Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/576

544 BOOK II. Orthros. Typhon.

the mother of three sons, whose strength is to be tested by the same ^ ordeal to which Theseus and Sigurd are compelled to submit. He only of the three shall remain in the land who can brace around his body the girdle of Herakles and stretch his bow. To the girdle is attached a golden phial or cup, of which we have already traced the history.

As the name Ahi reappears in that of Echidna, so that of Vritra is reproduced in Orthros, who in the Hesiodic Theogony is simply a hound sprung from Echidna and Geryones, but in ApoUodoros becomes a dog with two heads, as Kerberos appears with three, although in Hesiod his heads are not less than fifty in number. It must, however, be noted that Orthros is sometimes himself called Kerberos. He is thus the being who, hke Vritra, hides away the light or the glistening cows of the sun ; but the time specially assigned to him as to the Asvins is that which marks the first faint streak of dawn, the time in which darkness is still supreme although its reign is drawing towards its close. ^ It was at this time that Hermes, having toiled all night in the kindled forests, returned home gently to lay himself down like a child in his cradle, as the soft breeze of morning follows the gale which may have raged through the night. This Orthros, who with Kerberos answers seemingly to the two dogs of Yama, is slain by Herakles, as Vritra is killed by Indra, who thus obtains the name of Vritrahan, — a name which must have assumed in Greek the form Orthrophon, Nor is the name of Kerberos, who, armed with serpents for his mane and tail, has sometimes even a hundred heads, wanting in the Veda, which exhibits it under the form Sarvari, an epithet for the night, meaning originally dark or pale. Kerberos is thus " the dog of night, watching the path to the lower world." ^

The same terrible enemy of the powers of light appears again under the names Typhon, and Typhoeus, which denote the smoke and flames vomited out by Vritra, Geryon, or Cacus, — in other words, the lightning flashes which precede the fall of the pent-up rain. This being is in the Hesiodic Theogony * the father of all the dreadful winds which bring mischief and ruin to mortals, destroying ships at sea and houses and crops on land. By this dreadful hurricane, Setvoi/ v/3pi.a-Tr]v dvefxov, Echidna becomes the mother of Kerberos, the Lernaian Hydra, the Chimaira, the Sphinx, and the Nemean Lion, all of them representing under different forms the dark powers who struggle with and are conquered by the lord of day, and whose mightiest hosts are seen in the armies of the Titans leagued against

» MaxMuller, C/ii/'s/n. 1S5. » //>. 183. » TAfo^. S69.