Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/586

554 BOOK II. in the second, " Oidipous has smitten the Sphinx," we have the con summation which sets the land free from the plague of drought. The same myth comes before us in the story of Sigurd and Fafnir whose blood is the rain. Sigurd is bidden to dig a pit in the dragon's path- way, and then, getting into the pit, to smite him to the heart, as Indra smites Vritra. Sigurd dreads a flood which may drown him ; but Odin bids him dig many pits to catch the blood, and thus it is made to fertilise the whole earth.

The Py- thian Dragon. In other myths the incidents of the imprisonment and liberation of the waters are marked with scarcely less clearness than in the history of Indra himself The being with whom Apollon has to fight is the dragon of Pytho, who had chased and vexed his mother during her jour- neyings before she reached Delos, and at whose death the imprisoned waters started from the sources opened by the spear of Phoibos. In the Theban myth the snake who is slain by Kadmos guards the well of Ares, and slays all who come to fetch water until Kadmos himself deals it the death-blow.^ The snakes or serpents are no other than the dragon of the glistening heath, which, in the myths of the frost- bound regions of the north, lies coiled round the sleeping Brynhild and all her treasures. The myth is changed only in the point of view which substitutes deliverance from the deadly cold of winter for deliverance from the not less dreadful plague of drought. Tlie latter idea may be traced in the strange story related by Pausanias ^ of the hero of Temessa. The enemy here is not a snake but an evil spirit, or rather the demon of one of the companions of Odysseus who had been slain for wrong done to a maiden of that city. The ravages of this demon, not less terrible than those of the Sphinx, could be stayed, the Pythian priestess said, only by building a temple to this hero or demon, and offering to him once a year a beautiful maiden. From this point the story is but another version of the myth of Perseus. Like him, Euthymos (a wrestler who is said to have won several victories at Olympia between the 70th and 80th Olympiads, but whom his countrymen regarded as a son of the river Kaikines) resolves to rescue the maiden, and wins her as his bride,^ while the

> Mr. Breal {Ilercuk et Caats, 1 13) adds the instance of Eury bates : " Eiiry- bate ayant tire de son antre le monstre Sybaris qui desolait les environs de Delphi, et I'ayant brise contre les ro- chers, a la place ou il disparut una source s'e]an9a de la pierre." This monbter, under the form of a huge wild ass, who haunts a spring, is slain again by the Persian Rustein. — Koightley, Fail}' Mythology, 19. « . 6.

story may be found in .'^outhey's metrical tale of the Dragon of Antioch.
 * In a still more modern shape the