Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/519

 CHAP. VII The name Nephele stands almost at the beginning of that series of mythical narratives which stretch down to a time even later than the alleged period of the return of the Herakleids. She is the mother an^'neue. of the children whose disappearance led to the long searching of the Argonautai for the Golden Fleece, to be followed by the disappearance of Helen and then of the children of Herakles ; each with its aston- ishing train of marvellous incidents which, when closely viewed, are. found more or less to repeat each other under a different colouring, and with names sometimes only slightly disguised, sometimes even unchanged. But Nephele herself is strictly the representative of the mist or the cloud, and as such she becomes the ^^^fe of Athamas, a being on whose nature some light is thrown by the fact that he is the brother of Sisyphos, the sun condemned, like Ixion, to an endless and a fruitless toil.^ In this aspect, the myth resolves itself into a series of transparent phrases. The statement that Athamas married Nephele at the bidding of Here is merely the assertion that the wedding of the sun with the clouds, of Herakles with lole, is brought to pass in the sight of the blue heaven. From this union spring two children, Phrixos and Helle, whose names and attributes are purely atmospheric. It is true that a mistaken etymology led some of the old mythographers to connect the name of Phrixos with the roasting of corn in order to kill the seed, as an explanation of the anger of Athamas and his crime ; but we have to mark the sequel of the tale, in which it is of the very essence of the story that Phrixos reaches Kolchis safely on the back of the ram, while Helle falls off and is drowned. That the name of this ill-fated maiden is the same as that

the Semitic Tammuz, which Mr. Brown hunt alone. — Great Dwnysiak Myth, further identifies with the Akkadian ii. 293 ; The Unicom, 59. Dumuzi, the Only Son, the solitary
 * The name Athamas is indubitably Sun-god, Melkarth, who goes forth to