Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/357

Rh In its earlier scenes the legend of Chandragupta presents some points of difference with that of Cyrus. The child is exposed to great danger in his infancy ; but it is at the hands, not of his kinsman, but gupta. of a tributary chief who has defeated and slain his suzerain, and it is his mother who, " relinquishing him to the protection of the devas, places him in a vase, and deposits him at the door of a cattle-pen." Here a bull named Chando comes to him and guards him, and a herdsman, noting this wonder, takes the child and rears him as his own. The mode by which he is subsequently discovered differs from the Persian story only by the substitution of the chopping off of hands and feet instead of scourging. This is done by axes made of the horns of goats for blades, with sticks for handles ; and the lopped limbs are restored whole at Chandraguptas word when the play is done.^ Slightly altered, this story becomes the legend of Semiramis, whom her mother the fish-goddess Derketo exposes in her infancy ; but she was saved by doves, and like Cyrus, Romulus, and Chandra- gupta, brought up by a shepherd until her beauty attracts Onnes, one of the king's generals, and afterwards makes her the wife of king Ninus himself, whom in some versions she presently puts to death, in order that she may reign alone, like Eos surviving Kephalos.^

As handed down to us by Greek poets and mythographers, the story Kadmos of Europe is, like that of Daphne or Arethousa, Psyche or Urvasi, one E^5pg. of the many forms assumed by the myth that the sun and the dawn are soon parted. The scene is laid in the Phoinikian or purple land, a region belonging to the same aerial geography with Lykia, Delos, Ortygia, the Arkadia of Kallisto or the Athens of Theseus and Peirithoos. But when Phenicia became to the Greeks the name of an earthly country, versions were not long wanting, which asserted that Agenor was born in Tyre or Sidon, or some other spot in the

' Max Miiller, Saiiskr. Lit. 290. Assyria ; and the king of Assyria was Ninus and Semiramis are, like Romu- nessed to his chariot. But the history his, purely mythical or fabulous beings. of Assyria makes no mention of Scsos-
 * Unlike Cyrus and Chandragupta, doubtless one of those whom he har-

" The name of Ninus is derived from tris Semiramis is related to have con- the city : he is the eponymous king and quered Egj-pt ; but the history of Eg)-pt founder of Nineveh, and stands to it m makes no mention of Semiramis. " — Sir the same relation as Tros to Troy, Medus G. C. ^c'K,Aslrono/>iyoft/ieA)inmis, to Media, Miron to Maeonia, Romulus 408. Romulus is one of seven kings to Rome. His conquests and those of whose chronology is given with great Semiramis are as unreal as those precision ; but this chronology is of Sesostris. It is the characteristic of throughout, in Niebuhr's trenchant these fabulous conquerors, that, although words, ' ' a forger)' and a fiction." — J/ist. they are reported to have overrun and Rome, vol. i. ; Edinbur:^li Rtindu, Jan. subdued many countries, the history of 1867, p. 130 ; Dkd'oiiaiy of Siiiitce, those countries is silent on the subject. Litcialtireaud Art, s.v. " Tabulation of Sesostris is related to have conquered Chronology."