Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/411

Rh CHAP. of the West is the golden light stolen away in the evening. The weary voyage from the Achaian shores is the long journey of the sun children for the stolen treasure, beginning just when the twilight is deepening into night, and when the lagging hours seem likely never to pass away. Iphigeneia is slain at the beginning of this dismal journey — in other words, she dies in the evening that Helen may come back in the morning, when, after ten long hours of mortal strife, the walls of Ilion have fallen. But when Artemis, Helen, and Iphi- geneia, had received each her own distinct personality, it was easy to say that the anger of Artemis, offended for some supposed neglect or affront of Agamemnon, was the cause of the death of Iphigeneia.

The distinction between Artemis and Britomarlis is as slight as Iphigeneia that which separates her from Iphigeneia. Whatever be the origin martisr °' of the name, Britomartis is spoken of as a daughter of Leto, or of Zeus and Karme, and as flying from the pursuit of Minos as Artemis flies from that of Alpheios.^ From this pursuit she escapes, like Arethousa and Daphne, only by throwing herself into the sea — as some said, because she leaped from the heights of Diktynnaion, or, as others would have it, because she fell into the nets {Slktvo) of the fishermen. Rescued from the water she goes to Aigina, and is reverenced there under the name of Aphaia. The wanderings of Britomartis are simply the journey of the day across the heaven, and the story of the nets must clearly be compared with that of Danae and the kindly treatment of Diktys of Seriphos, who is contrasted with his gloomy brother Polydektes — a mere reflexion of Hades Polydegmon. When the name of Diktys is further compared with the myth of the Diktaian cave, we can no longer doubt that Artemis Diktynna is simply Artemis the light-giving, and that the nets were brought into the myths by an equivocation similar to that which converted Arkas and Kallisto into bears and Lykaon into a wolf.^

No one will claim a distinctively Hellenic character for such Orion, beings as Astarte, Adonis, or Melikertes; and few, after examining their characteristics, will hesitate to assert that the ideas expressed in these beings belong to the ordering of the Kosnios quite as much as

' Kallim. Ilyntn. Art. 192, &c. the East. This arch is the Diktaian ' As the (lawn springs fu'ly armed cave in which the infant Zeus is nour- from the forehead of the cloven sky, so ished until he reaches his full strength the eye first discerns the blue of heaven — in other words, until the day ia fully as the first faint arch of light is seen in come.