Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/471

Rh CHAP. when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of his adversary.^ In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in his wayworn mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the Boots or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore ; and as the giant is manifestly the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the time hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun himself Avho pierces out his eye ; and thus Odysseus, Boots, and Jack the Giant Killer alike overcome and escape from the enemy, although they may each be said to escape with the skin of their teeth.

Polyphemos then is the Kyklops,^ in his aspect as a shepherd The Ky- ..J ir -1 l<16pes. feedmg his vast nocks on the mountam-sides ; but from the mighty vapours through which his great eye glares may dart at any moment the forked streams of lightning; and thus the Kyklopes are connected with the fire-convulsed heaven, and with Hephaistos the lord of the awful flames. These, with the Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed monsters, are the true Gigantes, the earth-born children of Ouranos, whom he thrusts down into the nether abyss, like the pent-up fires of a volcano. But the Titans still remained free. Whatever may be the names of these beings, they are clearly the mighty forces which carry on the stupendous changes wrought from time to time in the physical world. Of the titles given to them by mythographers, many doubtless, like the abstract conceptions of Themis and Mnemosyne, are artificial additions, and may be the manufacture of the mytho- graphers themselves. Others, as Krios and Hyperion, denote simply might or supremacy, and as such might become the names of Helios, Phoibos, or other kindred beings. Between these beings and their father a second war is waged, in which Gaia enables her children to mutilate Ouranos, from whose blood spring the Erinyes, so fearful on Hellenic soil, so beautiful in the land of the five streams, and Aphrodite, the dawn goddess, who may be terrible as well as lovely. The Kyklopes are now delivered from their prison-house, and Kronos becomes the supreme king ; but time can only swallow the things which he has made, and vomit them forth again. The thing which hath been, shall be, and there is nothing new under the sun. But it was as impossible that the Kyklopes could continue the allies of

is equally true to the phenomena of its mysterious shadows, nature. E%'en if the notion of the round ' The story and attributes of Poly- face was suggested before the Greek phemos with a thousand others were myth-makers reached the idea of the transferred to the devil, when the Chris- one eye in the centre of the forehead, tian missionaries had converted all the we can see at once how readily the ancient gods into demons. See ch. x. of latter notion may be derived from the this book, section 8. sight of the black storm-cloud, as it ^ Sayce, Introduclion to the Science suffers the sun to glare dimly through of Language, ii. 263.