes with Proserpine. As Diana represents the moonlight splendor 
 of night, so Hecate represents its darkness and terrors. She was the 
 goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, and was believed to wander by night 
 along the earth, seen only by the dogs, whose barking told her approach. 
 
MEDEA AND /ESON 
 
 135 
 
 She next erected two altars, the one to Hecate, the 
 other to Hebe, the goddess of youth, and sacrificed a 
 black sheep, pouring libations of milk and wine. She 
 implored Pluto and his stolen bride that they would not 
 hasten to take the old man’s life. Then she directed 
 that ^Eson should be led forth, and having thrown him 
 into a deep sleep by a charm, had him laid on a bed 
 of herbs, like one dead. Jason and all others were 
 kept away from the place, that no profane eyes might 
 look upon her mysteries. Then, with streaming hair, 
 she thrice moved round the altars, dipped flaming twigs 
 in the blood, and laid them thereon to burn. Mean¬ 
 while the caldron with its contents was got ready. In 
 it she put magic herbs, with seeds and flowers of acrid 
 juice, stones from the distant east, and sand from the 
 shore of all-surrounding ocean; hoar frost, gathered by 
 moonlight, a screech owl’s head and wings, and the en¬ 
 trails of a wolf. She added fragments of the shells 
 of tortoises, and the liver of stags,—animals tenacious 
 of life,—and the head and beak of a crow, that out¬ 
 lives nine generations of men. These with many other 
 things “without a name” she boiled together for her 
 purposed work, stirring them up with a dry olive 
 branch; and behold! the branch when taken out in¬ 
 stantly became green, and before long was covered with 
 leaves and a plentiful growth of young olives; and as 
 the liquor boiled and bubbled, and sometimes ran over, 
 the grass wherever the sprinklings fell shot forth with 
 a verdure like that of spring. 
 
 Seeing that all was ready, Medea cut the throat of 
 the old man and let out all his blood, and poured into 
 his mouth and into his wound the juices of her caldron. 
 As soon as he had completely imbibed them, his hair 
 and beard laid by their whiteness and assumed the black¬ 
 ness of youth; his paleness and emaciation were gone; 
 his veins were full of blood, his limbs of vigor and 
 robustness. Hison is amazed at himself, and remembers 
 that such as he now is, he was in his youthful days, 
 forty years before. 
 
 Medea used her arts here for a good purpose, but 
 not so in another instance, where she made them the 
 
136 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 instruments of revenge. Pelias, our readers will recol¬ 
 lect, was the usurping uncle of Jason, and had kept him 
 out of his kingdom. Yet he must have had some good 
 qualities, for his daughters loved him, and when they 
 saw what Medea had done for TEson, they wished her 
 to do the same for their father. Medea pretended to 
 consent, and prepared her caldron as before. At her 
 request an old sheep was brought and plunged into the 
 caldron. Very soon a bleating was heard in the kettle, 
 and when the cover was removed, a lamb jumped forth 
 and ran frisking away into the meadow. The daughters 
 of Pelias saw the experiment with delight, and appointed 
 a time for their father to undergo the same operation. 
 But Medea prepared her caldron for him in a very 
 different way. She put in only water and a few simple 
 herbs. In the night she with the sisters entered the 
 bed chamber of the old king, while he and his guards 
 slept soundly under the influence of a spell cast upon 
 them by Medea. The daughters stood by the bedside 
 with their weapons drawn, but hesitated to strike, till 
 Medea chid their irresolution. Then turning away their 
 faces, and giving random blows, they smote him with 
 their weapons. He, starting from his sleep, cried out, 
 “My daughters, what are you doing? Will you kill 
 your father?” Their hearts failed them and their weap¬ 
 ons fell from their hands, but Medea struck him a fatal 
 blow, and prevented his saying more. 
 
 Then they placed him in the caldron, and Medea 
 hastened to depart in her serpent-drawn chariot before 
 they discovered her treachery, or their vengeance would 
 have been terrible. She escaped, however, but had little 
 enjoyment of the fruits of her crime. Jason, for whom 
 she had done so much, wishing to marry Creusa, princess 
 of Corinth, put away Medea. She, enraged at his in¬ 
 gratitude, called on the gods for vengeance, sent a pois¬ 
 oned robe as a gift to the bride, and then killing her 
 own children, and setting fire to the palace, mounted 
 her serpent-drawn chariot and fled to Athens, where 
 she married King iEgeus, the father of Theseus, and 
 we shall meet her again when we come to the adven¬ 
 tures of that hero. 
 
MEDEA AND /ESON 
 
 137 
 
 The incantations of Medea will remind the reader 
 of those of the witches in “Macbeth.” The following 
 lines are those which seem most strikingly to recall the 
 ancient model: 
 
 “Round about the caldron go; 
 
 In the poisoned entrails throw. 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 Fillet of a fenny snake 
 In the caldron boil and bake; 
 
 Eye of newt and toe of frog, 
 
 Wool of bat and tongue of dog, 
 
 Adder’s fork and biind-worm’s sting, 
 
 Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing: 
 
 Maw of ravening salt-sea shark, 
 
 Root of hemlock digged in the dark,” etc. 
 
 — Macbeth, Act IV., Scene 1 
 
 And again: 
 
 Macbeth .—What is’t you do? 
 
 Witches .—A deed without a name. 
 
 There is another story of Medea almost too revolting 
 for record even of a sorceress, a class of persons to 
 whom both ancient and modern poets have been accus¬ 
 tomed to attribute every degree of atrocity. In her 
 flight from Colchis she had taken her young brother 
 Absyrtus with her. Finding the pursuing vessels of 
 ^Eetes gaining upon the Argonauts, she caused the lad 
 to be killed and his limbs to be strewn over the sea. 
 ^Eetes on reaching the place found these sorrowful 
 traces of his murdered son; but while he tarried to 
 collect the scattered fragments and bestow upon them 
 an honorable interment, the Argonauts escaped. 
 
 In the poems of Campbell will be found a transla¬ 
 tion of one of the choruses of the tragedy of “Medea,” 
 where the poet Euripides has taken advantage of the 
 occasion to pay a glowing tribute to Athens, his native 
 city. It begins thus: 
 
 “O haggard queen! to Athens dost thou guide 
 Thy glowing chariot, steeped in kindred gore; 
 
 Or seek to hide thy damned parricide 
 Where peace and justice dwell for evermore?” 
 
138 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MELEAGER AND ATALANTA 
 
 One of the heroes of the Argonautic expedition was 
 Meleager, son of QEneus and Althea, king and queen 
 of Calydon. Althea, when her son was born, beheld 
 the three destinies, who, as they spun their fatal thread, 
 foretold that the life of the child should last no longer 
 than a brand then burning upon the hearth. Althea 
 seized and quenched the brand, and carefully preserved 
 it for years, while Meleager grew to boyhood, youth, and 
 manhood. It chanced, then, that (Eneus, as he offered 
 sacrifices to the gods, omitted to pay due honors to 
 Diana; and she, indignant at the neglect, sent a wild 
 boar of enormous size to lay waste the fields of Caly¬ 
 don. Its eyes shone with blood and fire, its bristles stood 
 like threatening spears, its tusks were like those of In¬ 
 dian elephants. The growing corn was trampled, the 
 vines and olive trees laid waste, the flocks and herds 
 were driven in wild confusion by the slaughtering foe. 
 All common aid seemed vain; but Meleager called on 
 the heroes of Greece to join in a bold hunt for the 
 ravenous monster. Theseus and his friend Pirithous, 
 Jason, Peleus, afterwards the father of Achilles, Tela¬ 
 mon the father of Ajax, Nestor, then a youth, but who 
 in his age bore arms with Achilles and Ajax in the 
 Trojan war,—these and many more joined in the enter¬ 
 prise. With them came Atalanta, the daughter of Iasius, 1 
 king of Arcadia. A buckle of polished gold confined her 
 vest, an ivory quiver hung on her left shoulder, and her 
 left hand bore the bow. Her face blent feminine beauty 
 with the best graces of martial youth. Meleager saw 
 and loved. 
 
 But now already they were near the monster’s lair. 
 They stretched strong nets from tree to tree; they un¬ 
 coupled their dogs, they tried to find the footprints of 
 their quarry in the grass. From the wood was a de¬ 
 scent to marshy ground. Here the boar, as he lay 
 
MELEAGER AND ATALANTA 
 
 139 
 
 among the reeds, heard the shouts of his pursuers, and 
 rushed forth against them. One and another is thrown 
 down and slain. Jason throws his spear, with a prayer 
 to Diana for success; and the favoring goddess allows 
 the weapon to touch, but not to wound, removing the 
 steel point of the spear in its flight. Nestor, assailed, 
 seeks and finds safety in the branches of a tree. Tela¬ 
 mon rushes on, but stumbling at a projecting root, falls 
 prone. But an arrow from Atalanta at length for the 
 first time tastes the monster’s blood. It is a slight wound, 
 but Meleager sees and joyfully proclaims it. Anceus, 
 excited to envy by the praise given to a female, loudly 
 proclaims his own valor, and defies alike the boar and 
 the goddess who had sent it; but as he rushes on, the 
 infuriated beast lays him low with a mortal wound. 
 Theseus throws his lance, but it is turned aside by a 
 projecting bough. The dart of Jason misses its object, 
 and kills instead one of their own dogs. But Meleager, 
 after one unsuccessful stroke, drives his spear into the 
 monster’s side, then rushes on and despatches him with 
 repeated blows. 
 
 Then rose a shout from those around; they congratu¬ 
 lated the conqueror, crowding to touch his hand. He, 
 placing his foot upon the head of the slain boar, turned 
 to Atalanta and bestowed on her the head and the rough 
 hide which were the trophies of his success. But at 
 this, envy excited the rest to strife. Plexippus and 
 Toxeus, the brothers of Meleager’s mother, beyond the 
 rest opposed the gift, and snatched from the maiden 
 the trophy she had received. Meleager, kindling with 
 rage at the wrong done to himself, and still more at 
 the insult offered to her whom he loved, forgot the 
 claims of kindred, and plunged his sword into the of¬ 
 fenders’ hearts. 
 
 As Althea bore gifts of thankfulness to the temples 
 for the victory of her son, the bodies of her murdered 
 brothers met her sight. She shrieks, and beats her 
 breast, and hastens to change the garments of rejoicing 
 for those of mourning. But when the author of the 
 deed is known, grief gives way to the stern desire of 
 vengeance on her son. The fatal brand, which once 
 
140 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 she rescued from the flames, the brand which the des¬ 
 tinies had linked with Meleager’s life, she brings forth, 
 and commands a fire to be prepared. Then four times 
 she essays to place the brand upon the pile; four times 
 draws back, shuddering at the thought of bringing de¬ 
 struction on her son. The feelings of the mother and 
 the sister contend within her. Now she is pale at the 
 thought of the proposed deed, now flushed again with 
 anger at the act of her son. As a vessel, driven in one 
 direction by the wind, and in the opposite by the tide, 
 the mind of Althea hangs suspended in uncertainty. But 
 now the sister prevails above the mother, and she begins 
 as she holds the fatal wood: “Turn, ye Furies, god¬ 
 desses of punishment! turn to behold the sacrifice I 
 bring! Crime must atone for crime. Shall CEneus re¬ 
 joice in his victor son, while the house of Thestius is 
 desolate ? But, alas! to what deed am I borne along ? 
 Brothers forgive a mother’s weakness! my hand fails 
 me. He deserves death, but not that I should destroy 
 him. But shall he then live, and triumph, and reign 
 over Calydon, while you, my brothers, wander unavenged 
 among the shades? No ! thou hast lived by my gift; die, 
 now, for thine own crime. Return the life which twice 
 I gave thee, first at thy birth, again when I snatched 
 this brand from the flames. O that thou hadst then died! 
 Alas! evil is the conquest; but, brothers, ye have con¬ 
 quered.” And, turning away her face, she threw the 
 fatal wood upon the burning pile. 
 
 It gave, or seemed to give, a deadly groan. Meleager, 
 absent and unknowing of the cause, felt a sudden pang. 
 He burns, and only by courageous pride conquers the 
 pain which destroys him. He mourns only that he per¬ 
 ishes by a bloodless and unhonored death. With his 
 last breath he calls upon his aged father, his brother, 
 and his fond sisters, upon his beloved Atalanta, and 
 upon his mother, the unknown cause of his fate. The 
 flames increase, and with them the pain of the hero. 
 Now both subside; now both are quenched. The brand 
 is ashes, and the life of Meleager is breathed forth to 
 the wandering winds. 
 
 Althea, when the deed was done, laid violent hands 
 
ATALANTA 
 
 141 
 
 upon herself. The sisters of Meleager mourned their 
 brother with uncontrollable grief; till Diana, pitying the 
 sorrows of the house that once had aroused her anger, 
 turned them into birds. 
 
 ATALANTA 
 
 The innocent cause of so much sorrow was a maiden 
 whose face you might truly say was boyish for a girl, 
 yet too girlish for a boy. Her fortune had been told, 
 and it was to this effect: “Atalanta, do not marry; mar¬ 
 riage will be your ruin.” Terrified by this oracle, she 
 fled the society of men, and devoted herself to the sports 
 of the chase. To all suitors (for she had many) she 
 imposed a condition which was generally effectual in 
 relieving her of their persecutions,—“I will be the prize 
 of him who shall conquer me in the race; but death must 
 be the penalty of all who try and fail.” In spite of this 
 hard condition some would try. Hippomenes was to be 
 judge of the race. “Can it be possible that any will be 
 so rash as to risk so much for a wife?” said he. But 
 when he saw her lay aside her robe for the race, he 
 changed his mind, and said, “Pardon me, youths, I knew 
 not the prize you were competing for.” As he surveyed 
 them he wished them all to be beaten, and swelled with 
 envy of any one that seemed at all likely to win. While 
 such were his thoughts, the virgin darted forward. As 
 she ran she looked more beautiful than ever. The 
 breezes seemed to give wings to her feet; her hair flevt 
 over her shoulders, and the gay fringe of her garment 
 fluttered behind her. A ruddy hue tinged the whiteness 
 of her skin, such as a crimson curtain casts on a marble 
 wall. All her competitors were distanced, and were put 
 to death without mercy. Hippomenes, not daunted by 
 this result, fixing his eyes on the virgin, said, “Why 
 boast of beating those laggards? I offer myself for the 
 contest.” Atalanta looked at him with a pitying coun¬ 
 tenance, and hardly knew whether she would rather con¬ 
 quer him or not. “What god can tempt one so young 
 and handsome to throw himself away? I pity him, not 
 for his beauty (yet he is beautiful), but for his youth. 
 
142 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 I wish he would give up the race, or if he will be so 
 mad, I hope he may outrun me.” While she hesitates, 
 revolving these thoughts, the spectators grow impatient 
 for the race, and her father prompts her to prepare. 
 Then Hippomenes addressed a prayer to Venus: “Help 
 me, Venus, for you have led me on.” Venus heard and 
 was propitious. 
 
 In the garden of her temple, in her own island of 
 Cyprus, is a tree with yellow leaves and yellow branches 
 and golden fruit. Hence she gathered three golden ap¬ 
 ples, and, unseen by any one else, gave them to Hippo¬ 
 menes, and told him how to use them. The signal is 
 given; each starts from the goal and skims over the 
 sand. So light their tread, you would almost have 
 thought they might run over the river surface or over 
 the waving grain without sinking. The cries of the 
 spectators cheered Hippomenes,—“Now, now, do your 
 best! haste, haste! you gain on her! relax not! one more 
 effort!” It was doubtful whether the youth or the maiden 
 heard these cries with the greater pleasure. But his 
 breath began to fail him, his throat was dry, the goal 
 yet far off. At that moment he threw down one of the 
 golden apples. The virgin was all amazement. She 
 stopped to pick it up. Hippomenes shot ahead. Shouts 
 burst forth from all sides. She redoubled her efforts, 
 and soon overtook him. Again he threw an apple. She 
 stopped again, but again came up with him. The goal 
 was near; one chance only remained. “Now, goddess,” 
 said he, “prosper your gift!” and threw the last apple 
 off at one side. She looked at it, and hesitated; Venus 
 impelled her to turn aside for it. She did so, and was 
 vanquished. The youth carried off his prize. 
 
 But the lovers were so full of their own happiness 
 that they forgot to pay due honor to Venus; and the 
 goddess was provoked at their ingratitude. She caused 
 them to give offence to Cybele. That powerful goddess 
 was not to be insulted with impunity. She took from 
 them their human form and turned them into animals 
 of characters resembling their own: of the huntress- 
 heroine, triumphing in the blood of her lovers, she made 
 a lioness, and of her lord and master a lion, and yoked 
 
HERCULES 
 
 143 
 
 them to her car, where they are still to be seen in all 
 representations, in statuary or painting, of the goddess 
 Cybele. 
 
 Cybele is the Latin name of the goddess called by 
 the Greeks Rhea and Ops. She was the wife of Cronos 
 and mother of Zeus. In works of art she exhibits the 
 matronly air which distinguishes Juno and Ceres. Some¬ 
 times she is veiled, and seated on a throne with lions at 
 her side, at other times riding in a chariot drawn by 
 lions. She wears a mural crown, that is, a crown whose 
 rim is carved in the form of towers and battlements. 
 Her priests were called Corybantes. 
 
 Byron, in describing the city of Venice, which is built 
 on a low island in the Adriatic Sea, borrows an illus¬ 
 tration from Cybele: 
 
 “She looks a sea-Cybele fresh from ocean, 
 
 Rising with her tiara of proud towers 
 At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
 
 A ruler of the waters and their powers.” 
 
 —Childe Harold, IV. 
 
 In Moore’s “Rhymes on the Road,” the poet, speaking 
 of Alpine scenery, alludes to the story of Atalanta and 
 Hippomenes thus: 
 
 “Even here, in this region of wonders, I find 
 That light-footed Fancy leaves Truth far behind, 
 
 Or at least, like Hippomenes, turns her astray 
 By the golden illusions he flings in her way.” 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HERCULES-HEBE AND GANYMEDE 
 
 HERCULES 
 
 Hercules was the son of Jupiter and Alcmena. As 
 Juno was always hostile to the offspring of her husband 
 by mortal mothers, she declared war against Hercules 
 
144 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 from his birth. She sent two serpents to destroy him as 
 he lay in his cradle, but the precocious infant strangled 
 them with his own hands. He was, however, by the 
 arts of Juno rendered subject to Eurystheus and com¬ 
 pelled to perform all his commands. Eurystheus en¬ 
 joined upon him a succession of desperate adventures, 
 which are called the “Twelve Labors of Hercules.” The 
 first was the fight with the Nemean lion. The valley 
 of Nemea was infested by a terrible lion. Eurystheus 
 ordered Hercules to bring him the skin of this monster. 
 After using in vain his club and arrows against the lion, 
 Hercules strangled the animal with his hands. He re¬ 
 turned carrying the dead lion on his shoulders; but 
 Eurystheus was so frightened at the sight of it and at 
 this proof of the prodigious strength of the hero, that 
 he ordered him to deliver the account of his exploits 
 in future outside the town. 
 
 His next labor was the slaughter of the Hydra. This 
 monster ravaged the country of Argos, and dwelt in a 
 swamp near the well of Amymone. This well had been 
 discovered by Amymone when the country was suffering 
 from drought, and the story was that Neptune, who loved 
 her, had permitted her to touch the rock with his trident, 
 and a spring of three outlets burst forth. Here the 
 Hydra took up his position, and Hercules was sent to 
 destroy him. The Hydra had nine heads, of which the 
 middle one was immortal. Hercules struck off its heads 
 with his club, but in the place of the head knocked off, 
 two new ones grew forth each time. At length with 
 the assistance of his faithful servant Iolaus, he burned 
 away the heads of the Hydra, and buried the ninth or 
 immortal one under a huge rock. 
 
 Another labor was the cleaning of the Augean stables. 
 Augeas, king of Elis, had a herd of three thousand oxen, 
 whose stalls had not been cleansed for thirty years. Her¬ 
 cules brought the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through 
 them, and cleansed them thoroughly in one day. 
 
 His next labor was of a more delicate kind. Admeta, 
 the daughter of Eurystheus, longed to obtain the girdle 
 of the queen of the Amazons, and Eurystheus ordered 
 Hercules to go and get it. The Amazons were a nation 
 
HERCULES 
 
 145 
 
 of women. They were very warlike and held several 
 flourishing cities. It was their custom to bring up only 
 the female children; the boys were either sent away to 
 the neighboring nations or put to death. Hercules was 
 accompanied by a number of volunteers, and after vari¬ 
 ous adventures at last reached the country of the Ama¬ 
 zons. Hippolyta, the queen, received him kindly, and 
 consented to yield him her girdle, but Juno, taking the 
 form of an Amazon, went and persuaded the rest that 
 the strangers were carrying off their queen. They in¬ 
 stantly armed and came in great numbers down to the 
 ship. Hercules, thinking that Hippolyta had acted 
 treacherously, slew her, and taking her girdle made sail 
 homewards. 
 
 Another task enjoined him was to bring to Eurystheus 
 the oxen of Geryon, a monster with three bodies, who 
 dwelt in the island Erytheia (the red), so called because 
 it lay at the west, under the rays of the setting sun. 
 This description is thought to apply to Spain, of which 
 Geryon was king. After traversing various countries, 
 Hercules reached at length the frontiers of Libya and 
 Europe, where he raised the two mountains of Calpe and 
 Abyla, as monuments of his progress, or, according to 
 another account, rent one mountain into two and left half 
 on each side, forming the straits of Gibraltar, the two 
 mountains being called the Pillars of Hercules. The 
 oxen were guarded by the giant Eurytion and his two- 
 headed dog, but Hercules killed the giant and his dog 
 and brought away the oxen in safety to Eurystheus. 
 
 The most difficult labor of all was getting the golden 
 apples of the Hesperides, for Hercules did not know 
 where to find them. These were the apples which Juno 
 had received at her wedding from the goddess of the 
 Earth, and which she had intrusted to the keeping of 
 the daughters of Hesperus, assisted by a watchful dragon. 
 After various adventures Hercules arrived at Mount 
 Atlas in Africa. Atlas was one of the Titans who had 
 warred against the gods, and after they were subdued, 
 Atlas was condemned to bear on his shoulders the weight 
 of the heavens. He was the father of the Hesperides, 
 and Hercules thought might, if any one could, find the 
 
146 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 apples and bring them to him. But how to send Atlas 
 away from his post, or bear up the heavens while he 
 was gone? Hercules took the burden on his own shoul¬ 
 ders, and sent Atlas to seek the apples. He returned 
 with them, and though somewhat reluctantly, took his 
 burden upon his shoulders again, and let Hercules re¬ 
 turn with the apples to Eurystheus. 
 
 Milton, in his “Comus,” makes the Hesperides the 
 daughters of Hesperus and nieces of Atlas: 
 
 “. . . amidst the gardens fair 
 
 Of Hesperus and his daughters three, x 
 
 That sing about the golden tree.” 
 
 The poets, led by the analogy of the lovely appear¬ 
 ance of the western sky at sunset, viewed the west as 
 a region of brightness and glory. Hence they placed in 
 it the Isles of the Blest, the ruddy Isle Erythea, on 
 which the bright oxen of Geryon were pastured, and 
 the Isle of the Hesperides. The apples are supposed 
 by some to be the oranges of Spain, of which the Greeks 
 had heard some obscure accounts. 
 
 A celebrated exploit of Hercules was his victory over 
 Antaeus. Antaeus, the son of Terra, the Earth, was a 
 mighty giant and wrestler, whose strength was invincible 
 so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth. 
 He compelled all strangers who came to his country to 
 wrestle with him, on condition that if conquered (as 
 they all were) they should be put to death. Hercules 
 encountered him, and finding that it was of no avail 
 to throw him, for he always rose with renewed strength 
 from every fall, he lifted him up from the earth and 
 strangled him in the air. 
 
 Cacus was a huge giant, who inhabited a cave on 
 Mount Aventine, and plundered the surrounding coun¬ 
 try. When Hercules was driving home the oxen of 
 Geryon, Cacus stole part of the cattle, while the hero 
 slept. That their footprints might not serve to show 
 where they had been driven, he dragged them back- 
 
HERCULES 
 
 147 
 
 ward by their tails to his cave; so their tracks all seemed 
 to show that they had gone in the opposite direction. 
 Hercules was deceived by this stratagem, and would have 
 failed to find his oxen, if it had not happened that in 
 driving the remainder of the herd past the cave where 
 the stolen ones were concealed, those within began to 
 low, and were thus discovered. Cacus was slain by 
 Hercules. 
 
 The last exploit we shall record was bringing Cerberus 
 from the lower world. Hercules descended into Hades, 
 accompanied by Mercury and Minerva. He obtained 
 permission from Pluto to carry Cerberus to the upper 
 air, provided he could do it without the use of weapons; 
 and in spite of the monster’s struggling, he seized him, 
 held him fast, and carried him to Eurystheus, and after¬ 
 wards brought him back again. When he was in Hades 
 he obtained the liberty of Theseus, his admirer and 
 imitator, who had been detained a prisoner there for an 
 unsuccessful attempt to carry off Proserpine. 
 
 Hercules in a fit of madness killed his friend Iphitus, 
 and was condemned for this offence to become the slave 
 of Queen Omphale for three years. While in this service 
 the hero’s nature seemed changed. He lived effeminately, 
 wearing at times the dress of a woman, and spinning 
 wool with the hand-maidens of Omphale, while the queen 
 wore his lion’s skin. When this service was ended 
 he married Dejanira and lived in peace with her three 
 years. On one occasion as he was travelling with his 
 wife, they came to a river, across which the Centaur 
 Nessus carried travellers for a stated fee. Hercules 
 himself forded the river, but gave Dejanira to Nessus 
 to be carried across. Nessus attempted to run away with 
 her, but Hercules heard her cries and shot an arrow 
 into the heart of Nessus. The dying Centaur told De¬ 
 janira to take a portion of his blood and keep it, as it 
 might be used as a charm to preserve the love of her 
 husband. 
 
 Dejanira did so and before long fancied she had occa¬ 
 sion to use it. Hercules in one of his conquests had 
 taken prisoner a fair maiden, named Iole, of whom he 
 seemed more fond than Dejanira approved. When Her- 
 
148 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 cules was about to offer sacrifices to the gods in honor 
 of his victory, he sent to his wife for a white robe to 
 use on the occasion. Dejanira, thinking it a good oppor¬ 
 tunity to try her love-spell, steeped the garment in the 
 blood of Nessus. We are to suppose she took care 
 to wash out all traces of it, but the magic power re¬ 
 mained, and as soon as the garment became warm on 
 the body of Hercules the poison penetrated into all his 
 limbs and caused him the most intense agony. In his 
 frenzy he seized Lichas, who had brought him the fatal 
 robe, and hurled him into the sea. He wrenched off the 
 garment, but it stuck to his flesh, and with it he tore 
 away whole pieces of his body. In this state he em¬ 
 barked on board a ship and was conveyed home. Deja¬ 
 nira, on seeing what she had unwittingly done, hung 
 herself. Hercules, prepared to die, ascended Mount CEta, 
 where he built a funeral pile of trees, gave his bow and 
 arrows to Philoctetes, and laid himself down on the pile, 
 his head resting on his club, and his lion’s skin spread 
 over him. With a countenance as serene as if he were 
 taking his place at a festal board he commanded Philoc¬ 
 tetes to apply the torch. The flames spread apace and 
 soon invested the whole mass. 
 
 Milton thus alludes to the frenzy of Hercules: 
 
 “As when Alcides , 1 from (Echalia crowned 
 With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore, 
 Through pain, up by the roots Thessalian pines 
 And Lichas from the top of QEta threw 
 Into the Euboic Sea.” 
 
 The gods themselves felt troubled at seeing the cham¬ 
 pion of the earth so brought to his end. But Jupiter 
 with cheerful countenance thus addressed them: “I am 
 pleased to see your concern, my princes, and am gratified 
 to perceive that I am the ruler of a loyal people, and 
 that my son enjoys your favor. For although your in¬ 
 terest in him arises from his noble deeds, yet it is not 
 the less gratifying to me. But now I say to you, Fear 
 not. He who conquered all else is not to be conquered 
 
 1 Alcides, a name of Hercules. 
 
HERCULES 
 
 149 
 
 by those flames which you see blazing on Mount (Eta. 
 Only his mother’s share in him can perish; what he 
 derived from me is immortal. I shall take him, dead 
 to earth, to the heavenly shores, and I require of you 
 all to receive him kindly. If any of you feel grieved 
 at his attaining this honor, yet no one can deny that he 
 has deserved it.” The gods all gave their assent; Juno 
 only heard the closing words with some displeasure that 
 she should be so particularly pointed at, yet not enough 
 to make her regret the determination of her husband. 
 So when the flames had consumed the mother’s share 
 of Hercules, the diviner part, instead of being injured 
 thereby, seemed to start forth with new vigor, to assume 
 a more lofty port and a more awful dignity. Jupiter 
 enveloped him in a cloud, and took him up in a four- 
 horse chariot to dwell among the stars. As he took his 
 place in heaven, Atlas felt the added weight. 
 
 Juno, now reconciled to him, gave him her daughter 
 Hebe in marriage. 
 
 The poet Schiller, in one of his pieces called the “Ideal 
 and Life,” illustrates the contrast between the practical 
 and the imaginative in some beautiful stanzas, of which 
 the last two may be thus translated: 
 
 “Deep degraded to a coward’s slave, 
 
 Endless contests bore Alcides brave, 
 
 Through the thorny path of suffering led; 
 
 Slew the Hydra, crushed the lion’s might, 
 
 Threw himself, to bring his friend to light, 
 
 Living, in the skiff that bears the dead. 
 
 All the torments, every toil of earth 
 Juno’s hatred on him could impose, 
 
 Well he bore them, from his fated birth 
 To life’s grandly mournful close. 
 
 “Till the god, the earthly part forsaken, 
 
 From the man in flames asunder taken, 
 
 Drank the heavenly ether’s purer breath. 
 
 Joyous in the new unwonted lightness, 
 
 Soared he upwards to celestial brightness, 
 
 Earth’s dark heavy burden lost in death. 
 
 High Olympus gives harmonious greeting 
 To the hall where reigns his sire adored; 
 
 Youth’s bright goddess, with a blush at meeting. 
 
 Gives the nectar to her lord.” — S. G. B. 
 
150 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 t 
 
 HEBE AND GANYMEDE 
 
 Hebe, the daughter of Juno, and goddess of youth, 
 was cup-bearer to the gods. The usual story is that 
 she resigned her office on becoming the wife of Her¬ 
 cules. But there is another statement which our coun¬ 
 tryman Crawford, the sculptor, has adopted in his group 
 of Hebe and Ganymede, now in the Athenaeum gallery. 
 According to this, Hebe was dismissed from her office 
 in consequence of a fall which she met with one day 
 when in attendance on the gods. Her successor was 
 Ganymede, a Trojan boy, whom Jupiter, in the disguise 
 of an eagle, seized and carried off from the midst of 
 his playfellows on Mount Ida, bore up to fieaven, and 
 installed in the vacant place. 
 
 Tennyson, in his “Palace of Art,” describes among 
 the decorations on the walls a picture representing this 
 legend: 
 
 “There, too, flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh 
 Half buried in the eagle’s down, 
 
 Sole as a flying star shot through the sky 
 Above the pillared town.” 
 
 And in Shelley’s “Prometheus” Jupiter calls to his 
 cup-bearer thus: 
 
 “Pour forth heaven’s wine, Idsean Ganymede, 
 
 And let it fill the Daedal cups like fire.” 
 
 The beautiful legend of the “Choice of Hercules” may 
 be found in the “Tatler,” No. 97. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THESEUS-DAEDALUS—CASTOR AND POLLUX 
 
 THESEUS 
 
 Theseus was the son of SEgeus, king of Athens, and 
 of zEthra, daughter of the king of Troezen. He was 
 brought up at Troezen, and when arrived at manhood 
 was to proceed to Athens and present himself to his 
 
THESEUS 
 
 151 
 
 father. SEgeus on parting from SEthra, before the birth 
 of his son, placed his sword and shoes under a large 
 stone and directed her to send his son to him when he 
 became strong enough to roll away the stone and take 
 them from under it. When she thought the time had 
 come, his mother led Theseus to the stone, and he re¬ 
 moved it with ease and took the sword and shoes. As 
 the roads were infested with robbers, his grandfather 
 pressed him earnestly to take the shorter and safer way 
 to his father’s country—by sea; but the youth, feeling 
 in himself the spirit and the soul of a hero, and eager 
 to signalize himself like Hercules, with whose fame all 
 Greece then rang, by destroying the evil-doers and mon¬ 
 sters that oppressed the country, determined on the 
 more perilous and adventurous journey by land. 
 
 His first day’s journey brought him to Epidaurus, 
 where dwelt a man named Periphetes, a son of Vulcan. 
 This ferocious savage always went armed with a club 
 of iron, and all travellers stood in terror of his violence. 
 When he saw Theseus approach he assailed him, but 
 speedily fell beneath the blows of the young hero, who 
 took possession of his club and bore it ever afterwards 
 as a memorial of his first victory. 
 
 Several similar contests with the petty tyrants and 
 marauders of the country followed, in all of which 
 Theseus was victorious. One of these evil-doers was 
 called Procrustes, or the Stretcher. He had an iron 
 bedstead, on which he used to tie all travellers who 
 fell into his hands. If they were shorter than the bed, 
 he stretched their limbs to make them fit it; if they 
 were longer than the bed, he lopped off a portion. The¬ 
 seus served him as he had served others. 
 
 Having overcome all the perils of the road, Theseus 
 at length reached Athens, where new dangers awaited 
 him. Medea, the sorceress, who had fled from Corinth 
 after her separation from Jason, had become the wife 
 of Aigeus, the father of Theseus. Knowing by her arts 
 who he was, and fearing the loss of her influence with 
 her husband if Theseus should be acknowledged as his 
 son, she filled the mind of iEgeus with suspicions of 
 the young stranger, and induced him to present him a 
 cup of poison; but at the moment when Theseus stepped 
 
152 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 forward to take it, the sight of the sword which he 
 wore discovered to his father who he was, and prevented 
 the fatal draught. Medea, detected in her arts, fled 
 once more from deserved punishment, and arrived in 
 Asia, where the country afterwards called Media re¬ 
 ceived its name from her. Theseus was acknowledged 
 by his father, and declared his successor. 
 
 The Athenians were at that time in deep affliction, on 
 account of the tribute which they were forced to pay 
 to Minos, king of Crete. This tribute consisted of 
 seven youths and seven maidens, who were sent every 
 year to be devoured by the Minotaur, a monster with 
 a bull’s body and a human head. It was exceedingly 
 strong and fierce, and was kept in a labyrinth constructed 
 by Daedalus, so artfully contrived that whoever was en¬ 
 closed in it could by no means find his way out unas¬ 
 sisted. Here the Minotaur roamed, and was fed with 
 human victims. 
 
 Theseus resolved to deliver his countrymen from 
 this calamity, or to die in the attempt. Accordingly, when 
 the time of sending off the tribute came, and the youths 
 and maidens were, according to custom, drawn by lot to 
 be sent, he offered himself as one of the victims, in 
 spite of the entreaties of his father. The ship departed 
 under black sails, as usual, which Theseus promised his 
 father to change for white, in case of his returning vic¬ 
 torious. When they arrived in Crete, the youths and 
 maidens were exhibited before Minos; and Ariadne, the 
 daughter of the king, being present, became deeply enam¬ 
 ored of Theseus, by whom her love was readily returned. 
 She furnished him with a sword, with which to encoun¬ 
 ter the Minotaur, and with a clew of thread by which he 
 might find his way out of the labyrinth. He was suc¬ 
 cessful, slew the Minotaur, escaped from the labyrinth, 
 and taking Ariadne as the companion of his way, with his 
 rescued companions sailed for Athens. On their way 
 they stopped at the island of Naxos, where Theseus 
 abandoned Ariadne, leaving her asleep. 1 His excuse for 
 
 1 One of the finest pieces of sculpture in Italy, the recumbent Ariadne 
 of the Vatican, represents this incident. A copy is owned by the 
 Athenaeum, Boston, and deposited in the Museum of Fine Arts. 
 
THESEUS 
 
 153 
 
 this ungrateful treatment of his benefactress was that 
 Minerva appeared to him in a dream and commanded him 
 to do so. 
 
 On approaching the coast of Attica, Theseus forgot 
 the signal appointed by his father, and neglected to raise 
 the white sails, and the old king, thinking his son had 
 perished, put an end to his own life. Theseus thus became 
 king of Athens. 
 
 One of the most celebrated of the adventures of The¬ 
 seus is his expedition against the Amazons. He assailed 
 them before they had recovered from the attack of 
 Hercules, and carried off their queen Antiope. The 
 Amazons in their turn invaded the country of Athens and 
 penetrated into the city itself; and the final battle in 
 which Theseus overcame them was fought in the very 
 midst of the city. This battle was one of the favorite 
 subjects of the ancient sculptors, and is commemorated 
 in several works of art that are still extant. 
 
 The friendship between Theseus and Pirithous was 
 of a most intimate nature, yet it originated in the midst 
 of arms. Pirithous had made an irruption into the plain 
 of Marathon, and carried off the herds of the king of 
 Athens. Theseus went to repel the plunderers. The 
 moment Pirithous beheld him, he was seized with admi¬ 
 ration ; he stretched out his hand as a token of peace, 
 and cried, “Be judge thyself—what satisfaction dost thou 
 require?” “Thy friendship,” replied the Athenian, and 
 they swore inviolable fidelity. Their deeds corresponded 
 to their professions, and they ever continued true brothers 
 in arms. Each of them aspired to espouse a daughter 
 of Jupiter. Theseus fixed his choice on Helen, then but 
 a child, afterwards so celebrated as the cause of the 
 Trojan war, and with the aid of his friend he carried 
 her off. Pirithous aspired to the wife of the monarch 
 of Erebus; and Theseus, though aware of the danger, 
 accompanied the ambitious lover in his descent to the 
 under-wbrld. But Pluto seized and set them on an en¬ 
 chanted rock at his palace gate, where they remained 
 till Hercules arrived and liberated Theseus, leaving Pi¬ 
 rithous to his fate. 
 
 After the death of Antiope, Theseus married Phae- 
 
154 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 dra, daughter of Minos, king of Crete. Phaedra saw in 
 Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, a youth endowed with 
 all the graces and virtues of his father, and of an age 
 corresponding to her own. She loved him, but he re¬ 
 pulsed her advances, and her love was changed to hate. 
 She used her influence over her infatuated husband to 
 cause him to be jealous of his son, and he imprecated the 
 vengeance of Neptune upon him. As Hippolytus was one 
 day driving his chariot along the shore, a sea-monster 
 raised himself above the waters, and frightened the 
 horses so that they ran away and dashed the chariot to 
 pieces. Hippolytus was killed, but by Diana’s assistance 
 ^Esculapius restored him to life. Diana removed Hip¬ 
 polytus from the power of his deluded father and false 
 stepmother, and placed him in Italy under the protection 
 of the nymph Egeria. 
 
 Theseus at length lost the favor of his people, and 
 retired to the court of Lycomedes, king of Scyros, who 
 at first received him kindly, but afterwards treacherously 
 slew him. In a later age the Athenian general Cimon 
 discovered the place where his remains were laid, and 
 caused them to be removed to Athens, where they were 
 deposited in a temple called the Theseum, erected in 
 honor of the hero. 
 
 The queen of the Amazons whom Theseus espoused 
 is by some called Hippolyta. That is the name she bears 
 in Shakspeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,”—the 
 subject of which is the festivities attending the nup¬ 
 tials of Theseus and Hippolyta. 
 
 Mrs. Hemans has a poem on the ancient Greek tra¬ 
 dition that the “Shade of Theseus” appeared strength¬ 
 ening his countrymen at the battle of Marathon. 
 
 Theseus is a semi-historical personage. It is record¬ 
 ed of him that he united the several tribes by whom 
 the territory of Attica was then possessed into one 
 state, of which Athens was the capital. In commemora¬ 
 tion of this important event, he instituted the festival 
 of Panathensea, in honor of Minerva, the patron deity 
 of Athens. This festival differed from the other Gre¬ 
 cian games chiefly in two particulars. It was peculiar 
 
OLYMPIC AND OTHER GAMES 
 
 155 
 
 to the Athenians, and its chief feature was a solemn 
 procession in which the Peplus, or sacred robe of 
 Minerva, was carried to the Parthenon, and suspended 
 before the statue of the goddess. The Peplus was cov¬ 
 ered with embroidery, worked by select virgins of the 
 noblest families in Athens. The procession consisted of 
 persons of all ages and both sexes. The old men car¬ 
 ried olive branches in their hands, and the young men 
 bore arms. The young women carried baskets on their 
 heads, containing the sacred utensils, cakes, and all 
 things necessary for the sacrifices. The procession 
 formed the subject of the bas-reliefs which embellished 
 the outside of the temple of the Parthenon. A con¬ 
 siderable portion of these sculptures is now in the Brit¬ 
 ish Museum among those known as the “Elgin marbles.’* 
 
 OLYMPIC AND OTHER GAMES 
 
 It seems not inappropriate to mention here the other 
 celebrated national games of the Greeks. The first and 
 most distinguished were the Olympic, founded, it was 
 said, by Jupiter himself. They were celebrated at Olym¬ 
 pia in Elis. Vast numbers of spectators flocked to them 
 from every part of Greece, and from Asia, Africa, and 
 Sicily. They were repeated every fifth year in mid¬ 
 summer, and continued five days. They gave rise to 
 the custom of reckoning time and dating events by 
 Olympiads. The first Olympiad is generally consid¬ 
 ered as corresponding with the year 776 B.C. The 
 Pythian games were celebrated in the vicinity of Delphi, 
 the Isthmian on the Corinthian isthmus, the Nemean at 
 Nemea, a city of Argolis. 
 
 The exercises in these games were of five sorts: run¬ 
 ning, leaping, wrestling, throwing the quoit, and hurl¬ 
 ing the javelin, or boxing. Besides these exercises of 
 bodily strength and agility, there were contests in music, 
 poetry, and eloquence. Thus these games furnished 
 poets, musicians, and authors the best opportunities to 
 present their productions to the public, and the fame of 
 the victors was diffused far and wide. 
 
156 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 DAEDALUS 
 
 The labyrinth from which Theseus escaped by means 
 of the clew of Ariadne was built by Daedalus, a most 
 skilful artificer. It was an edifice with numberless wind¬ 
 ing passages and turnings opening into one another, and 
 seeming to have neither beginning nor end, like the river 
 Maeander, which returns on itself, and flows now on¬ 
 ward, now backward, in its course to the sea. Daedalus 
 built the labyrinth for King Minos, but afterwards lost 
 the favor of the king, and was shut up in a tower. He 
 contrived to make his escape from his prison, but could 
 not leave the island by sea, as the king kept strict watch 
 on all the vessels, and permitted none to sail without 
 being carefully searched. “Minos may control the land 
 and sea,” said Daedalus, “but not the regions of the air. 
 I will try that way.” So he set to work to fabricate 
 wings for himself and his young son Icarus. He 
 wrought feathers together, beginning with the smallest 
 and adding larger, so as to form an increasing surface. 
 The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller 
 with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like 
 the wings of a bird. Icarus, the boy, stood and looked 
 on, sometimes running to gather up the feathers which 
 the wind had blown away, and then handling the wax 
 and working it over with his fingers, by his play im¬ 
 peding his father in his labors. When at last the work 
 was done, the artist, waving his wings, found himself 
 buoyed upward, and hung suspended, poising himself on 
 the beaten air. He next equipped his son in the same 
 manner, and taught him how to fly, as a bird tempts her 
 young ones from the lofty nest into the air. When all 
 was prepared for flight he said, “Icarus, my son, I 
 charge you to keep at a moderate height, for if you 
 fly too low the damp will clog your wings, and if too 
 high the heat will melt them. Keep near me and you 
 will be safe.” While he gave him these instructions and 
 fitted the wings to his shoulders, the face of the father 
 was wet with tears, and his hands trembled. He kissed 
 the boy, not knowing that it was for the last time. Then 
 rising on his wings, he flew off, encouraging him to fol- 
 
DAEDALUS 
 
 157 
 
 low, and looked back from his own flight to see how 
 his son managed his wings. As they flew the plough¬ 
 man stopped his work to gaze, and the shepherd leaned 
 on his staff and watched them, astonished at the sight, 
 and thinking they were gods who could thus cleave 
 the air. 
 
 They passed Samos and Delos on the left and Leb- 
 ynthos on the right, when the boy, exulting in his ca¬ 
 reer, began to leave the guidance of his companion and 
 soar upward as if to reach heaven. The nearness of 
 the blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers 
 together, and they came off. He fluttered with his arms, 
 but no feathers remained to hold the air. While his 
 mouth uttered cries to his father it was submerged in 
 the blue waters of the sea, which thenceforth was called 
 by his name. His father cried, “Icarus, Icarus, where 
 are you?” At last he saw the feathers floating on the 
 water, and bitterly lamenting his own arts, he buried 
 the body and called the land Icaria in memory of his 
 child. Daedalus arrived safe in Sicily, where he built 
 a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings, an offering 
 to the god. 
 
 Daedalus was so proud of his achievements that he 
 could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed 
 her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the me¬ 
 chanical arts. He was an apt scholar and gave strik¬ 
 ing evidences of ingenuity. Walking on the seashore 
 he picked up the spine of a fish. Imitating it, he took 
 a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, and thus 
 invented the saw. He put two pieces of iron together, 
 connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpen¬ 
 ing the other ends, and made a pair of compasses. 
 Daedalus was so envious of his nephew’s performances 
 that he took an opportunity, when they were together 
 one day on the top of a high tower, to push him off. 
 But Minerva, who favors ingenuity, saw him falling, 
 and arrested his fate by changing him into a bird called 
 after his name, the Partridge. This bird does not build 
 his nest in the trees, nor take lofty flights, but nestles 
 in the hedges, and mindful of his fall, avoids high 
 places. 
 
158 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 The death of Icarus is told in the following lines by 
 Darwin: 
 
 “ . . with melting wax and loosened strings 
 
 Sunk hapless Icarus on unfaithful wings; 
 
 Headlong he rushed through the affrighted air, 
 
 With limbs distorted and dishevelled hair; 
 
 His scattered plumage danced upon the wave, 
 
 And sorrowing Nereids decked his watery grave; 
 
 O’er his pale corse their pearly sea-flowers shed, 
 
 And strewed with crimson moss his marble bed; 
 
 Struck in their coral towers the passing bell, 
 
 And wide in ocean tolled his echoing knell.” 
 
 CASTOR AND POLLUX 
 
 Castor and Pollux were the offspring of Leda and 
 the Swan, under which disguise Jupiter had concealed 
 himself. Leda gave birth to an egg from which sprang 
 the twins. Helen, so famous afterwards as the cause 
 of the Trojan war, was their sister. 
 
 When Theseus and his friend Pirithous had carried 
 off Helen from Sparta, the youthful heroes Castor and 
 Pollux, with their followers, hastened to her rescue. 
 Theseus was absent from Attica and the brothers were 
 successful in recovering their sister. 
 
 Castor was famous for taming and managing horses, 
 and Pollux for skill in boxing. They were united by 
 the warmest affection and inseparable in all their en¬ 
 terprises. They accompanied the Argonautic expedition. 
 During the voyage a storm arose, and Orpheus prayed 
 to the Samothracian gods, and played on his harp, 
 whereupon the storm ceased and stars appeared on the 
 heads of the brothers. From this incident, Castor and 
 Pollux came afterwards to be considered the patron 
 deities of seamen and voyagers, and the lambent flames, 
 which in certain states of the atmosphere play round the 
 sails and masts of vessels, were called by their names. 
 
 After the Argonautic expedition, we find Castor and 
 Pollux engaged in a war with Idas and Lynceus. Cas¬ 
 tor was slain, and Pollux, inconsolable for the loss of 
 his brother, besought Jupiter to be permitted to give 
 his own life as a ransom for him. Jupiter so far con- 
 
CASTOR AND POLLUX 
 
 159 
 
 sented as to allow the two brothers to enjoy the boon 
 of life alternately, passing one day under the earth and 
 the next in the heavenly abodes. According to another 
 form of the story, Jupiter rewarded the attachment of 
 the brothers by placing them among the stars as Gemini 
 the Twins. 
 
 They received divine honors under the name of 
 Dioscuri (sons of Jove). They were believed to have 
 appeared occasionally in later times, taking part with 
 one side or the other, in hard-fought fields, and were 
 said on such occasions to be mounted on magnificent 
 white steeds. Thus in the early history of Rome they 
 are said to have assisted the Romans at the battle of 
 Lake Regillus, and after the victory a temple was erected 
 in their honor on the spot where they appeared. 
 
 Macaulay, in his “Lays of Ancient Rome,” thus al- 
 ludes to the legend: 
 
 ‘‘So like they were, no mortal 
 Might one from other know; 
 
 White as snow their armor was, 
 
 Their steeds were white as snow. 
 
 Never on earthly anvil 
 
 Did such rare armor gleam, 
 
 And never did such gallant steeds 
 Drink of an earthly stream. 
 
 “Back comes the chief in triumph 
 Who in the hour of fight 
 Hath seen the great Twin Brethren 
 In harness on his right. 
 
 Safe comes the ship to haven, 
 Through billows and through gales, 
 If once the great Twin Brethren 
 Sit shining on the sails.” 
 
160 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 BACCHUS—ARIADNE 
 BACCHUS 
 
 Bacchus was the son of Jupiter and Semele. Juno, 
 to gratify her resentment against Semele, contrived a 
 plan for her destruction. Assuming the form of Beroe, 
 her aged nurse, she insinuated doubts whether it was 
 indeed Jove himself who came as a lover. Heaving a 
 sigh, she said, “I hope it will turn out so, but I can’t 
 help being afraid. People are not always what they 
 pretend to be. If he is indeed Jove, make him give 
 some proof of it. Ask him to come arrayed in all his 
 splendors, such as he wears in heaven. That will put 
 the matter beyond a doubt.” Semele was persuaded to 
 try the experiment. She asks a favor, without nam¬ 
 ing what it is. Jove gives his promise, and confirms it 
 with the irrevocable oath, attesting the river Styx, ter¬ 
 rible to the gods themselves. Then she made known her 
 request. The god would have stopped her as she spake, 
 but she was too quick for him. The words escaped, 
 and he could neither unsay his promise nor her request. 
 In deep distress he left her and returned to the upper 
 regions. There he clothed himself in his splendors, not 
 putting on all his terrors, as when he overthrew the 
 giants, but what is known among the gods as his lesser 
 panoply. Arrayed in this, he entered the chamber of 
 Semele. Her mortal frame could not endure the splen¬ 
 dors of the immortal radiance. She was consumed to 
 ashes. 
 
 Jove took the infant Bacchus and gave him in charge 
 to the Nysaean nymphs, who nourished his infancy and 
 childhood, and for their care were rewarded by Jupiter 
 by being placed, as the Hyades, among the stars. When 
 Bacchus grew up he discovered the culture of the vine 
 and the mode of extracting its precious juice; but Juno 
 struck him with madness, and drove him forth a wan¬ 
 derer through various parts of the earth. In Phrygia 
 
BACCHUS 
 
 161 
 
 the godaess Rhea cured him and taught him her re¬ 
 ligious rites, and he set out on a progress through Asia, 
 teaching the people the cultivation of the vine. The 
 most famous part of his wanderings is his expedition to 
 India, which is said to have lasted several years. Re¬ 
 turning in triumph, he undertook to introduce his wor¬ 
 ship into Greece, but was opposed by some princes, who 
 dreaded its introduction on account of the disorders and 
 madness it brought with it. 
 
 As he approached his native city Thebes, Pentheus 
 the king, who had no respect for the new worship, for¬ 
 bade its rites to be performed. But when it was known 
 that Bacchus was advancing, men and women, but 
 chiefly the latter, young and old, poured forth to meet 
 him and to join his triumphal march. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow in his “Drinking Song” thus describes 
 the march of Bacchus: 
 
 ‘‘Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow; 
 
 Ivy crowns that brow, supernal 
 As the forehead of Apollo, 
 
 And possessing youth eternal. 
 
 “Round about him fair Bacchantes, 
 
 Bearing cymbals, flutes and thyrses, 
 
 Wild from Naxian groves of Zante’s 
 Vineyards, sing delirious verses.” 
 
 It was in vain Pentheus remonstrated, commanded, 
 and threatened. “Go,” said he to his attendants, “seize 
 this vagabond leader of the rout and bring him to me. 
 I will soon make him confess his false claim of heavenly 
 parentage and renounce his counterfeit worship.” It was 
 in vain his nearest friends and wisest counsellors remon¬ 
 strated and begged him not to oppose the god. Their 
 remonstrances only made him more violent. 
 
 But now the attendants returned whom he had de¬ 
 spatched to seize Bacchus. They had been driven away 
 by the Bacchanals, but had succeeded in taking one of 
 them prisoner, whom, with his hands tied behind him, 
 they brought before the king. Pentheus, beholding him 
 with wrathful countenance, said, “Fellow! you shall 
 
162 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 speedily be put to death, that your fate may be a warn¬ 
 ing to others; but though I grudge the delay of your 
 punishment, speak, tell us who you are, and what are 
 these new rites you presume to celebrate.” 
 
 The prisoner, unterrified, responded, “My name is 
 Acetes; my country is Mseonia; my parents were poor 
 people, who had no fields or flocks to leave me, but 
 they left me their fishing rods and nets and their fisher¬ 
 man’s trade. This I followed for some time, till grow¬ 
 ing weary of remaining in one place, I learned the pilot’s 
 art and how to guide my course by the stars. It hap¬ 
 pened as I was sailing for Delos we touched at the 
 island of Dia and went ashore. Next morning I sent 
 the men for fresh water, and myself mounted the hill 
 to observe the wind; when my men returned bringing 
 with them a prize, as they thought, a boy of delicate 
 appearance, whom they had found asleep. They judged 
 he was a noble youth, perhaps a king’s son, and they 
 might get a liberal ransom for him. I observed his 
 dress, his walk, his face. There was something in them 
 which I felt sure was more than mortal. I said to my 
 men, ‘What god there is concealed in that form I know 
 not, but some one there certainly is. Pardon us, gentle 
 deity, for the violence we have done you, and give suc¬ 
 cess to our undertakings.’ Dictys, one of my best hands 
 for climbing the mast and coming down by the ropes, 
 and Melanthus, my steersman, and Epopeus, the leader 
 of the sailor’s cry, one and all exclaimed, ‘Spare your 
 prayers for us.’ So blind is the lust of gain! When 
 they proceeded to put him on board I resisted them. 
 ‘This ship shall not be profaned by such impiety,’ said 
 I. ‘I have a greater share in her than any of you.’ But 
 Lycabas, a turbulent fellow, seized me by the throat 
 and attempted to throw me overboard, and I scarcely 
 saved myself by clinging to the ropes. The rest ap¬ 
 proved the deed. 
 
 “Then Bacchus (for it was indeed he), as if shaking 
 off his drowsiness, exclaimed, ‘What are you doing with 
 me? What is this fighting about? Who brought me 
 here? Where are you going to carry me?’ One of 
 them replied, ‘Fear nothing; tell us where you wish 
 
BACCHUS 
 
 163 
 
 to go and we will take you there.’ ‘Naxos is my home/ 
 said Bacchus; ‘take me there and you shall be well re- 
 warded.’ They promised so to do, and told me to pilot 
 the ship to Naxos. Naxos lay to the right, and I was 
 trimming the sails to carry us there, when some by signs 
 and others by whispers signified to me their will that I 
 should sail in the opposite direction, and take the boy 
 to Egypt to sell him for a slave. I was confounded and 
 said, ‘Let some one else pilot the ship / withdrawing my¬ 
 self from any further agency in their wickedness. They 
 cursed me, and one of them, exclaiming, ‘Don’t flatter 
 yourself that we depend on you for our safety,’ took 
 my place as pilot, and bore away from Naxos. 
 
 “Then the god, pretending that he had just become 
 aware of their treachery, looked out over the sea and 
 said in a voice of weeping, ‘Sailors, these are not the 
 shores you promised to take me to; yonder island is 
 not my home. What have I done that you should treat 
 me so? It is small glory you will gain by cheating a 
 poor boy.’ I wept to hear him, but the crew laughed 
 at both of us, and sped the vessel fast over the sea. All 
 at once—strange as it may seem, it is true,—the vessel 
 stopped, in the mid sea, as fast as if it was fixed on 
 the ground. The men, astonished, pulled at their oars, 
 and spread more sail, trying to make progress by the 
 aid of both, but all in vain. Ivy twined round the oars 
 and hindered their motion, and clung to the sails, with 
 heavy clusters of berries. A vine, laden with grapes, 
 ran up the mast, and along the sides of the vessel. The ( 
 sound of flutes was heard and the odor of fragrant wine/ 
 spread all around. The god himself had a chaplet of 
 vine leaves, and bore in his hand a spear wreathed with 
 ivy. Tigers crouched at his feet, and forms of lynxes 
 and spotted panthers played around him. The men were 
 seized with terror or madness; some leaped overboard; 
 others preparing to do the same beheld their compan¬ 
 ions in the water undergoing a change, their bodies 
 becoming flattened and ending in a crooked tail. One 
 exclaimed, ‘What miracle is this!’ and as he spoke his 
 mouth widened, his nostrils expanded, and scales cov¬ 
 ered all his body. Another, endeavoring to pull the oar. 
 
164 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 felt his hands shrink up and presently to be no longer 
 hands but fins; another, trying to raise his arms to a 
 rope, found he had no arms, and curving his mutilated 
 body, jumped into the sea. What had been his legs 
 became the two ends of a crescent-shaped tail. The 
 whole crew became dolphins and swam about the ship, 
 now upon the surface, now under it, scattering the 
 spray, and spouting the water from their broad nostrils. 
 Of twenty men I alone was left. Trembling with fear, 
 the god cheered me. ‘Fear not/ said he; ‘steer towards 
 Naxos.’ I obeyed, and when we arrived there, I kindled 
 the altars and celebrated the sacred rites of Bacchus.” 
 
 Pentheus here exclaimed, “We have wasted time 
 enough on this silly story. Take him away and have 
 him executed without delay.” Acetes was led away by 
 the attendants and shut up fast in prison; but while 
 they were getting ready the instruments of execution 
 the prison doors came open of their own accord and the 
 chains fell from his limbs, and when they looked for 
 him he was nowhere to be found. 
 
 Pentheus would take no warning, but instead of send¬ 
 ing others, determined to go himself to the scene of 
 the solemnities. The mountain Citheron was all alive 
 with worshippers, and the cries of the Bacchanals re¬ 
 sounded on every side. The noise roused the anger of 
 Pentheus as the sound of a trumpet does the fire of 
 a war-horse. He penetrated through the wood and 
 reached an open space where the chief scene of the 
 orgies met his eyes. At the same moment the women 
 saw him; and first among them his own mother, Agave, 
 blinded by the god, cried out, “See there the wild boar, 
 the hugest monster that prowls in these woods! Come 
 on, sisters! I will be the first to strike the wild boar.” 
 The whole band rushed upon him, and while he now 
 talks less arrogantly, now excuses himself, and now con¬ 
 fesses his crime and implores pardon, they press upon 
 him and wound him. In vain he cries to his aunts to 
 protect him from his mother. Autonoe seized one arm, 
 Ino the other, and between them he was torn to pieces, 
 while his mother shouted, “Victory! Victory! we have 
 done it; the glory is ours!” 
 
ARIADNE 
 
 165 
 
 So the worship of Bacchus was established in Greece. 
 
 There is an allusion to the story of Bacchus and the 
 mariners in Milton’s “Comus,” at line 46. The story 
 of Circe will be found in Chapter XXIX. 
 
 “Bacchus that first from out the purple grapes 
 Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine, 
 
 After the Tuscan mariners transformed, 
 
 Coasting the Tyrrhene shore as the winds listed 
 On Circe’s island fell (who knows not Circe, 
 
 The daughter of the Sun? whose charmed cup 
 Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, 
 
 And downward fell into a grovelling swine).” 
 
 ARIADNE 
 
 We have seen in the story of Theseus how Ariadne, 
 the daughter of King Minos, after helping Theseus to 
 escape from the labyrinth, was carried by him to the 
 island of Naxos and was left there asleep, while the un¬ 
 grateful Theseus pursued his way home without her. 
 Ariadne, on waking and finding herself deserted, aban¬ 
 doned herself to grief. But Venus took pity on her, and 
 consoled her with the promise that she should have an 
 immortal lover, instead of the mortal one she had lost. 
 
 The island where Ariadne was left was the favorite 
 island of Bacchus, the same that he wished the Tyrrhe¬ 
 nian mariners to carry him to, when they so treacher¬ 
 ously attempted to make prize of him. As Ariadne sat 
 lamenting her fate, Bacchus found her, consoled her, 
 and made her his wife. As a marriage present he gave 
 her a golden crown, enriched with gems, and when she 
 died, he took her crown and threw it up into the sky. 
 As it mounted the gems grew brighter and were turned 
 into stars, and preserving its form Ariadne’s crown re¬ 
 mains fixed in the heavens as a constellation, between 
 the kneeling Hercules and the man who holds the ser¬ 
 pent. 
 
 Spenser alludes to Ariadne’s crown, though he has 
 made some mistakes in his mythology. It was at the 
 
166 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 wedding of Pirithous, and not Theseus, that the Cen¬ 
 taurs and Lapithse quarrelled. 
 
 “Look how the crown which Ariadne wore 
 Upon her ivory forehead that same day 
 That Theseus her unto his bridal bore, 
 
 Then the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray 
 With the fierce Lapiths which did them dismay; 
 
 Being now placed in the firmament, 
 
 Through the bright heaven doth her beams display, 
 
 And is unto the stars an ornament, 
 
 Which round about her move in order excellent.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE RURAL DEITIES—ERISICHTHON—RHCECUS—THE 
 WATER DEITIES-CAMENA2-WINDS 
 
 THE RURAL DEITIES 
 
 Pan, the god of woods and fields, of flocks and shep¬ 
 herds, dwelt in grottos, wandered on the mountains and 
 in valleys, and amused himself with the chase or in 
 leading the dances of the nymphs. He was fond of 
 music, and as we have seen, the inventor of the syrinx, 
 or shepherd’s pipe, which he himself played in a mas¬ 
 terly manner. Pan, like other gods who dwelt in for¬ 
 ests, was dreaded by those whose occupations caused 
 them to pass through the woods by night, for the gloom 
 ,and loneliness of such scenes dispose the mind to su¬ 
 perstitious fears. Hence sudden fright without any 
 visible cause was ascribed to Pan, and called a Panic 
 terror. 
 
 As the name of the god signifies all , Pan came to be 
 considered a symbol of the universe and personification 
 of Nature; and later still to be regarded as a represen¬ 
 tative of all the gods and of heathenism itself. 
 
 Sylvanus and Faunus were Latin divinities, whose 
 characteristics are so nearly the same as those of Pan 
 that we may safely consider them as the same person¬ 
 age under different names. 
 
THE RURAL DEITIES 
 
 167 
 
 The wood-nymphs, Pan’s partners in the dance, were 
 but one class of nymphs. There were beside them the 
 Naiads, who presided over brooks and fountains, the 
 Oreads, nymphs of mountains and grottos, and the Ne¬ 
 reids, sea-nymphs. The three last named were immor¬ 
 tal, but the wood-nymphs, called Dryads or Hamadryads, 
 were believed to perish with the trees which had been 
 their abode and with which they had come into exist¬ 
 ence. It was therefore an impious act wantonly to de¬ 
 stroy a tree, and in some aggravated cases were severely 
 punished, as in the instance of Erisichthon, which we 
 are about to record. 
 
 Milton in his glowing description of the early cre¬ 
 ation, thus alludes to Pan as the personification of 
 Nature: 
 
 “. . . Universal Pan, 
 
 Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, 
 Led on the eternal spring.” 
 
 And describing Eve’s abode: 
 
 “. . . In shadier bower, 
 
 More sacred or sequestered, though but feigned, 
 
 Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph 
 Nor Faunus haunted.” 
 
 —Paradise Lost , B. IV. 
 
 It was a pleasing trait in the old Paganism that it 
 loved to trace in every operation of nature the agency 
 of deity. The imagination of the Greeks peopled all 
 the regions of earth and sea with divinities, to whose 
 agency it attributed those phenomena which our phi¬ 
 losophy ascribes to the operation of the laws of nature. 
 Sometimes in our poetical moods we feel disposed to 
 regret the change, and to think that the heart has lost 
 as much as the head has gained by the substitution. The 
 poet Wordsworth thus strongly expresses this senti¬ 
 ment : 
 
 “. . . Great God, I’d rather be 
 A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
168 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 
 And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.” 
 
 Schiller, in his poem “Die Gotter Griechenlands, ,, ex¬ 
 presses his regret for the overthrow of the beautiful 
 mythology of ancient times in a way which has called 
 forth an answer from a Christian poet, Mrs. E. Bar¬ 
 rett Browning, in her poem called “The Dead Pan.” 
 The two following verses are a specimen: 
 
 “By your beauty which confesses 
 Some chief Beauty conquering you, 
 
 By our grand heroic guesses 
 Through your falsehood at the True, 
 
 We will weep not! earth shall roll 
 Heir to each god’s aureole,. 
 
 And Pan is dead. 
 
 “Earth outgrows the mythic fancies 
 Sung beside her in her youth; 
 
 And those debonaire romances 
 Sound but dull beside the truth. 
 
 Phoebus’ chariot course is run! 
 
 Look up, poets, to the sun! 
 
 Pan, Pan is dead.” 
 
 These lines are founded on an early Christian tra¬ 
 dition that when the heavenly host told the shepherds 
 at Bethlehem of the birth of Christ, a deep groan, heard 
 through all the isles of Greece, told that the great Pan 
 was dead, and that all the royalty of Olympus was 
 dethroned and the several deities were sent wandering 
 in cold and darkness. So Milton in his “Hymn on the 
 Nativity”: 
 
 m* 
 
 “The lonely mountains o’er, 
 
 And the resounding shore, 
 
 A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; 
 
 From haunted spring and dale, 
 
 Edged with poplar pale, 
 
 The parting Genius is with sighing sent; 
 
 With flower-enwoven tresses torn, 
 
 The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.” 
 
ERISICHTHON 
 
 169 
 
 ERISICHTHON 
 
 Erisichthon was a profane person and a despiser of 
 the gods. On one occasion he presumed to violate with 
 the axe a grove sacred to Ceres. There stood in this 
 grove a venerable oak so large that it seemed a wood 
 in itself, its ancient trunk towering aloft, whereon vo¬ 
 tive garlands were often hung and inscriptions carved 
 expressing the gratitude of suppliants to the nymph of 
 the tree. Often had the Dryads danced round it hand 
 in hand. Its trunk measured fifteen cubits round, and 
 it overtopped the other trees as they overtopped the 
 shrubbery. But for all that, Erisichthon saw no reason 
 why he should spare it and he ordered his servants to 
 cut it down. When he saw them hesitate he snatched 
 an axe from one, and thus impiously exclaimed: “I care 
 not whether it be a tree beloved of the goddess or not; 
 were it the goddess herself it should come down if it 
 stood in my way.” So saying, he lifted the axe and the 
 oak seemed to shudder and utter a groan. When the 
 first blow fell upon the trunk blood flowed from the 
 wound. All the bystanders were horror-struck, and one 
 of them ventured to remonstrate and hold back the fatal 
 axe. Erisichthon, with a scornful look, said to him, 
 “Receive the reward of your piety;” and turned against 
 him the weapon which he had held aside from the tree, 
 gashed his body with many wounds, and cut off his 
 head. Then from the midst of the oak came a voice, 
 “I who dwell in this tree am a nymph beloved of Ceres, 
 and dying by your hands forewarn you that punish¬ 
 ment awaits you.” He desisted not from his crime, and 
 at last the tree, sundered by repeated blows and drawn 
 by ropes, fell with a crash and prostrated a great part 
 of the grove in its fall. 
 
 The Dryads in dismay at the loss of their compan¬ 
 ion and at seeing the pride of the forest laid low, went 
 in a body to Ceres, all clad in garments of mourning, 
 and invoked punishment upon Erisichthon. She nod¬ 
 ded her assent, and as she bowed her head the grain 
 ripe for harvest in the laden fields bowed also. She 
 planned a punishment so dire that one would pity him, 
 
170 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 if such a culprit as he could be pitied,—to deliver him 
 over to Famine. As Ceres herself could not approach 
 Famine, for the Fates have ordained that these two 
 goddesses shall never come together, she called an 
 Oread from her mountain and spoke to her in these 
 words: “There is a place in the farthest part of ice- 
 clad Scythia, a sad and sterile region without trees and 
 without crops. Cold dwells there, and Fear and Shud¬ 
 dering, and Famine. Go and jtell the last to take pos¬ 
 session of the bowels of Erisichthon. Let not abundance 
 subdue her, nor the power of my gifts drive her away. 
 Be not alarmed at the distance’" (for Famine dwells 
 very far from Ceres), “but take my chariot. The 
 dragons are fleet and obey the rein, and will take you 
 through the air in a short time.” So she gave her the 
 reins, and she drove away and soon reached Scythia. 
 On arriving at Mount Caucasus she stopped the drag¬ 
 ons and found Famine in a stony field, pulling up with 
 teeth and claws the scanty herbage. Her hair was 
 rough, her eyes sunk, her face pale, her lips blanched, 
 her jaws covered with dust, and her skin drawn tight, 
 so as tojshow all her bones. As the Oread saw her 
 afar off (for she did not dare to come near), she de¬ 
 livered the commands of Ceres; and, though she stopped 
 as short a time as possible, and kept her distance as 
 well as she could, yet she began to feel hungry, and 
 turned the dragons’ heads and drove back to Thessaly. 
 
 Famine obeyed the commands of Ceres and sped 
 through the air to the dwelling of Erisichthon, entered 
 the bedchamber of the guilty man, and found him asleep. 
 She enfolded him with her wings and breathed herself 
 into him, infusing her poison into his veins. Having 
 discharged her task, she hastened to leave the land of 
 plenty and returned to her accustomed haunts. Erisich¬ 
 thon still slept, and in his dreams craved food, and 
 moved his jaws as if eating. When he awoke, his 
 hunger was raging. Without a moment’s delay he would 
 have food set before him, of whatever kind earth, sea, 
 or air produces; and complained of hunger even while 
 he ate. What would have sufficed for a city or a na¬ 
 tion, was not enough for him. The more he ate the 
 
ERISICHTHON 
 
 171 
 
 more he craved. His hunger was like the sea, which re^ 
 ceives all the rivers, yet is never filled; or like fire, 
 that burns all the fuel that is heaped upon it, yet is still 
 voracious for more. 
 
