Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/581

Rh the explanation of an incident which, translated into the conditions CHAP, of human life, becomes a clumsy stratagem. In storms, when con- trary currents are blowing at different elevations,- the clouds may often appear from the earth to be going against or right towards the wind. Then it is that Cacus is drawing the cattle of Herakles by their tails towards his cave. Virgil notes especially the rough and shaggy (villosa) breast of The the monster Cacus : and this epithet carries us to the names of similar Beiieros. beings in the mythology of other Aryan tribes. That the root var^ to hide or cover, has furnished names for Varuna the brooding heaven, as well as for Vritra, the enemy who hides away or imprisons the rain, we have already seen. We may follow Professor Max Miiller as he traces the root further through the Sanskrit ura in ura- bhra, a ram (in other w'ords, the wool-bearer), to urna, wool, the Greek etpos and Ip-tov, in lirnayu, a goat and a spider (the Greek d/3-a;(V7^), the one as supplying wool, the other as appearing to weave it, to Aurnavabha, the wool-provider, one of the enemies slain by Indra, the Russian volna, the Gothic vulla, the English wool, the Latin villus and vellus, and the English fleece. But as in Varuna the idea of covering gives place to that of guarding or shielding, so lira^/a^ is a ram, but wxznzJi is a protector. The meaning of the word is further modified from hairiness or wooUiness into that of mere roughness, and the term varvara was applied by the Aryan invaders to the negro-like aboriginal tribes, whom the Greeks would have termed barbarians. That this last word can be referred to no other root is further proved by comparison of the Sanskrit loma^a with the Greek 8acri;T>;s, words in which the shagginess of hair furnishes a metaphor denoting roughness of pronunciation.^ But the Sanskrit varvara transliterated into Greek would yield the word Belleros : and thus we retain some notion of a being of whom the Greek myth gives otherwise no account whatever. The invention of a noble Corinthian of this name, to serve as the victim of Hipponoos the son of Glaukos, is on a par with the explanations given by mythographers for such names as Pan, Odysseus, Oidipous, or Aias. Belleros then is some shaggy or hairy monster, slain by the hero named from this exploit,

' It is needless for me to do more treated at lengtli and most convincinp;ly. than refer the reader to Professor Max Were I to repeat my obligations ns often Miiller's chapter on Pellerophon {Chips, as I feel that I ought to repeat them, I vol. ii.), where he will find the subject might become wearisome.