Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/286

254 BOOK II. The min- isters of Aphrodite.

Enalia and Pontia, the deity of the deep sea.^ In our lUad and Odyssey the myth is scarcely yet crystaUised. In the former poem Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, in whom was seen the mother of Dionysos after her resurrection. In the Odyssey she is the wife of Hephaistos, whose love for Ares forms the subject of the lay of Demodokos. Here she is attended by the Charites who wash her and anoint her with oil at Paphos. In the Iliad, however, the wife of Hephaistos is Charis, and thus we are brought back to the old myth in which both Charis and Aphrodite are mere names for the glistening dawn. In Charis we have simply the brilliancy produced by fat or ointment,* which is seen again in Liparai Athanai, the gleaming city of the morning. In the Vedic hymns this epithet has already passed from the dawn or the sun to the shining steeds which draw their chariot, and the Haris and Harits are the horses of Indra, the sun, and the da^^•n, as the Rohits are the horses of Agni, the fire.** Thus also the single Charis of the Iliad is converted into the Charites of the Odyssey, the graceful beings whose form in Hellenic mytholog}' is always human.*

With this origin of the name Charis all the myths which have gathered round the Charites are in the closest agreement ; and they do but resolve themselves, somewhat monotonously, into ex- pressions denoting the birth of the morning from the heavens or the sky, and the sea or the waters. In the Hesiodic Theogony, the Charis who is the wife of Hephaistos is called Aglaia (the shining), myth of transformations in which to escape from Typhon in the war between Zeus and the Titans, Aphrodite, hke Phoibos and Onnes, Thetis or Proteus, assumes the form of a fish. Ov. Met. V. 331. With this idea there is pro- bably mingled in this instance the notion of the vesica piscis as the emblem of generation, and denoting the special function of Aphrodite. The same em- blematical form is seen in the kestos or cestus of Aphrodite, which answers to the necklace of Ilarmonia or Eriphyle. This cestus has the magic power of in- spiring love, and is used by Here, when she wishes to prevent Zeus from marring her designs.
 * This notion is seen in the strange

second series, 369, 375. The Latin Gratia belongs to the same root, which yields — as has been already noticed — our "grease." Objections founded on any supposed degrading association of ideas in this connexion are themselves un- worthy and trivial. Professor Miiller remarks that " as fat and greasy infants grow into airy fairy Lilians, so do words and ideas," and that "the Psalmist does not shrink from even bolder metaphors, " as in Psalm cxxxiii. That the root which thus supplied a name for Aphro- dite should also be employed to denote gracefulness or charm in general, is strictly natural. Thus the Sanskrit arka is a name not only for the sun, but also for a hymn of praise, while the cognate arkshas denoted the shining stars.
 * Max Miiller, Leciures on Language,

' Max Miiller, i/>. 370.

marks that in Greek the name Charis never means a horse, and that " it never passed through that phase in the mind of the Greek poets which is so familiar in the poetry of the Indian bards." But the Greek notion, he observes, had at the least dawned on the mind of the Vedic ]ioets, for in one hymn the Ilarits are called the Sisters, and in another are represented with beautiful wings.
 * Professor Miiller, Lect. 372, re-