Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/355

Rh found, they called him lamos, the violet child ; and as he grew in CHAP, years and strength, he went down into the Alpheian stream, and prayed to his father that he would glorify his son. Then the voice of Zeus Poseidon was heard, bidding him come to the heights of Olympos, where he should receive the gift of prophecy and the power to understand the voices of the birds. The local legend made him, of course, the soothsayer of the Eleian Olympia, where Herakles had founded the great games.

The myth of Pelias and Neleus has the same beginning with Pelias and the stories of Oidipous, Telephos, and Pans. Their mother Tyro loves the Enipean stream, and thus she becomes the wife of Poseidon ; in other words, her twin sons Pelias and Neleus are, like Aphrodite and Athene, the children of the waters. These Dioskouroi, or sons of Zeus Poseidon, are left to die, but a mare suckles the one, a dog the other ; and in due course they avenge the wrongs of Tyro by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidero, whom her father Salmoneus had married. The sequel of the tale, which makes Pelias drive his brother from the throne of lolkos, belongs rather to the history of Jason.

This myth which has now come before us so often is the ground- Romulus work of the great Roman traditions. Here also we have the r" mus Dioskouroi, Romulus and Remus, the children of Mars and the priestess Rhea Ilia or Silvia. Like Perseus and Dionysos, the babes are exposed on the waters ; but a wolf is drawn to them by their cries, and suckles them until they are found by Acca Larentia, and taken to the house of her husband the shepherd Faustulus. There they grow up renowned for their prowess in all manly exercises, and, like Cyrus, the acknowledged leaders of all their youthful neighbours ; and when at length Remus falls into the hands of king Amulius, Romulus hastens to his rescue, and the tyrant undergoes the doom of Laios and Akrisios. These two brothers bear the same name, for Remus and Romus are only another and an older form of Romulus ;^ and thus a foundation might be furnished for the story of their rivalry, even if this feature were not prominent in the myths of Pelias and Neleus and the Dioskouroi who are the sons of Zeus

honey, in the other the violet flower. as applied to colour is traced by Prof. But the phrase which he uses, $e0pey- Max Muller to the root t, as denotini,' a fjiivos oLKTlffiv Xwv (01. vi. 92), leads us crying hue, i.e. a loud colour. The to another meaning of ios, which, as story of lamos is the institutional le- a spear, represents the far-darting rays gend of the lamidai, on whom Pindar of the sun ; and a further equivoca- bestows the highest praise alike for tion was the result of the other mean- their wisdom and their truthfulness.

ing of poison attached to the same ' Hence they are mere eponymoi, word. Hence the poisoned arrows of like BtuOtos, Orchomenos, &c.

Achillcus and Philoktetes. The word