Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/578

546 BOOK discreetly avoided by making Hermes drive the cattle hither and thither, until all possibility of tracking them was lost ; and with him the story goes on with a colloquy between Herakles and Cacus, who stands at the entrance of the cave and denies all knowledge of the cattle. But his guilt is proved when the lowing of the other cattle whom Herakles brings up rouses the imprisoned oxen to reply. He then slays Cacus with a blow of his club, and builds an altar to Zeus the discoverer (evpecrios) near the Porta Trigemina.^

Cacus an- The' myth as related by Virgil and Ovid carries us back at once ofVritra!" to the language of the Vedic hymns; and this fact, of which the poets were of course profoundly unconscious, shows the fidelity with which they adhered to the genuine tradition of the country. Here we have the deep cave of Vritra, with its huge rocks beetling over it, • — the miglity mass which represents the dark thundercloud in which the waters are confined.^ Into this cave the rays of the sun can never enter ; ^ and here dwelt the monster, who, like Echidna, is but half a human being, and of whom the fire-god Vulcan is the father. In the lowing of the imprisoned cattle, as in the dark speech of the Sphinx, we have the rumbling of the thunder before the rain bursts from its confinement in the clouds. The hurling down of the rock by Hercules is the shattering of the castle of Vritra by the spear of Indra. No sooner is the blow struck than the horrible abyss of his dwelling is lighted up by the flames which burst from the monster's

' Dion. H. i. 39-41. This version hero, and is substituted for Potitius, Dionysios rejects as fabulous "because nay, for Evander; the latter does not the expedition of Herakles to drive oxen appear at all, nor do any Arcadians: from the far west, in order to please none but natives are mentioned. So a Eurystheus, is an improbable event, not sister of Cacus, Caca, was worshipped because it contravenes the order of like Vesta, with eternal fire." — Niebuhr, nature." — Lewis, Credibility of Early History of Rome, i. : " The Aborigines Roman History, i. 289. Dionysios has and Latins. " Niebuhr saw that in no scruple in converting the myth into this legend " the worship of the Sabine history by making Herakles the leader Semo Sancus was transferred to the son of a great army, and by stating that the of Alkmene : " but he merely states the stolen beasts belonged to his commis- fact without attempting to account for it. sariat. Herakles is also invested by The version of the legend given by him with that high moral character on Livy diflfers from that of Dionysios only which the apologue of Prodikos is made in the description of Cacus as a shen- to turn. Sir Cornewall Lewis remarks herd. Dionysios simply speaks of him that in a legend of the Epizcphyrian as a thief. The former ranks liim with Lokrians " Latinus fills the 7)lace of the pastoral Kylopes ; the latter de- Cacus and steals the oxen of Hercules." grades him to the level of Sinis and — -/^. 335. That the myth took a strong Prokroustes.

hold on the Latin imagination cannot * Of Indra it is said that he has be doubted. " The den of Cacus is slain Ahi who was seated on the moun- placed in the Aventine ; but the steps tain summit ; the word pai-nafa being of Cacus were on the Palatine ; they used to denote alike a hill and a cloud, are known to Diodorns ; and the latter — R. V, i. 32 ; Breal, He/rule et Cacus, hill is in his narrative the residence of 94.

Cacius, who with Pinarius hopitably * " Solis inaccessam radiis." and reverently entertains the Tirynthian Nirg. ^Eii, viii. 195.