The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911)

70. Textual. Family of Cadmus: see Tables D and E. Castalian Cave of Mount Parnassus, Phocis; here was the famous Delphic oracle of Apollo. Cephissus: a river running through Doris, Phocis, and Bœotia into the Eubœan Gulf; the valley of the Cephissus was noted for its fertility. Panope: a town on the Cephissus. Tyrians: Cadmus and his followers came from Tyre in Phœnicia. The Necklace of Harmonia was a fateful gift. It brought evil to whomsoever it belonged: to all the descendants of Cadmus; to Eriphyle, wife of Amphiaraüs of Argos, to whom Polynices gave it; and to the sons of Eriphyle. It was finally dedicated to Apollo in Delphi. Harmonia's robe possessed the same fatality, 187, 189. Enchelians: a people of Illyria. For the myths of Semele, see 60; of Ino, 144; of Autonoë and her son, Actæon, 95; of Agave and her son, Pentheus,112; of Polydorus, the Labdacidæ, Œdipus, etc., 182. Eight years: the usual period of penance. Apollo, after slaying the Python, had to clear himself of defilement by a period of purification.

Interpretative. Cadmus and his Tyrians: according to the usual explanation, this myth is based upon an immigration of Phœnicians, who settled Bœotia and gave laws, the rudiments of culture (alphabet, etc.), and industrial arts to the older races of Greece. Many Theban names, such as Melicertes, Cadmus, point to a possible Phœnician origin; cf. Semitic Melkarth, and Kedem, the East. But Preller holds that two mythical personages, a Greek Cadmus and a Phœnician Cadmus, have been confounded; that the Theban Cadmus is merely the representative of the oldest Theban state; that the selection of the spot on which a heifer had lain down was a frequent practice among settlers, superstitious about the site of their new town; that the dragon typifies the cruel and forbidding nature of the uncultivated surroundings; and that the story of the dragon's teeth was manufactured to flatter the warlike spirit of the Thebans, the teeth themselves being spear points.

Harmonia, daughter of the patron deities of Thebes, is the symbol of the peace and domesticity that attend the final establishment of order in the State.

According to the Sun-and-Cloud theory of Cox, Cadmus, the Sun, pursues his sister, Europa, the broad-flushing light of Dawn, who has been carried off on a spotless cloud (the Bull). The Sun, of course, must journey farther west than Crete. The heifer that he is to follow is, therefore, still another cloud (like the cattle of the Sun, – clouds). The dragon of Mars is still a third cloud; and this the Sun dissipates. A storm follows, after which new conflicts arise between the clouds that have sprung up from the moistened earth (the harvest of armed men!). This kind of explanation, indiscriminately indulged, delights the fancy of the inventor and titillates the risibles of the reader.

Illustrative. Milton, Paradise Lost, 9, 506. The serpent that tempted Eve compared with the serpents Cadmus and "Hermione." See Byron, Don Juan, 3, 86, "You have the letters Cadmus gave – Think you he meant them for a slave?"

In Art. Fig. 54, in text: from a vase in the Naples Museum. Fig. 55 is of a vase-painting from Eretria.

71. Textual. Eurynome is represented by some as one of the Titans, the wife of Ophion. Ophion and Eurynome, according to one legend, ruled over heaven before the age of Saturn (Cronus). So Milton, Paradise Lost, 10, 580, "And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called Ophion, with Eurynome (the wide-Encroaching Eve perhaps), had first the rule Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven." According to Vulcan's statement (Iliad, 18), Eurynome was daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. She was mother, by Jupiter, of the Graces. Thetis: see 50. Xanthus: the principal river of Lycia in Asia Minor.

72-73. Interpretative. Latona (Leto): according to Homer, one of the deities of Olympus; a daughter of the Titans Cœus and Phœbe, whose names indicate phenomena of radiant light. She belonged, perhaps, to an ancient theogony of Asia Minor. At any rate she held at one time the rank of lawful wife to Zeus. Preller and, after him, Cox take Leto as the dusk or darkness. Cox traces the word to the root of Lethe (the forgetful), but Preller is doubtful. Possibly Leto and Leda, the mother of the bright Castor and Pollux, have something in common. The wanderings of Latona may be the weary journey of the night over the mountain tops, both before and after the Sun (Apollo) is born in Delos (the land of Dawn).

Illustrative. Milton, Arcades, 20, and Sonnet XII, "On the detraction which followed upon my writing certain treatises."

