Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/565

Rh the world of living men, and to lead through it the channels of CHAP. Lethe, in which all things are forgotten, of Kokytos, which echoes only with shrieks of pain, of Pyryphlegethon, with its waves of fire.^ But, in truth, such details as these, produced as they are, not by The the necessities of mythical developement but by the growth or the of the^ wants of a religious faith, belong rather to the history of religion, and not to the domain of mythology, which is concerned only or mainly with legends springing from words and phrases whose original meaning has been misunderstood or else either wholly or in part forgotten. Thus, although the ideas of Elysion in the conception of the epic or lyric poets may be full of the deepest interest as throwing light on the thoughts and convictions of the time, their mythological value must be measured by the degree in which they may be traced to phrases denoting originally only the physical pheno- mena of the heavens and the earth. With the state and the feelings of the departed we are not here concerned ; but there is enough in the descriptions of the asphodel meadows and the land where the corn ripens thrice in the year, to guide us to the source of all these notions. The Elysian plain is far away in the west where the sun goes down beyond the bounds of the earth, when Eos gladdens the close of day as she sheds her violet tints over the sky. The abodes of the blessed are golden islands sailing in a sea of blue, the burnished clouds floating in the pure ether. Grief and sorrow cannot approach them ; plague and sickness cannot touch them. The barks of the Phaiakians dread no disaster ; and thus the blissful company gathered together in that far western land inherits a tearless eternity." Of the other details in the picture the greater number would be suggested directly by these images drawn from the phenomena of sunset and twilight. What spot or stain can be seen on the deep blue ocean in which the islands of the blessed repose for ever? What unseemly forms can mar the beauty of that golden home lit by the radiance of a sun which can never go down ? Who then but the pure in heart, the truthful and the generous, can be suffered to tread the violet fields ? And how shall they be tested save by judges who can weigh the thoughts and intents of the heart ? Thus every soul, as it drew near to that joyous land, was brought before the august

' Acheron, the remaining river, is one river of Hades, probably only another form of Ache- * &SaKpvu vf/xoin-ai alwt'r. Pind. 0/. loos, the flowing water, and may per- ii. 120. haps have been in the earlier myths the