 His property rapidly diminished under the unceasing 
 demands of his appetite, but his hunger continued un¬ 
 abated. At length he had spent all and had only his 
 daughter left, a daughter worthy of a better parent. 
 Her too he sold. She scorned to be the slave of a pur¬ 
 chaser and as she stood by the seaside raised her hands 
 in prayer to Neptune. He heard her prayer, and though 
 her new master was not far off and had his eye upon 
 her a moment before, Neptune changed her form and 
 made her assume that of a fisherman busy at his oc¬ 
 cupation. Her master, looking for her and seeing her 
 in her altered form, addressed her and said, “Good 
 fisherman, whither went the maiden whom I saw just 
 now, with hair dishevelled and in humble garb, standing 
 about where you stand? Tell me truly; so may your 
 luck be good and not a fish nibble at your hook and get 
 away.” She perceived that her prayer was answered 
 and rejoiced inwardly at hearing herself inquired of 
 about herself. She replied, “Pardon me, stranger, but 
 I have been so intent upon my line that I have seen 
 nothing else; but I wish I may never catch another fish 
 if I believe any woman or other person except myself 
 to have been hereabouts for some time.” He was de¬ 
 ceived and went his way, thinking his slave had escaped. 
 Then she resumed her own form. Her father was well 
 pleased to find her still with him, and the money too that 
 he got by the sale of her; so he sold her again. But 
 she was changed by the favor of Neptune as often as 
 she was sold, now into a horse, now a bird, now an ox, 
 and now a stag,—got away from her purchasers and 
 came home. By this base method the starving father 
 procured food; but not enough for his wants, and at last 
 hunger compelled him to devour his limbs, and he strove 
 to nourish his body by eating his body, till death re¬ 
 lieved him from the vengeance of Ceres. 
 
172 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 RHCECUS 
 
 The Hamadryads could appreciate services as well as 
 punish injuries. The story of Rhoecus proves this. 
 Rhoecus, happening to see an oak just ready to fall, 
 ordered his servants to prop it up. The nymph, who 
 had been on the point of perishing with the tree, came 
 and expressed her gratitude to him for having saved 
 her life and bade him ask what reward he would. 
 Rhoecus boldly asked her love and the nymph yielded to 
 his desire. She at the same time charged him to be 
 constant and told him that a bee should be her mes¬ 
 senger and let him know when she would admit his 
 society. One time the bee came to Rhoecus when he 
 was playing at draughts and he carelessly brushed it 
 away. This so incensed the nymph that she deprived 
 him of sight. 
 
 Our countryman, J. R. Lowell, has taken this story 
 for the subject of one of his shorter poems. He intro¬ 
 duces it thus: 
 
 “Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, 
 
 As full of freedom, youth and beauty still, 
 
 As the immortal freshness of that grace 
 Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze.” 
 
 THE WATER DEITIES 
 
 Oceanus and Tethys were the Titans who ruled over 
 the watery element. When Jove and his brothers over¬ 
 threw the Titans and assumed their power, Neptune and 
 Amphitrite succeeded to the dominion of the waters in 
 place of Oceanus and Tethys. 
 
 NEPTUNE 
 
 Neptune was the chief of the water deities. The 
 symbol of his power was the trident, or spear with 
 three points, with which he used to shatter rocks, to 
 call forth or subdue storms, to shake the shores and the 
 like. He created the horse and was the patron of 
 
THE WATER DEITIES 
 
 173 
 
 horse races. His own horses had brazen hoofs and 
 golden manes. They drew his chariot over the sea, 
 which became smooth before him, while the monsters 
 of the deep gambolled about his path. 
 
 AMPHITRITE 
 
 Amphitrite was the wife of Neptune. She was the 
 daughter of Nereus and Doris, and the mother of Triton. 
 Neptune, to pay his court to Amphitrite, came riding on 
 a dolphin. Having won her he rewarded the dolphin 
 by placing him among the stars. 
 
 NEREUS AND DORIS 
 
 Nereus and Doris were the parents of the Nereids, 
 the most celebrated of whom were Amphitrite, Thetis, 
 the mother of Achilles, and Galatea, who was loved 
 by the Cyclops Polyphemus. Nereus was distinguished 
 for his knowledge and his love of truth and justice, 
 whence he was termed an elder; the gift of prophecy 
 was also assigned to him. 
 
 TRITON AND PROTEUS 
 
 Triton was the son of Neptune and Amphitrite, and 
 the poets make him his father s trumpeter. Proteus 
 was also a son of Neptune. He, like Nereus, is styled 
 a sea-elder for his wisdom and knowledge of future 
 events. His peculiar power was that of changing his 
 shape at will. 
 
 THETIS 
 
 Thetis, the daughter of Nereus and Doris, was so 
 beautiful that Jupiter himself sought her in marriage; 
 but having learned from Prometheus the Titan that 
 Thetis should bear a son who should grow greater than 
 his father, Jupiter desisted from his suit and decreed 
 that Thetis should be the wife of a mortal. By the 
 aid of Chiron the Centaur, Peleus succeeded in winning 
 
174 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 the goddess for his bride and their son was the re¬ 
 nowned Achilles. In our chapter on the Trojan war 
 it will appear that Thetis was a faithful mother to him, 
 aiding him in all difficulties, and watching over his in¬ 
 terests from the first to the last. 
 
 LEUCOTHEA AND PALA2MON 
 
 Ino, the daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas, 
 flying from her frantic husband with her little son Meli- 
 certes in her arms, sprang from a cliff into the sea. 
 The gods, out of compassion, made her a goddess of 
 the sea, under the name of Leucothea, and him a god, 
 under that of Palaemon. Both were held powerful to 
 save from shipwreck and were invoked by sailors. 
 Palaemon was usually represented riding on a dolphin. 
 The Isthmian games were celebrated in his honor. He 
 was called Portunus by the Romans, and believed to 
 have jurisdiction of the ports and shores. 
 
 Milton alludes to all these deities in the song at the 
 conclusion of “Comus”: 
 
 “. . . Sabrina fair, 
 
 Listen and appear to us, 
 
 In name of great Oceanus; 
 
 By the earth-shaking Neptune’s mace, 
 
 And Tethys’ grave, majestic pace, ' 
 
 By hoary Nereus’ wrinkled look, 
 
 And the Carpathian wizard’s hook , 1 
 By scaly Triton’s winding shell, 
 
 And old soothsaying Glaucus’ spell, 
 
 By Leucothea’s lovely hands, 
 
 And her son who rules the strands. 
 
 By Thetis’ tinsel-slippered feet, 
 
 And the songs of Sirens sweet;” etc. 
 
 Armstrong, the poet of the “Art of preserving 
 Health,” under the inspiration of Hygeia, the goddess 
 of health, thus celebrates the Naiads. Paeon is a name 
 both of Apollo and ^Esculapius. 
 
 1 Proteus. 
 
THE WATER DEITIES 
 
 175 
 
 “Come, ye Naiads! to the fountains lead! 
 Propitious maids! the task remains to sing 
 Your gifts (so Paeon, so the powers of Health 
 Command), to praise your crystal element. 
 
 O comfortable streams! with eager lips 
 And trembling hands the languid thirsty quaff 
 New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins. 
 
 No warmer cups the rural ages knew, 
 
 None warmer sought the sires of humankind; 
 Happy in temperate peace their equal days 
 Felt not the alternate fits of feverish mirth 
 And sick dejection; still serene and pleased, 
 Blessed with divine immunity from ills, 
 
 Long centuries they lived; their only fate 
 Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.” 
 
 THE CAMENiE 
 
 By this name the Latins designated the Muses, but 
 included under it also some other deities, principally 
 nymphs of fountains. Egeria was one of them, whose 
 fountain and grotto are still shown. It was said that 
 Numa, the second king of Rome, was favored by this 
 nymph with secret interviews, in which she taught him 
 those lessons of wisdom and of law which he imbodied 
 in the institutions of his rising nation. After the death 
 of Numa the nymph pined away and was changed into 
 a fountain. 
 
 Byron, in “Childe Harold,” Canto IV., thus alludes 
 to Egeria and her grotto: 
 
 “Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, 
 
 Egeria! all thy heavenly bosom beating 
 For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover; 
 
 The purple midnight veiled that mystic meeting 
 With her most starry canopy;” etc. 
 
 Tennyson, also, in his “Palace of Art,” gives us a 
 glimpse of the royal lover expecting the interview: 
 
 “Holding one hand against his ear, 
 
 To list a footfall ere he saw 
 The wood-nymph, stayed the Tuscan king to hear 
 Of wisdom and of law.” 
 
176 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 THE WINDS 
 
 When so many less active agencies were personified, 
 it is not to be supposed that the winds failed to be so. 
 They were Boreas or Aquilo, the north wind; Zephyrus 
 or Favonius, the west; Notus or Auster, the south; and 
 Eurus, the east. The first two have been chiefly cele¬ 
 brated by the poets, the former as the type of rude¬ 
 ness, the latter of gentleness. Boreas loved the nymph 
 Orithyia, and tried to play the lover’s part, but met 
 with poor success. It was hard for him to breathe 
 gently, and sighing was out of the question. Weary at last 
 of fruitless endeavors, he acted out his true character, 
 seized the maiden and carried her off. Their children 
 were Zetes and Calais, winged warriors, who accom¬ 
 panied the Argonautic expedition, and did good service 
 in an encounter with those monstrous birds the Harpies. 
 
 Zephyrus was the lover of Flora. Milton alludes 
 to them in “Paradise Lost,” where he describes Adam 
 waking and contemplating Eve still asleep. 
 
 “. . . He on his side 
 
 Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love, 
 
 Hung over her enamored, and beheld 
 Beauty which, whether waking or asleep, 
 
 Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice, 
 
 Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, 
 
 Her hand soft touching, whispered thus: ‘Awake! 
 
 My fairest, my espoused, my latest found, 
 
 Heaven’s last, best gift, my ever-new delight.’” 
 
 Dr. Young, the poet of the “Night Thoughts,” ad¬ 
 dressing the idle and luxurious, says: 
 
 “Ye delicate! who nothing can support 
 (Yourselves most insupportable) for whom 
 The winter rose must blow, . . . 
 
 . .$ . and silky soft 
 
 Favonius breathe still softer or be chid!” 
 
STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 ( Continued ) 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 ACHELOUS AND HERCULES—ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS— 
 
 ANTIGONE—PENELOPE 
 
 ACHELOUS AND HERCULES 
 
 The river-god Achelous told the story of Erisichthon 
 to Theseus and his companions, whom he was enter¬ 
 taining at his hospitable board, while they were delayed 
 on their journey by the overflow of his waters. Having 
 finished his story, he added, “Brit why should I tell of 
 other persons’ transformations when I myself am an 
 instance of the possession of this power? Sometimes I 
 become a serpent, and sometimes a bull, with horns on 
 my head. Or I should say I once could do so; but now 
 I have but one horn, having lost one.” And here he 
 groaned and was silent. 
 
 Theseus asked him the cause of his grief, and how 
 he lost his horn. To which question the river-god re¬ 
 plied as follows: “Who likes to tell of his defeats ? 
 Yet I will not hesitate to relate mine, comforting my¬ 
 self with the thought of the greatness of my conqueror, 
 for it was Hercules. Perhaps you have heard of the 
 fame of Dejanira, the fairest of maidens, whom a host 
 of suitors strove to win. Hercules and myself were of 
 the number, and the rest yielded to us two. He urged 
 in his behalf his descent from Jove and his labors by 
 which he had exceeded the exactions of Juno, his step¬ 
 mother. I, on the other hand, said to the father of the 
 maiden, ‘Behold me, the king of the waters that flow 
 
 177 
 
178 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 through your land. I am no stranger from a foreign 
 shore, but belong to the country, a part of your realm. 
 Let it not stand in my way that royal Juno owes me no 
 enmity nor punishes me with heavy tasks. As for this 
 man, who boasts himself the son of Jove, it is either 
 a false pretence, or disgraceful to him if true, for it 
 cannot be true except by his mother’s shame.’ As I said 
 this Hercules scowled upon me, and with difficulty re¬ 
 strained his rage. ‘My hand will answer better than 
 my tongue,’ said he. ‘I yield to you the victory in words, 
 but trust my cause to the strife of deeds.’ With that 
 he advanced towards me, and I was ashamed, after 
 what I had said, to yield. I threw off my green vesture 
 and presented myself for the struggle. He tried to 
 throw me, now attacking my head, now my body. My 
 bulk was my protection, and he assailed me in vain. 
 For a time we stopped, then returned to the conflict. 
 We each kept our position, determined not to yield, foot 
 to foot, I bending over him, clenching his hand in mine, 
 with my forehead almost touching his. Thrice Hercules 
 tried to throw me off, and the fourth time he succeed¬ 
 ed, brought me to the ground, and himself upon my 
 back. I tell you the truth, it was as if a mountain had 
 fallen on me. I struggled to get my arms at liberty, 
 panting and reeking with perspiration. He gave me no 
 chance to recover, but seized my throat. My knees 
 were on the earth and my mouth in the dust. 
 
 “Finding that I was no match for him in the warrior’s 
 art, I resorted to others and glided away in the form 
 of a serpent. I curled my body in a coil and hissed 
 at him with my forked tongue. He smiled scornfully 
 at this, and said, ‘It was the labor of my infancy to 
 conquer snakes.’ So saying he clasped my neck with 
 his hands. I was almost choked, and struggled to get 
 my neck out of his grasp. Vanquished in this form, I 
 tried what alone remained to me and assumed the form 
 of a bull. He grasped my neck with his arm, and drag¬ 
 ging my head down to the ground, overthrew me on 
 the sand. Nor was this enough. His ruthless hand rent 
 my horn from my head. The Naiades took it, conse¬ 
 crated it, and filled it with fragrant flowers. Plenty 
 
ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS 
 
 179 
 
 adopted my horn and made it her own, and called it 
 ‘Cornucopia/ ” 
 
 The ancients were fond of finding a hidden meaning 
 in their mythological tales. They explain this fight of 
 Achelous with Hercules by saying Achelous was a river 
 that in seasons of rain overflowed its banks. When 
 the fable says that Achelous loved Dejanira, and sought 
 a union with her, the meaning is that the river in its 
 windings flowed through part of Dejanira’s kingdom. 
 It was said to take the form of a snake because of 
 its winding, and of a bull because it made a brawling 
 or roaring in its course. When the river swelled, it 
 made itself another channel. Thus its head was horned. 
 Hercules prevented the return of these periodical over¬ 
 flows by embankments and canals; and therefore he was 
 said to have vanquished the river-god and cut off his 
 horn. Finally, the lands formerly subject to overflow, 
 but now redeemed, became very fertile, and this is meant 
 by the horn of plenty. 
 
 There is another account of the origin of the Cornu¬ 
 copia. Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother 
 Rhea to the care of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan 
 king. They fed the infant deity with the milk of the 
 goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke off one of the horns 
 of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and endowed it 
 with the wonderful power of becoming filled with what¬ 
 ever the possessor might wish. 
 
 The name of Amalthea is also given by some writers 
 to the mother of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, 
 “Paradise Lost,” Book IV.: 
 
 “. . . That Nyseian isle, 
 
 Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, 
 
 Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove, 
 
 Hid Amalthea and her florid son, 
 
 Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye.” 
 
 ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS 
 
 ^Esculapius, the son of Apollo, was endowed by his 
 father with such skill in the healing art that he even 
 
180 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 restored the dead to life. At this Pluto took alarm* 
 and prevailed on Jupiter to launch a thunderbolt at 
 Hisculapius. Apollo was indignant at the destruction 
 of his son, and wreaked his vengeance on the inno¬ 
 cent workmen who had made the thunderbolt. These 
 were the Cyclopes, who have their workshop under 
 Mount TEtna., from which the smoke and flames of 
 their furnaces are constantly issuing. Apollo shot his 
 arrows at the Cyclopes, which so incensed Jupiter that 
 he condemned him as a punishment to become the serv¬ 
 ant of a mortal for the space of one year. Accord¬ 
 ingly Apollo went into the service of Admetus, king of 
 Thessaly, and pastured his flocks for him on the verdant 
 banks of the river Amphrysos. 
 
 Admetus was a suitor, with others, for the hand of 
 Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, who promised her to 
 him who should come for her in a chariot drawn by 
 lions and boars. This task Admetus performed by the 
 assistance of his divine herdsman, and was made happy 
 in the possession of Alcestis. But Admetus fell ill, 
 and being near to death, Apollo prevailed on the Fates 
 to spare him on condition that some one would con¬ 
 sent to die in his stead. Admetus, in his joy at this 
 reprieve, thought little of the ransom, and perhaps re¬ 
 membering the declarations of attachment which he had 
 often heard from his courtiers and dependents fancied 
 that it would be easy to find a substitute. But it was 
 not so. Brave warriors, who would willingly have per¬ 
 illed their lives for their prince, shrunk from the thought 
 of dying for him on the bed of sickness; and old serv¬ 
 ants who had experienced his bounty and that of his 
 house from their childhood up, were not willing to lay 
 down the scanty remnant of their days to show their 
 gratitude. Men asked, “Why does not one of his par¬ 
 ents do it? They cannot in the course of nature live 
 much longer, and who can feel like them the call to 
 rescue the life they gave from an untimely end?” But 
 the parents, distressed though they were at the thought 
 of losing him, shrunk from the call. Then Alcestis, with 
 a generous self-devotion, proffered herself as the sub¬ 
 stitute. Admetus, fond as he was of life, would not 
 
ANTIGONE 
 
 181 
 
 have submitted to receive it at such a cost; but there 
 was no remedy. The condition imposed by the Fates 
 had been met, and the decree was irrevocable. Alcestis 
 sickened as Admetus revived, and she was rapidly sink¬ 
 ing to the grave. 
 
 Just at this time Hercules arrived at the palace of 
 Admetus, and found all the inmates in great distress 
 for the impending loss of the devoted wife and beloved 
 mistress. Hercules, to whom no labor was too arduous, 
 resolved to attempt her rescue. He went and lay in 
 wait at the door of the chamber of the dying queen, 
 and when Death came for his prey, he seized him and 
 forced him to resign his victim. Alcestis recovered, and 
 was restored to her husband. 
 
 Milton alludes to the story of Alcestis in his Sonnet 
 “on his deceased wife:” 
 
 “Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, 
 
 Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave, 
 Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.” 
 
 J. R. Lowell has chosen the “Shepherd of King Ad¬ 
 metus” for the subject of a short poem. He makes that 
 event the first introduction of poetry to men. 
 
 “Men called him but a shiftless youth, 
 
 In whom no good they saw. 
 
 And yet unwittingly, in truth, 
 
 They made his careless words their law. 
 
 “And day by day more holy grew 
 Each spot where he had trod, 
 
 Till after-poets only knew 
 
 Their first-born brother was a god.” 
 
 ANTIGONE 
 
 A large proportion both of the interesting persons 
 and of the exalted acts of legendary Greece belongs to 
 the female sex. Antigone was as bright an example 
 of filial and sisterly fidelity as was Alcestis of connu- 
 
182 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 bial devotion. She was the daughter of (Edipus and 
 Jocasta, who with all their descendants were the victims 
 of an unrelenting fate, dooming them to destruction. 
 (Edipus in his madness had torn out his eyes, and was 
 driven forth from his kingdom Thebes, dreaded and 
 abandoned by all men, as an object of divine vengeance. 
 Antigone, his daughter, alone shared his wanderings and 
 remained with him till he died, and then returned to 
 Thebes. 
 
 Her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had agreed to 
 share the kingdom between them, and reign alternately 
 year by year. The first year fell to the lot of Eteocles, 
 who, when his time expired, refused to surrender the 
 kingdom to his brother. Polynices fled to Adrastus, 
 king of Argos, who gave him his daughter in marriage, 
 and aided him with an army to enforce his claim to the 
 kingdom. This led to the celebrated expedition of the 
 “Seven against Thebes,” which furnished ample ma¬ 
 terials for the epic and tragic poets of Greece. 
 
 Amphiaraus, the brother-in-law of Adrastus, opposed 
 the enterprise, for he was a soothsayer, and knew by 
 his art that no one of the leaders except Adrastus would 
 live to return. But Amphiaraus, on his marriage to 
 Eriphyle, the king’s sister, had agreed that whenever he 
 and Adrastus should differ in opinion, the decision 
 should be left to Eriphyle. Polynices, knowing this, 
 gave Eriphyle the collar of Harmonia, and thereby 
 gained her to his interest. This collar or necklace was 
 a present which Vulcan had given to Harmonia on her 
 marriage with Cadmus, and Polynices had taken it with 
 him on his flight from Thebes. Eriphyle could not re¬ 
 sist so tempting a bribe, and by her decision the war was 
 resolved on, and Amphiaraus went to his certain fate. 
 He bore his part bravely in the contest, but could not 
 avert his destiny. Pursued by the enemy, he fled along 
 the river, when a thunderbolt launched by Jupiter 
 opened the ground, and he, his chariot, and his chari¬ 
 oteer were swallowed up. 
 
 It would not be in place here to detail all the acts 
 of heroism or atrocity which marked the contest; but 
 we must not omit to record the fidelity of Evadne as 
 
ANTIGONE 
 
 183' 
 
 an offset to the weakness of Eriphyle. Capaneus, the 
 husband of Evadne, in the ardor of the fight declared 
 that he would force his way into the city in spite of 
 Jove himself. Placing a ladder against the wall he 
 mounted, but Jupiter, offended at his impious language, 
 struck him with a thunderbolt. When his obsequies 
 were celebrated, Evadne cast herself on his funeral pile 
 and perished. 
 
 Early in the contest Eteocles consulted the sooth¬ 
 sayer Tiresias as to the issue. Tiresias in his youth 
 had by chance seen Minerva bathing. The goddess in 
 her wrath deprived him of his sight, but afterwards 
 relenting gave him in compensation the knowledge of 
 future events. When consulted by Eteocles, he de¬ 
 clared that victory should fall to Thebes if Menoeceus, 
 the son of Creon, gave himself a voluntary victim. The 
 heroic youth, learning the response, threw away his life 
 in the first encounter. 
 
 The siege continued long, with various success. At 
 length both hosts agreed that the brothers should de¬ 
 cide their quarrel by single combat. They fought and 
 fell by each other’s hands. The armies then renewed 
 the fight, and at last the invaders were forced to yield, 
 and fled, leaving their dead unburied. Creon, the uncle 
 of the fallen princes, now become king, caused Eteocles 
 to be buried with distinguished honor, but suffered the 
 body of Polynices to lie where it fell, forbidding every 
 one on pain of death to give it burial. 
 
 Antigone, the sister of Polynices, heard with indigna^ 
 tion the revolting edict which consigned her brother’s 
 body to the dogs and vultures, depriving it of those 
 rites which were considered essential to the repose of 
 the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of an 
 affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure as¬ 
 sistance, she determined to brave the hazard, and to 
 bury the body with her own hands. She was detected 
 in the act, and Creon gave orders that she should be 
 buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the 
 solemn edict of the city. Her lover, Hsemon, the son 
 of Creon, unable to avert her fate, would not survive 
 her, and fell by his own hand. 
 
184 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Antigone forms the subject of two fine tragedies of 
 the Grecian poet Sophocles. Mrs. Jameson, in her 
 “Characteristics of Women,” has compared her char¬ 
 acter with that of Cordelia, in Shakspeare’s “King 
 Lear.” The perusal of her remarks cannot fail to 
 gratify our readers. 
 
 The following is the lamentation of Antigone over 
 CEdipus, when death has at last relieved him from his 
 sufferings: 
 
 “Alas! I only wished I might have died 
 With my poor father; wherefore should I ask 
 For longer life? 
 
 O, I was fond of misery with him; 
 
 E’en what was most unlovely grew beloved 
 When he was with me. O my dearest father, 
 
 Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid, 
 
 Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still 
 Wast dear, and shalt be ever.” 
 
 — Francklin’s Sophocles. 
 
 PENELOPE 
 
 Penelope is another of those mythic heroines whose 
 beauties were rather those of character and conduct 
 than of person. She was the daughter of Icarius, a 
 Spartan prince. Ulysses, king of Ithaca, sought her 
 in marriage, and won her, over all competitors. When 
 the moment came for the bride to leave her father’s 
 house, Icarius, unable to bear the thoughts of parting 
 with his daughter, tried to persuade her to remain with 
 him, and not accompany her husband to Ithaca. Ulysses 
 gave Penelope her choice, to stay or go with him. 
 Penelope made no reply, but dropped her veil over her 
 face. Icarius urged her no further, but when she was 
 gone erected a statue to Modesty on the spot where they 
 parted. 
 
 Ulysses and Penelope had not enjoyed their union 
 more than a year when it was interrupted by the events 
 which called Ulysses to the Trojan war. During his 
 long absence, and when it was doubtful whether he still 
 lived, and highly improbable that he would ever return, 
 Penelope was importuned by numerous suitors, from 
 whom there seemed no refuge but in choosing one of 
 
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 
 
 185 
 
 them for her husband. Penelope, however, employed 
 every art to gain time, still hoping for Ulysses’ return. 
 One of her arts of delay was engaging in the prepara¬ 
 tion of a robe for the funeral canopy of Laertes, her 
 husband’s father. She pledged herself to make her 
 choice among the suitors when the robe was finished. 
 During the day she worked at the robe, but in the night 
 she undid the work of the day. This is the famous 
 Penelope’s web, which is used as a proverbial expres¬ 
 sion for anything which is perpetually doing but never 
 done. The rest of Penelope’s history will be told when 
 we give an account of her husband’s adventures. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE—ARIST^US—AMPHION—LINUS 
 —THAMYRIS—MARSYAS—MELAMPUS—MUS^US 
 
 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 
 
 Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the Muse Cal¬ 
 liope. He was presented by his father with a Lyre 
 and taught to play upon it, which he did to such per¬ 
 fection that nothing could withstand the charm of his 
 music. Not only his fellow-mortals but wild beasts were 
 softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid 
 by their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay. Nay, 
 the very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. 
 The former crowded round him and the latter relaxed 
 somewhat of their hardness, softened by his notes. 
 
 Hymen had been called to bless with his presence 
 the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice; but though he 
 attended, he brought no happy omens with him. His 
 very torch smoked and brought tears into their eyes. 
 In coincidence with such prognostics, Eurydice, shortly 
 after her marriage, while wandering with the nymphs, 
 her companions, was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, 
 who was struck with her beauty and made advances to 
 
186 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 her. She fled, and in flying trod upon a snake in the 
 grass, was bitten in the foot, and died. Orpheus sang 
 his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods 
 and men, and finding it all unavailing resolved to seek 
 his wife in the regions of the dead. He descended by 
 a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Tsenarus 
 and arrived at the Stygian realm. He passed through 
 crowds of ghosts and presented himself before the 
 throne of Pluto and Proserpine. Accompanying the 
 words with the lyre, he sung, “O deities of the under¬ 
 world, to whom all we who live must come, hear my 
 words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the 
 secrets of Tartarus, nor to try my strength against the 
 three-headed dog with snaky hair who guards the en¬ 
 trance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years 
 the poisonous viper’s fang has brought to an untimely 
 end. Love has led me here, Love, a god all power¬ 
 ful with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old tradi¬ 
 tions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these 
 abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and un¬ 
 created things, unite again the thread of Eurydice’s life. 
 We all are destined to you, and sooner or later must 
 
 pass to your domain. She too, when she shall have 
 
 filled her term of life, will rightly be yours. But till 
 then grant her to me, I beseech you. If you deny me I 
 cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of 
 us both.” 
 
 As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed 
 tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a 
 moment his efforts for water, Ixion’s wheel stood still, 
 the vulture ceased to tear the giant’s liver, the daughters 
 of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in 
 a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then 
 
 for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies 
 
 were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist, and 
 Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice was called. She 
 came from among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with 
 her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her 
 away with him on one condition, that he should not 
 turn around to look at her till they should have reached 
 the upper air. Under this condition they proceeded on 
 
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 
 
 187 
 
 their way, he leading, she following, through passages 
 dark and steep, in total silence, till they had nearly 
 reached the outlet into the cheerful upper world, when 
 Orpheus, in a moment of forgetfulness, to assure him¬ 
 self that she was still following, cast a glance behind 
 him, when instantly she was borne away. Stretching 
 out their arms to embrace each other, they grasped only 
 the air! Dying now a second time, she yet cannot re¬ 
 proach her husband, for how can she blame his impa¬ 
 tience to behold her? “Farewell,” she said, “a last fare¬ 
 well,”—and was hurried away, so fast that the sound 
 hardly reached his ears. 
 
 Orpheus endeavored to follow her, and besought per¬ 
 mission to return and try once more for her release; 
 but the stern ferryman repulsed him and refused pas¬ 
 sage. Seven days he lingered about the brink, without 
 food or sleep; then bitterly accusing of cruelty the 
 powers of Erebus, he sang his complaints to the rocks 
 and mountains, melting the hearts of tigers and moving 
 the oaks from their stations. He held himself aloof 
 from womankind, dwelling constantly on the recollection 
 of his sad mischance. The Thracian maidens tried their 
 best to captivate him, but he repulsed their advances. 
 They bore with him as long as they could; but finding 
 him insensible one day, excited by the rites of Bacchus, 
 one of them exclaimed, “See yonder our despiser!” and 
 threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it 
 came within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his 
 feet. So did also the stones that they threw at him. But 
 the women raised a scream and drowned the voice of the 
 music, and then the missiles reached him and soon were 
 stained with his blood. The maniacs tore him limb from 
 limb, and threw his head and his lyre into the river 
 Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music, 
 to which the shores responded a plaintive symphony. 
 The Muses gathered up the fragments of his body and 
 buried them at Libethra, where the nightingale is said 
 to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other 
 part of Greece. His lyre was placed by Jupiter among 
 the stars. His shade passed a second time to Tartarus, 
 where he sought out his Eurydice and embraced her 
 
188 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 with eager arms. They roam the happy fields together 
 now, sometimes he leading, sometimes she; and Orpheus 
 gazes as much as he will upon her, no longer incurring 
 a penalty for a thoughtless glance. 
 
 The story of Orpheus has furnished Pope with an 
 illustration of the power of music, for his “Ode for St. 
 Cecilia’s Day.” The following stanza relates the con¬ 
 clusion of the story: 
 
 “But soon, too soon the lover turns his eyes; 
 
 Again she falls, again she dies, she dies! 
 
 How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move? 
 
 No crime was thine, if ’t is no crime to love. 
 
 Now under hanging mountains, 
 
 Beside the falls of fountains, 
 
 Or where Hebrus wanders, 
 
 Rolling in meanders, 
 
 All alone, 
 
 He makes his moan, 
 
 And calls her ghost, 
 
 Forever, ever, ever lost! 
 
 Now with furies surrounded, 
 
 Despairing, confounded, 
 
 He trembles, he glows, 
 
 Amidst Rhodope’s snows. 
 
 See, wild as the winds o’er the desert he flies; 
 
 Hark! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals’ cries; 
 
 Ah, see, he dies! 
 
 Yet even in death Eurydice he sung, 
 
 Eurydice still trembled on his tongue: 
 
 Eurydice the woods 
 
 Eurydice the floods 
 
 Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung.” 
 
 The superior melody of the nightingale’s song over 
 the grave of Orpheus is alluded to by Southey in his 
 “Thalaba”: 
 
 “Then on his ear what sounds 
 Of harmony arose! 
 
 Far music and the distance-mellowed song 
 From bowers of merriment; 
 
 The waterfall remote; 
 
 The murmuring of the leafy groves; 
 
 The single nightingale 
 Perched in the rosier by, so richly toned. 
 That never from that most melodious bird 
 
ARISTiEUS, THE BEE-KEEPER 
 
 189 
 
 Singing a love song to his brooding mate, 
 
 Did Thracian shepherd by the grave 
 Of Orpheus hear a sweeter melody, 
 
 Though there the spirit of the sepulchre 
 All his own power infuse, to swell 
 The incense that he loves/’ 
 
 ARIST^US, THE BEE-KEEPER 
 
 Man avails himself of the instincts of the inferior 
 animals for his own advantage. Hence sprang the art 
 of keeping bees. Honey must first have been known as 
 a wild product, the bees building their structures in hol¬ 
 low trees or holes in the rocks, or any similar cavity that 
 chance offered. Thus occasionally the carcass of a dead 
 animal would be occupied by the bees for that purpose. 
 It was no doubt from some such incident that the super¬ 
 stition arose that the bees were engendered by the de¬ 
 caying flesh of the animal; and Virgil, in the following 
 story, shows how this supposed fact may be turned to 
 account for renewing the swarm when it has been lost 
 by disease or accident: 
 
 Aristseus, who first taught the management of bees, 
 was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene. His bees had 
 perished, and he resorted for aid to his mother. He 
 stood at the river side and thus addressed her: “O 
 mother, the pride of my life is taken from me! I have 
 lost my precious bees. My care and skill have availed me 
 nothing, and you my mother have not warded off from 
 me the blow of misfortune.” His mother heard these 
 complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom of the 
 river, with her attendant nymphs around her. They 
 were engaged in female occupations, spinning and weav¬ 
 ing, while one told stories to amuse the rest. The sad 
 voice of Aristseus interrupting their occupation, one of 
 them put her head above the water and seeing him, re¬ 
 turned and gave information to his mother, who ordered 
 that he should be brought into her presence. The river 
 at her command opened itself and let him pass in, while 
 it stood curled like a mountain on either side. He de¬ 
 scended to the region where the fountains of the great 
 rivers lie; he saw the enormous receptacles of waters 
 
190 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 and was almost deafened with the roar, while he sur¬ 
 veyed them hurrying off in various directions to water 
 the face of the earth. Arriving at his mother’s apart¬ 
 ment, he was hospitably received by Cyrene and her 
 nymphs, who spread their table with the richest dainties. 
 They first poured out libations to Neptune, then regaled 
 themselves with the feast, and after that Cyrene thus 
 addressed him: “There is an old prophet named Proteus, 
 who dwells in the sea and is a favorite of Neptune, 
 whose herd of sea-calves he pastures. We nymphs hold 
 him in great respect, for he is a learned sage and knows 
 all things, past, present, and to come. He can tell you, 
 my son, the cause of the mortality among your bees, 
 and how you may remedy it. But he will not do it vol¬ 
 untarily, however you may entreat him. You must com¬ 
 pel him by force. If you seize him and chain him, he 
 will answer your questions in order to get released, for 
 he cannot by all his arts get away if you hold fast the 
 chains. I will carry you to his cave, where he comes 
 at noon to take his midday repose. Then you may 
 easily secure him. But when he finds himself captured, 
 his resort is to a power he possesses of changing himself 
 into various forms. He will become a wild boar or a 
 fierce tiger, a scaly dragon or lion with yellow mane. Or 
 he will make a noise like the crackling of flames or the 
 rush of water, so as to tempt you to let go the chain, 
 when he will make his escape. But you have only to 
 keep him fast bound, and at last when he finds all his 
 arts unavailing, he will return to his own figure and 
 obey your commands.” So saying she sprinkled her son 
 with fragrant nectar, the beverage of the gods, and im¬ 
 mediately an unusual vigor filled his frame, and courage 
 his heart, while perfume breathed all around him. 
 
 The nymph led her son to the prophet’s cave and con¬ 
 cealed him among the recesses of the rocks, while she 
 herself took her place behind the clouds. When noon 
 came and the hour when men and herds retreat from 
 the glaring sun to indulge in quiet slumber, Proteus 
 issued from the water, followed by his herd of sea-calves 
 which spread themselves along the shore. He sat on 
 the rock and counted his herd; then stretched himself on 
 
ARISTAEUS, THE BEE-KEEPER 
 
 191 
 
 the floor of the cave and went to sleep. Aristaeus hardly 
 allowed him to get fairly asleep before he fixed the fet¬ 
 ters on him and shouted aloud. Proteus, waking and 
 finding himself captured, immediately resorted to his 
 arts, becoming first a fire, then a flood, then a horrible 
 wild beast, in rapid succession. But finding all would 
 not do, he at last resumed his own form and addressed 
 the youth in angry accents: “Who are you, bold youth, 
 who thus invade my abode, and what do you want of 
 me?” Aristaeus replied, “Proteus, you know already, 
 for it is needless for any one to attempt to deceive you. 
 And do you also cease your efforts to elude me. I am 
 led hither by divine assistance, to know from you the 
 cause of my misfortune and how to remedy it.” At 
 these words the prophet, fixing on him his gray eyes 
 with a piercing look, thus spoke: “You receive the 
 merited reward of your deeds, by which Eurydice met 
 her death, for in flying from you she trod upon a serpent, 
 of whose bite she died. To avenge her death, the 
 nymphs, her companions, have sent this destruction to 
 your bees. You have to appease their anger, and thus 
 it must be done: Select four bulls, of perfect form and 
 size, and four cows of equal beauty, build four altars to 
 the nymphs, and sacrifice the animals, leaving their car¬ 
 casses in the leafy grove. To Orpheus and Eurydice 
 you shall pay such funeral honors as may allay their re¬ 
 sentment. Returning after nine days, you will examine 
 the bodies of the cattle slain and see what will befall.” 
 Aristaeus faithfully obeyed these directions. He sacri¬ 
 ficed the cattle, he left their bodies in the grove, he 
 offered funeral honors to the shades of Orpheus and 
 Eurydice; then returning on the ninth day he examined 
 the bodies of the animals, and, wonderful to relate! a 
 swarm of bees had taken possession of one of the car¬ 
 casses and were pursuing their labors there as in a hive. 
 
 In “The Task,” Cowper alludes to the story of 
 Aristaeus, when speaking of the ice-palace built by the 
 Empress Anne of Russia. He has been describing the 
 fantastic forms which ice assumes in connection with 
 waterfalls, etc.: 
 
192 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 “Less worthy of applause though more admired 
 Because a novelty, the work of man, 
 
 Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ, 
 
 Thy most magnificent and mighty freak, 
 
 The wonder of the north. No forest fell 
 When thou wouldst build, no quarry sent its stores 
 T’ enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods 
 And make thy marble of the glassy wave. 
 
 In such a palace Aristaeus found 
 Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale 
 Of his lost bees to her maternal ear.” 
 
 Milton also appears to have had Cyrene and her 
 domestic scene in his mind when he describes to us 
 Sabrina, the nymph of the river Severn, in the Guard¬ 
 ian-spirit’s Song in “Comus”: 
 
 “Sabrina fair! 
 
 Listen where thou art sitting 
 Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave 
 In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
 The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; 
 
 Listen for dear honor’s sake, 
 
 Goddess of the silver lake! 
 
 Listen and save.” 
 
 The following are other celebrated mythical poets 
 and musicians, some of whom were hardly inferior to 
 Orpheus himself: 
 
 AMPHION 
 
 l 
 
 Amphion was the son of Jupiter and Antiope, queen 
 of Thebes. With his twin brother Zethus he was ex¬ 
 posed at birth on Mount Cithaeron, where they grew up 
 among the shepherds, not knowing their parentage. 
 Mercury gave Amphion a lyre and taught him to play 
 upon it, and his brother occupied himself in hunting and 
 tending the flocks. Meanwhile Antiope, their mother, 
 who had been treated with great cruelty by Lycus, the 
 usurping king of Thebes, and by Dirce, his wife, found 
 means to inform her children of their rights and to 
 summon them to her assistance. With a band of their 
 fellow-herdsmen they attacked and slew Lycus, and tying 
 Dirce by the hair of her head to a bull, let him drag her 
 
. MELAMPUS 
 
 193 
 
 till she was dead. Amphion, having become king of 
 Thebes, fortified the city with a wall. It is said that 
 when he played on his lyre the stones moved of their 
 own accord and took their places in the wall. 
 
 See Tennyson’s poem of “Amphion” for an amusing 
 use made of this story. 
 
 LINUS 
 
 Linus was the instructor of Hercules in music, but 
 having one day reproved his pupil rather harshly, he 
 roused the anger of Hercules, who struck him with his 
 lyre and killed him. 
 
 THAMYRIS 
 
 An ancient Thracian bard, who in his presumption 
 challenged the Muses to a trial of skill, and being over¬ 
 come in the contest, was deprived by them of his sight. 
 Milton alludes to him with other blind bards, when 
 speaking of his own blindness, “Paradise Lost,” Book 
 III., 35. 
 
 MARSYAS 
 
 Minerva invented the flute, and played upon it to the 
 delight of all the celestial auditors; but the mischievous 
 urchin Cupid having dared to laugh at the queer face 
 which the goddess made while playing, Minerva threw 
 the instrument indignantly away, and it fell down to 
 earth, and was found by Marsyas. He blew upon 
 it, and drew from it such ravishing sounds that he 
 was tempted to challenge Apollo himself to a musical 
 contest. The god of course triumphed, and punished 
 Marsyas by flaying him alive. 
 
 MELAMPUS 
 
 Melampus was the first mortal endowed with pro¬ 
 phetic powers. Before his house there stood an oak 
 tree containing a serpent’s nest. The old serpents were 
 killed by the servants, but Melampus took care of the 
 young ones and fed them carefully. One day when he 
 was asleep under the oak the serpents licked his ears 
 
194 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 with their tongues. On awaking he was astonished to 
 find that he now understood the language of birds and 
 creeping things. This knowledge enabled him to fore¬ 
 tell future events, and he became a renowned soothsayer. 
 At one time his enemies took him captive and kept him 
 strictly imprisoned. Melampus in the silence of the night 
 heard the woodworms in the timbers talking together, 
 and found out by what they said that the timbers were 
 nearly eaten through and the roof would soon fall in. 
 He told his captors and demanded to be let out, warn¬ 
 ing them also. They took his warning, and thus escaped 
 destruction, and rewarded Melampus and held him in 
 high honor. 
 
 MUS^EUS 
 
 A semi-mythological personage who was represented 
 by one tradition to be the son of Orpheus. He is said 
 to have written sacred poems and oracles. Milton 
 couples his name with that of Orpheus in his “II 
 Penseroso”: 
 
 “But O, sad virgin, that thy power 
 Might raise Musseus from his bower, 
 
 Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
 Such notes as warbled to the string, 
 
 Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek, 
 
 And made Hell grant what love did seek.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 ARION—IBYCUS—SIMONIDES—SAPPHO 
 
 The poets whose adventures compose this chapter 
 were real persons some of whose works yet remain, 
 and their influence on poets who succeeded them is yet 
 more important than their poetical remains. The adven¬ 
 tures recorded of them in the following stories rest on 
 the same authority as other narratives of the “Age of 
 Fable,” that is, of the poets who have told them. In 
 their present form, the first two are translated from 
 
ARION 
 
 195 
 
 the German, Arion from Schlegel, and Ibycus from 
 Schiller. 
 
 ARION 
 
 Arion was a famous musician, and dwelt in the court 
 of Periander, king of Corinth, with whom he was a 
 great favorite. There was to be a musical contest in 
 Sicily, and Arion longed to compete for the prize. 
 He told his wish to Periander, who besought him like 
 a brother to give up the thought. “Pray stay with 
 me,” he said, “and be contented. He who strives to 
 win may lose.” Arion answered, “A wandering life 
 best suits the free heart of a poet. The talent which 
 a god bestowed on me, I would fain make a source of 
 pleasure to others. And if I win the prize, how will 
 the enjoyment of it be increased by the consciousness 
 of my widespread fame!” He went, won the prize, and 
 embarked with his wealth in a Corinthian ship for home. 
 On the second morning after setting sail, the wind 
 breathed mild and fair. “O Periander,” he exclaimed, 
 “dismiss your fears! Soon shall you forget them in my 
 embrace. With what lavish offerings will we display 
 our gratitude to the gods, and how merry will we be at 
 the festal board!” The wind and sea continued propi¬ 
 tious. Not a cloud dimmed the firmament. He had 
 not trusted too much to the ocean—but he had to man. 
 He overheard the seamen exchanging hints with one 
 another, and found they were plotting to possess them¬ 
 selves of his treasure. Presently they surrounded him 
 loud and mutinous, and said, “Arion, you must die! If 
 you would have a grave on shore, yield yourself to die 
 on this spot; but if otherwise, cast yourself into the 
 sea.” “Will nothing satisfy you but my life?” said 
 he. “Take my gold, and welcome. I willingly buy 
 my life at that price.” “No, no; we cannot spare you. 
 Your life would be too dangerous to us. Where could 
 we go to escape from Periander, if he should know that 
 you had been robbed by us? Your gold would be of 
 little use to us, if on returning home, w T e could never 
 more be free from fear.” “Grant me, then,” said he, “a 
 last request, since nought will avail to save my life, that I 
 
196 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 may die, as I have lived, as becomes a bard. When I 
 shall have sung my death song, and my harp-strings 
 shall have ceased to vibrate, then I will bid farewell to 
 life, and yield uncomplaining to my fate.” This prayer, 
 like the others, would have been unheeded,—they 
 thought only of their booty,—but to hear so famous a 
 musician, that moved their rude hearts. “Suffer me,” 
 he added, “to arrange my dress. Apollo will not favor 
 me unless I be clad in my minstrel garb.” 
 
 He clothed his well-proportioned limbs in gold and 
 purple fair to see, his tunic fell around him in graceful 
 folds, jewels adorned his arms, his brow was crowned 
 with a golden wreath, and over his neck and shoulders 
 flowed his hair perfumed with odors. His left hand 
 held the lyre, his right the ivory wand with which he 
 struck its chords. Like one inspired, he seemed to 
 drink the morning air and glitter in the morning ray. 
 The seamen gazed with admiration. He strode forward 
 to the vessel’s side and looked down into the deep blue 
 sea. Addressing his lyre, he sang, “Companion of my 
 voice, come with me to the realm of shades. Though 
 Cerberus may growl, we know the power of song can 
 tame his rage. Ye heroes of Elysium, who have passed 
 the darkling flood,—ye happy souls, soon shall I join 
 your band. Yet can ye relieve my grief? Alas, I leave 
 my friend behind me. Thou, who didst find thy Euryd- 
 ice, and lose her again as soon as found; when she had 
 vanished like a dream, how didst thou hate the cheerful 
 light! I must away, but I will not fear. The gods look 
 down upon us. Ye who slay me unoffending, when I 
 am no more, your time of trembling shall come. Ye 
 Nereids, receive your guest, who throws himself upon 
 your mercy!” So saying, he sprang into the deep sea. 
 The waves covered him, and the seamen held on their 
 way, fancying themselves safe from all danger of de¬ 
 tection. 
 
 But the strains of his music had drawn round him 
 the inhabitants of the deep to listen, and Dolphins fol¬ 
 lowed the ship as if chained by a spell. While he 
 struggled in the waves, a Dolphin offered him his back, 
 and carried him mounted thereon safe to shore. At the 
 
ARION 
 
 197 
 
 spot where he landed, a monument of brass was after¬ 
 wards erected upon the rocky shore, to preserve the 
 memory of the event. 
 
 When Arion and the dolphin parted, each to his own 
 element, Arion thus poured forth his thanks: “Farewell, 
 thou faithful, friendly fish! Would that I could reward 
 thee; but thou canst not wend with me, nor I with thee. 
 Companionship we may not have. May Galatea, queen 
 of the deep, accord thee her favor, and thou, proud of 
 the burden, draw her chariot over the smooth mirror of 
 the deep.” 
 
 Arion hastened from the shore, and soon saw before 
 him the towers of Corinth. He journeyed on, harp in 
 hand, singing as he went, full of love and happiness, 
 forgetting his losses, and mindful only of what re¬ 
 mained, his friend and his lyre. He entered the hos¬ 
 pitable halls, and was soon clasped in the embrace of 
 Periander. “I come back to thee, my friend,” he said. 
 “The talent which a god bestowed has been the delight 
 of thousands, but false knaves have stripped me of my 
 well-earned treasure; yet I retain the consciousness of 
 wide spread fame.” Then he told Periander all the won¬ 
 derful events that had befallen him, who heard him 
 with amazement. “Shall such wickedness triumph ?” said 
 he. “Then in vain is power lodged in my hands. That 
 we may discover the criminals, you must remain here 
 in concealment, and so they will approach without sus¬ 
 picion.” When the ship arrived in the harbor, he sum¬ 
 moned the mariners before him. “Have you heard 
 anything of Arion?” he inquired. “I anxiously look for 
 his return.” They replied, “We left him well and pros¬ 
 perous in Tarentum.” As they said these words, Arion 
 stepped forth and faced them. His well-proportioned 
 limbs were arrayed in gold and purple fair to see, his 
 tunic fell around him in graceful folds, jewels adorned 
 his arms, his brow was crowned with a golden wreath, 
 and over his neck and shoulders flowed his hair per¬ 
 fumed with odors; his left hand held the lyre, his right 
 the ivory wand with which he struck its chords. They 
 fell prostrate at his feet, as if a lightning bolt had struck 
 them. “We meant to murder him, and he has become 
 
198 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 a god. O Earth, open and receive us!” Then Periander 
 spoke. “He lives, the master of the lay! Kind Heaven 
 protects the poet’s life. As for you, I invoke not the 
 spirit of vengeance; Arion wishes not your blood. Ye 
 slaves of avarice, begone! Seek some barbarous land, 
 and never may aught beautiful delight your souls!” 
 
 Spenser represents Arion, mounted on his dolphin, 
 accompanying the train of Neptune and Amphitrite: 
 
 “Then was there heard a most celestial sound 
 Of dainty music which did next ensue, 
 
 And, on the floating waters as enthroned, 
 
 Arion with his harp unto him drew 
 
 The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew; 
 
 Even when as yet the dolphin which him bore 
 Through the /Egean Seas from pirates’ view, 
 
 Stood still, by him astonished at his lore, 
 
 And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.” 
 
 Byron, in his “Childe Harold,” Canto II., alludes to 
 the story of Arion, when, describing his voyage, he 
 represents one of the seamen making music to entertain 
 the rest: 
 
 “The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve! 
 
 Long streams of light o’er dancing waves expand; 
 
 Now lads on shore may sigh and maids believe; 
 
 Such be our fate when we return to land! 
 
 Meantime some rude Arion’s restless hand 
 Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love; 
 
 A circle there of merry listeners stand, 
 
 Or to some well-known measure featly move 
 Thoughtless as if on shore they still were free to rove.” 
 
 IBYCUS 
 
 In order to understand the story of Ibycus which 
 follows it is necessary to remember, first, that the 
 theatres of the ancients were immense fabrics capable 
 of containing from ten to thirty thousand spectators, 
 and as they were used only on festival occasions, and 
 admission was free to all, they were usually filled. 
 They were without roofs and open to the sky, and the 
 performances were in the daytime. Secondly, the ap¬ 
 palling representation of the Furies is not exaggerated 
 
IBYCUS 
 
 
 199 
 
 in the story. It is recorded that zEschylus, the tragic 
 poet, having on one occasion represented the Furies in 
 a chorus of fifty performers, the terror of the specta¬ 
 tors was such that many fainted and were thrown into 
 convulsions, and the magistrates forbade a like repre¬ 
 sentation for the future. 
 
 Ibycus, the pious poet, was on his way to the chariot 
 races and musical competitions held at the Isthmus of 
 Corinth, which attracted all of Grecian lineage. Apollo 
 had bestowed on him the gfft of song, the honeyed lips 
 of the poet, and he pursued his way with lightsome step, 
 full of the god. Already the towers of Corinth crown¬ 
 ing the height appeared in view, and he had entered 
 with pious awe the sacred grove of Neptune. No living 
 object was in sight, only a flock of cranes flew overhead 
 taking the same course as himself in their migration to 
 a southern clime. “Good luck to you, ye friendly squad¬ 
 rons,” he exclaimed, “my companions from across the 
 sea. I take your company for a good omen. We come 
 from far and fly in search of hospitality. May both 
 of us meet that kind reception which shields the stranger 
 guest from harm!” 
 
 He paced briskly on, and soon was in the middle of 
 the wood. There suddenly, at a narrow pass, two rob¬ 
 bers stepped forth and barred his way. He must yield 
 or fight. But his hand, accustomed to the lyre, and 
 not to the strife of arms, sank powerless. He called 
 for help on men and gods, but his cry reached no de¬ 
 fender’s ear. “Then here must I die,” said he, “in a 
 strange land, unlamented, cut off by the hand of out¬ 
 laws, and see none to avenge my cause.” Sore wounded, 
 he sank to the earth, when hoarse screamed the cranes 
 overhead. “Take up my cause, ye cranes,” he said, “since 
 no voice but yours answers to my cry.” So saying he 
 closed his eyes in death. 
 
 The body, despoiled and mangled, was found, and 
 though disfigured with wounds, was recognized by the 
 friend in Corinth who had expected him as a guest. 
 “Is it thus I find you restored to me?” he exclaimed. 
 “I who hoped to entwine your temples with the wreath 
 of triumph in the strife of song!” 
 
200 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 The guests assembled at the festival heard the tidings 
 with dismay. All Greece felt the wound, every heart 
 owned its loss. They crowded round the tribunal of 
 the magistrates, and demanded vengeance on the mur¬ 
 derers and expiation with their blood. 
 
 But what trace or mark shall point out the perpe¬ 
 trator from amidst the vast multitude attracted by the 
 splendor of the feast? Did he fall by the hands of 
 robbers or did some private enemy slay him? The all- 
 discerning sun alone can tell, for no other eye beheld 
 it. Yet not improbably the murderer even now walks 
 in the midst of the throng, and enjoys the fruits of his 
 crime, while vengeance seeks for him in vain. Perhaps 
 in their own temple’s enclosure he defies the gods, 
 mingling freely in this throng of men that now presses 
 into the amphitheatre. 
 
 For now crowded together, row on row, the multi¬ 
 tude fill the seats till it seems as if the very fabric would 
 give way. The murmur of voices sounds like the roar 
 of the sea, while the circles widening in their ascent rise 
 tier on tier, as if they would reach the sky. 
 
 And now the vast assemblage listens to the awful 
 voice of the chorus personating the Furies, which in 
 solemn guise advances with measured step, and moves 
 around the circuit of the theatre. Can they be mortal 
 women who compose that awful group, and can that 
 vast concourse of silent forms be living beings? 
 
 The choristers, clad in black, bore in their fleshless 
 hands torches blazing with a pitchy flame. Their cheeks 
 were bloodless, and in place of hair writhing and swell¬ 
 ing serpents curled around their brows. Forming a 
 circle, these awful beings sang their hymns, rending the 
 hearts of the guilty, and enchaining all their faculties. 
 It rose and swelled, overpowering the sound of the in¬ 
 struments, stealing the judgment, palsying the heart, 
 curdling the blood. 
 
 “Happy the man who keeps his heart pure from guilt 
 and crime! Him we avengers touch not; he treads the 
 path of life secure from us. But woe! woe! to him 
 who has done the deed of secret murder. We the fear¬ 
 ful family of Night fasten ourselves upon his whole 
 
SIMONIDES 
 
 201 
 
 being. Thinks he by flight to escape us? We fly still 
 faster in pursuit, twine our snakes around his feet, and 
 bring him to the ground. Unwearied we pursue; no 
 pity checks our course; still on and on, to the end of 
 life, we give him no peace nor rest.” Thus the Eume- 
 nides sang, and moved in solemn cadence, while stillness 
 like the stillness of death sat over the whole assembly 
 as if in the presence of superhuman beings; and then 
 in solemn march completing the circuit of the theatre, 
 they passed out at the back of the stage. 
 
 Every heart fluttered between illusion and reality, and 
 every breast panted with undefined terror, quailing be¬ 
 fore the awful power that watches secret crimes and 
 winds unseen the skein of destiny. At that moment a 
 cry burst forth from one of the uppermost benches—« 
 “Look! look! comrade, yonder are the cranes of 
 Ibycus!” And suddenly there appeared sailing across 
 the sky a dark object which a moment’s inspection 
 showed to be a flock of cranes flying directly over the 
 theatre. “Of Ibycus! did he say?” The beloved name 
 revived the sorrow in every breast. As wave follows 
 wave over the face of the sea, so ran from mouth 
 to mouth the words, “Of Ibycus! him whom we all la¬ 
 ment, whom some murderer’s hand laid low! What 
 have the cranes to do with him?” And louder grew the 
 swell of voices, while like a lightning’s flash the thought 
 sped through every heart, “Observe the power of the 
 Eumenides ! The pious poet shall be avenged! the mur¬ 
 derer has informed against himself. Seize the man who 
 uttered that cry and the other to whom he spoke!” 
 
 The culprit would gladly have recalled his words, but 
 it was too late. The faces of the murderers, pale with 
 terror, betrayed their guilt The people took them be¬ 
 fore the judge, they confessed their crime, and suffered 
 the punishment they deserved. 
 
 SIMONIDES 
 
 Simonides was one of the most prolific of the early 
 poets of Greece, but only a few fragments of his com¬ 
 positions have descended to us. He wrote hymns, tri- 
 
202 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 umphal odes, and elegies. In the last species of com¬ 
 position he particularly excelled. His genius was 
 inclined to the pathetic, and none could touch with truer 
 effect the chords of human sympathy. The “Lamenta¬ 
 tion of Danae,” the most important of the fragments 
 which remain of his poetry, is based upon the tradition 
 that Danae and her infant son were confined by order 
 of her father, Acrisius, in a chest and set adrift on the 
 sea. The chest floated towards the island of Seriphus, 
 where both were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman, and 
 carried to Polydectes, king of the country, who received 
 and protected them. The child, Perseus, when grown up 
 became a famous hero, whose adventures have been re¬ 
 corded in a previous chapter. 
 
 Simonides passed much of his life at the courts of 
 princes, and often employed his talents in panegyric and 
 festal odes, receiving his reward from the munificence 
 of those whose exploits he celebrated. This employment 
 was not derogatory, but closely resembles that of the 
 earliest bards, such as Demodocus, described by Homer, 
 or of Homer himself, as recorded by tradition. 
 
 On one occasion, when residing at the court of Scopas, 
 king of Thessaly, the prince desired him to prepare a 
 poem in celebration of his exploits, to be recited at a 
 banquet In order to diversify his theme, Simonides, 
 who was celebrated for his piety, introduced into his 
 poem the exploits of Castor and Pollux. Such digres¬ 
 sions were not unusual with the poets on similar oc¬ 
 casions, and one might suppose an ordinary mortal 
 might have been content to share the praises of the 
 sons of Leda. But vanity is exacting; and as Scopas 
 sat at his festal board among his courtiers and syco¬ 
 phants, he grudged every verse that did not rehearse his 
 own praises. When Simonides approached to receive 
 the promised reward Scopas bestowed but half the ex¬ 
 pected sum, saying, “Here is payment for my portion 
 of thy performance; Castor and Pollux will doubtless 
 compensate thee for so much as relates to them.” The 
 disconcerted poet returned to his seat amidst the laugh¬ 
 ter which followed the great man’s jest. In a little 
 time he received a message that two young men on 
 
SAPPHO 
 
 203 j 
 
 horseback were waiting without and anxious to see him. 
 Simonides hastened to the door, but looked in vain for 
 the visitors. Scarcely, however, had he left the banquet¬ 
 ing hall when the roof fell in with a loud crash, bury¬ 
 ing Scopas and all his guests beneath the ruins. On 
 inquiring as to the appearance of the young men who 
 had sent for him, Simonides was satisfied that they were 
 110 other than Castor and Pollux themselves. 
 
 SAPPHO 
 
 Sappho was a poetess who flourished in a very early 
 age of Greek literature. Of her works few fragments 
 remain, but they are enough to establish her claim to 
 eminent poetical genius. The story of Sappho com¬ 
 monly alluded to is that she was passionately in love 
 with a beautiful youth named Phaon, and failing to 
 obtain a return of affection she threw herself from the 
 promontory of Leucadia into the sea, under a supersti¬ 
 tion that those who should take that “Lover’s-leap” 
 would, if not destroyed, be cured of their love. 
 
 Byron alludes to the story of Sappho in “Childe 
 Harold,” Canto II.: 
 
 “Childe Harold sailed and passed the barren spot 
 Where sad Penelope o’erlooked the wave, 
 
 And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot, 
 
 The lover’s refuge and the Lesbian’s grave. 
 
 Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save 
 That breast imbued with such immortal fire? 
 
 “’Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve 
 Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;” etc. 
 
 Those who wish to know more of Sappho and her 
 “leap” are referred to the “Spectator,” Nos. 223 and 
 229. See also Moore’s “Evenings in Greece.” 
 
204 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 ENDYMION-ORION-AURORA AND TITHONUS-ACIS AND 
 
 GALATEA 
 
 DIANA AND ENDYMION 
 
 Endymion was a beautiful youth who fed his flock 
 on Mount Latmos. One calm, clear night Diana, the 
 moon, looked down and saw him sleeping. The cold 
 heart of the virgin goddess was warmed by his sur¬ 
 passing beauty, and she came down to him, kissed him, 
 and watched over him while he slept. 
 
 Another story was that Jupiter bestowed on him the 
 gift of perpetual youth united with perpetual sleep. Of 
 one so gifted we can have but few adventures to re¬ 
 cord. Diana, it was said, took care that his fortunes 
 should not suffer by his inactive life, for she made his 
 flock increase, and guarded his sheep and lambs from 
 the wild beasts. 
 
 The story of Endymion has a peculiar charm from 
 the human meaning which it so thinly veils. We see 
 in Endymion the young poet, his fancy and his heart 
 seeking in vain for that which can satisfy them, finding 
 his favorite hour in the quiet moonlight, and nursing 
 there beneath the beams of the bright and silent wit¬ 
 ness the melancholy and the ardor which consumes him. 
 The story suggests aspiring and poetic love, a life spent 
 more in dreams than in reality, and an early and wel¬ 
 come death.— S. G. B. 
 
 The “Endymion” of Keats is a wild and fanciful 
 poem, containing some exquisite poetry, as this, to the 
 moon: 
 
 : . . . The sleeping kine 
 
 Couched in thy brightness dream of fields divine. 
 Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, 
 
 Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes, 
 
ORION 
 
 205 
 
 And yet thy benediction passeth not 
 One obscure hiding-place, one little spot 
 Where pleasure may be sent; the nested wren 
 Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken;” etc., etc. 
 
 Dr. Young, in the “Night Thoughts,” alludes to 
 Endymion thus: 
 
 . . These thoughts, O night, are thine; 
 
 From thee they came like lovers’ secret sighs, 
 
 While others slept. So Cynthia, poets feign, 
 
 In shadows veiled, soft, sliding from her sphere, 
 
 Her shepherd cheered, of her enamoured less 
 Than I of thee.” 
 
 Fletcher, in the “Faithful Shepherdess,” tells: 
 
 “How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 
 
 First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies; 
 
 How she conveyed him softly in a sleep, 
 
 His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
 Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother’s light, 
 
 To kiss her sweetest.” 
 
 ORION 
 
 Orion was the son of Neptune. He was a handsome 
 giant and a mighty hunter. His father gave him the 
 power of wading through the depths of the sea, or, as 
 others say, of walking on its surface. 
 
 Orion loved Merope, the daughter of (Enopion, king 
 of Chios, and sought her in marriage. He cleared the 
 island of wild beasts, and brought the spoils of the chase 
 as presents to his beloved; but as (Enopion constantly 
 deferred his consent, Orion attempted to gain possession 
 of the maiden by violence. Her father, incensed at 
 this conduct, having made Orion drunk, deprived him 
 of his sight and cast him out on the seashore. The 
 blinded hero followed the sound of a Cyclops’ hammer 
 till he reached Lemnos, and came to the forge of Vul¬ 
 can, who, taking pity on him, gave him Kedalion, one 
 of his men, to be his guide to the abode of the sun. 
 
206 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Placing Kedalion on his shoulders, Orion proceeded to 
 the east, and there meeting the sun-god, was restored 
 to sight by his beam. 
 
 After this he dwelt as a hunter with Diana, with 
 whom he was a favorite, and it is even said she was 
 about to marry him. Her brother was highly displeased 
 and often chid her, but to no purpose. One day, ob¬ 
 serving Orion wading through the sea with his head 
 just above the water, Apollo pointed it out to his sister 
 and maintained that she could not hit that black thing 
 on the sea. The archer-goddess discharged a shaft with 
 fatal aim. The waves rolled the dead body of Orion 
 to the land, and bewailing her fatal error with many 
 tears, Diana placed him among the stars, where he ap¬ 
 pears as a giant, with a girdle, sword, lion’s skin, and 
 club. Sirius, his dog, follows him, and the Pleiads fly 
 before him. 
 
 The Pleiads were daughters of Atlas, and nymphs of 
 Diana’s train. One day Orion saw them and became 
 enamoured and pursued them. In their distress they 
 prayed to the gods to change their form, and Jupiter 
 in pity turned them into pigeons, and then made them 
 a constellation in the sky. Though their number was 
 seven, only six stars are visible, for Electra, one of 
 them, it is said left her place that she might not behold 
 the ruin of Troy, for that city was founded by her son 
 Dardanus. The sight had such an effect on her sisters 
 that they have looked pale ever since. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow has a poem on the “Occultation of 
 Orion.” The following lines are those in which he 
 alludes to the mythic story. We must premise that on 
 the celestial globe Orion is represented as robed in a 
 lion’s skin and wielding a club. At the moment the stars 
 of the constellation, one by one, were quenched in the 
 light of the moon, the poet tells us 
 
 “Down fell the red skin of the lion 
 Into the river at his feet. 
 
 His mighty club no longer beat 
 The forehead of the bull; but he 
 Reeled as of yore beside the sea, 
 
AURORA AND TITHONUS 
 
 207 
 
 When blinded by CEnopion 
 He sought the blacksmith at his forge, 
 
 And climbing up the narrow gorge, 
 
 Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.” 
 
 Tennyson has a different theory of the Pleiads: 
 
 “Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow 
 shade, 
 
 Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.” 
 
 —Locksley Hall. 
 
 Byron alludes to the lost Pleiad: 
 
 “Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.” 
 
 See also Mrs. Hemans’s verses on the same subject. 
 
 AURORA AND TITHONUS 
 
 The goddess of the Dawn, like her sister the Moon, 
 was at times inspired with the love of mortals. Her 
 greatest favorite was Tithonus, son of Laomedon, king 
 of Troy. She stole him away, and prevailed on Jupi¬ 
 ter to grant him immortality; but, forgetting to have 
 youth joined in the gift, after some time she began to 
 discern, to her great mortification, that he was growing 
 old. When his hair was quite white she left his soci¬ 
 ety; but he still had the range of her palace, lived on 
 ambrosial food, and was clad in celestial raiment. At 
 length he lost the power of using his limbs, and then 
 she shut him up in his chamber, whence his feeble voice 
 might at times be heard. Finally she turned him into 
 a grasshopper. 
 
 Memnon was the son of Aurora and Tithonus. He 
 was king of the ^Ethiopians, and dwelt in the extreme 
 east, on the shore of Ocean. He came with his war¬ 
 riors to assist the kindred of his father in the war of 
 Troy. King Priam received him with great honors, 
 and listened with admiration to his narrative of the 
 wonders of the ocean shore. 
 
 The very day after his arrival, Memnon, impatient 
 of repose, led his troops to the field. Antilochus, the 
 
208 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 orave son of Nestor, fell by his hand, and the Greeks 
 were put to flight, when Achilles appeared and restored 
 the battle. A long and doubtful contest ensued between 
 him and the son of Aurora; at length victory declared 
 for Achilles, Memnon fell, and the Trojans fled in 
 dismay. 
 
 Aurora, who from her station in the sky had viewed 
 with apprehension the danger of her son, when she 
 saw him fall, directed his brothers, the Winds, to con¬ 
 vey his body to the banks of the river Esepus in Paph- 
 lagonia. In the evening Aurora came, accompanied 
 by the Hours and the Pleiads, and wept and lamented 
 over her son. Night, in sympathy with her grief, 
 spread the heaven with clouds; all nature mourned for 
 the offspring of the Dawn. The ^Ethiopians raised his 
 tomb on the banks of the stream in the grove of the 
 Nymphs, and Jupiter caused the sparks and cinders of 
 his funeral pile to be turned into birds, which, dividing 
 into two flocks, fought over the pile till they fell into 
 the flame. Every year at the anniversary of his death 
 they return and celebrate his obsequies in like manner. 
 Aurora remains inconsolable for the loss of her son. 
 Her tears still flow, and may be seen at early morning 
 in the form of dew-drops on the grass. 
 
 Unlike most of the marvels of ancient mythology, 
 there still exist some memorials of this. On the banks 
 of the river Nile, in Egypt, are two colossal statues, 
 one of which is said to be the statue of Memnon. An¬ 
 cient writers record that when the first rays of the 
 rising sun fall upon this statue a sound is heard to issue 
 from it, which they compare to the snapping of a harp¬ 
 string. There is some doubt about the identification of 
 the existing statue with the one described by the an¬ 
 cients, and the mysterious sounds are still more doubtful. 
 Yet there are not wanting some modern testimonies to 
 their being still audible. It has been suggested that 
 sounds produced by confined air making its escape from 
 crevices or caverns in the rocks may have given some 
 ground for the story. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, a late 
 traveller, of the highest authority, examined the statue 
 
ACTS AND GALATEA 
 
 209 
 
 itself, and discovered that it was hollow, and that “in 
 the lap of the statue is a stone, which on being struck 
 emits a metallic sound, that might still be made use of 
 to deceive a visitor who was predisposed to believe its 
 powers.” 
 
 The vocal statue of Memnon is a favorite subject 
 of allusion with the poets. Darwin, in his “Botanic Gar¬ 
 den,” says: 
 
 “So to the sacred Sun in Memnon’s fane 
 Spontaneous concords choired the matin strain; 
 
 Touched by his orient beam responsive rings 
 The living lyre and vibrates all its strings; 
 
 Accordant aisles the tender tones prolong, 
 
 And holy echoes swell the adoring song.” 
 
 Book I., 1., 182. 
 
 ACIS AND GALATEA 
 
 Scylla was a fair virgin of Sicily, a favorite of the 
 Sea-Nymphs. She had many suitors, but repelled them 
 all, and would go to the grotto of Galatea, and tell her 
 how she was persecuted. One day the goddess, while 
 Scylla dressed her hair, listened to the story, and then 
 replied, “Yet, maiden, your persecutors are of the not 
 ungentle race of men, whom, if you will, you can repel; 
 but I, the daughter of Nereus, and protected by such 
 a band of sisters, found no escape from the passion of 
 the Cyclops but in the depths of the sea;” and tears 
 stopped her utterance, which when the pitying maiden 
 had wiped away with her delicate finger, and soothed 
 the goddess, “Tell me, dearest,” said she, “the cause of 
 your grief.” Galatea then said, “Acis was the son of 
 Faunus and a Naiad. His father and mother loved him 
 dearly, but their love was not equal to mine. For the 
 beautiful youth attached himself to me alone, and he 
 was just sixteen years old, the down just beginning to 
 darken his cheeks. As much as I sought his society, so 
 much did the Cyclops seek mine; and if you ask me 
 whether my love for Acis or my hatred of Polyphemus 
 was the stronger, I cannot tell you; they were in equal 
 measure. O Venus, how great is thy power! this fierce 
 giant, the terror of the woods, whom no hapless stranger 
 
210 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 escaped unharmed, who defied even Jove himself, learned 
 to feel what love was, and, touched with a passion for 
 me, forgot his flocks and his well-stored caverns. Then 
 for the first time he began to take some care of his 
 appearance, and to try to make himself agreeable; he 
 harrowed those coarse locks of his with a comb, and 
 mowed his beard with a sickle, looked at his harsh fea¬ 
 tures in the water, and composed his countenance. His 
 love of slaughter, his fierceness and thirst of blood pre¬ 
 vailed no more, and ships that touched at his island 
 went away in safety. He paced up and down the sea¬ 
 shore, imprinting huge tracks with his heavy tread, and, 
 when weary, lay tranquilly in his cave. 
 
