Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/50

xl of Grecian mythology; and most interesting it is to trace the history of her growth from her rise in the land of the Aryans to her culmination in the majestic goddess of the Eumenides.

The elemental character of the Homeric Zeus suggests the idea of some natural phenomenon underlying the extraordinary birth of his brilliant offspring, "from no mother born." Accordingly her name has been regarded as corresponding to the Sanscrit Aháná, a recognised appellation of the dawn in the Veda; and thus her miraculous birth from the head of Zeus, translated back into Sanscrit, implies that Ushas, the Dawn, sprang from the East, the forehead of the sky. Welcker gives a different interpretation of her name. "The Grecians," he says, "brought with them from their distant home the conception of an element of light and warmth above the atmosphere, independent of the sun." He derives her name from, to burn, with the ancient suffix , and regards her as the impersonation of the pure Ether, the abode of Zeus.

The peculiar rites with which her worship was celebrated in different localities, together with the symbolism associated with her effigy on ancient vases and coins, attest, according to Welcker, the original elemental character of the goddess. This deified impersonation of a nature-power, whether identified with the Ether or the Dawn, became gradually invested with a variety of attributes, human and superhuman;