74. Textual. Hyperboreans: those who dwell in the land beyond the North. Pæan, see C. 68. Tityus: an earthborn giant; condemned to the underworld, he lay stretched over nine acres while two vultures devoured his liver.

Interpretative. Python: in many savage myths, a serpent, a frog, or a lizard that drinks up all the waters, and is destroyed by some national hero or god. As Mr. Lang says: "Whether the slaying of the Python was or was not originally an allegory of the defeat of winter by sunlight, it certainly, at a very early period, became mixed up with ancient legal ideas and local traditions. It is almost as necessary for a young god or hero to slay monsters as for a young lady to be presented at court; and we may hesitate to explain all these legends of a useful feat of courage as nature myths" (Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 196). Compare the feats of Hercules, Jason, Bellerophon, Perseus, St. George and the Dragon, Sigurd, and Jack the Giant Killer. Commentators take Python to be the rigor of winter, or the darkness of night, or a "black storm-cloud which shuts up the waters" (Cox). It is not impossible that the Python was the sacred snake of an older animal worship superseded by that of Apollo. (See also C. 38.)

75. Textual. The Tyrian hue is purple, made from the juice of the murex, or purple shellfish. On the leaves of the hyacinth were inscribed characters like Ai, Ai, the Greek exclamation of woe. It is evidently not our modern hyacinth that is here described, but perhaps some species of iris, or of larkspur, or pansy. The meaning of the name is also uncertain, but the best authorities favor youthful. A festival called the Hyacinthia was celebrated, in commemoration of the myth, over a large part of the Peloponnesus. It lasted three days, probably in the first half of July. It consisted of chants of lamentation and fasting during the first and last days; during the second day, of processions, a horse race, joyous choral songs, dances, feasting, and sacrifice.

Interpretative. Most scholars consider Hyacinthus to be the personification of the blooming vegetation of spring, which withers under the heats of summer. The Hyacinthian festival seems to have celebrated – like the Linus festival and the Eleusinian – the transitory nature of life and the hope of immortality.

Illustrative. Keats, Endymion, "Pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cool breath Of Zephyr slew him" (see context); Milton, Lycidas, "Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe"; On the Death of a Fair Infant, 4.

In Art. Fig. 58, in text, is of a marble group in the Hope Collection.

76. Textual. Clymene: a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Chrysolite: or gold stone, our topaz. Daystar: Phosphor, see 38 (II). Ambrosia (ἀμβρόσιος, ἄμβροτος, ἀ-βροτός), immortal, – here, "food for the immortals." Turn off to theleft: indicating the course of the sun, west by south. The Serpent, or Dragon: a constellation between the Great and Little Bears. Boötes: the constellation called the Wagoner. The limits of the Scorpion were restricted by the insertion of the sign of the Scales. Athos: a mountain forming the eastern of three peninsulas south of Macedonia. Mount Taurus: in Armenia. Mount Tmolus: in Lydia. Mount Œte: between Thessaly and Ætolia, where Hercules ascended his funeral pile. Ida: the name of two mountains, – one in Crete, where Jupiter was nurtured by Amalthea, the other in Phrygia, near Troy. Mount Helicon: in Bœotia, sacred also to Apollo. Mount Hæmus: in Thrace. Ætna: in Sicily. Parnassus: in Phocis; one peak was sacred to Apollo, the other to the Muses. The Castalian Spring, sacred to the Muses, is at the foot of the mountain; Delphi is near by. Rhodope: part of the Hæmus range of mountains. Scythia: a general designation of Europe and Asia north of the Black Sea. Caucasus: between the Black and Caspian seas. Mount Ossa: associated with Mount Pelion in the story of the giants, who piled one on top of the other in their attempt to scale Olympus. These mountains, with Pindus, are in Thessaly. Libyan desert: in Africa. Libya was fabled to have been the daughter of Epaphus, king of Egypt. Tanaïs: the Don, in Scythia. Caïcus: a river of Greater Mysia, flowing into the sea at Lesbos. Xanthus and Mæander: rivers of Phrygia, flowing near Troy. Caÿster: a river of Ionia, noted for its so-called "tuneful" swans. For Nereus, Doris, Nereïds, etc., see 50 and 52. Eridanus: the mythical name of the river Po in Italy (amber was found on its banks). Naiads, see 52 (6).

