Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/588

556 BOOK II. dawn-o;oddess Athene ; in other words, the tribute must come from Athens. But all these fearful monsters lurk m secret places; each has his cave or mountain fastness, where he gorges himself on his prey. The road to it is gloomy and bewildering ; and in the expres- sion put into the mouth of the Panis, who tell Sarama that " the way is far and leads tortuously away," we have something more than the germ of the twisting and hazy labyrinth — we have the labyrinth itself. This intricate abode is indeed the work of the masfnificent o Daidalos; but the walls of Ilion, to which Paris the seducer takes the beautiful Helen, are built by Phoibos and Herakles themselves. In this dark retreat lurks the monster who can be slain only by one invincible hero ; but although Indra is the destined destroyer of Vritra, he cannot find out where his enemy is hidden away except by the aid of Sarama. In this lovely being, who, peering about through the sky in search of the stolen cattle, guides Indra to the den of the throttling serpent, we see the not less beautiful Ariadne who points out to Theseus the clue which is to guide him to the abode of the Minotaur ; and thus the myth resolves itself into phrases which spoke of the night as sprung from the day, as dwelling in the inscrut; ble labyrinth of stars,^ as stealing the treasures of the day and devouiing its victims through the hours of darkness, and as discovered by the early morning who brings up its destined conqueror, the sun. The Phor- Nor are myths wanting for the other phases of the heaven between Gr^ai and Setting and the rising of the sun. If" the lovely flush of the first Gorgons, twilight is betokened by the visits of Selene to Endymion, the dusky gloaming is embodied in the Graiai, or daughters of Phorkys and Keto, who are grey or ashen-coloured from their birth. Thus the phrase that Perseus had reached the home of the Graiai only said in other words that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon. In the Hesiodic Theogony * they are only two in number, Pephredo and Enyo, the latter name being akin to Enyalios and Enosichthon, epithets of Ares and Poseidon as shakers of the earth and sea In the scholiast on ^schylos' they appear as swan-maidens, who have only one tooth and one eye in common, Avhich they borrow from one

' This rcfercnre to the Kosmos and I have no wish to dispute Mr. may tie a special Plienician feature in Brown's conchisions as to the character the myth ; bit there is nothinp; (lis- of this monster and of the worship^ tinctivcly Semitic in the name Mine- ofTercd tohini. — Great Dionysiak Myth, tauros. Krete is, however, strictly ii. 143, et seq. within the domain of Semitic influence ; 2 273. • Prom. V. 793.