BOOK II. Antigonê and Haimon. Alkmaiôn and Eriphylê. that there is no longer any hope, as the gods have abandoned them. The city is therefore surrendered, and Thersandros, the son of Polyneikes, is seated on the throne of Kadmos. Of the remaining incidents connected with these two great struggles the most remarkable is the doom of Antigonê, who is condemned by Kreôn to be buried alive because she had performed the funeral rites over the body of Polyneikes, which had been cast forth to the birds and dogs. Of the sentiments which Sophokles puts into her mouth as explaining her motives and justifying her actions all that we need to say here is that they belong seemingly rather to the Eastern than the Western world, and may be a genuine portion of the Persian myth which Herodotos has clothed in a Greek garb in the story of the Seven Conspirators. But the dismal cave in which she is left to die seems but the horrid den into which the Panis sought to entice Saramâ, and in which they shut up the beautiful cattle of the dawn. It is the cave of night into which the evening must sink and where she must die before the day can again dawn in the east. Nor can we well fail to notice the many instances in which those who mourn for mythical heroes taken away put an end to their own lives by hanging. It is thus that Haimon ends his misery when he finds himself too late to save Antigonê; it is thus that Iokastê hides her shame from the sight of the world; it is thus that Althaia and Kleopatra hasten away from life which without Meleagros is not worth the living for. The death of these beings is the victory of Echidna and Ahi, the throttling or strangling snake; and the tradition unconsciously preserved may have determined the mode in which these luckless beings must die. Nor may we forget that after the death of Amphiaraos the fortunes of his house run parallel with those of the house of Agamemnon after his return from Ilion. In obedience to his father's command Alkmaion slays his mother Eriphylê, and the awful Erinys, the avenger of blood, pursues him with the unrelenting pertinacity of the gadfly sent by Hêrê to torment the heifer Iô. Go where he will, she is there to torture him by day and scare him by night; and not until he has surrendered to Phoibos the ORESTES AND PYLADES. 189 СНАР. III. precious necklace of Harmonia or Kadmos, and found out a spot to dwell in on which the sun had never looked at the time when Eriphylê met her doom, can Alkmaion have any rest. Such a refuge was furnished by the Oiniadai, islands which had grown up at the mouth of the river Achelôos from the deposits brought down by the stream to the sea. Here he marries Kallirhoe the daughter of the river god, who causes his death at the hands of the sons of Phegeus by insisting on his fetching her the necklace of Euriphylê. But Kallirhoe is, like Leda and Lêtô, the mother of twin sons, and she prays that they may at once grow into mature manhood and become the avengers of their father, as Hyllos is avenged by the Herakleids of a later generation. This is substantially the story of Orestes, who slays Orestes Klytaimnestra for murdering her husband Agamemnon as and KlyEuriphylê had brought about the death of Amphiaraos, and tra. who is therefore chased, like Alkmaion, from land to land by the Erinyes of his mother, until at last he comes to Athens, the dawn city, and is there by the casting vote of Athênê herself acquitted in the court of Areiopagos. Of this myth there were, as we might expect, many variations among these we may notice the story which speaks of him and his friend Pylades as slaying Helen when Menelaos refused to rescue them from the angry Argives, and lastly, the legend that Orestes himself, like Eurydikê, died from the bite of a snake, doubtless the Ahi or throttling serpent of Vedic mythology. and taimnês CHAPTER IV. THE FIRE. SECTION 1.-AGNI. BOOK heat. WHEN the old Vedic faith had been long overlaid by an elaborate sacerdotal ceremonialism, Agni still remained, as Light and it had been from the first, a name for light or heat as pervading all things or as concentrated in the flame of fire. In the Satapatha-Brâhmana, Svetaketu tells king Janaka that he sacrifices to two heats in one another which are ever shining and filling the world with their splendour. When the king asks how this may be, the answer is Aditya (the sun) is heat to him do I sacrifice in the evening in the fire (Agni). Agni is heat: to him do I sacrifice in the morning in the sun (Aditya). When to Somasushma, who says that he sacrifices to light in light, the king puts the same question, the Brahman replies, Aditya is light; to him do I sacrifice in the evening in Agni. Agni is light; to him do I sacrifice in the morning in Aditya."1 The majesty of Agni. Thus Agni, like Indra, is sometimes addressed as the one great god who makes all things, sometimes as the light which fills the heavens, sometimes as the blazing lightning, or as the clear flame of earthly fire. The poets pass from one application of the word to another with perfect ease, as conscious that in each case they are using a mere name which may denote similar qualities in many objects. There is no rivalry or antagonism between these deities. Agni is greatest, Varuna is greatest, and Indra is greatest; but when the Max Müller, Sanskrit Lit. 421. has never been taken into consideration by those who have written on the history of ancient polytheism.'