Interpretative. Apollo assumed many of the attributes of Helios, the older divinity of the sun, who is ordinarily reputed to be the father of Phaëthon (ordinarily anglicized Phaëton). The name Phaëthon, like the name Phœbus, means the radiant one. The sun is called both Helios Phaëthon and Helios Phœbus in Homer. It was an easy feat of the imagination to make Phaëthon the incautious son of Helios, or Apollo, and to suppose that extreme drought is caused by his careless driving of his father's chariot. The drought is succeeded by a thunderstorm; and the lightning puts an end to Phaëthon. The rain that succeeds the lightning is, according to Cox, the tears of the Heliades. It is hardly wise to press the analogy so far, unless one is prepared to explain the amber in the same way.

Illustrative. Milman in his Samor alludes to the story. See also Chaucer, Hous of Fame, 435; Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 9; Shakespeare, Richard II, III, iii; Two Gentlemen of Verona, III, i; 3 Henry VI, I, iv; II, vi; Romeo and Juliet, III, ii. Poems: Prior, Female Phaëton; J. G. Saxe, Phaëton; and G. Meredith, Phaëton. For description of the palace and chariot of the Sun, see Landor, Gebir, Bk. I.

In Art: Fig. 59, in text: a relief on a Roman sarcophagus in the Louvre.

77. Textual. For the siege of Troy, see Chap. XXII. Atrides (Atreides): the son of Atreus, Agamemnon. The ending -ides means son of, and is used in patronymics; for instance, Pelides (Peleides), Achilles; Tydides, Diomede, son of Tydeus. The ending -is, in patronymics, means daughter of; as Tyndaris, daughter of Tyndarus (Tyndareus), Helen; Chryseïs, daughter of Chryses.

Interpretative. Of this incident Gladstone, in his primer on Homer, says: "One of the greatest branches and props of morality for the heroic age lay in the care of the stranger and the poor… Sacrifice could not be substituted for duty, nor could prayer. Such, upon the abduction of Chryseïs, was the reply of Calchas the Seer: nothing would avail but restitution."

78. The Dynasty of Tantalus and its Connections. (See also Table I.)

Table F

Pelops. It is said that the goddess Demeter in a fit of absent-mindedness ate the shoulder of Pelops. The part was replaced in ivory when Pelops was restored to life. Mount Cynthus: in Delos, where Apollo and Diana were born.

Interpretative. Max Müller derives Niobe from the root snu, or snigh, from which come the words for snow in the Indo-European languages. In Latin and Greek, the stem is Niv, hence Nib, Niobe. The myth, therefore, would signify the melting of snow and the destruction of its icy offspring under the rays of the spring sun (Sci. Relig. 372). According to Homer (Iliad, 24, 611), there were six sons and six daughters. After their death no one could bury them, since all who looked on them were turned to stone. The burial was, accordingly, performed on the tenth day after the massacre, by Jupiter and the other gods. This petrifaction of the onlookers may indicate the operation of the frost. Cox says that Niobe, the snow, compares her golden-tinted, wintry mists or clouds with the splendor of the sun and moon. Others look upon the myth as significant of the withering of spring vegetation under the heats of summer (Preller). The latter explanation is as satisfactory, for spring is the child of winter (Niobe).

Illustrative. Pope, Dunciad, 2, 311; Lewis Morris, Niobe on Sipylus (Songs Unsung); Byron's noble stanza on fallen Rome, "The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe," etc. (Childe Harold, 4, 79); W. S. Landor, Niobe; Frederick Tennyson, Niobe. On Tantalus, see Lewis Morris, Tantalus, in The Epic of Hades. On Sir Richard Blackmore, a physician and poor poet, Thomas Moore writes the following stanza:

'T was in his carriage the sublime
Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme,
And, if the wits don't do him wrong,
'Twixt death and epics passed his time,
Scribbling and killing all day long;
Like Phœbus in his car at ease,
Now warbling forth a lofty song,
Now murdering the young Niobes.

In Art. The restoration of the statue of Niobe, Mount Sipylus; of extreme antiquity. The St. Petersburg relief (Fig. 61, in text) is probably the best group. Figs. 60 and 62 are from the ancient marbles in the Uffizi, Florence. The fragments of the latter group were discovered in 1583 near the Porta San Giovanni, Rome. The figure of the mother, clasping the little girl who has run to her in terror, is one of the most admired of the ancient statues. It ranks with the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere among the masterpieces of art. The following is a translation of a Greek epigram supposed to relate to this statue:

To stone the gods have changed her, but in vain;
The sculptor's art has made her breathe again.

