Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/290

258 BOOK H. BOOK II. Aphroditfi and Adonis.

like that of Meleagros, bound up with the brilliant but short-lived day.

But the da^vn as bringing back the sun and thus recalling to life the slumbering powers of nature is especially the lover of the bright fruits and flowers which gladden her brilliant pathway. In other words, Aphrodite loves Adonis, and would have him for ever with her. The word Adonis is manifestly Semitic, and the influence of Asiatic thought may be readily admitted in the later developements of this myth ; but the myth itself is one which must be suggested to the inhabitants of every country where there is any visible alternation or succession of seasons. There is nothing in the cultus of Tammuz which may not be found in that of Demeter or Baldur, if we except its uncontrolled licentiousness. It is scarcely necessary to go through all the details of the later mythographers, — not one of which, however, presents any real discordance with the oldest forms of the legend. Adonis, as denoting the fruitfulness and the fruits of the earth, must spring from its plants, and so the story ran that he was born from the cloven body of his mother who had been changed into a tree, as Athene sprang from the cloven head of Zeus. The beautiful babe, anointed by the Naiads with his mother's tears (the dews of spring- time) as the tears of Eos fall for her dead son Memnon, was placed in a chest and put into the hands of Persephone, the queen of the underworld, who, marking his wonderful loveliness, refused to yield up her charge to Aphrodite.^ It is the seeming refusal of the wintry powers to loosen their clutch and let go their hold of the babe, which cannot thrive until it is released from their grasp. But the Dawn is not thus to be foiled, and she carries her complaint to Zeus, who decides that the child shall remain during four months of each year with Persephone, and for four he should remain with his mother, while the remaining four were to be at his own disposal. In a climate like that of Greece the myth would as inevitably relate that these four months he spent with Aphrodite, as on the fells of Norway it would run that he was compelled to spend them in Niflheim. Still the doom is upon him. He must beware of all noxious and biting beasts. The fair summer cannot longer survive the deadly bite of winter than Little Surya Bai the piercing of the Raksha's claw, or Baldur withstand the mistletoe of Loki. Like Atys the fair and brave, he is to meet his death in a boar-hunt ; and the bite, which only leaves a life-long mark on the body of Odysseus, brings to an end the dream of Aphrodite. In vain she hastens to stanch the wound.

' In short, Perseiihone refuses to give up the treasure which the dragon so jealously guards on the Glistening Heath.