Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/298

266 BOOK From this point the mytholog)', which has grown up, such as it is, round the fatal sisters, may be regarded as thoroughly artificial. Sisters. The division of time into the past, the present, and the future once made, it only remained to assign these divisions severally to one personal being, and to invest this being with attributes suited to the office which it has to perform. It may be instructive to trace the process by which the single Moira of the Iliad and Odyssey suggests the notion of many Moirai, and is represented by the Hesiodic sisters, Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos ; but the process is altogether different from that which, starting with phrases denoting simply the action of wind or air in motion, gives us first the myths of Hermes, Orpheus, Pan, and Amphion, and ends with the folk-lore of the Master Thief and the Shifty Lad. In the latter case, the myth-maker knew little, probably nothing, of the source and the meaning of the story, and worked in unconscious fidelity to traditions which had taken too strong a root to be lightly dislodged or materially changed. In the fonner we have the work rather of the moralist or the theologian. The course of human existence and of all earthly things is regarded as a long coil of thread, and the gods are the spinners of it. Thus this work is specially set apart to Aisa, the spoken word of Zeus, the Fatum of the Latins, or to Moira, the apportioner; for to both alike is this task of weaving or spinning assigned,^ and Aisa and Moira are alike the ministers of Zeus to do his will, not the despotic and irresponsible powers before whom, as before the Ananke of Euripides, Zeus himself must bow. Nay, even a mortal may have a certain power over them, and Achilleus may choose either a brief career and a brilliant one, or a time of repose after his return home which shall stand him in the stead of glory.^ The dualism of the ideas of birth and death would lead us to look for two Moirai in some traditions, and accordingly we find the two at Delphoi, of whom Zeus and ApoUon are the leaders and guides.^ The three Hesiodic Moirai, who are sisters of the Erinyes, are also called the Keres, or masters of the destinies of men.* Of these three one alone is, by her name Klotho, charged with the task of spinning; but in some later versions this task is performed by all three; nor is the same account always

• //. ix. 411. KpaTati] of the J/iai/. Yet the elymo- • Faus. x. 24, 4, log>' was not wholly without reason, 9avdroio — the name belonging to the share or portion, the idea of pieces or same root which has yielded the words fragments being naturally ex]iressed by Kvpios, Koipavos, and the Latin creare the root used to denote the working of (cf. Gr. Kpt'iai), creator. The name the hammer or the millstone. Moira answers to that of the Latin Mors,
 * //. XX. 128 ; xxiv. 209. the grinding, crushing power, the fj.o7pa
 * These are the Krjpfs ravrjXcyeos which connected the word with fitpos, a