Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/359

Rh Thebes. But before he can offer the cow ^ in sacrifice to the dawn- ^^j^^' goddess Athene, he has to fight with the cloud in a form akin to that of the Pythian monster, or of the Sphinx which at a later period of its mythical history was to vex his own people. A great dragon, the child of Ares, the grinder or crusher, guards the well from which he seeks to obtain water, and slays the men whom he sends to fetch it. Kadmos alone, like Oidipous, can master it ; but his victory is followed by another struggle or storm. He sows in the earth the dragon's teeth, which, as in the story of lason in Kolchis, produce a harvest of armed men who slay each other, leaving five only to become the ancestors of the Thebans. It is the conflict of the clouds which spring up from the earth after the waters have been let loose from the prison-house, and mingle in wild confusion until a few only remain upon the battle-field of the heaven. But if Phoibos himself paid the penalty for slaying the Kyklopes, Kadmos must not the less undergo, like him, a time of bondage, at the end of which Athene makes him king of Thebes, and Zeus gives him Harmonia as his bride. These incidents interpret themselves; while tlie gifts which Kadmos bestowed on Harmonia suggest a comparison with the peplos ^ of Athene and the hangings woven for the Ashera by the Syrian women, as well as with the necklace of Eriphyle, and through this with the circular emblems which reproduce the sign of the Yoni. The wars in which Kadmos fights are the wars of Kephalos or Theseus ; and the spirit of the old myth is seen in the legend, that when their work here was done, Kadmos and his wife were changed into dragons (like the keen-sighted creatures which draw the chariot of Medeia), and so taken up to Elysion. The children of Europe are more prominent in Hellenic mytho- Minos and logy than Kadmos himself Minos, who appears first in the lists of [^un ^'"°' Apollodoros, is in some accounts split up into two beings of the same name ; but the reason which would justify this distinction might be urged in the case of almost all the gods and heroes of Aryan tradition. It is enough to say that as the son of Zeus and Europe he is the son of the heaven and the morning ; as the offspring of Lykastos and ' This cow had on each side a mark god as much or more than that of the like the moon (Paus. ix. 12). It led vine-god fills Boioto-Euboia from end Kadmos through Phokis : and the coins to end." — Brown, Cn-at Diouysiak of Phokis bear the head of an ox, and Myth, i. 390. also the heads of three oxen placed ^ The star-spangled peplos ofHar- trian<Tularly, like the three legs in the monia is the star-lit vault of heaven, arms of the Kingdom of Man. " Epa- According to I'hcrekydes this peplos phos, thus connected with Euboia, hangs on a winged oak, which is is the Hellenic idea of the Eg)ptian indubitably the world-tree Yggdrasil. — Apis. ... In a word, the cult of the Ox- Brown, 1 he Unicorn, 89.