Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/575

Rh and dread, she herself retains some portion of her parents' beauty. CHAP. Like the French Melusina, from the waist upwards she is a beautiful ^' maiden,^ the rest of her body being that of a huge snake. Her abode, according to Hesiod, is among the Arimoi, where Typhoeus slumbers, or according to Herodotos, far away in the icy Scythia. Among her children, of some of whom Typhaon, " the terrible and wanton wind," is the father, are the dogs Orthros and Kerberos, the Lernaian Hydra, the Chimaira, and the deadly Phix or Sphinx which brings drought and plague on Thebes. But whether in Hesiod, Apollodoros, or Herodotos, the story of Echidna is interwined with chat of Geryones, who like herself is not only a child of Chrysaor and Kallirhoe, but a monster, who has the bodies of three men united at the waist. This being lived in Er}'theia, the red land, which, in some versions, was on the coast of Epeiros, in others, near Gadeira or Gades beyond the Pillars of Herakles. In either case, he abode in the western regions, and there kept his herds of red oxen. In other words, the myth of Gerj'ones exhibits a fiery and stormy sun- set, in which the red or purple oxen are the flaming clouds which gather in the western horizon. These herds are guarded by the shepherd Eurytion and the two-headed dog Orthros, the offspring of Echidna and Typhon. These herds Herakles is charged to bring to Eurystheus, and accordingly he journeys westward, receiving from Helios the golden cup in which HeUos himself journeys every night from the west to the east. Having slain Orthros and Eurytion, Herakles has a final struggle with Geryones, in which he wins a victory answering to that of Indra over Vritra; and placing the purple oxen in the golden cup he conveys them across the Ocean stream, and begins his journey westward.^ The stories of Alebion and Derkynos, and again of Eryx, as noted by Apollodoros,^ are only fresh versions of the myth of the Panis, while the final incident of the gadfly sent by Here to scatter the herds reproduces the legend of the same gadfly as sent to torment the heifer 16. The myth as related by Herodotos has a greater interest, although he starts with speaking of o:«en and ends with a story of stolen horses. Here the events occur in the wintry Scythian land, where Herakles coming himself with his lionskin goes to sleep, and his horses straying away are caught by Echidna and imprisoned in her cave. Thither Herakles comes in search of them, and her reply to his question is that the animals cannot be restored to him until he should have sojourned with her for a time. Herakles must fare as Odysseus fared in the palace of Kirke and the cave of Kalypso ; and Echidna becomes


 * Hes. Theog. 297. * Max Muller, Chips, ii. 1S4. ' ii. 5, 10.