Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/260

 epithet need only perhaps declare his habitation. His divinity is plainly asserted, and the legend that he resigned the divine guerdon of immortality in order to deliver Prometheus accords with Pindar's doctrine.

But on the other hand the story of Ixion as told by Pindar reveals another tradition. Ixion himself was human; for his presumptuous sin of lusting after the wife of Zeus 'swiftly he suffered as he, mere man, deserved, and won a misery unique .' The son of Ixion therefore by a nebulous mother could not be divine. The cloud wherewith in his delusion he had mated 'bare unto him, unblest of the Graces, a monstrous son, a thing apart even as she, with no rank either among men or where gods have their portion; him she nurtured and named Centauros; and he in the dales of Pelion did mate with Magnesian mares, and thence there sprang a wondrous warrior-tribe like unto both their parents—like to their dams in their nether parts, and the upper frame their sire's .' The first Centaur then, the founder of the race, though only half-human in origin, was in no respect divine. How then came Chiron, one of that race, to be divine? The two traditions are inconsistent. Pindar as a poet was not troubled thereby; he chose now the one, now the other, for his art to embroider.' But in the science of mythology the discrepancy of the two traditions is important. Once more we must carry our search further back—to Hesiod and to Homer.

The former, in placing the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs among the scenes wrought on the shield of Heracles , says never a word to suggest that either set of combatants were other than human; the contrast between them lies wholly in the weapons they use. The Lapithae have their leaders enumerated, Caineus, Dryas, Pirithous, and the rest; the Centaurs in like manner are gathered about their Chieftains, 'huge Petraeos and Asbolos the augur and Arctos and Oureios and black-haired Mimas and the two sons of Peukeus, Perimedes and Dryalos.' The account reads like a description of a fight between two tribes, one of them equipped with body-armour and using spears, the other more primitive and armed only with rude wooden weapons.