Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/583

Rh dasapati, the Greek Despotes, or lord of subjects, in other words, of conquered enemies.^ In the Theban legend this foe is reproduced as Laios,^ who is doomed, like Akrisios, to perish by the hand of his child, as the night must give place to the day.

The close affinity of the Theban Sphinx with the Ahi, the The throttling snake, is manifest from its name, which belongs to the same root with the verb acjiiyyw, to bind tight, to squeeze, and so to choke. In the Hesiodic Theogony this word is given under the form Phix, and points to the connexion between the words o-^iyyo), and the Latin figo, to fix or fasten. If the Thebans derived this name from the mount Phikion, their mistake was but a repetition of the process which traced the surnames of Phoibos to the island of Delos and the country of Lykia. The Sphinx, then, like Vritra and the Panis, is a being who imprisons the rain in hidden dungeons. Like them, she takes her seat on a rock, and there she utters her dark sayings, and destroys the men who cannot expound them. In Hesiod, she is a daughter of Orthros and Chimaira, who with her mother Echidna exhibits the same composite form which reappears in the Sphinx. In the Sphinx the head of a woman is combined yah the body of a beast, having like Typhon the claws of the lion, the wings of the bird, and the serpent's tail : and in ApoUodoros Typhon is himself her father.^ It is, of course, possible that the so-called Eg}^ptian Sphinx may be an expression for the same idea

' With this we must compare not = S'ktkos. — Chips, ii. i68. He adds only the Greek A.ao'y, K^ws, people, but (iS6) a large number of instances in the adjective h-i]io%, hostile. This word which the same word in Latin exists Professor Max Miiller {Chips, ii. 187) under both forms, as impedimenta, traces to the root das, to perish, although impelimenta ; presidium, prcesilium ; he adds that, " in its frequent appHca- considium, consilium ; dingua (Goth, tion to fire the adjective 5oior might tuggu), and lingua, &c. Professor well be referred to the root dii, to Curtius, when he speaks of the transi- burn." The difterence in meaning be- tion of 5 into A. as unheard of in Greek, tween them is not greater than that must, in Professor Mliller's opinion, be which separates Varuna from Vrilra, or speaking of classical Greek, and not of Uranah from Uranah. the Greek dialects, " which are never- fcssor jMiillcr and of M. Breal, is an the interpretation of the names of local exact equivalent of the Sanskrit Dasyu. gods and heroes, and in the explanation To the assertion of M. Comparetti that of local legends." But if we sought an Aiyan d never appears in Greek as /, for a Greek equivalent to the Latin lavo, Professor Midler replies by saying that we might look for a form Sefcu, not less the instances in support of his own than for Xohui ; and we find both, as in position were supplied byAhrens, "De //. ii. 471, ore yXdyos &yyea Sfvtu T")ialecto Dorica,' who cites a.fn = ' iii. 5, 8. Sa.cj)i'r],'0v(X(Tfvs = 'OSvaaiii$, and a'ktkos
 * Laios, in the opinion both of Pro- theless of the greatest importance in