Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/520

488 BOOK II. Athamas and Ind.

of the Helloi, or Selloi, or Hellenes, and that the latter are the children of Helios, will probably be disputed by none. Helle then is the bright clear air as illuminated by the rays of the sun ; and she is carried away from the western Thessaly to the far eastern land. But before the dawn can come the evening light must die out utterly, and hence it was inevitable that Helle should meet her doom in the broad-flowing Hellespontos, the path which bears her name. What then is her brother but the air of ether in itself, and not merely as lit up by the splendour of the sun? It was impossible, then, that the frigid Phrixos could feel the weariness which conquered his sister. Her force might fail, but his arms would cling only the more closely round the neck of the ram, until at last, as the first blush of light was wakened in the eastern sky, he reaches the home of the Kolchian king.

Not less clear are the other incidents of the legend. Athamas has been wedded to Nephele ; but he is no more at ease than is lason with IMedeia, and the Kadmeian Ino plays in this tale the part of the Corinthian Glauke. Finding that her husband's love has been given to another, Nephele vanishes away. The morning mist retreats to Niflheim, its cloud-home, leaving her children in the hands of Ino Leukothea, the gleaming heaven. Hence between her and the children of the mist there is an enmity as natural as that which exists between Ares and Athene, and this enmity is as naturally signified in the drought or famine which she brings upon the land. It is, in fact, the same plague with which the Sphinx tormented the men of Thebes and Ahi scourged the worshippers of Indra. When consulted as to the cause of all this misery, the Delphian priestess answers that the children of Athamas must be sacrificed, or in other words that the crime of Tantalos and Lykaon must be committed again. Ino seeks to bring the doom on the children of Nephele, who now sends the golden-fleeced ram to bear them away to Kolchis. But the curse works on still; and the madness of Herakles falls on Athamas, who carries out the sentence of the Pythia by slaying his son Learchos. The drought has reached its height; and Ino, with her other child, Melikertes, casts herself into the sea. Left alone, Athamas now asks whither he must go and where he may find a home : and the answer is that he must make his abode where wild beasts receive him hospitably. This welcome he finds in a spot where wolves, having torn some sheep, leave for him the untasted banquet. The beasts must needs be wolves, and the country of which he thus becomes the lord is the Aleian plain, through which the lonely Bellerophon wandered in the closing days of his life.