Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/407

Rh tions will roll on, which are to end in the glorious victories of her CHAP, descendant, Herakles.^

To Phoibos, as Hekatos, the far-shooting lord of light, Hekate Hekaie. stands in the relation which Diana holds towards Dianus or Janus. She falls, in short, into the ranks of correlative deities with the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Surya and Savitri, and many others already named. Her keenness of hearing and sight is second only to that of Helios, for when Demeter is searching in agony for her lost child, it is Hekate alone who says that she has heard her cries, while Helios is further able to tell her whither Hades has departed with the maiden. She is then the queen of the night, the moon, and as such she may be described as sprung either from Zeus and Here, or Uke Phoibos himself, from Leto, or even from Tartaros, or again, from Asteria, the starlit night '^ In a comparison of offices and honours it is hard to see whether Phoibos or Hekate stands higher ; and all that can be said is that the Hesiodic poet could hardly have spoken of her in a strain so highflown if the thought of ApoUon and his wisdom, incom- municable even to Hermes, had at the moment crossed his mind, just as the worshipper of Brahma or Vishnu must have modified his language, had he wished to bring it into apparent consistency with what he may have said elsewhere in his devotions to Varuna, Dyaus, or Soma. She is the benignant being, ever ready to hear those who offer to her a holy sacrifice. Nor has she fallen from the high estate which was hers before Zeus vanquished the Titans ; but she remains mighty as ever, in the heavens, on the earth, and in the sea. She is the giver of victory in war, the helper of kings in the ministration of justice, the guardian of the flocks and of the vineyards ; and thus she is named pre-eminently Kourotrophos, the nurse and the cherisher of men. But these great powers could scarcely fail to throw over her an air of mystery and awe. She would be sometimes the solitary in- habitant of a dismal region, caring nothing for the sympathy or the love of others ; and the very help which with her flaming torch she gives to Demeter would make her a goddess of the dark nether world to which she leads the sorrowing mother. Her ministers therefore must be as mysterious as herself, and thus the Kouretes and Kabeiroi become the chosen servants of her sacrifices. Like Artemis, she is accompanied by hounds, not flashing-footed like that which Prokris received from the twin-sister of Phoibos, but Stygian dogs akin to

' It is, of course, quite possible that or a horned maiden. Both alike lose with this particular myth of 16 some their children and search for them as features borrowed from Semitic mytho- Demeter searched for Persephone. — logy may have been designedly blended. Preller, Gr. Alyth. ii. 44. The Phenician Astarte, Ashtaroth, was ' lies. Theo^. 411. also represented as a wandering heifer,