Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/331

Rh CHAP. II. the radiant Hebe as his bride.^ It is a myth in which " looms a magnificent sunset," ^ the forked flames as they leap from the smoke of the kindled wood being the blood-red vapours which stream from the body of the dying sun." It is the reverse of the picture which leaves Odysseus with Penelope in all the brightness of early youth, knowing indeed that the night must come, yet blessed in the profound calm which has followed the storms and troubles of the past. It is the picture of a sunset in wild confusion, the multitude of clouds hurrying hither and thither, now hiding, now revealing the mangled body of the sun, — of a sunset more awful yet not more sad than that which is seen in the last hours of Bellerophon, as he wanders through the Aleian plain in utter solitude, — the loneliness of the sun who has scattered the hostile vapours and then sinks slowly down the vast expanse of pale light with the ghastly hues of death upon his face.*

Of the Latin Hercules we need say but little here. The most The Latin prominent myth connected with the name in comparatively recent times is that of the punishment of Cacus for stealing the oxen of the hero ; and this story must be taken along with the other legends which reproduce the great contest between the powers of light and darkness set forth in the primitive myth of Indra and Ahi. The god or hero of whom the Latins told this story is certainly the same in character with the Hellenic son of Alkmene; but, as Niebuhr insisted, it is not less certain that the story must have been told from the first not of the genuine Latin Hercules or Herculus, a deity who was the guardian of boundaries, like the Zeus Herkeios of the Greeks, but of some god in whose place Hercules has been intruded, from the pho- netic resemblance between his name and that of Herakles. Apart from this story the Latin Hercules, or rather Recaranus, has no genuine mythology, the story of the Potitii and Pinarii being, like a thousand

' There was no reason why the myth Prynhild in the Nibclung Song bids her should stop short here ; and the cycle maidens scatter about at her death, already so many times repeated is * It was easy to think of Herakles carried on by making Herakles and as never wearied and never dying, but Hebe the parents of Alexiares and as journeying by the Ocean stream after Aniketos, names which again denote sun-down to the spot whence he comes the irresistible strength and the benig- again into sight in the morning. Hence nant nature of the parent whose blood in the Orphic hymns he is self-born, flows in their veins. The name Alexi- the wanderer along the path of light ares belongs to the same class with (Lykabas) in which he performs his Alcxikakos, an epithet which Herakles mighty exploits between the rising and shares with Zeus and Apollon, along the setting of the sun. He is of many with Daphnephoros, Olympics, Pange- shapes, he devours all things and pro- netor, and others. — Max Mliller, Chips, duces all things, he slays and he heals,

ii, 89. Round his head he bears the Morning ' The same picture is brought before thiough the hours of darkness he wears us in the shower of g. ii. 88. and the Night (xii.), and as living