Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/343

Rh hold of Aphidnai has been destroyed, and that Menestheus is king in Athens. He therefore sends his sons to Euboia, and hastens to Skyros, where the chief Lykomedes hurls him from a cliff into the sea, a death which Kephalos inflicted upon himself at the Leukadian or White Cape. But though his own life closes in gloom, his children return at length with Aithra from Ilion, and are restored, like the Herakleids, to their ancient inheritance.

This is the Theseus who, in the pages of Thucydides, consolidates the independent Attic Demoi into one Athenian state, over which he rules as a constitutional sovereign, confining himself strictly to his definite functions. There is nothing more to be said against the method by which this satisfactory result is obtained than that it may be applied with equal profit, if not with equal pleasure, to the stories of Boots and Jack the Giant-Killer.

In the Corinthian tradition, Hipponoös, the son of Glaukos or of Poseidon, is known especially as the slayer of Belleros, whom the same tradition converted into a near kinsman, but in whom we are now able to discern a being whose features much resemble those of the gloomy Vritra. Like Perseus, Theseus, Phoibos, he is a son of the heaven or the sea; and his career is throughout that of the sun journeying through thunderstorms and clouds. In his youth he attracts the love of Anteia, the wife of Proitos, who on his refusal deals with him as Phaidra deals with Hippolytos; and Proitos, believing her lies, sends him as the bearer of woeful signs which are to bid Iobates, the Lykian king, to put the messenger to death. The fight with the monster Chimaira which ensues must come before us among the many forms assumed by the struggle between the darkness and the light ; and in the winged steed Pegasos, on which Bellero- phon is mounted, we see the light-crowned cloud soaring with or above the sun into the highest heavens. But although he returns thus a conqueror, Iobates has other toils still in store for him. He must fight with the Amazons and the Solymoi, and last of all must be assailed by the bravest of the Lykians, who, by the king's orders, lurk in ambush for him. These are all slain by his unerring spear ; and Hipponoos is welcomed once more to the house of Proitos. But the doom is not yet accomplished. The hatred of the gods lies heavy upon him. Although we are not told the reason, we have not far to seek it. The slaughter of the Kyklôpes roused the anger of Zeus against Phoibos: the blinding of Polyphêmos excited the rage of