-Sanskr. Lil. 546. THE PARENTAGE OF AGNI. one is so described, the others are for the time unnoticed, or else are placed in a subordinate position. Thus Agni is said to comprehend all other gods within himself, as the circumference of a wheel embraces its spokes; and not unfrequently Indra is said to be Agni, and Agni is said to be Indra, while both alike are Skambha, the supporter of the universe. 191 CHAP. IV. attributes Hence the character of the god, as we might expect, is Physical almost wholly physical. The blessings which his worship- of Agni. pers pray for are commonly temporal, and very rarely is he asked, like Varuna, to forgive sin. In the earlier hymns, he is generally addressed as the fire which to mortal men is an indispensable boon: in the more developed ceremonialism of later times he is chiefly concerned with the ordering of the sacrifice. As bearing up the offerings on the flames which mount to the sky, he stands in the place of Hermes as the messenger between gods and men. Like Phoibos and Indra, he is full of a secret wisdom. He is the tongue (of fire) through which gods and men receive each their share of the victims offered on the altar. Nay, so clearly is his mythical character still understood, that, although he is sometimes the originator of all things, at others he is said to have been kindled by Manu (man), and the expression at once carries us to the legends of Prometheus, Hermes, and Phorôneus, who is himself the Vedic god of fire Bhuranyu. The very sticks which Manu rubbed together are called the parents of Agni, who is said to have destroyed them, as Oidipous and Perseus, Cyrus and Romulus are said to have destroyed their fathers. The hymns describe simply the phenomena of fire. 'O Agni, thou from whom, as a new-born male, undying flames proceed, the brilliant smoke-god goes towards the sky, for as messenger thou art sent to the gods. 'Thou, whose power spreads over the earth in a moment. when thou hast grasped food with thy jaws-like a dashing army thy blast goes forth; with thy lambent flame thou seemest to tear up the grass. 'Him alone, the ever youthful Agni, men groom, like a Muir, Principal Deities of R. V. 570. BOOK II. The in horse in the evening and at dawn; they bed him as a stranger in his couch; the light of Agni, the worshipped male, is lighted. Thy appearance is fair to behold, thou bright-faced Agni, when like gold thou shinest at hand; thy brightness comes like the lightning of heaven; thou showest splendour like the bright sun."1 'Adorable and excellent Agni, emit the moving and graceful smoke. 'The flames of Agni are luminous, powerful, fearful, and not to be trusted :'2 phrases which bring before us at once the capriciousness and sullenness of Meleagros and Achilleus. Like Indra, Agni is also Vritrahan. 'I extol the greatness of that showerer of rain whom men celebrate as the slayer of Vritra: the Agni, Vaiśwánara, slew the stealer of the waters.'3 Like Indra, again, and the later Krishna, he is 'the lover of the maidens, the husband of the wives." He is 'blackbacked' and 'many-limbed;' his hair is flame,' and 'he it is whom the two sticks have engendered, like a new-born babe.' 6 75 Thou art laid hold of with difficulty,' the poet truly says, like the young of tortuously twining snakes, thou who art a consumer of forests as a beast is of fodder.' many As the infant Hermes soon reaches his full strength, so fant Agni. the flames of Agni, who, puny at his birth, is kept alive by clarified butter, roar after a little while like the waves of the sea. But Agni consumes that which Hermes is constrained to leave untasted, and scathes the forest with his tongue, shearing off the hair of the earth as with a razor. Agni the Psychopompos. As the special guardian and regulator of sacrifices, Agni assumes the character of the Hellenic Hestia, and almost attains the majesty of the Latin Vesta. He is the lord and protector of every house, and the father, mother, brother, and son of every one of the worshippers. He is the keeper 1 R. V. vii. 3; Max Müller, Sanskr. Lit. 567. 2 H. H. Wilson, Rig Veda S. vol. i. pp. 102-104. 6 3 H. H. Wilson, Rig Veda S. ii. 158. 4 lb. ii. 180. Ib. iii. 253. Muir, Princip. D. of R. V. 569. |