BOOK II. Pelops. the eye of Kekrops, who gives judgment that the city shall bear the name of the dawn-goddess.1 A more transparent myth of the earth is found in the history of Pelops, the son of Tantalos and Diônê, or as some have it, Klytia or Euryanassa. His father in his magnificent palace and with his inexhaustible wealth is manifestly only another form of Ixîôn and Helios; and the child whom he slays represents not less clearly the fruits of the earth first sustained by his warmth and then scorched by his raging heat. This horrible banquet of his flesh he sets before Zeus, for the ravages of drought are accomplished in the face of the blue heaven; but none of the gods will eat of it, except Dêmêtêr, who, plunged in grief for the loss of her child, eats the shoulder and thus the story ran that when at the bidding of Zeus Hermes boiled the limbs and restored them to life, an ivory shoulder supplied the place of the part devoured by Dêmêtêr. In the story of Hippodameia, a name which occurs as an epithet of Aphroditê,3 Pelops plays the part of the successful hero in the myths of Brynhild, or Briar Rose. The heads of those who have failed to conquer Oinomaos in the chariot race stare down upon him from the doorposts; but nothing daunted, he makes a compact with Myrtilos the charioteer to loosen the wheels of Oinamaos. Pelops is thus the victor; but as even the summer which succeeds in ripening the grape must die, so Pelops is made to fall under the curse of Myrtilos, whom he ungratefully drowns in the sea. This curse was wrought out in the fortunes of all his children, whose life and death do but exhibit one of the many aspects of the great tragedy of nature. The meaning of the myth of Kekrops is sufficiently clear, whether we adopt or reject Preller's explanation of the word: 'Der Name scheint mit kaprès und KрúжIоv zusammenhängen, so dass sich also schon dadurch die Beziehung auf Frucht und Erndte ankündigen würde.' Gr. Myth. ii. 137. 2 Hence the notion that his descendants likewise had one shoulder white as ivory. Pindar rejects the story, preferring the version that he was carried off by Poseidôn, as Ganymedes was taken by the eagle to Olympos. Ol. i. 40. 3 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 385. SECTION IV.-THE PRIESTS OF THE GREAT MOTHER. CHAP. Ouranos. The earth itself, as the soil distinguished from the fruits which grow from it or the power which nourishes them, is known as Gaia in the Hesiodic Theogony, where she is Gaia and described seemingly as self-existent, for no parents are assigned either to her or to Chaos, Tartaros, and Eros. All this, however, with the assignment of Erebos and Nyx as children of Chaos, and of Aithêr and Hemera as children of Nyx, the night, may have been to the poet as mere an allegory as the birth of the long hills which together with the troubled sea are brought into being by Gaia. Then follows the bridal of the earth and sky, and Gaia becomes the mother of a host of children, representing either the sun under the name of Hyperîôn, or the forces at work in the natural world, the thunders and lightnings, here called the round-eyed giants, and the hundred-handed monsters, one of whom, Briareos, rescues Zeus from the wiles of Hêrê, Athênê and Poseidôn. But in all this there is really not much more mythology than in the little which has to be said of the Latin Tellus or Terra, a name, the meaning of which was never either lost or weakened. It was otherwise with Mars, a god who, worshipped originally as the ripener of fruits and grain, was afterwards from the accident of his name invested with the attributes of the fierce and brutal Arês of the Greeks. In his own character, as fostering wealth of corn and cattle, he was worshipped at Præneste, as Herodotos would have us believe that Scythian tribes worshipped Arês, with the symbol of a sword, one of the many forms assumed by the Hindu Linga. As such, he was pre-eminently the father of all living things, Marspiter, or Maspiter, the parent of the twin-born Romulus and Remus. The root is mar, which yields the name of the Maruts and many other mythical beings. See vol. i. p. 32, &c. Mars, with his common epithet Silvanus, is the softener of the earth and the ripener of its harvests. The name occurs under the forms Mamers and Mavors. Of these Professor Müller says, Marmar and Marmor, old Latin names for Mars, are reduplicated forms; and in the Oscan Mâmers the of the reduplicated syllable is lost. Mâvors is more difficult to explain, for there is no instance in Latin of m in the middle of a word being changed to v.'-Lectures, second series, 324. BOOK Rhea. As the ripener and grinder of the corn he is Pilumnus and Picumnus, although the process of disintegration constantly at work on mythical names converted these epithets into two independent deities, while another myth affirmed that he received the name Picumnus as being the god to whom the woodpecker was consecrated. 