Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/517

Rh answers this question by a reference to the physical geography of chap. Argolis. Not much, he thinks, can be done by referring the name Danaos to the root da, to burn, which we find in Ahana, Dahana, and Daphne,^ as denoting the dry and waterless nature of the Argive soil. This dryness, he remarks, is only superficial, the whole terri- tory being rich in wells or fountains which, it must be specially noted, are in the myth assigned as the works of Danaos, who causes them to be dug. These springs were the object of a special veneration, and the fifty daughters of Danaos are thus the representatives of the many Argive wells or springs, and belong strictly to the ranks of water- nymphs.^ In the summer these springs may fail. Still later even the beds of the larger streams, as of the Inachos or the Kephisos, may be left dry, while in the rainy portion of the year these Cha- radrai or Cheimarrhoi, winter flowing streams, come down with great force and overflow their banks. Thus the myth resolves itself into phrases which described originally these alternations of flood and drought. The downward rush of the winter torrents is the wild pursuit of the sons of Aigyptos, who threaten to overwhelm the Danaides, or nymphs of the fountains ; but as their strength begins to fail, they offer themselves as their husbands, and are taken at their word. But the time for vengeance has come ; the waters of the torrents fail more and more, until their stream is even more scanty than that of the springs. In other words, they are slain by their wives, who draw or cut off the waters from their sources. These sources are the heads of the rivers, and thus it is said that the Danaides cut off their husbands' heads. A precise parallel to this myth is furnished by the Arkadian tale, which speaks of Skephros (the droughty) as slandering or reviling Leimon (the moist or watery being), and as presently slain by Leimon, who in his turn is killed by Artemis. If in place of the latter we substitute the Danaides, and for the former the sons of Aigyptos, we have at once the Argive tradition. The meaning becomes still more obvious when we mark the fact that the Danaides threw the heads into the marsh-grounds of Lernai (in other words, that there the sources of the waters were preserved according to the promise of Poseidon that that fountain should never fail), while the bodies of the sons of Aigyptos, the dry beds of the rivers, were exposed in the sight of all the people. It

' The objection on the score of the quantity of the first syllable, which in Danaos is short, while in Dapline and Zavh. |i'/Aa, wood easily inilainmalile, it is long, is perhaps one on which too much stress should not be laid.

' If the name Danaos itself denotes water, it must be identillcd withTanais, Don, Donau, Tyne, Teign, Tone, and other forms of the Celtic and Slavonic words fur a running stream,