 “There is a cliff which projects into the sea, which 
 washes it on either side. Thither one day the huge 
 Cyclops ascended, and sat down while his flocks spread 
 themselves around. Laying down his staff, which would 
 have served for a mast to hold a vessel’s sail, and tak¬ 
 ing his instrument compacted of numerous pipes, he 
 made the hills and the waters echo the music of his 
 song. I lay hid under a rock by the side of my beloved 
 Acis, and listened to the distant strain. It was full 
 of extravagant praises of my beauty, mingled with pas¬ 
 sionate reproaches of my coldness and cruelty. 
 
 “When he had finished he rose up, and, like a raging 
 bull that cannot stand still, wandered off into the woods. 
 Acis and I thought no more of him, till on a sudden 
 he came to a spot which gave him a view of us as we 
 sat. T see you,’ he exclaimed, ‘and I will make this the 
 last of your love-meetings.’ His voice was a roar such 
 as an angry Cyclops alone could utter. ^Etna trembled 
 at the sound. I, overcome with terror, plunged into the 
 water. Acis turned and fled, crying, ‘Save me, Galatea, 
 save me, my parents!’ The Cyclops pursued him, and 
 tearing a rock from the side of the mountain hurled it 
 at him. Though only a corner of it touched him, it 
 overwhelmed him. 
 
 “All that fate left in my power I did for Acis. I 
 endowed him with the honors of his grandfather, the 
 river-god. The purple blood flowed out from under 
 the rock, but by degrees grew paler and looked like the 
 
THE TROJAN WAR 
 
 211 
 
 stream of a river rendered turbid by rains, and in time 
 it became clear. The rock cleaved open, and the 
 water, as it gushed from the chasm, uttered a pleasing 
 murmur.” 
 
 Thus Acis was changed into a river, and the river 
 retains the name of Acis. 
 
 Dryden, in his “Cymon and Iphigenia,” has told the 
 story of a clown converted into a gentleman by the 
 power of love, in a way that shows traces of kindred to 
 the old story of Galatea and the Cyclops. 
 
 “What not his father's care nor tutor’s art 
 Could plant with pains in his unpolished heart, 
 
 The best instructor, Love, at once inspired, 
 
 As barren grounds to fruitfulness are fired. 
 
 Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife 
 Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE TROJAN WAR 
 
 Minerva was the goddess of wisdom, but on one 
 occasion she did a very foolish thing; she entered into 
 competition with Juno and Venus for the prize of 
 beauty. It happened thus: At the nuptials of Peleus 
 and Thetis all the gods were invited with the excep¬ 
 tion of Eris, or Discord. Enraged at her exclusion, 
 the goddess threw a golden apple among the guests, 
 with the inscription, “For the fairest.” Thereupon 
 Juno, Venus, and Minerva each claimed the apple. 
 Jupiter, not willing to decide in so delicate a matter, 
 sent the goddesses to Mount Ida, where the beautiful 
 shepherd Paris was tending his flocks, and to him was 
 committed the decision. The goddesses accordingly ap¬ 
 peared before him. Juno promised him power and 
 riches, Minerva glory and renown in war, and Venus 
 the fairest of women for his wife, each attempting to 
 bias his decision in her own favor. Paris decided ic 
 
212 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 favor of Venus and gave her the golden apple, thus 
 making the two other goddesses his enemies. Under 
 the protection of Venus, Paris sailed to Greece, and 
 was hospitably received by Menelaus, king of Sparta. 
 Now Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was the very wom¬ 
 an whom Venus had destined for Paris, the fairest 
 of her sex. She had been sought as a bride by numer¬ 
 ous suitors, and before her decision was made known, 
 they all, at the suggestion of Ulysses, one of their num¬ 
 ber, took an oath that they would defend her from all 
 injury and avenge her cause if necessary. She chose 
 Menelaus, and was living with him happily when Paris 
 became their guest. Paris, aided by Venus, persuaded 
 her to elope with him, and carried her to Troy, whence 
 arose the famous Trojan war, the theme of the greatest 
 poems of antiquity, those of Homer and Virgil. 
 
 Menelaus called upon his brother chieftains of Greece 
 to fulfil their pledge, and join him in his efforts to 
 recover his wife. They generally came forward, but 
 Ulysses, who had married Penelope, and was very happy 
 in his wife and child, had no disposition to embark 
 in such a troublesome affair. He therefore hung back 
 and Palamedes was sent to urge him. When Palamedes 
 arrived at Ithaca Ulysses pretended to be mad. He 
 yoked an ass and an ox together to the plough and 
 began to sow salt. Palamedes, to try him, placed the 
 infant Telemachus before the plough, whereupon the 
 father turned the plough aside, showing plainly that he 
 was no madman, and after that could no longer refuse 
 to fulfil his promise. Being now himself gained for the 
 undertaking, he lent his aid to bring in other reluctant 
 chiefs, especially Achilles. This hero was the son of 
 that Thetis at whose marriage the apple of Discord had 
 been thrown among the goddesses. Thetis was herself 
 one of the immortals, a sea-nymph, and knowing that 
 her son was fated to perish before Troy if he went on 
 the expedition, she endeavored to prevent his going. 
 She sent him away to the court of King Lycomedes, and 
 induced him to conceal himself in the disguise of a 
 maiden among the daughters of the king. Ulysses, hear¬ 
 ing he was there, went disguised as a merchant to the 
 
THE TROJAN WAR 
 
 213 
 
 palace and offered for sale female ornaments, among 
 which he had placed some arms. While the king’s 
 daughters were engrossed with the other contents of 
 the merchant’s pack, Achilles handled the weapons and 
 thereby betrayed himself to the keen eye of Ulysses, who 
 found no great difficulty in persuading him to disre¬ 
 gard his mother’s prudent counsels and join his coun¬ 
 trymen in the war. 
 
 Priam was king of Troy, and Paris, the shepherd 
 ?md seducer of Helen, was his son. Paris had been 
 brought up in obscurity, because there were certain 
 ominous forebodings connected with him from his in¬ 
 fancy that he would be the ruin of the state. These 
 forebodings seemed at length likely to be realized, for 
 the Grecian armament now in preparation was the 
 greatest that had ever been fitted out. Agamemnon, 
 king of Mycense, and brother of the injured Menelaus, 
 was chosen commander-in-chief. Achilles was their 
 most illustrious warrior. After him ranked Ajax, gi¬ 
 gantic in size and of great courage, but dull of intel¬ 
 lect ; Diomede, second only to Achilles in all the qualities 
 of a hero; Ulysses, famous for his sagacity; and Nestor, 
 the oldest of the Grecian chiefs, and one to whom they 
 all looked up for counsel. But Troy was no feeble 
 enemy. Priam, the king, was now old, but he had been 
 a wise prince and had strengthened his state by good 
 government at home and numerous alliances with his 
 neighbors. But the principal stay and support of his 
 throne was his son Hector, one of the noblest charac¬ 
 ters painted by heathen antiquity. He felt, from the 
 first, a presentiment of the fall of his country, but still 
 persevered in his heroic resistance, yet by no means 
 justified the wrong which brought this danger upon her. 
 He was united in marriage with Andromache, and as 
 a husband and father his character was not less ad¬ 
 mirable than as a warrior. The principal leaders on the 
 side of the Trojans, besides Hector, were Hffieas and 
 Deiphobus, Glaucus and Sarpedon. 
 
 After two years of preparation the Greek fleet and 
 army assembled in the port of Aulis in Boeotia. Here 
 Agamemnon in hunting killed a stag which was sacred 
 
214 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 to Diana, and the goddess in return visited the army 
 with pestilence, and produced a calm which prevented 
 the ships from leaving the port. Calchas, the sooth¬ 
 sayer, thereupon announced that the wrath of the virgin 
 goddess could only be appeased by the sacrifice of a 
 virgin on her altar, and that none other but the daughter 
 of the offender would be acceptable. Agamemnon, how¬ 
 ever reluctant, yielded his consent, and the maiden 
 Iphigenia was sent for under the pretence that she was 
 to be married to Achilles. When she was about to 
 be sacrificed the goddess relented and snatched her 
 away, leaving a hind in her place, and Iphigenia, en¬ 
 veloped in a cloud, was carried to Tauris, where Diana 
 made her priestess of her temple. 
 
 Tennyson, in his “Dream of Fair Women,” makes 
 Iphigenia thus describe her feelings at the moment of 
 sacrifice: 
 
 “I was cut off from hope in that sad place, 
 
 Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears; 
 
 My father held his hand upon his face; 
 
 I, blinded by my tears, 
 
 ‘'Still strove to speak; my voice was thick with sighs, 
 
 As in a dream. Dimly I could descry 
 The stern black-bearded kings, with wolfish eyes, 
 
 Waiting to see me die. 
 
 “The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat, 
 
 The temples and the people and the shore; 
 
 One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat 
 Slowly,—and—nothing more.” 
 
 The wind now proving fair the fleet made sail and 
 brought the forces to the coast of Troy. The Trojans 
 came to oppose their landing, and at the first onset Pro- 
 ^esilaus fell by the hand of Hector. Protesilaus had 
 left at home his wife, Laodamia, who was most ten¬ 
 derly attached to him. When the news of his death 
 reached her she implored the gods to be allowed to con¬ 
 verse with him only three hours. The request was 
 granted. Mercury led Protesilaus back to the upper 
 world, and when he died a second time Laodamia died 
 with him. There was a story that the nymphs planted 
 
“THE ILIAD” 
 
 215 
 
 elm trees round his grave which grew very well till they 
 were high enough to command a view of Troy, and 
 then withered away, while fresh branches sprang from 
 the roots. 
 
 Wordsworth has taken the story of Protesilaus and 
 Laodamia for the subject of a poem. It seems the 
 oracle had declared that victory should be the lot of 
 that party from which should fall the first victim to 
 the war. The poet represents Protesilaus, on his brief 
 return to earth, as relating to Laodamia the story of 
 his fate: 
 
 “ ‘The wished-for wind was given; I then revolved 
 The oracle, upon the silent sea; 
 
 And if no worthier led the way, resolved 
 That of a thousand vessels mine should be 
 The foremost prow impressing to the strand,— 
 
 Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand. 
 
 44 ‘Yet bitter, ofttimes bitter was the pang 
 When of thy loss I thought, beloved wife! 
 
 On thee too fondly did my memory hang, 
 
 And on the joys we shared in mortal life, 
 
 The paths which we had trod,—these fountains, flowers; 
 My new planned cities and unfinished towers. 
 
 “ ‘But should suspense permit the foe to cry, 
 
 “Behold they tremble! haughty their array. 
 
 Yet of their number no one dares to die?” 
 
 In soul I swept the indignity away: 
 
 Old frailties then recurred: but lofty thought 
 In act embodied my deliverance wrought/ 
 
 • ••••*« 
 
 “. . . upon the side 
 
 Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) 
 
 A knot of spiry trees for ages grew 
 
 From out the tomb of him for whom she died; 
 
 And ever when such stature they had gained 
 That Ilium’s walls were subject to their view, 
 
 The trees’ tall summits withered at the sight, 
 
 A constant interchange of growth and blight!” 
 
 “THE ILIAD” 
 
 The war continued without decisive results for nine 
 years. Then an event occurred which seemed likely to 
 be fatal to the cause of the Greeks, and that was a 
 
216 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. It is at this 
 point that the great poem of Homer, “The Iliad,” be¬ 
 gins. The Greeks, though unsuccessful against Troy, 
 had taken the neighboring and allied cities, and in the 
 division of the spoil a female captive, by name Chry- 
 seis, daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo, had fallen 
 to the share of Agamemnon. Chryses came bearing the 
 sacred emblems of his office, and begged the release of 
 his daughter. Agamemnon refused. Thereupon Chry¬ 
 ses implored Apollo to afflict the Greeks till they should 
 be forced to yield their prey. Apollo granted the prayer 
 of his priest, and sent pestilence into the Grecian camp. 
 Then a council was called to deliberate how to allay the 
 wrath of the gods and avert the plague. Achilles boldly 
 charged their misfortunes upon Agamemnon as caused 
 by his withholding Chryseis. Agamemnon, enraged, 
 consented to relinquish his captive, but demanded that 
 Achilles should yield to him in her stead Briseis, a 
 maiden who had fallen to Achilles’ share in the division 
 of the spoil. Achilles submitted, but forthwith declared 
 that he would take no further part in the war. He 
 withdrew his forces from the general camp and openly 
 avowed his intention of returning home to Greece. 
 
 The gods and goddesses interested themselves as much 
 in this famous war as the parties themselves. It was 
 well known to them that fate had decreed that Troy 
 should fall, at last, if her enemies should persevere and 
 not voluntarily abandon the enterprise. Yet there was 
 room enough left for chance to excite by turns the hopes 
 and fears of the powers above who took part with 
 either side. Juno and Minerva, in consequence of the 
 slight put upon their charms by Paris, were hostile to 
 the Trojans; Venus for the opposite cause favored 
 them. Venus enlisted her admirer Mars on the same 
 side, but Neptune favored the Greeks. Apollo was 
 neutral, sometimes taking one side, sometimes the other, 
 and Jove himself, though he loved the good King Priam, 
 yet exercised a degree of impartiality; not, however, 
 without exceptions. 
 
 Thetis, the mother of Achilles, warmly resented the 
 injury done to her son. She repaired immediately to 
 
“THE ILIAD” 
 
 217 
 
 Jove’s palace and besought him to make the Greeks re¬ 
 pent of their injustice to Achilles by granting success 
 to the Trojan arms. Jupiter consented, and in the bat¬ 
 tle which ensued the Trojans were completely success¬ 
 ful. The Greeks were driven from the field and took 
 refuge in their ships. 
 
 Then Agamemnon called a council of his wisest and 
 bravest chiefs. Nestor advised that an embassy should 
 be sent to Achilles to persuade him to return to the 
 field; that Agamemnon should yield the maiden, the 
 cause of the dispute, with ample gifts to atone for the 
 wrong he had done. Agamemnon consented, and 
 Ulysses, Ajax, and Phoenix were sent to carry to 
 Achilles the penitent message. They performed that 
 duty, but Achilles was deaf to their entreaties. He 
 positively refused to return to the field, and persisted 
 in his resolution to embark for Greece without delay. 
 
 The Greeks had constructed a rampart around their 
 ships, and now instead of besieging Troy they were in 
 a manner besieged themselves, within their rampart. 
 The next day after the unsuccessful embassy to Achil¬ 
 les, a battle was fought, and the Trojans, favored by 
 Jove, were successful, and succeeded in forcing a pas¬ 
 sage through the Grecian rampart, and were about to 
 set fire to the ships. Neptune, seeing the Greeks so 
 pressed, came to their rescue. He appeared in the form 
 of Calchas the prophet, encouraged the warriors with 
 his shouts, and appealed to each individually till he 
 raised their ardor to such a pitch that they forced the 
 Trojans to' give way. Ajax performed prodigies of 
 valor, and at length encountered Hector. Ajax shouted 
 defiance, to which Hector replied, and hurled his lance 
 at the huge warrior. It was well aimed and struck 
 Ajax, where the belts that bore his sword and shield 
 crossed each other on the breast. The double guard 
 prevented its penetrating and it fell harmless. Then 
 Ajax, seizing a huge stone, one of those that served to 
 prop the ships, hurled it at Hector. It struck him in 
 the neck and stretched him on the plain. His followers 
 instantly seized him and bore him off, stunned and 
 wounded. 
 
213 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 While Neptune was thus aiding the Greeks and driv¬ 
 ing back the Trojans, Jupiter saw nothing of what was 
 going on, for his attention had been drawn from the 
 field by the wiles of Juno. That goddess had arrayed 
 herself in all her charms, and to crown all had bor¬ 
 rowed of Venus her girdle, called “Cestus,” which had 
 the effect to heighten the wearer’s charms to such a de¬ 
 gree that they were quite irresistible. So prepared, Juno 
 went to join her husband, who sat on Olympus watch¬ 
 ing the battle. When he beheld her she looked so charm¬ 
 ing that the fondness of his early love revived, and, 
 forgetting the contending armies and all other affairs of 
 state, he thought only of her and let the battle go as 
 it would. 
 
 But this absorption did not continue long, and when, 
 upon turning his eyes downward, he beheld Hector 
 stretched on the plain almost lifeless from pain and 
 bruises, he dismissed Juno in a rage, commanding her 
 to send Iris and Apollo to him. When Iris came he 
 sent her with a stern message to Neptune, ordering him 
 instantly to quit the field. Apollo was despatched to 
 heal Hector’s bruises and to inspirit his heart. These 
 orders were obeyed with such speed that, while the bat¬ 
 tle still raged, Hector returned to the field and Neptune 
 betook himself to his own dominions. 
 
 An arrow from Paris’s bow wounded Machaon, son 
 of ^Esculapius, who inherited his father’s art of heal¬ 
 ing, and was therefore of great value to the Greeks as 
 their surgeon, besides being one of their bravest war¬ 
 riors. Nestor took Machaon in his chariot and conveyed 
 him from the field. As they passed the ships of Achil¬ 
 les, that hero, looking out over the field, saw the chariot 
 of Nestor and recognized the old chief, but could not 
 discern who the wounded chief was. So calling Patro- 
 clus, his companion and dearest friend, he sent him to 
 Nestor’s tent to inquire. 
 
 Patroclus, arriving at Nestor’s tent, saw Machaon 
 wounded, and having told the cause of his coming would 
 have hastened away, but Nestor detained him, to tell 
 him the extent of the Grecian calamities. He reminded 
 him also how, at the time of departing for Troy, Achilles 
 
“THE ILIAD” 
 
 219 
 
 and himself had been charged by their respective fathers 
 with different advice: Achilles to aspire to the highest 
 pitch of glory, Patroclus, as the elder, to keep watch 
 over his friend, and to guide his inexperience. “Now,” 
 said Nestor, “is the time for such influence. If the 
 gods so please, thou mayest win him back to the com 
 mon cause; but if not let him at least send his soldiers 
 to the field, and come thou, Patroclus, clad in his armor, 
 and perhaps the very sight of it may drive back the 
 Trojans.” 
 
 Patroclus was strongly moved with this address, and 
 hastened back to Achilles, revolving in his mind all he 
 had seen and heard. He told the prince the sad con¬ 
 dition of affairs at the camp of their late associates: 
 Diomede, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Machaon, all wounded, 
 the rampart broken down, the enemy among the ships 
 preparing to burn them, and thus to cut off all means 
 of return to Greece. While they spoke the flames burst 
 forth from one of the ships. Achilles, at the sight, re¬ 
 lented so far as to grant Patroclus his request to lead 
 the Myrmidons (for so were Achilles’ soldiers called) 
 to the field, and to lend him his armor, that he might 
 thereby strike more terror into the minds of the Tro¬ 
 jans. Without delay the soldiers were marshalled, 
 Patroclus put on the radiant armor and mounted the 
 chariot of Achilles, and led forth the men ardent for 
 battle. But before he went, Achilles strictly charged 
 him that he should be content with repelling the foe. 
 “Seek not,” said he, “to press the Trojans without me, 
 lest thou add still more to the disgrace already mine.” 
 Then exhorting the troops to do their best he dismissed 
 them full of ardor to the fight. 
 
 Patroclus and his Myrmidons at once plunged into 
 the contest where it raged hottest; at the sight of which 
 the joyful Grecians shouted and the ships reechoed the 
 acclaim. The Trojans, at the sight of the well-known 
 armor, struck with terror, looked everywhere for refuge. 
 First those who had got possession of the ship and set 
 it on fire left and allowed the Grecians to retake it and 
 extinguish the flames. Then the rest of the Trojans fled 
 in dismay. Ajax, Menelaus, and the two sons of Nestor 
 
220 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 performed prodigies of valor. Hector was forced to 
 turn his horses’ heads and retire from the enclosure, 
 leaving his men entangled in the fosse to escape as they 
 could. Patroclus drove them before him, slaying many, 
 none daring to make a stand against him. 
 
 At last Sarpedon, son of Jove, ventured to oppose 
 himself in fight to Patroclus. Jupiter looked down upon 
 him and would have snatched him from the fate which 
 awaited him, but Juno hinted that if he did so it would 
 induce all others of the inhabitants of heaven to inter¬ 
 pose in like manner whenever any of their offspring 
 were endangered; to which reason Jove yielded. Sarpe¬ 
 don threw his spear, but missed Patroclus, but Patroclus 
 threw his with better success. It pierced Sarpedon’s 
 breast and he fell, and, calling to his friends to save 
 his body from the foe, expired. Then a furious con¬ 
 test arose for the possession of the corpse. The Greeks 
 succeeded and stripped Sarpedon of his armor; but Jove 
 would not allow the remains of his son to be dishonored, 
 and by his command Apollo snatched from the midst of 
 the combatants the body of Sarpedon and committed it 
 to the care of the twin brothers Death and Sleep, by 
 whom it was transported to Lycia, the native land of 
 Sarpedon, where it received due funeral rites. 
 
 Thus far Patroclus had succeeded to his utmost wish 
 in repelling the Trojans and relieving his countrymen, 
 but now came a change of fortune. Hector, borne in 
 his chariot, confronted him. Patroclus threw a vast 
 stone at Hector, which missed its aim, but smote Ce- 
 briones, the charioteer, and knocked him from the 
 car. Hector leaped from the chariot to rescue his 
 friend, and Patroclus also descended to complete his 
 victory. Thus the two heroes met face to face. At 
 this decisive moment the poet, as if reluctant to give 
 Hector the glory, records that Phoebus took part against 
 Patroclus. He struck the helmet from his head and the 
 lance from his hand. At the same moment an obscure 
 Trojan wounded him in the back, and Hector, press¬ 
 ing forward, pierced him with his spear. He fell mor¬ 
 tally wounded. 
 
 Then arose a tremendous conflict for the body of 
 
‘THE ILIAD” 
 
 221 
 
 Patroclus, but his armor was at once taken possession 
 of by Hector, who retiring a short distance divested 
 himself of his own armor and put on that of Achilles, 
 then returned to the fight. Ajax and Menelaus de¬ 
 fended the body, and Hector and his bravest warriors 
 struggled to capture it. The battle raged with equal 
 fortunes, when Jove enveloped the whole face of heaven 
 with a dark cloud. The lightning flashed, the thunder 
 roared, and Ajax, looking round for some one whom 
 he might despatch to Achilles to tell him of the death 
 of his friend, and of the imminent danger that his re¬ 
 mains would fall into the hands of the enemy, could 
 see no suitable messenger. It was then that he ex¬ 
 claimed in those famous lines so often quoted, 
 
 “Father of heaven and earth! deliver thou 
 Achaia’s host from darkness; clear the skies; 
 
 Give day; and, since thy sovereign will is such, 
 Destruction with it; but, O, give us day.” 
 
 — Cowper, 
 
 Or, as rendered by Pope, 
 
 . . Lord of earth and air! 
 
 O king! O father! hear my humble prayer! 
 
 Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore; 
 
 Give me to see and Ajax asks no more; 
 
 If Greece must perish we thy will obey, 
 
 But let us perish in the face of day.” 
 
 Jupiter heard the prayer and dispersed the /clouds. 
 Then Ajax sent Antilochus to Achilles with the intelli¬ 
 gence of Patroclus’s death, and of the conflict raging 
 for his remains. The Greeks at last succeeded in bear¬ 
 ing off the body to the ships, closely pursued by Hector 
 and Tmeas and the rest of the Trojans. 
 
 Achilles heard the fate of his friend with such dis¬ 
 tress that Antilochus feared for a while that he would 
 destroy himself. His groans reached the ears of his 
 mother, Thetis, far down in the deeps of ocean where 
 she abode, and she hastened to him to inquire the cause. 
 She found him overwhelmed with self-reproach that 
 he had indulged his resentment so far, and suffered his 
 friend to fall a victim to it. But his only consolation 
 
222 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 was the hope of revenge. He would fly instantly in 
 search of Hector. But his mother reminded him that 
 he was now without armor, and promised him, if he 
 would but wait till the morrow, she would procure for 
 him a suit of armor from Vulcan more than equal tc 
 that he had lost. He consented, and Thetis immediately 
 repaired to Vulcan’s palace. She found him busy at 
 his forge making tripods for his own use, so artfully 
 constructed that they moved forward of their own ac¬ 
 cord when wanted, and retired again when dismissed. 
 On hearing the request of Thetis, Vulcan immediately 
 laid aside his work and hastened to comply with her 
 wishes. He fabricated a splendid suit of armor for 
 Achilles, first a shield adorned with elaborate devices, 
 then a helmet crested with gold, then a corselet and 
 greaves of impenetrable temper, all perfectly adapted 
 to his form, and of consummate workmanship. It was 
 all done in one night, and Thetis, receiving it, descended 
 with it to earth, and laid it down at Achilles’ feet at the 
 dawn of day. 
 
 The first glow of pleasure that Achilles had felt since 
 the death of Patroclus was at the sight of this splendid 
 armor. And now, arrayed in it, he went forth into the 
 camp, calling all the chiefs to council. When they were 
 all assembled he addressed them. Renouncing his dis¬ 
 pleasure against Agamemnon and bitterly lamenting the 
 miseries that had resulted from it, he called on them to 
 proceed at once to the field. Agamemnon made a suit¬ 
 able reply, laying all the blame on Ate, the goddess of 
 discord; and thereupon complete reconcilement took 
 place between the heroes. 
 
 Then Achilles went forth to battle inspired with a 
 rage and thirst for vengeance that made him irresistible. 
 The bravest warriors fled before him or fell by his 
 2ance. Hector, cautioned by Apollo, kept aloof; but 
 the god, assuming the form of one of Priam’s sons, 
 Lycaon, urged iEneas to encounter the terrible war¬ 
 rior. ^Eneas, though he felt himself unequal, did not 
 decline the combat. He hurled his spear with all his 
 force against the shield the work of Vulcan. It was 
 formed of five metal plates; two were of brass, two 
 
“THE ILIAD” 
 
 223 
 
 of tin, and one of gold. The spear pierced two thick¬ 
 nesses, but was stopped in the third. Achilles threw his 
 with better success. It pierced through the shield of 
 /Eneas, but glanced near his shoulder and made no 
 wound. Then ^Eneas seized a stone, such as two men 
 of modern times could hardly lift, and was about to 
 throw it, and Achilles, with sword drawn, was about 
 to rush upon him, when Neptune, who looked out upon 
 the contest, moved with pity for y£neas, who he saw 
 would surely fall a victim if not speedily rescued, spread 
 a cloud between the combatants, and lifting /Eneas from 
 the ground, bore him over the heads of warriors and 
 steeds to the rear of the battle. Achilles, when the 
 mist cleared away, looked round in vain for his ad¬ 
 versary, and acknowledging the prodigy, turned his arms 
 against other champions. But none dared stand before 
 him, and Priam looking down from the city walls be¬ 
 held his whole army in full flight towards the city. He 
 gave command to open wide the gates to receive the 
 fugitives, and to shut them as soon as the Trojans 
 should have passed, lest the enemy should enter like¬ 
 wise. But Achilles was so close in pursuit that that 
 would have been impossible if Apollo had not, in the 
 form of Agenor, Priam’s son, encountered Achilles for 
 a while, then turned to fly, and taken the way apart 
 from the city. Achilles pursued and had chased his 
 supposed victim far from the walls, when Apollo dis¬ 
 closed himself, and Achilles, perceiving how he had been 
 deluded, gave up the chase. 
 
 But when the rest had escaped into the town Hector 
 stood without determined to await the combat. His 
 old father called to him from the walls and begged him 
 to retire nor tempt the encounter. His mother, Hecuba, 
 also besought him to the same effect, but all in vain. 
 “How can I,” said he to himself, “by whose command 
 the people went to this day’s contest, where so many 
 have fallen, seek safety for myself against a single foe? 
 But what if I offer him to yield up Helen and all her 
 treasures and ample of our own beside ? Ah, no! it is 
 too late. He would not even hear me through, but slay 
 me while I spoke.” While he thus ruminated. Achilles 
 
224 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 approached, terrible as Mars, his armor flashing light¬ 
 ning as he moved. At that sight Hector’s heart failed 
 him and he fled. Achilles swiftly pursued. They ran, 
 still keeping near the walls, till they had thrice encircled 
 the city. As often as Hector approached the walls 
 Achilles intercepted him and forced him to keep out in 
 a wider circle. But Apollo sustained Hector’s strength 
 and would not let him sink in weariness. Then Pallas, 
 assuming the form of Deiphobus, Hector’s bravest 
 brother, appeared suddenly at his side. Hector saw him 
 with delight, and thus strengthened stopped his flight 
 and turned to meet Achilles. Hector threw his spear, 
 which struck the shield of Achilles and bounded back. 
 He turned to receive another from the hand of Deipho¬ 
 bus, but Deiphobus was gone. Then Hector understood 
 his doom and said, “Alas! it is plain this is my hour 
 to die! I thought Deiphobus at hand, but Pallas de¬ 
 ceived me, and he is still in Troy. But I will not fall 
 inglorious.” So saying he drew his falchion from his 
 side and rushed at once to combat. Achilles, secured 
 behind his shield, waited the approach of Hector. When 
 he came within reach of his spear, Achilles choosing 
 with his eye a vulnerable part where the armor leaves 
 the neck uncovered, aimed his spear at that part and 
 Hector fell, death-wounded, and feebly said, “Spare my 
 body! Let my parents ransom it, and let me receive 
 funeral rites from the sons and daughters of Troy.” To 
 which Achilles replied, “Dog, name not ransom nor pity 
 to me, on whom you have brought such dire distress. 
 No! trust me, naught shall save thy carcass from the 
 dogs. Though twenty ransoms and thy weight in gold 
 were offered, I would refuse it all.” 
 
 So saying he stripped the body of its armor, and 
 fastening cords to the feet tied them behind his chariot, 
 leaving the body to trail along the ground. Then mount¬ 
 ing the chariot he lashed the steeds and so dragged the 
 body to and fro before the city. What words can tell 
 the grief of King Priam and Queen Hecuba at this 
 sight! His people could scarce restrain the old king 
 from rushing forth. He threw himself in the dust and 
 besought them each by name to give him way. Hec- 
 
“THE ILIAD” 
 
 225 
 
 ttba’s distress was not less violent. The citizens stood 
 round them weeping. The sound of the mourning 
 reached the ears of Andromache, the wife of Hector, 
 as she sat among her maidens at work, and anticipating 
 evil she went forth to the wall. When she saw the 
 sight there presented, she would have thrown herself 
 headlong from the wall, but fainted and fell into the 
 arms of her maidens. Recovering, she bewailed her 
 fate, picturing to herself her country ruined, herself a 
 captive, and her son dependent for his bread on the 
 charity of strangers. 
 
 When Achilles and the Greeks had taken their re¬ 
 venge on the killer of Patroclus they busied themselves 
 in paying due funeral rites to their friend. A pile was 
 erected, and the body burned with due solemnity; and 
 then ensued games of strength and skill, chariot races, 
 wrestling, boxing, and archery. Then the chiefs sat 
 down to the funeral banquet and after that retired to 
 rest. But Achilles neither partook of the feast nor of 
 sleep. The recollection of his lost friend kept him 
 awake, remembering their companionship in toil and 
 dangers, in battle or on the perilous deep. Before the 
 earliest dawn he left his tent, and joining to his chariot 
 his swift steeds, he fastened Hector’s body to be dragged 
 behind. Twice he dragged him around the tomb of 
 Patroclus, leaving him at length stretched in the dust. 
 But Apollo would not permit the body to be torn or 
 disfigured with all this abuse, but preserved it free from 
 all taint or defilement. 
 
 While Achilles indulged his wrath in thus disgracing 
 brave Hector, Jupiter in pity summoned Thetis to his 
 presence. He told her to go to her son and prevail on 
 him to restore the body of Hector to his friends. Then 
 Jupiter sent Iris to King Priam to encourage him to go 
 to Achilles and beg the body of his son. Iris delivered 
 her message, and Priam immediately prepared to obey. 
 He opened his treasuries and took out rich garments and 
 cloths, with ten talents in gold and two splendid tripods 
 and a golden cup of matchless workmanship. Then he 
 called to his sons and bade them draw forth his litter 
 and place in it the various articles designed for a ransom 
 
226 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 to Achilles. When all was ready, the old king with a 
 single companion as aged as himself, the herald Idseus, 
 drove forth from the gates, parting there with Hecuba, 
 his queen, and all his friends, who lamented him as 
 going to certain death. 
 
 But Jupiter, beholding with compassion the venerable 
 king, sent Mercury to be his guide and protector. Mer¬ 
 cury, assuming the form of a young warrior, presented 
 himself to the aged couple, and while at the sight of him 
 they hesitated whether to fly or yield, the god ap¬ 
 proached, and grasping Priam’s hand offered to be their 
 guide to Achilles’ tent. Priam gladly accepted his 
 offered service, and he, mounting the carriage, assumed 
 the reins and soon conveyed them to the tent of Achilles. 
 Mercury’s wand put to sleep all the guards, and without 
 hinderance he introduced Priam into the tent where 
 Achilles sat, attended by two of his warriors. The old 
 king threw himself at the feet of Achilles, and kissed 
 those terrible hands which had destroyed so many of his 
 sons. “Think, O Achilles,” he said, “of thy own father, 
 full of days like me, and trembling on the gloomy verge 
 of life. Perhaps even now some neighbor chief op¬ 
 presses him and there is none at hand to succor him in 
 his distress. Yet doubtless knowing that Achilles lives he 
 still rejoices, hoping that one day he shall see thy face 
 again. But no comfort cheers me, whose bravest sons, so 
 late the flower of Ilium, all have fallen. Yet one I had, 
 one more than all the rest the strength of my age, whom, 
 fighting for his country, thou hast slain. I come to 
 redeem his body, bringing inestimable ransom with me. 
 Achilles! reverence the gods! recollect thy father! for 
 his sake show compassion to me!” These words moved 
 Achilles, and he wept; remembering by turns his absent 
 father and his lost friend. Moved with pity of Priam’s 
 silver locks and beard, he raised him from the earth, 
 and thus spake: “Priam, I know that thou hast reached 
 this place conducted by some god, for without aid divine 
 no mortal even in his prime of youth had dared the 
 attempt. I grant thy request, moved thereto by the 
 evident will of Jove.” So saying he arose, and went 
 forth with his two friends, and unloaded of its charge 
 
THE FALL OF TROY 
 
 227 
 
 the litter, leaving two mantles and a robe for the cover¬ 
 ing of the body, which they placed on the litter, and 
 spread the garments over it, that not unveiled it should 
 be borne back to Troy. Then Achilles dismissed the old 
 king with his attendants, having first pledged himself to 
 allow a truce of twelve days for the funeral solemnities. 
 
 As the litter approached the city and was descried from 
 the walls, the people poured forth to gaze once more on 
 the face of their hero. Foremost of all, the mother and 
 the wife of Hector came, and at the sight of the lifeless 
 body renewed their lamentations. The people all wept 
 with them, and to the going down of the sun there was 
 no pause or abatement of their grief. 
 
 The next day preparations were made for the funeral 
 solemnities. For nine days the people brought wood 
 and built the pile, and on the tenth they placed the body 
 on the summit and applied the torch; while all Troy 
 thronging forth encompassed the pile. When it had 
 completely burned, they quenched the cinders with wine, 
 collected the bones and placed them in a golden urn, 
 which they buried in the earth, and reared a pile of 
 stones over the spot. 
 
 “Such honors Ilium to her hero paid, 
 
 And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.” 
 
 — Pope. 
 
 ' CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE FALL OF TROY—RETURN OF THE GREEKS—ORESTES 
 
 AND ELECTRA 
 
 THE FALL OF TROY 
 
 The story of the Iliad ends with the death of Hec¬ 
 tor, and it is from the Odyssey and later poems that 
 we learn the fate of the other heroes. After the death 
 of Hector, Troy did not immediately fall, but receiv¬ 
 ing aid from new allies still continued its resistance. 
 One of these allies was Memnon, the ^Ethiopian prince, 
 
228 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 whose story we have already told. Another was Pen- 
 thesilea, queen of the Amazons, who came with a band 
 of female warriors. All the authorities attest their valor 
 and the fearful effect of their war cry. Penthesilea 
 slew manv of the bravest warriors, but was at last slain 
 by Achilles. But when the hero bent over his fallen 
 foe, and contemplated her beauty, youth, and valor, he 
 bitterly regretted his victory. Thersites, an insolent 
 brawler and demagogue, ridiculed his grief, and was in 
 consequence slain by the hero. 
 
 Achilles by chance had seen Polyxena, daughter of 
 King Priam, perhaps on the occasion of the truce which 
 was allowed the Trojans for the burial of Hector. He 
 was captivated with her charms, and to win her in mar¬ 
 riage agreed to use his influence with the Greeks to 
 grant peace to Troy. While in the temple of Apollo, 
 negotiating the marriage, Paris discharged at him a 
 poisoned arrow, which, guided by Apollo, wounded 
 Achilles in the heel, the only vulnerable part about him. 
 For Thetis his mother had dipped him when an infant 
 in the river Styx, which made every part of him invul¬ 
 nerable except the heel by which she held him. 1 
 
 The body of Achilles so treacherously slain was 
 rescued by Ajax and Ulysses. Thetis directed the 
 Greeks to bestow her son’s armor on the hero who of 
 all the survivors should be judged most deserving of it. 
 Ajax and Ulysses were the only claimants; a select 
 number of the other chiefs were appointed to award 
 the prize. It was awarded to Ulysses, thus placing wis¬ 
 dom before valor; whereupon Ajax slew himself. On 
 the spot where his blood sank into the earth a flower 
 sprang up, called the hyacinth, bearing on its leaves the 
 first two letters of the name of Ajax, Ai, the Greek 
 for “woe.” Thus Ajax is a claimant with the boy 
 Hyacinthus for the honor of giving birth to this flower. 
 There is a species of Larkspur which represents the 
 hyacinth of the poets in preserving the memory of this 
 event, the Delphinium Ajacis—Ajax’s Larkspur. 
 
 1 The story of the invulnerability of Achilles is not found in Homer, 
 and is inconsistent with his account. For how could Achilles require the 
 aid of celestial armor if he were invulnerable? 
 
THE FALL OF TROY 
 
 229 
 
 It was now discovered that Troy could not be taken 
 but by the aid of the arrows of Hercules. They were 
 in possession of Philoctetes, the friend who had been 
 with Hercules at the last and lighted his funeral pyre. 
 Philoctetes had joined the Grecian expedition against 
 Troy, but had accidentally wounded his foot with one 
 of the poisoned arrows, and the smell from his wound 
 proved so offensive that his companions carried him to 
 the isle of Lemnos and left him there. Diomed was 
 now sent to induce him to rejoin the army. He suc¬ 
 ceeded. Philoctetes was cured of his wound by Ma- 
 chaon, and Paris was the first victim of the fatal arrows. 
 In his distress Paris bethought him of one whom in 
 his prosperity he had forgotten. This was the nymph 
 QEnone, whom he had married when a youth, and had 
 abandoned for the fatal beauty Helen. CEnone, remem¬ 
 bering the wrongs she had suffered, refused to heal the 
 wound, and Paris went back to Troy and died. CEnone 
 quickly repented, and hastened after him with remedies, 
 but came too late, and in her grief hung herself. 1 
 
 There was in Troy a celebrated statue of Minerva 
 called the Palladium. It was said to have fallen from 
 heaven, and the belief was that the city could not be 
 taken so long as this statue remained within it. Ulysses 
 and Diomed entered the city in disguise and succeeded 
 in obtaining the Palladium, which they carried off to the 
 Grecian camp. 
 
 But Troy still held out, and the Greeks began to 
 despair of ever subduing it by force, and by advice of 
 Ulysses resolved to resort to stratagem. They pre¬ 
 tended to be making preparations to abandon the siege, 
 and a portion of the ships were withdrawn and lay hid 
 behind a neighboring island. The Greeks then con¬ 
 structed an immense wooden horse, which they gave out 
 was intended as a propitiatory offering to Minerva, but in 
 fact was filled with armed men. The remaining Greeks 
 then betook themselves to their ships and sailed away, 
 as if for a final departure. The Trojans, seeing the en- 
 
 1 Tennyson has chosen CEnone as the subject of a short poem; but he 
 has omitted the most poetical part of the story, the return of Paris 
 wounded, her cruelty and subsequent repentance. 
 
230 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 campment broken up and the fleet gone, concluded the 
 enemy to have abandoned the siege. The gates were 
 thrown open, and the whole population issued forth 
 rejoicing at the long-prohibited liberty of passing freely 
 over the scene of the late encampment. The great 
 horse was the chief object of curiosity. All wondered 
 what it could be for. Some recommended to take it 
 into the city as a trophy; others felt afraid of it. 
 
 While they hesitate, Laocoon, the priest of Neptune 
 exclaims, “What madness, citizens, is this? Have you 
 not learned enough of Grecian fraud to be on your 
 guard against it? For my part, I fear the Greeks even 
 when they offer gifts.” 1 So saying he threw his lance 
 at the horse’s side. It struck, and a hollow sound 
 reverberated like a groan. Then perhaps the people 
 might have taken his advice and destroyed the fatal 
 horse and all its contents; but just at that moment a 
 group of people appeared, dragging forward one who 
 seemed a prisoner and a Greek. Stupefied with terror, 
 he was brought before the chiefs, who reassured him, 
 promising that his life should be spared on condition of 
 his returning true answers to the questions asked him. 
 He informed them that he was a Greek, Sinon by 
 name, and that in consequence of the malice of Ulysses 
 he had been left behind by his countrymen at their de¬ 
 parture. With regard to the wooden horse, he told 
 them that it was a propitiatory offering to Minerva, 
 and made so huge for the express purpose of preventing 
 its being carried within the city; for Calchas the prophet 
 had told them that if the Trojans took possession of 
 it they would assuredly triumph over the Greeks. This 
 language turned the tide of the people’s feelings and 
 they began to think how they might best secure the mon¬ 
 strous horse and the favorable auguries connected with 
 it, when suddenly a prodigy occurred which left no 
 room to doubt. There appeared, advancing over the 
 sea, two immense serpents. They came upon the land, 
 and the crowd fled in all directions. The serpents ad¬ 
 vanced directly to the spot where Laocoon stood with 
 his two sons. They first attacked the children, winding 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
THE FALL OF TROY 
 
 231 
 
 round their bodies and breathing their pestilential breath 
 in their faces. The father, attempting to rescue them, 
 is next seized and involved in the serpents’ coils. He 
 struggles to tear them away, but they overpower all his 
 efforts and strangle him and the children in their poison¬ 
 ous folds. This event was regarded as a clear indication 
 of the displeasure of the gods at Laocoon’s irreverent 
 treatment of the wooden horse, which they no longer 
 hesitated to regard as a sacred object, and prepared to 
 introduce with due solemnity into the city. This was 
 done with songs and triumphal acclamations, and the 
 day closed with festivity. In the night the armed men 
 who were enclosed in the body of the horse, being let 
 out by the traitor Sinon, opened the gates of the city 
 to their friends, who had returned under cover of the 
 night. The city was set on fire; the people, overcome 
 with feasting and sleep, put to the sword, and Troy 
 completely subdued. 
 
 One of the most celebrated groups of statuary in ex¬ 
 istence is that of Laocoon and his children in the em¬ 
 brace of the serpents. A cast of it is owned by the Bos¬ 
 ton Athenaeum; the original is in the Vatican at Rome. 
 The following lines are from the “Childe Harold” of 
 Byron: 
 
 “Now turning to the Vatican go see 
 Laocoon’s torture dignifying pain; 
 
 A father’s love and mortal’s agony 
 With an immortal’s patience blending;—vain 
 The struggle! vain against the coiling strain 
 And gripe and deepening of the dragon’s grasp. 
 
 The old man’s clinch; the long envenomed chain 
 Rivets the living links; the enormous asp 
 Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp.” 
 
 The comic poets will also occasionally borrow a classi¬ 
 cal allusion. The following is from Swift’s “Descrip¬ 
 tion of a City Shower”: 
 
 “Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits, 
 
 While spouts run clattering o’er the roof by fits, 
 
 And ever and anon with frightful din 
 The leather sounds; he trembles from within. 
 
232 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed 
 Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed, 
 
 (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, 
 
 Instead of paying chairmen, run them through) ; 
 Laocoon struck the outside with a spear, 
 
 And each imprisoned champion quaked with fear.” 
 
 King Priam lived to see the downfall of his kingdom 
 and was slain at last on the fatal night when the Greeks 
 took the city. He had armed himself and was about 
 to mingle with the combatants, but was prevailed on by 
 Hecuba, his aged queen, to take refuge with herself 
 and his daughters as a suppliant at the altar of Jupiter. 
 While there, his youngest son Polites, pursued by 
 Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, rushed in wounded, and 
 expired at the feet of his father; whereupon Priam, 
 overcome with indignation, hurled his spear with feeble 
 hand against Pyrrhus, 1 and was forthwith slain by him. 
 
 Queen Hecuba and her daughter Cassandra were 
 carried captives to Greece. Cassandra had been loved 
 by Apollo, and he gave her the gift of prophecy; but 
 afterwards offended with her, he rendered the gift un¬ 
 availing by ordaining that her predictions should never 
 be believed. Polyxena, another daughter, who had 
 been loved by Achilles, was demanded by the ghost of 
 that warrior, and was sacrificed by the Greeks upon his 
 tomb. 
 
 MENELAUS AND HELEN 
 
 Our readers will be anxious to know the fate of 
 Helen, the fair but guilty occasion of so much slaughter. 
 On the fall of Troy Menelaus recovered possession of 
 his wife, who had not ceased to love him, though she 
 had yielded to the might of Venus and deserted him for 
 another. After the death of Paris she aided the Greeks 
 secretly on several occasions, and in particular when 
 Ulysses and Diomed entered the city in disguise to 
 carry off the Palladium. She saw and recognized 
 Ulysses, but kept the secret and even assisted them in 
 obtaining the image. Thus she became reconciled to 
 
 1 Pyrrhus’s exclamation, “Not such aid nor such defenders does th« 
 time require,” has become proverbial. See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
HELEN OF TROY. 
 
 From painting by Lord Leighton 
 
AGAMEMNON, ORESTES, AND ELECTRA 233 
 
 her husband, and they were among the first to leave 
 the shores of Troy for their native land. But having 
 incurred the displeasure of the gods they were driven by 
 storms from shore to shore of the Mediterranean, visit¬ 
 ing Cyprus, Phoenicia, and Egypt. In Egypt they were 
 kindly treated and presented with rich gifts, of which 
 Helen’s share was a golden spindle and a basket on 
 wheels. The basket was to hold the wool and spools 
 for the queen’s work. 
 
 Dyer, in his poem of the “Fleece,” thus alludes to 
 this incident: 
 
 “. . . many yet adhere 
 To the ancient distaff, at the bosom fixed, 
 
 Casting the whirling spindle as they walk. 
 
 «••♦••• 
 
 This was of old, in no inglorious days, 
 
 The mode of spinning, when the Egyptian prince 
 A golden distaff gave that beauteous nymph, 
 
 Too beauteous Helen; no uncourtly gift.” 
 
 Milton also alludes to a famous recipe for an invig¬ 
 orating draught, called Nepenthe, which the Egyptian 
 queen gave to Helen: 
 
 “Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone 
 In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena, 
 
 Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 
 
 To life so friendly or so cool to thirst.” 
 
 — Comus. 
 
 Menelaus and Helen at length arrived in safety at 
 Sparta, resumed their royal dignity, and lived and 
 reigned in splendor; and when Telemachus, the son of 
 Ulysses, in search of his father, arrived at Sparta, he 
 found Menelaus and Helen celebrating the marriage of 
 their daughter Hermione to Neoptolemus, son of 
 Achilles. 
 
 AGAMEMNON, ORESTES, AND ELECTRA 
 
 Agamemnon, the general-in-chief of the Greeks, the 
 brother of Menelaus, and who had been drawn into 
 the quarrel to avenge his brother’s wrongs, not his own, 
 
234 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 was not so fortunate in the issue. During his absence 
 his wife Clytemnestra had been false to him, and when 
 his return was expected, she with her paramour, Hfgis- 
 thus, laid a plan for his destruction, and at the banquet 
 given to celebrate his return, murdered him. 
 
 It was intended by the conspirators to slay his son 
 Orestes also, a lad not yet old enough to be an object 
 of apprehension, but from whom, if he should be suf¬ 
 fered to grow up, there might be danger. Electra, the 
 sister of Orestes, saved her brother’s life by sending 
 him secretly away to his uncle Strophius, King of 
 Phocis. In the palace of Strophius Orestes grew up 
 with the king’s son Pylades, and formed with him that 
 ardent friendship which has become proverbial. Electra 
 frequently reminded her brother by messengers of the 
 duty of avenging his father’s death, and when grown up 
 he consulted the oracle of Delphi, which confirmed him 
 in his design. He therefore repaired in disguise to 
 Argos, pretending to be a messenger from Strophius, who 
 had come to announce the death of Orestes, afid brought 
 the ashes of the deceased in a funeral urn. After visit¬ 
 ing his father’s tomb and sacrificing upon it, according 
 to the rites of the ancients, he made himself known to 
 his sister Electra, and soon after slew both Higisthus 
 and Clytemnestra. 
 
 This revolting act, the slaughter of a mother by her 
 son, though alleviated by the guilt of the victim and 
 the express command of the gods, did not fail to awaken 
 in the breasts of the ancients the same abhorrence that 
 it does in ours. The Eumenides, avenging deities, 
 seized upon Orestes, and drove him frantic from land 
 to land. Pylades accompanied him in his wanderings 
 and watched over him. At length, in answer to a second 
 appeal to the oracle, he was directed to go to Tauris in 
 Scythia, and to bring thence a statue of Diana which 
 was believed to have fallen from heaven. Accordingly 
 Orestes and Pylades went to Tauris, where the barbar¬ 
 ous people were accustomed to sacrifice to the goddess 
 all strangers who fell into their hands. The two friends 
 were seized and carried bound to the temple to be made 
 victims. But the priestess of Diana was no other than 
 
AGAMEMNON, ORESTES, AND ELECTRA 235 
 
 Iphigenia, the sister of Orestes, who, our readers will 
 remember, was snatched away by Diana at the moment 
 when she was about to be sacrificed. Ascertaining from 
 the prisoners who they were, Iphigenia disclosed herself 
 to them, and the three made their escape with the statue 
 of the goddess, and returned to Mycenae. 
 
 But Orestes was not yet relieved from the vengeance 
 of the Erinyes. At length he took refuge with Minerva 
 at Athens. The goddess afforded him protection, and 
 appointed the court of Areopagus to decide his fate. 
 The Erinyes brought forward their accusation, and 
 Orestes made the command of the Delphic oracle his 
 excuse. When the court voted and the voices were 
 equally divided, Orestes was acquitted by the command 
 of Minerva. 
 
 Byron, in “Childe Harold,” Canto IV., alludes to the 
 story of Orestes: 
 
 “O thou who never yet of human wrong 
 Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! 
 
 Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss. 
 
 And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss, 
 
 For that unnatural retribution,—just, 
 
 Had it but been from hands less near,—in this, 
 
 Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!” 
 
 One of the most pathetic scenes in the ancient drama 
 is that in which Sophocles represents the meeting of 
 Orestes and Electra, on his return from Phocis. Ores¬ 
 tes, mistaking Electra for one of the domestics, and 
 desirous of keeping his arrival a secret till the hour of 
 vengeance should arrive, produces the urn in which 
 his ashes are supposed to rest. Electra, believing him 
 to be really dead, takes the urn and, embracing it, 
 pours forth her grief in language full of tenderness and 
 despair. 
 
 Milton, in one of his sonnets, says: 
 
 “. . . The repeated air 
 Of sad Electra’s poet had the power 
 To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.” 
 
236 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 This alludes to the story that when, on one occasion, 
 the city of Athens was at the mercy of her Spartan foes, 
 and it was proposed to destroy it, the thought was re¬ 
 jected upon the accidental quotation, by some one, of 
 a chorus of Euripides. 
 
 troy 
 
 The facts relating to the city of Troy are still unknown 
 to history. Antiquarians have-long sought for the actual 
 city and some record of its rulers. The most interesting 
 explorations were those conducted about 1890 by the Ger¬ 
 man scholar, Henry Schliemann, who believed that at the 
 mound of Hissarlik, the traditional site of Troy, he had 
 uncovered the ancient capital. Schliemann excavated 
 down below the ruins of three or four settlements, each 
 revealing an earlier civilization, and finally came upon 
 some royal jewels and other relics said to be “Priam’s 
 Treasure.” Scholars are by no means agreed as to the 
 historic value of these discoveries. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES-THE LOTUS-EATERS-CYCLOPES 
 
 -CIRCE-SIRENS-SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS-CALYPSO 
 
 RETURN OF ULYSSES 
 
 The romantic poem of the Odyssey is now to engage 
 our attention. It narrates the wanderings of Ulysses 
 (Odysseus in the Greek language) in his return from 
 Troy to his own kingdom Ithaca. 
 
 .From Troy the vessels first made land at Ismarus, 
 city of the Ciconians, where, in a skirmish with the 
 inhabitants, Ulysses lost six men from each ship. Sail¬ 
 ing thence, they were overtaken by a storm which drove 
 
RETURN OF ULYSSES 
 
 237 
 
 them for nine days along the sea till they reached the 
 country of the Lotus-eaters. Here, after watering, 
 Ulysses sent three of his men to discover who the in¬ 
 habitants were. These men on coming among the Lotus- 
 eaters were kindly entertained by them, and were given 
 some of their own food, the lotus-plant, to eat. The 
 effect of this food was such that those who partook of 
 it lost all thoughts of home and wished to remain in 
 that country. It was by main force that Ulysses dragged 
 these men away, and he was even obliged to tie them 
 under the benches of the ships. 1 
 
 They next arrived at the country of the Cyclopes. 
 The Cyclopes were giants, who inhabited an island of 
 which they were the only possessors. The name means 
 “round eye,” and these giants were so called because 
 they had but one eye, and that placed in the middle of 
 the forehead. They dwelt in caves and fed on the wild 
 productions of the island and on what their flocks 
 yielded, for they were shepherds. Ulysses left the 
 main body of his ships at anchor, and with one vessel 
 went to the Cyclopes’ island to explore for supplies. He 
 landed with his companions, carrying with them a jar of 
 wine for a present, and coming to a large cave they 
 entered it, and finding no one within examined its con¬ 
 tents. They found it stored with the richest of the 
 flock, quantities of cheese, pails and bowls of milk, 
 lambs and kids in their pens, all in nice order. Presently 
 arrived the master of the cave, Polyphemus, bearing an 
 immense bundle of firewood, which he threw down be¬ 
 fore the cavern’s mouth. He then drove into the cave 
 
 1 Tennyson in the “Lotus-eaters” has charmingly expressed the dreamy, 
 ianguid feeling which the lotus food is said to have produced. 
 
 “How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream 
 With half-shut eyes ever to seem , 
 
 Falling asleep in a half dream! 
 
 To dream and dream, like yonder amber light 
 
 Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; 
 
 To hear each others’ whispered speech; 
 
 Eating the Lotos, day by day, 
 
 To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, 
 
 And tender curving lines of creamy spray: 
 
 To lend our hearts and spirits wholly 
 To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; 
 
 To muse and brood and live again in memory. 
 
 With those old faces of our infancy 
 Heaped over with a mound of grass. 
 
 Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass.” 
 
238 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 the sheep and goats to be milked, and, entering, rolled 
 to the cave’s mouth an enormous rock, that twenty oxen 
 could not draw. Next he sat down and milked his 
 ewes, preparing a part for cheese, and setting the rest 
 aside for his customary drink. Then, turning round 
 his great eye, he discerned the strangers, and growled 
 out to them, demanding who they were, and where from. 
 Ulysses replied most humbly, stating that they were 
 Greeks, from the great expedition that had lately won 
 so much glory in the conquest of Troy; that they were 
 now on their way home, and finished by imploring his 
 hospitality in the name of the gods. Polyphemus 
 deigned no answer, but reaching out his hand seized 
 two of the Greeks, whom he hurled against the side of 
 the cave, and dashed out their brains. He proceeded 
 to devour them with great relish, and having made a 
 hearty meal, stretched himself out on the floor to sleep. 
 Ulysses was tempted to seize the opportunity and plunge 
 his sword into him as he slept, but recollected that it 
 would only expose them all to certain destruction, as the 
 rock with which the giant had closed up the door was far 
 beyond their power to remove, and they would there¬ 
 fore be in hopeless imprisonment. Next morning the 
 giant seized two more of the Greeks, and despatched 
 them in the same manner as their companions, feasting 
 on their flesh till no fragment was left. He then moved 
 away the rock from the door, drove out his flocks, and 
 went out, carefully replacing the barrier after him. 
 When he was gone Ulysses planned how he might take 
 vengeance for his murdered friends, and effect his 
 escape with his surviving companions. He made his men 
 prepare a massive bar of wood cut by the Cyclops for 
 a staff, which they found in the cave. They sharpened 
 the end of it, and seasoned it in the fire, and hid it 
 under the straw on the cavern floor. Then four of 
 the boldest were selected, with whom Ulysses joined 
 himself as a fifth. The Cyclops came home at evening, 
 rolled away the stone and drove in his flock as usual. 
 After milking them and making his arrangements as be¬ 
 fore, he seized two more of Ulysses’ companions and 
 dashed their brains out, and made his evening meal 
 
RETURN OF ULYSSES 
 
 239 
 
 upon them as he had on the others. After he had 
 supped, Ulysses approaching him handed him a bowl of 
 wine, saying, “Cyclops, this is wine; taste and drink 
 after thy meal of men’s flesh.” He took and drank it, 
 and was hugely delighted with it, and called for more. 
 Ulysses supplied him once again, which pleased the giant 
 so much that he promised him as a favor that he should 
 be the last of the party devoured. He asked his name, 
 to which Ulysses replied, “My name is Noman.” 
 
 After his supper the giant lay down to repose, and 
 was soon sound asleep. Then Ulysses with his four 
 select friends thrust the end of the stake into the fire 
 till it was all one burning coal, then poising it exactly 
 above the giant’s only eye, they buried it deeply into 
 the socket, twirling it round as a carpenter does his 
 auger. The howling monster with his outcry filled the 
 cavern, and Ulysses with his aids nimbly got out of 
 his way and concealed themselves in the cave. He, 
 bellowing, called aloud on all the Cyclopes dwelling in 
 the caves around him, far and near. They on his cry 
 flocked round the den, and inquired what grievous hurt 
 had caused him to sound such an alarm and break their 
 slumbers. He replied, “O friends, I die, and Noman 
 gives the blow.” They answered, “If no man hurts thee 
 it is the stroke of Jove, and thou must bear it.” So 
 saying, they left him groaning. 
 
 Next morning the Cyclops rolled away the stone to 
 let his flock out to pasture, but planted himself in the 
 door of the cave to feel of all as they went out, that 
 Ulysses and his men should not escape with them. But 
 Ulysses had made his men harness the rams of the 
 flock three abreast, with osiers which they found on the 
 floor of the cave. To the middle ram of the three one 
 of the Greeks suspended himself, so protected by the 
 exterior rams on either side. As they passed, the giant 
 felt of the animals’ backs and sides, but never thought 
 of their bellies; so the men all passed safe, Ulysses him¬ 
 self being on the last one that passed. When they had 
 got a few paces from the cavern, Ulysses and his friends 
 released themselves from their rams, and drove a good 
 part of the flock down to the shore to their boat. They 
 
240 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 put them aboard with all haste, then pushed off from 
 the shore, and when at a safe distance Ulysses shouted 
 out, “Cyclops, the gods have well requited thee for thy 
 atrocious deeds. Know it is Ulysses to whom thou 
 owest thy shameful loss of sight.” The Cyclops, hear¬ 
 ing this, seized a rock that projected from the side of 
 the mountain, and rending it from its bed, he lifted 
 it high in the air, then exerting all his force, hurled it 
 in the direction of the voice. Down came the mass, 
 just clearing the vessel’s stern. The ocean, at the plunge 
 of the huge rock, heaved the ship towards the land, so 
 that it barely escaped being swamped by the waves. 
 When they had with the utmost difficulty pulled off 
 shore, Ulysses was about to hail the giant again, but 
 his friends besought him not to do so. He could not 
 forbear, however, letting the giant know that they had 
 escaped his missile, but waited till they had reached a 
 safer distance than before. The giant answered them 
 with curses, but Ulysses and his friends plied their oars 
 vigorously, and soon regained their companions. 
 
 Ulysses next arrived at the island of yEolus. To this 
 monarch Jupiter had intrusted the government of the 
 winds, to send them forth or retain them at his will. 
 He treated Ulysses hospitably, and at his departure gave 
 him, tied up in a leathern bag, with a silver string, 
 such winds as might be hurtful and dangerous, com¬ 
 manding fair winds to blow the barks towards their coun¬ 
 try. Nine days they sped before the wind, and all that 
 time Ulysses had stood at the helm, without sleep. At 
 last quite exhausted he lay down to sleep. While he 
 slept, the crew conferred together about the mysterious 
 bag, and concluded it must contain treasures given by 
 the hospitable king Hiolus to their commander. Tempt¬ 
 ed to secure some portion for themselves, they loosed 
 the string, when immediately the winds rushed forth. 
 The ships were driven far from their course, and back 
 again to the island they had just left. HLolus was so 
 indignant at their folly that he refused to assist them 
 further, and they were obliged to labor over their course 
 once more by means of their oars. 
 
THE LiESTRYGONIANS 
 
 241 
 
 THE L^ESTRYGONIANS 
 
 Their next adventure was with the barbarous tribe 
 of Lsestrygonians. The vessels all pushed into the har¬ 
 bor, tempted by the secure appearance of the cove, com¬ 
 pletely land-locked; only Ulysses moored his vessel 
 without. As soon as the Laestrygonians found the ships 
 completely in their power they attacked them, heaving 
 huge stones which broke and overturned them, and with 
 their spears despatched the seamen as they struggled 
 in the water. All the vessels with their crews were de¬ 
 stroyed, except Ulysses’ own ship, which had remained 
 outside, and finding no safety but in flight, he exhorted 
 his men to ply their oars vigorously, and they escaped. 
 
 With grief for their slain companions mixed with joy 
 at their own escape, they pursued their way till they 
 arrived at the zEaean isle, where Circe dwelt, the daugh¬ 
 ter of the sun. Landing here, Ulysses climbed a hill, 
 and gazing round saw no signs of habitation except in 
 one spot at the centre of the island, where he perceived 
 a palace embowered with trees. He sent forward one- 
 half of his crew, under the command of Eurylochus, to 
 see what prospect of hospitality they might find. As 
 they approached the palace, they found themselves sur¬ 
 rounded by lions, tigers, and wolves, not fierce, but tamed 
 by Circe’s art, for she was a powerful magician. All 
 these animals had once been men, but had been changed 
 by Circe’s enchantments into the forms of beasts. The 
 sounds of soft music were heard from within, and a 
 sweet female voice singing. Eurylochus called aloud 
 and the goddess came forth and invited them in; they 
 all gladly entered except Eurylochus, who suspected dan¬ 
 ger. The goddess conducted her guests to a seat, and 
 had them served with wine and other delicacies. When 
 they had feasted heartily, she touched them one by one 
 with her wand, and they became immediately changed 
 into swine, in “head, body, voice, and bristles,” yet with 
 their intellects as before. She shut them in her sties 
 and supplied them with acorns and such other things 
 as swine love. 
 
 Eurylochus hurried back to the ship and told the 
 
242 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 tale. Ulysses thereupon determined to go himself, and 
 try if by any means he might deliver his companions. 
 As he strode onward alone, he met a youth who ad¬ 
 dressed him familiarly, appearing to be acquainted with 
 his adventures. He announced himself as Mercury, and 
 informed Ulysses of the arts of Circe, and of the dan¬ 
 ger of approaching her. As Ulysses was not to be dis¬ 
 suaded from his attempt, Mercury provided him with 
 a sprig of /the plant Moly, of wonderful power to resist 
 sorceries, and instructed him how to act. Ulysses pro¬ 
 ceeded, and reaching the palace was courteously received 
 by Circe, who entertained him as she had done his com¬ 
 panions, and after he had eaten and drank, touched 
 him with her wand, saying, “Hence, seek the sty and 
 wallow with thy friends.” But he, instead of obeying, 
 drew his sword and rushed upon her with fury in his 
 countenance. She fell on her knees and begged for 
 mercy. He dictated a solemn oath that she would re¬ 
 lease his companions and practise no further harm 
 against him or them; and she repeated it, at the same 
 time promising to dismiss them all in safety after hos¬ 
 pitably entertaining them. She was as good as her 
 word. The men were restored to their shapes, the rest 
 of the crew summoned from the shore, and the whole 
 magnificently entertained day after day, till Ulysses 
 seemed to have forgotten his native land, and to have 
 reconciled himself to an inglorious life of ease and 
 pleasure. 
 
 At length his companions recalled him to nobler sen¬ 
 timents, and he received their admonition gratefully. 
 Circe aided their departure, and instructed them how to 
 pass safely by the coast of the Sirens. The Sirens were 
 sea-nymphs who had the power of charming by their 
 song all who heard them, so that the unhappy mariners 
 were irresistibly impelled to cast themselves into the sea 
 to their destruction. Circe directed Ulysses to fill the 
 ears of his seamen with wax, so that they should not 
 hear the strain; and to cause himself to be bound to the 
 mast, and his people to be strictly enjoined, whatever 
 he might say or do, by no means to release him till they 
 should have passed the Sirens’ island. Ulysses obeyed 
 
SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS 
 
 243 
 
 these directions. He filled the ears of his people with 
 wax, and suffered them to bind him with cords firmly 
 to the mast. As they approached the Sirens’ island, 
 the sea was calm, and over the waters came the notes of 
 music so ravishing and attractive that Ulysses struggled 
 to get loose, and by cries and signs to his people begged 
 to be released; but they, obedient to his previous orders, 
 sprang forward and bound him still faster. They held 
 on their course, and the music grew fainter till it ceased 
 to be heard, when with joy Ulysses gave his companions 
 the signal to unseal their ears, and they relieved him 
 from his bonds. 
 
 The imagination of a modern poet, Keats, has dis¬ 
 covered for us the thoughts that passed through the 
 brains of the victims of Circe, after their transforma¬ 
 tion. In his “Endymion” he represents one of them, a 
 monarch in the guise of an elephant, addressing the sor¬ 
 ceress in human language, thus: 
 
 “I sue not for my happy crown again; 
 
 I sue not for my phalanx on the plain ; 
 
 I sue not for my lone, my widowed wife; 
 
 I sue not for my ruddy drops of life, 
 
 My children fair, my lovely girls and boys; 
 
 I will forget them; I will pass these joys, 
 
 Ask nought so heavenward; so too—too high; 
 
 Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die; 
 
 To be delivered from this cumbrous flesh, 
 
 From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh, 
 
 And merely given to the cold, bleak air. 
 
 Have mercy, goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!” 
 
 SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS 
 
 Ulysses had been warned by Circe of the two mon¬ 
 sters Scylla and Charybdis. We have already met with 
 Scylla in the story of Glaucus, and remember that she 
 was once a beautiful maiden and was changed into a 
 snaky monster by Circe. She dwelt in a cave high up on 
 the cliff, from whence she was accustomed to thrust 
 forth her long necks (for she had six heads), and in 
 each of her mouths to seize one of the crew of every 
 vessel passing within reach. The other terror, Charyb- 
 
244 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 dis, was a gulf, nearly on a level with the water. Thrice 
 each day the water rushed into a frightful chasm, and 
 thrice was disgorged. Any vessel coming near the whirl¬ 
 pool when the tide was rushing in must inevitably be 
 ingulfed; not Neptune himself could save it. 
 
 On approaching the haunt of the dread monsters, 
 Ulysses kept strict watch to discover them. The roar 
 of the waters as Charybdis ingulfed them, gave warn¬ 
 ing at a distance, but Scylla could nowhere be discerned. 
 While Ulysses and his men watched with anxious eyes 
 the dreadful whirlpool, they were not equally on their 
 guard from the attack of Scylla, and the monster, dart¬ 
 ing forth her snaky heads, caught six of his men, and 
 bore them away, shrieking, to her den. It was the sad¬ 
 dest sight Ulysses had yet seen; to behold his friends 
 thus sacrificed and hear their cries, unable to afford them 
 any assistance. 
 
 Circe had warned him of another danger. After pass¬ 
 ing Scylla and Charybdis the next land he would make 
 was Thrinakia, an island whereon were pastured the 
 cattle of Hyperion, the Sun, tended by his daughters 
 Lampetia and Phaethusa. These flocks must not be vio¬ 
 lated, whatever the wants of the voyagers might be. If 
 this injunction were transgressed destruction was sure 
 to fall on the offenders. 
 
 Ulysses would willingly have passed the island of 
 the Sun without stopping, but his companions so ur¬ 
 gently pleaded for the rest and refreshment that would 
 be derived from anchoring and passing the night on 
 shore, that Ulysses yielded. He bound them, however, 
 with an oath that they would not touch one of the 
 animals of the sacred flocks and herds, but content 
 themselves with what provision they yet had left of the 
 supply which Circe had put on board. So long as this 
 supply lasted the people kept their oath, but contrary 
 winds detained them at the island for a month, and after 
 consuming all their stock of provisions, they were forced 
 to rely upon the birds and fishes they could catch. 
 Famine pressed them, and at length one day, in the ab¬ 
 sence of Ulysses, they slew some of the cattle, vainly 
 attempting to make amends for the deed by offering 
 
CALYPSO 
 
 245 
 
 from them a portion to the offended powers. Ulysses, 
 on his return to the shore, was horror-struck at per¬ 
 ceiving what they had done, and the more so on account 
 of the portentous signs which followed. The skins crept - 
 on the ground, and the joints of meat lowed on the spits' 
 while roasting. 
 
 The wind becoming fair they sailed from the island. 
 They had not gone far when the weather changed, 
 and a storm of thunder and lightning ensued. A stroke 
 of lightning shattered their mast, which in its fall killed 
 the pilot. At last the vessel itself came to pieces. The 
 keel and mast floating side by side, Ulysses formed of 
 them a raft, to which he clung, and, the wind changing, 
 the waves bore him to Calypso’s island. All the rest of 
 the crew perished. 
 
 The following allusion to the topics we have just been 
 considering is from Milton’s “Comus,” line 252: 
 
 “. . . I have often heard 
 My mother Circe and the Sirens three, 
 
 Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, 
 
 Culling their potent herbs and baneful drugs, 
 
 Who as they sung would take the prisoned soul 
 And lap it in Elysium. Scylla wept, 
 
 And chid her barking waves into attention, 
 
 And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.” 
 
 Scylla and Charybdis have become proverbial, to 
 denote opposite dangers which beset one’s course. See 
 Proverbial Expressions. 
 
