THE CHARITES OR GRACES. Charites of the Odyssey, the graceful beings whose form in CHAP. Hellenic mythology is always human.' II. sters of 3 With this origin of the name Charis all the myths which The minihave gathered round the Charites are in the closest agree- Aphrodite. ment; and they do but resolve themselves, somewhat monotonously, into expressions denoting the birth of the morning from the heavens or the sky, and the sea or the waters. In the Hesiodic Theogony, the Charis who is the wife of Hephaistos is called Aglaia (the shining), whose name is also that of Aiglê, Glaukos, and Athênê of the bright face (Glaukôpis). In other versions their mother is herself Aiglê, who here becomes a wife of Phoibos; in others again she is Eurydomene, or Eurynome, names denoting with many others the broad flush of the morning light; or she is Lêthê, as Phoibos is also a son of Lêtô, and the bright Dioskouroi spring from the colourless Leda. So too the two Spartan Charites are, like Phaethousa and Lampetiê, Klêtê and Phaenna (the clear and glistening). But beautiful though they all might be, there would yet be room for rivalry or comparison, and thus the story of the judgment of Paris is repeated in the sentence by which Teiresias adjudged the prize of beauty to Kalê, the fair. The seer in this case. brings on himself a punishment which answers to the ruin caused by the verdict of Paris." arrows of As the goddess of the dawn, Aphroditê is endowed with The arrows irresistible as those of Phoibos or Achilleus, the rays Aphrodité. which stream like spears from the flaming sun and are as fatal to the darkness as the arrows of Aphroditê to the giant Polyphemos. Nay, like Ixîôn himself, she guides the fourspoked wheel, the golden orb at its first rising: but she does not share his punishment, for Aphroditê is not seen in the blazing noontide.3 In her brilliant beauty she is Arjunî, a 1 Professor Müller, Lect. 372. remarks that in Greek the name Charis never means a horse, and that it never passed through that phase in the mind of the Greek poets which is so familiar in the poetry of the Indian bards.' But the Greek notion, he observes, had at the least dawned on the mind of the Vedic B 2 poets, for in one hymn the Harits are 2 Sostratos ap. Eustath. ad Hom. BOOK Her children. Share of Aphroditê in the Trojan war. name which appears again in that of Arjuna, the companion of Krishna, and the Hellenic Argynnis. But the conception of the morning in the form of Aphroditê exhibits none of the severity which marks the character of Athênê. She is the dawn in all her loveliness and splendour, but the dawn not as unsullied by any breath of passion, but as waking all things into life, as the great mother who preserves and fosters all creatures in whom is the breath of life. She would thus be associated most closely with those forms under which the phenomena of reproduction were universally set forth. She would thus be a goddess lavish of her smiles and of her love, most benignant to her closest imitators; and as the vestals of Athens showed forth the purity of the Zeus-born goddess, so the Hierodouloi of Corinth would exhibit the opposite sentiment, and answer to the women who assembled in the temples of the Syrian Mylitta. The former is really Aphroditê Ourania; the latter the Aphroditê known by the epithet Pandêmos. Aphroditê is thus the mother of countless children, not all of them lovely and beautiful like herself, for the dawn may be regarded as sprung from the darkness, and the evening (Eôs) as the mother of the darkness again. Hence like Echidna and Typhon, Phobos and Deimos (fear and dread) are among the offspring whom the bright Paphian goddess bore to Ares, while Priapos and Bacchos are her children by Dionysos. Nor is her love confined to undying gods. The so-called Homeric hymn tells the story how in the guise of a simple maiden she came to the folds where the Trojan Anchises was tending his flocks, and how Aineias was born, whom the nymphs loved by the Seilenoi and Hermes the Argos-Slayer tended and cherished.' In the Iliad, Aphroditê, as the mother of Aineias, fights on the side of Ilion, not so much because she has any keen wish for the victory of the one side rather than the other, as because she desires to preserve her child and make him a father of many nations. Nowhere in fact do we more clearly see the disintegration of the earliest myths than in the part which the several deities play in the long struggle before the Hymn to Aphroditê, 258. APHRODITE AND AINEIAS. walls of Ilion. That struggle is strictly the desperate strife which is to avenge the wrongs and woes of Helen and to end in her return to her ancient home in the west,-the return of the beautiful dawnlight, whom the powers of darkness had borne away from the western heavens in the evening. It is unnecessary to do more here than to refer to the evidence by which this conclusion may be regarded as proved; but it follows hence that not only is the faithless Helen the Saramâ whom the dark beings vainly try to seduce in the hymns of the Veda, but Paris is Pani, the cheat and the thief, who steals away and shuts up the light in his secret. lurking-place. Thus in the early and strict form of the myth, Helen is all light and Paris is all blackness; and his kinsfolk are the robbers which are associated with the great seducer. Hence we should expect that on the side of the Trojans there would be only the dark and forbidding gods, on the side of the Achaians only those who dwell in the ineffable light of Olympos. The latter is indeed the case: but although Hêrê, the queen of the pure ether, is the zealous guardian of the Argive hosts, and Athênê gives strength to the weapons and wisdom to the hearts of Achilleus and Odysseus, yet Apollôn and Aphroditê are not partakers in their counsels. Throughout, the latter is anxious only for the safety of her child, and Apollôn encourages and comforts the noble and self-devoted Hektor. There