Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/168

 136 HISTO IY OF GREECE. whom were Epopeus and Aloeus. 1 Aloeus married Imphimedea, who became enamored of the god Poseidon, and boasted of her intimacy with him. She had by him two sons, Otos and Ephi- altes, the huge and formidable Aloids, Titanic beings, nine fathoms in height and nine cubits in breadth, even in their boy- hood, before they had attained their full strength. These Aloids defied and insulted the gods in Olympus ; they paid their court to Here and Artemis, and they even seized and bound Ares, confining him in a brazen chamber for thirteen months. No one knew where he was, and the intolerable chain would have worn him to death, had not Eriboea, the jealous stepmother of the Aloids, revealed the place of his detention to Hermes, who carried him surreptitiously away when at the last extremity ; nor could Ares obtain any atonement for such an indignity. Otus and Ephialtes even prepared to assault the gods in heaven, piling up Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa, in order to reach them. And this they would have accomplished had they been allowed to grow to their full maturity ; but the arrows of Apollo put a timely end to their short-lived career. 2 1 Canace 1, daughter of ./Eolus, is a subject of deep tragical interest both in Euripide's and Ovid. The eleventh Heroic Epistle of the latter, founded mainly on the lost tragedy of the former called ./Eolus, purports to be from Canace to Macareus, and contains a pathetic description of the ill-fated pas- sion between a brother and sister : see the fragments of the _<Eolus in Din- dorf s collection. In the tale of Kaunos and Byblis, both children of Miletos, the results of an incestuous passion are different but hardly less melancholy (Parthenios, Narr. xi.). Makar, the son of JEolns, is the primitive settler of the island of Lesbos (Horn, Hymn. Apoll. 37) : moreover in the Odyssey, JEolus son of Hippoti-s, the dispenser of the winds, has six sons and six daughters, and marries the former to the latter (Odyss. x. 7). The two persons called JEolus are brought into connection genealogically (see Schol. ad Odyss. 1. c., and Dio- dor. iv. 67), but it seems probable that Euripides was the first to place the names of Macareus and Canace in that relation which confers upon them their poetical celebrity. Sostratus (ap. Stobaeum, t. 614, p. 404) can hardly be considered to have borrowed from any older source than Euripides Welcker (Griech. Tragod. vol. ii. p. 860) puts together all that ca~i be known respecting the structure of the lost drama of Euripides. Hcsiodic Theogony, the last enemy of the gods, is killed before he come* to maturity (Theog. 837). For the different turns given to this ancient Ho
 * Iliad, v. 386 ; Odyss. xi. 306 ; ApoKodor. i. 7. 4. So Typhoeus, in the