Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/274

242 BOOK II. H6ba and Gany- medSs. The story of Dido and Anna.

beautiful Kleitos. Her children are born in many lands. As united with Astraios, the starry, she is the mother of Zephyros, Boreas, and Notos, the breezes or winds of morning, and of Heosphoros, the light-bringer. Another son of Eos is Phaethon, of whom mytho- graphers spoke as the luckless sori of Helios, but who is really the same being with his father. Finally, she is the mother of Memnon, the chieftain from the glistening land of the Aithiopians (Ethiopians), who falls by the spear of Antilochos, and on whose death she weeps tears of morning dew, and obtains from Zeus the boon that he shall rise again to renewed and endless life.

Another form of Eos is the beautiful Hebe, ever young, on whom is bestowed without any drawback the youthfulness of the maimed Hephaistos. She is the daughter necessarily of Zeus and Here. Like the Vedic Ahana or Ushas she can make the old young again, and she ministers to the gods the life-giving nectar and ambrosia. But Hebe, though the bride of the deified Herakles, or the mother of his children Alexiares and Aniketos, the invincible deliverers, re- mains little more than a name. She is Ganymede, the brilliant ; and thus what Iris is to Hermes, that is Hebe to Ganymedes, the lovely Trojan youth who is borne away on the eagle's wing to the Olympian heaven, where he also became the immortal cup-bearer of the gods. Thus in both alike we see the morning light carried up into heaven on the wings of the sunlit cloud.^

The same story of unrequited love which has been embodied in the myths of Ariadne and Medeia, of Selene and Echo, meets us again in the legends which the Latin poets modified to suit their own traditions, or their prejudices and fancies. But although Virgil has chosen to mix up the story of Dido with that of ^neas (Aineias), he has introduced into it little or nothing which is not found in the myth as related by Justin. In fact, the story of Aphrodite or Daphne is twice told in the life of Dido, for the Sichxus or Acerbas whose death she bewails is the Adonis who, like Sichgeus, is slain by the dark being or power of night. As the Panis look greedily on the cattle of Indra, Pygmalion " covets the vast treasures which Sichseus possesses with Tantalos, Sisyphos, Helen and Brynhild, or Ixion ; and thus is the husband of Dido murdered, her first and, according to the version of Justin, her only love, and his wealth is in the hands of his destroyer. But the idea of dwelling with Pygmalion is as hateful

see Ralston, Songs of the Kussian J'o}>U, 171.
 * For Slavonic versions of this myth

^ The antagonism between Pygma- lion .and Sichseus answers to thnt of Sat-Osiris and Typhon. " The one wlio is .slain signifies t/ie pure, ' Zakkai,' and Pohcni Elyon, 'the murderer of the Most High.'" — Brown, Great Dioiiysiak ATvlli, ii. 2.S9.