There is also a fine figure of a daughter of Niobe in the Vatican, Rome; and there are figures in the Louvre. Reinach in his Apollo attributes the originals to Scopas.

79. Interpretative. The month in which the festival of Linus took place was called the Lambs' Month: the days were the Lambs' Days, on one of which was a massacre of dogs. According to some, Linus was a minstrel, son of Apollo and the Muse Urania, and the teacher of Orpheus and Hercules.

80. Centaurs. Monsters represented as men from the head to the loins, while the remainder of the body was that of a horse. Centaurs are the only monsters of antiquity to which any good traits were assigned. They were admitted to the companionship of men. Chiron was the wisest and justest of the Centaurs. At his death he was placed by Jupiter among the stars as the constellation Sagittarius (the Archer). Messenia: in the Peloponnesus. Æsculapius: there were numerous oracles of Æsculapius, but the most celebrated was at Epidaurus. Here the sick sought responses and the recovery of their health by sleeping in the temple. It has been inferred from the accounts that have come down to us that the treatment of the sick resembled what is now called animal magnetism or mesmerism.

Serpents were sacred to Æsculapius, probably because of a superstition that those animals have a faculty of renewing their youth by a change of skin. The worship of Æsculapius was introduced into Rome in a time of great sickness. An embassy, sent to the temple of Epidaurus to entreat the aid of the god, was propitiously received; and on the return of the ship Æsculapius accompanied it in the form of a serpent. Arriving in the river Tiber, the serpent glided from the vessel and took possession of an island, upon which a temple was soon erected to his honor.

Interpretative. The healing powers of nature may be here symbolized. But it is more likely that the family of Asclepiadæ (a medical clan) invented Asklepios as at once their ancestor and the son of the god of healing, Apollo.

Illustrative. Milton, Paradise Lost, 9, 506; Shakespeare, Pericles, III, ii; Merry Wives, II, iii.

In Art. Æsculapius (sculpture), Vatican; also the statue in the Uffizi, Florence (text, Fig. 63). Thorwaldsen's (sculpture) Hygea (Health) and Æsculapius, Copenhagen.

81. Interpretative. Perhaps the unceasing and unvarying round of the sun led to the conception of him as a servant. Max Müller cites the Peruvian Inca who said that if the sun were free, like fire, he would visit new parts of the heavens. "He is," said the Inca, "like a tied beast who goes ever round and round in the same track" (Chips, etc., 2, 113). Nearly all Greek heroes had to undergo servitude, – Hercules, Perseus, etc. No stories are more beautiful or more lofty than those which express the hope, innate in the human heart, that somewhere and at some time some god has lived as a man among men and for the good of men. Such stories are not confined to the Greeks or the Hebrews.

Illustrative. R. Browning, Apollo and the Fates; Edith M. Thomas, Apollo the Shepherd; Emma Lazarus, Admetus; W. M. W. Call, Admetus.

83. Textual. Alcestis was a daughter of the Pelias who was killed at the instigation of Medea (167). In that affair Alcestis took no part. For her family, see Table G. She was held in the highest honor in Greek fable, and ranked with Penelope and Laodamia, the latter of whom was her niece. To explain the myth as a physical allegory would be easy, but is it not more likely that the idea of substitution finds expression in the myth? – that idea of atonement by sacrifice, which is suggested in the words of Œdipus at Colonus (185), "For one soul working in the strength of love Is mightier than ten thousand to atone." Koré (the daughter of Ceres): Proserpina. Larissa: a city of Thessaly, on the river Peneüs.

Illustrative. Milton's sonnet, On his Deceased Wife:

Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

Chaucer, Legende of Good Women, 208 et seq.; Court of Love (?), 100 et seq.

Poems. Robert Browning's noble poem, Balaustion's Adventure, purports to be a paraphrase of the Alcestis of Euripides, but while it maintains the classical spirit, it is in execution an original poem. The Love of Alcestis, by William Morris; Mrs. Hemans, The Alcestis of Alfieri, and The Death Song of Alcestis; W. S. Landor, Hercules, Pluto, Alcestis, and Admetus; Alcestis: F. T. Palgrave, W. M. W. Call, John Todhunter (a drama).

In Art. Fig. 64, in text, Naples Museum; also the relief on a Roman sarcophagus in the Vatican.