 CALYPSO 
 
 Calypso was a sea-nymph, which name denotes a 
 numerous class of female divinities of lower rank, yet 
 sharing many of the attributes of the gods. Calypso 
 received Ulysses hospitably, entertained him magnifi¬ 
 cently, became enamoured of him, and wished to retain 
 him forever, conferring on him immortality. But he 
 persisted in his resolution to return to his country and 
 his wife and son. Calypso at last received the com¬ 
 mand of Jove to dismiss him. Mercury brought the 
 
246 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 message to her, and found her in her grotto, which is 
 thus described by Homer: 
 
 “A garden vine, luxuriant on all sides, 
 
 Mantled the spacious cavern, cluster-hung 
 Profuse; four fountains of serenest lymph, 
 
 Their sinuous course pursuing side by side, 
 
 Strayed all around, and everywhere appeared 
 Meadows of softest verdure, purpled o’er 
 With violets; it was a scene to fill 
 A god from heaven with wonder and delight.” 
 
 Calypso with much reluctance proceeded to obey the 
 commands of Jupiter. She supplied Ulysses with the 
 means of constructing a raft; provisioned it well for him, 
 and gave him a favoring gale. He sped on his course 
 prosperously for many days, till at length, when in 
 sight of land, a storm arose that broke his mast, and 
 threatened to rend the raft asunder. In this crisis he 
 was seen by a compassionate sea-nymph, who in the 
 form of a cormorant alighted on the raft, and presented 
 him a girdle, directing him to bind it beneath his breast, 
 and if he should be compelled to trust himself to the 
 waves, it would buoy him up and enable him by swim¬ 
 ming to reach the land. 
 
 Fenelon, in his romance of “Telemachus,” has given 
 us the adventures of the son of Ulysses in search of his 
 father. Among other places at which he arrived, fol¬ 
 lowing on his father’s footsteps, was Calypso’s isle, and, 
 as in the former case, the goddess tried every art to 
 keep him with her, and offered to share her immortality 
 with him. But Minerva, who in the shape of Mentor 
 accompanied him and governed all his movements, 
 made him repel her allurements, and when no other 
 means of escape could be found, the two friends leaped 
 from a cliff into the sea, and swam to a vessel which 
 lay becalmed off shore. Byron alludes to this leap of 
 Telemachus and Mentor in the following stanza: 
 
 “But not in silence pass Calypso’s isles, 
 
 The sister tenants of the middle deep; 
 
 There for the weary still a haven smiles, 
 
 Though the fair goddess long has ceased to weep, 
 
THE PH2EACIANS 
 
 247 
 
 And o’er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep 
 For him who dared prefer a mortal bride. 
 
 Here too his boy essayed the dreadful leap, 
 
 Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; 
 
 While thus of both bereft the nymph-queen doubly sighed.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE PH^EACIANS—FATE OF THE SUITORS 
 THE PH^ACIANS 
 
 Ulysses clung to the raft while any of its timbers 
 kept together, and when it no longer yielded him sup¬ 
 port, binding the girdle around him, he swam. Min¬ 
 erva smoothed the billows before him and sent him a 
 wind that rolled the waves towards the shore. The 
 surf beat high on the rocks and seemed to forbid ap¬ 
 proach ; but at length finding calm water at the mouth 
 of a gentle stream, he landed, spent with toil, breathless 
 and speechless and almost dead. After some time, re¬ 
 viving, he kissed the soil, rejoicing, yet at a loss what 
 course to take. At a short distance he perceived a wood, 
 to which he turned his steps. There, finding a covert 
 sheltered by intermingling branches alike from the sun 
 and the rain, he collected a pile of leaves and formed 
 a bed, on which he stretched himself, and heaping the 
 leaves over him, fell asleep. 
 
 The land where he was thrown was Scheria, the coun¬ 
 try of the Phseacians. These people dwelt originally 
 near the Cyclopes; but being oppressed by that savage 
 race, they migrated to the isle of Scheria, under the 
 conduct of Nausithoiis, their king. They were, the poet 
 tells us, a people akin to the gods, who appeared mani¬ 
 festly and feasted among them when they offered sac¬ 
 rifices, and did not conceal themselves from solitary 
 wayfarers when they met them. They had abundance 
 of wealth and lived in the enjoyment of it undisturbed 
 by the alarms of war, for as they dwelt remote from 
 gain-seeking man, no enemy ever approached their 
 
248 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 shores, and they did not even require to make use of 
 bows and quivers. Their chief employment was 
 navigation. Their ships, which went with the velocity 
 of birds, were endued with intelligence; they knew 
 every port and needed no pilot. Alcinoiis, the son 
 of Nausithoiis, was now their king, a wise and just 
 sovereign, beloved by his people. 
 
 Now it happened that the very night on which Ulysses 
 was cast ashore on the Phaeacian island, and while he 
 lay sleeping on his bed of leaves, Nausicaa, the daugh¬ 
 ter of the king, had a dream sent by Minerva, remind¬ 
 ing her that her wedding-day was not far distant, and 
 that it would be but a prudent preparation for that event 
 to have a general washing of the clothes of the family. 
 This was no slight affair, for the fountains were at some 
 distance, and the garments must be carried thither. On 
 awaking, the princess hastened to her parents to tell 
 them what was on her mind; not alluding to her wed¬ 
 ding-day, but finding other reasons equally good. Her 
 father readily assented and ordered the grooms to fur¬ 
 nish forth a wagon for the purpose. The clothes were 
 put therein, and the queen mother placed in the wagon, 
 likewise, an abundant supply of food and wine. The 
 princess took her seat and plied the lash, her attendant 
 virgins following her on foot. Arrived at the river side, 
 they turned out the mules to graze, and unlading the 
 carriage, bore the garments down to the water, and 
 working with cheerfulness and alacrity soon despatched 
 their labor. Then having spread the garments on the 
 shore to dry, and having themselves bathed, they sat 
 down to enjoy their meal; after which they rose and 
 amused themselves with a game of ball, the princess 
 singing to them while they played. But when they had 
 refolded the apparel and were about to resume their 
 way to the town, Minerva caused the ball thrown by 
 the princess to fall into the water, whereat they all 
 screamed and Ulysses awaked at the sound. 
 
 Now we must picture to ourselves Ulysses, a ship¬ 
 wrecked mariner, but a few hours escaped from the 
 waves, and utterly destitute of clothing, awaking and 
 discovering that only a few bushes were interposed be- 
 
THE PH^EACIANS 
 
 249 
 
 tween him and a group of young maidens whom, by 
 their deportment and attire, he discovered to be not 
 mere peasant girls, but of a higher class. Sadly need¬ 
 ing help, how could he yet venture, naked as he was, 
 to discover himself and make his wants known? It 
 certainly was a case worthy of the interposition of his 
 patron goddess Minerva, who never failed him at a 
 crisis. Breaking off a leafy branch from a tree, he held 
 it before him and stepped out from the thicket. The 
 virgins at sight of him fled in all directions, Nausicaa 
 alone excepted, for her Minerva aided and endowed 
 with courage and discernment. Ulysses, standing re¬ 
 spectfully aloof, told his sad case, and besought the 
 fair object (whether queen or goddess he professed he 
 knew not) for food and clothing. The princess replied 
 courteously, promising present relief and her father’s 
 hospitality when he should become acquainted with the 
 facts. She called back her scattered maidens, chiding 
 their alarm, and reminding them that the Phseacians had 
 no enemies to fear. This man, she told them, was an 
 unhappy wanderer, whom it was a duty to cherish, for 
 the poor and stranger are from Jove. She bade them 
 bring food and clothing, for some of her brother’s 
 garments were among the contents of the wagon. When 
 this was done, and Ulysses, retiring to a sheltered place, 
 had washed his body free from the sea-foam, clothed 
 and refreshed himself with food, Pallas dilated his form 
 and diffused grace over his ample chest and manly 
 brows. 
 
 The princess, seeing him, was filled with admiration, 
 and scrupled not to say to her damsels that she wished 
 the gods would send her such a husband. To Ulysses 
 she recommended that he should repair to the city, fol¬ 
 lowing herself and train so far as the way lay through 
 the fields; but when they should approach the city she 
 desired that he would no longer be seen in her com¬ 
 pany, for she feared the remarks which rude and vulgar 
 people might make on seeing her return accompanied 
 by such a gallant stranger. To avoid which she directed 
 him to stop at a grove adjoining the city, in which were 
 a farm and garden belonging to the king. After al- 
 
250 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 lowing time for the princess and her companions to 
 reach the city, he was then to pursue his way thither, 
 and would be easily guided by any he might meet to 
 the royal abode. 
 
 Ulysses obeyed the directions and in due time pro¬ 
 ceeded to the city, on approaching which he met a 
 young woman bearing a pitcher forth for water. It 
 was Minerva, who had assumed that form. Ulysses ac¬ 
 costed her and desired to be directed to the palace of 
 Alcinoiis the king. The maiden replied respectfully, 
 offering to be his guide; for the palace, she informed 
 him, stood near her father’s dwelling. Under the 
 guidance of the goddess, and by her power enveloped 
 in a cloud which shielded him from observation, Ulysses 
 passed among the busy crowd, and with wonder ob¬ 
 served their harbor, their ships, their forum (the resort 
 of heroes), and their battlements, till they came to the 
 palace, where the goddess, having first given him some 
 information of the country, king, and people he was 
 about to meet, left him. Ulysses, before entering the 
 courtyard of the palace, stood and surveyed the scene. 
 Its splendor astonished him. Brazen walls stretched 
 from the entrance to the interior house, of which the 
 ' doors were gold, the doorposts silver, the lintels silver 
 ornamented with gold. On either side were figures of 
 mastiffs wrought in gold and silver, standing in rows as 
 if to guard the approach. Along the walls were seats 
 spread through all their length with mantles of finest 
 texture, the work of Phaeacian maidens. On these seats 
 the princes sat and feasted, while golden statues of 
 graceful youths held in their hands lighted torches which 
 shed radiance over the scene. Full fifty female menials 
 served in household offices, some employed to grind the 
 corn, others to wind off the purple wool or ply the 
 loom. For the Phaeacian women as far exceeded all other 
 women in household arts as the mariners of that coun¬ 
 try did the rest of mankind in the management of ships. 
 Without the court a spacious garden lay, four acres in 
 extent. In it grew many a lofty tree, pomegranate, 
 pear, apple, fig, and olive. Neither winter’s cold nor 
 summer’s drought arrested their growth, but they flour- 
 
THE PHtEACIANS 
 
 251 
 
 ished in constant succession, some budding while others 
 were maturing. The vineyard was equally prolific. In 
 one quarter you might see the vines, some in blossom, 
 some loaded with ripe grapes, and in another observe 
 the vintagers treading the wine press. On the garden’s 
 borders flowers of all hues bloomed all the year round, 
 arranged with neatest art. In the midst two fountains 
 poured forth their waters, one flowing by artificial chan¬ 
 nels over all the garden, the other conducted through 
 the courtyard of the palace, whence every citizen might 
 draw his supplies. 
 
 Ulysses stood gazing in admiration, unobserved him¬ 
 self, for the cloud which Minerva spread around him 
 still shielded him. At length, having sufficiently ob¬ 
 served the scene, he advanced with rapid step into the 
 hall where the chiefs and senators were assembled, pour¬ 
 ing libation to Mercury, whose worship followed the 
 evening meal. Just then Minerva dissolved the cloud 
 and disclosed him to the assembled chiefs. Advancing 
 to the place where the queen sat, he' knelt at her feet 
 and implored her favor and assistance to enable him 
 to return to his native country. Then withdrawing, he 
 seated himself in the manner of suppliants, at the hearth 
 side. 
 
 For a time none spoke. At last an aged statesman, 
 addressing the king, said, “It is not fit that a stranger 
 who asks our hospitality should be kept waiting in sup¬ 
 pliant guise, none welcoming him. Let him therefore 
 be led to a seat among us and supplied with food and 
 wine.” At these words the king rising gave his hand 
 to Ulysses and led him to a seat, displacing thence his 
 own son to make room for the stranger. Food and 
 wine were set before him and he ate and refreshed him¬ 
 self. 
 
 The king then dismissed his guests, notifying them 
 that the next day he would call them to council to con¬ 
 sider what had best be done for the stranger. 
 
 When the guests had departed and Ulysses was left 
 alone with the king and queen, the queen asked him 
 who he was and whence he came, and (recognizing the 
 clothes which he wore as those which her maidens and 
 
252 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 herself had made) from whom he received those gar¬ 
 ments. He told them of his residence in Calypso’s isle 
 and his departure thence; of the wreck of his raft, his 
 escape by swimming, and of the relief afforded by the 
 princess. The parents heard approvingly, and the king 
 promised to furnish a ship in which his guest might re¬ 
 turn to his own land. 
 
 The next day the assembled chiefs confirmed the 
 promise of the king. A bark was prepared and a crew 
 of stout rowers selected, and all betook themselves to 
 the palace, where a bounteous repast was provided. 
 After the feast the king proposed that the young men 
 should show their guest their proficiency in manly 
 sports, and all went forth to the arena for games of 
 running, wrestling, and other exercises. After all had 
 done their best, Ulysses being challenged to show what 
 he could do, at first declined, but being taunted by one 
 of the youths, seized a quoit of weight far heavier than 
 any of the Phasacians had thrown, and sent it farther 
 than the utmost throw of theirs. All were astonished, 
 and viewed their guest with greatly increased respect. 
 
 After the games they returned to the hall, and the 
 herald led in Demodocus, the blind bard,— 
 
 “. . . Dear to the Muse, 
 
 Who yet appointed him both good and ill, 
 
 Took from him sight, but gave him strains divine.” 
 
 He took for his theme the “Wooden Horse,” by means 
 of which the Greeks found entrance into Troy. Apollo 
 inspired him, and he sang so feelingly the terrors and 
 the exploits of that eventful time that all were de¬ 
 lighted, but Ulysses was moved to tears. Observing 
 which, Alcinoiis, when the song was done, demanded of 
 him why at the mention of Troy his sorrows awaked. 
 Had he lost there a father, or brother, or any dear 
 friend? Ulysses replied by announcing himself by his 
 true name, and at their request, recounted the adven¬ 
 tures which had befallen him since his departure from 
 Troy. This narrative raised the sympathy and admira¬ 
 tion of the Phseacians for their guest to the highest 
 pitch. The king proposed that all the chiefs should 
 
THE PHAEACIANS 
 
 253 
 
 present him with a gift, himself setting the example. 
 They obeyed, and vied with one another in loading the 
 illustrious stranger with costly gifts. 
 
 The next day Ulysses set sail in the Phseacian ves¬ 
 sel, and in a short time arrived safe at Ithaca, his own 
 island. When the vessel touched the strand he was 
 asleep. The mariners, without waking him, carried 
 him on shore, and landed with him the chest containing 
 his presents, and then sailed away. 
 
 Neptune was so displeased at the conduct of the 
 Phaeacians in thus rescuing Ulysses from his hands that 
 on the return of the vessel to port he transformed it into 
 a rock, right opposite the mouth of the harbor. 
 
 Homer’s description of the ships of the Phaeacians 
 has been thought to look like an anticipation of the 
 wonders of modern steam navigation. Alcinous says to 
 Ulysses: 
 
 “Say from what city, from what regions tossed, 
 
 And what inhabitants those regions boast? 
 
 So shalt thou quickly reach the realm assigned, 
 
 In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind; 
 
 No helm secures their course, no pilot guides; 
 
 Like man intelligent they plough the tides, 
 
 Conscious of every coast and every bay 
 That lies beneath the sun’s all-seeing ray.” 
 
 — Odyssey , Book VIII. 
 
 Lord Carlisle, in his “Diary in the Turkish and Greek 
 Waters,” thus speaks of Corfu, which he considers to 
 be the ancient Phaeacian island: 
 
 “The sites explain the ‘Odyssey.’ The temple of the 
 sea-god could not have been more fitly placed, upon a 
 grassy platform of the most elastic turf, on the brow 
 of a crag commanding harbor, and channel, and ocean. 
 Just at the entrance of the inner harbor there is a pic¬ 
 turesque rock with a small convent perched upon it, 
 which by one legend is the transformed pinnace of 
 Ulysses. 
 
 “Almost the only river in the island is just at the 
 proper distance from the probable site of the city and 
 palace of the king, to justify the princess Nausicaa 
 
254 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 having had resort to her chariot and to luncheon when 
 she went with the maidens of the court to wash their 
 garments.” 
 
 FATE OF THE SUITORS 
 
 Ulysses had now been away from Ithaca for twenty 
 years, and when he awoke he did not recognize his na¬ 
 tive land. Minerva appeared to him in the form of a 
 young shepherd, informed him where he was, and told 
 him the state of things at his palace. More than a hun¬ 
 dred nobles of Ithaca and of the neighboring islands 
 had been for years suing for the hand of Penelope, his 
 wife, imagining him dead, and lording it over his palace 
 and people, as if they were owners of both. That he 
 might be able to take vengeance upon them, it was im¬ 
 portant that he should not be recognized. Minerva ac¬ 
 cordingly metamorphosed him into an unsightly beggar, 
 and as such he was kindly received by Eumseus, the 
 swine-herd, a faithful servant of his house. 
 
 Telemachus, his son, was absent in quest of his father. 
 He had gone to the courts of the other kings, who had 
 returned from the Trojan expedition. While on the 
 search, he received counsel from Minerva to return 
 home. He arrived and sought Eumseus to learn some¬ 
 thing of the state of affairs at the palace before present¬ 
 ing himself among the suitors. Finding a stranger with 
 Eumseus, he treated him courteously, though in the garb 
 of a beggar, and promised him assistance. Eumseus was 
 sent to the palace to inform Penelope privately of her 
 son’s arrival, for caution was necessary with regard to 
 the suitors, who, as Telemachus had learned, were plot¬ 
 ting to intercept and kill him. When Eumseus was gone, 
 Minerva presented herself to Ulysses, and directed him 
 to make himself known to his son. At the same time 
 she touched him, removed at once from him the ap¬ 
 pearance of age and penury, and gave him the aspect of 
 vigorous manhood that belonged to him. Telemachus 
 ^viewed him with astonishment, and at first thought he 
 must be more than mortal. But Ulysses announced him¬ 
 self as his father, and accounted for the change of ap¬ 
 pearance by explaining that it was Minerva’s doing. 
 
k 
 
 FATE OF THE SUITORS 255 
 
 **. . . Then threw Telemachus 
 His arms around his father’s neck and wept. 
 
 Desire intense of lamentation seized 
 On both; soft murmurs uttering, each indulged 
 His grief.” 
 
 The father and son took counsel together how they 
 should get the better of the suitors and punish them for 
 their outrages. It was arranged that Telemachus should 
 proceed to the palace and mingle with the suitors as 
 formerly; that Ulysses should also go as a beggar, a 
 character which in the rude old times had different privi¬ 
 leges from what we concede to it now. As traveller 
 and storyteller, the beggar was admitted in the halls of 
 chieftains, and often treated like a guest; though some¬ 
 times, also, no doubt, with contumely. Ulysses charged 
 his son not to betray, by any display of unusual interest 
 in him, that he knew him to be other than he seemed, 
 and even if he saw him insulted, or beaten, not to in¬ 
 terpose otherwise than he might do for any stranger. 
 At the palace they found the usual scene of feasting and 
 riot going on. The suitors pretended to receive Telem¬ 
 achus with joy at his return, though secretly mortified 
 at the failure of their plots to take his life. The old 
 beggar was permitted to enter, and provided with a 
 portion from the table. A touching incident occurred as 
 Ulysses entered the courtyard of the palace. An old 
 dog lay in the yard almost dead with age, and seeing a 
 stranger enter, raised his head, with ears erect. It was 
 Argus, Ulysses’ own dog, that he had in other days often 
 led to the chase. 
 
 “. . . Soon as he perceived 
 Long-lost Ulysses nigh, down fell his ears 
 Clapped close, and with his tail glad sign he gave 
 Of gratulation, impotent to rise, 
 
 And to approach his master as of old. 
 
 Ulysses, noting him, wiped off a tear 
 Unmarked. 
 
 . . . Then his destiny released 
 
 Old Argus, soon as he had lived to see 
 
 Ulysses in the twentieth year restored.” 
 
 As Ulysses sat eating his portion in the hall, the 
 
256 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 suitors began to exhibit their insolence to him. When 
 he mildly remonstrated, one of them raised a stool and 
 with it gave him a blow. Telemachus had hard work 
 to restrain his indignation at seeing his father so treated 
 in his own hall, but remembering his father’s injunctions, 
 said no more than what became him as master of the 
 house, though young, and protector of his guests. 
 
 Penelope had protracted her decision in favor of 
 either of her suitors so long that there seemed to be 
 no further pretence for delay. The continued absence 
 of her husband seemed to prove that his return was no 
 longer to be expected. Meanwhile her son had grown 
 up, and was able to manage his own affairs. She there¬ 
 fore consented to submit the question of her choice to 
 a trial of skill among the suitors. The test selected 
 was shooting with the bow. Twelve rings were ar¬ 
 ranged in a line, and he whose arrow was sent through 
 the whole twelve was to have the queen for his prize. 
 A bow that one of his brother heroes had given to 
 Ulysses in former times was brought from the armory, 
 and with its quiver full of arrows was laid in the hall. 
 Telemachus had taken care that all other weapons should 
 be removed, under pretence that in the heat of compe¬ 
 tition there was danger, in some rash moment, of put¬ 
 ting them to an improper use. 
 
 All things being prepared for the trial, the first thing 
 to be done was to bend the bow in order to attach the 
 string. Telemachus endeavored to do it, but found all 
 his efforts fruitless; and modestly confessing that he 
 had attempted a task beyond his strength, he yielded the 
 bow to another. He tried it with no better success, and, 
 amidst the laughter and jeers of his companions, gave it 
 up. Another tried it and another; they rubbed the bow 
 with tallow, but all to no purpose; it would not bend. 
 Then spoke Ulysses, humbly suggesting that he should 
 be permitted to try; for, said he, ‘‘beggar as I am, I 
 was once a soldier, and there is still some strength in 
 these old limbs of mine.” The suitors hooted with de¬ 
 rision, and commanded to turn him out of the hall for 
 his insolence. But Telemachus spoke up for him, and, 
 merely to gratify the old man, bade him try. Ulysses 
 
FATE OF THE SUITORS 
 
 257 
 
 took the bow, and handled it with the hand of a master. 
 With ease he adjusted the cord to its notch, then fitting 
 an arrow to the bow he drew the string and sped the 
 arrow unerring through the rings. 
 
 Without allowing them time to express their aston¬ 
 ishment, he said, “Now for another mark!” and aimed 
 direct at the most insolent one of the suitors. The 
 arrow pierced through his throat and he fell dead. 
 Telemachus, Eumseus, and another faithful follower, 
 well armed, now sprang to the side of Ulysses. The 
 suitors, in amazement, looked round for arms, but found 
 none, neither was there any way of escape, for Eumseus 
 had secured the door. Ulysses left them not long in 
 uncertainty; he announced himself as the long-lost chief, 
 whose house they had invaded, whose substance they 
 had squandered, whose wife and son they had perse¬ 
 cuted for ten long years; and told them he meant to 
 have ample vengeance. All were slain, and Ulysses was 
 left master of his palace and possessor of his kingdom 
 and his wife. 
 
 Tennyson’s poem of “Ulysses” represents the old 
 hero, after his dangers past and nothing left but to stay 
 at home and be happy, growing tired of inaction and 
 resolving to set forth again in quest of new adventures: 
 
 “. . . Come, my friends, 
 
 ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
 
 Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
 The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars, until I die. 
 
 It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; 
 
 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
 
 And see the great Achilles whom we knew ;” etc. 
 
258 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 ADVENTURES OF ^FNEAS-THE HARPIES—DIDO- 
 
 PALINURUS 
 
 ADVENTURES OF AiNEAS 
 
 We have followed one of the Grecian heroes, Ulysses, 
 in his wanderings on his return home from Troy, and 
 now we propose to share the fortunes of the remnant 
 of the conquered people, under their chief ^Eneas, in 
 their search for a new home, after the ruin of their na¬ 
 tive city. On that fatal night when the wooden horse 
 disgorged its contents of armed men, and the capture 
 and conflagration of the city were the result, ^Eneas 
 made his escape from the scene of destruction, with 
 his father, and his wife, and young son. The father, 
 Anchises, was too old to walk with the speed required, 
 and /Eneas took him upon his shoulders. Thus bur¬ 
 dened, leading his son and followed by his wife, he 
 made the best of his way out of the burning city; but, 
 in the confusion, his wife was swept away and lost. 
 
 On arriving at the place of rendezvous, numerous 
 fugitives, of both sexes, were found, who put them¬ 
 selves under the guidance of /Eneas. Some months 
 were spent in preparation, and at length they embarked. 
 They first landed on the neighboring shores of Thrace, 
 and were preparing to build a city, but ^Eneas was 
 deterred by a prodigy. Preparing to offer sacrifice, he 
 tore some twigs from one of the bushes. To his dis¬ 
 may the wounded part dropped blood. When he re¬ 
 peated the act a voice from the ground cried out to 
 him, “Spare me, Hineas; I am your kinsman, Polydore, 
 here murdered with many arrows, from which a bush 
 has grown, nourished with my blood.” These words 
 recalled to the recollection of /Eneas that Polydore was 
 a young prince of Troy, whom his father had sent with 
 ample treasures to the neighboring land of Thrace, to 
 be there brought up, at a distance from the horrors of 
 war. The king to whom he was sent had murdered 
 
ADVENTURES OF TINEAS 
 
 259 
 
 him and seized his treasures. ^Eneas and his compan¬ 
 ions, considering the land accursed by the stain of such 
 a crime, hastened away. 
 
 They next landed on the island of Delos, which was 
 once a floating island, till Jupiter fastened it by adaman¬ 
 tine chains to the bottom of the sea. Apollo and Diana 
 were born there, and the island was sacred to Apollo. 
 Here ^Eneas consulted the oracle of Apollo, and re¬ 
 ceived an answer, ambiguous as usual,—“Seek your an¬ 
 cient mother; there the race of iEneas shall dwell, and 
 reduce all other nations to their sway/’ The Trojans 
 heard with joy and immediately began to ask one an¬ 
 other, “Where is the spot intended by the oracle ?” 
 Anchises remembered that there was a tradition that 
 their forefathers came from Crete and thither they re¬ 
 solved to steer. They arrived at Crete and began to 
 build their city, but sickness broke out among them, 
 and the fields that they had planted failed to yield a 
 crop. In this gloomy aspect of affairs zEneas was 
 warned in a dream to leave the country and seek a 
 western land, called Hesperia, whence Dardanus, the 
 true founder of the Trojan race, had originally mi¬ 
 grated. To Hesperia, now called Italy, therefore, they 
 directed their future course, and not till after many 
 adventures and the lapse of time sufficient to carry a 
 modern navigator several times round the world, did 
 they arrive there. 
 
 Their first landing was at the island of the Harpies. 
 These were disgusting birds with the heads of maidens, 
 with long claws and faces pale with hunger. They were 
 sent by the gods to torment a certain Phineus, whom 
 Jupiter had deprived of his sight, in punishment of his 
 cruelty; and whenever a meal was placed before him 
 the Harpies darted down from the air and carried it 
 off. They were driven away from Phineus by the 
 heroes of the Argonautic expedition, and took refuge 
 in the island where iEneas now found them. 
 
 When they entered the port the Trojans saw herds 
 of cattle roaming over the plain. They slew as many 
 as they wished and prepared for a feast. But no sooner 
 had they seated themselves at the table than a horrible 
 
260 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 clamor was heard in the air, and a flock of these odious 
 harpies came rushing down upon them, seizing in their 
 talons the meat from the dishes and flying away with 
 it. .Eneas and his companions drew their swords and 
 dealt vigorous blows among the monsters, but to no pur¬ 
 pose, for they were so nimble it was almost impossible 
 to hit them, and their feathers were like armor im¬ 
 penetrable to steel. One of them, perched on a neigh¬ 
 boring cliff, screamed out, “Is it thus, Trojans, you treat 
 us innocent birds, first slaughter our cattle and then 
 make war on ourselves?” She then predicted dire suf¬ 
 ferings to them in their future course, and having vented 
 her wrath flew away. The Trojans made haste to leave 
 the country, and next found themselves coasting along 
 the shore of Epirus. Here they landed, and to their 
 astonishment learned that certain Trojan exiles, who 
 had been carried there as prisoners, had become rulers 
 of the country. Andromache, the widow of Hector, be¬ 
 came the wife of one of the victorious Grecian chiefs, 
 to whom she bore a son. Her husband dying, she was 
 left regent of the country, as guardian of her son, and 
 had married a fellow-captive, Helenus, of the royal race 
 of Troy. Helenus and Andromache treated the exiles 
 with the utmost hospitality, and dismissed them loaded 
 with gifts. 
 
 From hence Eneas coasted along the shore of Sicily 
 and passed the country of the Cyclopes. Here they 
 were hailed from the shore by a miserable object, whom 
 by his garments, tattered as they were, they perceived 
 to be a Greek. He told them he was one of Ulysses’s 
 companions, left behind by that chief in his hurried 
 departure. He related the story of Ulysses’s adventure 
 with Polyphemus, and besought them to take him off 
 with them as he had no means of sustaining his ex¬ 
 istence where he was but wild berries and roots, and 
 lived in constant fear of the Cyclopes. While he spoke 
 Polyphemus made his appearance; a terrible monster, 
 shapeless, vast, whose only eye had been put out. 1 He 
 walked with cautious steps, feeling his way with a staff, 
 down to the sea-side, to wash his eye-socket in the 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
ADVENTURES OF /ENEAS 
 
 261 
 
 waves. When he reached the water, he waded out 
 towards them, and his immense height enabled him to 
 advance far into the sea, so that the Trojans, in terror, 
 took to their oars to get out of his way. Hearing the 
 oars, Polyphemus shouted after them, so that the shores 
 resounded, and at the noise the other Cyclopes came 
 forth from their caves and woods and lined the shore, i 
 like a row of lofty pine trees. The Trojans plied their 
 oars and soon left them out of sight. 
 
 Eneas had been cautioned by Helenus to avoid the 
 strait guarded by the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. 
 There Ulysses, the reader will remember, had lost six 
 of his men, seized by Scylla while the navigators were 
 wholly intent upon avoiding Charybdis. Eneas, fol¬ 
 lowing the advice of Helenus, shunned the dangerous 
 pass and coasted along the island of Sicily. 
 
 Juno, seeing the Trojans speeding their way prosper¬ 
 ously towards their destined shore, felt her old grudge 
 against them revive, for she could not forget the slight 
 that Paris had put upon her, in awarding "Lhe prize of 
 beauty to another. In heavenly minds can such resent¬ 
 ments dwell i 1 Accordingly she hastened to Eolus, the 
 ruler of the winds,—the same who supplied Ulysses 
 with favoring gales, giving him the contrary ones tied 
 up in a bag. Eolus obeyed the goddess and sent forth 
 his sons, Boreas, Typhon, and the other winds, to toss 
 the ocean. A terrible storm ensued and the Trojan ships 
 were driven out of their course towards the coast of 
 Africa. They were in imminent danger of being 
 wrecked, and were separated, so that /Eneas thought 
 that all were lost except his own. j 
 
 At this crisis, Neptune, hearing the storm raging, and 
 knowing that he had given no orders for one, raised his 
 head above the waves, and saw the fleet of .Eneas driv¬ 
 ing before the gale. Knowing the Hostility of Juno, he 
 was at no loss to account for it, but his anger was not 
 the less at this interference in his province. He called 
 the winds and dismissed them with a severe reprimand. 
 He then soothed the waves, and brushed away the clouds 
 from before the face of the sun. Some of the ships 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
262 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 \ 
 
 which had got on the rocks he pried off with his own 
 trident, while Triton and a sea-nymph, putting their 
 shoulders under others, set them afloat again. The Tro¬ 
 jans, when the sea became calm, sought the nearest 
 shore, which was the coast of Carthage, where .Eneas 
 was so happy as to find that one by one the ships all 
 arrived safe, though badly shaken. 
 
 Waller, in his “Panegyric to the Lord Protector” 
 (Cromwell), alludes to this stilling of the storm by 
 Neptune: 
 
 “Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face, 
 
 To chide the winds and save the Trojan race, 
 
 So has your Highness, raised above the rest, 
 
 Storms of ambition tossing us repressed." 
 
 DIDO 
 
 Carthage, where the exiles had now arrived, was a 
 spot on the coast of Africa opposite Sicily, where at 
 that time a Tyrian colony under Dido, their queen, were 
 laying the foundations of a state destined in later ages 
 to be the rival of Rome itself. Dido was the daughter 
 of Belus, king of Tyre, and sister of Pygmalion, who 
 succeeded his father on the throne. Her husband was 
 Sichaeus, a man of immense wealth, but Pygmalion, 
 who coveted his treasures, caused him to be put to death. 
 Dido, with a numerous body of friends and followers, 
 both men and women, succeeded in effecting their escape 
 from Tyre, in several vessels, carrying with them the 
 treasures of Sichaeus. On arriving at the spot which they 
 selected as the seat of their future home, they asked of 
 the natives only so much land as they could enclose with 
 a bull's hide. When this was readily granted, she caused 
 the hide to be cut into strips, and with them enclosed a 
 spot on which she built a citadel, and called it Byrsa (a 
 hide). Around this fort the city of Carthage rose, and 
 soon became a powerful and flourishing place. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when Eneas with his 
 Trojans arrived there. Dido received the illustrious 
 exiles with friendliness and hospitality. “Not unac- 
 
DIDO 
 
 263 
 
 quainted with distress,” she said, “I have learned to 
 succor the unfortunate.” 1 The queen’s hospitality dis¬ 
 played itself in festivities at which games of strength 
 and skill were exhibited. The strangers contended for 
 the palm with her own subjects, on equal terms, the 
 queen declaring that whether the victor were “Trojan or 
 Tyrian should make no difference to her.” 1 At the feast 
 which followed the games, ^Eneas gave at her request 
 a recital of the closing events of the Trojan history and 
 his own adventures after the fall of the city. Dido was 
 charmed with his discourse and filled with admiration 
 of his exploits. She conceived an ardent passion for 
 him, and he for his part seemed well content to accept 
 the fortunate chance which appeared to offer him at 
 once a happy termination of his wanderings, a home, a 
 kingdom, and a bride. Months rolled away in the en¬ 
 joyment of pleasant intercourse, and it seemed as if 
 Italy and the empire destined to be founded on its shores 
 were alike forgotten. Seeing which, Jupiter despatched 
 Mercury with a message to .Eneas recalling him to a 
 sense of his high destiny, and commanding him to re¬ 
 sume his voyage. 
 
 .Eneas parted from Dido, though she tried every al¬ 
 lurement and persuasion to detain him. The blow to 
 her affection and her pride was too much for her to 
 endure, and when she found that he was gone, she 
 mounted a funeral pile which she had caused to be 
 erected, and having stabbed herself was consumed with 
 the pile. The flames rising over the city were seen by 
 the departing Trojans, and, though the cause was un¬ 
 known, gave to .Eneas some intimation of the fatal 
 event. 
 
 The following epigram we find in 
 tracts”: 
 
 From the Latin 
 
 “Elegant Ex* 
 
 "Unhappy, Dido, was thy fate 
 In first and second married state! 
 
 One husband caused thy flight by dying, 
 Thy death the other caused by flying.” 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
264 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 PALINURUS 
 
 After touching at the island of Sicily, where Acestes, 
 a prince of Trojan lineage, bore sway, who gave them 
 a hospitable reception, the Trojans reembarked, and 
 held on their course for Italy. Venus now interceded 
 with Neptune to allow her son at last to attain the 
 wished-for goal and find an end of his perils on the 
 deep. Neptune consented, stipulating only for one life 
 as a ransom for the rest. The victim was Palinurus, 
 the pilot. As he sat watching the stars, with his hand 
 on the helm, Somnus sent by Neptune approached in 
 the guise of Phorbas and said: “Palinurus, the breeze 
 is fair, the water smooth, and the ship sails steadily on 
 her course. Lie down awhile and take needful rest. 
 I will stand at the helm in your place.” Palinurus re¬ 
 plied, “Tell me not of smooth seas or favoring winds, 
 —me who have seen so much of their treachery. Shall 
 I trust iEneas to the chances of the weather and the 
 winds?” And he continued to grasp the helm and to 
 keep his eyes fixed on the stars. But Somnus waved 
 over him a branch moistened wtih Lethsean dew, and 
 his eyes closed in spite of all his efforts. Then Somnus 
 pushed him overboard and he fell; but keeping his hold 
 upon the helm, it came away with him. Neptune was 
 mindful of his promise and kept the ship on her track 
 without helm or pilot, till Hineas discovered his loss, 
 and, sorrowing deeply for his faithful steersman, took 
 charge of the ship himself. 
 
 There is a beautiful allusion to the story of Palinurus 
 in Scott’s “Marmion,” Introduction to Canto I., where 
 the poet, speaking of the recent death of William Pitt, 
 says: 
 
 “O, think how, to his latest day, 
 
 When death just hovering claimed his prey, 
 
 With Palinure’s unaltered mood, 
 
 Firm at his dangerous post he stood; 
 
 Each call for needful rest repelled, 
 
 With dying hand the rudder held, 
 
 Till in his fall, with fateful sway, 
 
 The steerage of the realm gave way.” 
 
PALINURUS 
 
 265 
 
 The ships at last reached the shores of Italy, and joy¬ 
 fully did the adventurers leap to land. While his people 
 were employed in making their encampment ^neas 
 sought the abode of the Sibyl. It was a cave connected 
 with a temple and grove, sacred to Apollo and Diana. 
 While ZEneas contemplated the scene, the Sibyl accosted 
 him. She seemed to know his errand, and under the 
 influence of the deity of the place, burst forth in a pro¬ 
 phetic strain, giving dark intimations of labors and perils 
 through which he was destined to make his way to 
 final success. She closed with the encouraging words 
 which have become proverbial: “Yield not to disasters, 
 but press onward the more bravely.” 1 .ZEneas replied 
 that he had prepared himself for whatever might await 
 him. He had but one request to make. Having been 
 directed in a dream to seek the abode of the dead in 
 order to confer with his father, Anchises, to receive 
 from him a revelation of his future fortunes and those 
 of his race, he asked her assistance to enable him to ac¬ 
 complish the task. The Sibyl replied, “The descent to 
 Avernus is easy: the gate of Pluto stands open night 
 and day; but to retrace one’s steps and return to the 
 upper air, that is the toil, that the difficulty.” 1 She in¬ 
 structed him to seek in the forest a tree on which grew 
 a golden branch. This branch was to be plucked off 
 and borne as a gift to Proserpine, and if fate was pro¬ 
 pitious it would yield to the hand and quit its parent 
 trunk, but otherwise no force could rend it away. If 
 torn away, another would succeed. 1 
 
 HZneas followed the directions of the Sibyl. His 
 mother, Venus, sent two of her doves to fly before him 
 and show him the way, and by thei. assistance he found 
 the tree, plucked the branch, and hastened back with it 
 to the Sibyl. 
 
 J See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
266 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE INFERNAL REGIONS-THE SIBYL 
 
 THE INFERNAL REGIONS 
 
 As at the commencement of our series we have given 
 the pagan account of the creation of the world, so as 
 we approach its conclusion we present a view of the 
 regions of the dead, depicted by one of their most en¬ 
 lightened poets, who drew his doctrines from their most 
 esteemed philosophers. The region where Virgil locates 
 the entrance to this abode is perhaps the most strikingly 
 adapted to excite ideas of the terrific and preternatural 
 of any on the face of the earth. It is the volcanic 
 region near Vesuvius, where the whole country is cleft 
 with chasms, from which sulphurous flames arise, while 
 the ground is shaken with pent-up vapors, and mysteri¬ 
 ous sounds issue from the bowels of the earth. The 
 lake Avernus is supposed to fill the crater of an ex¬ 
 tinct volcano. It is circular, half a mile wide, and very 
 deep, surrounded by high banks, which in Virgil's time 
 were covered with a gloomy forest. Mephitic vapors 
 rise from its waters, so that no life is found on its banks, 
 and no birds fly over it. Here, according to the poet, 
 was the cave which afforded access to the infernal re¬ 
 gions, and here yEneas offered sacrifices to the infernal 
 deities, Proserpine, Hecate, and the Furies. Then a 
 roaring was heard in the earth, the woods on the hill¬ 
 tops were shaken, and the howling of dogs announced 
 the approach of the deities. “Now," said the Sibyl, 
 “summon up your courage, for you will need it.” She 
 descended into the cave, and ^Eneas followed. Before 
 the threshold of hell they passed through a group of 
 beings who are enumerated as Griefs and avenging 
 Cares, pale Diseases and melancholy Age, Fear and 
 Hunger that tempt to crime, Toil, Poverty, and Death,— 
 forms horrible to view. The Furies spread their couches 
 there, and Discord, whose hair was of vipers tied up 
 with a bloody fillet. Here also were the monsters, 
 
THE INFERNAL REGIONS 
 
 267 
 
 Briareus, with his hundred arms, Hydras hissing, and 
 Chimseras breathing fire. Tineas shuddered at the sight, 
 drew his sword and would have struck, but the Sibyl 
 restrained him. They then came to the black river 
 Cocytus, where they found the ferryman, Charon, old 
 and squalid, but strong and vigorous, who was receiving 
 passengers of all kinds into his boat, magnanimous 
 heroes, boys and unmarried girls, as numerous as the 
 leaves that fall at autumn, or the flocks that fly south¬ 
 ward at the approach of winter. They stood pressing 
 for a passage and longing to touch the opposite shore. 
 But the stern ferryman took in only such as he chose, 
 driving the rest back. Tineas, wondering at the sight, 
 asked the Sibyl, “Why this discrimination?” She an¬ 
 swered, “Those who are taken on board the bark are the 
 souls of those who have received due burial rites; the 
 host of others who have remained unburied are not 
 permitted to pass the flood, but wander a hundred years, 
 and flit to and fro about the shore, till at last they are 
 taken over.” Tineas grieved at recollecting some of 
 his own companions who had perished in the storm. At 
 that moment he beheld Palinurus, his pilot, who fell 
 overboard and was drowned. He addressed him and 
 asked him the cause of his misfortune. Palinurus re¬ 
 plied that the rudder was carried away, and he, clinging 
 to it, was swept away with it. He besought Tineas 
 most urgently to extend to him his hand and take him 
 in company to the opposite shore. But the Sibyl re¬ 
 buked him for the wish thus to transgress the laws of 
 Pluto; but consoled him by informing him that the peo¬ 
 ple of the shore where his body had been wafted by 
 the waves should be stirred up by prodigies to give it 
 due burial, and that the promontory should bear the 
 name of Cape Palinurus, which it does to this day. 
 Leaving Palinurus consoled by these words, they ap¬ 
 proached the boat. Charon, fixing his eyes sternly upon 
 the advancing warrior, demanded by what right he, liv¬ 
 ing and armed, approached that shore. To which the 
 Sibyl replied that they would commit no violence, that 
 Tineas’s only object was to see his father, and finally 
 exhibited the golden branch, at sight of which Charon’s 
 
268 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 wrath relaxed, and he made haste to turn his bark to 
 the shore, and receive them on board. The boat, 
 adapted only to the light freight of bodiless spirits, 
 groaned under the weight of the hero. They were soon 
 conveyed to the opposite shore. There they were en¬ 
 countered by the three-headed dog, Cerberus, with his 
 necks bristling with snakes. He barked with all his 
 three throats till the Sibyl threw him a medicated cake 
 which he eagerly devoured, and then stretched himself 
 out in his den and fell asleep. .Eneas and the Sibyl 
 sprang to land. The first sound that struck their ears 
 was the wailing of young children, who had died on the 
 threshold of life, and near to these were they who had 
 perished under false charges. Minos presides over them 
 as judge, and examines the deeds of each. The next 
 class was of those who had died by their own hand, hat¬ 
 ing life and seeking refuge in death. O how willingly 
 would they now endure poverty, labor, and any other 
 infliction, if they might but return to life! Next were 
 situated the regions of sadness, divided ofif into retired 
 paths, leading through groves of myrtle. Here roamed 
 those who had fallen victims to unrequited love, not 
 freed from pain even by death itself. Among these, 
 HIneas thought he descried the form of Dido, with 
 a wound still recent. In the dim light he was for a mo¬ 
 ment uncertain, but approaching, perceived it was indeed 
 herself. Tears fell from his eyes, and he addressed her 
 in the accents of love. “Unhappy Dido! was then the 
 rumor true that you had perished ? and was I, alas! the 
 cause? I call the gods to witness that my departure 
 from you was reluctant, and in obedience to the com¬ 
 mands of Jove; nor could I believe that my absence 
 would cost you so dear. Stop, I beseech you, and refuse 
 me not a last farewell ;” She stood for a moment with 
 averted countenance, and eyes fixed on the ground, and 
 then silently passed on, as insensible to his pleadings as 
 a rock. iEneas followed for some distance; then, with 
 a heavy heart, rejoined his companion and resumed his 
 route. 
 
 They next entered the fields where roam the heroes 
 who have fallen in battle. Here they saw many shades 
 
THE INFERNAL REGIONS 
 
 269 
 
 of Grecian and Trojan warriors. The Trojans thronged 
 around him, and could not be satisfied with the sight. 
 They asked the cause of his coming, and plied him with 
 innumerable questions. But the Greeks, at the sight of 
 his armor glittering through the murky atmosphere, rec¬ 
 ognized the hero, and filled with terror turned their 
 backs and fled, as they used to do on the plains of Troy. 
 
 Tineas would have lingered long with his Trojan 
 friends, but the Sibyl hurried him away. They next 
 came to a place where the road divided, the one leading 
 to Elysium, the other to the regions of the condemned. 
 Tineas beheld on one side the walls of a mighty city, 
 around which Phlegethon rolled its fiery waters. Be¬ 
 fore him was the gate of adamant that neither gods nor 
 men can break through. An iron tower stood by the 
 gate, on which Tisiphone, the avenging Fury, kept 
 guard. From the city were heard groans, and the sound 
 of the scourge, the creaking of iron, and the clanking 
 of chains. Tineas, horror-struck, inquired of his guide 
 what crimes were those whose punishments produced 
 the sounds he heard? The Sibyl answered, “Here is the 
 judgment hall of Rhadamanthus, who brings to light 
 crimes done in life, which the perpetrator vainly thought 
 impenetrably hid. Tisiphone applies her whip of scor¬ 
 pions, and delivers the offender over to her sister 
 Furies.” At this moment with horrid clang the brazen 
 gates unfolded, and Tineas saw within a Hydra with 
 fifty heads guarding the entrance. The Sibyl told him 
 that the gulf of Tartarus descended deep, so that its 
 recesses were as far beneath their feet as heaven was 
 high above their heads. In the bottom of this pit, the 
 Titan race, who warred against the gods, lie prostrate; 
 Salmoneus, also, who presumed to vie with Jupiter, and 
 built a bridge of brass over which he drove his chariot 
 that the sound might resemble thunder, launching flam¬ 
 ing brands at his people in imitation of lightning, till 
 Jupiter struck him with a real thunderbolt, and taught 
 him the difference between mortal weapons and divine. 
 Here, also, is Tityus, the giant, whose form is so im¬ 
 mense that as he lies he stretches over nine acres, while 
 a vulture preys upon his liver, which as fast as it is 
 
270 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 devoured grows again, so that his punishment will have 
 no end. 
 
 ^Eneas saw groups seated at tables loaded with dain¬ 
 ties, while near by stood a Fury who snatched away the 
 viands from their lips as fast as they prepared to taste 
 them. Others beheld suspended over their heads huge 
 rocks, threatening to fall, keeping them in a state of 
 constant alarm. These were they who had hated their 
 brothers, or struck their parents, or defrauded the 
 friends who trusted them, or who, having grown rich, 
 kept their money to themselves, and gave no share to 
 others; the last being the most numerous class. Here 
 also were those who had violated the marriage vow, or 
 fought in a bad cause, or failed in fidelity to their em¬ 
 ployers. Here was one who had sold his country for 
 gold, another who perverted the laws, making them say 
 one thing to-day and another to-morrow. 
 
 Ixion was there, fastened to the circumference of a 
 wheel ceaselessly revolving; and Sisyphus, whose task 
 was to roll a huge stone up to a hill-top, but when the 
 steep was well-nigh gained, the rock, repulsed by some 
 sudden force, rushed again headlong down to the plain. 
 Again he toiled at it, while the sweat bathed all his 
 weary limbs, but all to no effect. There was Tantalus, 
 who stood in a pool, his chin level with the water, yet 
 he was parched with thirst, and found nothing to as¬ 
 suage it; for when he bowed his hoary head, eager to 
 quaff, the water fled away, leaving the ground at his 
 feet all dry. Tall trees laden with fruit stooped their 
 heads to him, pears, pomegranates, apples, and luscious 
 figs; but when with a sudden grasp he tried to seize 
 them winds whirled them high above his reach. 
 
 The Sibyl now warned ^Eneas that was time to 
 turn from these melancholy regions and seek the city of 
 the blessed. They passed through a middle tract of 
 darkness, and came upon the Elysian fields, the groves 
 where the happy reside. They breathed a freer air, 
 and saw all objects clothed in a purple light. The re¬ 
 gion has a sun and stars of its own. The inhabitants 
 were enjoying themselves in various ways, some in 
 sports on the grassy turf, in games of strength or skill. 
 
THE INFERNAL REGIONS 
 
 271 
 
 others dancing or singing. Orpheus struck the chords 
 of his lyre, and called forth ravishing sounds. Here 
 Eneas saw the founders of the Trojan state, magnani¬ 
 mous heroes who lived in happier times. He gazed 
 with admiration on the war chariots and glittering arms 
 now reposing in disuse. Spears stood fixed in the 
 ground, and the horses, unharnessed, roamed over the 
 plain. The same pride in splendid armor and generous 
 steeds which the old heroes felt in life, accompanied 
 them here. He saw another group feasting and listen¬ 
 ing to the strains of music. They were in a laurel grove, 
 whence the great river Po has its origin, and flows out 
 among men. Here dwelt those who fell by wounds re¬ 
 ceived in their country’s cause, holy priests also, and 
 poets who have uttered thoughts worthy of Apollo, and 
 others who have contributed to cheer and adorn life by 
 their discoveries in the useful arts, and have made their 
 memory blessed by rendering service to mankind. They 
 wore snow-white fillets about their brows. The Sibyl 
 addressed a group of these, and inquired where Anchises 
 was to be found. They were directed where to seek 
 him, and soon found him in a verdant valley, where he 
 was contemplating the ranks of his posterity, their des¬ 
 tinies and worthy deeds to be achieved in coming times. 
 When he recognized Eneas approaching, he stretched 
 out both hands to him, while tears flowed freely. “Have 
 you come at last,” said he, “long expected, and do I be¬ 
 hold you after such perils past? O my son, how have 
 I trembled for you as I have watched your career!” 
 To which Eneas replied, “O father! your image was 
 always before me to guide and guard me.” Then he 
 endeavored to enfold his father in his embrace, but his 
 arms enclosed only an unsubstantial image. 
 
 Eneas perceived before him a spacious valley, with 
 trees gently waving to the wind, a tranquil landscape, 
 through which the river Lethe flowed. Along the 
 banks of the stream wandered a countless multitude, 
 numerous as insects in the summer air. .Eneas, with 
 surprise, inquired who were these. Anchises answered, 
 “They are souls to which bodies are to be given in due 
 time. Meanwhile they dwell on Lethe’s bank, and drink 
 
272 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 oblivion of their former lives.” “O father!” said 
 TEneas, “is it possible that any can be so in love with 
 life as to wish to leave these tranquil seats for the 
 upper world?” Anchises replied by explaining the plan 
 of creation. The Creator, he told him, originally made 
 the material of which souls are composed of the four 
 elements, fire, air, earth, and water, all which when 
 united took the form of the most excellent part, fire, and 
 became flame. This material was scattered like seed 
 among the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and stars. 
 Of this seed the inferior gods created man and all other 
 animals, mingling it with various proportions of earth, 
 by which its purity was alloyed and reduced. Thus, the 
 more earth predominates in the composition the less pure 
 is the individual; and we see men and women with 
 their full-grown bodies have not the purity of child¬ 
 hood. So in proportion to the time which the union of 
 body and soul has lasted is the impurity contracted by 
 the spiritual part. This impurity must be purged away 
 after death, which is done by ventilating the souls in 
 the current of winds, or merging them in water, or 
 burning out their impurities by fire. Some few, of whom 
 Anchises intimates that he is one, are admitted at once 
 to Elysium, there to remain. But the rest, after the 
 impurities of earth are purged away, are sent back to 
 life endowed with new bodies, having had the remem¬ 
 brance of their former lives effectually washed away by 
 the waters of Lethe. Some, however, there still are, so 
 thoroughly corrupted, that they are not fit to be in¬ 
 trusted with human bodies, and these are made into 
 brute animals, lions, tigers, cats, dogs, monkeys, etc. 
 This is what the ancients called Metempsychosis, or the 
 transmigration of souls; a doctrine which is still held by 
 the natives of India, who scruple to destroy the life even 
 of the most insignificant animal, not knowing but it may 
 be one of their relations in an altered form. 
 
 Anchises, having explained so much, proceeded to 
 point out to iEneas individuals of his race, who were 
 hereafter to be born, and to relate to him the exploits 
 they should perform in the world. After this he re¬ 
 verted to the present, and told his son of the events that 
 
THE CUMEAN SIBYL. 
 
 From painting by Michael Angelo. Sistine Chapel 
 
ELYSIUM 
 
 273 
 
 remained to him to be accomplished before the complete 
 establishment of himself and his followers in Italy. 
 Wars were to be waged, battles fought, a bride to be 
 won, and in the result a Trojan state founded, from 
 which should rise the Roman power, to be in time the 
 sovereign of the world. 
 
 ^Eneas and the Sibyl then took leave of Anchises, and 
 returned by some short cut, which the poet does not 
 explain, to the upper world. 
 
 ELYSIUM 
 
 Virgil, we have seen, places his Elysium under the 
 earth, and assigns it for a residence to the spirits of 
 the blessed. But in Homer Elysium forms no part of 
 the realms of the dead. He places it on the west of the 
 earth, near Ocean, and describes it as a happy land, 
 where there is neither snow, nor cold, nor rain, and 
 always fanned by the delightful breezes of Zephyrus. 
 Hither favored heroes pass without dying and live happy 
 under the rule of Rhadamanthus. The Elysium of 
 Hesiod and Pindar is in the Isles of the Blessed, or 
 Fortunate Islands, in the Western Ocean. From these 
 sprang the legend of the happy island Atlantis. This 
 blissful region may have been wholly imaginary, but 
 possibly may have sprung from the reports of some 
 storm-driven mariners who had caught a glimpse of the 
 coast of America. 
 
 J. R. Lowell, in one of his shorter poems, claims for 
 the present age some of the privileges of that happy 
 realm. Addressing the Past, he says: 
 
 “Whatever of true life there was in thee, 
 
 Leaps in our age’s veins. 
 
 • •*•*•* 
 
 Here, ’mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, 
 
 Float the green ‘Fortunate Isles,’ 
 
 Where all thy hero-spirits dwell and share 
 Our martyrdoms and toils. 
 
 The present moves attended 
 With all of brave and excellent and fair 
 That made the old time splendid.” 
 
274 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Milton also alludes to the same fable in “Paradise 
 Lost,” Book III., 1. 568: 
 
 “Like those Hesperian gardens famed of old, 
 
 Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, 
 
 Thrice happy isles.” 
 
 And in Book II. he characterizes the rivers of Erebus 
 according to the meaning of their names in the Greek 
 language: 
 
 “Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, 
 
 Sad Acheron of sorrow black and deep; 
 
 Cocytus named of lamentation loud 
 Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon 
 Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. 
 
 Far off from these a slow and silent stream, 
 
 Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 
 
 Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks 
 
 Forthwith his former state and being forgets, 
 
 Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain ” 
 
 THE SIBYL 
 
 As iEneas and the Sibyl pursued their way back to 
 earth, he said to her, “Whether thou be a goddess or 
 a mortal beloved of the gods, by me thou shalt always 
 be held in reverence. When I reach the upper air I 
 will cause a temple to be built to thy honor, and will 
 myself bring offerings.” “I am no goddess,” said the 
 Sibyl; “I have no claim to sacrifice or offering. I am 
 mortal; yet if I could have accepted the love of Apollo 
 I might have been immortal. He promised me the ful¬ 
 filment of my wish, if I would consent to be his. I 
 took a handful of sand, and holding it forth, said, ‘Grant 
 me to see as many birthdays as there are sand grains 
 in my hand.’ Unluckily I forgot to ask for enduring 
 youth. This also he would have granted, could I have 
 accepted his love, but offended at my refusal, he allowed 
 me to grow old. My youth and youthful strength fled 
 long ago. I have lived seven hundred years, and to 
 equal the number of the sand grains I have still to see 
 three hundred springs and three hundred harvests. My 
 body shrinks up as years increase, and in time, I shall 
 be lost to sight, but my voice will remain, and future 
 ages will respect my sayings.” 
 
THE SIBYL 
 
 275 
 
 These concluding words of the Sibyl alluded to her 
 prophetic power. In her cave she was accustomed to 
 inscribe on leaves gathered from the trees the names 
 and fates of individuals. The leaves thus inscribed were 
 arranged in order within the cave, and might be con¬ 
 sulted by her votaries. But if perchance at the opening 
 of the door the wind rushed in and dispersed the leaves 
 the Sibyl gave no aid to restoring them again, and the 
 oracle was irreparably lost. 
 
 The following legend of the Sibyl is fixed at a later 
 date. In the reign of one of the Tarquins there ap¬ 
 peared before the king a woman who offered him nine 
 books for sale. The king refused to purchase them, 
 whereupon the woman went away and burned three of 
 the books, and returning offered the remaining books 
 for the same price she had asked for the nine. The 
 king again rejected them; but when the woman, after 
 burning three books more, returned and asked for the 
 three remaining the same price which she had before 
 asked for the nine, his curiosity was excited, and he 
 purchased the books. They were found to contain the 
 destinies of the Roman state. They were kept in the 
 temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, preserved in a stone chest, 
 and allowed to be inspected only by especial officers ap¬ 
 pointed for that duty, who, on great occasions, consulted 
 them and interpreted their oracles to the people. 
 
 There were various Sibyls; but the Cumsean Sibyl, of 
 whom Ovid and Virgil write, is the most celebrated of 
 them. Ovid’s story of her life protracted to one thousand 
 years may be intended to represent the various Sibyls 
 as being only reappearances of one and the same in¬ 
 dividual. 
 
 Young, in the “Night Thoughts/’ alludes to the Sibyl. 
 Speaking of Worldly Wisdom, he says: 
 
 “If future fate she plans ’tis all in leaves, 
 
 Like Sibyl, unsubstantial, fleeting bliss; 
 
 At the first blast it vanishes in air. 
 
 • ••••• © 
 
 As worldly schemes resemble Sibyl’s leaves, 
 
 The good man’s days to Sibyl’s books compare. 
 
 The price still rising as in number less.” 
 
276 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 CAMILLA—BVANDER—NISUS AND EURYALUS— MEZENTIUS 
 
 -TURNUS 
 
 ./Eneas, having parted from the Sibyl and rejoined 
 his fleet, coasted along the shores of Italy and cast anchor 
 in the mouth of the Tiber. The poet, having brought 
 his hero to this spot, the destined termination of his wan¬ 
 derings, invokes his Muse to tell him the situation of 
 things at that eventful moment. Latinus, third in descent 
 from Saturn, ruled the country. He was now old and 
 had no male descendant, but had one charming daughter, 
 Lavinia, who was sought in marriage by many neighbor¬ 
 ing chiefs, one of whom, Turnus, king of the Rutulians, 
 was favored by the wishes of her parents. But Latinus 
 had been warned in a dream by his father Faunus, that 
 the destined husband of Lavinia should come from a for¬ 
 eign land. From that union should spring a race destined 
 to subdue the world. 
 
 Our readers will remember that in the conflict with 
 the Harpies one of those half-human birds had threat¬ 
 ened the Trojans with dire sufferings. In particular she 
 predicted that before their wanderings ceased they 
 should be pressed by hunger to devour their tables. This 
 portent now came true; for as they took their scanty 
 meal, seated on the grass, the men placed their hard bis¬ 
 cuit on their laps, and put thereon whatever their glean¬ 
 ings in the woods supplied. Having despatched the 
 latter they finished by eating the crusts. Seeing which, 
 the boy lulus said playfully, “See, we are eating our 
 tables.” /Eneas caught the words and accepted the omen. 
 “All hail, promised land!” he exclaimed, “this is our 
 home, this our country.” He then took measures to find 
 out who were the present inhabitants of the land, and 
 who their rulers. A hundred chosen men were sent 
 to the village of Latinus, bearing presents and a re¬ 
 quest for friendship and alliance. They went and were 
 favorably received. Latinus immediately concluded that 
 
OPENING THE GATES OF JANUS 277 
 
 the Trojan hero was no other than the promised son-in- 
 law announced by the oracle. He cheerfully granted 
 his alliance and sent back the messengers mounted on 
 steeds from his stables, and loaded with gifts and 
 friendly messages. 
 
 Juno, seeing things go thus prosperously for the Tro¬ 
 jans, felt her old animosity revive, summoned Alecto 
 from Erebus, and sent her to stir up discord. The Fury 
 first took possession of the queen, Amata, and roused 
 her to oppose in every way the new alliance. Alecto 
 then speeded to the city of Turnus, and assuming the 
 form of an old priestess, informed him of the arrival of 
 the foreigners and of the attempts of their prince to rob 
 him of his bride. Next she turned her attention to the 
 camp of the Trojans. There she saw the boy lulus and 
 his companions amusing themselves with hunting. She 
 sharpened the scent of the dogs, and led them to rouse 
 up from the thicket a tame stag, the favorite of Silvia, 
 the daughter of Tyrrheus, the king’s herdsman. A javelin 
 from the hand of lulus wounded the animal, and he had 
 only strength left to run homewards, and died at his mis¬ 
 tress’s feet. Her cries and tears roused her brothers and 
 the herdsmen, and they, seizing whatever weapons came 
 to hand, furiously assaulted the hunting party. These 
 were protected by their friends, and the herdsmen were 
 finally driven back with the loss of two of their number. 
 
 These things were enough to rouse the storm of war, 
 and the queen, Turnus, and the peasants all urged the 
 old king to drive the strangers from the country. He 
 resisted as long as he could, but, finding his opposition 
 unavailing, finally gave way and retreated to his retire¬ 
 ment. 
 
 OPENING THE GATES OF JANUS 
 
 It was the custom of the country, when war was to 
 be undertaken, for the chief magistrate, clad in his robes 
 of office, with solemn pomp to open the gates of the 
 temple of Janus, which were kept shut as long as peace 
 endured. His people now urged the old king to perform 
 that solemn office, but he refused to do so. While they 
 
278 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 contested, Juno herself, descending from the skies, smote 
 the doors with irresistible force, and burst them open. 
 Immediately the whole country was in a flame. The 
 people rushed from every side breathing nothing but 
 war. 
 
 Turnus was recognized by all as leader; others joined 
 as allies, chief of whom was Mezentius, a brave and able 
 soldier, but of detestable cruelty. He had been the chief 
 of one of the neighboring cities, but his people drove 
 him out. With him was joined his son Lausus, a gen¬ 
 erous youth, worthy of a better sire. 
 
 CAMILLA 
 
 Camilla, the favorite of Diana, a huntress and warrior, 
 after the fashion of the Amazons, came with her band 
 of mounted followers, including a select number of her 
 own sex, and ranged herself on the side of Turnus. 
 This maiden had never accustomed her fingers to the 
 distaff or the loom, but had learned to endure the toils 
 of war, and in speed to outstrip the wind. It seemed as 
 if she might run over the standing corn without crushing 
 it, or over the surface of the water without dipping her 
 feet. Camilla's history had been singular from the begin¬ 
 ning. Her father, Metabus, driven from his city by civil 
 discord, carried with him in his flight his infant daughter. 
 As he fled through the woods, his enemies in hot pursuit, 
 he reached the bank of the river Amazenus, which, 
 swelled by rains, seemed to debar a passage. He paused 
 for a moment, then decided what to do. He tied 
 the infant to his lance with wrappers of bark, and poising 
 the weapon in his upraised hand thus addressed Diana: 
 “Goddess of the woods! I consecrate this maid to you 
 then hurled the weapon with its burden to the opposite 
 bank. The spear flew across the roaring water. His 
 pursuers were already upon him, but he plunged into 
 the river and swam across, and found the spear, with 
 the infant safe on the other side. Thenceforth he lived 
 among the shepherds and brought up his daughter in 
 woodland arts. While a child she was taught to use the 
 bow and throw the javelin. With her sling she could 
 
EVANDER 
 
 279 
 
 bring down the crane or the wild swan. Her dress was a 
 tiger’s skin. Many mothers sought her for a daughter- 
 in-law, but she continued faithful to Diana and repelled 
 the thought of marriage. 
 
 EVANDER 
 
 Such were the formidable allies that ranged them¬ 
 selves against Tineas. It was night and he lay stretched 
 in sleep on the bank of the river under the open heavens. 
 The god of the stream, Father Tiber, seemed to raise 
 his head above the willows and to say, “O goddess-born, 
 destined possessor of the Latin realms, this is the prom¬ 
 ised land, here is to be your home, here shall terminate 
 the hostility of the heavenly powers, if only you faith¬ 
 fully persevere. There are friends not far distant. Pre¬ 
 pare your boats and row up my stream; I will lead you 
 to Evander, the Arcadian chief, he has long been at 
 strife with Turnus and the Rutulians, and is pre¬ 
 pared to become an ally of yours. Rise! offer your 
 vows to Juno, and deprecate her anger. When you have 
 achieved your victory then think of me.” Tineas woke 
 and paid immediate obedience to the friendly vision. He 
 sacrificed to Juno, and invoked the god of the river and 
 all his tributary fountains to lend their aid. Then for 
 the first time a vessel filled with armed warriors floated 
 on the stream of the Tiber. The river smoothed its 
 waves, and bade its current flow gently, while, impelled 
 by the vigorous strokes of the rowers, the vessels shot 
 rapidly up the stream. 
 
 About the middle of the day they came in sight of 
 the scattered buildings of the infant town, where in after 
 times the proud city of Rome grew, whose glory reached 
 the skies. By chance the old king, Evander, was that 
 day celebrating annual solemnities in honor of Hercules 
 and all the gods. Pallas, his son, and all the chiefs of 
 the little commonwealth stood by. When they saw the 
 tall ship gliding onward near the wood, they were 
 alarmed at the sight, and rose from the tables. But 
 Pallas forbade the solemnities to be interrupted, and 
 seizing a weapon, stepped forward to the river’s bank. 
 
280 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 He called aloud, demanding who they were, and what 
 their object. yEneas, holding forth an olive-branch, 
 replied, “We are Trojans, friends to you, and enemies 
 to the Rutulians. We seek Evander, and offer to join 
 our arms with yours.” Pallas, in amaze at the sound of 
 so great a name, invited them to land, and when YEneas 
 touched the shore he seized his hand, and held it long in 
 friendly grasp. Proceeding through the wood, they 
 joined the king and his party and were most favorably 
 received. Seats were provided for them at the tables, 
 and the repast proceeded. 
 
 INFANT ROME 
 
 When the solemnities were ended all moved towards 
 the city. The king, bending with age, walked be¬ 
 tween his son and Hineas, taking the arm of one or the 
 other of them, and with much variety of pleasing talk 
 shortening the way. yEneas with delight looked and 
 listened, observing all the beauties of the scene, and 
 learning much of heroes renowned in ancient times. 
 Evander said, “These extensive groves were once in¬ 
 habited by fauns and nymphs, and a rude race of men 
 who sprang from the trees themselves, and had neither 
 laws nor social culture. They knew not how to yoke the 
 cattle nor raise a harvest, nor provide from present abun¬ 
 dance for future want; but browsed like beasts upon the 
 leafy boughs, or fed voraciously on their hunted prey. 
 Such were they when Saturn, expelled from Olympus by 
 his sons, came among them and drew together the fierce 
 savages, formed them into society, and gave them laws. 
 Such peace and plenty ensued that men ever since have 
 called his reign the golden age; but by degrees far other 
 times succeeded, and the thirst of gold and the thirst of 
 blood prevailed. The land was a prey to successive ty¬ 
 rants, till fortune and resistless destiny brought me 
 hither, an exile from my native land, Arcadia.” 
 
 Having thus said, he showed him the Tarpeian rock, 
 and the rude spot then overgrown with bushes where in 
 after times the Capitol rose in all its magnificence. He 
 next pointed to some dismantled walls, and said, “Here 
 
INFANT ROME 
 
 281 
 
 stood Janiculum, built by Janus, and there Saturnia, the 
 town of Saturn.” Such discourse brought them to the 
 cottage of poor Evander, whence they saw the lowing 
 herds roaming over the plain where now the proud and 
 stately Forum stands. They entered, and a couch was 
 spread for iEneas, well stuffed with leaves, and covered 
 with the skin of a Libyan bear. 
 
 Next morning, awakened by the dawn and the shrill 
 song of birds beneath the eaves of his low mansion, old 
 Evander rose. Clad in a tunic, and a panther’s skin 
 thrown over his shoulders, with sandals on his feet and 
 his good sword girded to his side, he went forth to seek 
 his guest. Two mastiffs followed him, his whole retinue 
 and body guard. He found the hero attended by his 
 faithful Achates, and, Pallas soon joining them, the old 
 king spoke thus: 
 
 “Illustrious Trojan, it is but little we can do in so 
 great a cause. Our state is feeble, hemmed in on one 
 side by the river, on the other by the Rutulians. But I 
 propose to ally you with a people numerous and rich, to 
 whom fate has brought you at the propitious moment. 
 The Etruscans hold the country beyond the river. Mezen- 
 tius was their king, a monster of cruelty, who invented 
 unheard-of torments to gratify his vengeance. He 
 would fasten the dead to the living, hand to hand and 
 face to face, and leave the wretched victims to die in 
 that dreadful embrace. At length the people cast him 
 out, him and his house. They burned his palace and 
 slew his friends. He escaped and took refuge with 
 Turnus, who protects him with arms. The Etruscans 
 demand that he shall be given up to deserved punishment, 
 and would ere now have attempted to enforce their de¬ 
 mand; but their priests restrain them, telling them that 
 it is the will of heaven that no native of the land shall 
 guide them to victory, and that thair destined leader 
 must come from across the sea. They have offered the 
 crown to me, but I am too old to undertake such great 
 affairs, and my son is native-born, which precludes him 
 from the choice. You, equally by birth and time of life, 
 and fame in arms, pointed out by the gods, have but to 
 appear to be hailed at once as their leader. With you 
 
282 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 I will join Pallas, my son, my only hope and comfort. 
 Under you he shall learn the art of war, and strive to 
 emulate your great exploits.” 
 
 Then the king ordered horses to be furnished for 
 the Trojan chiefs, and iEneas, with a chosen band of 
 followers and Pallas accompanying, mounted and took 
 the way to the Etruscan city, 1 having sent back the rest 
 of his party in the ships. EEneas and his band safely ar¬ 
 rived at the Etruscan camp and were received with open 
 arms by Tarchon and his countrymen. 
 
