Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/534

502 BOOK II. Aktai6n, Medonsa and Chry- sa6r.

and men. Here plainly Medousa is none other than Leto, the mother of Chrysaor, the lord of the golden sword ; in other words, the night in its benignant aspect as the parent of the sun, and there- fore as mortal, for must not the birth of the sun be fatal to the darkness from which it springs ? Hence Perseus, the child of the golden shower, must bring her weary woe to an end. The remaining feature of the story is the early loveliness of Medousa, which tempts her into rivalry with the dawn-goddess Athene herself, a rivalry which they who know the moonlit nights of the Mediterranean can well under- stand. But let the storm-clouds pass across the sky, and the maiden's beauty is at once marred. She is no longer the darling of Poseidon, sporting on the grassy shore. The unseemly vapours stream like serpents across her once beautiful face, hissing with the breath of the night-breeze, and a look of agony unutterable comes over her countenance, chilling and freezing the hearts' blood of those who gaze on the brow of the storm-tormented night. This agony can pass away only with her life ; in other words, when the sword of Phoibos smites and scatters the murky mists. But although Medousa may die, the source from which the storm-clouds come cannot be choked, and thus the Gorgons who seek to revenge on Perseus their sister's death are themselves immortal.

In the Theban myth of Aktaion, the son of the Kadmeian Autonoe, the cloud appears as a huntsman who has been taught by the Kentaur Cheiron, but who is torn to pieces by his own dogs, just as the large masses of vapour are rent and scattered by the wind, which bear them across the sky. As this rending is most easily seen in a heaven tolerably free from clouds, so the story ran that Aktaion was thus punished because he had rashly looked on Artemis while she was bathing in the fountain of Gargaphia.

Not less significant is the myth of Pegasos, the offspring of Medousa with Chrysaor, the magnificent piles of sunlit cloud, which seem to rise as if on eagle's wings to the highest heaven, and in whose bosom may lurk the lightnings and thunders of Zeus. Like Athene and Aphrodite, like Daphne and Arethousa, this horse of the morning (Eos) must be born from the waters ; hence he is Pegasos, sprung from the fountains of Poseidon, the sea.^ On this horse Bellerophon is mounted in his contest with the Chimaira: but he becomes

' With Pegasos we may compare the horse in Grimm's story of the Two Wanderers (Dioskouroi), which courses thrice round the castle yard as swiftly as lightning, and then falls. This is the moment of the lightning flash, and the .story of course goes on to say that "at the same moment a fearful noise was heard, and a piece out of the ground of the court rose up into the air like a ball," and a stream of water leaps forth, as cm the discomfiture of the Sphinx.