Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/65

Rh each reflect the sun, and Prokris becomes faithless to her lover, while she grants him her love under a new disguise; and finally, when her fault has been atoned, she dies by the spear of Artemis, with which the sun unwittingly strikes her down. It is the old tale of Daphnê and Eurydike: and Kephalos goes mourning on his solitary journey, labouring not for himself, but for men who need his help, until he sinks to sleep beneath the western sea.

But, as we have seen, the sun may be spoken of as either beneficent or destructive, as toiling for the good of men or as slaying them. Sometimes he may sink to rest in quietness and peace, while the moon comes to give him her greeting of love; or he may die after a battle with the struggling clouds, leaving a solitary line of blood-red light behind him. So in the Hellenic legend, Phoibos cannot rest in his birthplace of Lykia or Delos; he must wander far westwards over many lands, through the fair vale of Telphoussa, to his western home in Delphi. There the mighty power of his rays is shown in the death of the great dragon, whose body is left to rot at Pytho. Yet it was strange that the sun, whose influence was commonly for life and gladness, should sometimes vex and slay the sons of men; and so the tale went that plague and pestilence came when Phaethon had taken the place of Helios, and vainly sought to guide aright his fire-breathing horses. So again the legend of Meleagros exhibits only the capricious action of the sun, and the alternations of light and shade are expressed in the sudden exploits and moody sullenness of the hero; but his life is bound up with the torch of day, the burning brand, and when its last spark flickers out the life of the hero is ended. More commonly, however, he is the mighty one labouring on and finally worn out by an unselfish toil, struggUng in his hard task for a being who is not worthy of the great and costly sacrifice. So Phoibos Apollôn, with his kinsman Heraklês, serves the Trojan Laomedôn; and so he dwells as a bondman in the house of Admetos. So likewise, as Bellerophontes, he encounters fearful peril at the bidding of a treacherous host, and dies, like Sarpedon and Memnon, in a quarrel which is not his own. But nowhere is his un-utterable toil and scanty reward brought out so prominently as in the whole legend, or rather the mass of unconnected legend, which is gathered round the person of Herakles. Doomed before his birth to be the slave of a weak and cruel master, he strangles, while yet in his cradle, the serpents of the night, which stung to death the fair Eurydike. His toils begin. His limbs are endued with an irresistible power, and he has a soul which knows no fear. He may use this power for good or for evil, and his choice for good furnishes the