 NISUS AND EURYALUS 
 
 In the meanwhile Turnus had collected his bands and 
 made all necessary preparations for the war. Juno sent 
 Iris to him with a message inciting him to take advan¬ 
 tage of the absence of EEneas and surprise the Trojan 
 camp. Accordingly the attempt was made, but the Tro¬ 
 jans were found on their guard, and having received 
 strict orders from ^Eneas not to fight in his absence, they 
 lay still in their intrenchments, and resisted all the efforts 
 of the Rutulians to draw them into the field. Night 
 coming on, the army of Turnus, in high spirits at their 
 fancied superiority, feasted and enjoyed themselves, and 
 finally stretched themselves on the field and slept secure. 
 
 In the camp of the Trojans things were far otherwise. 
 There all was watchfulness and anxiety and impatience 
 for EEneas’s return. Nisus stood guard at the entrance 
 of the camp, and Euryalus, a youth distinguished above 
 all in the army for graces of person and fine qualities, 
 was with him. These two were friends and brothers 
 in arms. Nisus said to his friend, “Do you per¬ 
 ceive what confidence and carelessness the enemy dis¬ 
 play? Their lights are few and dim, and the men seem 
 all oppressed with wine or sleep. You know how anx¬ 
 iously our chiefs wish to send to EEneas, and to get intel¬ 
 ligence from him. Now, I am strongly moved to make 
 my way through the enemy’s camp and to go in search 
 
 1 The poet here inserts a famous line which is thought to imitate in its 
 sound the galloping of horses. It may be thus translated: “Then struck 
 the hoofs of the steeds on the ground with a four-footed trampling.”— 
 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
NISUS AND EURYALUS 
 
 283 
 
 of our chief. If I succeed, the glory of the deed will be 
 reward enough for me, and if they judge the service 
 deserves anything more, let them pay it to you.” 
 
 Euryalus, all on fire with the love of adventure, re¬ 
 plied, “Would you, then, Nisus, refuse to share your 
 enterprise with me? And shall I let you go into such 
 danger alone? Not so my brave father brought me up, 
 nor so have I planned for myself when I joined the 
 standard of ^Eneas, and resolved to hold my life cheap 
 in comparison with honor.” Nisus replied, “I doubt it 
 not, my friend; but you know the uncertain event of 
 such an undertaking, and whatever may happen to me, I 
 wish you to be safe. You are younger than I and have 
 more of life in prospect. Nor can I be the cause of such 
 grief to your mother, who has chosen to be here in the 
 camp with you rather than stay and live in peace with 
 the other matrons in Acestes’ city.” Euryalus replied, 
 “Say no more. In vain you seek arguments to dissuade 
 me. I am fixed in the resolution to go with you. Let us 
 lose no time.” They called the guard, and committing 
 the watch to them, sought the general’s tent. They 
 found the chief officers in consultation, deliberating how 
 they should send notice to ^Eneas of their situation. The 
 offer of the two friends was gladly accepted, themselves 
 loaded with praises and promised the most liberal re¬ 
 wards in case of success. lulus especially addressed 
 Euryalus, assuring him of his lasting friendship. Eury¬ 
 alus replied, “I have but one boon to ask. My aged 
 mother is with me in the camp. For me she left the Trojan 
 soil, and would not stay behind with the other matrons 
 at the city of Acestes. I go now without taking leave of 
 her. I could not bear her tears nor set at nought her en¬ 
 treaties. But do thou, I beseech you, comfort her in her 
 distress. Promise me that and I shall go more boldly 
 into whatever dangers may present themselves.” lulus 
 and the other chiefs were moved to tears, and prom¬ 
 ised to do all his request. “Your mother shall be mine,” 
 said lulus, “and all that I have promised to you shall be 
 made good to her, if you do not return to receive it.” 
 
 The two friends left the camp and plunged at once 
 into the midst of the enemy. They found no watch, 
 
284 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 no sentinels posted, but, all about, the sleeping soldiers 
 strewn on the grass and among the wagons. The laws 
 of war at that early day did not forbid a brave man to 
 slay a sleeping foe, and the two Trojans slew, as they 
 passed, such of the enemy as they could without exciting 
 alarm. In one tent Euryalus made prize of a helmet 
 brilliant with gold and plumes. They had passed through 
 the enemy’s ranks without being discovered, but now 
 suddenly appeared a troop directly in front of them, 
 which, under Volscens, their leader, were approaching 
 the camp. The glittering helmet of Euryalus caught 
 their attention, and Volscens hailed the two, and de¬ 
 manded who and whence they were. They made no 
 answer, but plunged into the wood. The horsemen 
 scattered in all directions to intercept their flight. Nisus 
 had eluded pursuit and was out of danger, but Euryalus 
 being missing he turned back to seek him. He again en¬ 
 tered the wood and soon came within sound of voices. 
 Looking through the thicket he saw the whole band sur¬ 
 rounding Euryalus with noisy questions. What should 
 he do ? how extricate the youth, or would it be better to 
 die with him. 
 
 Raising his eyes to the moon, which now shone clear, 
 he said, “Goddess! favor my effort!” and aiming his 
 javelin at one of the leaders of the troop, struck him 
 in the back and stretched him on the plain with a death¬ 
 blow. In the midst of their amazement another weapon 
 flew and another of the party fell dead. Volscens, the 
 leader, ignorant whence the darts came, rushed sword in 
 hand upon Euryalus. “You shall pay the penalty off 
 both,” he said, and would have plunged the sword into 
 his bosom, when Nisus, who from his concealment saw 
 the peril of his friend, rushed forward exclaiming, 
 “’Twas I, ’twas I; turn your swords against me, Ru- 
 tulians, I did it; he only followed me as a friend.” While 
 he spoke the sword fell, and pierced the comely bosom 
 of Euryalus. His head fell over on his shoulder, like a 
 flower cut down by the plough. Nisus rushed upon 
 Volscens and plunged his sword into his body, and was 
 himself slain on the instant by numberless blows. 
 
MEZENTIUS 
 
 285 
 
 MEZENTIUS 
 
 ZEneas, with his Etrurian allies, arrived on the scene 
 of action in time to rescue his beleaguered camp; and 
 now the two armies being nearly equal in strength, the 
 war began in good earnest. We cannot find space for 
 all the details, but must simply record the fate of the 
 principal characters whom we have introduced to our 
 readers. The tyrant Mezentius, finding himself engaged 
 against his revolting subjects, raged like a wild beast. 
 He slew all who dared to withstand him, and put the 
 multitude to flight wherever he appeared. At last he 
 encountered ZEneas, and the armies stood still to see 
 the issue. Mezentius threw his spear, which striking 
 ZEneas’s shield glanced off and hit Anthor. He was a 
 Grecian by birth, who had left Argos, his native city, 
 and followed Evander into Italy. The poet says of him 
 with simple pathos which has made the words proverbial, 
 “He fell, unhappy, by a wound intended for another, 
 looked up at the skies, and dying remembered sweet 
 Argos.” 1 ZEneas now in turn hurled his lance. It 
 pierced the shield of Mezentius, and wounded him in 
 the thigh. Lausus, his son, could not bear the sight, but 
 rushed forward and interposed himself, while the fol¬ 
 lowers pressed round Mezentius and bore him away. 
 ZEneas held his sword suspended over Lausus and de¬ 
 layed to strike, but the furious youth pressed on and he 
 was compelled to deal the fatal blow. Lausus fell, and 
 ZEneas bent over him in pity. “Hapless youth,” he said, 
 “what can I do for you worthy of your praise? Keep 
 those arms in which you glory, and fear not but that your 
 body shall be restored to your friends, and have due 
 funeral honors.” So saying, he called the timid follow¬ 
 ers and delivered the body into their hands. 
 
 Mezentius meanwhile had been borne to the riverside, 
 and washed his wound. Soon the news reached him of 
 Lausus’s death, and rage and despair supplied the place 
 of strength. He mounted his horse and dashed into the 
 thickest of the fight, seeking ZEneas. Having found him. 
 
 1 See Proverbial Expressions. 
 
286 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 he rode round him in a circle, throwing one javelin after 
 another, while tineas stood fenced with his shield, turn¬ 
 ing every way to meet them. At last, after Mezentius 
 had three times made the circuit, iEneas threw his lance 
 directly at the horse’s head. It pierced his temples and 
 he fell, while a shout from both armies rent the skies. 
 Mezentius asked no mercy, but only that his body might 
 be spared the insults of his revolted subjects, and be 
 buried in the same grave with his son. He received the 
 fatal stroke not unprepared, and poured out his life and 
 his blood together. 
 
 PALLAS, CAMILLA, TURNUS 
 
 While these things were doing in one part of the field, 
 in another Turnus encountered the youthful Pallas. The 
 contest between champions so unequally matched could 
 not be doubtful. Pallas bore himself bravely, but fell by 
 the lance of Turnus. The victor almost relented when 
 he saw the brave youth lying dead at his feet, and spared 
 to use the privilege of a conqueror in despoiling him of 
 his arms. The belt only, adorned with studs and carv¬ 
 ings of gold, he took and clasped round his own body. 
 The rest he remitted to the friends of the slain. 
 
 After the battle there was a cessation of arms for 
 some days to allow both armies to bury their dead. In 
 this interval ^Eneas challenged Turnus to decide the con¬ 
 test by single combat, but Turnus evaded the challenge. 
 Another battle ensued, in which Camilla, the virgin war¬ 
 rior, was chiefly conspicuous. Her deeds of valor sur¬ 
 passed those of the bravest warriors, and many Trojans 
 and Etruscans fell pierced with her darts or struck down 
 by her battle-axe. At last an Etruscan named Aruns, 
 who had watched her long, seeking for some advantage, 
 observed her pursuing a flying enemy whose splendid 
 armor offered a tempting prize. Intent on the chase 
 she observed not her danger, and the javelin of Aruns 
 struck her and inflicted a fatal wound. She fell and 
 breathed her last in the arms of her attendant maidens. 
 But Diana, who beheld her fate, suffered not her 
 slaughter to be unavenged. Aruns, as he stole away, 
 
PALLAS, CAMILLA, TURNUS 
 
 287 
 
 glad, but frightened, was struck by a secret arrow, 
 launched by one of the nymphs of Diana’s train, and 
 died ignobly and unknown. 
 
 At length the final conflict took place between ^Eneas 
 and Turnus. Turnus had avoided the contest as long as 
 he could, but at last, impelled by the ill success of his 
 arms and by the murmurs of his followers, he braced 
 himself to the conflict. It could not be doubtful. On 
 the side of iEneas were the expressed decree of destiny, 
 the aid of his goddess-mother at every emergency, and 
 impenetrable armor fabricated by Vulcan, at her request, 
 for her son. Turnus, on the other hand, was deserted 
 by his celestial allies, Juno having been expressly for¬ 
 bidden by Jupiter to assist him any longer. Turnus 
 threw his lance, but it recoiled harmless from the shield 
 of ^Eneas. The Trojan hero then threw his, which pene¬ 
 trated the shield of Turnus, and pierced his thigh. Then 
 Turnus’s fortitude forsook him and he begged for mercy; 
 and ^Eneas would have given him his life, but at the in¬ 
 stant his eye fell on the belt of Pallas, which Turnus had 
 taken from the slaughtered youth. Instantly his rage 
 revived, and exclaiming, “Pallas immolates thee with 
 this blow,” he thrust him through with his sword. 
 
 Here the poem of the ‘VEneid” closes, and we are 
 left to infer that TEneas, having triumphed over his foes, 
 obtained Lavinia for his bride. Tradition adds that he 
 founded his city, and called it after her name, Lavin- 
 ium. His son lulus founded Alba Longa, which was the 
 birthplace of Romulus and Remus and the cradle of 
 Rome itself. 
 
 There is an allusion to Camilla in those well-known 
 lines of Pope, in which, illustrating the rule that “the 
 sound should be an echo to the sense,” he says: 
 
 “When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw, 
 
 The line too labors and the words move slow. 
 
 Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, 
 
 Flies o’er th’ unbending corn or skims along the main.” 
 
 —Essay on Criticism . 
 
288 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 PYTHAGORAS—EGYPTIAN DEITIES-ORACLES 
 
 PYTHAGORAS 
 
 The teachings of Anchises to ^Eneas, respecting the 
 nature of the human soul, were in conformity with the 
 doctrines of the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras (born five 
 hundred and forty years B.C.) was a native of the 
 island of Samos, but passed the chief portion of his 
 life at Crotona in Italy. He is therefore sometimes 
 called “the Samian/’ and sometimes “the philosopher of 
 Crotona.” When young he travelled extensively, and 
 it is said visited Egypt, where he was instructed by the 
 priests in all their learning, and afterwards journeyed 
 to the East, and visited the Persian and Chaldean Magi, 
 and the Brahmins of India. 
 
 At Crotona, where he finally established himself, his 
 extraordinary qualities collected round him a great num- 
 ber of disciples. The inhabitants were notorious for 
 luxury and licentiousness, but the good effects of his 
 influence were soon visible. Sobriety and temperance 
 succeeded. Six hundred of the inhabitants became his 
 disciples and enrolled themselves in a society to aid each 
 other in the pursuit of wisdom, uniting their prop¬ 
 erty in one common stock for the benefit of the whole. 
 They were required to practise the greatest purity and 
 simplicity of manners. The first lesson they learned 
 was silence; for a time they were required to be only 
 hearers. “He [Pythagoras] said so” (Ipse dixit), was 
 to be held by them as sufficient, without any proof. It 
 was only the advanced pupils, after years of patient 
 submission, who were allowed to ask questions and to 
 state objections. 
 
 Pythagoras considered numbers as the essence and 
 principle of all things, and attributed to them a real and 
 distinct existence; so that, in his view, they were the 
 elements out of which the universe was constructed. 
 
PYTHAGORAS 
 
 289 
 
 How he conceived this process has never been satis¬ 
 factorily explained. He traced the various forms and 
 phenomena of the world to numbers as their basis and 
 essence. The “Monad” or unit he regarded as the 
 source of all numbers. The number Two was imper¬ 
 fect, and the cause of increase and division. Three was 
 called the number of the whole because it had a be¬ 
 ginning, middle, and end. Four, representing the square, 
 is in the highest degree perfect; and Ten, as it contains 
 the sum of the four prime numbers, comprehends all 
 musical and arithmetical proportions, and denotes the 
 system of the world. 
 
 As the numbers proceed from the monad, so he re¬ 
 garded the pure and simple essence of the Deity as the 
 source of all the forms of nature. Gods, demons, and 
 heroes are emanations of the Supreme, and there is a 
 fourth emanation, the human soul. This is immortal, 
 and when freed from the fetters of the body passes to 
 the habitation of the dead, where it remains till it re¬ 
 turns to the world, to dwell in some other human or 
 animal body, and at last, when sufficiently purified, it 
 returns to the source from which it proceeded. This 
 doctrine of the transmigration of souls (metempsycho¬ 
 sis), which was originally Egyptian and connected with 
 the doctrine of reward and punishment of human ac¬ 
 tions, was the chief cause why the Pythagoreans killed 
 no animals. Ovid represents Pythagoras addressing his 
 disciples in these words: “Souls never die, but always 
 on quitting one abode pass to another. I myself can 
 remember that in the time of the Trojan war I was 
 Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, and fell by the spear 
 of Menelaus. Lately being in the temple of Juno, at 
 Argos, I recognized my shield hung up there among 
 the trophies. All things change, nothing perishes. The 
 soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, 
 now that, passing from the body of a beast into that 
 of a man, and thence to a beast’s again. As wax is 
 stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped 
 anew with others, yet is always the same wax, so the 
 soul, being always the same, yet wears, at different 
 times, different forms. Therefore, if the love of kin- 
 
290 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 dred is not extinct in your bosoms, forbear, I entreat 
 you, to violate the life of those who may haply be your 
 own relatives.” 
 
 Shakspeare, in the “Merchant of Venice,” makes 
 Gratiano allude to the metempsychosis, where he says 
 to Shylock: 
 
 “Thou almost mak’st me waver in my faith, 
 
 To hold opinion with Pythagoras, 
 
 That souls of animals infuse themselves 
 Into the trunks of men; thy currish spirit 
 Governed a wolf; who hanged for human slaughter 
 Infused his soul in thee; for thy desires 
 Are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous.” 
 
 The relation of the notes of the musical scale to 
 numbers, whereby harmony results from vibrations in 
 equal times, and discord from the reverse, led Pythag¬ 
 oras to apply the word “harmony” to the visible crea¬ 
 tion, meaning by it the just adaptation of parts to each 
 other. This is the idea which Dryden expresses in the 
 beginning of his “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”: 
 
 “From harmony, from heavenly harmony 
 This everlasting frame began; 
 
 From harmony to harmony 
 
 Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
 
 The Diapason closing full in Man.” 
 
 In the centre of the universe (he taught) there was a 
 central fire, the principle of life. The central fire was 
 surrounded by the earth, the moon, the sun, and the 
 five planets. The distances of the various heavenly 
 bodies from one another were conceived to correspond 
 to the proportions of the musical scale. The heavenly 
 bodies, with the gods who inhabited them, were sup¬ 
 posed to perform a choral dance round the central fire, 
 “not without song.” It is this doctrine which Shak¬ 
 speare alludes to when he makes Lorenzo teach astron¬ 
 omy to Jessica in this fashion: 
 
 “Look, Jessica, see how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold I 
 
PYTHAGORAS 
 
 291 
 
 There’s not the smallest orb that thou behold’st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim; 
 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls! 
 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in we cannot hear it.” 
 
 —Merchant of Venice. 
 
 The spheres were conceived to be crystalline or glassy 
 fabrics arranged over one another like a nest of bowls 
 reversed. In the substance of each sphere one or more 
 of the heavenly bodies was supposed to be fixed, so as 
 to move with it. As the spheres are transparent we 
 look through them and see the heavenly bodies which 
 they contain and carry round with them. But as these 
 spheres cannot move on one another without friction, 
 a sound is thereby produced which is of exquisite har¬ 
 mony, too fine for mortal ears to recognize. Milton, in 
 his “Hymn on the Nativity,” thus alludes to the music 
 of the spheres: 
 
 “Ring out, ye crystal spheres! 
 
 Once bless our human ears 
 
 (If ye have power to charm our senses so) ; 
 
 And let your silver chime 
 Move in melodious time, 
 
 And let the base of Heaven’s deep organ blow; 
 
 And with your ninefold harmony 
 
 Make up full concert with the angelic symphony.” 
 
 Pythagoras is said to have invented the lyre. Our 
 own poet Longfellow, in “Verses to a Child,” thus re¬ 
 lates the story: 
 
 “As great Pythagoras of yore, 
 
 Standing beside the blacksmith’s door, 
 
 And hearing the hammers as they smote 
 The anvils with a different note, 
 
 Stole from the varying tones that hung 
 Vibrant on every iron tongue, 
 
 The secret of the sounding wire, 
 
 And formed the seven-chorded lyre.” 
 
 See also the same poet’s “Occultation of Orion”— 
 
 “The Samian’s great TLolian lyre.” 
 
292 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 SYBARIS AND CROTONA 
 
 Sybaris, a neighboring city to Crotona, was as cele¬ 
 brated for luxury and effeminacy as Crotona for the 
 reverse. The name has become proverbial. J. R. 
 Lowell uses it in this sense in his charming little poem 
 “To the Dandelion”: 
 
 ‘‘Not in mid June the golden cuirassed bee 
 Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment 
 In the white lily’s breezy tent 
 (His conquered Sybaris) than I when first 
 From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.” 
 
 A war arose between the two cities, and Sybaris was 
 conquered and destroyed. Milo, the celebrated athlete, 
 led the army of Crotona. Many stories are told of 
 Milo’s vast strength, such as his carrying a heifer of 
 four years old upon his shoulders and afterwards eat¬ 
 ing the whole of it in a single day. The mode of his 
 death is thus related: As he was passing through a 
 forest he saw the trunk of a tree which had been par¬ 
 tially split open by wood-cutters, and attempted to rend 
 it further; but the wood closed upon his hands and held 
 him fast, in which state he was attacked and devoured 
 by wolves. 
 
 Byron, in his “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte,” alludes 
 to the story of Milo: 
 
 “He who of old would rend the oak 
 Deemed not of the rebound; 
 
 Chained by the trunk he vainly broke, 
 
 Alone, how looked he round!” 
 
 EGYPTIAN DEITIES 
 
 The Egyptians acknowledged as the highest deity 
 Amun, afterwards called Zeus, or Jupiter Ammon. 
 Amun manifested himself in his word or will, which 
 created Kneph and Athor, of different sexes. From 
 Kneph and Athor proceeded Osiris and Isis. Osiris was 
 worshipped as the god of the sun, the source of warmth, 
 
MYTH OF OSIRIS AND ISIS 
 
 293 
 
 life, and fruitfulness, in addition to which he was also 
 regarded as the god of the Nile, who annually visited 
 his wife, Isis (the Earth), by means of an inundation. 
 Serapis or Hermes is sometimes represented as identical 
 with Osiris, and sometimes as a distinct divinity, the 
 ruler of Tartarus and god of medicine. Anubis is the 
 guardian god, represented with a dog’s head, emblematic 
 of his character of fidelity and watchfulness. Horus or 
 Harpocrates was the son of Osiris. He is represented 
 seated on a Lotus flower, with his finger on his lips, as 
 the god of Silence. 
 
 In one of Moore’s “Irish Melodies” is an allusion to 
 Harpocrates: 
 
 ‘‘Thyself shall, under some rosy bower, 
 
 Sit mute, with thy finger on thy lip; 
 
 Like him, the boy, who born among 
 
 The flowers that on the Nile-stream blush, 
 
 Sits ever thus,—his only song 
 To Earth and Heaven, ‘Hush all, hush!’ ” 
 
 MYTH OF OSIRIS AND ISIS 
 
 Osiris and Isis were at one time induced to descend 
 to the earth to bestow gifts and blessings on its inhabi¬ 
 tants. Isis showed them first the use of wheat and 
 barley, and Osiris made the instruments of agriculture 
 and taught men the use of them, as well as how to 
 harness the ox to the plough. He then gave men laws, 
 the institution of marriage, a civil organization, and 
 taught them how to worship the gods. After he had 
 thus made the valley of the Nile a happy country, 
 he assembled a host with which he went to bestow his 
 blessings upon the rest of the world. He conquered the 
 nations everywhere, but not with weapons, only with 
 music and eloquence. His brother Typhon saw this, 
 and filled with envy and malice sought during his ab¬ 
 sence to usurp his throne. But Isis, who held the reins 
 of government, frustrated his plans. Still more em¬ 
 bittered, he now resolved to kill his brother. This he 
 did in the following manner: Having organized a con¬ 
 spiracy of seventy-two members, he went with them 
 
294 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 to the feast which was celebrated in honor of the king’s 
 return. He then caused a box or chest to be brought 
 in, which had been made to fit exactly the size of Osiris, 
 and declared that he would give that chest of precious 
 wood to whosoever could get into it. The rest tried 
 in vain, but no sooner was Osiris in it than Typhon and 
 his companions closed the lid and flung the chest into 
 the Nile. When Isis heard of the cruel murder she 
 wept and mourned, and then with her hair shorn, clothed 
 in black and beating her breast, she sought diligently 
 for the body of her husband. In this search she was 
 materially assisted by Anubis, the son of Osiris and 
 Nephthys. They sought in vain for some time; for 
 when the chest, carried by the waves to the shores of 
 Byblos, had become entangled in the reeds that grew 
 at the edge of the water, the divine power that dwelt in 
 the body of Osiris imparted such strength to the shrub 
 that it grew into a mighty tree, enclosing in its trunk 
 the coffin of the god. This tree with its sacred deposit 
 was shortly after felled, and erected as a column in 
 the palace of the king of Phoenicia. But at length by 
 the aid of Anubis and the sacred birds, Isis ascertained 
 these facts, and then went to the royal city. There she 
 offered herself at the palace as a servant, and being 
 admitted, threw off her disguise \ and appeared as a 
 goddess, surrounded with thunder and lightning. Strik¬ 
 ing the column with her wand she caused it to split open 
 and give up the sacred coffin. This she seized and re¬ 
 turned with it, and concealed it in the depth of a forest, 
 but Typhon discovered it, and cutting the body into 
 fourteen pieces scattered them hither and thither. After 
 a tedious search, Isis found thirteen pieces, the fishes 
 of the Nile having eaten the other. This she replaced 
 by an imitation of sycamore wood, and buried the body 
 at Philae, which became ever after the great burying 
 place of the nation, and the spot to which pilgrimages 
 were made from all parts of the country. A temple 
 of surpassing magnificence was also erected there in 
 honor of the god, and at every place where one of his 
 limbs had been found minor temples and tombs were 
 built to commemorate the event. Osiris became after 
 
MYTH OF OSIRIS AND ISIS 
 
 295 
 
 that the tutelar deity of the Egyptians. His soul was 
 supposed always to inhabit the body of the bull Apis, 
 and at his death to transfer itself to his successor. 
 
 Apis, the Bull of Memphis, was worshipped with the 
 greatest reverence by the Egyptians. The individual 
 animal who was held to be Apis was recognized by 
 certain signs. It was requisite that he should be quite 
 black, have a white square mark on the forehead, an¬ 
 other, in the form of an eagle, on his back, and under 
 his tongue a lump somewhat in the shape of a scara- 
 bseus or beetle. As soon as a bull thus marked was 
 > found by those sent in search of him, he was placed in 
 a building facing the east, and was fed with milk for 
 four months. At the expiration of this term the priests 
 repaired at new moon, with great pomp, to his habita¬ 
 tion and saluted him Apis. He was placed in a vessel 
 magnificently decorated and conveyed down the Nile to 
 Memphis, where a temple, with two chapels and a court 
 for exercise, was assigned to him. Sacrifices were made 
 to him, and once every year, about the time when the 
 Nile began to rise, a golden cup was thrown into the 
 river, and a grand festival was held to celebrate his 
 birthday. The people believed that during this festival 
 the crocodiles forgot their natural ferocity and became 
 harmless. There was, however, one drawback to his 
 happy lot: he was not permitted to live beyond a cer¬ 
 tain period, and if, when he had attained the age of 
 twenty-five years, he still survived, the priests drowned 
 him in the sacred cistern and then buried him in the 
 temple of Serapis. On the death of this bull, whether it 
 occurred in the course of nature or by violence, the 
 whole land was filled with sorrow and lamentations, 
 which lasted until his successor was found. 
 
 We find the following item in one of the newspapers 
 of the day: 
 
 “The Tomb of Apis .—The excavations going on at 
 Memphis bid fair to make that buried city as interesting 
 as Pompeii. The monster tomb of Apis is now open, 
 after having lain unknown for centuries.’’ 
 
 Milton, in his “Hymn on the Nativity,” alludes to 
 
296 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 the Egyptian deities, not as imaginary beings, but as 
 real demons, put to flight by the coming of Christ. 
 
 “The brutish gods of Nile as fast, 
 
 Isis and Horus and the dog Anubis haste. 
 
 Nor is Osiris seen 
 In Memphian grove or green 
 Trampling the 1 unshowered grass with lowings loud; 
 
 Nor can he be at rest 
 Within his sacred chest; 
 
 Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud. 
 
 In vain with timbrel’d anthems dark 
 The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.” 
 
 Isis was represented in statuary with the head veiled, 
 a symbol of mystery. It is this which Tennyson al¬ 
 ludes to in “Maud,” IV., 8: 
 
 “For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil,” etc. 
 
 ORACLES 
 
 Oracle was the name used to denote the place where 
 answers were supposed to be given by any of the 
 divinities to those who consulted them respecting the 
 future. The word was also used to signify the re¬ 
 sponse which was given. 
 
 The most ancient Grecian oracle was that of Jupiter 
 at Dodona. According to one account, it was estab¬ 
 lished in the following manner: Two black doves took 
 their flight from Thebes in Egypt. One flew to Dodona 
 in Epirus, and alighting in a grove of oaks, it pro¬ 
 claimed in human language to the inhabitants of the 
 district that they must establish there an oracle of Jupi¬ 
 ter. The other dove flew to the temple of Jupiter 
 Ammon in the Libyan Oasis, and delivered a similar 
 command there. Another account is, that they were not 
 doves, but priestesses, who were carried off from 
 Thebes in Egypt by the Phoenicians, and set up oracles 
 at the Oasis and Dodona. The responses of the oracle 
 
 1 There being no rain in Egypt, the grass is “unshowered,” and the 
 country depends for its fertility upon the overflowings of the Nile. The 
 ark alluded to in the last line is shown by pictures still remaining on the 
 walls of the Egyptian temples to have been borne by the priests in their 
 religious processions. It probably represented the chest in which Osiris 
 was placed. 
 
ORACLE OF TROPHONIUS 
 
 297 
 
 were given from the trees, by the branches rustling in 
 the wind, the sounds being interpreted by the priests. 
 
 But the most celebrated of the Grecian oracles was 
 that of Apollo at Delphi, a city built on the slopes of 
 Parnassus in Phocis. » 
 
 It had been observed at a very early period that the 
 goats feeding on Parnassus were thrown into convul¬ 
 sions when they approached a certain long deep cleft 
 in the side of the mountain. This was owing to a 
 peculiar vapor arising out of the cavern, and one of 
 the goatherds was induced to try its effects upon him¬ 
 self. Inhaling the intoxicating air, he was affected in 
 the same manner as the cattle had been, and the in¬ 
 habitants of the surrounding country, unable to explain 
 the circumstance, imputed the convulsive ravings to 
 which he gave utterance while under the power of the 
 exhalations to a divine inspiration. The fact was speed¬ 
 ily circulated widely, and a temple was erected on the 
 spot. The prophetic influence was at first variously 
 attributed to the goddess Earth, to Neptune, Themis, 
 and others, but it was at length assigned to Apollo, and 
 to him alone. A priestess was appointed whose office 
 it was to inhale the hallowed air, and who was named 
 the Pythia. She was prepared for this duty by previ¬ 
 ous ablution at the fountain of Castalia, and being 
 crowned with laurel was seated upon a tripod similarly 
 adorned, which was placed over the chasm whence the 
 divine afflatus proceeded. Her inspired words while 
 thus situated were interpreted by the priests. 
 
 ORACLE OF TROPHONIUS 
 
 Besides the oracles of Jupiter and Apollo, at Dodona 
 and Delphi, that of Trophonius in Boeotia was held in 
 high estimation. Trophonius and Agamedes were 
 brothers. They were distinguished architects, and built 
 the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and a treasury for King 
 Hyrieus. In the wall of the treasury they placed a 
 stone, in such a manner that it could be taken out; and 
 by this means, from time to time, purloined the treasure. 
 This amazed Hyrieus, for his locks and seals were un- 
 
298 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 touched, and yet his wealth continually diminished. At 
 length he set a trap for the thief and Agamedes was 
 caught. Trophonius, unable to extricate him, and fear¬ 
 ing that when found he would be compelled by torture 
 to discover his accomplice, cut off his head. Trophonius 
 himself is said to have been shortly afterwards swal¬ 
 lowed up by the earth. 
 
 The oracle of Trophonius was at Lebadea in Boeotia. 
 During a great drought the Boeotians, it is said, were 
 directed by the god at Delphi to seek aid of Tropho¬ 
 nius at Lebadea. They came thither, but could find 
 no oracle. One of them, however, happening to see a 
 swarm of bees, followed them to a chasm in the earth, 
 which proved to be the place sought. 
 
 Peculiar ceremonies were to be performed by the 
 person who came to consult the oracle. After these 
 preliminaries, he descended into the cave by a narrow 
 passage. This place could be entered only in the night. 
 The person returned from the cave by the same nar¬ 
 row passage, but walking backwards. He appeared mel¬ 
 ancholy and dejected; and hence the proverb which was 
 applied to a person low-spirited and gloomy, “He has 
 been consulting the oracle of Trophonius.” 
 
 ORACLE OF ^SCULAPJUS 
 
 There were numerous oracles of iEsculapius, but the 
 most celebrated one was at Epidaurus. Here the sick 
 sought responses and the recovery of their health by 
 sleeping in the temple. It has been inferred from the 
 accounts that have come down to us that the treatment 
 of the sick resembled what is now called Animal Mag¬ 
 netism or Mesmerism. 
 
 Serpents were sacred to ^Esculapius, probably be¬ 
 cause of a superstition that those animals have a faculty 
 of renewing their youth by a change of skin. The wor¬ 
 ship of Hisculapius was introduced into Rome in a time 
 of great sickness, and an embassy sent to the temple of 
 Epidaurus to entreat the aid of the god. HLsculapius 
 was propitious, and on the return of the ship accom¬ 
 panied it in the form of a serpent. Arriving in the 
 
ORACLE OF APIS 
 
 299 . 
 
 river Tiber, the serpent glided from the vessel and took 
 possession of an island in the river, and a temple was 
 there erected to his honor. 
 
 ORACLE OF APIS 
 
 At Memphis the sacred bull Apis gave answer to those 
 who consulted him by the manner in which he received 
 or rejected what was presented to him. If the bull 
 refused food from the hand of the inquirer it was con¬ 
 sidered an unfavorable sign, and the contrary when he 
 received it. 
 
 It has been a question whether oracular responses 
 ought to be ascribed to mere human contrivance or to 
 the agency of evil spirits. The latter opinion has been 
 most general in past ages. A third theory has been 
 advanced since the phenomena of Mesmerism have at¬ 
 tracted attention, that something like the mesmeric 
 trance was induced in the Pythoness, and the faculty 
 of clairvoyance really called into action. 
 
 Another question is as to the time when the Pagan 
 oracles ceased to give responses. Ancient Christian 
 writers assert that they became silent at the birth of 
 Christ, and were heard no more after that date. Milton 
 adopts this view in his “Hymn on the Nativity,” and 
 in lines of solemn and elevated beauty pictures the 
 consternation of the heathen idols at the advent of the 
 Saviour: 
 
 “The oracles are dumb; 
 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 
 Rings through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine, 
 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 
 No nightly trance or breathed spell 
 
 Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.” 
 
 In Cowper’s poem of “Yardley Oak” there are some 
 beautiful mythological allusions. The former of the 
 two following is to the fable of Castor and Pollux; the 
 latter is more appropriate to our present subject. Ad¬ 
 dressing the acorn he says: 
 
300 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 “Thou fell’st mature; and in the loamy clod, 
 
 Swelling with vegetative force instinct, 
 
 Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins 
 Now stars; two lobes protruding, paired exact; 
 
 A leaf succeeded and another leaf, 
 
 And, all the elements thy puny growth 
 Fostering propitious, thou becam’st a twig. 
 
 Who lived when thou wast such? O, couldst thou speak, 
 
 As in Dodona once thy kindred trees 
 
 Oracular, I would not curious ask 
 
 The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth 
 
 Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past” 
 
 Tennyson, in his “Talking Oak,” alludes to the oaks 
 of Dodona in these lines: 
 
 “And I will work in prose and rhyme, 
 
 And praise thee more in both 
 Than bard has honored beech or lime, 
 
 Or that Thessalian growth 
 In which the swarthy ring-dove sat 
 And mystic sentence spoke;” etc. 
 
 Byron alludes to the oracle of Delphi where, speaking 
 of Rousseau, whose writings he conceives did much to 
 bring on the French revolution, he says: 
 
 “For then he was inspired, and from him came, 
 
 As from the Pythian’s mystic cave of yore, 
 
 Those oracles which set the world in flame, 
 
 Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 ORIGIN OF MYTHOLOGY—STATUES OF GODS AND GODDESSES 
 
 —POETS OF MYTHOLOGY 
 
 ORIGIN OF MYTHOLOGY 
 
 Having reached the close of our series of stories of 
 Pagan mythology, an inquiry suggests itself. “Whence 
 came these stories? Have they a foundation in truth, 
 or are they simply dreams of the imagination?” Phi¬ 
 losophers have suggested various theories on the sub- 
 
ORIGIN OF MYTHOLOGY 
 
 301 
 
 ject; and 1. The Scriptural theory; according to which 
 all mythological legends are derived from the narratives 
 of Scripture, though the real facts have been disguised 
 and altered. Thus Deucalion is only another name for 
 Noah, Hercules for Samson, Arion for Jonah, etc. Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, in his “History of the World,” says, 
 “Jubal, Tubal, and Tubal-Cain were Mercury, Vulcan, 
 and Apollo, inventors of Pasturage, Smithing, and Mu¬ 
 sic. The Dragon which kept the golden apples was the 
 serpent that beguiled Eve. Nimrod’s tower was the 
 attempt of the Giants against Heaven.” There are doubt¬ 
 less many curious coincidences like these, but the theory 
 cannot without extravagance be pushed so far as to ac¬ 
 count for any great proportion of the stories. 
 
 2. The Historical theory; according to which all the 
 persons mentioned in mythology were once real human 
 beings, and the legends and fabulous traditions relating 
 to them are merely the additions and embellishments of 
 later times. Thus the story of vEolus, the king and god 
 of the winds, is supposed to have risen from the fact 
 that ^Eolus was the ruler of some islands in the Tyrrhe¬ 
 nian Sea, where he reigned as a just and pious king, 
 and taught the natives the use of sails for ships, and 
 how to tell from the signs of the atmosphere the changes 
 of the weather and the winds. Cadmus, who, the legend 
 says, sowed the earth with dragon’s teeth, from which 
 sprang a crop of armed men, was in fact an emigrant 
 from Phoenicia, and brought with him into Greece the 
 knowledge of the letters of the alphabet, which he taught 
 to the natives. From these rudiments of learning 
 sprung civilization, which the poets have always been 
 prone to describe as a deterioration of man’s first estate, 
 the Golden Age of innocence and simplicity. 
 
 3. The Allegorical theory supposes that all the myths 
 of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and con¬ 
 tained some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or 
 historical fact, under the form of an allegory, but came 
 in process of time to be understood literally. Thus Sat¬ 
 urn, who devours his own children, is the same power 
 whom the Greeks called Cronos (Time), which may 
 truly be s lid to destroy whatever it has brought into 
 
302 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 existence. The story of Io is interpreted in a similar 
 manner. Io is the moon, and Argus the starry sky, 
 which, as it were, keeps sleepless watch over her. The 
 fabulous wanderings of Io represent the continual rev¬ 
 olutions of the moon, which also suggested to Milton 
 the same idea. 
 
 “To behold the wandering moon 
 Riding near her highest noon, 
 
 Like one that had been led astray 
 In the heaven’s wide, pathless way.” 
 
 —II Penseroso. 
 
 4. The Physical theory; according to which the ele¬ 
 ments of air, fire, and water were originally the objects 
 of religious adoration, and the principal deities were 
 personifications of the powers of nature. The tran¬ 
 sition was easy from a personification of the elements 
 to the notion of supernatural beings presiding over and 
 governing the different objects of nature. The Greeks, 
 whose imagination was lively, peopled all nature with 
 invisible beings, and supposed that every object, from 
 the sun and sea to the smallest fountain and rivulet, was 
 under the care of some particular divinity. Words¬ 
 worth, in his “Excursion,” has beautifully developed 
 this view of Grecian mythology: 
 
 “In that fair clime the lonely herdsman, stretched 
 On the soft grass through half a summer’s day, 
 
 With music lulled his indolent repose; 
 
 And, in some fit of weariness, if he, 
 
 When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear 
 A distant strain far sweeter than the sounds 
 Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched 
 Even from the blazing chariot of the Sun 
 A beardless youth who touched a golden lute, 
 
 And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. 
 
 The mighty hunter, lifting up his eyes 
 Toward the crescent Moon, with grateful heart 
 Called on the lovely Wanderer who bestowed 
 That timely light to share his joyous sport; 
 
 And hence a beaming goddess with her nymphs 
 Across the lawn and through the darksome grove 
 (Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes 
 By echo multiplied from rock or cave) 
 
 Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars 
 
THE OLYMPIAN JUPITER 
 
 303 
 
 Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven 
 
 When winds are blowing strong. The Traveller slaked 
 
 His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked 
 
 The Naiad. Sunbeams upon distant hills 
 
 Gliding apace with shadows in their train, 
 
 Might with small help from fancy, be transformed 
 Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly. 
 
 The Zephyrs, fanning, as they passed, their wings, 
 
 Lacked not for love fair objects whom they wooed 
 With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque, 
 Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, 
 
 From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth 
 In the low vale, or on steep mountain side; 
 
 And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns 
 Of the live deer, or goat’s depending beard; 
 
 These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood 
 Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself, 
 
 That simple shepherd’s awe-inspiring god.” 
 
 All the theories which have been mentioned are true 
 to a certain extent. It would therefore be more cor¬ 
 rect to say that the mythology of a nation has sprung 
 from all these sources combined than from any one in 
 particular. We may add also that there are many 
 myths which have arisen from the desire of man to ac¬ 
 count for those natural phenomena which he cannot 
 understand; and not a few have had their rise from a 
 similar desire of giving a reason for the names of places 
 and persons. 
 
 STATUES OF THE GODS 
 
 To adequately represent to the eye the ideas intended 
 to be conveyed to the mind under the several names of 
 deities was a task which called into exercise the high¬ 
 est powers of genius and art. Of the many attempts 
 four have been most celebrated, the first two known to 
 us only by the descriptions of the ancients, the others 
 still extant and the acknowledged masterpieces of the 
 sculptor’s art. 
 
 THE OLYMPIAN JUPITER 
 
 The statue of the Olympian Jupiter by Phidias was 
 considered the highest achievement of this department 
 of Grecian art. It was of colossal dimensions, and was 
 
304 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 what the ancients called “chryselephantinethat is, 
 composed of ivory and gold; the parts representing flesh 
 being of ivory laid on a core of wood or stone, while 
 the drapery and other ornaments were of gold. The 
 height of the figure was forty feet, on a pedestal twelve 
 feet high. The god was represented seated on his 
 throne. His brows were crowned with a wreath of 
 olive, and he held in his right hand a sceptre, and in 
 his left a statue of Victory. The throne was of cedar, 
 adorned with gold and precious stones. 
 
 The idea which the artist essayed to embody was that 
 of the supreme deity of the Hellenic (Grecian) nation, 
 enthroned as a conqueror, in perfect majesty and re¬ 
 pose, and ruling with a nod the subject world. Phidias 
 avowed that he took his idea from the representation 
 which Homer gives in the first book of the “Iliad,” in 
 the passage thus translated by Pope: 
 
 “He spoke and awful bends his sable brows, 
 
 Shakes his rmbrosial curls and gives the nod, 
 
 The stamp of fate and sanction of the god. 
 
 High heaven with reverence the dread signal took, 
 
 And all Olympus to the centre shook.” 1 
 
 THE MINERVA OF THE PARTHENON 
 
 This was also the work of Phidias. It stood in thq 
 Parthenon, or temple of Minerva at Athens. The god¬ 
 dess was represented standing. In one hand she held a 
 spear, in the other a statue of Victory. Her helmet, 
 highly decorated, was surmounted by a Sphinx. The 
 statue was forty feet in height, and, like the Jupiter, 
 composed of ivory and gold. The eyes were of marble, 
 and probably painted to represent the iris and pupil. 
 
 1 Cowper’s version is less elegant, but truer to the original: 
 
 “He ceased, and under his dark brows the nod 
 Vouchsafed of confirmation. All around 
 The sovereign’s everlasting head his curls 
 Ambrosial shook, and the huge mountain reeled.” 
 
 It may interest our readers to see how this passage appears in another 
 famous version, that which was issued under the name of Tickell, eon« 
 temporaneously with Pope’s, and which, being by many attributed to 
 Addison, led to the quarrel which ensued between Addison and Pope: 
 
 “This said, his kingly brow the sire inclined; 
 
 The large black curls fell awful from behind, 
 
 Thick shadowing the stern forehead of the god; 
 
 Olympus trembled at the almighty nod.” 
 
THE VENUS DE’ MEDICI 
 
 305 
 
 The Parthenon, in which this statue stood, was also 
 constructed under the direction and superintendence of 
 Phidias. Its exterior was enriched with sculptures, 
 many of them from the hand of Phidias. The Elgin 
 marbles, now in the British Museum, are a part of 
 them. 
 
 Both the Jupiter and Minerva of Phidias are lost, 
 but there is good ground to believe that we have, in 
 several extant statues and busts, the artist’s concep¬ 
 tions of the countenances of both. They are character¬ 
 ized by grave and dignified beauty, and freedom from 
 any transient expression, which in the language of art 
 is called repose. 
 
 THE VENUS DE' MEDICI 
 
 The Venus of the Medici is so called from its hav¬ 
 ing been in the possession of the princes of that name 
 in Rome when it first attracted attention, about two 
 hundred years ago. An inscription on the base records 
 it to be the work of Cleomenes, an Athenian sculptor 
 of 200 B.C., but the authenticity of the inscription is 
 doubtful. There is a story that the artist was employed 
 by public authority to make a statue exhibiting the per¬ 
 fection of female beauty, and to aid him in his task the 
 most perfect forms the city could supply were furnished 
 him for models. It is this which Thomson alludes to 
 in his “Summer”: 
 
 “So stands the statue that enchants the world; 
 
 So bending tries to veil the matchless boast, 
 
 The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.” 
 
 Byron also alludes to this statue. Speaking of the 
 Florence Museum, he says: 
 
 “There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills 
 The air around with beauty;” etc. 
 
 And in the next stanza, 
 
 “Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan shepherd’s prize.” 
 
 See this last allusion explained in Chapter XXVII. 
 
'306 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 THE APOLLO BELVEDERE 
 
 The most highly esteemed of all the remains of an¬ 
 cient sculpture is the statue of Apollo, called the Belve¬ 
 dere, from the name of the apartment of the Pope’s 
 palace at Rome in which it was placed. The artist 
 is unknown. It is supposed to be a work of Roman 
 art, of about the first century of our era. It is a stand¬ 
 ing figure, in marble, more than seven feet high, naked 
 except for the cloak which is fastened around the neck 
 and hangs over the extended left arm. It is supposed 
 to represent the god in the moment when he has shot 
 the arrow to destroy the monster Python. (See Chapter 
 III.) The victorious divinity is in the act of step¬ 
 ping forward. The left arm, which seems to have held 
 the bow, is outstretched, and the head is turned in the 
 same direction. In attitude and proportion the graceful 
 majesty of the figure is unsurpassed. The effect is com¬ 
 pleted by the countenance, where on the perfection of 
 youthful godlike beauty there dwells the consciousness 
 of triumphant power. 
 
 THE DIANA A LA BICHE 
 
 The Diana of the Hind, in the palace of the Louvre, 
 may be considered the counterpart to the Apollo Belve¬ 
 dere. The attitude much resembles that of the Apollo, 
 the sizes correspond and also the style of execution. 
 It is a work of the highest order, though by no means 
 equal to the Apollo. The attitude is that of hurried and 
 eager motion, the face that of a huntress in the ex¬ 
 citement of the chase. The left hand is extended over 
 the forehead of the Hind, which runs by her side, the 
 right arm reaches backward over the shoulder to draw 
 an arrow from the quiver. 
 
 THE POETS OF MYTHOLOGY 
 
 Homer, from whose poems of the “Iliad” and “Odys¬ 
 sey” we have taken the chief part of our chapters of 
 the Trojan war and the return of the Grecians, is 
 
VIRGIL 
 
 30 7 . 
 
 almost as mythical a personage as the heroes he cele¬ 
 brates. The traditionary story is that he was a wander¬ 
 ing minstrel, blind and old, who travelled from place to 
 place singing his lays to the music of his harp, in the 
 courts of princes or the cottages of peasants, and de¬ 
 pendent upon the voluntary offerings of his hearers for 
 support. Byron calls him “The blind old man of Scio’s 
 rocky isle,” and a well-known epigram, alluding to the 
 uncertainty of the fact of his birthplace, says: 
 
 “Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead, 
 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread. ,v 
 
 These seven were Smyrna, Scio, Rhodes, Colophon, 
 Salamis, Argos, and Athens. 
 
 Modern scholars have doubted whether the Homeric 
 poems are the work of any single mind. This arises 
 from the difficulty of believing that poems of such 
 length could have been committed to writing at so early 
 an age as that usually assigned to these, an age earlier 
 than the date of any remaining inscriptions or coins, 
 and when no materials capable of containing such long 
 productions were yet introduced into use. On the other 
 hand it is asked how poems of such length could have 
 been handed down from age to age by means of the 
 memory alone. This is answered by the statement that 
 there was a professional body of men, called Rhap- 
 sodists, who recited the poems of others, and whose 
 business it was to commit to memory and rehearse for 
 pay the national and patriotic legends. 
 
 The prevailing opinion of the learned, at this time, 
 seems to be that the framework and much of the struc¬ 
 ture of the poems belong to, Homer, but that there are 
 numerous interpolations and additions by other hands. 
 
 The date assigned to Homer, on the authority of 
 Herodotus, is 850 B.C. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 
 Virgil, called also by his surname, Maro, from whose 
 poem of the “TEneid” we have taken the story of Hineas, 
 was one of the great poets who made the reign of the 
 
308 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Roman emperor Augustus so celebrated, under the name 
 of the Augustan age. Virgil was born in Mantua in the 
 year 70 B.C. His great poem is ranked next to those 
 of Homer, in the highest class of poetical composition, 
 the Epic. Virgil is far inferior to Homer in originality 
 and invention, but superior to him in correctness and 
 elegance. To critics of English lineage Milton alone 
 of modern poets seems worthy to be classed with these 
 illustrious ancients. His poem of “Paradise Lost,” from 
 which we have borrowed so many illustrations, is in many 
 respects equal, in some superior, to either of the great 
 works of antiquity. The following epigram of Dryden 
 characterizes the three poets with as much truth as it is 
 usual to find in such pointed criticism: 
 
 “On Milton 
 
 “Three poets in three different ages born, 
 
 Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
 
 The first in loftiness of soul surpassed, 
 
 The next in majesty, in both the last. 
 
 The force of nature could no further go; 
 
 To make a third she joined the other two.” 
 
 From Cowper’s “Table Talk”: 
 
 “Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, 
 
 And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard. 
 
 To carry nature lengths unknown before, 
 
 To give a Milton birth, asked ages more. 
 
 Thus genius rose and set at ordered times. 
 
 And shot a dayspring into distant climes, 
 
 Ennobling every region that he chose; 
 
 He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose, 
 
 And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past, 
 
 Emerged all splendor in our isle at last. 
 
 Thus lovely Halcyons dive into the main, 
 
 Then show far off their shining plumes again.” 
 
 Ovid, 
 
 often alluded to in poetry by his other name of Naso, 
 was born in the year 43 B.C. He was educated for 
 public life and held some offices of considerable dignity, 
 but poetry was his delight, and he early resolved to de¬ 
 vote himself to it. He accordingly sought the society 
 
OVID 
 
 309 
 
 of the contemporary poets, and was acquainted with 
 Horace and saw Virgil, though the latter died when 
 Ovid was yet too young and undistinguished to have 
 formed his acquaintance. Ovid spent an easy life at 
 Rome in the enjoyment of a competent income. He was 
 intimate with the family of Augustus, the emperor, and 
 it is supposed that some serious offence given to some 
 member of that family was the cause of an event which 
 reversed the poet’s happy circumstances and clouded all 
 the latter portion of his life. At the age of fifty he 
 was banished from Rome, and ordered to betake him¬ 
 self to Tomi, on the borders of the Black Sea. Here, 
 among the barbarous people and in a severe climate, the 
 poet, who had been accustomed to all the pleasures of a 
 luxurious capital and the society of his most distin¬ 
 guished contemporaries, spent the last ten years of his 
 life, worn out with grief and anxiety. His only con¬ 
 solation in exile was to address his wife and absent 
 friends, and his letters were all poetical. Though these 
 poems (the “Trista” and “Letters from Pontus”) have 
 no other topic than the poet’s sorrows, his exquisite 
 taste and fruitful invention have redeemed them from 
 the charge of being tedious, and they are read with 
 pleasure and even with sympathy. 
 
 The two great works of Ovid are his “Metamor¬ 
 phoses” and his “Fasti.” They are both mythological 
 poems, and from the former we have taken most of our 
 stories of Grecian and Roman mythology. A late writer 
 thus characterizes these poems: 
 
 “The rich mythology of Greece furnished Ovid, as 
 it may still furnish the poet, the painter, and the sculp¬ 
 tor, with materials for his art. With exquisite taste, 
 simplicity, and pathos he has narrated the fabulous tra¬ 
 ditions of early ages, and given to them that appearance 
 of reality which only a master hand could impart. His 
 pictures of nature are striking and true; he selects with 
 care that which is appropriate; he rejects the superflu¬ 
 ous; and when he has completed his work, it is neither 
 defective nor redundant. The ‘Metamorphoses’ are read 
 with pleasure by youth, and are re-read in more ad¬ 
 vanced age with still greater delight. The poet ventured 
 
310 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 to predict that his poem would survive him, and be read 
 wherever the Roman name was known.” 
 
 The prediction above alluded to is contained in the 
 closing lines of the “Metamorphoses,” of which we give 
 a literal translation below: 
 
 “And now I close my work, which not the ire 
 Of Jove, nor tooth of time, nor sword, nor fire 
 Shall bring to nought. Come when it will that day 
 Which o’er the body, not the mind, has sway, 
 
 And snatch the remnant of my life away, 
 
 My better part above the stars shall soar, 
 
 And my renown endure forevermore. 
 
 Where’er the Roman arms and arts shall spread, 
 
 There by the people shall my book be read; 
 
 And, if aught true in poet’s visions be, 
 
 My name and fame have immortality.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 MODERN MONSTERS-THE PHCENIX-BASILISK-UNICORN 
 
 -SALAMANDER 
 
 MODERN MONSTERS 
 
 There is a set of imaginary beings which seem to 
 have been the successors of the “Gorgons, Hydras, and 
 Chimeras dire” of the old superstitions, and, having no 
 connection with the false gods of Paganism, to have 
 continued to enjoy an existence in the popular belief 
 after Paganism was superseded by Christianity. They 
 are mentioned perhaps by the classical writers, but their 
 chief popularity and currency seem to have been in more 
 modern times. We seek our accounts of them not so 
 much in the poetry of the ancients as in the old natural 
 history books and narrations of travellers. The accounts 
 which we are about to give are taken chiefly from the 
 Penny Cyclopedia. 
 
 THE PHCENIX 
 
 Ovid tells the story of the Phoenix as follows: “Most 
 beings spring from other individuals; but there is a 
 certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians 
 
THE PHCENIX 
 
 311 
 
 call it the Phoenix. It does not live on fruit or flowers, 
 but on frankincense and odoriferous gums. When it 
 has lived five hundred years, it builds itself a nest in 
 the branches of an oak, or on the top of a palm tree. 
 In this it collects cinnamon, and spikenard, and myrrh, 
 and of these materials builds a pile on which it de¬ 
 posits itself, and dying, breathes out its last breath 
 amidst odors. From the body of the parent bird, a 
 young Phoenix issues forth, destined to live as long a 
 life as its predecessor. When this has grown up and 
 gained sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree 
 (its own cradle and its parent’s sepulchre), and carries 
 it to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and deposits it in 
 the temple of the Sun.” 
 
 Such is the account given by a poet. Now let us see 
 that of a philosophic historian. Tacitus says, “In the 
 consulship of Paulus Fabius (A.D. 34) the miraculous 
 bird known to the world by the name of the Phoenix, 
 after disappearing for a series of ages, revisited Egypt. 
 It was attended in its flight by a group of various birds, 
 all attracted by the novelty, and gazing with wonder at 
 so beautiful an appearance.” He then gives an account 
 of the bird, not varying materially from the preceding, 
 but adding some details. “The first care of the young 
 bird as soon as fledged, and able to trust to his wings, 
 is to perform the obsequies of his father. But this duty 
 is not undertaken rashly. He collects a quantity of 
 myrrh, and to try his strength makes frequent excur¬ 
 sions with a load on his back. When he has gained suf¬ 
 ficient confidence in his own vigor, he takes up the body 
 of his father and flies with it to the altar of the Sun, 
 where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fra¬ 
 grance.” Other writers add a few particulars. The 
 myrrh is compacted in the form of an egg, in which the 
 dead Phoenix is enclosed. From the mouldering flesh 
 of the dead bird a worm springs, and this worm, when 
 grown large, is transformed into a bird. Herodotus 
 describes the bird, though he says, “I have not seen it 
 myself, except in a picture. Part of his plumage is 
 gold-colored, and part crimson; and he is for the most 
 part very much like an eagle in outline and bulk.” 
 
312 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 The first writer who disclaimed a belief in the ex¬ 
 istence of the Phoenix was Sir Thomas Browne, in his 
 “Vulgar Errors,” published in 1646. He was replied 
 to a few years later by Alexander Ross, who says, in 
 answer to the objection of the Phoenix so seldom making 
 his appearance, “His instinct teaches him to keep out 
 of the way of the tyrant of the creation, man, for if he 
 were to be got at, some wealthy glutton would surely 
 devour him, though there were no more in the world.” 
 
 Dryden in one of his early poems has this allusion to 
 the Phoenix: 
 
 “So when the new-born Phoenix first is seen, 
 
 Her feathered subjects all adore their queen, 
 
 And while she makes her progress through the East, 
 
 Frdm every grove her numerous train’s increased; 
 
 Each poet of the air her glory sings, 
 
 And round him the pleased audience clap their wings.” 
 
 Milton, in “Paradise Lost,” Book V., compares the 
 angel Raphael descending to earth to a Phoenix: 
 
 “ . . Down thither, prone in flight 
 He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky 
 Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing, 
 
 Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan 
 Winnows the buxom air; till within soar 
 Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems 
 A Phoenix, gazed by all; as that sole bird 
 When, to enshrine his relics in the sun’s 
 Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.” 
 
 THE COCKATRICE, OR BASILISK 
 
 This animal was called the king of the serpents. In 
 confirmation of his royalty, he was said to be endowed 
 with a crest, or comb upon the head, constituting a 
 crown. He was supposed to be produced from the egg 
 of a cock hatched under toads or serpents. There were 
 several species of this animal. One species burned up 
 whatever they approached; a second were a kind of 
 wandering Medusa’s heads, and their look caused an in¬ 
 stant horror which was immediately followed by death. 
 In Shakspeare’s play of “Richard the Third,” Lady 
 
THE COCKATRICE, OR BASILISK 313 
 
 Anne, in answer to Richard’s compliment on her eyes, 
 says, “Would they were basilisk’s, to strike thee 
 dead!” 
 
 The basilisks were called kings of serpents because 
 all other serpents and snakes, behaving like good sub¬ 
 jects, and wisely not wishing to be burned up or struck 
 dead, fled the moment they heard the distant hiss of 
 their king, although they might be in full feed upon 
 the most delicious prey, leaving the sole enjoyment of 
 the banquet to the royal monster. 
 
 The Roman naturalist Pliny thus describes him: “He 
 does not impel his body, like other serpents, by a mul¬ 
 tiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He 
 kills the shrubs, not only by contact, but by breathing 
 on them, and splits the rocks, such power of evil is there 
 in him.” It was formerly believed that if killed by a 
 spear from on horseback the power of the poison con¬ 
 ducted through the weapon killed not only the rider, 
 but the horse also. To this Lucan alludes in these 
 lines: 
 
 “What though the Moor the basilisk hath slain. 
 
 And pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain. 
 
 Up through the spear the subtle venom flies, 
 
 The hand imbibes it, and the victor dies.” 
 
 Such a prodigy was not likely to be passed over in 
 the legends of the saints. Accordingly we find it re¬ 
 corded that a certain holy man, going to a fountain in 
 the desert, suddenly beheld a basilisk. He immediately 
 raised his eyes to heaven, and with a pious appeal to 
 the Deity laid the monster dead at his feet. 
 
 These wonderful powers of the basilisk are attested 
 by a host of learned persons, such as Galen, Avicenna, 
 Scaliger, and others. Occasionally one would demur to 
 some part of the tale while he admitted the rest. Jon- 
 ston, a learned physician, sagely remarks, “I would 
 scarcely believe that it kills with its look, for who could 
 have seen it and lived to tell the story?” The worthy 
 sage was not aware that those who went to hunt the 
 basilisk of this sort took with them a mirror, which re¬ 
 flected back the deadly glare upon its author, and by a 
 
314 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 kind of poetical justice slew the basilisk with his own 
 weapon. 
 
 But what was to attack this terrible and unapproach¬ 
 able monster? There is an old saying that “everything 
 has its enemy”—and the cockatrice quailed before the 
 weasel. The basilisk might look daggers, the weasel 
 cared not, but advanced boldly to the conflict. When 
 bitten, the weasel retired for a moment to eat some 
 rue, which was the only plant the basilisks could not 
 wither, returned with renewed strength and soundness 
 to the charge, and never left the enemy till he was 
 stretched dead on the plain. The monster, too, as if 
 conscious of the irregular way in which he came into 
 the world, was supposed to have a great antipathy to a 
 cock; and well he might, for as soon as he heard the 
 cock crow he expired. 
 
 The basilisk was of some use after death. Thus we 
 read that its carcass was suspended in the temple of 
 Apollo, and in private houses, as a sovereign remedy 
 against spiders, and that it was also hung up in the 
 temple of Diana, for which reason no swallow ever 
 dared enter the sacred place. 
 
 The reader will, we apprehend, by this time have had 
 enough of absurdities, but still we can imagine his anxi¬ 
 ety to know what a cockatrice was like. The follow¬ 
 ing is from Aldrovandus, a celebrated naturalist of the 
 sixteenth century, whose work on natural history, in 
 thirteen folio volumes, contains with much that is valu¬ 
 able a large proportion of fables and inutilities. In 
 particular he is so ample on the subject of the cock and 
 the bull that from his practice, all rambling, gossiping 
 tales of doubtful credibility are called cock and bull 
 stories. Aldrovandus, however, deserves our respect and 
 esteem as the founder of a botanic garden, and as a 
 pioneer in the now prevalent custom of making scientific 
 collections for purposes of investigation and research. 
 
 Shelley, in his “Ode to Naples,” full of the enthu¬ 
 siasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation 
 of a Constitutional Government at Naples, in 1820, thus 
 uses an allusion to the basilisk: 
 
THE UNICORN 
 
 315 
 
 “What though Cimmerian anarchs dare blaspheme 
 Freedom and thee? a new Actaeon’s error 
 Shall theirs have been,—devoured by their own hounds! 
 
 Be thou like the imperial basilisk, 
 
 Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! 
 
 Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk, 
 
 Aghast she pass from the earth’s disk. 
 
 Fear not, but gaze,—for freemen mightier grow, 
 
 And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe.” 
 
 THE UNICORN 
 
 Pliny, the Roman naturalist, out of whose account 
 of the unicorn most of the modern unicorns have been 
 described and figured, records it as “a very ferocious 
 beast, similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with 
 the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of 
 a boar, a deep, bellowing voice, and a single black horn, 
 two cubits in length, standing out in the middle of its 
 forehead.” He adds that “it cannot be taken alive;” 
 and some such excuse may have been necessary in those 
 days for not producing the living animal upon the arena 
 of the amphitheatre. 
 
 The unicorn seems to have been a sad puzzle to the 
 hunters, who hardly knew how to come at so valuable 
 a piece of game. Some described the horn as movable 
 at the will of the animal, a kind of small sword, in short, 
 with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning 
 in fence could have a chance. Others maintained that 
 all the animal’s strength lay in its horn, and that when 
 hard pressed in pursuit, it would throw itself from the 
 pinnacle of the highest rocks horn foremost, so as to 
 pitch upon it, and then quietly march off not a whit 
 the worse for its fall. 
 
 But it seems they found out how to circumvent the 
 poor unicorn at last. They discovered that it was a 
 great lover of purity and innocence, so they took the 
 field with a young virgin, who was placed in the un¬ 
 suspecting admirer’s way. When the unicorn spied her, 
 he approached with all reverence, couched beside her, 
 and laying his head in her lap, fell asleep. The treach¬ 
 erous virgin then gave a signal, and the hunters made 
 in and captured the simple beast. 
 
316 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be 
 with such fables as these, disbelieve generally the ex¬ 
 istence of the unicorn. Yet there are animals bearing on 
 their heads a bony protuberance more or less like a horn, 
 which may have given rise to the story. The rhinoceros 
 horn, as it is called, is such a protuberance, though it 
 does not exceed a few inches in height, and is far from 
 agreeing with the descriptions of the horn of the uni¬ 
 corn. The nearest approach to a horn in the middle 
 of the forehead is exhibited in the bony protuberance 
 on the forehead of the giraffe; but this also is short 
 and blunt, and is not the only horn of the animal, but 
 a third horn, standing in front of the two others. In 
 fine, though it would be presumptuous to deny the ex¬ 
 istence of a one-horned quadruped other than the rhi¬ 
 noceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion of a 
 long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse¬ 
 like or deer-like animal is as near an impossibility as 
 anything can be. 
 
 THE SALAMANDER 
 
 The following is from the “Life of Benvenuto Cel¬ 
 lini/’ an Italian artist of the sixteenth century, written 
 by himself: “When I was about five years of age, my 
 father, happening to be in a little room in which they 
 had been washing, and where there was a good fire of 
 oak burning, looked into the flames and saw a little 
 animal resembling a lizard, which could live in the 
 hottest part of that element. Instantly perceiving what 
 it was, he called for my sister and me, and after he had 
 shown us the creature, he gave me a box on the ear. I 
 fell a-crying, while he, soothing me with caresses, spoke 
 these words: ‘My dear child, I do not give you that blow 
 for any fault you have committed, but that you may rec¬ 
 ollect that the little creature you see in the fire is a 
 salamander; such a one as never was beheld before to 
 my knowledge/ So saying he embraced me, and gave 
 me some money.” 
 
 It seems unreasonable to doubt a story of which 
 Signor Cellini was both an eye and ear witness. Add 
 
THE SALAMANDER 
 
 317 
 
 to which the authority of numerous sage philosophers, 
 at the head of whom are Aristotle and Pliny, affirms 
 this power of the salamander. According to them, the 
 animal not only resists fire, but extinguishes it, and when 
 he sees the flame charges it as an enemy which he well 
 knows how to vanquish. 
 
 That the skin of an animal which could resist the 
 action of fire should be considered proof against that 
 element is not to be wondered at. We accordingly find 
 that a cloth made of the skin of salamanders (for there 
 really is such an animal, a kind of lizard) was incom¬ 
 bustible, and very valuable for wrapping up such articles 
 as were too precious to be intrusted to any other en¬ 
 velopes. These fire-proof cloths were actually produced, 
 said to be made of salamander’s wool, though the know¬ 
 ing ones detected that the substance of which they 
 were composed was asbestos, a mineral, which is in 
 fine filaments capable of being woven into a flexible 
 cloth. 
 
 The foundation of the above fables is supposed to be 
 the fact that the salamander really does secrete from 
 the pores of his body a milky juice, which when he is 
 irritated is produced in considerable quantity, and would 
 doubtless, for a few moments, defend the body from 
 fire. Then it is a hibernating animal, and in winter re¬ 
 tires to some hollow tree or other cavity, where it coils 
 itself up and remains in a torpid state till the spring 
 again calls it forth. It may therefore sometimes be 
 carried with the fuel to the fire, and wake up only time 
 enough to put forth all its faculties for its defence. 
 Its viscous juice would do good service, and all who 
 profess to have seen it, acknowledge that it got out of 
 the fire as fast as its legs could carry it; indeed, too 
 fast for them ever to make prize of one, except in one 
 instance, and in that one the animal’s feet and some 
 parts of its body were badly burned. 
 
 Dr. Young, in the “Night Thoughts,” with more 
 quaintness than good taste, compares the sceptic who 
 can remain unmoved in the contemplation of the starry 
 heavens to a salamander unwarmed in the fire: 
 
318 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 “An undevout astronomer is mad! 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 “O, what a genius must inform the skies! 
 And is Lorenzo’s salamander-heart 
 Cold and untouched amid these sacred fires ?” 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 EASTERN MYTHOLOGY-ZOROASTER—HINDU MYTHOLOGY 
 
 -CASTES-BUDDHA-GRAND LAMA 
 
 ZOROASTER 
 
 Our knowledge of the religion of the ancient Persians 
 is principally derived from the Zendavesta, or sacred 
 books of that people. Zoroaster was the founder of 
 their religion, or rather the reformer of the religion 
 which preceded him. The time when he lived is doubt¬ 
 ful, but it is certain that his system became the dom¬ 
 inant religion of Western Asia from the time of Cyrus 
 (550 B.C.) to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the 
 Great. Under the Macedonian monarchy the doctrines 
 of Zoroaster appear to have been considerably cor¬ 
 rupted by the introduction of foreign opinions, but they 
 afterwards recovered their ascendency. 
 
 Zoroaster taught the existence of a supreme being, 
 who created two other mighty beings and imparted to 
 them as much of his own nature as seemed good to him. 
 Of these, Ormuzd (called by the Greeks Oromasdes) 
 remained faithful to his creator, and was regarded as 
 the source of all good, while Ahriman (Arimanes) 
 rebelled, and became the author of all evil upon the 
 earth. Ormuzd created man and supplied him with all 
 the materials of happiness; but Ahriman marred this 
 happiness by introducing evil into the world, and creat¬ 
 ing savage beasts and poisonous reptiles and plants. In 
 consequence of this, evil and good are now mingled to¬ 
 gether in every part of the world, and the followers of 
 good and evil—the adherents of Ormuzd and Ahriman— 
 carry on incessant war. But this state of things will not 
 
ZOROASTER 
 
 319 
 
 last forever. The time will come when the adherents of 
 Ormuzd shall everywhere be victorious, and Ahriman 
 and his followers be consigned to darkness forever. 
 
 The religious rites of the ancient Persians were ex¬ 
 ceedingly simple. They used neither temples, altars, nor 
 statues, and performed their sacrifices on the tops of 
 mountains. They adored fire, light, and the sun as em¬ 
 blems of Ormuzd, the source of all light and purity, but 
 did not regard them as independent deities. The re¬ 
 ligious rites and ceremonies were regulated by the 
 priests, who were called Magi. The learning of the 
 Magi was connected with astrology and enchantment, 
 in which they were so celebrated that their name was 
 applied to all orders of magicians and enchanters. 
 
 Wordsworth thus alludes to the worship of the Per¬ 
 sians : 
 
 . . the Persian,—zealous to reject 
 Altar and Image, and the inclusive walls 
 And roofs of temples built by human hands,— 
 
 The loftiest heights ascending, from their tops, 
 
 With myrtle-wreathed Tiara on his brows, 
 
 Presented sacrifice to Moon and Stars, 
 
 And to the Winds and mother Elements, 
 
 And the whole circle of the Heavens, for him 
 A sensitive existence and a God.” 
 
 — Excursion, Book IV. 
 
 In “Childe Harold” Byron speaks thus of the Persian 
 worship: 
 
 ‘‘Not vainly did the early Persian make 
 His altar the high places and the peak 
 Of earth-o’er-gazing mountains, and thus take 
 A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek 
 The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak, 
 
 Upreared of human hands. Come and compare 
 Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek, 
 
 With Nature’s realms of worship, earth and air, 
 
 Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer.” 
 
 III., 91. 
 
