Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/356

324 and Leda, as well as in the rivalry of Eos and Prokris, of Niobe and Leto, of Athene and Medousa. Nor does Romulus resemble Oidipous less in the close of his life than at his birth. He is taken away in a thunderstorm, wrapped in the clouds which are to bear him in a fiery chariot to the palace of Jupiter, just as Olaf of Sweden disappears in the din of battle.

The myth of Cyrus differs from the Romulean legend only in the fact that here it has gathered round an unquestionable historical person. But it cannot be too often repeated that from the myth we learn nothing of his history, and his history confers no sort of credi- bility on the myth. So far as the latter is concerned, in other words, in all that relates to his earlier years, he remains wholly unknown to us, while the story resolves itself into the stock materials of all such narratives. As Laios in the Theban myth is the enemy, Dasyu, of the devas or bright gods, so is Astyages only a Grecised form of Asdahag, the Azidahaka or biting snake of Hindu legend and the Zohak of the epic of Firdusi. Like Laios also he is told that if his daughter IMandane has a son, that child will live to be king in his stead. In this case the emblem seen before the birth of the infant is not a torch but a vine which overspreads the whole of Asia, and the babe who is exposed is not the child whom Harpagos delivers to the herds- man clad in a magnificent golden robe, but the dead child which happens to be born in the herdsman's house just as he enters it with the doomed son of IMandane. Under this man's roof Cyrus grows up with the true spirit of kingship, and when he is chosen despot by the village boys in their sport, he plays his part so well that Artembares, the father of a boy who has been scourged by his orders, complains to Astyages of the insult The bearing of the youth and his apparent age make Astyages think of the babe whose death he had decreed, and an examination of the herdsman justifies his worst fears. On Harpagos, to whom he had in the first instance intrusted the child, he takes an awful vengeance ; but the magi satisfy him that the election of Cyrus to be king of the village boys fulfils the terms of prophecy, and that therefore he need have no further fears on his account. Thus Cyrus is suffered to grow up in the palace, and is afterwards sent to his father, the Persian Cambyses. Har- pagos thinks that the time is now come for requiting Astyages for his detestable cruelty, and counsels Cyrus to raise the standard of revolt. The sequel is an institutional legend, of much the same value with the story of the setting up of the Median monarchy by Deiokes, a name in which we also recognise the Dahak or biter of Hindu mythology.