Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/504

472 BOOK II. and thus he becomes pre-eminently fickle and treacherous,^ the object of hatred and disgust to all the gods, except when, as in the lay of Demodokos, he is loved by Aphrodite. But this legend implies that the god has laid aside his fury, and so is entrapped in the coils cast round him by Hephaistos, an episode which merely repeats his imprisonment by the Aloadai. Like these, his body is of enormous size, and his roar, like the roar of a hurricane, is louder than the shouting of ten thousand men. But in spite of his strength, his life is little more than a series of disasters, for the storm-wind must soon be conquered by the powers of the bright heaven. Hence he is defeated by Herakles when he seeks to defend his son Kyknos against that hero, and wounded by Diomedes, who fights under the protection of Athene. In the myth of Adonis he is the boar who smites the darling of Aphrodite, of whom he is jealous, as the storm-winds of autumn grudge to the dawn the light of the beautiful summer.^

was worshipped by Scythian tribes under dotos on a comparison of attributes the form of a sword, to which even would not be altogether trustworthy, human sacrifices were offered, we have The so-called Egyptian Ares has much to receive his statement with as much more of the features of Dionysos. The caution as the account given by him of Scythian sword belongs to another set the Ares worshipped by the Egyptians. of ideas. See ch. ii. sect. xii. That the deities were worshipped under
 * aowp6(raos. this Hellenic name, no one will now
 * When Herodotos says that Ares maintain ; and the judgment of Hero-