Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/217

Rh of lightning, but because its arch seems to join the heaven and the CHAP, earth, as a ladder by which the angels may descend and rise up again - into their home above. Hence the phrase was that the rainbow spread its glorious path across the sky, whenever the gods wished to send their messenger to do their bidding. In this office Iris carries out the behests sometimes of Zeus, sometimes of Here or of Phoibos, ' while sometimes she comes of her own free act. She is, in short, the counterpart of Hermes, whose staff she bears in her hand.^ If, again, in some myths she may be spoken of as always a maiden, it may not less truly be said that the winds love her exquisite tints, while the earth lies enraptured at her feet ; and this accordingly is the tale which makes her the bride of Zephyros and the mother of Eros, the darling of the gods. But the name of this lovely being soon became a mere general title of messengers or errand-carriers, and reappears in Iros the beggar of the Odyssey, who resembles her in no other way.

Lastly, as seeing from his throne in heaven all that is done on Zeus the earth, Zeus must be the punisher of all iniquity. But the judgments of a god, whose characteristics depend on half-forgotten mythical phrases, or on words wholly misunderstood, will not be always equitable. The sentences passed will have reference often to his mythical rights, while they may be designed generally to redress wrongs between man and man. The punishments of Tantalos and Ixion, of Lykaon and Sisyphos, are involved in the very idea of these beings. The sun, who woos the dawn, yet drives her from him as he rises in the sky. He loves the dew which his rays burn up ; and if he shine on the earth too fiercely, its harvests must be withered. If his face approaches the stream too closely, the water-courses will soon be beds of gaping slime. The penalty paid by Tantalos is bound up with the phrases which described the action of the sun, while that of Lykaon sprung, as we have seen, from a confusion between two words derived from the same source. If, again, the sun, as rismg into the dizzy heights of heaven, might be said to gaze too boldly on the bride of Zeus, his downward course is not less certain than his ascent, and at midday he must revolve like Ixion on his blazing wheel ; while the stone which Sisyphos has with huge toil rolled to the mountain summit (the zenith) must slip from his grasp and dash down again into the valley below. Still more must Zeus punish the insults done to him as lord uf the fire-laden thunder- clouds ; and Prometheus, as teaching men how to kindle a flame and cheat the gods with offerings of fat and bone, is an offender less easily pardoned than chiefs who sacrifice their children on his

' " Dev weibliche Hermes. " — Prellcr, Gricchiiche Mythologie, i. 390.