 The religion of Zoroaster continued to flourish even 
 after the introduction of Christianity, and in the third 
 century was the dominant faith of the East, till the rise 
 of the Mahometan power and the conquest of Persia by 
 
320 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 the Arabs in the seventh century, who compelled the 
 greater number of the Persians to renounce their ancient 
 faith. Those who refused to abandon the religion of 
 their ancestors fled to the deserts of Kerman and to 
 Hindustan, where they still exist under the name of 
 Parsees, a name derived from Pars, the ancient name of 
 Persia. The Arabs call them Guebers, from an Arabic 
 word signifying unbelievers. At Bombay the Parsees 
 are at this day a very active, intelligent, and wealthy 
 class. For purity of life, honesty, and conciliatory man¬ 
 ners, they are favorably distinguished. They have 
 numerous temples to Fire, which they adore as the sym¬ 
 bol of the divinity. 
 
 The Persian religion makes the subject of the finest 
 tale in Moore’s “Lalla Rookh,” the “Fire Worshippers.” 
 The Gueber chief says, 
 
 “Yes! I am of that impious race, 
 
 Those slaves of Fire, that morn and even 
 Hail their creator’s dwelling-place 
 Among the living lights of heaven; 
 
 Yes! I am of that outcast crew 
 To Iran and to vengeance true, 
 
 Who curse the hour your Arabs came 
 To desecrate our shrines of flame, 
 
 And swear before God’s burning eye, 
 
 To break our country’s chains or die.” 
 
 HINDU MYTHOLOGY 
 
 The religion of the Hindus is professedly founded on 
 the Vedas. To these books of their scripture they at¬ 
 tach the greatest sanctity, and state that Brahma him¬ 
 self composed them at the creation. But the present 
 arrangement of the Vedas is attributed to the sage 
 Vyasa, about five thousand years ago. 
 
 The Vedas undoubtedly teach the belief of one su¬ 
 preme God. The name of this deity is Brahma. His 
 attributes are represented by the three personified powers 
 of creation, preservation, and destruction, which under 
 the respective names of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva form 
 the Trimurti or triad of principal Hindu gods. Of the 
 inferior gods the most important are: 1. Indra, the god 
 
VISHNU 
 
 321 
 
 &f heaven, of thunder, lightning, storm, and rain; 2. 
 Agni, the god of fire; 3. Yama, the god of the infernal 
 regions; 4. Surya, the god of the sun. 
 
 Brahma is the creator of the universe, and the source 
 from which all the individual deities have sprung, and 
 into which all will ultimately be absorbed. “As milk 
 changes to curd, and water to ice, so is Brahma vari¬ 
 ously transformed and diversified, without aid of exterior 
 means of any sort.” The human soul, according to the 
 Vedas, is a portion of the supreme ruler, as a spark is 
 of the fire. 
 
 VISHNU 
 
 Vishnu occupies the second place in the triad of the 
 Hindus, and is the personification of the preserving 
 principle. To protect the world in various epochs of 
 danger, Vishnu descended to the earth in different incar¬ 
 nations, or bodily forms, which descents are called Ava¬ 
 tars. They are very numerous, but ten are more partic¬ 
 ularly specified. The first Avatar was as Matsya, the 
 Fish, under which form Vishnu preserved Manu, the 
 ancestor of the human race, during a universal deluge. 
 The second Avatar was in the form of a Tortoise, which 
 form he assumed to support the earth when the gods 
 were churning the sea for the beverage of immortality, 
 Amrita. 
 
 We may omit the other Avatars, which were of the 
 same general character, that is, interpositions to protect 
 the right or to punish wrong-doers, and come to the 
 ninth, which is the most celebrated of the Avatars of 
 Vishnu, in which he appeared in the human form of 
 Krishna, an invincible warrior, who by his exploits re¬ 
 lieved the earth from the tyrants who oppressed it. 
 
 Buddha is by the followers of the Brahmanical religion 
 regarded as a delusive incarnation of Vishnu, assumed 
 by him in order to induce the Asuras, opponents of the 
 gods, to abandon the sacred ordinances of the Vedas, by 
 which means they lost their strength and supremacy. 
 
 Kalki is the name of the tenth Avatar, in which 
 Vishnu will appear at the end of the present age of the 
 
322 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 world to destroy all vice and wickedness, and to restore 
 mankind to virtue and purity. 
 
 SIVA 
 
 Siva is the third person of the Hindu triad. He is the 
 personification of the destroying principle. Though the 
 third name, he is, in respect to the number of his wor¬ 
 shippers and the extension of his worship, before either 
 of the others. In the Puranas (the scriptures of the 
 modern Hindu religion) no allusion is made to the orig¬ 
 inal power of this god as a destroyer; that power not 
 being to be called into exercise till after the expiration of 
 twelve millions of years, or when the universe will come 
 to an end; and Mahadeva (another name for Siva) is 
 rather the representative of regeneration than of de¬ 
 struction. 
 
 The worshippers of Vishnu and Siva form two sects, 
 each of which proclaims the superiority of its favorite 
 deity, denying the claims of the other, and Brahma, the 
 creator, having finished his work, seems to be regarded 
 as no longer active, and has now only one temple in 
 India, while Mahadeva and Vishnu have many. The 
 worshippers of Vishnu are generally distinguished by a 
 greater tenderness for life, and consequent abstinence 
 from animal food, and a worship less cruel than that of 
 the followers of Siva. 
 
 JUGGERNAUT 
 
 Whether the worshippers of Juggernaut are to be 
 reckoned among the followers of Vishnu or Siva, our 
 authorities differ. The temple stands near the shore, 
 about three hundred miles south-west of Calcutta. The 
 idol is a carved block of wood, with a hideous face, 
 painted black, and a distended blood-red mouth. On 
 festival days the throne of the image is placed on a 
 tower sixty feet high, moving on wheels. Six long ropes 
 are attached to the tower, by which the people draw it 
 along. The priests and their attendants stand round the 
 
CASTES 
 
 323 
 
 throne on the tower, and occasionally turn to the wor¬ 
 shippers with songs and gestures. While the tower 
 moves along numbers of the devout worshippers throw 
 themselves on the ground, in order to be crushed by the 
 wheels, and the multitude shout in approbation of thej 
 act, as a pleasing sacrifice to the idol. Every year, par¬ 
 ticularly at two great festivals in March and July, pil¬ 
 grims flock in crowds to the temple. Not less than sev¬ 
 enty or eighty thousand people are said to visit the place 
 on these occasions, when all castes eat together. 
 
 CASTES 
 
 The division of the Hindus into classes or castes, 
 with fixed occupations, existed from the earliest times. 
 It is supposed by some to have been founded upon con¬ 
 quest, the first three castes being composed of a foreign 
 race, who subdued the natives of the country and re¬ 
 duced them to an inferior caste. Others trace it to the 
 fondness of perpetuating, by descent from father to son, 
 certain offices or occupations. 
 
 The Hindu tradition gives the following account of 
 the origin of the various castes: At the creation Brahma 
 resolved to give the earth inhabitants who should be 
 direct emanations from his own body. Accordingly 
 from his mouth came forth the eldest born, Brahma (the 
 priest), to whom he confided the four Vedas; from 
 his right arm issued Shatriya (the warrior), and from 
 his left, the warrior’s wife. His thighs produced 
 Vaissyas, male and female (agriculturists and traders), 
 and lastly from his feet sprang Sudras (mechanics and 
 laborers). 
 
 The four sons of Brahma, so significantly brought 
 into the world, became the fathers of the human race, 
 and heads of their respective castes. They were com¬ 
 manded to regard the four Vedas as containing all the 
 rules of their faith, and all that was necessary to guide 
 them in their religious ceremonies. They were also 
 commanded to take rank in the order of their birth, the 
 Brahmans uppermost, as having sprung from the head 
 of Brahma. 
 
324 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 A strong line of demarcation is drawn between the 
 first three castes and the Sudras. The former are al¬ 
 lowed to receive instruction from the Vedas, which is 
 not permitted to the Sudras. The Brahmans possess 
 the privilege of teaching the Vedas, and were in former 
 times in exclusive possession of all knowledge. Though 
 the sovereign of the country was chosen from the Sha- 
 triya class, also called Rajputs, the Brahmans possessed 
 the real power, and were the royal counsellors, the 
 judges and magistrates of the country; their persons 
 and property were inviolable; and though they commit¬ 
 ted the greatest crimes, they could only be banished 
 from the kingdom. They were to be treated by sov¬ 
 ereigns with the greatest respect, for “a Brahman, 
 whether learned or ignorant, is a powerful divinity.” 
 
 When the Brahman arrives at years of maturity it be¬ 
 comes his duty to marry. He ought to be supported 
 by the contributions of the rich, and not to be obliged to 
 gain his subsistence by any laborious or productive occu¬ 
 pation. But as all the Brahmans could not be main¬ 
 tained by the working classes of the community, it was 
 found necessary to allow them to engage in productive 
 employments. 
 
 We need say little of the two intermediate classes, 
 whose rank and privileges may be readily inferred from 
 their occupations. The Sudras or fourth class are 
 bound to servile attendance on the higher classes, espe¬ 
 cially the Brahmans, but they may follow mechanical 
 occupations and practical arts, as painting and writing, 
 or become traders or husbandmen. Consequently they 
 sometimes grow rich, and it will also sometimes happen 
 that Brahmans become poor. That fact works its usual 
 consequence, and rich Sudras sometimes employ poor 
 Brahmans in menial occupations. 
 
 There is another class lower even than the Sudras, 
 for it is not one of the original pure classes, but springs 
 from an unauthorized union of individuals of different 
 castes. These are the Pariahs, who are employed in the 
 lowest services and treated with the utmost severity. 
 They are compelled to do what no one else can do with¬ 
 out pollution. They are not only considered unclean 
 
BUDDHA 
 
 325 
 
 themselves, but they render unclean everything they 
 touch. They are deprived of all civil rights, and stig¬ 
 matized by particular laws regulating their mode of life, 
 their houses, and their furniture. They are not allowed 
 to visit the pagodas or temples of the other castes, but 
 have their own pagodas and religious exercises. They 
 are not suffered to enter the houses of the other castes; 
 if it is done incautiously or from necessity, the place 
 must be purified by religious ceremonies. They must 
 not appear at public markets, and are confined to the 
 use of particular wells, which they are obliged to sur¬ 
 round with bones of animals, to warn others against 
 using them. They dwell in miserable hovels, distant 
 from cities and villages, and are under no restrictions in 
 regard to food, which last is not a privilege, but a mark 
 of ignominy, as if they were so degraded that nothing 
 could pollute them. The three higher castes are prohib¬ 
 ited entirely the use of flesh. The fourth is allowed to 
 use all kinds except beef, but only the lowest caste is al¬ 
 lowed every kind of food without restriction. 
 
 BUDDHA 
 
 Buddha, whom the Vedas represent as a delusive in¬ 
 carnation of Vishnu, is said by his followers to have 
 been a mortal sage, whose name was Gautama, called 
 also by the complimentary epithets of Sakyasinha, the 
 Lion, and Buddha, the Sage. 
 
 By a comparison of the various epochs assigned to 
 his birth, it is inferred that he lived about one thousand 
 years before Christ. 
 
 He was the son of a king; and when in conformity 
 to the usage of the country he was, a few days after 
 his birth, presented before the altar of a deity, the image 
 is said to have inclined its head as a presage of the 
 future greatness of the new-born prophet. The child 
 soon developed faculties of the first order, and became 
 equally distinguished by the uncommon beauty of his 
 person. No sooner had he grown to years of maturity 
 than he began to reflect deeply on the depravity and 
 misery of mankind, and he conceived the idea of retiring 
 
326 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 from society and devoting himself to meditation. His 
 father in vain opposed this design. Buddha escaped the 
 vigilance of his guards, and having found a secure re¬ 
 treat, lived for six years undisturbed in his devout con¬ 
 templations. At the expiration of that period he came 
 forward at Benares as a religious teacher. At first some 
 who heard him doubted of the soundness of his mind; 
 but his doctrines soon gained credit, and were propa¬ 
 gated so rapidly that Buddha himself lived to see them 
 spread all over India. He died at the age of eighty 
 years. 
 
 The Buddhists reject entirely the authority of the 
 Vedas, and the religious observances prescribed in them 
 and kept by the Hindus. They also reject the distinc¬ 
 tion of castes, and prohibit all bloody sacrifices, and al¬ 
 low animal food. Their priests are chosen from all 
 classes; they are expected to procure their maintenance 
 by perambulation and begging, and among other things 
 it is their duty to endeavor to turn to some use things 
 thrown aside as useless by others, and to discover the 
 medicinal power of plants. But in Ceylon three orders 
 of priests are recognized; those of the highest order are 
 usually men of high birth and learning, and are 
 supported at the principal temples, most of which have 
 been richly endowed by the former monarchs of the 
 country. 
 
 For several centuries after the appearance of Buddha, 
 his sect seems to have been tolerated by the Brahmans, 
 and Buddhism appears to have penetrated the peninsula 
 of Hindustan in every direction, and to have been car¬ 
 ried to Ceylon, and to the eastern peninsula. But after¬ 
 wards it had to endure in India a long-continued persecu¬ 
 tion, which ultimately had the effect of entirely abolish¬ 
 ing it in the country where it had originated, but to 
 scatter it widely over adjacent countries. Buddhism ap¬ 
 pears to have been introduced into China about the year 
 65 of our era. From China it was subsequently extended 
 to Corea, Japan, and Java. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 
 
 327 
 
 THE GRAND LAMA 
 
 It is a doctrine alike of the Brahminical Hindus and 
 of the Buddhist sect that the confinement of the human 
 soul, an emanation of the divine spirit, in a human 
 body, is a state of misery, and the consequence of 
 frailties and sins committed during former existences. 
 But they hold that some few individuals have appeared 
 on this earth from time to time, not under the neces¬ 
 sity of terrestrial existence, but who voluntarily de¬ 
 scended to the earth to promote the welfare of man¬ 
 kind. These individuals have gradually assumed the char¬ 
 acter of reappearances of Buddha himself., in which 
 capacity the line is continued till the present day, in the 
 several Lamas of Thibet, China, and other countries 
 where Buddhism prevails. In consequence of the vic¬ 
 tories of Gengis Khan and his successors, the Lama re¬ 
 siding in Thibet was raised to the dignity of chief pon¬ 
 tiff of the sect. A separate province was assigned to 
 him as his own territory, and besides his spiritual dig¬ 
 nity he became to a limited extent a temporal monarch. 
 He is styled the Dalai Lama. 
 
 The first Christian missionaries who proceeded to 
 Thibet were surprised to find there in the heart of Asia 
 a pontifical court and several other ecclesiastical institu¬ 
 tions resembling those of the Roman Catholic church. 
 They found convents for priests and nuns; also pro¬ 
 cessions and forms of religious worship, attended with 
 much pomp and splendor; and many were induced by 
 these similarities to consider Lamaism as a sort of de¬ 
 generated Christianity. It is not improbable that the 
 Lamas derived some of these practices from the Nesto- 
 rian Christians, who were settled in Tartary when 
 Buddhism was introduced into Thibet. 
 
 PRESTER JOHN 
 
 An early account, communicated probably by trav¬ 
 elling merchants, of a Lama or spiritual chief among 
 the Tartars, seems to have occasioned in Europe the re¬ 
 port of a Presbyter or Prester John, a Christian pontiff 
 
328 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 resident in Upper Asia. The Pope sent a mission in 
 search of him, as did also Louis IX. of France, some 
 years later, but both missions were unsuccessful, though 
 the small communities of Nestorian Christians, which 
 they did find, served to keep up the belief in Europe that 
 such a personage did exist somewhere in the East. At 
 last in the fifteenth century, a Portuguese traveller, 
 Pedro Covilham, happening to hear that there was a 
 Christian prince in the country of the Abessines (Abys¬ 
 sinia), not far from the Red Sea, concluded that this 
 must be the true Prester John. He accordingly went 
 thither, and penetrated to the court of the king, whom 
 he calls Negus. Milton alludes to him in “Paradise 
 Lost,” Book XI., where, describing Adam's vision of 
 his descendants in their various nations and cities, scat¬ 
 tered over the face of the earth, he says,— 
 
 “. . . Nor did his eyes not ken 
 Th’ empire of Negus, to his utmost port, 
 
 Ercoco, and the less maritime kings, 
 
 Mombaza and Quiloa and Melind.” 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY—VALHALLA—THE VALKYRIOR 
 
 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY 
 
 The stories which have engaged our attention thus 
 far relate to the mythology of southern regions. But 
 there is another branch of ancient superstitions which 
 ought not to be entirely overlooked, especially as it be¬ 
 longs to the nations from which we, through our 
 English ancestors, derive our origin. It is that of the 
 northern nations, called Scandinavians, who inhabited 
 the countries now known as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, 
 and Iceland. These mythological records are con- 
 
NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY 
 
 329 
 
 tained in two collections called the Eddas, of which the 
 oldest is in poetry and dates back to the year 1056, the 
 more modern or prose Edda being of the date of 1640. 
 
 According to the Eddas there was once no heaven 
 above nor earth beneath, but only a bottomless deep, 
 and a world of mist in which flowed a fountain. Twelve 
 rivers issued from this fountain, and when they had 
 flowed far from their source, they froze into ice, and one 
 layer accumulating over another, the great deep was filled 
 up. 
 
 Southward from the world of mist was the world of 
 light. From this flowed a warm wind upon the ice and 
 melted it. The vapors rose in the air and formed clouds, 
 from which sprang Ymir, the Frost giant and his pro¬ 
 geny, and the cow Audhumbla, whose milk afforded 
 nourishment and food to the giant. The cow got nour¬ 
 ishment by licking the hoar frost and salt from the 
 ice. While she was one day licking the salt stones 
 there appeared at first the hair of a man, on the second 
 day the whole head, and on the third the entire form 
 endowed with beauty, agility, and power. This new be¬ 
 ing was a god, from whom and his wife, a daughter of 
 the giant race, sprang the three brothers Odin, Vili, and 
 Ve. They slew the giant Ymir, and out of his body 
 formed the earth, of his blood the seas, of his bones the 
 mountains, of his hair the trees, of his skull the heavens, 
 and of his brain clouds, charged with hail and snow. Of 
 Ymir’s eyebrows the gods formed Midgard (mid earth), 
 destined to become the abode of man. 
 
 Odin then regulated the periods of day and night and 
 the seasons by placing in the heavens the sun and moon, 
 and appointing to them their respective courses. As 
 soon as the sun began to shed its rays upon the earth, 
 it caused the vegetable world to bud and sprout. 
 Shortly after the gods had created the world they 
 walked by the side of the sea, pleased with their new 
 work, but found that it was still incomplete, for it was 
 without human beings. They therefore took an ash tree 
 and made a man out of it, and they made a woman out 
 of an elder, and called the man Aske and the woman 
 Embla. Odin then gave them life and soul, Vili reason 
 
330 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 and motion, and Ve bestowed upon them the senses, ex¬ 
 pressive features, and speech. Midgard was then given 
 them as their residence, and they became the progenitors 
 of the human race. 
 
 The mighty ash tree Ygdrasill was supposed to sup¬ 
 port the whole universe. It sprang from the body of 
 Ymir, and had three immense roots, extending one into 
 Asgard (the dwelling of the gods), the other into Jotun- 
 heim (the abode of the giants), and the third to Niffle- 
 heim (the regions of darkness and cold). By the side 
 of each of these roots is a spring, from which it is 
 watered. The root that extends into Asgard is care¬ 
 fully tended by the three Norns, goddesses, who are 
 regarded as the dispensers of fate. They are Urdur 
 (the past), Verdandi (the present), Skuld (the future). 
 The spring at the Jotunheim side is Ymir’s well, in 
 which wisdom and wit lie hidden, but that of Niffleheim 
 feeds the adder Nidhogge (darkness), which perpetu¬ 
 ally gnaws at the root. Four harts run across the 
 branches of the tree and bite the buds; they represent 
 the four winds. Under the tree lies Ymir, and when he 
 tries to shake off its weight the earth quakes. 
 
 Asgard is the name of the abode of the gods, access 
 to which is only gained by crossing the bridge Bifrost 
 (the rainbow). Asgard consists of golden and silver 
 palaces, the dwellings of the gods, but the most beautiful 
 of these is Valhalla, the residence of Odin. When 
 seated on his throne he overlooks all heaven and earth. 
 Upon his shoulders are the ravens Hugin and Munin, 
 who fly every day over the whole world, and on their 
 return report to him all they have seen and heard. At 
 his feet lie his two wolves, Geri and Freki, to whom 
 Odin gives all the meat that is set before him, for he 
 himself stands in no need of food. Mead is for him 
 both food and drink. He invented the Runic characters, 
 and it is the business of the Norns to engrave the runes 
 of fate upon a metal shield. From Odin’s name, spelt 
 Woden, as it sometimes is, came Wednesday, the name 
 of the fourth day of the week. 
 
 Odin is frequently called Alfadur (All-father), but 
 this name is sometimes used in a way that shows that 
 
OF THOR AND THE OTHER GODS 331 
 
 the Scandinavians had an idea of a deity superior to 
 Odin, uncreated and eternal. 
 
 OF THE JOYS OF VALHALLA 
 
 Valhalla is the great hall of Odin, wherein he feasts 
 with his chosen heroes, all those who have fallen bravely 
 in battle, for all who die a peaceful death are excluded. 
 The flesh of the boar Schrimnir is served up to them, 
 and is abundant for all. For although this boar is cooked 
 every morning, he becomes whole again every night. 
 For drink the heroes are supplied abundantly with mead 
 from the she-goat Heidrum. When the heroes are not 
 feasting they amuse themselves with fighting. Every 
 day they ride out into the court or field and fight until 
 they cut each other in pieces. This is their pastime; 
 but when meal time comes they recover from their 
 wounds and return to feast in Valhalla. 
 
 THE VALKYRIE 
 
 The Valkyrie are warlike virgins, mounted upon 
 horses and armed with helmets and spears. Odin, who 
 is desirous to collect a great many heroes in Valhalla 
 to be able to meet the giants in a day when the fina 
 contest must come, sends down to every battle-field <L 
 make choice of those who shall be slain. The Valky- 
 rie are his messengers, and their name means “Choosers 
 of the slain.” When they ride forth on their errand, 
 their armor sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes 
 up over the northern skies, making what men call the 
 “Aurora Borealis,” or “Northern Lights.” 1 
 
 OF THOR AND THE OTHER GODS 
 
 Thor, the thunderer, Odin’s eldest son, is the strong¬ 
 est of gods and men, and possesses three very pre¬ 
 cious things. The first is a hammer, which both the 
 Frost and the Mountain giants know to their cost, when 
 they see it hurled against them in the air, for it has split 
 many a skull of their fathers and kindred. When 
 
 1 Gray's ode, “The Fatal Sisters,” is founded on this superstition. 
 
332 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 thrown, it returns to his hand of its own accord. The 
 second rare thing he possesses is called the belt of 
 strength. When he girds it about him his divine might 
 is doubled. The third, also very precious, is his iron 
 gloves, which he puts on whenever he would use his 
 mallet efficiently. From Thor’s name is derived our 
 word Thursday. 
 
 Frey is one of the most celebrated of the gods. He 
 presides over rain and sunshine and all the fruits of the 
 earth. His sister Freya is the most propitious of the 
 goddesses. She loves music, spring, and flowers, and is 
 particularly fond of the Elves (fairies). She is very 
 fond of love ditties, and all lovers would do well to 
 invoke her. 
 
 Bragi is the god of poetry, and his song records the 
 deeds of warriors. His wife, Iduna, keeps in a box 
 the apples which the gods, when they feel old age ap¬ 
 proaching, have only to taste of to become young again. 
 
 Heimdall is the watchman of the gods, and is there¬ 
 fore placed on the borders of heaven to prevent the 
 giants from forcing their way over the bridge Bifrost 
 (the rainbow). He requires less sleep than a bird, and 
 sees by night as well as by day a hundred miles around 
 him. So acute is his ear that no sound escapes him, for 
 he can even hear the grass grow and the wool on a 
 sheep’s back. 
 
 OF LOKI AND HIS PROGENY 
 
 There is another deity who is described as the calum¬ 
 niator of the gods and the contriver of all fraud and 
 mischief. His name is Loki. He is handsome and well 
 made, but of a very fickle mood and most evil disposi¬ 
 tion. He is of the giant race, but forced himself into 
 the company of the gods, and seems to take pleasure in 
 bringing them into difficulties, and in extricating them 
 out of the danger by his cunning, wit, and skill. Loki 
 has three children. The first is the wolf Fenris, the 
 second the Midgard serpent, the third Hela (Death). 
 The gods were not ignorant that these monsters were 
 growing up, and that they would one day bring much 
 
HOW THOR PAID THE GIANT’S WAGES 333 
 
 evil upon gods and men. So Odin deemed it advis¬ 
 able to send one to bring them to him. When they came 
 he threw the serpent into that deep ocean by which the 
 earth is surrounded. But the monster had grown to 
 such an enormous size that holding his tail in his mouth 
 he encircles the whole earth. Hela he cast into Niffle- 
 heim, and gave her power over nine worlds or regions, 
 into which she distributes those who are sent to her; 
 that is, all who die of sickness or old age. Her hall is 
 called Elvidner. Hunger is her table, Starvation her 
 knife, Delay her man, Slowness her maid, Precipice her 
 threshold, Care her bed, and Burning Anguish forms the 
 hangings of the apartments. She may easily be recog¬ 
 nized, for her body is half flesh color and half blue, and 
 she has a dreadfully stern and forbidding countenance. 
 
 The wolf Fenris gave the gods a great deal of trou¬ 
 ble before they succeeded in chaining him. He broke 
 the strongest fetters as if they were made of cobwebs. 
 Finally the gods sent a messenger to the mountain spirits, 
 who made for them the chain called Gleipnir. It is 
 fashioned of six things, viz., the noise made by the 
 footfall of a cat, the beards of women, the roots of 
 stones, the breath of fishes, the nerves (sensibilities) of 
 bears, and the spittle of birds. When finished it was 
 as smooth and soft as a silken string. But when the 
 gods asked the wolf to suffer himself to be bound with 
 this apparently slight ribbon, he suspected their design, 
 fearing that it was made by enchantment. He there¬ 
 fore only consented to be bound with it upon condition 
 that one of the gods put his hand in his (Fenris’s) 
 mouth as a pledge that the band was to be removed 
 again. Tyr (the god of battles) alone had courage 
 enough to do this. But when the wolf found that he 
 could not break his fetters, and that the gods would not 
 release him, he bit off Tyr’s hand, and he has ever since 
 remained one-handed. 
 
 HOW THOR PAID THE MOUNTAIN GIANT HIS WAGES 
 
 Once on a time, when the gods were constructing 
 their abodes and had already finished Midgard and Val- 
 
334 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 halla, a certain artificer came and offered to build them 
 a residence so well fortified that they should be per¬ 
 fectly safe from the incursions of the Frost giants and 
 the giants of the mountains. But he demanded for his 
 reward the goddess Freya, together with the sun and 
 moon. The gods yielded to his terms, provided he 
 would finish the whole work himself without any one’s 
 assistance, and all within the space of one winter. But 
 if anything remained unfinished on the first day of sum¬ 
 mer he should forfeit the recompense agreed on. On 
 being told these terms the artificer stipulated that he 
 should be allowed the use of his horse Svadilfari, and 
 this by the advice of Loki was granted to him. He ac¬ 
 cordingly set to work on the first day of winter, and 
 during the night let his horse draw stone for the build¬ 
 ing. The enormous size of the stones struck the gods 
 with astonishment, and they saw clearly that the horse 
 did one-half more of the toilsome work than his master. 
 Their bargain, however, had been concluded, and con¬ 
 firmed by solemn oaths, for without these precautions 
 a giant would not have thought himself safe among the 
 gods, especially when Thor should return from an ex¬ 
 pedition he had then undertaken against the evil demons. 
 
 As the winter drew to a close, the building was far 
 advanced, and the bulwarks were sufficiently high and 
 massive to render the place impregnable. In short, when 
 it wanted but three days to summer, the only part that 
 remained to be finished was the gateway. Then sat the 
 gods on their seats of justice and entered into consul¬ 
 tation, inquiring of one another who among them could, 
 have advised to give Freya away, or to plunge the 
 heavens in darkness by permitting the giant to carry 
 away the sun and the moon. 
 
 They all agreed that no one but Loki, the author of 
 so many evil deeds, could have given such bad counsel, 
 and that he should be put to a cruel death if he did not 
 contrive some way to prevent the artificer from com¬ 
 pleting his task and obtaining the stipulated recom¬ 
 pense. They proceeded to lay hands on Loki, who in 
 his fright promised upon oath that, let it cost him what 
 it would, he would so manage matters that the man 
 
THE RECOVERY OF THE HAMMER 335 
 
 should lose his reward. That very night when the man 
 went with Svadilfari for building stone, a mare suddenly 
 ran out of a forest and began to neigh. The horse 
 thereat broke loose and ran after the mare into the 
 forest, which obliged the man also to run after his 
 horse, and thus between one and another the whole night 
 was lost, so that at dawn the work had not made the 
 usual progress. The man, seeing that he must fail of 
 completing his task, resumed his own gigantic stature, 
 and the gods now clearly perceived that it was in reality 
 a mountain giant who had come amongst them. Feeling 
 no longer bound by their oaths, they called on Thor, 
 who immediately ran to their assistance, and lifting up 
 his mallet, paid the workman his wages, not with the 
 sun and moon, and not even by sending him back to 
 Jotunheim, for with the first blow he shattered the 
 giant’s skull to pieces and hurled him headlong into 
 Niffleheim. 
 
 THE RECOVERY OF THE HAMMER 
 
 Once upon a time it happened that Thor’s hammer 
 fell into the possession of the giant Thrym, who buried 
 it eight fathoms deep under the rocks of Jotunheim. 
 Thor sent Loki to negotiate with Thrym, but he could 
 only prevail so far as to get the giant’s promise to re¬ 
 store the weapon if Freya would consent to be his bride. 
 Loki returned and reported the result of his mission, 
 but the goddess of love was quite horrified at the idea 
 of bestowing her charms on the king of the Frost giants. 
 In this emergency Loki persuaded Thor to dress himself 
 in Freya’s clothes and accompany him to Jotunheim. 
 Thrym received his veiled bride with due courtesy, but 
 was greatly surprised at seeing her eat for her supper 
 eight salmons and a full grown ox, besides other deli¬ 
 cacies, washing the whole down with three tuns of 
 mead. Loki, however, assured him that she had not 
 tasted anything for eight long nights, so great was her 
 desire to see her lover, the renowned ruler of Jotunheim. 
 Thrym had at length the curiosity to peep under his 
 bride’s veil, but started back in affright and demanded 
 
336 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 why Freya’s eyeballs glistened with fire. Loki repeated 
 the same excuse and the giant was satisfied. He or¬ 
 dered the hammer to be brought in and laid on the 
 maiden’s lap. Thereupon Thor threw off his disguise, 
 grasped his redoubted weapon, and slaughtered Thrym 
 and all his followers. 
 
 Frey also possessed a wonderful weapon, a sword 
 which would of itself spread a field with carnage when¬ 
 ever the owner desired it. Frey parted with this sword, 
 but was less fortunate than Thor and never recovered 
 it. It happened in this way: Frey once mounted Odin’s 
 throne, from whence one can see over the whole uni¬ 
 verse, and looking round saw far off in the giant’s king¬ 
 dom a beautiful maid, at the sight of whom he was 
 struck with sudden sadness, insomuch that from that 
 moment he could neither sleep, nor drink, nor speak. 
 At last Skirnir, his messenger, drew his secret from him, 
 and undertook to get him the maiden for his bride, if 
 he would give him his sword as a reward. Frey con¬ 
 sented and gave him the sword, and Skirnir set off on 
 his journey and obtained the maiden’s promise that with¬ 
 in nine nights she would come to a certain place and 
 there wed Frey. Skirnir having reported the success 
 of his errand, Frey exclaimed: 
 
 “Long is one night, 
 
 Long are two nights, 
 
 But how shall I hold out three? 
 
 Shorter hath seemed 
 
 A month to me oft 
 
 Than of this longing time the half.” 
 
 So Frey obtained Gerda, the most beautiful of all 
 women, for his wife, but he lost his sword. 
 
 This story, entitled “Skirnir For,” and the one im¬ 
 mediately preceding it, “Thrym’s Quida,” will be found 
 poetically told in Longfellow’s “Poets and Poetry of 
 Europe.” 
 
THOR’S VISIT TO JOTUNHEIM • 337 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THOR’S VISIT TO JOTUNHEIM 
 THOR’S VISIT TO JOTUNHEIM, THE GIANT’S COUNTRY 
 
 One day the god Thor, with his servant Thialfi, and 
 accompanied by Loki, set out on a journey to the giant’s 
 country. Thialfi was of all men the swiftest of foot. 
 He bore Thor’s wallet, containing their provisions. 
 When night came on they found themselves in an im¬ 
 mense forest, and searched on all sides for a place where 
 they might pass the night, and at last came to a very 
 large hall, with an entrance that took the whole breadth 
 of one end of the building. Here they lay down to 
 sleep, but towards midnight were alarmed by an earth¬ 
 quake which shook the whole edifice. Thor, rising up, 
 called on his companions to seek with him a place of 
 safety. On the right they found an adjoining chamber, 
 into which the others entered, but Thor remained at 
 the doorway with his mallet in his hand, prepared to 
 defend himself, whatever might happen. A terrible 
 groaning was heard during the night, and at dawn of 
 day Thor went out and found lying near him a huge 
 giant, who slept and snored in the way that had alarmed 
 them so. It is said that for once Thor was afraid to 
 use his mallet, and as the giant soon waked up, Thor 
 contented himself with simply asking his name. 
 
 “My name is Skrymir,” said the giant, “but I need 
 not ask thy name, for I know that thou art the god 
 Thor. But what has become of my glove?” Thor then 
 perceived that what they had taken overnight for a 
 hall was the giant’s glove, and the chamber where his 
 two companions had sought refuge was the thumb. 
 Skrymir then proposed that they should travel in com¬ 
 pany, and Thor consenting, they sat down to eat their 
 breakfast, and when they had done, Skrymir packed all 
 the provisions into one wallet, threw it over his shoulder, 
 and strode on before them, taking such tremendous 
 
338 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 strides that they were hard put to it to keep up with 
 him. So they travelled the whole day, and at dusk 
 Skrymir chose a place for them to pass the night in 
 under a large oak tree. Skrymir then told them he 
 would lie down to sleep. “But take ye the wallet/’ he 
 added, “and prepare your supper.” 
 
 Skrymir soon fell asleep and began to snore strongly; 
 but when Thor tried to open the wallet, he found the 
 giant had tied it up so tight he could not untie a single 
 knot. At last Thor became wroth, and grasping his 
 mallet with both hands he struck a furious blow on the 
 giant’s head. Skrymir, awakening, merely asked whether 
 a leaf had not fallen on his head, and whether they 
 had supped and were ready to go to sleep. Thor an¬ 
 swered that they were just going to sleep, and so saying 
 went and laid himself down under another tree. But 
 sleep came not that night to Thor, and when Skrymir 
 snored again so loud that the forest reechoed with the 
 noise, he arose, and grasping his mallet launched it 
 with such force at the giant’s skull that it made a deep 
 dint in it. Skrymir, awakening, cried out, “What’s the 
 matter? Are there any birds perched on this tree? I 
 felt some moss from the branches fall on my head. 
 How fares it with thee, Thor?” But Thor went away 
 hastily, saying that he had just then awoke, and that as 
 it was only midnight, there was still time for sleep. 
 He, however, resolved that if he had an opportunity of 
 striking a third blow, it should settle all matters between 
 them. A little before daybreak he perceived that Skry¬ 
 mir was again fast asleep, and again grasping his mal¬ 
 let, he dashed it with such violence that it forced its 
 way into the giant’s skull up to the handle. But Skrymir 
 sat up, and stroking his cheek said, “An acorn fell on 
 my head. What! Art thou awake, Thor? Methinks 
 it is time for us to get up and dress ourselves; but you 
 have not now a long way before you to the city called 
 Utgard. I have heard you whispering to one another 
 that I am not a man of small dimensions; but if you 
 come to Utgard you will see there many men much 
 taller than I. Wherefore, I advise you, when you come 
 there, not to make too much of yourselves, for the 
 
THOR’S VISIT TO JOTUNHEIM 
 
 339 
 
 followers of Utgard-Loki will not brook the boasting 
 of such little fellows as you are. You must take the 
 road that leads eastward, mine lies northward, so we 
 must part here.” 
 
 Hereupon he threw his wallet over his shoulders and 
 turned away from them into the forest, and Thor had 
 no wish to stop him or to ask for any more of his 
 company. 
 
 Thor and his companions proceeded on their way, and 
 towards noon descried a city standing in the middle of 
 a plain. It was so lofty that they were obliged to bend 
 their necks quite back on their shoulders in order to 
 see to the top of it. On arriving they entered the city, 
 and seeing a large palace before them with the door 
 wide open, they went in, and found a number of men 
 of prodigious stature, sitting on benches in the hall. 
 Going further, they came before the king, Utgard-Loki, 
 whom they saluted with great respect. The king, re¬ 
 garding them with a scornful smile, said, “If I do not 
 mistake me, that stripling yonder must be the god Thor.” 
 Then addressing himself to Thor, he said, “Perhaps 
 thou mayst be more than thou appearest to be. What 
 are the feats that thou and thy fellows deem yourselves 
 skilled in, for no one is permitted to remain here who 
 does not, in some feat or other, excel all other men?” 
 
 “The feat that I know,” said Lol^i, “is to eat quicker 
 than any one else, and in this I am ready to give a 
 proof against any one here who may choose to com¬ 
 pete with me.” 
 
 “That will indeed be a feat,” said Utgard-Loki, “if 
 thou performest what thou promisest, and it shall be 
 tried forthwith.” 
 
 He then ordered one of his men who was sitting at 
 the farther end of the bench, and whose name was 
 Logi, to come forward and try his skill with Loki. A 
 trough filled with meat having been set on the hall 
 floor, Loki placed himself at one end, and Logi at the 
 other, and each of them began to eat as fast as he could, 
 until they met in the middle of the trough. But it was 
 found that Loki had only eaten the flesh, while his 
 adversary had devoured both flesh and bone, and the 
 
340 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 trough to boot. All the company therefore adjudged 
 that Loki was vanquished. 
 
 Utgard-Loki then asked what feat the young man 
 who accompanied Thor could perform. Thialfi answered 
 that he would run a race with any one who might be 
 matched against him. The king observed that skill 
 in running was something to boast of, but if the youth 
 would win the match he must display great agility. He 
 then arose and went with all who were present to a 
 plain where there was good ground for running on, and 
 calling a young man named Hugi, bade him run a match 
 with Thialfi. In the first course Hugi so much out¬ 
 stripped his competitor that he turned back and met 
 him not far from the starting place. Then they ran a 
 second and a third time, but Thialfi met with no better 
 success. 
 
 Utgard-Loki then asked Thor in what feats he would 
 choose to give proofs of that prowess for which he 
 was so famous. Thor answered that he would try a 
 drinking-match with any one. Utgard-Loki bade his 
 cup-bearer bring the large horn which his followers 
 were obliged to empty when they had trespassed in any 
 way against the law of the feast. The cupbearer having 
 presented it to Thor, Utgard-Loki said, “Whoever is 
 a good drinker will empty that horn at a single draught, 
 though most men make two of it, but the most puny 
 drinker can do it in three.” 
 
 Thor looked at the horn, which seemed of no ex¬ 
 traordinary size though somewhat long; however, as 
 he was very thirsty, he set it to his lips, and without 
 drawing breath, pulled as long and as deeply as he could, 
 that he might not be obliged to make a second draught 
 of it; but when he set the horn down and looked in, 
 he could scarcely perceive that the liquor was diminished. 
 
 After taking breath, Thor went to it again with all 
 his might, but when he took the horn from his mouth, 
 it seemed to him that he had drunk rather less than 
 before, although the horn could now be carried without 
 spilling. 
 
 “How now, Thor?” said Utgard-Loki; “thou must 
 not spare thvself; if thou meanest to drain the horn 
 
THOR’S VISIT TO JOTUNHEIM 
 
 341 
 
 at the third draught thou must pull deeply; and I must 
 needs say that thou wilt not be called so mighty a man 
 here as thou art at home if thou showest no greater 
 prowess in other feats than methinks will be shown in 
 this.” 
 
 Thor, full of wrath, again set the horn to his lips, 
 and did his best to empty it; but on looking in found 
 the liquor was only a little lower, so he resolved to make 
 no further attempt, but gave back the horn to the cup¬ 
 bearer. 
 
 “I now see plainly,” said Utgard-Loki, “that thou art 
 not quite so stout as we thought thee: but wilt thou 
 try any other feat, though methinks thou art not likely 
 to bear any prize away with thee hence.” 
 
 “What new trial hast thou to propose?” said Thor. 
 
 “We have a very trifling game here,” answered Ut¬ 
 gard-Loki, “in which we exercise none but children. 
 It consists in merely lifting my cat from the ground; 
 nor should I have dared to mention such a feat to the 
 great Thor if I had not already observed that thou art 
 by no means what we took thee for.” 
 
 As he finished speaking, a large gray cat sprang on 
 the hall floor. Thor put his hand under the cat’s belly 
 and did his utmost to raise him from the floor, but the 
 cat, bending his back, had, notwithstanding all Thor’s 
 efforts, only one of his feet lifted up, seeing which 
 Thor made no further attempt. 
 
 “This trial has turned out,” said Utgard-Loki, “just 
 as I imagined it would. The cat is large, but Thor 
 is little in comparison to our men.” 
 
 “Little as ye call me,” answered Thor, “let me see 
 who among you will come hither now I am in wrath 
 and wrestle with me.” 
 
 “I see no one here,” said Utgard-Loki, looking at the 
 men sitting on the benches, “who would not think it 
 beneath him to wrestle with thee; let somebody, how¬ 
 ever, call hither that old crone, my nurse Elli, and let 
 Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown to 
 the ground many a man not less strong than this Thor 
 
 is” 
 
 A toothless old woman then entered the hall, and 
 
342 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 was told by Utgard-Loki to take hold of Thor. The 
 tale is shortly told. The more Thor tightened his hold 
 on the crone the firmer she stood. At length after a 
 very violent struggle Thor began to lose his footing, 
 and was finally brought down upon one knee. Utgard- 
 Loki then told them to desist, adding that Thor had 
 now no occasion to ask any one else in the hall to 
 wrestle with him, and it was also getting late; so he 
 showed Thor and his companions to their seats, and they 
 passed the night there in good cheer. 
 
 The next morning, at break of day, Thor and his 
 companions dressed themselves and prepared for their 
 departure. Utgard-Loki ordered a table to be set for 
 them, on which there was no lack of victuals or drink. 
 After the repast Utgard-Loki led them to the gate of 
 the city, and on parting asked Thor how he thought his 
 journey had turned out, and whether he had met with 
 any men stronger than himself. Thor told him that he 
 could not deny but that he had brought great shame on 
 himself. “And what grieves me most,” he added, “is 
 that ye will call me a person of little worth.” 
 
 “Nay,” said Utgard-Loki, “it behooves me to tell thee 
 the truth, now thou art out of the city, which so long 
 as I live and have my way thou shalt never enter again. 
 And, by my troth, had I known beforehand that thou 
 hadst so much strength in thee, and wouldst have 
 brought me so near to a great mishap, I would not have 
 suffered thee to enter this time. Know then that I have 
 all along deceived thee by my illusions; first in the 
 forest, where I tied up the wallet with iron wire so 
 that thou couldst not untie it. After this thou gavest 
 me three blows with thy mallet; the first, though the 
 least, would have ended my days had it fallen on me, 
 but I slipped aside and thy blows fell on the mountain, 
 where thou wilt find three glens, one of them remark¬ 
 ably deep. These are the dints made by thy mallet. I 
 have made use of similar illusions in the contests you 
 have had with my followers. In the first, Loki, like 
 hunger itself, devoured all that was set before him, 
 but Logi was in reality nothing else than Fire, and 
 therefore consumed not only the meat, but the trough 
 
THE DEATH OF BALDUR 
 
 343 
 
 which held it. Hugi, with whom Thialfi contended in 
 running, was Thought, and it was impossible for Thialfi 
 to keep pace with that. When thou in thy turn didst 
 attempt to empty the horn, thou didst perform, by my 
 troth, a deed so marvellous that had I not seen it my¬ 
 self I should never have believed it. For one end of that 
 horn reached the sea, which thou wast not aware of, but 
 when thou comest to the shore thou wilt perceive how 
 much the sea has sunk by thy draughts. Thou didst 
 perform a feat no less wonderful by lifting up the cat, 
 and to tell thee the truth, when we saw that one of 
 his paws was off the floor, we were all of us terror- 
 stricken, for what thou tookest for a cat was in reality 
 the Midgard serpent that encompasseth the earth, and 
 he was so stretched by thee that he was barely long 
 enough to enclose it between his head and tail. Thy 
 wrestling with Elli was also a most astonishing feat, 
 for there was never yet a man, nor ever will be, whom 
 Old Age, for such in fact was Elli, will not sooner or 
 later lay low. But now, as we are going to part, let 
 me tell thee that it will be better for both of us if thou 
 never come near me again, for shouldst thou do so, I 
 shall again defend myself by other illusions, so that 
 thou wilt only lose thy labor and get no fame from 
 the contest with me.” 
 
 On hearing these words Thor in a rage laid hold of 
 his mallet and would have launched it at him, but 
 Utgard-Loki had disappeared, and when Thor would 
 have returned to the city to destroy it, he found noth¬ 
 ing around him but a verdant plain. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE DEATH OF BALDUR-THE ELVES-RUNIC LETTERS — 
 
 ICELAND-TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY-NIBELUNGEN LIED 
 
 THE DEATH OF BALDUR 
 
 Baldur the Good, having been tormented with ter¬ 
 rible dreams indicating that his life was in peril, told 
 
344 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 them to the assembled gods, who resolved to conjure all 
 things to avert from him the threatened danger. Then 
 Frigga, the wife of Odin, exacted an oath from fire 
 and water, from iron and all other metals, from stones, 
 trees, diseases, beasts, birds, poisons, and creeping things, 
 that none of them would do any harm to Baldur. Odin, 
 not satisfied with all this, and feeling alarmed for the 
 fate of his son, determined to consult the prophetess 
 Angerbode, a giantess, mother of Fenris, Hela, and the 
 Midgard serpent. She was dead, and Odin was forced 
 to seek her in Hela’s dominions. This Descent of Odin 
 forms the subject of Gray’s fine ode beginning,— 
 
 “Uprose the king- of men with speed 
 And saddled straight his coal-black steed ” 
 
 But the other gods, feeling that what Frigga had 
 done was quite sufficient, amused themselves with using 
 Baldur as a mark, some hurling darts at him, some 
 stones, while others hewed at him with their swords 
 and battle-axes; for do what they would, none of them 
 could harm him. And this became a favorite pastime 
 with them and was regarded as an honor shown to 
 Baldur. But when Loki beheld the scene he was sorely 
 vexed that Baldur was not hurt. Assuming, therefore, 
 the shape of a woman, he went to Fensalir, the man¬ 
 sion of Frigga. That goddess, when she saw the pre¬ 
 tended woman, inquired of her if she knew what the 
 gods were doing at their meetings. She replied that 
 they were throwing darts and stones at Baldur, with¬ 
 out being able to hurt him. “Ay,” said Frigga, “neither 
 stones, nor sticks, nor anything else can hurt Baldur, 
 for I have exacted an oath from all of them.” “What,” 
 exclaimed the woman, “have all things sworn to spare 
 Baldur?” “All things,” replied Frigga, “except one lit¬ 
 tle shrub that grows on the eastern side of Valhalla, 
 and is called Mistletoe, and which I thought too young 
 and feeble to crave an oath from.” 
 
 As soon as Loki heard this he went away, and re¬ 
 suming his natural shape, cut off the mistletoe, and re¬ 
 paired to the place where the gods were assembled. 
 There he found Hodur standing apart, without partak- 
 
THE DEATH OF BALDUR 
 
 345 
 
 ing of the sports, on account of his blindness, and going 
 up to him, said, “Why dost thou not also throw some¬ 
 thing at Baldur?” 
 
 “Because I am blind,” answered Hodur, “and see 
 not where Baldur is, and have, moreover, nothing to 
 throw.” 
 
 “Come, then,” said Loki, “do like the rest, and show 
 honor to Baldur by throwing this twig at him, and I 
 will direct thy arm towards the place where he stands.” 
 
 Hodur then took the mistletoe, and under the guid¬ 
 ance of Loki, darted it at Baldur, who, pierced through 
 and through, fell down lifeless. Surely never was there 
 witnessed, either among gods or men, a more atrocious 
 deed than this. When Baldur fell, the gods were struck 
 speechless with horror, and then they looked at each 
 other, and all were of one mind to lay hands on him 
 who had done the deed, but they were obliged to delay 
 their vengeance out of respect for the sacred place where 
 they were assembled. They gave vent to their grief by 
 loud lamentations. When the gods came to themselves, 
 Frigga asked who among them wished to gain all her 
 love and good will. “For this,” said she, “sha^ he have 
 who will ride to Hel and offer Hela a ransom if she 
 will let Baldur return to Asgard.” Whereupon Hermod, 
 surnamed the Nimble, the son of Odin, offered to un¬ 
 dertake the journey. Odin’s horse, Sleipnir, which has 
 eight legs and can outrun the wind, was then led forth, 
 on which Hermod mounted and galloped away on his 
 mission. For the space of nine days and as many nights 
 he rode through deep glens so dark that he could not 
 discern anything, until he arrived at the river Gyoll, 
 which he passed over on a bridge covered with glit¬ 
 tering gold. The maiden who kept the bridge asked him 
 his name and lineage, telling him that the day before 
 five bands of dead persons had ridden over the bridge, 
 and did not shake it as much as he alone. “But,” she 
 added, “thou hast not death’s hue on thee; why then 
 ridest thou here on the way to Hel?” 
 
 “I ride to Hel,” answered Hermod, “to seek Baldur, 
 Hast thou perchance seen him pass this way?” 
 
 She replied, “Baldur hath ridden over Gyoll’s bridge, 
 
346 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 and yonder lieth the way he took to the abodes of 
 death.” 
 
 Hermod pursued his journey until he came to the 
 barred gates of Hel. Here he alighted, girthed his sad¬ 
 dle tighter, and remounting clapped both spurs to his 
 horse, who cleared the gate by a tremendous leap with¬ 
 out touching it. Hermod then rode on to the palace, 
 where he found his brother Baldur occupying the most 
 distinguished seat in the hall, and passed the night in 
 his company. The next morning he besought Hela to let 
 Baldur ride home with him, assuring her that nothing 
 but lamentations were to be heard among the gods. 
 Hela answered that it should now be tried whether 
 Baldur was so beloved as he was said to be. “If, 
 therefore,’’ she added, “all things in the world, both liv¬ 
 ing and lifeless, weep for him, then shall he return to 
 life; but if any one thing speak against him or refuse 
 to weep, he shall be kept in Hel.” 
 
 Hermod then rode back to Asgard and gave an ac¬ 
 count of all he had heard and witnessed. 
 
 The gods upon this despatched messengers through¬ 
 out the world to beg everything to weep in order that 
 Baldur might be delivered from Hel. All things very 
 willingly complied with this request, both men and every 
 other living being, as well as earths, and stones, and 
 trees, and metals, just as we have all seen these things 
 weep when they are brought from a cold place into a 
 hot one. As the messengers were returning, they found 
 an old hag named Thaukt sitting in a cavern, and begged 
 her to weep Baldur out of Hel. But she answered, 
 
 “Thaukt will wail 
 With dry tears 
 Baldur’s bale-fire. 
 
 Let Hela keep her own.” 
 
 It was strongly suspected that this hag was no other 
 t!ian Loki himself, who never ceased to work evil among 
 gods and men. So Baldur was prevented from coming 
 back to Asgard. 3 
 
 1 In Longfellow’s Poems will be found a poem entitled “Tegner’s Drapa,” 
 upon the subject of Baldur’s death. 
 
THE FUNERAL OF BALDUR 
 
 347 
 
 THE FUNERAL OF BALDUR 
 
 The gods took up the dead body and bore it to the 
 seashore where stood Baldur’s ship “Hringham,” which 
 passed for the largest in the world. Baldur’s dead body 
 was put on the funeral pile, on board the ship, and his 
 wife Nanna was so struck with grief at the sight that 
 she broke her heart, and her body was burned on the 
 same pile as her husband’s. There was a vast concourse 
 of various kinds of people at Baldur’s obsequies. First 
 came Odin accompanied by Frigga, the Valkyrie, and 
 his ravens; then Frey in his car drawn by Gullinbursti, 
 the boar; Heimdall rode his horse Gulltopp, and Freya 
 drove in her chariot drawn by cats. There were also a 
 great many Frost giants and giants of the mountain 
 present. Baldur’s horse was led to the pile fully ca¬ 
 parisoned and consumed in the same flames with his 
 master. 
 
 But Loki did not escape his deserved punishment. 
 When he saw how angry the gods were, he fled to the 
 mountain, and there built himself a hut with four doors, 
 so that he could see every approaching danger. He in¬ 
 vented a net to catch the fishes, such as fishermen have 
 used since his time. But Odin found out his hiding- 
 place and the gods assembled to take him. He, seeing 
 this, changed himself into a salmon, and lay hid among 
 the stones of the brook. But the gods took his net 
 and dragged the brook, and Loki, finding he must be 
 caught, tried to leap over the net; but Thor caught him 
 by the tail and compressed it, so that salmons ever since 
 have had that part remarkably fine and thin. They bound 
 him with chains and suspended a serpent over his head, 
 whose venom falls upon his face drop by drop. His 
 wife Siguna sits by his side and catches the drops as 
 they fall, in a cup; but when she carries it away to 
 empty it, the venom falls upon Loki, which makes him 
 howl with horror, and twist his body about so violently 
 that the whole earth shakes, and this produces what men 
 call earthquakes. 
 
348 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 THE ELVES 
 
 The Edda mentions another class of beings, inferior 
 to the gods, but still possessed of great power; these 
 were called Elves. The white spirits, or Elves of 
 Light, were exceedingly fair, more brilliant than the 
 sun, and clad in garments of a delicate and transparent 
 texture. They loved the light, were kindly disposed to 
 mankind, and generally appeared as fair and lovely chil¬ 
 dren. Their country was called Alfheim, and was the 
 domain of Freyr, the god of the sun, in whose light 
 they were always sporting. 
 
 The Black or Night Elves were a different kind of 
 creatures. Ugly, long-nosed dwarfs, of a dirty brown 
 color, they appeared only at night, for they avoided the 
 sun as their most deadly enemy, because whenever his 
 beams fell upon any of them they changed them imme¬ 
 diately into stones. Their language was the echo of 
 solitudes, and their dwelling-places subterranean caves 
 and clefts. They were supposed to have come into ex¬ 
 istence as maggots produced by the decaying flesh of 
 Ymir’s body, and were afterwards endowed by the gods 
 with a human form and great understanding. They 
 were particularly distinguished for a knowledge of the 
 mysterious powers of nature, and for the runes which 
 they carved and explained. They were the most skilful 
 artificers of all created beings, and worked in metals and 
 in wood. Among their most noted works were Thor’s 
 hammer, and the ship “Skidbladnir,” which they gave 
 to Freyr, and which was so large that it could contain 
 all the deities with their war and household implements 
 but so skillfully was it wrought that when folded to¬ 
 gether it could be put into a side pocket. 
 
 RAGNAROK, THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS 
 
 It was a firm belief of the northern nations that a time 
 would come when all the visible creation, the gods of 
 Valhalla and Niffieheim, the inhabitants of Jotunheim, 
 Alfheim, and Midgard, together with their habitations, 
 would be destroyed. The fearful day of destruction 
 
RAGNAROK 
 
 349 
 
 will not, however, be without its forerunners. First 
 will come a triple winter, during which snow will fall 
 from the four corners of the heavens, the frost be very 
 severe, the wind piercing, the weather tempestuous, and 
 the sun impart no gladness. Three such winters will 
 pass away without being tempered by a single summer. 
 Three other similar winters will then follow, during 
 which war and discord will spread over the universe. 
 The earth itself will be frightened and begin to tremble, 
 the sea leave its basin, the heavens tear asunder, and 
 men perish in great numbers, and the eagles of the air 
 feast upon their still quivering bodies. The wolf Fenris 
 will now break his bands, the Midgard serpent rise out 
 of her bed in the sea, and Loki, released from his bonds, 
 will join the enemies of the gods. Amidst the general 
 devastation the sons of Muspelheim will rush forth un¬ 
 der their leader Surtur, before and behind whom are 
 flames and burning fire. Onward they ride over Bifrost, 
 the rainbow bridge, which breaks under the horses' 
 hoofs. But they, disregarding its fall, direct their 
 course to the battlefield called Vigrid. Thither also re¬ 
 pair the wolf Fenris, the Midgard serpent, Loki with 
 all the followers of Hela, and the Frost giants. 
 
 Heimdall now stands up and sounds the Giallar horn 
 to assemble the gods and heroes for the contest. The 
 gods advance, led on by Odin, who engages the wolf 
 Fenris, but falls a victim to the monster, who is, how¬ 
 ever, slain by Vidar, Odin’s son. Thor gains great re¬ 
 nown by killing the Midgard serpent, but recoils and 
 falls dead, suffocated with the venom which the dying 
 monster vomits over him. Loki and Heimdall meet 
 and fight till they are both slain. The gods and their 
 enemies having fallen in battle, Surtur, who has killed 
 Freyr, darts fire and flames over the world, and the 
 whole universe is burned up. The sun becomes dim, 
 the earth sinks into the ocean, the stars fall from heaven, 
 and time is no more. 
 
 After this Alfadur (the Almighty) will cause a new 
 heaven and a new earth to arise out of the sea. The 
 new earth filled with abundant supplies will spontane¬ 
 ously produce its fruits without labor or care. Wicked- 
 
350 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 ness and misery will no more be known, but the gods 
 and men will live happily together. 
 
 RUNIC LETTERS 
 
 One cannot travel far in Denmark, Norway, or 
 Sweden without meeting with great stones of different 
 forms, engraven with characters called Runic, which 
 appear at first sight very different from all we know. 
 The letters consist almost invariably of straight lines, 
 in the shape of little sticks either singly or put together. 
 Such sticks were in early times used by the northern 
 nations for the purpose of ascertaining future events. 
 The sticks were shaken up, and from the figures that 
 they formed a kind of divination was derived. 
 
 The Runic characters were of various kinds. They 
 were chiefly used for magical purposes. The noxious, 
 or, as they called them, the bitter runes, were em¬ 
 ployed to bring various evils on their enemies; the favor¬ 
 able averted misfortune. Some were medicinal, others 
 employed to win love, etc. In later times they were 
 frequently used for inscriptions, of which more than a 
 thousand have been found. The language is a dialect of 
 the Gothic, called Norse, still in use in Iceland. The 
 inscriptions may therefore be read with certainty, but 
 hitherto very few have been found which throw the 
 least light on history. They are mostly epitaphs on 
 tombstones. 
 
 Gray’s ode on the “Descent of Odin” contains an al¬ 
 lusion to the use of Runic letters for incantation: 
 
 “Facing to the northern clime, 
 
 Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme; 
 
 Thrice pronounced, in accents dread, 
 
 The thrilling verse that wakes the dead. 
 
 Till from out the hollow ground 
 Slowly breathed a sullen sound.” 
 
 THE SKALDS 
 
 The Skalds were the bards and poets of the nation, 
 a very important class of men in all communities in an 
 early stage of civilization. They are the depositaries of 
 
TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY 
 
 351 
 
 whatever historic lore there is, and it is their office to 
 mingle something of intellectual gratification with the 
 rude feasts of the warriors, by rehearsing, with such 
 accompaniments of poetry and music as their skill can 
 afford, the exploits of their heroes living or dead. The 
 compositions of the Skalds were called Sagas, many of 
 which have come down to us, and contain valuable ma¬ 
 terials of history, and a faithful picture of the state of 
 society at the time to which they relate. 
 
 ICELAND 
 
 The Eddas and Sagas have come to us from Iceland. 
 The following extract from Carlyle’s lectures on “Heroes 
 and Hero Worship” gives an animated account of the 
 region where the strange stories we have been reading 
 had their origin. Let the reader contrast it for a mo¬ 
 ment with Greece, the parent of classical mythology: 
 
 “In that strange island, Iceland,—burst up, the geolo¬ 
 gists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea, a wild land 
 of barrenness and lava, swallowed many months of every 
 year in black tempests, yet with a wild, gleaming beauty 
 in summer time, towering up there stern and grim in 
 the North Ocean, with its snow yokuls [mountains], 
 roaring geysers [boiling springs], sulphur pools, and 
 horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste, chaotic battle¬ 
 field of Frost and Fire,—where, of all places, we least 
 looked for literature or written memorials,—the record 
 of these things was written down. On the seaboard of 
 this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle 
 can subsist, and men by means of them and of what the 
 sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, 
 men who had deep thoughts in them and uttered music¬ 
 ally their thoughts. Much would be lost had Ice¬ 
 land not been burst up from the sea, not been discovered 
 by the Northmen!” 
 
 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY 
 
 In the mythology of Germany proper, the name of 
 Odin appears as Wotan; Freya and Frigga are regarded 
 as one and the same divinity, and the gods are in general 
 
352 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 represented as less warlike in character than those in 
 the Scandinavian myths. As a whole, however, Teu¬ 
 tonic mythology runs along almost identical lines 
 with that of the northern nations. The most notable 
 divergence is due to modifications of the legends by 
 reason of the difference in climatic conditions. The 
 more advanced social condition of the Germans is also 
 apparent in their mythology. 
 
 THE NIBELUNGEN LIED 
 
 One of the oldest myths of the Teutonic race is found 
 in the great national epic of the Nibelungen Lied, which 
 dates back to the prehistoric era when Wotan, Frigga, 
 Thor, Loki, and the other gods and goddesses were 
 worshipped in the German forests. The epic is divided 
 into two parts, the first of which tells how Siegfried, 
 the youngest of the kings of the Netherlands, went to 
 Worms, to ask in marriage the hand of Kriemhild, sister 
 of Gunther, King of Burgundy. While he was staying 
 with Gunther, Siegfried helped the Burgundian king to 
 secure as his wife Brunhild, queen of Issland. The 
 latter had announced publicly that he only should be her 
 husband who could beat her in hurling a spear, throwing 
 a huge stone, and in leaping. Siegfried, who possessed 
 a cloak of invisibility, aided Gunther in these three con¬ 
 tests, and Brunhild became his wife. In return for these 
 services, Gunther gave Siegfried his sister Kriemhild in 
 marriage. 
 
 After some time had elapsed, Siegfried and Kriem¬ 
 hild went to visit Gunther, when the two women fell into 
 a dispute about the relative merits of their husbands. 
 Kriemhild, to exalt Siegfried, boasted that it was to the 
 latter that Gunther owed his victories and his wife. 
 Brunhild, in great anger, employed Hagan, liegeman of 
 Gunther, to murder Siegfried. In the epic Hagan is de¬ 
 scribed as follows: 
 
 “Well-grown and well-compacted was that redoubted guest; 
 
 Long were his legs and sinewy, and deep and broad his chest; 
 
 His hair, that once was sable, with gray was dashed of late; 
 
 Most terrible his visage, and lordly was his gait” 
 
 —Nibelungen Liedj stanza 1789. 
 
THE NIBELUNGEN HOARD 
 
 353 
 
 This Achilles of German romance stabbed Siegfried 
 between the shoulders, as the unfortunate King of the 
 Netherlands was stooping to drink from a brook during 
 a hunting expedition. 
 
 The second part of the epic relates how, thirteen years 
 later, Kriemhild married Etzel, King of the Huns. 
 After a time, she invited the King of Burgundy, with 
 Hagan and many others, to the court of her husband. 
 A fearful quarrel was stirred up in the banquet hall, 
 which ended in the slaughter of all the Burgundians but 
 Gunther and Hagan. These two were taken prisoners 
 and given to Kriemhild, who with her own hand cut off 
 the heads of both. For this bloody act of vengeance 
 Kriemhild was herself slain by Hildebrand, a magician 
 and champion, who in German mythology holds a place 
 to an extent corresponding to that of Nestor in the 
 Greek mythology. 
 
 THE NIBELUNGEN HOARD 
 
 This was a mythical mass of gold and precious stones 
 which Siegfried obtained from the Nibelungs, the people 
 of the north whom he had conquered and whose country 
 he had made tributary to his own kingdom of the Nether¬ 
 lands. Upon his marriage, Siegfried gave the treasure 
 to Kriemhild as her wedding portion. After the murder 
 of Siegfried, Hagan seized it and buried it secretly be¬ 
 neath the Rhine at Lochham, intending to recover it at 
 a future period. The hoard was lost forever when 
 Hagan was killed by Kriemhild. Its wonders are thus 
 set forth in the poem: 
 
 “ ’Twas as much as twelve huge wagons in four whole nights 
 and days 
 
 Could carry from the mountain down to the salt sea bay; 
 
 Though to and fro each wagon thrice journeyed every day. 
 
 * It was made up of nothing but precious stones and gold; 
 
 Were all the world bought from it, and down the value told, 
 
 Not a mark the less would there be left than erst there was, I 
 ween.” 
 
 —Nibelungen Lied, XIX. 
 
354 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 Whoever possessed the Nibelungen hoard were 
 termed Nibelungers. Thus at one time certain people 
 of Norway were so called. When Siegfried held the 
 treasure he received the title “King of the Nibelungers. ,, 
 
 WAGNER*S NIBELUNGEN RING 
 
 Though Richard Wagner’s music-drama of the Nibe¬ 
 lungen Ring bears some resemblance to the ancient Ger¬ 
 man epic, it is a wholly independent composition and 
 was derived from various old songs and sagas, which 
 the dramatist wove into one great harmonious story. 
 The principal source was the Volsunga Saga, while 
 lesser parts were taken from the Elder Edda and the 
 Younger Edda, and others from the Nibelungen Lied, 
 the Ecklenlied, and other Teutonic folklore. 
 
 In the drama there are at first only four distinct races, 
 —the gods, the giants, the dwarfs, and the nymphs. 
 Later, by a special creation, there come the valkyrie and 
 the heroes. The gods are the noblest and highest race, 
 and dwell first in the mountain meadows, later in the 
 palace of Valhalla on the heights. The giants are a 
 great and strong race, but lack wisdom; they hate what 
 is noble, and are enemies of the gods; they dwell in caves 
 near the earth’s surface. The dwarfs, or nibelungs, are 
 black uncouth pigmies, hating the good, hating the gods; 
 they are crafty and cunning, and dwell in the bowels of 
 the earth. The nymphs are pure, innocent creatures of 
 the water. The valkyrie are daughters of the gods, but 
 mingled with a mortal strain; they gather dead heroes 
 from the battle-fields and carry them to Valhalla. The 
 heroes are children of the gods, but also mingled with 
 a mortal strain; they are destined to become at last the 
 highest race of all, and to succeed the gods in the govern¬ 
 ment of the world. 
 
 The principal gods are Wotan, Loki, Donner, and 
 Froh. The chief giants are Fafner and Fasolt, brothers. 
 The chief dwarfs are Alberich and Mime, brothers, and 
 later Hagan, son of Alberich. The chief nymphs are 
 the Rhine-daughters, Flosshilda, Woglinda,, and Well- 
 gunda. There are nine Valkyrie, of whom Brunhild 
 is the leading one. 
 
WAGNER’S NIBELUNGEN RING 
 
 355 
 
 Wagner’s story of the Ring may be summarized as 
 follows: 
 
 A hoard of gold exists in the depths of the Rhine, 
 guarded by the innocent Rhine-maidens. Alberich, the 
 dwarf, forswears love to gain this gold. He makes it 
 into a magic ring. It gives him all power, and he gathers 
 by it a vast amount of treasures. 
 
 Meanwhile Wotan, chief of the gods, has engaged the 
 giants to build for him a noble castle, Valhalla, from 
 whence to rule the world, promising in payment Freya, 
 goddess of youth and love. But the gods find they cannot 
 spare Freya, as they are dependent on her for their im¬ 
 mortal youth. Loki, called upon to provide a substitute, 
 tells of Alberich’s magic ring and other treasure. Wotan 
 goes with Loki, and they steal the ring and the golden 
 hoard from Alberich, who curses the ring and lays the 
 curse on all who shall henceforth possess it. The gods 
 give the ring and the treasure to the giants as a sub¬ 
 stitute for Freya. The curse at once begins. One giant, 
 Fafner, kills his brother to get all, and transforms him¬ 
 self into a dragon to guard his wealth. The gods enter 
 Valhalla over the rainbow bridge. This ends the first 
 part of the drama, called the Rhine-Gold. 
 
 The second part, the Valkyrie, relates how Wotan still 
 covets the ring. He cannot take it himself, for he has 
 given his word to the giants. He stands or falls by his 
 word. So he devises an artifice to get the ring. He 
 will get a hero-race to work for him and recover the 
 ring and the treasures. Siegmund and Sieglinda are 
 twin children of this new race. Sieglinda is carried off 
 as a child and is forced into marriage with Hunding. 
 Siegmund comes, and unknowingly breaks the law of 
 marriage, but wins Nothung, the great sword, 
 and a bride. Brunhild, chief of the Valkyrie, is com¬ 
 missioned by Wotan at the instance of Fricka, god¬ 
 dess of marriage, to slay him for his sin. She disobeys 
 and tries to save him, but Hunding, helped by Wotan, 
 slays him. Sieglinda, however, about to bear the free 
 hero, to be called Siegfried, is saved by Brunhild, and 
 hid in the forest. Brunhild herself is punished by 
 being made a mortal woman. She is left sleeping on the 
 
356 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 mountains with a wall of fire around her which only a 
 hero can penetrate. 
 
 The drama continues with the story of Siegfried, 
 which opens with a scene in the smithy between Mime 
 the dwarf and Siegfried. Mime is welding a sword, 
 and Siegfried scorns him. Mime tells him something of 
 his mother, Sieglinda, and shows him the broken pieces 
 of his father’s sword. Wotan comes and tells Mime that 
 only one who has no fear can remake the sword. Now 
 Siegfried knows no fear and soon remakes the sword 
 Nothung. Wotan and Alberich come to where the 
 dragon Fafner is guarding the ring. They both long for 
 it, but neither can take it. Soon Mime comes bringing 
 Siegfried with the mighty sword. Fafner comes out, but 
 Siegfried slays him. Happening to touch his lips with 
 the dragon’s blood, he understands the language of the 
 birds. They tell him of the ring. He goes and gets it. 
 Siegfried now has possession of the ring, but it is to 
 bring him nothing of happiness, only evil. It is to curse 
 love and finally bring death. The birds also tell him of 
 Mime’s treachery. He slays Mime. He longs for some 
 one to love. The birds tell him of the slumbering 
 Brunnhilda, whom he finds and marries. 
 
