Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/294

262 BOOK II. HM and Ixion, Akraia. UM the Matron,

and here alone was a reason why Zeus should not be eager to bring about the victory of the Achaians ; but among the allies of Priam there were others in whose veins his own blood was running, the Aithiopian Memnon, the child of the morning, Glaukos, the brave chieftain from the land of light, and, dearest of all, Sarpeddn. Here at once there were causes of strife between Zeus and his queen, and in these quarrels Here wins her ends partly by appealing to his policy or his fears, or by obtaining from Aphrodite her girdle of irresistible power. Only once do we hear of any attempt at force, and this instance is furnished by the conspiracy in which she plots with Poseidon and Athene to make Zeus a prisoner.^ This scheme is defeated by Thetis and Briareos, and perhaps with this may be con- nected the story that Zeus once hung up Here in *the heaven with golden handcuffs on her wrists and two heavy anvils suspended from her feet. In the same way she is at enmity with Herakles, and is wounded by his barbed arrows. But where the will of Zeus is not directly thwarted. Here is endowed with the attributes even of Phoibos himself Thus she imparts to the horse Xanthos the gifts at once of human speech and of prophecy, and sends the unwilhng Helios to his ocean bed when Patroklos falls beneath the spear of Hektor.

But while Zeus asserts and enforces his own power over her, none other may venture to treat her with insult ; and the proud Ixion himself is fastened to the four-spoked wheel of noon-day, for his pre- sumption in seeking the love of the wife of Zeus. The sun as climb- ing the heights of heaven, and wooing the bright ether, is an arrogant being who must be bound to the fiery cross, or whose flaming orb must be made to descend to the west, like the stone of Sisyphos, just when it has reached the zenith, or summit of the hill.

Among the many names under which she was known appears the epithet Akraia, which was supposed to describe her as the protectress of cities, but which was appUed also to Athene as denoting the bright sky of morning.^ Thus viewed she is the mother of Hebe, the embodiment of everlasting youth, the cupbearer of Zeus himself. Here, however, like Athene, has her dark and terrible aspects. From Ouranos, the heaven, spring the gigantic monsters. Thunder and Lightning ; and as the source of like convulsions, Here is the mother of Ares (Mars), the crusher, and Hephaistos, the forger of the thunderbolts.

But her relations to marriage are those which were most promi-

' Mr. Brown regards the story of this conspiracy as a tradition of the slrujjgles consequent on the attempt to introduce the foreign worship of Posei- don into the West.


 * ijee Prclier, Cr. Myth. i. 125.