Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/323

Rh myth of the fifty daughters of Thestios or Thespios, which in some CHAP, versions is connected with his first great exploit, is akin to that ol ' the fifty daughters of Danaos and the fifty children whom Asterodia bare to Endymion.^ It is but one instance out of many in which we have the sun under an aspect altogether inconsistent with the ideal of Prodikos. Herakles is no longer the hero who imposes on himself a hard discipline, but the voluptuous wanderer who has many loves in many lands. In his attack on the envoys of Erginos he is armed with a coat of mail brought to him by the dawn-goddess Athene, as Achilleus and Sigurd wear the armour brought to them by Thetis and Hjordis.^ The same thought suggested the gift of the bow and arrows from Phoibos, the lord of the spear-like sunbeams, of the sword from Hermes, whose stroke can split the forest trees, of the peplos from Athene, the clear-faced morning. The arrows bestowed on himby ApoUon it must specially be noted are poisoned; and these poisoned barbs are used by Philoktetes, wlio receives them from Neoptolemos, the child of Achilleus, the brilliant but short-lived sun, and by Odysseus, whom Athene restores to youthful beauty as his life's labour draws towards its end. But we have no historical evi- dence that poisoned arrows were used by any Hellenic tribes, or that they would not have regarded the employment of such weapons with the utmost horror. How then comes it to pass that the poets of the Iliad and Odyssey can attribute to the Achaian heroes practices from which their kinsmen would have shrunk with disgust ? The mystery is easily solved. The equivocation which turned the violet-tinted rays of morning into spears was inevitable ; the change of the spears or arrows into poisoned barbs was, at the least, as natural and necessary.'

As the conquest of the lion of Kithairon is the first great exploit, H-mkies so according to the systematising mythographers the bringing up of beros. the dog Kerberos * from Hades is the last. This story is mentioned

the Nemean lion is the den or cave with two openings or entrances, the gates through one of which the sun enters the land of night, while through the other he comes fortli again in the morn- ing. — Maury, Croyances et Let^endes de r Antiqiiih', 194. This lion is also represented as mortally afraid of the cock, — for an obvious reason. — Guber natis. Zoological Mythology, ii. 158. > See p'. 278. and Agamtdes, the builders of the Delphian shrine — the myth of the children of darkness raising the sanc- tuary of the lord of light answering to the legend which makes Apollon him- self the child of (Leto) the sombre night. ' The word (o's, Xov, which furnished a name for the violet hue, for a sjiear, and for poison, is really a homonym traceable to two or three roots ; and thus far the equivocation differs from that which turned Lykaon into a wolf, and Arkas into a bear, these names being in fact of the same signification, although the men who uttered them had ceased to be conscious of it. Sarvara, or Sambara, one of the enemies slain by Indra. — Max Midler, Chips, n. 1S2, 1S8.
 * Erginos is the father of Trophonios
 * The name Kerberos is the Sanskrit