Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/277

Rh the blaze of the fire which consumes the body of Herakles rises to the CHAP. heavens, she is left alone in her sorrow to vanish before the cheerless • ii. gloaming. The fate of lokaste had for the Greeks of the age of Perikles a more terrible significance. She is not only the mother of Oidipous, but his wife. As his mother, she had been tortured by seeing her child torn from her arms, to be cast away on Mount Kithairon ; and the shame of finding herself his wife after his victory over the Sphinx drives her to end her misery with her own hands. ^ According to the version of Hyginus, the life of Aithra (the pure air), the mother of Theseus, had the same end. Long ago she had been loved by Bellerophon ; but when he was driven from Corinth, she became the wife of the Athenian Aigeus, who left her with the infant Theseus at Troizen, having, like the father of Sigurd, placed his invincible weapons under a large stone, that his son might become possessed of them only when he had reached his full strength. Later still, the Dioskouroi, it is said, carried her away to Sparta, where she became the slave of Helen, and whence with Helen she was taken to Troy, to be brought back again through the prayers of her grandson Demophon. By the same hard fate, Auge, the (brilliant) daughter of Neaira, who, as the early morning, reappears as the mother of the nj'mphs Phaethousa and Lampetie in the Odyssey, no sooner becomes the mother of Telephos (the being who shines from far) than she is deprived of her child, who is exposed on Mount Parthenion. The story of Ariadne exhibits much the same outlines. She is the daughter of INIinos, the son of Zeus, and the all-brilliant Pasiphae, who is the mother of the Minotauros, as the bright Here is the mother of Typhaon. In the slaughter of this monster she has a share corresponding to that of Medeia in the conquest of the bulls and the dragon-sprung men ; like Medeia, she accompanies the con- queror, and like her she is deserted by him. Ariadne then either slays herself, like lokaste and Auge, Dido or Anna, or becomes the wife of Dionysos, who places her among the stars. In substance this is also the story of the Argive Danae, who is shut up by her father Akrisios in a brazen dungeon,^ which Zeus enters in the form of a golden shower, as the light of morning pierces the dark chambers of the night. She thus becomes the mother of Perseus ; but, as in the case of Oidipous, the oracle had foretold that if she had a son, he would become the slayer of her father Akrisios, and Akrisios,

^ lokaste is the wife of the gloomy night.

Laios : in other words, the dawn from * The Iron Stove of the German which the sun is born may be regarded story. (Grimm. ) as the wife of the dark and cheerless