 The Dusk of the Gods portrays at the opening the 
 three norns or fates weaving and measuring the thread 
 of destiny. It is the beginning of the end. The perfect 
 pair, Siegfried and Brunhild, appear in all the glory 
 of their life, splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood. 
 But Siegfried goes out into the world to achieve deeds 
 of prowess. He gives her the Nibelungen ring to keep 
 as a pledge of his love till his return. Meanwhile Al¬ 
 berich also has begotten a son, Hagan, to achieve for 
 him the possession of the ring. He is partly of the 
 Gibichung race, and works through Gunther and Gut- 
 rune, half-brother and half-sister to him. They beguile 
 Siegfried to them, give him a magic draught which 
 makes him forget Brunhild and fall in love with Gut- 
 rune. Under this same spell, he ofifers to bring Brun¬ 
 hild for wife to Gunther. Now is Valhalla full of 
 sorrow and despair. The gods fear the end. Wotan 
 murmurs, “O that she would give back the ring to the 
 
WAGNER’S NIBELUNGEN RING 
 
 357 
 
 Rhine.” But Brunhild will not give it up,—it is now 
 her pledge of love. Siegfried comes, takes the ring, and 
 Brunhild is now brought to the Rhine castle of the 
 Gibichungs, but Siegfried under the spell does not love 
 her. She is to be wedded to Gunther. She rises in 
 wrath and denounces Siegfried. But at a hunting ban¬ 
 quet Siegfried is given another magic draught, remem¬ 
 bers all, and is slain by Hagan by a blow in the back, as 
 he calls on Brunhild’s name in love. Then comes the 
 end. The body of Siegfried is burned on a funeral 
 pyre, a grand funeral march is heard, and Brunhild 
 rides into the flames and sacrifices herself for love’s 
 sake; the ring goes back to the Rhine-daughters; and 
 the old world—of the gods of Valhalla, of passion and 
 sin—is burnt up with flames, for the gods have broken 
 moral law, and coveted power rather than love, gold 
 rather than truth, and therefore must perish. They pass, 
 and a new era, the reign of love and truth, has begun. 
 
 Those who wish to study the differences in the legends 
 of the Nibelungen Lied and the Nibelungen Ring, and 
 the way in which Wagner used his ancient material, are 
 referred to Professor W. C. Sawyer’s book on “Teu¬ 
 tonic Legends in the Nibelungen Lied and the Nibe¬ 
 lungen Ring,” where the matter is treated in full detail. 
 For a very thorough and clear analysis of the Ring as 
 Wagner gives it, with a study of the musical motifs, 
 probably nothing is better for general readers than 
 the volume “The Epic of Sounds,” by Freda Winworth. 
 The more scholarly work of Professor Lavignac is indis¬ 
 pensable for the student of Wagner’s dramas. There 
 is much illuminating comment on the sources and ma¬ 
 terials in “Legends of the Wagner Drama” by J. L. 
 Weston. 
 
358 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 THE DRUIDS—IONA 
 DRUIDS 
 
 The Druids were the priests or ministers of religion 
 among the ancient Celtic nations in Gaul, Britain, and 
 Germany. Our information respecting them is bor¬ 
 rowed from notices in the Greek and Roman writers, 
 compared with the remains of Welsh and Gaelic poetry 
 still extant. 
 
 The Druids combined the functions of the priest, the 
 magistrate, the scholar, and the physician. They stood 
 to the people of the Celtic tribes in a relation closely 
 analogous to that in which the Brahmans of India, the 
 Magi of Persia, and the priests of the Egyptians stood 
 to the people respectively by whom they were revered. 
 
 The Druids taught the existence of one god, to whom 
 they gave a name “Be’ al,” which Celtic antiquaries tell 
 us means “the life of everything,” or “the source of all 
 beings,” and which seems to have affinity with the 
 Phoenician Baal. What renders this affinity more strik¬ 
 ing is that the Druids as well as the Phoenicians identi¬ 
 fied this, their supreme deity, with the Sun. Fire was 
 regarded as a symbol of the divinity. The Latin writers 
 assert that the Druids also worshipped numerous in¬ 
 ferior gods. 
 
 They used no images to represent the object of their 
 worship, nor did they meet in temples or buildings of 
 any kind for the performance of their sacred rites. A 
 circle of stones (each stone generally of vast size), en¬ 
 closing an area of from twenty feet to thirty yards in 
 diameter, constituted their sacred place. The most cele¬ 
 brated of these now remaining is Stonehenge, on Salis¬ 
 bury Plain, England. 
 
 These sacred circles were generally situated near 
 some stream, or under the shadow of a grove or wide- 
 spreading oak. In the centre of the circle stood the 
 
DRUIDS 
 
 359 
 
 Cromlech or altar, which was a large stone, placed in 
 the manner of a table upon other stones set up on end. 
 The Druids had also their high places, which were 
 large stones or piles of stones on the summits of hills. 
 These were called Cairns, and were used in the worship 
 of the deity under the symbol of the sun. 
 
 That the Druids offered sacrifices to their deity there 
 can be no doubt. But there is some uncertainty as to 
 what they offered, and of the ceremonies connected with 
 their religious services we know almost nothing. The 
 classical (Roman) writers affirm that they offered on 
 great occasions human sacrifices; as for success in war 
 or for relief from dangerous diseases. Caesar has given 
 a detailed account of the manner in which this was done. 
 “They have images of immense size, the limbs of which 
 are framed with twisted twigs and filled with living per¬ 
 sons. These being set on fire, those within are encom¬ 
 passed by the flames.” Many attempts have been made 
 by Celtic writers to shake the testimony of the Roman 
 historians to this fact, but without success. 
 
 The Druids observed two festivals in each year. The 
 former took place in the beginning of May, and was 
 called Beltane or “fire of God.” On this occasion a 
 large fire was kindled on some elevated spot, in honor 
 of the sun, whose returning beneficence they thus wel¬ 
 comed after the gloom and desolation of winter. Of 
 this custom a trace remains in the name given to Whit¬ 
 sunday in parts of Scotland to this day. Sir Walter 
 Scott uses the word in the “Boat Song” in the “Lady 
 of the Lake”: 
 
 “Ours is no sapling, chance sown by the fountain. 
 Blooming at Beltane in winter to fade;” etc. 
 
 The other great festival of the Druids was called 
 “Samh’in,” or “fire of peace,” and was held on Hallow- 
 eve (first of November), which still retains this designa¬ 
 tion in the Highlands of Scotland. On this occasion the 
 Druids assembled in solemn conclave, in the most cen¬ 
 tral part of the district, to discharge the judicial func¬ 
 tions of their order. All questions, whether public or 
 
360 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 private, all crimes against person or property, were at 
 this time brought before them for adjudication. With 
 these judicial acts were combined certain superstitious 
 usages, especially the kindling of the sacred fire, from 
 which all the fires in the district, which had been before¬ 
 hand scrupulously extinguished, might be relighted. This 
 usage of kindling fires on Hallow-eve lingered in the 
 British islands long after the establishment of Chris¬ 
 tianity. 
 
 Besides these two great annual festivals, the Druids 
 were in the habit of observing the full moon, and espe¬ 
 cially the sixth day of the moon. On the latter they 
 sought the Mistletoe, which grew on their favorite oaks, 
 and to which, as well as to the oak itself, they ascribed 
 a peculiar virtue and sacredness. The discovery of it 
 was an occasion of rejoicing and solemn worship. 
 “They call it,” says Pliny, “by a word in their language, 
 which means ‘heal-all,’ and having made solemn prep¬ 
 aration for feasting and sacrifice under the tree, they 
 drive thither two milk-white bulls, whose horns are then 
 for the first time bound. The priest then, robed in 
 white, ascends the tree, and cuts off the mistletoe with 
 a golden sickle. It is caught in a white mantle, after 
 which they proceed to slay the victims, at the same time 
 praying that God would render his gift prosperous to 
 those to whom he had given it.” They drink the water 
 in which it has been infused, and think it a remedy for 
 all diseases. The mistletoe is a parasitic plant, and is 
 not always nor often found on the oak, so that when 
 it is found it is the more precious. 
 
 The Druids were the teachers of morality as well as 
 of religion. Of their ethical teaching a valuable speci¬ 
 men is preserved in the Triads of the Welsh Bards, 
 and from this we may gather that their views of moral 
 rectitude were on the whole just, and that they held 
 and inculcated many very noble and valuable principles 
 of conduct. They were also the men of science and 
 learning of their age and people. Whether they were 
 acquainted with letters or not has been disputed, though 
 the probability is strong that they were, to some extent. 
 But it is certain that they committed nothing of their 
 
STONEHENGE. 
 
DRUIDS 
 
 36V 
 
 doctrine, their history, or their poetry to writing. Their 
 teaching was oral, and their literature (if such a word 
 may be used in such a case) was preserved solely by 
 tradition. But the Roman writers admit that “they paid 
 much attention to the order and laws of nature, and in¬ 
 vestigated and taught to the youth under their charge 
 many things concerning the stars and their motions, the 
 size of the world and the lands, and concerning the 
 might and power of the immortal gods.” 
 
 Their history consisted in traditional tales, in which 
 the heroic deeds of their forefathers were celebrated. 
 These were apparently in verse, and thus constituted 
 part of the poetry as well as the history of the Druids. 
 In the poems of Ossian we have, if not the actual pro¬ 
 ductions of Druidical times, what may be considered 
 faithful representations of the songs of the Bards. 
 
 The Bards were an essential part of the Druidical 
 hierarchy. One author, Pennant, says, “The Bards 
 were supposed to be endowed with powers equal to 
 inspiration. They were the oral historians of all past 
 transactions, public and private. They were also ac¬ 
 complished genealogists,” etc. 
 
 Pennant gives a minute account of the Eisteddfods 
 or sessions of the Bards and minstrels, which were held 
 in Wales for many centuries, long after the Druidical 
 priesthood in its other departments became extinct. At 
 these meetings none but Bards of merit were suffered to 
 rehearse their pieces, and minstrels of skill to perform. 
 Judges were appointed to decide on their respective 
 abilities, and suitable degrees were conferred. In the 
 earlier period the judges were appointed by the Welsh 
 princes, and after the conquest of Wales, by commis¬ 
 sion from the kings of England. Yet the tradition is 
 that Edward I., in revenge for the influence of the 
 Bards in animating the resistance of the people to his 
 sway, persecuted them with great cruelty. This tra¬ 
 dition has furnished the poet Gray with the subject of 
 his celebrated ode, the “Bard.” 
 
 There are still occasional meetings of the lovers of 
 Welsh poetry and music, held under the ancient name. 
 Among Mrs. Hemans’ poems is one written for an 
 
362 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 \ 
 
 Eisteddfod, or meeting of Welsh Bards, held in Lon¬ 
 don, May 22, 1822. It begins with a description of 
 the ancient meeting, of which the following lines are a 
 part: 
 
 “ . . midst the eternal cliffs, whose strength defied 
 The crested Roman in his hour of pride; 
 
 And where the Druid’s ancient cromlech frowned, 
 
 And the oaks breathed mysterious murmurs round, 
 
 There thronged the inspired of yore! on plain or height, 
 
 In the sun’s face, beneath the eye of light, 
 
 And baring unto heaven each noble head, 
 
 Stood in the circle, where none else might tread.” 
 
 The Druidical system was at its height at the time 
 of the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar. Against 
 the Druids, as their chief enemies, these conquerors of 
 the world directed their unsparing fury. The Druids, 
 harassed at all points on the mainland, retreated to 
 Anglesey and Iona, where for a season they found shel¬ 
 ter and continued their now dishonored rites. 
 
 The Druids retained their predominance in Iona and 
 over the adjacent islands and mainland until they were 
 supplanted and their superstitions overturned by the 
 arrival of St. Columba, the apostle of the Highlands, 
 by whom the inhabitants of that district were first led 
 to profess Christianity. 
 
 IONA 
 
 One of the smallest of the British Isles, situated near 
 a rugged and barren coast, surrounded by dangerous 
 seas, and possessing no sources of internal wealth, Iona 
 has obtained an imperishable place in history as the 
 seat of civilization and religion at a time when the 
 darkness of heathenism hung over almost the whole of 
 Northern Europe. Iona or Icolmkill is situated at the 
 extremity of the island of Mull, from which it is sep¬ 
 arated by a strait of half a mile in breadth, its distance 
 from the mainland of Scotland being thirty-six miles. 
 
 Columba was a native of Ireland, and connected by 
 birth with the princes of the land. Ireland was at 
 that time a land of gospel light, while the western and 
 
IONA 
 
 363 
 
 northern parts of Scotland were still immersed in the 
 darkness of heathenism. Columba with twelve friends 
 landed on the island of Iona in the year of our Lord 
 563, having made the passage in a wicker boat cov¬ 
 ered with hides. The Druids who occupied the island 
 endeavored to prevent his settling there, and the savage 
 nations on the adjoining shores incommoded him with 
 their hostility, and on several occasions endangered his 
 life by their attacks. Yet by his perseverance and zeal 
 he surmounted all opposition, procured from the king 
 a gift of the island, and established there a monastery 
 of which he was the abbot. He was unwearied in his 
 labors to disseminate a knowledge of the Scriptures 
 throughout the Highlands and islands of Scotland, and 
 such was the reverence paid him that though not a 
 bishop, but merely a presbyter and monk, the entire 
 province with its bishops was subject to him and his 
 successors. The Pictish monarch was so impressed with 
 a sense of his wisdom and worth that he held him in 
 the highest honor, and the neighboring chiefs and 
 princes sought his counsel and availed themselves of 
 his judgment in settling their disputes. 
 
 When Columba landed on Iona he was attended by 
 twelve followers whom he had formed into a religious 
 body of which he was the head. To these, as occa¬ 
 sion required, others were from time to time added, so 
 that the original number was always kept up. Their 
 institution was called a monastery and the superior 
 an abbot, but the system had little in common with the 
 monastic institutions of later times. The name by which 
 those who submitted to the rule were known was that 
 of Culdees, probably from the Latin “cultores Dei”— 
 worshippers of God. They were a body of religious 
 persons associated together for the purpose of aiding 
 each other in the common work of preaching the gos¬ 
 pel and teaching youth, as well as maintaining in them¬ 
 selves the fervor of devotion by united exercises of wor¬ 
 ship. On entering the order certain vows were taken 
 by the members, but they were not those which were 
 usually imposed by monastic orders, for of these, which 
 are three,—celibacy, poverty, and obedience,—the Cul- 
 
364 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 dees were bound to none except the third. To poverty 
 they did not bind themselves; on the contrary they seem 
 to have labored diligently to procure for themselves and 
 those dependent on them the comforts of life. Mar¬ 
 riage also was allowed them, and most of them seem 
 to have entered into that state. True, their wives were 
 not permitted to reside with them at the institution, but 
 they had a residence assigned to them in an adjacent 
 locality. Near Iona there is an island which still bears the 
 name of “Eilen nam ban/’ women’s island, where their 
 husbands seem to have resided with them, except when 
 duty required their presence in the school or the sanc¬ 
 tuary. 
 
 Campbell, in his poem of “Reullura,” alludes to the 
 married monks of Iona: 
 
 “. . . The pure Culdees 
 
 Were Albyn’s earliest priests of God, 
 
 Ere yet an island of her seas 
 
 By foot of Saxon monk was trod, 
 
 Long ere her churchmen by bigotry 
 Were barred from holy wedlock’s tie. 
 
 ’Twas then that Aodh, famed afar, 
 
 In Iona preached the word with power, 
 
 And Reullura, beauty’s star, 
 
 Was the partner of his bower.” 
 
 In one of his “Irish Melodies,” Moore gives the leg'- 
 end of St. Senanus and the lady who sought shelter on 
 the island, but was repulsed: 
 
 “O, haste and leave this sacred isle, 
 
 Unholy bark, ere morning smile; 
 
 For on thy deck, though dark it be, 
 
 A female form I see; 
 
 And I have sworn this sainted sod 
 Shall ne’er by woman’s foot be trod.” 
 
 In these respects and in others the Culdees departed 
 from the established rules of the Romish church, and 
 consequently were deemed heretical. The consequence 
 was that as the power of the latter advanced that of the 
 Culdees was enfeebled. It was not, however, till the 
 thirteenth century that the communities of the Culdees 
 
/ 
 
 IONA 365 
 
 were suppressed and the members dispersed. They still 
 continued to labor as individuals, and resisted the inroads 
 of Papal usurpation as they best might till the light of 
 the Reformation dawned on the world. 
 
 Iona, from its position in the western seas, was ex¬ 
 posed to the assaults of the Norwegian and Danish rov¬ 
 ers by whom those seas were infested, and by them it 
 was repeatedly pillaged, its dwellings burned, and its 
 peaceful inhabitants put to the sword. These unfav¬ 
 orable circumstances led to its gradual decline, which 
 was expedited by the subversion of the Culdees through¬ 
 out Scotland. Under the reign of Popery the island 
 became the seat of a nunnery, the ruins of which are 
 still seen. At the Reformation, the nuns were allowed 
 to remain, living in community, when the abbey was 
 dismantled. 
 
 Iona is now chiefly resorted to by travellers on ac¬ 
 count of the numerous ecclesiastical and sepulchral re¬ 
 mains which are found upon it. The principal of these 
 are the Cathedral or Abbey Church and the Chapel of 
 the Nunnery. Besides these remains of ecclesiastical 
 antiquity, there are some of an earlier date, and point¬ 
 ing to the existence on the island of forms of worship 
 and belief different from those of Christianity. These 
 are the circular Cairns which are found in various parts, 
 and which seem to have been of Druidical origin. It is 
 in reference to all these remains of ancient religion that 
 Johnson exclaims, “That man is little to be envied whose 
 patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of 
 Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid 
 the ruins of Iona.” 
 
 In the “Lord of the Isles” Scott beautifully contrasts 
 the church on Iona with the cave of Staffa, opposite: 
 
 “Nature herself, it seemed, would raise 
 A minister to her Maker’s praise! 
 
 Not for a meaner use ascend 
 Her columns, or her arches bend; 
 
 Nor of a theme less solemn tells 
 That mighty surge that ebbs and swells, 
 
 And still between each awful pause, 
 
 From the high vault an answer draws, 
 
366 
 
 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES 
 
 In varied tone, prolonged and high, 
 
 That mocks the organ’s melody; 
 
 Nor doth its entrance front in vain 
 To old Iona’s holy fane, 
 
 That Nature’s voice might seem to say, 
 Well hast thou done, frail child of clay! 
 
 Thy humble powers that stately shrine 
 Tasked high and hard—but witness mine!” 
 
PROVERBIAL EXPRESSIONS 
 
 No. 1. Page 39. 
 
 Materiem superabat opus.— Ovid. 
 
 The workmanship surpassed the material. 
 
 No. 2. Page 39. 
 
 Facies non omnibus una, 
 
 Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum. 
 
 — Ovid. 
 
 Their faces were not all alike, nor yet unlike, but such as those 
 of sisters ought to be. 
 
 No. 3. Page 42. 
 
 Medio tutissimus ibis.— Ovid. 
 
 You will go most safely in the middle. 
 
 No. 4. Page 45. 
 
 Hie situs est Phaeton, currus auriga paterni, 
 
 Quern si non tenuit, magnis tamen excidit ausis. 
 
 — Ovid. 
 
 Here lies Phaeton, the driver of his father’s chariot, which if 
 he failed to manage, yet he fell in a great undertaking. 
 
 No. 5. Page 123. 
 
 Imponere Pelio Ossam.— Virgil. 
 
 To pile Ossa upon Pelion. 
 
 No. 6. Page 230. 
 
 Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.— Virgil. 
 
 I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts. 
 
 No. 7. Page 232. 
 
 Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis 
 Tempus eget.— Virgil. 
 
 Not such aid nor such defenders does the time require. 
 
 No. 8. Page 245. 
 
 Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim. 
 
 He runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis. 
 
 367 
 
368 
 
 PROVERBIAL EXPRESSIONS 
 
 No. 9. Page 260. 
 
 Monstrum horrendum, in forme, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. 
 
 — Virgil. 
 
 A horrible monster, misshapen, vast, whose only eye has been 
 put out. 
 
 No. 10. Page 261. 
 
 Tantsene animis coelestibus irae?— Virgil. 
 
 In heavenly minds can such resentments dwell? 
 
 No. 11. Page 263. 
 
 Haud ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.— Virgil. 
 
 Not unacquainted with distress, I have learned to succor the 
 unfortunate. 
 
 No.. 12. Page 263. 
 
 Tros, Tyriusve mihi n-ullo discrimine agetur.— Virgil. 
 Whether Trojan or Tyrian shall make no difference to me. 
 
 No. 13. Page 265. 
 
 Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.— Virgil. 
 
 Yield thou not to adversity, but press on the more bravely. 
 
 No. 14. Page 265. 
 
 Facilis descensus Averni; 
 
 Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis; 
 
 Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, 
 
 Hoc opus, hie labor est.— Virgil. 
 
 The descent of Avernus is easy; the gate of Pluto stands open 
 night and day; but to retrace one’s steps and return to the upper 
 air—that is the toil, that the difficulty. 
 
 No. 15. Page 265. 
 
 Uno avulso non deficit alter.— Virgil. 
 
 When one is tom away another succeeds. 
 
 No. 16. Page 282. 
 
 Quadrupendante putrum sonitu quatit ungula campum.— Virgil, 
 Then struck the hoofs of the steeds on the ground with a four- 
 footed trampling. 
 
 No. 17. Page 285. 
 
 Sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, ccelumque 
 
 Adspicit et moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos.— Virgil. 
 
 He falls, unhappy, by a wound intended for another; looks up 
 to the skies, and dying remembers sweet Argos. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES 
 
 QUOTED FROM THE POETS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Addison (attributed to). 304 
 
 Armstrong ..22, 117, 175 
 
 Browning, Mrs. E. B..... 168 
 
 Bulfinch, Rev. S. G.45, 63, 149 
 
 Byron....7, 18, 19, 20, 38, 75, 94, 106, 114, 143, 175, 198, 
 
 203, 207, 231, 235, 236, 246, 292, 300, 305, 
 307, 319 
 
 Campbell . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ,137, 
 
 364 
 
 Coleridge . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 Cowper . 
 
 .4, 
 
 104, 
 
 192, 
 
 221, 
 
 300, 
 
 304, 
 
 308 
 
 Darwin . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .158, 
 
 209 
 
 Dryden. 
 
 
 
 ,.48, 
 
 211, 
 
 290, 
 
 308, 
 
 312 
 
 Dyer . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .133, 
 
 233 
 
 Fletcher . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 205 
 
 Francklin. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 184 
 
 Garrick . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 111 
 
 Goldsmith . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 104 
 
 Gray . 
 
 
 
 
 
 ...8, 
 
 344, 
 
 350 
 
 Harvey. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 90 
 
 Hemans . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 362 
 
 Homer. 
 
 
 ...3, 
 
 246, 
 
 252, 
 
 253, 
 
 255, 
 
 304 
 
 Hood . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ..57, 
 
 105 
 
 Keats . 
 
 .31, 62, 
 
 65, 68, 76 
 
 , 91, 
 
 106, 
 
 204, 
 
 243 
 
 Landor . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 Longfellow . 
 
 
 
 
 .161, 
 
 206, 
 
 291, 
 
 336 
 
 Lowell .. 
 
 
 
 ,.33, 
 
 172, 
 
 181, 
 
 273, 
 
 292 
 
 369 
 
370 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lucan .-. 313 
 
 Macaulay ..11, 159 
 
 Mickle .. 25 
 
 Milman .45, 122 
 
 Milton .3, 5, 6, 18, 33, 34, 38, 57, 67, 68, 75, 90, 94, 103, 
 
 104, 117, 120, 126, 128, 129, 146, 148, 165, 167, 
 
 168, 174, 176, 179, 181, 192, 194, 233, 235, 245, 
 
 274, 291, 296, 299, 302, 312, 328 
 
 Moore..2, 25, 28, 58, 91, 105, 115, 134, 143, 293, 320, 364 
 
 Nibelungen Lied . 353 
 
 Ovid . 310 
 
 Pope ..15, 133, 188, 221, 227, 287, 304 
 
 Schiller .63, 149 
 
 Scott .264, 359, 365 
 
 Shakspeare .5, 127, 137, 290, 291 
 
 Shelley ...23, 36, 150, 314 
 
 Southey . 188 
 
 Spenser.8, 110, 166, 198 
 
 Swift .51, 231 
 
 Tennyson .Ill, 150, 175, 207, 214, 237, 257, 300 
 
 Thomson ....80, 305 
 
 Tickell .. 304 
 
 Waller . 22, 262 
 
 Wordsworth • • • • • • ••••••• 167, 215, 302, 319 
 
 Young...126, 176, 205, 275, 318 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 A 
 
 Ab-syr'tus, younger brother of Me¬ 
 dea, 137. 
 
 A-by'dos, a town on the Helles¬ 
 pont, nearly opposite to Sestos, 
 105. 
 
 Ab'y-la, Mount, or Columna, a 
 mountain in Morocco, near Ceu¬ 
 ta, now called Jebel Musa or 
 Ape’s Hill, forming the North¬ 
 western extremity of the Afri¬ 
 can coast opposite Gibraltar (See 
 Pillars of Hercules), 145. 
 
 A-ces'tes, son of a Trojan woman 
 who was sent by her father to 
 Sicily, that she might not be de¬ 
 voured by the monsters which 
 infested the territory of Troy, 
 162, 164, 264; city of, 283. 
 
 A-ce'tes, Bacchanal, captured by 
 Pentheus, 164. 
 
 A-cha'tes, faithful friend and com¬ 
 panion of ZEneas, 281. 
 
 Ach-e-lo'us, river-god of the largest 
 river in Greece—his Horn of 
 Plenty, 177-179. 
 
 A-chilTes, the hero of the Iliad, 
 son of Peleus and of the Ne¬ 
 reid Thetis, slain by Paris, 95, 
 138, 173, 174, 208, 212, 213, 214, 
 216-228, 232, 233. 
 
 A'cis, youth loved by Galatea and 
 slain by Polyphemus, 209-211. 
 
 A-con'ti-us, a beautiful youth, who 
 fell in love with Cydippe, the 
 daughter of a noble Athenian, 
 121 . 
 
 A-cris'i-us, son of Abas, king of 
 Argos, grandson of Lynceus, the 
 great-grandson of Danaiis, 116, 
 202 . 
 
 Ac-tse'on, a celebrated huntsman, 
 son of Aristaeus and Autonoe, 
 who, having seen Diana bathing, 
 was changed by her to a stag and 
 killed by his own dogs, 34, 36, 
 
 94. 
 
 Ad-me'ta, daughter of Eurystheus, 
 covets Hippolyta’s girdle, 144. 
 
 Ad-me'tus, king of Thessaly, saved 
 from death by Alcestis, 180, 181. 
 
 A-do'nis, a youth beloved by 
 Aphrodite (Venus), and Proser¬ 
 pine; killed by a boar, 65-67. 
 
 A-dras'tus, a king of Argos, 182. 
 
 ZE'a-cus, son of Zeus (Jupiter) 
 and ZEgina, renowned in all 
 Greece for his justice and piety, 
 
 95. 
 
 ZE-ae'a, Circe’s island, visited by 
 Ulysses, 241. 
 
 .TE-e'tes, or ZEeta, son of Helios 
 (the Sun) and Perseis, and 
 father of Medea and Absyrtus, 
 130, 131, 132, 137. 
 
 -3C-ge'an Sea, 38, 73, 133. 
 
 ZE-ge'us, king of Athens, 136, 150, 
 151. 
 
 ZE-gi'na, a rocky island in the mid¬ 
 dle of the Saronic gulf, 95. 
 
 .TE'gis, shield or breastplate of Jupi¬ 
 ter and Minerva, 5, 109, 116. 
 
 ZE-gis'thus, murderer of Agamem¬ 
 non, slain by Orestes, 234. 
 
 .TE-ne'as, Trojan hero, son of An- 
 chises and Aphrodite (Venus), 
 and born on Mount Ida, reputed 
 first settler of Rome, 61, 213, 
 221, 222, 223, 258-287. 
 
 ^E-ne'id, poem by Virgil, relating 
 the wanderings of ZEneas from 
 Troy to Italy, 307. 
 
 371 
 
372 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 ZE'o-lus, son of Hellen and the 
 nymph Orseis, represented in 
 Homer as the happy ruler of the 
 Hiolian Islands, to whom Zeus 
 had given dominion over the 
 winds, 69, 75, 240, 261, 301. 
 
 ZEs'cu-la'pi-us, god of the medical 
 art, 127, 154, 174, 179, 180, 218, 
 298. 
 
 ZE'son, father of Jason, made young 
 again by Medea, 130, 134-136. 
 
 .TE-thi-o'pi-ans, inhabitants of the 
 country south off Egypt, 2, 118, 
 207, 208. 
 
 ZE'thra, mother of Theseus by 
 .TEgeus, 150, 151. 
 
 .TEt'na, volcano in Sicily, 43, 52, 
 122, 180, 210. 
 
 Ag'a-me'des, brother of Trophonius, 
 distinguished as an architect, 297, 
 298. 
 
 Ag'a-mem'non, son of Plisthenis 
 and grandson of Atreus, king of 
 Mycenae; although the chief com¬ 
 mander of the Greeks, is not the 
 hero of the Iliad, and in chival¬ 
 rous spirit altogether inferior to 
 Achilles, 213, 216, 217, 219, 222, 
 233. 
 
 A-ga've, daughter of Cadmus, wife 
 of Echion, and mother of Pen- 
 theus, 164. 
 
 A-ge'nor, father of Europa, Cad¬ 
 mus, Cilix, and Phoenix, 91, 223. 
 
 Ag-la'i-a, one of the Graces, 8. 
 
 Ag'ni, Hindu god of fire, 321. 
 
 Ah'ri-man, the Evil Spirit in the 
 dual system of Zoroaster, 318. 
 See Ormuzd. 
 
 A'jax, son of Tdamon, king of 
 Salamis, and grandson of dEacus; 
 represented in the Iliad as second 
 only td Achilles in bravery, 138, 
 213, 217, 219, 221, 228. 
 
 Al'ba Lon'ga, city in Italy founded 
 by son of dEneas-, 287. 
 
 Al'ber-ich, dwarf guardian of Rhine- 
 gold treasure of the Nibelungs, 
 354, 355, 356. 
 
 Al-ces'tis, wife of Admetus, offered 
 herself as sacrifice to spare her 
 
 husband, but rescued by Her¬ 
 cules, 180, 181. 
 
 Al-ci'des (Hercules), 148, 149. 
 
 Al-cin'o-us, Phaeacian king, 248, 
 250, 252. 
 
 Al-cip'pe, daughter of Mars; carried 
 off by Halirrhothius, 139. 
 
 Alc-me'na, wife of Jupiter, and 
 mother of Hercules, 143. 
 
 Al-dro-van'dus, dwarf guardian of 
 treasure, 354, 355, 356. 
 
 A-lec'to, one of the Furies, 9, 277. 
 
 Al-ex-an'der the Great, king of 
 Macedonia, conqueror of Greece, 
 Egypt, Persia, Babylonia, and 
 India, 48. 
 
 Al-fa'dur, a name for Odin, 331, 
 349. 
 
 Alf'heim, abode of the elves of 
 light, 348. 
 
 Al-phe'nor, son of Niobe, 113. 
 
 Al-phe'us, river-god pursuing Are- 
 thusa, who escaped by being 
 changed to a fountain, 56, 57, 
 144. 
 
 Al-thae'a, mother of Meleager, whom 
 she slew because he had in a 
 quarrel killed her brothers, thus 
 disgracing “the house of Thes- 
 tius,” her father, 138-140. 
 
 Am-al-the'a, nurse of the infant 
 Jupiter in Crete, 179. 
 
 A-ma'ta, wife of Latinus, driven 
 mad by Alecto, 277. 
 
 Am'a-zons, mythical race of warlike 
 women, 144-145, 153. 
 
 Am-bro'si-a, celestial food used by 
 the gods, 3. 
 
 Am'mon, Egyptian god of life, iden¬ 
 tified by Romans with phases of 
 Jupiter, the father of gods, 123. 
 
 Am-phi-a-ra'us, a great prophet and 
 hero at Argos, 182. 
 
 Am-phi'on, a musician, son of Jupi¬ 
 ter and Antiope (See Dirce), 
 113, 192-193. 
 
 Am-phi-tri'te, wife of Neptune, 172, 
 173. 
 
 Am-phyr'sos, a small river in Thes¬ 
 saly, 180. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 373 
 
 Am'pyx, assailant of Perseus, turned 
 to stone by seeing Gorgon’s head, 
 121 . 
 
 Am-ri'ta, nectar giving immortality, 
 321. 
 
 A'mun, 292. See Ammon. 
 
 Am'y-mo'ne, one of the fifty daugh¬ 
 ters of Danaus, and mother by 
 Poseidon (Neptune) of Nauplius, 
 the father of Palamedes, 144. 
 
 An'ax-ar'e-te, a maiden of Cyprus, 
 who treated her lover Iphis with 
 such haughtiness that he hanged 
 himself at her door, 78, 79. 
 
 An-ce'us, one of the Argonauts, 137. 
 
 An-chi'ses, beloved by Aphrodite 
 (Venus), by whom he became the 
 father of .TEneas, 258, 259, 265, 
 271, 272. 
 
 An-drae'mon, husband of Dry ope; 
 saw her changed into a tree, 64, 
 65. 
 
 An-drom'a-che, wife of Hector, 213, 
 225, 260. 
 
 An-drom'e-da, daughter of King 
 Cephas, delivered from monster • 
 by Perseus, 118-120. 
 
 A-nem'o-ne, short-lived wind-flower, 
 created by Venus from the blood 
 of the slain Adonis, 67. 
 
 An-ger'bo-de, giant prophetess, 
 mother of Fenris, Hela, and the 
 Midgard Serpent, 344. 
 
 An'gle-sey, a Northern British 
 island, refuge of Druids fleeing 
 from Romans, 362. 
 
 An-tse'us, giant wrestler of Libya, 
 killed by Hercules, who, finding 
 him stronger when thrown to the 
 earth, lifted him into the air and 
 strangled him, 122, 146. 
 
 An-te'a, wife of jealous Proetus, 125. 
 
 An'te-ros, deity avenging unrequited 
 love, brother of Eros (Cupid), 7. 
 
 An'thor, a Greek, 285. 
 
 An-tig'o-ne, daughter of /Edipus, 
 Greek ideal of filial and sisterly 
 fidelity, 181-184. 
 
 An-til'o-chus, son of Nestor, 207, 
 
 221 . 
 
 An-ti'o-pe, Amazonian queen, 153, 
 192, 194. See Dirce. 
 
 A-nu'bus, Egyptian god, conductor 
 of the dead to judgment, 293, 
 294. 
 
 Ap'en-nines, 43. 
 
 Aph-ro-di'te. See Venus, Dione, etc. 
 
 A'pis, Egyptian bull-god of Mem¬ 
 phis, 295, 299. 
 
 A-pol'lo, god of music and song, 3, 
 5, 8, 13, 19, 20-23, 38, 47, 67-68, 
 
 104, 112, 113, 123, 127, 173, 174, 
 
 179, 180, 185, 196, 199, 206, 216, 
 
 218, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 228, 
 
 232, 252, 259, 274, 301. 
 
 A-pol'lo Bel-ve-dere', famous antique 
 statue in Vatican at Rome, 306. 
 
 A-pol'lo, Oracle of, 69, 81, 92, 259, 
 297. 
 
 A-pol'lo, temple to, 157, 228, 314. 
 
 Apples of the Hesperides, wedding 
 gifts to Juno, guarded by daugh¬ 
 ters of Atlas and Hesperis, stolen 
 by Atlas for Hercules, 145. 
 
 Aq'ui-lo, or Boreas, the North 
 Wind, 176. 
 
 A-rach'ne, a maiden skilled in 
 weaving, changed to a spider by 
 Minerva for daring to compete 
 with her, 108-111. 
 
 Ar-ca'di-a, a country in the middle 
 of Peloponnesus, surrounded on 
 all sides by mountains, 9, 34, 138, 
 280. 
 
 Ar'ca-dy, star of, the Pole-star, 33. 
 
 Ar'cas, son of Jupiter and Callisto, 
 34. 
 
 Archer, constellation of the, 40. 
 
 A-re-op'a-gus, court of the, at Ath¬ 
 ens, 235. 
 
 A'res, called Mars by the Romans, 
 the Greek god of war, and one of 
 the great Olympian gods, 7. 
 
 Ar-e-thu'sa, nymph of Diana, 
 changed to a fountain, 55-56, 58. 
 
 Ar'go, builder of the vessel of Ja¬ 
 son for the Argonautic expedi¬ 
 tion, 130, 132, 133. 
 
 Ar'go-lis, city of the Nemeaif 
 games, 155. 
 
374 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Argonauts, Jason’s crew seeking 
 the Golden Fleece, 130, 131, 137, 
 144, 158, 176. 
 
 Ar'gos, a kingdom in Greece, 182, 
 234, 285, 289, 307. 
 
 Ar'gus, of the hundred eyes, guard¬ 
 ian of Io, 29-31, 130, 133, 255, 
 302. 
 
 A-ri-ad'ne, daughter of King Minos, 
 who helped Theseus slay the 
 Minotaur, 152, 156, 165. 
 
 A-rim'a-nes. See Ahriman. 
 
 Ar'i-mas'pi-ans, one-eyed people of 
 Syria, 129. 
 
 A-ri'on, famous musician, whom 
 sailors cast into the sea to rob 
 him, but whose lyric song charmed 
 the dolphins, one of which bore 
 him safely to land, 195-198. 
 
 Ar-is-tae'us, the bee-keeper, in love 
 with Eurydice, 185, 189-191. 
 
 Ar'te-mis. See Diana. 
 
 A'runs, an Etruscan who killed Ca¬ 
 milla, 286. 
 
 As'gard, home of the Northern 
 gods, 330, 345. 
 
 A'sia, 152, 161. 
 
 As'ke, the first man, made from an 
 ash-tree, 329. 
 
 As-trae'a, goddess of justice, daugh¬ 
 ter of Astraeus and Eos, 15. 
 
 As-ty'a-ges, an assailant of Perseus, 
 
 121 . 
 
 A-su'ras, opponents of the Bramin- 
 ical gods, 321. 
 
 At-a-lan'ta, beautiful daughter of 
 King of Icaria, loved and won in 
 a foot-race by Hippomenes, 138- 
 140, 141-142. 
 
 A'te, the goddess of infatuation, 
 mischief and guilt, 222. 
 
 Ath'a-mas, son of iEolus and Ena- 
 rete, and king of Orchomenus, in 
 Boeotia, 129, 130, 174. See Ino. 
 
 A-the'ne, tutelary goddess of Ath¬ 
 ens; the same as Minerva, 152. 
 
 Ath'ens, the capital of Attica, about 
 four miles from the sea, between 
 the small rivers Cephissus and 
 Ilissus, 95, 107, 136, 137, 150, 
 151, 153, 154, 235, 307. 
 
 A'thor, Egyptian deity, progenitor 
 of Isis and Osiris, 292. 
 
 A'thos, the mountainous peninsula, 
 also called Acte, which projects 
 from Chalcidice in Macedonia, 43. 
 
 At-lan'tis, according to an ancient 
 tradition, a great island west of 
 the Pillars of Hercules, in the 
 ocean, opposite Mount Atlas, 
 273. 
 
 At'las, a Titan, who bore the heav¬ 
 ens on his shoulders, as punish¬ 
 ment for opposing the gods; one 
 ctf the sons of Iapetus, 5, 44, 117- 
 118, 146, 149, 206. 
 
 At'las, Mount, general name for 
 range in northern Africa, 145. 
 
 At'ro-pos, one of the Fates (which 
 See), 9. 
 
 At'ti-ca, a state in ancient Greece, 
 153, 154, 158. 
 
 Aud-hum'bla, the cow from which 
 the giant Ymir was nursed. Her 
 milk was frost melted into rain¬ 
 drops, 329. 
 
 Au-ge'an stables, cleansed by Her¬ 
 cules, 144. 
 
 Au-ge'as, king of Elis, 144. 
 
 Au-gus'tan age, reign of Roman 
 Emperor Augustus Caesar, famed 
 for many great authors, 308. 
 
 Au-gus'tus, the first imperial Caesar, 
 who ruled the Roman Empire 
 31 B.c.—14 a.d., 11, 308. 
 
 Au'lis, port in Boeotia, meeting- 
 place of Greek expedition against 
 Troy, 213. 
 
 Au-ro'ra, identical with Eos, god¬ 
 dess of the dawn, 23, 26, 53, 72, 
 207-208. 
 
 Au-ro'ra Bo-re-a'lis, splendid noc¬ 
 turnal luminosity in northern sky, 
 called Northern Lights, probably 
 electrical, 331. 
 
 Au'tumn, attendant of Phoebus, the 
 Sun, 39. 
 
 Av'a-tar, name for any of the 
 earthly incarnations of Vishnu, 
 the Preserver (Hindu god), 321. 
 
 Av'en-tine, Mount, one of the 
 Seven Hills of Rome, 146. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 375 
 
 A-ver'nus, a miasmatic lake close to 
 the promontory between Cumae 
 and Puteoli, filling the crater of 
 an extinct volcano, by the an¬ 
 cients thought to be the entrance 
 to the infernal regions, 265, 
 266. 
 
 Av-i-cen'na, celebrated Arabian 
 physician and philosopher, 313. 
 
 B 
 
 Ba'al, king of Tyre, 358. 
 
 Bab-y-lo'ni-an River, dried up when 
 Phaeton drove the sun-chariot, 
 
 44. 
 
 Bac'cha-na'li-a, a feast to Bacchus 
 that was permitted to occur but 
 once in three years; attended by 
 most shameless orgies, 161. 
 
 Bac'cha-nals, devotees and festal 
 dancers of Bacchus, 161, 164. 
 
 Bac'chus (Dionysus), god of wine 
 and revelry, 8, 10, 46-47, 123, 
 160-165, 179, 187. 
 
 Bal'dur, son of Odin, and repre¬ 
 senting in Norse mythology the 
 sun-god, 343-347. 
 
 Bards, minstrels of Welsh Druids, 
 361. 
 
 Bas'i-lisk. See Cockatrice. 
 
 Bau'cis, wife of Philemon, visited 
 by Jupiter and Mercury, 49-51. 
 
 Be'al, Druids' god of life, 358. 
 
 Bear (Constellation of), 3. 
 
 Bel-ler'o-phon, demigod, conqueror 
 of the Chimjera, 125-126. 
 
 Bel-lo'na, the Roman goddess of 
 war, represented as the sister or 
 wife of Mars, 10. 
 
 Bel'tane, Druidical fire-festival, 359. 
 
 Be'lus, son of Poseidon (Neptune) 
 and Libya or Eurynome, twin- 
 brother of Agenor, 262. 
 
 Ber'o-e, nurse of Semele, 160. 
 
 Bi'frost, rainbow bridge between 
 the earth and Asgard (which 
 See), 330, 349. 
 
 Boe-o'ti-a, state in ancient Greece, 
 capital city Thebes, 213, 297. 
 
 Bo'na De'a, a Roman divinity of 
 fertility, 10 n. 
 
 Bo-o'tes, also called Areas, son of 
 Jupiter and Calisto, changed to 
 constellation of Ursa Major, 42. 
 
 Bo're-as, North wind, son of vEolus 
 and Aurora, 176, 261. 
 
 Bos'po-rus (Bosphorus), the Cow- 
 ford, named for Io (which See), 
 when as a heifer she crossed that 
 strait, 31. 
 
 Brag'i, Norse god of poetry, 332. 
 
 Brah'ma, the Creator, chief god of 
 Hindu religion, 320-325. 
 
 Brazen Age, 14. 
 
 Bri-a're-us, hundred-armed giant, 
 52, 123, 267. 
 
 Bri-se'is, captive maid belonging to 
 Achilles, 216. 
 
 Brun'hild, leader of the Valkyrie, 
 352, 354-357. 
 
 Bud'dha, called The Enlightened, 
 reformer of Brahmanism, deified 
 teacher of self-abnegation, virtue, 
 reincarnation, Karma (inevitable 
 sequence of every act), and Nir¬ 
 vana (beatific absorption into the 
 Divine), lived about 562-482 B.C., 
 321, 325-326. 
 
 Bull, constellation, 40. 
 
 Byb'los, in Egypt, 294. 
 
 Byr'sa, original site of Carthage, 
 262. 
 
 C 
 
 Ca'cus, gigantic son of Vulcan, 
 slain by Hercules, whose captured 
 cattle he stole, 146, 147. 
 
 Cad'mus, son of Agenor, king of 
 Phoenicia, and of Telephassa, 
 and brother of Europa, who, seek¬ 
 ing his sister, carried off by Jupi¬ 
 ter, had strange adventures—sow¬ 
 ing in the ground teeth of a 
 dragon he had killed, which 
 sprang up armed men who slew 
 each other, all but five, who 
 helped Cadmus to found the city 
 of Thebes, 34, 91-94, 131, 174, 
 182, 301. 
 
376 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Ca-du'ce*us, Mercury’s staff, 8, 49. 
 
 Ca-i'cus, a Greek river, 44* 
 
 Cairns, Druidical stone-piles, 359, 
 365. 
 
 Cal'ais, French town facing Eng¬ 
 land, 133, 176. 
 
 Cal'chas, wisest soothsayer among 
 the Greeks at Troy, 214, 217, 
 230. 
 
 Cal-li'o-pe, one of the nine Muses 
 (which See), 8, 185. 
 
 Cal-lis'to, an Arcadian nymph, 
 mother of Areas (See Bootes), 
 changed by Jupiter to constella¬ 
 tion Ursa Minor, 31-34. 
 
 Cal'pe, a mountain in the south 
 of Spain, on the strait between 
 the Atlantic and Mediterranean, 
 now Rock of Gibraltar, 145. 
 
 Cal'y-don, home of Meleager, 138, 
 140. 
 
 Ca-lyp'so, queen of Island of Ogyg- 
 ia, where Ulysses was wrecked 
 and held seven years, 245-247. 
 
 Ca-lyp'so Island, 245. 
 
 Ca-me'nae, prophetic nymphs, be¬ 
 longing to the religion of ancient 
 Italy, 175. 
 
 Ca-mil'la, Volscian maiden, huntress 
 and Amazonian warrior, favorite 
 of Diana, 278, 286, 287. 
 
 Cap'a-neus, husband of Evadne, 
 slain by Jupiter for disobedience, 
 183. 
 
 Car'thage, African city, home of 
 Dido (which See), 262. 
 
 Cas-san'dra, daughter of Priam and 
 Hecuba, and twin-sister of Hele- 
 nus, a prophetess, who foretold 
 the coming of the Greeks but was 
 not believed, 232. 
 
 Cas-si-o-pe'ia, mother of Androm¬ 
 eda, 118, 120. 
 
 Cas-ta'li-a, fountain of Parnassus, 
 giving inspiration to Oracular 
 priestess named Pyfhia, 297. 
 
 Cas-ta'lian Cave, oracle of Apollo, 
 92. 
 
 Castes (India), 323-325. 
 
 Cas'tor and Pol'lux—the Dioscu¬ 
 ri, sons of Jupiter and Leda,— 
 
 Castor a horseman, Pollux a 
 boxer (See Gemini), 133, 158-159, 
 202, 203. 
 
 Cau'ca-sus Mount, 18, 43, 170. 
 
 Ca-ys'ter, ancient river, 44. 
 
 Ce-bri'o-nes, Hector’s charioteer, 
 
 220 . 
 
 Ce'crops, first king of Athens, 107. 
 
 Ce-les'tials, gods of classic mythol¬ 
 ogy, 3. 
 
 Ce'le-U6, shepherd who sheltered 
 Ceres, seeking Proserpine, and 
 whose infant son Triptolemus was 
 in gratitude made great by Ce¬ 
 res, 54, 57. 
 
 Cel-li'ni, Benvenuto, famous Ital¬ 
 ian sculptor and artificer in 
 metals, 316. 
 
 Cen'taurs, originally an ancient 
 race, inhabiting Mount Pelion in 
 Thessaly; in later accounts rep¬ 
 resented as half horses and half 
 men, and said to have been the 
 offspring of Ixion and a cloud, 
 127-128, 166. 
 
 Ceph'a-lus, husband of beautiful 
 but jealous Procris, 26-28, 95. 
 
 Ce'phe-us, King of Ethiopians, 
 father of Andromeda, 118, 120. 
 
 Ceph'i-sus, a Grecian stream, 92. 
 
 Cer'be-rus, three-headed dog that 
 guarded the entrance to Hades; 
 called a son of Typhaon and 
 Echidna, 88, 147, 196, 268. 
 
 Ce'res (See Demeter), 8, 53, 54- 
 57, 86, 169. 
 
 Ces'tus, the girdle of Venus, 6, 218. 
 
 Cey-lon', 326. 
 
 Ce'yx, King of Thessaly (See Hal- 
 cyone), 69-75. 
 
 Cha'os, original Confusion, personi¬ 
 fied by Greeks as most ancient of 
 the gods, 4, 12, 45. 
 
 Cha'ron, son of Erebos, conveyed 
 in his boat the shades of the 
 dead across the rivers of the 
 lower world, 88, 267. 
 
 Cha-ryb'dis, whirlpool near the 
 coast of Sicily, 243-245, 261, 303, 
 304, 322. See Scylla. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 377 
 
 Chi-mae'ra, a fire-breathing monster, 
 the fore part of whose body was 
 that of a lion, the hind part 
 that of a dragon, and the middle 
 that of a goat, slain by Belle- 
 rophon, 122, 124-126, 267. 
 
 Chi'na, 326; Lamas (priests) of, 327. 
 
 Chi'os, island in the Grecian archi¬ 
 pelago, 205. 
 
 Chi'ron, wisest of all the Centaurs, 
 son of Cronos (Saturn) and 
 Philyra, lived on Mount Pelion, 
 instructor of Grecian heroes, 127, 
 128, 133, 173. 
 
 Chry-se'is, Trojan maid, taken by 
 Agamemnon, 216. 
 
 Chry'ses, priest of Apollo, father 
 of Chryseis, 216. 
 
 Ci-co'ni-ans, inhabitants of Isma- 
 rus, visited by Ulysses, 236. 
 
 Cim-me'ri-a, a land of darkness, 
 31, 71. 
 
 Ci'mon, Athenian general, 154. 
 
 Cir'ce, sorceress, sister of Tietes, 
 60, 61, 117, 241-243. 
 
 Ci-thse'ron, Mount, scene of Bacchic 
 worship, 164, 192. 
 
 Cli'o, one of the Muses (which 
 See), 8. 
 
 Clo'tho, one of the Fates (which 
 See), 9. 
 
 Clym'e-ne, an ocean nymph, 38-39. 
 
 Cly-tem-nes'tra, wife of Agamem¬ 
 non, killed by Orestes, 234. 
 
 Cly'tie, a water-nymph, in love with 
 Apollo, 104-105. 
 
 Cni'dos, ancient city of Asia Minor, 
 seat of worship of Aphrodite 
 (Venus), 66. 
 
 Cock'a-trice (or Basilisk), called 
 King of Serpents, supposed to 
 kill with its look, 312-314. 
 
 Co-cy'tus, a river of Hades, 267. 
 
 Col'chis, a kingdom east of the 
 Black Sea, 130, 131, 137. 
 
 Col'o-phon, one of the seven cities 
 claiming the birth of Homer, 307. 
 
 Co-lum'ba, St., an Irish Christian 
 missionary to Druidical parts of 
 Scotland, 362-363. 
 
 Cor'inth, city and isthmus of, 136, 
 151, 155, 195, 197, 199. 
 
 Cor-nu-co'pi-a of Achelous, 179. 
 
 Cor-y-ban'tes, priests of Cybele, or 
 Rhea, in Phrygia, who celebrated 
 her worship with dances, to the 
 sound of the drum and the cym¬ 
 bal, 143. 
 
 Crab, constellation, 41. 
 
 Cranes and their enemies, the Pyg¬ 
 mies, 128; of Ibycus, 198-201. 
 
 Cre'on, king of Thebes, 183. 
 
 Crete, one of the largest islands of 
 the Mediterranean Sea, lying 
 south of the Cyclades, 95, 100, 
 109, 152, 259. 
 
 Cre-u'sa, daughter of Priam, wife 
 of JEneas, 136. 
 
 Croc'a-le, a nymph of Diana, 34. 
 
 CromTech, Druidical altar, 359. 
 
 Cro'nos, 9, 301. See Saturn. 
 
 Cro-to'na, city of Italy, 288, 292. 
 
 Cul-dees', followers of St. Columba, 
 363-364. 
 
 Cu-mss'an Sibyl, seeress of Cumse, 
 consulted by .Tineas, sold Sibyl¬ 
 line books to Tarquin, 275. 
 
 Cu'pid, child of Venus and god of 
 love, 7, 20, 53, 65, 80-90, 193. 
 
 Cy'a-ne, river, opposed Pluto’s pas¬ 
 sage to Hades, 53, 54, 55. 
 
 Cyb'e-le (Rhea, which See), 11, 142. 
 
 Cy-clo'pes, creatures with circular 
 eyes, of whom Homer speaks as 
 a gigantic and lawless race of 
 shepherds in Sicily, who de¬ 
 voured human beings; they helped 
 Vulcan to forge the thunderbolts 
 of Zeus under ./Etna, 122, 123, 
 180, 205, 209, 210, 237-240, 247, 
 260. 
 
 Cy'no-sure (Dog’s tail), the Pole- 
 star, at tail of Constellation Ursa 
 Minor, 33. 
 
 Cyn'thi-an mountain top, birthplace 
 of Artemis (Diana) and Apollo, 
 112 . 
 
 Cy'prus, island off the coast of 
 Syria, sacred to Aphrodite, 6, 63, 
 66, 78, 142, 233. 
 
378 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Cy-re'ne, a nymph, mother of 
 
 Aristsus, 189-190. 
 
 D 
 
 Dae'da-lus, architect of the Cretan 
 Labyrinth; inventor of sails, 152, 
 156-157. 
 
 Da'lai La'ma, chief pontiff of 
 
 Thibet, 327. 
 
 Dan'a-e, mother of Perseus by 
 
 Jupiter, 202. 
 
 Da-na'i-des, the fifty daughters of 
 Danaus, king of Argos, who were 
 betrothed to the fifty sons of 
 ZEgyptus, but were commanded 
 by their father to slay each her 
 own husband on the marriage 
 night, 186. 
 
 Dan'a-us (See Danaides), 186. 
 
 Daph'ne, maiden loved by Apollo, 
 and changed into a laurel tree, 
 20-23. 
 
 Dar-da-nelles', ancient Hellespont 
 (which See), 129. 
 
 Dar'da-nus, progenitor of the Tro¬ 
 jan kings, 206, 259. 
 
 Dawn, 3, 5, 41. See Aurora. 
 
 Day, an attendant on Phoebus, the 
 Sun, 39. 
 
 Day-star (Hesperus), 41, 69, 71. 
 
 Death, 181, 220, 266. See Hela. 
 
 De-iph'o-bus, son of Priam and Hec¬ 
 uba, the bravest brother of Paris, 
 213, 224. 
 
 De'ja-ni'ra, wife of Hercules, 147, 
 177, 179. 
 
 De'los, floating island, birthplace of 
 Apollo and Diana, 38, 157, 162, 
 259. 
 
 Del'phi, shrine of Apollo, famed 
 for its oracles, 1, 123, 155, 234, 
 235, 297, 298. 
 
 Del'phos, 21. 
 
 De-me'ter, Greek goddess of mar¬ 
 riage and human fertility; identi¬ 
 fied by Romans with Ceres 
 (which See), 8. 
 
 De-mod'o-cus, bard of Alcinous, 
 king of the Phaeacians, 202, 252. 
 
 Deu-ca'li-on, king of Thessaly, who 
 with his wife Pyrrha were the 
 only pair surviving a deluge sent 
 by Zeus, 16-17, 301. 
 
 Di'a, island of, 162. 
 
 Di-a'na (Artemis), goddess of the 
 moon and of the chase, daughter 
 of Jupiter and Latona, 6, 21, 26, 
 30, 34-36, 38, 53, 56, 101, 112, 
 123, 127, 134 n., 138, 139, 141, 
 154, 204, 206, 214, 235, 259, 278, 
 286. 
 
 Di-a'na of the Hind, antique sculp¬ 
 ture in the Louvre, Paris, 306. 
 
 Di-a'na, temple of, 314. 
 
 Dic'tys, a sailor, 162, 202. 
 
 Di'do, queen of Tyre and Carthage, 
 entertained the shipwrecked 
 ZEneas, 262, 263, 2-68. 
 
 Di-o-me'de, Greek hero during Tro¬ 
 jan War, 213, 219, 229, 232. 
 
 Di-o'ne, female Titan, mother of 
 Zeus, of Aphrodite (Venus), 6. 
 
 Di-o-ny'sus. See Bacchus. 
 
 Di-os-cu'ri, the Twins (See Castor 
 and Pollux), 158. 
 
 Dir'ce, wife of Lycus, king of 
 Thebes, who ordered Amphion 
 and Zethus to tie Antiope to a 
 wild bull, but they, learning An¬ 
 tiope to be their mother, so 
 treated Dirce herself, 192. 
 
 Dis. See Pluto. 
 
 Dis'cord, apple of, 212. See Eris. 
 
 Dis-cor'di-a, 266. See Eris. 
 
 Do-do'na, site of an oracle of Zeus 
 (Jupiter), 296. 
 
 Dolphin, 196. 
 
 Dor'ce-us, a dog of Diana, 35. 
 
 Do'ris, wife of Nereus, 44, 173. 
 
 Drag'on’s teeth sown by Cadmus, 
 301. 
 
 Dru'ids, ancient Celtic priests, 358- 
 362. 
 
 Dry'-a-des (or Dryads), 169. See 
 Wood-nymphs. 
 
 Dry'o-pe, changed to a lotus plant, 
 for plucking a lotus—enchanted 
 form of the nymph Lotis, 64-65. 
 
 Dwarfs in Wagner’s Nibelungen 
 Ring, 354. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 379 
 
 E 
 
 Earth (Gaea), 4, 5, 44; goddess of 
 the, 145, 297. 
 
 Ech'o, nymph of Diana, shunned by 
 Narcissus, faded to nothing but a 
 voice, 101-103. 
 
 Eck'Ien-lied, the, 354. 
 
 Ed'das, Norse mythological records, 
 329, 348, 351, 354. 
 
 E-ge'ri-a, nymph of the Fountain, 
 
 154, 175. 
 
 Egypt, 123, 163, 233, 296. 
 
 Eis-tedd'fod, session of Welsh bards 
 and minstrels, 361. 
 
 E-lec'tra, the lost one of the 
 Pleiades (which See ); aflso, sis¬ 
 ter of Orestes (which See), 206, 
 234, 235. 
 
 El-eu-sin'i-an Mysteries, instituted 
 by Ceres, and calculated to 
 awaken feelings of piety and a 
 cheerful hope of better life in 
 the future, 57. 
 
 E-leu'sis, Grecian city, 54, 57. 
 
 El'gin Marbles, Greek sculptures 
 from the Parthenon of Athens, 
 now in British Museum, London, 
 placed there by Lord Elgin, 155. 
 
 E'lis, ancient Greek city, 55, 144, 
 
 155. 
 
 El'li, old age; the one successful 
 wrestler against Thor, 341. 
 
 Elves, spiritual beings, of many 
 powers and dispositions — some 
 evil, some good, 348. 
 
 El-vid'nir, the hall of Hela (which 
 See), 333. 
 
 E-lys'i-an Fields, the land of the 
 blest, 2. 
 
 E-lys'i-an Plain, whither the fa¬ 
 vored of the gods were taken 
 without death, 2. 
 
 E-lys'i-um, a happy land, where 
 there is neither snow, nor cold, 
 nor rain. Hither favored heroes, 
 like Menelaus, p a s 9 without 
 dying, and live happy under the 
 rule of Rhadamanthus. In the 
 Latin poets Elysium is part of 
 the lower world, and the resi¬ 
 
 dence of the shades of the 
 blessed, 196, 269, 272, 273. 
 
 Em'bla, the first woman, 329. 
 
 En-cel'a-dus, giant defeated by Ju¬ 
 piter, 52, 122. 
 
 En-dym'i-on, a beautiful youth be¬ 
 loved by Diana, 61, 204. 
 
 En'na, vale of, home of Proserpine, 
 53, 58. 
 
 Epi-dau'rus, a town in Argolis, on 
 the Saronic gulf; chief seat of 
 the worship of Aesculapius, whose 
 temple was situated near the 
 town, 94, 95, 151, 298. 
 
 Ep-L-me'theus, son of Iapetus; hus¬ 
 band of Pandora; with his brother 
 Prometheus took part in creation 
 of man, 13, 18. 
 
 E-pi'rus, country to the west of 
 Thessaly, lying along the Adriatic 
 Sea, 260, 292. 
 
 E-po'pe-us, a sailor, 162. 
 
 Er'a-to, one of the Muses (which 
 See), 8. 
 
 Er'e-bus, son of Chaos; region of 
 darkness, entrance to Hades, 4, 
 56, 88, 153, 187, 277. 
 
 E-rid'a-nus, river, 45. 
 
 E-ri'nys (pi. E-rin'ny-es), one of 
 the Furies (which See), 9, 235. 
 
 Er'i-phyTe, sister of Polynices, 
 bribed to decide on war, in which 
 her husband was slain, 182, 183. 
 
 E'ris (Discordia), goddess of dis¬ 
 cord. At the wedding of Peleus 
 and Thetis, Eris being uninvited 
 threw into the gathering an apple 
 “For the Fairest,” which was 
 claimed by Hera (Juno), Aphro¬ 
 dite (Venus) and Athena (Mi¬ 
 nerva). Paris, being called upon 
 for judgment, awarded it to Aph¬ 
 rodite, 211. 
 
 Er-i-sich'thon, an unbeliever, pun¬ 
 ished by famine, 167, 169-171, 
 177. 
 
 E'ros. See Cupid. 
 
 Er'y-the'ia, island, 145, 146. 
 
 E'ryx, a mount, haunt of Venus, 
 53. 
 
 E-se'pus, river in Paphlagonia, 208. 
 
380 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 E-te'o-cles, son of CEdipus and 
 Jocasta, 182, 183. 
 
 E-trus'cans, ancient people of Italy, 
 281. 
 
 Et'zel, king of the Huns, 353. 
 
 Eu-bo'ic Sea, where Hercules threw 
 Lichas, who brought him the 
 poisoned shirt of Nessus, 148. 
 
 Eu-mse'us, swineherd of ./Eneas, 254, 
 257. 
 
 Eu-men'i-des, also called Erinnyes, 
 and by the Romans Furiae or Di- 
 raas, the Avenging Deities, 201, 
 234. See Furies. 
 
 Eu-phor'bus, a Trojan, killed by 
 Menelaus, 289. 
 
 Eu-phros'y-ne, one of the Graces 
 (which See), 8. 
 
 Eu-ro'pa, daughter of the Phoeni¬ 
 cian king Agenor, by Zeus the 
 mother of Minos, Rhadamanthus, 
 and Sarpedon, 91, 109. 
 
 Eu'rus, the East wind, 176. 
 
 Eu-ry'a-lus, a gallant Trojan sol¬ 
 dier, who with Nisus entered the 
 Grecian camp, both being slain, 
 282, 283, 284. 
 
 Eu-ryd'i-ce, wife of Orpheus, who, 
 fleeing from an admirer, was 
 killed by a snake and borne to 
 Tartarus, where Orpheus sought 
 her and was permitted to bring 
 her to earth if he would not look 
 back at her following him; but 
 he did, and she returned to the 
 Shades, 185-188, 191, 196. 
 
 Eu-ryl'o-chus, a companion of 
 Ulysses, 241. 
 
 Eu-ryn'o-me, female Titan, wife of 
 Ophion (which See), 4, 5. 
 
 Eu-rys'theus, taskmaster of Her¬ 
 cules, 128, 143-147. 
 
 Eu-ryt'i-on, a Centaur (See Hippo- 
 damia), 127, 145. 
 
 Eu-ter'pe, Muse who presided over 
 music, 8. 
 
 Eux'ine Sea, 2, 130. 
 
 E-vad'ne, wife of Capaneus, who 
 flung herself upon his funeral 
 pile and perished with him, 182, 
 183. 
 
 E-van'der, Arcadian chief, befriend¬ 
 ing .TEneas in Italy, 279-281, 285. 
 
 Eve, 5, 17, 301. 
 
 F 
 
 Faf'ner, a giant turned dragon, 
 treasure-stealer; by the Solar The¬ 
 ory simply the Darkness who 
 steals the day, 354, 355, 356. 
 
 Fam'ine, 170. 
 
 Fa'solt, a giant, brother of Fafner, 
 and killed by him, 354. 
 
 “Fas'ti,” Ovid’s, a mythological 
 poetic calendar, 309. 
 
 Fates, the three, described as 
 daughters of Night—to indicate 
 the darkness and obscurity of 
 human destiny—or of Zeus and 
 Themis, that is, “daughters of 
 the just heavens;” they were 
 Clo'tho, who spun the thread of 
 life; Lach'e-sis, who held the 
 thread and fixed its length, and 
 At'ro-pos, who cut it off, 9, 56, 
 67, 170, 180, 181. 
 
 Fauns, cheerful sylvan deities, rep¬ 
 resented in human form, with 
 small horns, pointed ears, and 
 sometimes goat’s tail, 10, 76. 
 
 Fau'nus, son of Picus, grandson of 
 Saturnus, and father of Latinus, 
 worshipped as the protecting 
 deity of agriculture and of shep¬ 
 herds, and also as a giver of ora¬ 
 cles, 10, 36, 166, 209, 276. 
 
 Fa-vo'ni-us, the West wind, 176. 
 
 Fear, 266. 
 
 Fen'ris, a wolf, the son of Loki 
 the Evil Principle of Scandi¬ 
 navia; supposed to have perso¬ 
 nated the element of fire, de¬ 
 structive except when chained, 
 332, 333, 344, 349. 
 
 Fen-sa'lir, Freya’s palace, called 
 the Hall of the Sea, where were 
 brought together lovers, hus¬ 
 bands, and wives who had been 
 separated by death, 344. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 381 
 
 Fire-worshippers, of ancient Persia, 
 318-320. See Parsees. 
 
 Flo'ra, Roman goddess of flowers 
 and spring, 10, 176. 
 
 Floss-hil'da, one of the Rhine 
 daughters (which See), 354. 
 
 Fortunate Fields, 2. 
 
 Fortunate Islands (See Elysian 
 Plain), 273. 
 
 Fo'rum, market-place and open 
 square for public meetings in 
 Rome, surrounded by court¬ 
 houses, palaces, temples, etc., 281. 
 
 Fre'ki, one of Odin’s two wolves, 
 330. 
 
 Frey, or Freyr, god of the sun, 
 332, 336, 347, 348, 349. 
 
 Frey'a, Norse goddess of music, 
 spring, and flowers, 332, 334, 335, 
 347, 351, 355. 
 
 Frick'a, goddess of marriage, 355. 
 
 Frig'ga, goddess who presided over 
 smiling nature, sending sunshine, 
 rain, and harvest, 344, 345, 347, 
 351, 352. 
 
 Froh, one of the Norse gods, 354. 
 
 Frost Giants, 349. 
 
 Fu'ries (Erinnyes), the three re¬ 
 tributive spirits who punished 
 crime, represented as snaky-haired 
 old women, named Alecto, Me* 
 gaera, and Tisiphone, 9, 186, 198, 
 199, 266, 269, 270, 277. 
 
 G 
 
 Gse'a, of Ge, called Tellus by the 
 Romans, the personification of the 
 earth; described as the first being 
 that sprang from Chaos, and gave 
 birth to Uranus (Heaven) and 
 Pontus (Sea), 1-2. 
 
 Gal-a-te'a, a Nereid or sea-nymph, 
 173, 197. 
 
 Gal-a-te'a, statue carved and beloved 
 by Pygmalion, 209-211. 
 
 Ga'len, Greek physician and philo¬ 
 sophical writer, 313. 
 
 Games, national athletic contests in 
 Greece—Olympian, at Olympia; 
 Pythian, near Delphi, seat of 
 Apollo’s oracle; Isthmian, on the 
 Corinthian Isthmus; Nemean, at 
 Nemea in Argolis, 155. 
 
 Gan'ges, river in India, 44. 
 
 Gan'y-mede, the most beautiful of 
 all mortals; carried off to Olym¬ 
 pus that he might fill the cup of 
 Zeus and live among the immor¬ 
 tal gods, 150. 
 
 Gau'ta-ma, Prince, the Buddha 
 (which See), 325. 
 
 Gem'i-ni ( See Castor), constellation 
 created by Jupiter from the twin- 
 brothers after death, 158. 
 
 Gen'ghis Khan, Tartar conqueror, 
 327. 
 
 Ge'ni-us, in Roman belief, the pro¬ 
 tective Spirit of each individual 
 man, 11. See Juno, 
 r'da, wife of Frey, 336. 
 
 Ge'ri, one of Odin’s two wolves, 
 330. 
 
 Ge'ry-on, a three-bodied monster, 
 145. 
 
 Gi-al'lar Horn, the trumpet that 
 Heimdal will blow at the judg¬ 
 ment day, 349. 
 
 Gi'ants, beings of monstrous size 
 and of fearful countenances; rep¬ 
 resented as in constant opposition 
 to the gods, 122-123; in Wagner’s 
 Nibelungen Ring, 354. 
 
 Gi'bich-ung race, ancestors of Al- 
 berich, 356, 357. 
 
 Gi-bral'tar, great rock and town at 
 southwest corner of Spain (See 
 Pillars of Hercules), 145. 
 
 Glau-cus, a fisherman, loving Scylla, 
 59-61, 174, 213. 
 
 Gleip'nir, magical chain on the wolf 
 Fenris, 333. 
 
 Gods of the ancient myths, 12, 354. 
 
 Golden Age, 9, 14, 301. 
 
 Golden Apples, 117-118, 145-146. 
 
 Golden Fleece, of ram used for 
 escape of children of Athamas, 
 named Helle and Phryxus (which 
 See); after sacrifice of ram to 
 
382 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Jupiter, fleece was guarded by 
 sleepless dragon and gained by 
 Jason and Argonauts (which See; 
 also Helle), 129-133, 134. 
 
 Gor'di-an Knot, tying up in temple 
 the wagon of Gordius, he who 
 could untie it being destined to 
 be lord of Asia; it was cut by 
 Alexander the Great, 48. 
 
 Gor'di-us, a countryman who, ar¬ 
 riving in- Phrygia in a wagon, was 
 made king by the people, thus in¬ 
 terpreting an oracle, 48. 
 
 Gor'gons, three monstrous females, 
 with huge teeth, brazen claws and 
 snakes for hair, sight of whom 
 turned beholders to stone; Me¬ 
 dusa, the most famous, slain by 
 Perseus (which See), 115. 
 
 Graces, three goddesses who en¬ 
 hanced the enjoyments of life 
 by refinement and gentleness; 
 they were Aglaia (brilliance), 
 Euphrosyne (joy), and Thalia 
 (bloom), 4, 8. 
 
