Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/308

276 BOOK II. Phoibos and Daphne.

zenith, would give rise to the stories of Ixion on his flaming wheel and of Sisyphos with his recoiling stone. If again the sun exhibits an irresistible power, he may also be regarded as a being compelled to do his work, though it be against his own will. He must perform his daily journey ; he must slay the darkness which is his mother; he must be parted from the Dawn which cheered him at his birth ; and after a few hours he must sink into the darkness from which he had sprung in the morning. His work again may be benignant; the earth may laugh beneath his gaze in the wealth of fruits and flowers which he has given her. But these gifts are not for himself; they are lavished on the weak and vile beings called men. These are really his masters, and he must serve them as a bondman until his brief career comes to an end. These ideas lie at the bottom of half the Aryan mythology. They meet us, sometimes again and again, in every legend ; and it is scarcely possible to arrange in strict method either the numberless forms in which these ideas are clothed, or the stories in which we find them. The order of the daily phenomena of day and night may furnish the best clue for threading the mazes of the seemingly endless labyrinth.

In the myth of Daphne we see the sun as the lover of the Dawn, to whom his embrace is, as it must be, fatal. Whether as the daughter of the Arkadian Ladon or of the Thessalian Peneios, Daphne,^ or the Da^-n, is the child of the earth springing from the waters when the first flush of light trembles across the sky. But as the beautiful tints fade before the deepening splendour of the sun, so Daphne flies from ApoUon, as he seeks to win her. The more eager his chase, the more rapid is her flight, until in her despair she prays that the earth or the waters may deliver her from her persecutor ; and so the story went that the laurel tree grew up on the spot where she disappeared, or that Daphne herself was changed into the laurel tree, from which ApoUon took his incorruptible and glorious wreath.^

' From the roots ah and dah (to hum), which stand to each other in the relation of as and das (to bite), as in the Sanskrit asru and the Greek SaKpv, a tear, are produced the names Ahana, the Vedic dawn-goddess, and Athene, as w^ell as the Sanskrit Dahana and the Hellenic Daphne. These names denote simply the brightness of morning ; but the laurel, as wood that burns easily, received the same name. ' ' Afterwards the two, as usual, were sujiposed to be one, or to have some connexion with each other, for how — the people would say— could they have the same name ? " And hence the story of the transforma- tion of Daphne. — Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, second series, 502 ; Chips, &-'e., ii. 93. The idea of fury or madness was closely connected with that of fire ; hence the laurel which grew on the tomb of Amykos had the quality of making the crew of a ship quarrel till they threw it overboard. — Plin. //. A''. xvi. 89.

simply a weak version of that of Daphne, with some features derived from other myths. Like Telephos, Oidipous, and others, Daphnis is exposed in his in-
 * The stoiy of the Sicilian Daphnis is