Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/542

510 BOOK II. came nearest in sound to the Semitic Moloch, the king. Seen in its full form in Ha-mileas, it passes into the abraded forms Mocar, JNIacar, and Micar, for Molcar, Malcar, and Milcar. Mocar again appears in the form Bocar, Macar or Bacar, and so with the rest. So, too, Bokchus or Bocchus, the name of certain Mauretanian kings, is also ^^Titten Bocus and Mocus, and is a contraction of Malchus and Malek : and so in the Greek Bacchos we have a variant form of Melkarth, the Boiotian Melikertes. But Bacchos is confessedly Dionysos, and thus Dionysos is himself Zeus Meilichios, the Moloch, or king. As to the name Dionysos, we can scarcely speak with the same confidence. It may be the Assyrian Daian-nisi, or Dian-nisi, the judge of men ; and if so, it would correspond strictly to the Hamitic Rhotamenti, Rhadamanthys.^

The story The myth which gives most fully and most clearly the history of phonr eaith through the changing year is to be found not so much in the legend of Adonis as in the legend of Persephone herself. This story as related in the Hymn to Demeter tells us how the beautiful maiden (and in her relations with the upper world she is pre-eminently the maiden, Kore), was playing with her companions on the flowery Nysian plain, when far away across the meadow her eye caught the gleam of a narcissus flower. As she ran towards it alone, a fragrance, which reached to the heaven and made the earth and sea lausfh for gladness, filled her with delight; but when she stretched out her arms to seize the stalk 'v^th its hundred flowers, the earth gaped, and before her stood the immortal horses bearing the car of the king Polydegmon, who placed her by his side. In vain the maiden cried aloud, and made her prayer to the son of Kronos ; for Zeus was far away, receiving the prayers and offerings of men in his holy place, and there was none to hear save Hekate, who in her secret cave heard the wail of her agony, and Helios, the bright son of Hj-perion, and one other — the loving mother, whose heart was pierced as with a sword, as the cry of her child reached her ears, a cry which echoed mournfully over hills, and vales, and waters. Then Demeter threw the dark veil over her shoulders, and hastened like a bird over land and sea, searching for her child. But neither god nor man could give her tidings until, with torch in hand, she reached the cave of Hekate, who knew only of the theft of the maiden, but could not tell

' Brown, Greai Dionysiak Myth, ch. ix. sect. vi.