 Grae'se, three gray-haired female 
 watchers for the Gorgons, with 
 one movable eye and one tooth 
 between the three, 115-116. 
 
 Grand La'ma, Buddhist pontiff in 
 Thibet, 327. 
 
 Great Bear, constellation, 32-33, 
 36, 42. 
 
 Griefs, 266. 
 
 Gry'phon (griffin), a fabulous ani¬ 
 mal, with the body of a lion and 
 the head and wings of an eagle, 
 dwelling in the Rhipaean moun¬ 
 tains, between the Hyperboreans 
 and the one-eyed Arimaspians and 
 guarding the gold of the North, 
 128. 
 
 Gue'bers, Persian fire-worshippers, 
 320. 
 
 Gul-lin-burs'ti, the boar drawing 
 Frey’s car, 347. 
 
 Gull'topp, Heimdall’s horse, 347. 
 
 Gun'ther, Burgundian king, brother 
 of Kriemhild, 352, 356, 357. 
 
 Gu'trune, half-sister to Hagen, 356. 
 
 Gy'oll, river, 345. 
 
 H 
 
 Ha'des, originally the god of the 
 nether world—the name later used 
 to designate the gloomy subter¬ 
 ranean land of th"5 dead, 147. 
 
 Hse'mon, son of Creon of Thebes, 
 and lover of Antigone, 183. 
 
 Haemo'ni-an city, 73. 
 
 Hae'mus, Mount, northern boundary 
 of Thrace, 31, 43. 
 
 Ha'gan, a principal character in the 
 Nibelungen Lied, slayer of Sieg¬ 
 fried, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357. 
 
 Hal-cy'o-ne, daughter of .TEneas, 
 and the beloved wife of Ceyx, 
 who, when he was drowned, flew 
 to his floating body, and the pity¬ 
 ing gods changed them both to 
 birds (kingfishers), who nest at 
 sea during a certain calm week 
 in winter (“halcyon weather”), 
 69-76. 
 
 Ham-a-dry'ads, tree- or wood- 
 nymphs, 76, 172. See Nymphs. 
 
 Har-mo'ni-a, daughter of Mars and 
 Venus, wife of Cadmus, 94, 182. 
 
 Har'pies, monsters, with head and 
 bust of woman, but wings, legs 
 and tail of birds, seizing souls of 
 the wicked, or punishing evil¬ 
 doers by greedily snatching or 
 defiling their food, 176, 259-260, 
 276. 
 
 Har-poc'ra-tes, Egyptian god, Horus, 
 293. 
 
 Heaven, 4. 
 
 He'be, daughter of Juno, cupbearer 
 to the gods, 3, 135, 149, 150. 
 
 He'brus, ancient name of river 
 Maritzka, 187. 
 
 Hec'a-te, a mighty and formidable 
 divinity, supposed to send at night 
 all kinds of demons and terrible 
 phantoms from the lower world, 
 131, 134, 135, 266. 
 
 Hec'tor, son of Priam and cham¬ 
 pion of Troy, 213, 214, 217, 218, 
 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227, 260. 
 
 Hec'u-ba, wife of Priam, king of 
 Troy, to whom she bore Hector, 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 383 
 
 Paris, and many other children, 
 223, 224, 226, 232. 
 
 Heid'run, she-goat, furnishing mead 
 for slain heroes in Valhalla, 331. 
 
 Heim'dall, watchman of the gods, 
 332, 347, 349. 
 
 Hel, the lower world of Scandi¬ 
 navia, to which were consigned 
 those who had not died in battle, 
 345. 
 
 He'la (Death), the daughter of Lo- 
 ki and the mistress of the Scan¬ 
 dinavian Hel, 332, 344, 345, 349. 
 
 Hel'en, daughter of Jupiter and 
 Leda; wife of Menelaus; carried 
 off by Paris and cause of the 
 Trojan War, 77, 153, 158, 212, 
 223, 229, 232, 233. 
 
 Hel'e-nus, son of Priam and Hec¬ 
 uba, celebrated for his prophetic 
 powers, 260, 261. 
 
 He-li'a-des, sisters of Phaeton, 45. 
 
 Hel'i-con, Mount, in Greece, resi¬ 
 dence of Apollo and the Muses, 
 with fountains of poetic inspira¬ 
 tion, Aganippe and Hippocrene, 
 43, 124. 
 
 He-li-op'o-lis, city of the Sun, in 
 Egypt, 311. 
 
 Hel'las, Greece, 2. 
 
 Hel'le, daughter of Thessalian King 
 Athamas, who escaping from 
 cruel father with her brother 
 Phryxus, on ram with golden 
 fleece, fell into the sea-strait since 
 named for her (See Golden 
 Fleece), 129. 
 
 Hel'les-pont, narrow strait between 
 Europe and Asia Minor, named 
 for Helle (which See), 106, 129. 
 
 He-phaes'tos, 6. See Vulcan. 
 
 He'ra, called Juno by the Romans, 
 a daughter of Cronos (Saturn) 
 and Rhea, and sister and wife of 
 Jupiter, 6. See Juno. 
 
 Her'cu-les, athletic hero, son of 
 Jupiter and Alcmena, achieved 
 twelve vast labors and many fa¬ 
 mous deeds, 128, 130, 133, 143- 
 149, 150, 151, 153, 165, 177, 178, 
 179, 181, 193, 229, 279, 301. 
 
 Her'cu-les, Pillars of ( See Pillars 
 of Hercules), 145. 
 
 Her'cu-les, the twelve labors of, 
 144-147. 
 
 Her'mes (Mercury), messenger of 
 the gods, deity of commerce, sci¬ 
 ence, eloquence, trickery, theft, 
 and skill generally, 18, 49-51, 293. 
 
 Her-mi'o-ne, daughter of Menelaus 
 and Helen, 233. 
 
 Her'mod, the nimble, son of Odin, 
 345. 
 
 He'ro, a priestess of Venus, beloved 
 of Leander (which See), 105-106. 
 
 He-rod'o-tus, Greek historian, 307. 
 
 He'si-od, Greek poet, 273. 
 
 Hes-pe'ri-a, ancient name for Italy, 
 259. 
 
 Hes-per'i-des (See Apples of the 
 Hesperides), 46, 145. 
 
 Hes'pe-rus, the evening star (also 
 called Day-Star, p. 41), 53, 69, 
 145. 
 
 Hes'ti-a, called Vesta by the Ro¬ 
 mans, the goddess of the hearth, 
 10 . 
 
 Hil'de-brand, German magician and 
 champion, 353. 
 
 Hin'du mythology, 320-321. 
 
 Hin'du triad, Brahma^ Vishnu, and 
 Siva (which See), 320-323. 
 
 Hip-po-cre'ne (See Helicon), 124. 
 
 Hip-po-da-mi'a, wife of Pirithous, at 
 whose wedding the Centaurs of¬ 
 fered violence to the bride, caus¬ 
 ing a great battle, 127. 
 
 Hip-pol'y-ta, Queen of the Amazons, 
 145, 154. 
 
 Hip-pol'y-tus, son of Thesus, 154. 
 
 Hip-pom'e-nes, who won Atalanta in 
 foot-race, beguiling her with 
 golden apples thrown for her to 
 pick up, 66, 141-142. 
 
 Ho'dur, blind man, who, fooled by 
 Loki, threw a mistletoe-twig at 
 Baldur, killing him, 344-345. 
 
 Ho'mer, the blind poet of Greece, 
 about 850 b.c., 202, 212, 216, 273, 
 306-307. 
 
 Hope (See Pandora), 14. 
 
 Ho'rae. See Hours. 
 
384 
 
 INDEX AND . DICTIONARY 
 
 Ho'rus, Egyptian god of the sun, 
 293. 
 
 Hours, 39, 41, 208. 
 
 Hring'ham, Baldur’s ship, 347. 
 
 Hu'gi, who beat Thialfi in foot¬ 
 races, 340. 
 
 Hu'gin, one of Odin’s two ravens, 
 330. 
 
 Hun'ger, 266, 333. 
 
 Hun'ding, husband of Sieglinda, 
 355. 
 
 Hy-a-cin'thus, a youth, beloved by 
 Apollo, and accidentally killed by 
 him, changed in death to the 
 flower, hyacinth, 67-68, 228. 
 
 Hy'a -des, Nyszean nymphs, nurses 
 of infant Bacchus, rewarded by 
 being placed as cluster of stars in 
 the heavens, 160. 
 
 Hy'a-le, a nymph of Diana, 34. 
 
 Hy'dra, nine-headed monster slain 
 by Hercules, 144, 149, 267, 269. 
 
 Hy-ge'i-a, goddess of health, daugh¬ 
 ter of .TEsculapius, 174. 
 
 Hy'las, a youth detained by nymphs 
 of spring where he sought water, 
 133. 
 
 Hy'men, the god of marriage, imag¬ 
 ined as a handsome youth and in¬ 
 voked in bridal songs, 20, 185. 
 
 Hy-met'tus, mountain in Attica, 
 near Athens, celebrated for its 
 marble and its honey, 63. 
 
 Hy-per-bo're-ans, people of the far 
 North, 2. 
 
 Hy-pe'ri-on, a Titan, son of Ura¬ 
 nus and Ge, and father of He¬ 
 lios, Selene, and Eos, 4, 5; cattle 
 of, 244. 
 
 Hy-ri-e'us, king in Greece, 297. 
 
 I 
 
 I-ap'e-tus, a Titan, son of Uranus 
 and Ge, and father of Atlas, 
 Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Me- 
 noetius, 4, 18. 
 
 I-a'si-us, father of Atalanta, 138. 
 
 Ib'y-cus, a poet, story of, and the 
 cranes, 198-201. 
 
 I-ca'ri-a, island of the .TEgean Sea, 
 one of the Sporades, 157. 
 
 I-ca'ri-us, Spartan prince, father of 
 Penelope, 184. 
 
 Ic'a-rus, son of Daedalus, he flew 
 too neai> the sun with artificial 
 wings, and, the wax melting, he 
 fell into the sea, 156, 157. 
 
 Ice'land, 351. 
 
 Ice-los, attendant of Morpheus, 72. 
 
 I-coTum-kill. See Iona. 
 
 I'da, Mount, a Trojan hill, 43, 150, 
 
 211 . 
 
 I-dae'us, a Trojan herald, 226. 
 
 I'das, son of Aphareus and Arene, 
 and brother of Lynceus, 158. 
 
 I- du'na, wife of Bragi, 332. 
 
 Il'i-ad, epic poem of the Trojan 
 
 War, by Homer, 216, 227. 
 
 Il'i-o'heus, a son of Niobe (which 
 See), 113. 
 
 Il'i-um. See Troy. 
 
 II- lyr'i-a, Adriatic countries north 
 of Greece, 31, 94. 
 
 In'a-chus, son of Oceanus and Te- 
 thys, and father of Phoroneus 
 and Io; also first king of Argos, 
 and said to have given his name 
 to the river Inachus, 29. 
 
 In'dia, 39, 161. 
 
 In'dra, Hindu god of heaven, thun¬ 
 der, lightning, storm and rain, 
 320. 
 
 Infernal regions, 266-273. 
 
 I'na, wife of Athamas, fleeing from 
 whom with infant son she sprang 
 into the sea and was changed to 
 Leucothea (which See), 94, 164, 
 174. 
 
 I'o, changed to a heifer by Jupiter, 
 29-31, 302. 
 
 I-ob'a-tes, King of Lycia, 124, 125. 
 
 I-o-la'us, servant of Hercules, 144. 
 
 I-ol'cos, 133. 
 
 I'o-le, sister of Dryope, 64-65. 
 
 I-o'na, or Icolmkill, a small north¬ 
 ern island near Scotland, where 
 St. Columba founded a missionary 
 monastery (563 a.d.), 362-366. 
 
 I-o'ni-a, coast of Asia Minor, 69. 
 
 I-o'ni-an Sea, 31. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 385 
 
 Iph-i-ge-ni'a, daughter of Agamem¬ 
 non, offered as a sacrifice but 
 carried away by Diana, 214, 235. 
 
 I'phis, died for love of Anaxarete, 
 78. 
 
 Iph'i-tus, friend of Hercules, killed 
 by him, 147. 
 
 Ire'land, 362. 
 
 I'ris, goddess of the rainbow, mes¬ 
 senger of Juno and Zeus, 6, 71* 
 72, 218, 225, 282. 
 
 Iron Age, 15. 
 
 I'sis, wife of Osiris; described as 
 the giver of death, 292‘, 293-294. 
 
 Isles of the Blessed, 2, 146, 273. 
 
 Is'ma-rus, first stop of Ulysses, re¬ 
 turning from Trojan War, 236. 
 
 Is-me'nos, a son of Niobe, slain by 
 Apollo, 113. 
 
 Isth'mi-an Games, 155, 174. See 
 Games. 
 
 It'a-ly, 154, 259, 262, 263, 276, 285. 
 
 Ith'a-ca, home of Ulysses and Penel¬ 
 ope, 184, 212, 236, 253. 
 
 I-uTus, son of ZEneas, 276, 277, 283, 
 287. 
 
 Ix-i'on, once a sovereign of Thes¬ 
 saly, sentenced in Tartarus to be 
 lashed with serpents to a wheel 
 which a strong wind drove con¬ 
 tinually around, 186, 270. 
 
 J 
 
 Ja-nic'u-lum, Roman fortress on the 
 Janiculus, a hill on the other 
 side of the Tiber, 281. 
 
 Ja'nus, a deity from the earliest 
 times held in high estimation by 
 the Romans, 10, 281; temple of, 
 277. 
 
 Ja-pan', 326. 
 
 Ja'phet (Iapetus), 18. 
 
 Ja'son, leader of the Argonauts, 
 seeking the Golden Fleece, 130- 
 133, 134, 135, 136, 138-139, 151. 
 
 Ja'va, 326. 
 
 Jo-cas'ta, 124, 182. 
 
 Jo'tun-heim, home of the giants in 
 Northern mythology, 330, 335, 
 
 348. 
 
 Jove (Zeus), chietf god of Roman 
 and Grecian mythology, 5, 9, 13, 
 53, 56, 80, 98, 100, 118, 119, 172, 
 177, 183, 210, 216, 220, 221, 239, 
 245, 268. See Jupiter. 
 
 Jug'ger-naut, Hindu deity, 322. 
 
 Ju'no, the particular guardian spirit 
 of each woman (See Genius), 11. 
 
 Ju'no, wife of Jupiter, queen of the 
 gods, 6, 28-33, 37, 38, 71, 72, 81, 
 95, 101, 112, 123, 143, 144, 145, 
 149, 150, 160, 177, 211, 216, 218, 
 
 220, 261, 277, 278, 279, 282, 287, 
 
 289. 
 
 Ju'pi-ter, Jovis-pater, Father Jove; 
 Jupiter and Jove used interchange¬ 
 ably, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 
 15, 16, 21, 29-32, 38, 40, 44, 45, 
 49, 50, 52, 89, 91, 92, 97, 107, 
 109, 116, 117, 123, 125, 127, 128, 
 
 130, 143, 148, 150, 153, 155, 158, 
 
 160, 173, 179, 180, 182, 187, 192, 
 
 204, 206, 207, 208, 211, 217, 218, 
 
 220, 221, 225, 226, 232, 240, 259, 
 
 263, 269, 287; oracle of, at Do- 
 dona, 296; statue of the Olym¬ 
 pian, 303. 
 
 Ju'pi-ter Am'mon (See Ammon), 
 296. 
 
 Ju'piter Cap'i-to-li'nus, temple of, 
 preserving the Sibylline books, 275. 
 
 Jus'tice. See Themis. 
 
 K 
 
 Kal'ki, tenth avatar (which See) of 
 Vishnu, 321. 
 
 Ke-da'li-on, guide of Orion, 205-206. 
 
 Ker'man, desert of, 320. 
 
 Kneph, .spirit or breath, 292. 
 
 Kriem'hild, wife of Siegfried, 352, 
 35 3. 
 
 Krish'na, eighth avatar (which See) 
 of Vishnu, Hindu deity of fer¬ 
 tility in nature and mankind, 321. 
 
 L 
 
 Lab'y-rinth, the enclosed maze of 
 passageways where roamed the 
 Minotaur of Crete, killed by 
 
386 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Theseus with aid of Ariadne, 
 152, 156. 
 
 Lach'e-sis, one of the Fates (which 
 See), 9. 
 
 La-er'tes, father of Ulysses, 185. 
 
 Laes-try-go'ni-ans, savages attacking 
 Ulysses, 241. 
 
 La'ius, King of Thebes, 123. 
 
 La'raa, holy man of Thibet, 327. 
 
 Lam-pe'tia, daughter of Hyperion, 
 244. 
 
 La-oc'o-on, a priest of Neptune, in 
 Troy, who warned the Trojans 
 against the Wooden Horse (which 
 See), but when two serpents 
 came out of the sea and strangled 
 him and his two sons, the people 
 listened to the Greek spy Sinon 
 (which See), and brought the fatal 
 Horse into the town, 115, 230. 
 
 La-o-da-mi'a, daughter of Acastus 
 and wife of Protesilaus, 214. 
 
 La-om'e-don, King of Troy, 207. 
 
 Lap'i-tha:, Thessalonians, whose king 
 had invited the Centaurs to his 
 daughter’s wedding but who at¬ 
 tacked them for offering violence 
 to the bride, 127, 166. 
 
 La'res, household deities, 11. 
 
 Lark'spur, flower from the blood of 
 Ajax, 228. 
 
 La-ti'nus, ruler of Latium, where 
 ASneas landed in Italy, 276. 
 
 Lat'mos, Mount, where Diana fell 
 in love with Endymion, 204. 
 
 La-to'na, mother of Apollo, 6, 36- 
 38, 112, 113. 
 
 Lau'sus, son of Mezentius, killed 
 by Aineas, 278, 285. 
 
 La-vin'i-a, daughter of Latinus and 
 wife of Aineas, 276, 287. 
 
 La-vin'i-um, Italian city named for 
 Lavinia, 287. 
 
 Law. See Themis. 
 
 Le-an'der, a youth of Abydos, who, 
 swimming the Hellespont to see 
 Hero, his love, was drowned, 105- 
 106. 
 
 Le-ba-de'a, site of the oracle of 
 Trophonius, 298. 
 
 Le-byn'thos, Aigean island, 157. 
 
 Le'da, Queen of Sparta, wooed by 
 Jupiter in the form of a swan, 
 109, 158. 
 
 Le'laps, dog of Cephalus, 26, 35. 
 
 Lem'nos, large island in the Aegean 
 Sea, sacred to Vulcan, 6, 130, 
 205, 229. 
 
 Lem'u-res, the spectres or spirits 
 of the dead, 11. 
 
 Le'the, river of Hades, drinking 
 whose water caused forgetfulness, 
 72, 271. 
 
 Leu-ca'dia, a promontory, whence 
 Sappho, disappointed in love, was 
 said to have thrown herself into 
 the sea, 203. 
 
 Leu-co'the-a, a sea-goddess, invoked 
 by sailors for protection (See 
 Ino), 174. 
 
 Li'ber, ancient god of fruitfulness, 
 
 10 , 11 . 
 
 Li-be'thra, burial-place of Orpheus, 
 187. 
 
 Lib'y-a, Greek name for continent 
 of Africa in general, 145. 
 
 Lib'y-an Desert, in Africa, 44. 
 
 Lib'y-an Oasis, 296. 
 
 Li'chas, who brought the shirt of 
 Nessus to Hercules, 148. 
 
 Li'nus, musical instructor of Her¬ 
 cules, 193. 
 
 Lion, constellation, 41. 
 
 Little Bear, constellation, 32-33, 42. 
 
 Lo'gi, who vanquished Loki in an 
 eating-contest, 339. 
 
 Lo'ki, the Satan of Norse mythol¬ 
 ogy, son of the giant Farbanti, 
 332, 334, 335, 337, 339, 344-345, 
 346, 347, 349, 352, 354, 355. 
 
 Lo'tis, a nymph, changed to a lotus- 
 plant and in that form plucked 
 by Dryope (which See), 64. 
 
 Lo'tus-Eaters, soothed to indolence; 
 companions of Ulysses landing 
 among them lost all memory of 
 home and had to be dragged 
 away before they would continue 
 their voyage, 237. 
 
 Love (Eros) issued from egg of 
 Night, and with arrows and torch 
 produced life and joy, 4. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 387 
 
 Lyc'a-has, a turbulent sailor, 162. 
 
 Ly-ca'on, son of Priam, 222. 
 
 Lyc'i-a, a district in Southern Asia 
 Minor, 36, 124, 220. 
 
 Lyc-o-me'des, king of the Dolopi- 
 ans, who treacherously slew The¬ 
 seus, 154, 212. 
 
 Ly'cus, usurping King of Thebes, 
 192. 
 
 Lyn'ceus, one of the sons of 
 Atgyptus, 158. 
 
 M 
 
 Ma-cha'on, son of iEsculapius, 218, 
 219, 229. 
 
 Mae-o'ni-a, ancient Lydia, 162. 
 
 Ma'gi, Persian priests, 319. 
 
 Ma-ha-de'va, same as Siva (which 
 See), 322. 
 
 Ma'ia, daughter of Atlas and Plei- 
 one, eldest and most beautiful of 
 the Pleiades, 7. 
 
 Man, creation of, 12. 
 
 Man'tu-a, in Italy, birthplace of 
 Virgil, 308. 
 
 Ma'nu, ancestor of mankind, 321. 
 
 Mar'a-thon, where Theseus and 
 Pirithous met, 153. 
 
 Mar'mo-ra, Sea of, 106. 
 
 Ma'ro. See Virgil. 
 
 Mars, 6, 94, 107, 131, 216, 224. 
 
 Mar'sy-as, inventor of the flute, who 
 challenged Apollo to musical com¬ 
 petition, and, defeated, was flayed 
 alive, 193. 
 
 Mats'ya, the Fish, first avatar 
 (which See) of Vishnu, 321. 
 
 Me-an'der, Grecian river, 44, 156. 
 
 Me-de'a, princess and sorceress who 
 aided Jason, 117, 131, 132, 134- 
 137, 151, 152. 
 
 Med-i-ter-ra'ne-an Sea, 1, 233. 
 
 Me-du'sa, one of the Gorgons 
 (which See), 116-117, 124. 
 
 Me-gaeTa, one of the Furies (which 
 See), 9. 
 
 Meg'a-ra, 98. 
 
 Me-lam'pus, a Spartan dog, 35; the 
 first mortal endowed with pro¬ 
 phetic powers, 193-194. 
 
 Me-lan'thus, steersman for Bacchus, 
 162. 
 
 Me-le-a'ger, one of the Argonauts 
 (See Althasa), 138-141. 
 
 Mel'i-cer'tes, infant son of Ino, 
 changed to Palaemon (See Ino, 
 Leucothea, and Palaemon), 174. 
 
 Me-lis'se-us, a Cretan king, 179. 
 
 Mel-pom'e-ne, one of the Muses 
 (which See), 8. 
 
 Mem'non, the beautiful son of Ti- 
 thonus and Eos (Aurora), and 
 king of the Ethiopians, slain in 
 Trojan War, 120, 207, 208, 227. 
 
 Mem'phis, Egyptian city, 295, 299. 
 
 Men-e-la'us, son of King of Sparta, 
 husband of Helen, 212, 213, 219, 
 221, 232, 233, 289. 
 
 Men-oe'ceus, son of Creon, volun¬ 
 tary victim in war to gain suc¬ 
 cess for his father, 183. 
 
 Men'tor, son of Alcimus and a 
 faithful friend of Ulysses, 246. 
 
 Mer'cu-ry (See Hermes), 7, 13, 29- 
 31, 49, 56, 89, 116, 123, 129, 147, 
 192, 214, 226, 242, 245, 251, 263, 
 301. 
 
 Mer'o-pe, daughter of King of 
 Chios, beloved by Orion, 205. 
 
 Mes'mer-ism, likened to curative 
 oracle of ^Esculapius at Epidau- 
 rus, 298. 
 
 Met'a-bus, father of Camilla, 278. 
 
 Met'a-mor'pho-ses, Ovid’s poetical 
 legends of mythical transforma¬ 
 tions, a large source of our knowl¬ 
 edge of classic mythology, 309. 
 
 Met-a-ni'ra, a mother, kind to Ceres 
 seeking Proserpine, 54. 
 
 Me-temp'sy-cho'sis, transmigration of 
 souls—rebirth of dying men and 
 women in forms of animals or 
 human beings, 272. 
 
 Me'tis, Prudence, a spouse of Jupi¬ 
 ter, 5. 
 
 Me-zen'ti-us, a brave but cruel sol¬ 
 dier, opposing Aineas in Italy, 
 278, 281, 285, 286. 
 
 Mi'das, 46-48. 
 
 Mid'gard, the middle world of the 
 Norsemen, 329, 330, 348. 
 
388 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Mid'gard serpent, a sea-monster, 
 child of Loki, 332, 344, 349. 
 
 Milky Way, starred path across the 
 sky, believed to be road to pal¬ 
 ace of the gods, 15. 
 
 Mi'lo, a great athlete, 292. 
 
 Mi'me, one of the chief dwarfs of 
 ancient German mythology, 354, 
 356. 
 
 Mi-ner'va (Athene), daughter of 
 Jupiter, patroness of health, learn¬ 
 ing, and wisdom, 3, 4, 7, 13, 
 50, 53, 107-111, 116, 117, 123, 
 124, 125, 147, 153, 154, 157, 183, 
 193, 211, 216, 229, 230, 235, 246, 
 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254; 
 
 statue of, 304. 
 
 Mi'nos, King of Crete, 95, 98-100, 
 152, 154, 156, 165, 268. 
 
 Min'o-taur, monster killed by The¬ 
 seus, 152. 
 
 Mis'tle-toe, fatal to Baldur, 344, 360. 
 
 Mne-mos'y-ne, one of the Muses 
 (which See), 4, 8. 
 
 Modesty, statue to, 184. 
 
 MoTy, plant, powerful against sor¬ 
 cery, 242. 
 
 Mo'mus, a deity whose delight was to 
 jeer bitterly at gods and men, 9. 
 
 Mon'ad, the “unit” of Pythagoras, 
 289. 
 
 Monsters, unnatural beings, evilly 
 disposed to men, 122-129. 
 
 Month, the, attendant upon the Sun, 
 39. 
 
 Moon, 3, 5, 41, 43; goddess of, 
 See Diana. 
 
 Mor'pheus, son of Sleep and god 
 of dreams, 72, 73. 
 
 Mul'ci-ber, Latin name of Vulcan, 
 
 10 . 
 
 Mull, Island of, 362. 
 
 Mu'nin, one of Odin’s two ravens, 
 130. 
 
 Mu-sae'us, sacred poet, son of 
 Orpheus, 194. 
 
 Mu'ses, The, nine goddesses pre¬ 
 siding over poetry, etc.—Calliope, 
 epic poetry; Clio, history; Erato, 
 love poetry; Euterpe, lyric poetry; 
 Melpomene, tragedy; Polyhymnia, 
 
 oratory and sacred song; Terp¬ 
 sichore, choral song and dance; 
 Thalia, comedy and idyls; Ura¬ 
 nia, astronomy, 3, 8, 43, 124, 126, 
 187, 193. 
 
 Mus'pel-heim, the fire-world of the 
 Norsemen, 349. 
 
 My-ce'nae, ancient Grecian city, of 
 which Agamemnon was king, 213, 
 235. 
 
 Myr'mi-dons, bold soldiers of 
 Achilles, 95-98, 219. 
 
 Mys'i-a, Greek district on northwest 
 coast of Asia Minor, 130, 133. 
 
 Mythology, origin of, collected 
 myths, describing gods of early 
 peoples, 300-303. 
 
 N 
 
 Na'iads, water-nymphs, 36, 45, 167, 
 174, 178, 209. 
 
 Nan'na, wife of Baldur, 347. 
 
 Na'pe, a dog of Diana, 35. 
 
 Nar-cis'sus, who died of unsatis¬ 
 fied love for his own image in the 
 water, 101-103. 
 
 Nau-sic'a-a, daughter of King Al- 
 cinous, who befriended Ulysses, 
 248, 249. 
 
 Nau-sith'o-us, king of Phaeacians, 
 247, 248. 
 
 Nax'os, Island of, 152, 163, 165. 
 
 Ne'gus, King of Abyssinia, 328. 
 
 Ne-me'a, forest devastated by a 
 lion killed by Hercules, 144, 155. 
 
 Ne-me'an Games, held in honor of 
 Jupiter and Hercules, 155. 
 
 Ne-me'an Lion, killed by Hercules, 
 144. 
 
 Nem'e-sis, goddess of vengeance, 9. 
 
 Ne-op-tol'e-mus, son of Achilles, 
 233. 
 
 Ne-pen'the, ancient drug to cause 
 forgetfulness of pain or distress, 
 233. 
 
 Neph'e-le, mother of Phryxus and 
 Helle, 34, 129. 
 
 Neph'thys, Egyptian goddess, 294. 
 
 Nep'tune, identical with Poseidon, 
 god of the sea, 4, 5, 16, 44, 107, 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 389 
 
 109, 132, 144, 154, 171, 172, 173, 
 
 174, 190, 199, 205, 216, 217, 218, 
 
 223, 230, 244, 252, 261, 264, 297. 
 
 Ne're-ids, sea-nymphs, daughters of 
 Nereus and Doris, 44, 167, 173, 
 196. 
 
 Ne're-us, a sea-god, 44, 173, 174, 
 209. 
 
 Nes'sus, a centaur killed by Her¬ 
 cules, whose jealous wife sent him 
 a robe or shirt steeped in the 
 blood of Nessus, which poisoned 
 him, 147. 
 
 Nes'tor, king of Pylos, renowned 
 for his wisdom, justice, and 
 knowledge of war, 130, 138, 139, 
 208, 213, 217, 218, 219, 353. 
 
 Ni'be-lun'gen Hoard, treasure seized 
 by Siegfried from the Nibelungs, 
 buried in the Rhine by Hagan 
 after killing Siegfried, and lost 
 when Hagan was killed by Kriem- 
 hild; theme of Wagner’s four 
 music-dramas, “The Ring of the 
 Nibelungen,” 353. 
 
 Ni'be-lun'gen Lied, German epic, 
 giving the same nature-myth as 
 the Norse Volsunga Saga, concern¬ 
 ing the Hoard, 352, 354. 
 
 Ni'be-lun'gen Ring, Wagner’s mu¬ 
 sic-dramas, 354-357. 
 
 Ni'be-lungs, the, a race of Northern 
 dwarfs, 353, 354. 
 
 Nid'hogge, a serpent in the lowe^ 
 world that lives on the dead, 
 330. 
 
 Niffle'heim, mist world of the 
 Norsemen; the Hades of absent 
 spirits, 330, 333, 335, 348. 
 
 Night, 4, 42, 208. 
 
 Nile, Egyptian river, 31, 44. 
 
 Nim'rod, tower of, 301. 
 
 Ni'nus, Tomb of, 24. 
 
 Ni'o-be, daughter of Tantalus, proud 
 Queen of Thebes, whose seven 
 sons and seven daughters were 
 killed by Apollo and Diana, at 
 which Amphion, her husband, 
 killed himself, and Niobe wept 
 until she was turned to stone, 
 111-115. 
 
 Ni'sus, King of Megara, 98-101, 
 282, 283, 284. 
 
 No'man, name assumed by Ulysses, 
 239. 
 
 Norns, the three Scandinavian 
 Fates, Urdur (the past), Ver- 
 dandi (the present), and Skuld 
 (the future), 330. 
 
 Northern Mythology, 328-357. 
 
 No'thung, magic sword, 355, 356. 
 
 No'tus, southwest wind, 176. 
 
 Nox, daughter of Chaos and sister 
 of Erebus; personification of 
 night, 4. 
 
 Nu'ma, second king of Rome, 11, 
 175. 
 
 Nymphs, beautiful maidens, lesser 
 divinities of nature: Dryads and 
 Hamadryads, tree-nymphs; Naiads, 
 spring-, brook-, and river-nymphs; 
 Nereids, sea-nymphs; Oreads, 
 mountain- or hill-nymphs, 44, 79, 
 208. 
 
 Ny-sae'an nymphs, 160. 
 
 O 
 
 Ocean, 2, 44, 273. 
 
 O-ce'a-nus, a Titan, ruling watery 
 elements, 4, 32, 59, 172, 174. 
 
 O-cyr'o-e, a prophetess, daughter of 
 Chiron, 127. 
 
 O'din, chief of the Norse gods, 329, 
 330, 331, 344, 347, 349, 351. 
 
 O-dys'seus. See Ulysses. 
 
 Od'ys-sey, Homer’s poem, relating 
 the wanderings of Odysseus 
 (Ulysses) on returning from Tro¬ 
 jan War, 3, 227, 236. 
 
 (Ed'i-pus, Theban hero, who guessed 
 the riddle of the Sphinx (which 
 See), becoming King of Thebes, 
 123-124, 182. 
 
 CE'neus, King of Calydon, 138, 140. 
 
 CE-no'ne, nymph, married by Paris 
 in his youth, and abandoned for 
 Helen, 229. 
 
 CE-no'pi-on, King of Chios, 205. 
 
 CE'ta, Mount, scene of Hercules* 
 death, 148. 
 
390 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 O-lym'pia, a small plain in Elis, 
 where the Olympic games were 
 celebrated, 155. 
 
 O-lym'pi-ads, periods between Olym¬ 
 pic games (four years), 155. 
 
 O-lym'pi-an games, 155. See Games. 
 
 O-lym'pus, dwelling-place of the dy¬ 
 nasty of gods of which Zeus was 
 the head, 1, 3, 5, 43, 94, 213, 
 280. 
 
 Om'pha-le, queen of Lydia, daugh¬ 
 ter of Iardanus and wife of 
 Tmolus, 147. 
 
 O-phi'on, king of the Titans, who 
 ruled Olympus till dethroned by 
 the gods Saturn and Rhea, 4, 5. 
 
 Ops. See Rhea. 
 
 Or'a-cles, answers from the gods to 
 questions from seekers for knowl¬ 
 edge or advice for the future, 
 usually in equivocal form, so as 
 to fit any event; also places where 
 such answers were given forth, 
 usually by a priest or priestess, 
 296-300. 
 
 O're-ads, nymphs of mountains and 
 hills, 167, 170. 
 
 O-res'tes, son of Agamemnon and 
 Clytemnestra; because of his 
 crime in killing his mother, he 
 was pursued by the Furies until 
 purified by Minerva, 234, 235. 
 
 O-ri'on, youthful giant, loved by 
 Diana; Constellation, 122, 205-206. 
 
 Or-i-thy'i-a, a nymph, seized by 
 Boreas, 176. 
 
 Or'muzd (Greek, Oromasdes), son 
 of Supreme Being, source of good 
 as his brother Ahriman (Arima- 
 nes) was of evil, in Persian or 
 Zoroastrian religion, 318. 
 
 Or'pheus, musician, son of Apollo 
 and Calliope, 130, 133, 158, 185- 
 188, 191, 194, 271. See Eury- 
 dice. 
 
 O-si'ris, the most beneficent of the 
 Egyptian gods, 292, 293-294. 
 
 Os'sa, mountain of Thessaly, 43, 
 123. 
 
 Os'sian, Celtic poet of the second 
 or third century, 361. 
 
 Ov'id, Latin poet (See Meta¬ 
 morphoses), 98, 275, 289, 308. 
 
 P 
 
 Pac-to'lus, river whose sands were 
 changed to gold by Midas (which 
 See), 47. 
 
 Pse'on, a name for both Apollo and 
 iEsculapius, gods of medicine, 
 174. 
 
 Pa'gans, heathen, 12. 
 
 Pa-lae'mon, son of Athamas and 
 Ino (which See), 174. 
 
 Pal-a-me'des, messenger sent to call 
 Ulysses to the Trojan War, 212. 
 
 Pal'a-tine, one of Rome’s Seven 
 Hills, 281. 
 
 Pa'les, goddess presiding over cattle 
 and pastures, 10, 11. 
 
 Pal-i-nu'rus, faithful steersman of 
 ZEneas, 264, 267. 
 
 Pal-la'di-um, properly any image 
 of Pallas Athene, but specially 
 applied to an image at Troy, 
 which was stolen by Ulysses and 
 Diomedes, 229, 232. 
 
 Pal'las, son of Evander, 279, 280, 
 281, 282, 286, 287. 
 
 Pal'las A-the'ne (Minerva), 7, 81, 
 224, 249. 
 
 Pam'pha-gus, a dog of Diana, 35. 
 
 Pan, god of nature and the uni¬ 
 verse, 9, 30, 31, 47, 76, 166-168. 
 
 Pan-ath-e-nse'a, festival in honor of 
 Pallas Athene (Minerva), 154. 
 
 Pan-de'an Pipes, musical instru¬ 
 ment of reeds, made by Pan in 
 memory of Syrinx (which See). 
 
 Pan-do'ra (all-gifted), first woman, 
 dowered with gifts by every god, 
 yet entrusted with a box she was 
 cautioned not to open; but, curi¬ 
 ous, she opened it, and out flew 
 all the ills of humanity, leaving 
 behind only Hope, which re¬ 
 mained, 13-14, 17, 18. 
 
 Pan'o-pe, plain of, 92, 113. 
 
 Pan'thus, alleged earlier incarnation 
 of Pythagoras, 289. 
 
 Paph'la-go'ni-a, ancient country in 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 391 
 
 Asia Minor, south of Black Sea, 
 208. 
 
 Pa'phos, daughter of Pygmalion and 
 Galatea (both of which See), 63, 
 66 . 
 
 Par'cse. See Fates. 
 
 Pa-ri'ahs, lowest caste of Hindus, 
 324. 
 
 Par'is, son of Priam and Hecuba, 
 who eloped with Helen (which 
 See), 211, 212, 213, 216, 218, 
 228, 229, 232, 261. 
 
 Par-nas-sian laurel, wreath from 
 Parnassus, crown awarded to suc¬ 
 cessful poets, 47. 
 
 Par-nas'sus, mountain near Delphi, 
 sacred to Apollo and the Muses, 
 16, 19, 20, 43, 297. 
 
 Par'sees, Persian fire-worshippers 
 (Zoroastrians), of whom there are 
 still thousands in Persia and In¬ 
 dia, 320. 
 
 Par'the-non, the temple of Athene 
 Parthenos (“the Virgin”) on the 
 Acropolis of Athens, 155, 304. 
 
 Pa-tro'clus, friend of Achilles, 
 killed by Hector, 218, 219, 220, 
 221, 225. 
 
 Peg'a-sus, winged horse, born from 
 the sea-foam and the blood of 
 Medusa, 124-126. 
 
 Pe'leus, king of the Myrmidons, 
 father of Achilles by Thetis, 138, 
 173, 211. 
 
 Pe'li-as, usurping uncle of Jason, 
 130, 132, 136, 180. 
 
 Pe'li-on, mountain, 123, 133. 
 
 Pe-na'tes, protective household dei¬ 
 ties of the Romans, 11. 
 
 Pe-nel'o-pe, wife of Ulysses, who, 
 waiting twenty years for his re¬ 
 turn from the Trojan War, put 
 off the suitors for her hand by 
 promising to choose one when 
 her weaving was done, but un¬ 
 ravelled at night what she had 
 woven by day, 77, 184, 185, 212, 
 254, 256. 
 
 Pe-ne'us, river god, 20; river, 144. 
 
 Pen-the-si-le'a, queen of Amazons, 
 228. 
 
 Pen'the-us, king of Thebes; having 
 resisted the introduction of the 
 worship of Bacchus into his 
 kingdom, was driven mad by the 
 god, 94, 161, 164. 
 
 Pe'nus, Roman house pantry, giv¬ 
 ing name to the Penates, 11. 
 
 Pep'lus, sacred robe of Minerva, 
 155. 
 
 Per'dix, inventor of saw and com¬ 
 passes, 157. 
 
 Per'i-an'der, King of Corinth, friend 
 of Arion, 195-198. 
 
 Per-i-phe'tes, son of Vulcan, killed 
 by Theseus, 151. 
 
 Per-seph'o-ne, goddess of vegeta¬ 
 tion, 8. See Proserpine. 
 
 Per'seus, son of Jupiter and Danae, 
 slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, 
 deliverer of Andromeda from a 
 sea-monster, 116-122, 124, 202. 
 
 Phae-a'ci-ans, people who entertained 
 Ulysses, 247-253. 
 
 Phae'dra, faithless and cruel wife of 
 Theseus, 153-154. 
 
 Pha-e-thu'sa, sister of Phaeton, 244. 
 
 Pha-e-ton, son of Phoebus, who 
 dared attempt to drive his father’s 
 sun-chariot, 38-45. 
 
 Phan'ta-sos, a son of Somnus, 
 bringing strange images to sleep¬ 
 ing men, 72. 
 
 Pha'on, beloved by Sappho, 203. 
 
 Phid'i-as, famous Greek sculptor, 
 303, 304, 305. 
 
 Phi-le'mon, husband of Baucis 
 (which See), 49-51. 
 
 Phil-oc-te'tes, warrior who lighted 
 the fatal pyre of Hercules, 148, 
 229. 
 
 Phil'o-e, burial-place of Osiris, 294. 
 
 Phin'e-us, betrothed to Andromeda, 
 120-121, 130, 131, 259. 
 
 Phleg'e-thon, fiery river of Hades, 
 269. 
 
 Pho'cis, 234, 235, 297. 
 
 Phoebe, one of the sisters of Pha* 
 eton. \ 
 
 Phoe'bus (Apollo), god of music, 
 prophecy, and archery, the sun- 
 
392 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 god, 6, 22, 34, 38, 39-41, 68, 71, 
 
 92, 220. 
 
 Phoe-ni'cia, 91, 233, 294, 301. 
 
 Phoe-ni'ci-ans, 94, 296, 358. 
 
 Phce'nix, a messenger to Achilles, 
 217; also, a miraculous bird, 
 dying in fire by its own act and 
 springing up alive from its own 
 ashes, 310-312. 
 
 Phor'bas, a companion of ^Eneas, 
 whose form was assumed by Nep¬ 
 tune in luring Palinuras the 
 helmsman from his post, 264. 
 
 Phryg'i-a, 48, 49, 112, 160. 
 
 Phryx'us, brother of Helle (which 
 See), 130. 
 
 Pillars of Hercules, two mountains 
 —Cal'pe, now the Rock of Gibral¬ 
 tar, southwest corner of Spain in 
 Europe, and Ab'y-la, facing it 
 in Africa across the strait, 145. 
 
 Pin'dar, famous Greek poet, 273. 
 
 Pin'dus, Grecian mountain, 43. 
 
 Pi-re'ne, celebrated fountain at 
 Corinth, 125. 
 
 Pi-rith'o-us, king of the Lapithae in 
 Thessaly, and friend of Theseus, 
 husband of Hippodamia (which 
 See), 127, 138, 153, 158, 166. 
 
 Pleasure, daughter of Cupid and 
 Psyche, 89. 
 
 Ple'ia-des, seven of Diana's nymphs, 
 changed into stars, one being lost, 
 206, 208. 
 
 Plenty, the Horn of, 178-179. 
 
 Plex-ip'pus, brother of Althea, 139. 
 
 Plin'y, Roman naturalist, 313, 315, 
 317. 
 
 Plu'to, the same as Hades, Dis, 
 etc.; god of the Infernal Re¬ 
 gions, 5, 8, 9, 52-56, 58, 88, 127, 
 135, 147, 153, 180, 186, 265, 267. 
 
 Plu'tus, god of wealth, 9 
 
 Po, Italian river, 271. 
 
 Pole-star, 33. 
 
 Po-li'tes, youngest son of Priam of 
 Troy, 232, 
 
 Pol'lux, Castor and (Dioscuri, the 
 Twins) (See Castor), 133, 158- 
 159, 202, 203. 
 
 Pol-y-dec'tes, king of Seriphus, 116, 
 
 202 . 
 
 Pol-y-do're, slain kinsman of JEneas; 
 whose blood nourished a bush 
 that bled when broken, 258. 
 
 Pol-y-hym'ni-a, Muse of oratory and 
 sacred song, 8. 
 
 Po-ly'i-dus, soothsayer, 125. 
 
 Pol-y-ni'ces, King of Thebes, 182, 
 183. 
 
 Pol-y-phe'mus, giant son of Nep¬ 
 tune, 173, 209, 237, 238, 260. 
 
 Po-lyx'e-na, daughter of King Priam 
 of Troy, 228, |232. 
 
 Po-mo'na, goddess of fruit-trees 
 (See Vertumnus), 10, 11, 26, 76- 
 79. 
 
 Por-tu'nus, Roman name for Palae- 
 mon (which See), 174. 
 
 Po-sei'don (Neptune), ruler of the 
 ocean, 5. 
 
 Poverty, 266. 
 
 Prec'i-pice, threshold of Helas hall, 
 333. 
 
 Pres'ter John, a rumored priest or 
 presbyter, a Christian pontiff in 
 Upper Asia, believed in but never 
 found, 327-328. 
 
 Pri'am, king of Troy, 207, 213, 
 223, 224, 225, 226, 228, 232. 
 
 Pro'cris, beloved but jealous wife 
 of Cephalus, 26-28. 
 
 Pro-crus'tes, who seized travellers 
 and bound them on his iron bed, 
 stretching the short ones and cut¬ 
 ting short the tall; thus also 
 himself served by Theseus, 151. 
 
 Proe'tus, jealous of Bellerophon, 125. 
 
 Pro-me'theus, creator of man, who 
 stole fire from heaven for man’s 
 use, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 173. 
 
 Pros'er-pine, the same as Perse¬ 
 phone, goddess of all growing 
 things, daughter of Ceres, carried 
 off by Pluto, 8, 11, 53-57, 88, 
 134 n., 147, 186, 265, 266. 
 
 Pro-tes-i-la'us, slain by Hector the 
 Trojan, allowed by the gods to 
 return for three hours’ talk with 
 his widow Laodomia, 214. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 393 
 
 Pro'teus, the old man of the sea, 
 60, 173, 190-191. 
 
 Pru'dence (Metis), spouse of Jupi¬ 
 ter, 5. 
 
 Psy'che, a beautiful maiden, per¬ 
 sonification of the human soul, 
 sought by Cupid (Love), to whom 
 she responded, lost him by curi¬ 
 osity to see him (as he came to 
 her only by night), but finally 
 through his prayers was made im¬ 
 mortal and restored to him; a 
 symbol of immortality, 80-91. 
 
 Pu-ra'nas, Hindu Scriptures, 322. 
 
 Pyg-ma'li-on, sculptor in love with 
 a statue he had made, brought 
 to life by Venus, 62-63; brother 
 of Queen Dido, 262. 
 
 Pyg'mies, nation of dwarfs, at war 
 with the Cranes, 128. 
 
 Py'la-des, son of Straphius, friend 
 of Orestes, 234. 
 
 Pyr'a-mus, who? loved Thisbe, next- 
 door neighbor, and, their parents 
 opposing, they talked through 
 cracks in the house-wall, agree¬ 
 ing to meet in the near-by woods; 
 where Pyramus, finding a bloody 
 veil and thinking Thisbe slain, 
 killed himself, and she, seeing 
 his body, killed herself. (Bur¬ 
 lesqued in Shakespeare’s “Mid¬ 
 summer Night’s Dream”), 23-26. 
 
 Pyr'rha, wife of Deucalion (which 
 See), 16-17. 
 
 Pyr'rhus (Neoptolemus), son of 
 Achilles, 232. 
 
 Py-thag'o-ras, Greek philosopher 
 (540 b.c.), who thought numbers 
 to be the essence and principle of 
 all things, and taught transmi¬ 
 gration of souls of the dead into 
 new life as human or animal be¬ 
 ings, 288. 
 
 Pyth'i-a, priestess of Apollo at Del¬ 
 phi, 297. 
 
 Pytb'i-an Games, 19, 155. 
 
 Pyth'i-an Oracle, 84. 
 
 ipy'thon, serpent springing from 
 Deluge slum, destroyed by Apol¬ 
 lo, 19. 
 
 Q 
 
 Qui-ri'nus (from quiris, a lance or 
 spear), a war god, said to be 
 Romulus, founder of Rome, 10. 
 
 R 
 
 Rag-na-rok', the twilight (or ending) 
 of the gods, 348-349. 
 
 Raj'puts, minor Hindu caste, 324. 
 
 Re-gil'lus, lake in Latium, noted 
 for battle fought near by between 
 the Romans and the Latins, 158. 
 
 Re'mus, brother of Romulus, 
 founder of Rome, 287. 
 
 Rhad-a-man'thus, son of Jupiter 
 and Europa, after his death one 
 of the judges in the lower world, 
 269, 273. 
 
 Rhap'so-dist, professional reciter of 
 poems among the Greeks, 307. 
 
 Rhe'a, female Titan, wife of Saturn 
 (Cronos), mother of the chief 
 gods, worshipped in Greece and 
 Rome, 4, 5, 8, 143, 161, 179. 
 
 Rhine, river, 353, 355, 357. 
 
 Rhine-maidens, or daughters, three 
 water - nymphs, Flosshilda, Wo- 
 glinda, and Wellgunda, set to 
 guard the Nibelungen Hoard 
 (which See), buried in the Rhine, 
 354, 355. 
 
 Rhodes, one of the seven cities 
 claiming to be Homer’s birthplace, 
 307. 
 
 Rho'do-pe, mountain in Thrace, 43. 
 
 Rhoe'cus, a youth, beloved by a 
 Dryad, but who brushed away a? 
 bee sent by her to call him to 
 her, and she punished him with 
 blindness, 172. 
 
 River Ocean, flowing around the 
 earth, 2. 
 
 Rome, 262, 287, 298. 
 
 Rom'u-lus, founder of Rome, 10, 
 287. 
 
 Ru'nic characters, or runes, alpha¬ 
 betic signs used by early Teu¬ 
 tonic peoples, written or graved 
 on metal or stone, 330, 350. 
 
394 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 Ru-tu'li-ans, an ancient people in 
 Italy, subdued at an early period 
 by the Romans, 276, 279, 281, 
 282. 
 
 S 
 
 Sa'bra, maiden for whom Severn 
 River was named, daughter of 
 Locrine and Estrildis, thrown into 
 river Severn by Locrine’s wife, 
 transformed to a river-nymph, 
 poetically named Sabrina, 174. 
 
 Sa'gas, Norse tales of heroism, com¬ 
 posed by the Skalds (which See), 
 351-357. 
 
 Sa-git-ta'ri-us, 128. 
 
 Sak-ya-sin'ha, the Lion, epithet ap¬ 
 plied to Buddha, 325. 
 
 Sal'a-man'der, a lizard-like animal, 
 fabled to be able to live in fire, 
 316-317. 
 
 Sal'a-mis, Grecian city, 79, 307. 
 
 Sal-mo'neus, son of .Eolus and 
 Enarete, and brother of Sisy¬ 
 phus, 269. 
 
 Samh'in, or “fire of peace,” a Dru- 
 idical festival, 359. 
 
 Sa'mi-an sage (Pythagoras), 288. 
 
 Sa'mos, island in the vEgean Sea, 
 157, 288. 
 
 Sam-o-thra'cian gods, a group of 
 agricultural divinities, worshipped 
 in Samothrace, 158. 
 
 Sam'son, Hebrew hero, thought by 
 some to be original of Hercules, 
 301. 
 
 Sapph'o, Greek poetess, who leaped 
 into the sea from promontory of 
 Leucadia, in disappointed love for 
 Phaon, 38, 203. 
 
 Sar-pe'don, son of Jupiter and Eu- 
 ropa, killed by Patroclus, 213, 
 220 . 
 
 Sat'urn (Cronos), 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 
 276, 280, 281, 301. 
 
 Sat'ur-na'li-a, annual festival held 
 by Romans in honor of Saturn, 
 9. 
 
 Sa-tur'ni-a, an ancient name of 
 Italy, 281. 
 
 Sa-tyrs, male divinities of the for¬ 
 est, half man, half goat, 9, 10, 
 76. 
 
 Scal'i-ger, famous German scholar 
 of 16th century, 313. 
 
 Scan-di-na'vi-a, mythology of, giving 
 account of Northern gods, heroes, 
 etc., 328-351. 
 
 Sche'ri-a, mythical island, abode of 
 the Phsecians, 243. 
 
 Schrim'nir, the boar, cooked nightly 
 for the heroes of Valhalla, becom¬ 
 ing whole every morning, 331. 
 
 Sci'o, one of the island cities 
 claiming to be Homer’s birth¬ 
 place, 307. 
 
 Sco'pas, King of Thessaly, 202, 203. 
 
 Scor'pion, constellation, 41, 43. 
 
 Scyl'la, sea-nymph beloved by Glau- 
 cus, but changed by jealous Circe 
 to a monster and finally to a 
 dangerous rock on the Sicilian 
 coast, facing the whirlpool Cha- 
 rybdis, many mariners being 
 wrecked between the two, 59-61, 
 243-245, 261; also, daughter of 
 King Nisus of Megara, who loved 
 Minos, besieging her father’s city, 
 but he disliked her disloyalty and 
 drowned her, 98-101; also, a fair 
 virgin of Sicily, friend of sea- 
 nymph Galatea, 209-210. 
 
 Scy'ros, where Theseus was slain, 
 154. 
 
 Scyth'i-a, country lying north of 
 Euxine Sea, 31, 43, 129, 170. 
 
 Sea, the, 1. 
 
 Sea-nymphs, 120, 209. 
 
 Sea'sons, 3, 6. 
 
 Sem'e-le, daughter of Cadmus and, 
 by Jupiter, mother of Bacchus, 
 8, 94, 160. 
 
 Se-mir'a-mis, with Ninus the myth¬ 
 ical founder of the Assyrian em¬ 
 pire of Nineveh, 23. 
 
 Se-ra'pis, or Hermes, Egyptian di¬ 
 vinity of Tartarus and of medi¬ 
 cine, 293, 295. 
 
 Se-ri'phus, island in the Egean 
 Sea; one of the Cyclades, 116, 
 202 . 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 « 395 
 
 Serpent (Northern constellation), 
 42. 
 
 Ses'tos, dwelling of Hero (which 
 See, also Leander), 105. 
 
 “Seven against Thebes,” famous 
 Greek expedition, 182. 
 
 Sha-tri'ya, Hindu warrior caste, 
 323, 324. 
 
 Sib'yl, prophetess of Cumae, 265, 
 266-275. 
 
 Si-chae'us, husband of Dido (which 
 See), 262. 
 
 Sic'i-ly, 55, 56, 58, 61, 195, 209, 
 260, 261, 264. 
 
 Sieg'fried, young King of the Neth¬ 
 erlands, husband of Kriemhild; 
 she boasted to Brunhild that 
 Siegfried had aided Gunther to 
 beat her in athletic contests, thus 
 winning her as wife, and Brun¬ 
 hild, in anger, employed Hagan to 
 murder Siegfried. As hero of 
 Wagner’s “Valkyrie,” he wins the 
 Nibelungen treasure-ring, loves 
 and deserts Brunhild, and is slain 
 by Hagan, 352, 353, 355, 356-357. 
 
 Sieg-lin'da, wife of Hunding, 
 mother of Siegfried by Siegmund, 
 355, 356-357. 
 
 Sieg'mund, father of Siegfried, 355. 
 
 Si-gu'na, wife of Loki, 347. 
 
 Si-le'nus, a Satyr, school-master of 
 Bacchus, 46. 
 
 Silver Age, 14. 
 
 Sil'vi-a, daughter of Latin shep¬ 
 herd, 277. 
 
 Si-mon'i-des, an early poet of 
 Greece, 201-203. 
 
 Si'non, a Greek spy, who persuaded 
 the Trojans to take the Wooden 
 Horse (which See) into their 
 city, 230, 231. 
 
 Si'rens, sea-nymphs, whose singing 
 charmed mariners to leap into the 
 sea; passing their island, Ulysses 
 stopped the ears of his sailors 
 with wax, and had himself bound 
 to the mast so that he could hear 
 but not yield to their music, 242. 
 
 Sir'i-us, the dog of Orion, changed 
 to the Dog-star, 206. 
 
 Sis'y-phus, condemned in Tartarus 
 to perpetually roll up hill a big 
 rock which, when the top was 
 reached, rolled down again, 186, 
 270. 
 
 Si'va, the Destroyer, third person 
 of the Hindu triad of gods, 320, 
 322. 
 
 Skalds, Norse bards and poets, 350. 
 
 Skid-blad'nir, Freyr’s ship, 348. 
 
 Skir'nir, Frey’s messenger, who 
 won the god’s magic sword by 
 getting him Gerda for his wife, 
 336. 
 
 Skry'mir, a giant, Utgard Loki 
 (which See) in disguise, who 
 fooled Thor in athletic feats, 337. 
 
 Skuld, the Norn of the Future, 
 330. 
 
 Sleep, twin-brother of Death, 220. 
 
 Sleip'nir, Odin’s horse, 345. 
 
 Som'nus, child of Nox, twin 
 brother of Mors, god of sleep, 
 71-72, 264. 
 
 Soph'o-cles, Greek tragic dramatist, 
 235. 
 
 South wind. See Notus. 
 
 Spar'ta, capital of Lacedaemon, 158, 
 212, 233. 
 
 Sphinx, a monster, waylaying the 
 road to Thebes and propounding 
 riddles to all passers, on pain of 
 death for wrong guessing, who 
 killed herself in rage when 
 vEdipus guessed aright, 122, 123- 
 124. 
 
 Spring, 39, 56. 
 
 Stro'phi-us, father of Pylades, 234. 
 
 Styg'i-an realm, Hades, 186. 
 
 Styg'i-an sleep, escaped from the 
 beauty-box sent from Hades to 
 Venus by hand of Psyche, who 
 curiously opened the box and was 
 plunged into unconsciousness, 89. 
 
 Styx, river, bordering Hades, to be 
 crossed by all the dead, 160, 228. 
 
 Su'dras, Hindu laboring caste, 323, 
 324. 
 
 Summer, 39. 
 
 Sun, 3, 5, 39, 311. 
 
 Sur'tur, leader of giants against the 
 
396 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 gods in the day of their destruc¬ 
 tion (Norse mythology), 349. 
 
 Sur'ya, Hindu god of the sun, 
 corresponding to the Greek He¬ 
 lios, 321. 
 
 Sva-dil-fa'ri, giant’s horse, 334, 335. 
 
 Swan, Leda and, 158. 
 
 Syb'a-ris, Greek city in Southern 
 Italy, famed for luxury, 292. 
 
 Syl-va'nus, Latin divinity identified 
 with Pan, 76, 166. 
 
 Sym-pleg'a-des, floating rocks passed 
 by the Argonauts, 131. 
 
 Sy'rinx, nymph, pursued by Pan, 
 but esfcaping by being changed to 
 a bunch of reeds (See Pandean 
 pipes), 30. 
 
 T 
 
 Tac'i-tus, Roman historian, 311. 
 
 Tsn'a-rus, Greek entrance to lower 
 regions, 186. 
 
 Ta'gus, river in Spain and Portugal, 
 44. 
 
 Tan'a-is, ancient name of river Don, 
 44. 
 
 Tan'ta-lus, wicked king, punished in 
 Hades by standing in water that 
 retired when he would drink, un¬ 
 der fruit-trees that withdrew 
 when he would eat, 112, 186, 270. 
 
 Tar'chon, Etruscan chief, 282. 
 
 Ta-ren'tum, Italian city, 197. 
 
 Tar-pe'ian rock, in Rome, from 
 which condemned criminals were 
 hurled, 280. 
 
 Tar'quins, a ruling family in early 
 Roman legend, 275. 
 
 Tau'ris, Grecian city, site of tem¬ 
 ple of Diana {See Iphigenia), 
 214, 234. 
 
 Tar'rus, a mountain, 43. 
 
 Tar'ta-rus, place of confinement of 
 Titans, etc., originally a black 
 abyss below Hades; later, repre¬ 
 sented as place where the wicked 
 were punished, and sometimes the 
 name used as synonymous with 
 Hades, 5, 44, 52, 53, 73, 186, 187, 
 269, 293. 
 
 Tel'a-mon, Greek hero and adven¬ 
 turer, father of Ajax, 98, 138, 
 139. 
 
 Te-lem'a-chus, son of Ulysses and 
 Penelope, 212, 233, 246, 254, 255, 
 256, 257. 
 
 Tel'lus, another name for Rhea, 
 134. 
 
 Ten'e-dos, an island in .TEgean Sea, 
 
 21 . 
 
 Ter'mi-nus, Roman divinity presid¬ 
 ing over boundaries and fron¬ 
 tiers, 10. 
 
 Terp-sich'o-re, Muse of dancing, 8. 
 
 Ter'ra, goddess of the earth, 146. 
 
 Te'thys, goddess of the sea, 32, 40, 
 59, 172, 174. 
 
 Teu'cer, anciert king of the Tro¬ 
 jans, 78. 
 
 Tha-li'a, one of the three Graces 
 (which See ), 8. 
 
 Tham'y-ris, Thracian lord, who 
 challenged the Muses to competi¬ 
 tion in singing, and, defeated, 
 was blinded, 193. 
 
 Thaukt, Loki disguised as a hag, 
 346. 
 
 Thebes, city founded by Cadmus, 
 and capital of Boeotia, 11, 92, 
 94, 111, 112, 123, 124, 161, 182, 
 183, 192, 296. 
 
 The'mis, female Titan, law-counsel¬ 
 lor of Jove, 4, 7, 9, 15 n., 297. 
 
 The'ron, one of Diana’s dogs, 35. 
 
 Ther-si'tes, a brawler, killed by 
 Achilles, 228. 
 
 Thes'ce-lus, foe of Perseus, turned 
 to stone by sight of Gorgon’s 
 head, 121. 
 
 The-se'um, Athenian temple in 
 honor of Theseus, 154. 
 
 The'se-us, son of ACgeus and JEth- 
 ra, King of Athens, a great hero 
 of many adventures, 130, 136, 
 
 138, 139, 147, 150-157, 158, 165, 
 177. 
 
 Thes'saly, 3, 69, 129, 130, 132, 170, 
 
 202 . 
 
 Thes'ti-us, father of Althea (which 
 See), 140. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 397 
 
 The'tis, mother of Achilles, 173, 
 174, 211, 212, 216, 221, 222, 225, 
 228. 
 
 Thi'al-fi, Thor’s servant, 337, 340.. 
 
 This'be, Babylonian maiden beloved 
 by Pyramus (which See), 23-26. 
 
 Thor, the thunderer, of Norse 
 mythology, most popular of the 
 gods, 331, 332, 334, 335, 337-343, 
 349, 352. 
 
 Thrace, 31, 130, 258. 
 
 Thri-na'ki-a, island pasturing Hy¬ 
 perion’s cattle, where Ulysses 
 landed, but, his men killing some 
 cattle for food, their ship was 
 wrecked by lightning, 244. 
 
 Thrym, giant, who buried Thor’s 
 hammer, 335. 
 
 Thu-cyd'i-des, Greek historian, 98. 
 
 Ti'ber, river flowing through Rome, 
 276, 299. 
 
 Tiber, Father, god of the river, 279. 
 
 Ti'gris, river, 35. 
 
 Ti-re'si-as, a Greek soothsayer, 183. 
 
 Ti-siph'o-ne, one of the Furies 
 (which See), 9, 269. 
 
 Ti'tans, the sons and daughters of 
 Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea 
 (Earth), enemies of the gods and 
 overcome by them, 4, 5, 13, 18, 
 52, 172, 269. 
 
 Ti-tho'nus, Trojan prince, 207. 
 
 Tit'y-us, giant in Tartarus, 122, 
 269. 
 
 Tmo'lus, a mountain god, 43, 47. 
 
 Tortoise, second avatar (which See) 
 of Vishnu, 321. 
 
 Tox'e-us, brother of Melauger’s 
 mother, who snatched from Ata- 
 lanta her hunting trophy, and 
 was slain by Melauger, who had 
 awarded it to her, 139. 
 
 Triad, the Hindu, 320-321. 
 
 Tri-mur'ti, Hindu Triad, 320. 
 
 Trip-tol'e-mus, son of Celeus (which 
 See), and who, made great by 
 Ceres, founded her worship in 
 Eleusis, 57. 
 
 Tri'ton, a demi-god of the sea, son 
 of Poseidon (Neptune) and Am- 
 phitrite, 16, 60, 173, 174, 262. 
 
 Troe'zen, Greek city of Argolis, 150. 
 
 Tro'jans, 216, 259-264, 269, 277. 
 
 Tro'jan War, 138, 174, 184, 211- 
 227. 
 
 Tro-pho'ni-us, oracle of, in Boeotia, 
 297-298. 
 
 Troy, city in Asia Minor, ruled by 
 King Priam, whose son, Paris, 
 stole away Helen, wife of Mene- 
 laus the Greek, resulting in the 
 Trojan War and the destruction 
 of Troy, 206, 207, 212, 213, 214, 
 218, 224, 227, 229, 236. 
 
 Troy, fall of, 227-232. 
 
 Tur'nus, chief of the Rutulianes in 
 Italy, unsuccessful rival of ZEneas 
 for Lavinia, 276, 277, 278, 279, 
 281, 282, 286-287. 
 
 Ty'phon, one of the giants who at¬ 
 tacked the gods, were defeated, 
 and imprisoned under Mt. iEtna, 
 52, 123, 261, 293, 294. 
 
 Tyr, Norse god of battles, 333. 
 
 Tyre, Phoenician city governed by 
 Dido (which See), 262. 
 
 Tyr'ians, 92, 262. 
 
 Tyr'rhe-us, herdsman of King 
 Turnus in Italy, the slaying of 
 whose daughter’s stag aroused 
 war upon ZEneas and his com¬ 
 panions, 277. 
 
 U 
 
 U-lys'ses (Greek, Odysseus), hero 
 of the Odyssey, 60, 61, 76, 184, 
 212, 213, 217, 219, 228, 229, 230, 
 232, 233, 236-257, 261. 
 
 U'ni-corn, fabled animal with a sin¬ 
 gle horn, 315. 
 
 U-ra'ni-a, one of the Muses, a 
 daughter of Zeus by Mnemosyne, 
 8, 126. 
 
 Ur'dur, one of the Norns or Fates 
 of Scandinavia, representing the 
 Past, 330. 
 
 Ut'gard, abode of the giant Ut- 
 gard-Loki, 338. 
 
 Ut'gard-Lo'ki, King of the Giants 
 (See Skrymir), 339-343. 
 
398 
 
 INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 v 
 
 Va-is'sy-as, Hindu caste of agricul¬ 
 turists and traders, 323. 
 
 Val-hal'la, hall of Odin, heavenly 
 residence of slain heroes, 330, 
 331, 344, 348, 354, 355, 356. 
 
 Val-ky'rie, armed and mounted 
 warlike virgins, daughters of the 
 gods (Norse), Odin’s messengers, 
 who select slain heroes for Val¬ 
 halla and serve them at their 
 feasts, 331, 347, 354, 355. 
 
 Ve, brother of Odin, 329, 330. 
 
 Ve'das, Hindu sacred Scriptures, 
 320, 321, 324. 
 
 Ve'nus (Aphrodite), goddess of 
 beauty, 6, 7, 11, 13, 53, 65-67, 
 76, 78, 80, 82, 86-89, 94, 123, 
 142, 165, 209, 211, 212, 216, 218, 
 232, 264, 265. 
 
 Ve'nus de Med'i-ci, famous antique 
 statue in Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 
 Italy, 305. 
 
 Ver-dan'di, the Present, one of the 
 Norns (which See ), 330. 
 
 Ver-tum'nus, god of the changing 
 seasons, whose varied appearances 
 won the love of Pomona, 76-79. 
 
 Ves'ta, daughter of Cronos and 
 Rhea; goddess of the home-fire, 
 or hearth, 10. 
 
 Ves'tals, virgin priestesses in tem¬ 
 ple of Vesta, 10. 
 
 Ve-su'vi-us, Mount, volcano near 
 Naples, 266. 
 
 Vig'rid, final battle-field, with de¬ 
 struction of the gods and their 
 enemies, the sun, the earth, and 
 time itself, 349. 
 
 Vi'li, brother of Odin and Ve, 329. 
 
 Vir'gil, celebrated Latin poet (See 
 yEneid), 212, 266, 273, 275, 307- 
 
 308. 
 
 Vir'go, constellation of the Virgin, 
 representing Astraea, goddess of 
 innocence and purity, 15 n. 
 
 Vish'nu, the Preserver, second of 
 the three chief Hindu gods, 320, 
 321, 325. 
 
 Vol'scens, Rutulian troop leader 
 
 who killed Nisus and Euryalus, 
 284. 
 
 Vol'sung-a Sa'ga, an Icelandic poem, 
 giving about the same legends 
 as the Nibelungen Lied (which 
 See), 217, 354. 
 
 Vul'can (Greek, Haephestus), god 
 of fire and metal-working, with 
 forges under ^Ftna, husband of 
 Venus, 4, 6, 10, 39, 41, 94, 123, 
 151, 182, 205, 222, 287, 301. 
 
 Vy-a'sa, Hindu sage, 320. 
 
 W 
 
 Wain, the, constellation, 3. 
 
 Well-gun'da, one of the Rhin»- 
 daughters (which See), 354. 
 
 Western Ocean, 273. 
 
 Winds, the, 176, 208. 
 
 Winter, 39. 
 
 Wo'den, chief god in the Norse 
 mythology; Anglo-Saxon for Odin, 
 330. 
 
 Wog-lin'da, one of the Rhine- 
 daughters (which See), 354. 
 
 Woman, creation of, 13. 
 
 Wooden Horse, the, filled with 
 armed men, but left outside of 
 Troy as a pretended offering 
 to Minerva when the Greeks 
 feigned to sail away; accepted by 
 the Trojans (See Sinon, and Lao- 
 coon), brought into the city, and 
 at night emptied of the hidden 
 Greek soldiers, who destroyed the 
 town, 229-232. 
 
 Wood-nymphs, 76, 167. 
 
 Wo'tan, Old High German form of 
 Odin, 351, 352, 354, 355, 356. 
 
 X 
 
 Xan'thus, river of Asia Minor, 44. 
 Y 
 
 Ya'ma, Hindu god of the Infernal 
 Regions, 321. 
 
 Year, the, 39. 
 
INDEX AND DICTIONARY 
 
 399 
 
 Yg-dra'sil, great ash-tree, supposed 
 by Norse mythology to support 
 the universe, 330. 
 
 Y'mir, giant, slain by Odin, 329, 
 348. 
 
 Z 
 
 Zend'a-vesta, Persian sacred Scrip¬ 
 tures, 318. 
 
 Zeph'y-rus, god of the South wind, 
 68, 82, 83, 85, 176, 273. 
 
 Ze'tes, winged warrior, companion 
 of Theseus, 133, 176. 
 
 Ze'thus, son of Jupiter and Anti- 
 ope, brother of Amphion, 192. 
 See Dirce. 
 
 Zeus, 4. See Jupiter. 
 
 Zo-ro-as'ter, founder of the Persian 
 religion, which was dominant in 
 Western Asia from about 550 B.c. 
 to about 650 a.d., and is still held 
 by many thousands in Persia and 
 in India, 318-320.