was in truth nothing in the old mythical phrases which could render this result either impossible or unlikely. The victory of the Achaians might be the victory of the children of the sun over the dark beings who have deprived them of their brilliant treasure, but there was no reason why on each hero, on either side, there should not rest something of the lustre which surrounds the forms of Phoibos, Herakles, Perseus, and Bellerophon. There might be a hundred myths inwoven into the history of either side, so long as this was done without violating the laws of mythical credibility. Glaukos must not himself take part in the theft of Helen: but if local tradition made him a Lykian chief not only in a mythical but also in a geographical sense, there was no reason why he should not leave his home to repel the enemies of Priam. Phoibos must CHAP. II. 5 BOOK not so far turn the course of events as to secure the triumph of Paris: but he might fairly be regarded as the supporter and guide of the generous and self-sacrificing Hektor. Hence when the death day of Hektor has come, Apollôn leaves him, reluctantly it may be, but still he abandons him while Athênê draws near to Achilleus to nerve him for the final conflict. So again, Aphroditê may wrap Aineias in mist and thus withdraw him from the fight which was going against him; but she must not herself smite his enemy Diomêdês, and the Achaian must be victor even at the cost of the blood which flows within her own veins. But when the vengeance of Achilleus is accomplished, she may again perform her own special work for the fallen Hektor. The dawn is the great preserver, purifier, and restorer; and hence though the body of Hektor had been tied by the feet to Achilleus' chariot wheels and trailed in the defiling dust,2 still all that is unseemly is cleansed away and the beauty of death brought back by Aphroditê, who keeps off all dogs and anoints him with the ambrosial oil which makes all decay impossible, while Phoibos shrouds the body in a purple mist, to temper the fierce heat of the midday sun. It is true that this kindly office, by which the bodies of Chundun Rajah and Sodewa Bai are preserved in the Hindu fairy tales, is performed for the body of Patroklos by Thetis: but Thetis, like Athênê and Aphroditê, is herself the child of the waters, and the mother of a child whose bright career and early doom is, The importance of the subject warrants my repeating that too great a stress cannot be laid on this passage of the Iliad (xxii. 213). With an unfairness which would be astounding if we failed to remember that Colonel Mure had an hypothesis to maintain which must be maintained at all costs, the author of the Critical History of Greek Literature thought fit to glorify Achilleus and vilify Hektor, on the ground that the latter overcame Patroklos only because he was aided by Phoibos, while the former smote down Hektor only in fair combat and by his own unaided force. But in point of fact Achilleus cannot slay his antagonist until Phoibos has deserted him, and no room whatever is left for any comparison which may turn the balance in favour of either warrior. In neither case are the conditions with which we are dealing the conditions of human life, nor can the heroes be judged by the scales in which mankind must be weighed. Nay, not only does Phoibos leave Hektor to his own devices. but Athêne cheats him into resisting Achilleus, when perhaps his own sober sense would have led him to retreat within the walls. ll. xxii. 231. 2 I. xxii. 396. Yet it has been gravely asserted that 'Homer knows nothing of any deliberate insults to the body of Hektor, or of any barbarous indignities practised upon it.' 3 Il. xxiii. 185-191. ADONIS. like that of Meleagros, bound up with the brilliant but shortlived day. CHAP. II. Adonis. 7 But the dawn as bringing back the sun and thus recalling Aphroditê to life the slumbering powers of nature is especially the lover and of the bright fruits and flowers which gladden her brilliant pathway. In other words, Aphroditê loves Adonis, and would have him for ever with her. The word Adonis is manifestly Semitic, and the influence of Asiatic thought may be readily admitted in the later developements of this myth; but the myth itself is one which must be suggested to the inhabitants of every country where there is any visible alternation or succession of seasons. There is nothing in the cultus of Tammuz which may not be found in that of Dêmêtêr or Baldur, if we except its uncontrolled licentiousness. It is scarcely necessary to go through all the details of the later mythographers,—not one of which, however, presents any real discordance with the oldest forms of the legend. Adonis, as denoting the fruitfulness and the fruits of the earth, must spring from its plants, and so the story ran that he was born from the cloven body of his mother who had been changed into a tree, as Athênê sprang from the cloven head of Zeus. The beautiful babe, anointed by the Naiads with his mother's tears (the dews of spring-time) as the tears of Eôs fall for her dead son Memnôn, was placed in a chest and put into the hands of Persephonê, the queen of the underworld, who, marking his wonderful loveliness, refused to yield up her charge to Aphroditê.' It is the seeming refusal of the wintry powers to loosen their clutch and let go their hold of the babe which cannot thrive until it is released from their grasp. But the Dawn is not thus to be foiled, and she carries her complaint to Zeus, who decides that the child shall remain during four months of each year with Persephonê, and for four he should remain with his mother, while the remaining four were to be at his own disposal. In a climate like that of Greece the myth would as inevitably relate that these four months he spent with Aphroditê, as on the fells of Norway it would run In short Persephonê refuses to give up the treasure which the dragon so jealously guards on the Glistening |