Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/514

482 BOOK II. The ocean stream.

religion and mytholog}^ on that of the Greek world was far more direct and important than any that came from Egypt. In his later and more definite functions as the god of the waters, Poseidon is still the lord only of the troubled sea : ^ and there remains a being far more ancient and more majestic, the tranquil Okeanos, whose slow and deep-rolling stream no storm can ever ruffle. He dwells in the far west, where are the sources of all things. From him flow all rivers and all the tossing floods, all fountains and all wells.^ Nay, he is himself the spring of all existence,^ whether to the gods or to men.* He is therefore with Tethys his wife the guardian of Here, while Zeus is busy warring with the Titans. His children are recounted in numbers which denote infinity ; and the Hesiodic Theogony which calls him a son of Ouranos and Gaia gives him three thousand daughters who dwell in the lakes and fountains of the earth, and three thousand sons who inhabit the murmuring streams,' and seems also to point dimly to the source of the Ocean itself.®

Danaos and Aigyptos. If in the legend of Danaos and Aigyptos A-ith their fifty sons and fifty daughters we put aside the name Belos and possibly that of Aigj'ptos as not less distinctly foreign than the Semitic Melikertes, Kadmos, and Agenor in the Boiotian mythology, there remains in the whole list of names on either side scarcely a name which is not purely Greek or Aryan. Doubtless when at a comparatively late time the myths were systematically arranged, this singular story Avas dovetailed into the cycle of stories which began with the love of Zeus for the Inachian 16 ; and when 16 was further identified with Isis, a wide door was opened for the introduction of purely foreign elements into myths of strictly Aryan origin. Nor would it be prudent to deny that for such identifications there may not, in some cases, have been at the least a plausible ground. 16 was the homed maiden, and her calf-child was Epaphos ; but the Egyptian worshipped Apis, and had

gard the name as Aryan, and therefore as akin to the Greek vItttw, vi<pos, fe<pe-n, L. nebula, &c.) the god only of the cloud as the source of moisture and water, and therefore not a god of the sea at all, although Virgil chose to gather round him all the myths which were attached to the Hellenised Po- seidon ; but Mr. Isaac Taylor (Etruscan Researches, 139) identifies it with the Etruscan Ncthunus, for which he claims a solar character. ' //. xiv. 246. » Hes._ Theog. 365, &c. The name Okeanos is referred by some to the same root with the Latin aqua (cf. acer, oiKvs), the short syllable being repre- sented by Acheron and Acheloos, the long by Axios, Axe, Exe, Esk, Usk, and other forms. See also p. 199. ' Hcs. T/ieoi:. 2S2.
 * The Latin Neptunus is (if we re-
 * //. xxi. 195.
 * //. xiv. 301.