Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/319

Rh self the germs of the hard bondage which weighs down Herakles CHAP. through his whole career, and is only less prominent in the mythical histories of Perseus, Theseus, and other heroes, who, like Achilleus, Titd H°era- fight in a quarrel which is not of their own choosing or making.^ ^^s- The master whom Phoibos serves is one between whom and him- self there is no such contrariety of will as marks the relations of Herakles with Eurystheus. He is no hard exacter of tasks set in mere caprice to tax his servant's strength to the utmost ; but he is well content to have under his roof one who, like the Brownie of modern superstition, has brought with him health and wealth and all good things. One thing alone is wanting, and this even Phoibos cannot grant him. It is the life of Alkestis, the pure, the devoted, the self-sacrificing, for it had been told to Admetos that he might escape death, if only his parents or his wife would die in his stead, and Alkestis has taken the doom upon herself^ Thus in the very prime of her beauty she is summoned by Thanatos, death, to leave her home and children, and to cross with him the gloomy stream which separates the land of the living from the regions of the dead ; and although Phoibos intercedes for a short respite, the gloomy being whose debtor she is lays his icy hands upon her and will not let go until the mighty Herakles grapples with him, and having by main force rescued her from his grasp, brings her back to Admetos. Such is the story told by Euripides, a story in which the character of Herakles is exhibited in a light of broad burlesque altogether beyond that of the Hymn to Hermes. We see in it at once the main features of the cognate legends. It is essentially the myth of Orpheus who like Admetos must be parted from his lovely bride, and who differs from Admetos only in this, that he must go and seek for her himself In the one story the serpent stings and causes the death of Eurydike : in the other, when Admetos enters his bridal chamber on the day of his marriage, he sees on the bed a knot of twisted snakes, the omen of the grief that is coming. But although Alkestis may die, death cannot retain dominion over her ; and thus we have again the story of the simple phrases that the beautiful dawn or twilight, who is the bride of the sun, must die

' "The thought of the sun as a * Hence the connexion of the name bondman led tlie Peruvian Inca to deny with that of Alkmene or of (Athene) his pretension to be the doer of all Alalkomene. Mr. Brown, G>va/ D/ony- things ; for, if he were free, he would si'a/c Alyth, ii. 245, claims Alalkomene go and visit other parts of the heavens as Phenician ; but he does not give the where he had never been. He is, said Phenician form. There seems to be no the Inca, like a tied beast who goes sufficient reason for surrendering either ever round and round in the same this word or Aphrodite to the Semitic track." — Max Miiller, Chips, dr'f., ii. vocabulary. >i3-