Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/528

496 BOOK of a dolphin, and comes out of it again as a star. In tlie story of Aristaios the fish-god is seen as the preacher of wisdom ; it shows itself as a deliverer in the myth of Orion. As to snakes and dragons, they are everywhere ; as noxious beasts in the myths of Phoibos, Kadmos, or Herakles, and in beneficent aspects in the stories of lamos and Melampous. Dionysos can change him- self into a bear or a lion ; Lykaon is changed against his will into a wolf, Arachne into a spider, Philomele and Prokne into the nightingale and the swallow. The golden ram carries Phrixos and Helle from the land of Athamas ; the three-headed dog guards the gates of Hades. Nay, we have strange unions between Leda and the swan, and heroes and heroines hatched from eggs, with horrible associations between men and horses and other beasts ; and not only have we the marvellous changes by which Apollon and Athene appear as crows and Talaos as a partridge, but for many of these transformations or for the manifestation of them the times are definitely marked. It is only on comparing the Greek myths with those of other peoples or races that our eyes are opened to the enormous range of this mythological zoology. Birds, beasts, reptiles, insects, fishes, here live in a world of their owti, reflecting in greater or less degree the forms and habits of the animals of earth, yet never wholly like them ; and this strange world exhibits everywhere a series of incessantly and rapidly shifting scenes, in which the same objects from different points of view appear brilliant or dark, lovely or appalling. These continual changes originated the idea of celestial companions or friends, " who are now in unison, now separate ; who now appear to love each other, to move together, and affectionately to greet each other, now rush upon each other to fight, despoil, betray, and destroy each other turn by turn ; who now attract and are now attracted, are now seduced and now seducers, now cheated and now deceivers, now victims and now sacrificers."^ Their friends or enemies may, again, assume and throw off these brute forms ; and beasts are supposed to go through courses of action which are possible oiily for men. The god Hanuman, the son of the bull or of the wind, appearing himself both as a bull and as an ape, receives as a reward from the king Bharatas a hundred thousand cows, sixteen wives, and a hundred servant-maids. As bull or ape, what could he have done with them ? But they who handed down

' I quote the words of Count de subject ; but I should not be justified Gubcrnatis, who has made this mythical were I to fail in calling the reader's world his own in his volumes on Zoo- attention to an inquiry of great ini- logical Mythology. I can but stand portance. for a moment at the threshold of the