Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/563

 CHAP IX. The myths of Demeter and Persephone have already carried us to the hidden land beneath the earth's surface, in which the seeds of all life lie dormant, until Zeus sends Hermes to fetch the maiden back to her mother, or m other words, until Sigurd comes to awaken Brynhild out of her sleep. Hence, as containing the germs of all future harvests, this unseen region becomes at once a land of bound- less wealth, even if we take no thought- of the gold, silver, and other metals stored up in its secret places. This wealth may be of little use to its possessor, and poverty beneath the sunlit heaven may be happiness compared with the dismal pomp of the under world ; but its king is nevertheless the wealthiest of all monarchs, and thus the husband of Persephone ^ is known especially as Plouton, the king who never smiles in the midst of all his grandeur.

On this slender framework was raised the mythology of Hades, a Hades or- mythology which runs continually into the stories related of the dark - powers who fight with and are vanquished by the lord of light. The dog of the hateful king, the Kerberos of the Hesiodic Theogony, is but another form of Orthros, who is called his brother ; and Orthros is only a reflexion of the Vedic Vritra, the dark robber who hides away the cattle of Indra. But the conception of Hades as the ruler of this nether region is precisely parallel to that of Poseidon as the god of the sea, and of the sea alone. So long as the word Kronides remained a mere epithet, the Zeus of Olympos was also Zenoposeidon, and as Zeus Katachthonios he would be also Hades, Ais, or Aidoneus, the king of the lower world ; and the identity of the two is proved not only by these titles, but also by the power which, after the triple partition, Hades, like Poseidon, retains of appearing at will in

' A story was told that Hades was transformation is, of course, a mere play also a lover of the nymph Leuke, who on her name, while the myth resolves on her death was changed into a white itself into the phrase that the night poplar and planted in Elysion. The loves the tender light of morning.