Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/339

Rh against Vritra, Ahi, or the Sphinx. Thus the robber Periphetes is the club-bearing son of Hephaistos, who, being weak in the feet, uses his weapon to smite down the passers-by. But Sinis the robber, or plunderer, is his kinsman, being like himself a son of Poseidon, and from his name Pityokamptes is the stormwind which bends the pine trees. The myth went that he slew his victims by compelling them to bend a fir tree which he allowed to fly back upon them, and that Theseus who caught him in his own trap nevertheless felt that he needed to purify himself for the death of one who was also a son of the sea.^ The same idea gave rise to the myth of Phaia, the dark or ashen-coloured sow of Krommyon, who shares the fate of all such monsters, and again to that of Skeiron, who hurls from the cliffs the travellers whom he has constrained to kneel and wash his feet,^ and who in his turn is in like manner destroyed by Theseus. In Kerkyon, whose name apparently connects him with the Kerkopes, we have a reflexion of Laios, Akrisios, Amulius, and other beings who seek from fear for themselves to destroy their children or their children's children. The story of his daughter Alope is simply the story of Auge, Semele, Danae, and many others ; but Kerkyon himself is the Eleusinian wrestler, who is defeated by Theseus in his own art and slain. The robber Prokroustes is a being of the same kind ; but the myth attached to his name does not explain itself like the rest, and may perhaps have been suggested by the meaning of the word which may denote either the process of beating or hammering out, or simply a downright blow. In the latter case Prokroustes would simply be Sinis or Periphetes under another name ; in the former, the story of a bed to which he fitted the limbs of his victims by stretching them or cutting them off might not unnaturally spring up.^

Theseus now enters the dawn city with a long flowing robe, and Theseus at with his golden hair tied gracefully behind his head ; and his soft beauty excites the mockery of some workmen, who pause in their work of building to jest upon the maiden who is unseemly enough to walk about alone. It is the story of the young Dionysos or Achilleus

See further, Brown, Greai Diony- siak Myth, ii. 260. Mr. Brown sees in the story of Sinis a picture of Phe- nician barbarity and its overthrow. "Esscheint wohldassdieser Skeiron . . . ein Bild fur die heftigen Stiirme ist, welche den Wanderer von den Skeiron- ischen Felsen, so hiess dieser Pass, Icicht in die See hinunterstiessen, wo die Klippen seine Glieder zerschellten." — Gr, Myth. ii. 290.
 * Preller has no doubt on this head.

' The story is told of the men of Sodom in the Arabian myth. — (jould, Legends of Old TestameJit Characters, i. 200. The notion seems scarcely Greek. But generally in stories in which Po- seidon is prominent, the existence of Semitic influence is at least possible ; and this possibility should be always taken into account in the examination of details which seem to be non-Aryan in character.