2 Another representative of the earth is Rhea, herself a child of Ouranos and Gaia, and the wife of Kronos, by whom she becomes the mother of the great Olympian deities Hestia, Dêmêtêr, Hêrê, Hades, Poseidôn, all swallowed by their father, and lastly, Zeus, who is saved to be brought up in the cave of Diktê. But throughout Rhea remained a name and a power, worshipped as the great reproductive force of the world, as producing life through death, and thus as honoured by the sacrifice of the reproductive power in her ministers. Thus she became preeminently the great mother, worshipped under the titles Mâ and Ammas, and perhaps even more widely known and feared as Kybelê or Kybêbê.3 ''Pilumnus et Picumnus, deux anciens participes présents, le dieu qui broie et le dieu qui fend. Le pilum, avant d'être l'arme du soldat romain, si célèbre chez les historiens, fut le pilon qui sert à broyer le blé. Pilum est une contraction de pistillum et vient de pinsere. Pila est le vase où l'on broyait, et Pilumnus, comme le dit expressément Servius (En. ix. 4), le dieu des boulangers. Picumnus vient d'une racine pic qui veut dire fendre: on la trouve dans picus, le pic-vert qui creuse le tronc des arbres, pour y chercher sa nourriture et y loger ses petits.'-Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 34. The Latin Jupiter Pistor is another god whose name belongs to the same root with Pilumnus. Of this deity Professor Müller says that he was originally the god who crushes with the thunderbolt; and the Mola Martis seem to rest on an analogous conception of the nature of Mars.'-Lectures, second series, 324. It seems more probable that Jupiter Pistor, like Mars Silvanus or Pilumnus, was a rustic god. The expression Molæ Martis, like the Greek μaλos "Apnos, is one which might suit either the crushing or the softening god. This name Preller explains, after Hesychios, as denoting her abode on the hills: but such interpretations must be regarded with great suspicion. A large number of foreign words were associated with the worship of such deities as Rhea and Dionysos, and we are as little justified in identifying one with another as we are in adopting the conclusion of Herodotos, that Athênê is only another form of the Egyptian word Neith. To Mas, as a name of Rhea, Papas as a title of the Phrygian Zeus precisely corresponds. Preller, ib. i. 511. They are no more than the terms Pater and Mater applied to Zeus and Dêô, or AllFather as a name of Odin. The old title of Rhea is applied, whether with or without design, to the Virgin Mary. Thus Dr. Faber, writing to Mr. Watts Russell, asks him to think of him 'amid the glories of Christian Rome on those Sunday evenings in October, all dedicated to dearest Mama.'-Life, p. 329. PHOIBOS AND THE TELCHINES. 313 6 It VIII. rêtes and With the name of Rhea are connected the mystic beings CHAP. known as the Kourêtes, the Korybantes, the Idaian Daktyloi, and the Kabeiroi. Into the ethnological specu- The Koulations of which these names have been made the subject Idaian it is unnecessary to enter. It is as possible that they may, Daktyls. some or all of them, denote races displaced and overthrown by the advancing Hellenic tribes, as that the Trolls may represent aboriginal inhabitants driven to the mountains by the Teutonic invaders. But in the absence of all historical evidence it is as useless to affirm with Dr. Thirlwall, as it is unnecessary to deny, that the name Telchînes is only another name for the historical Phenician people, or that the legends related by them embody recollections of arts introduced or refined by foreigners who attracted the admiration of the rude tribes whom they visited." is enough to remark here that the art of the Telchînes is simply that of Hephaistos. Like him, they forge iron weapons or instruments for the gods and they resemble the Kyklôpes not only in this their work, but in their parentage, which exhibits them as sons of Poseidôn, or Thalassa, the troubled sea. Thus also we see in them not only the fellow-helpers of Hephaistos in the Iliad, but the rude shepherds of the Odyssey. The clouds from which the lightnings dart are the one: the mists clinging to the hills are the other. Hence they are creatures without feet, as the Phaiakian ships have neither rudders nor oars. They can pour down rain or snow on the earth, and, like the clouds, they can change their form at will; and thus they are destroyed by Phoibos in the guise of a wolf, as the sun's rays scatter the mists at noon-day. In this capacity of changing their form and bringing storms upon the earth we have all that is needed as the groundwork of their reputation as sorcerers, even if we refuse to indulge in any conjectures as to the origin of the name. Their office as nurses of Poseidôn3 is even more significant, as showing 1 Hist. Greece, part i. ch. iii. 2Der Name Teλxîves ist abzuleiten von éxyw in der Bedeutung bezaubern, durch Berührung berücken, daher Stesichoros die Keren und betaübende 2 Schläge, welche das Bewusstsein ver- Thirlwall, Hist. Greece, i. 76. BOOK II. The Kabeiroi and Koryban tes. their close affinity to the nurses of Zeus in the cave of Diktê, the soft clouds which hang at dawn on the eastern sky as contrasted with the rough mists which seem to brood over and to feed the sea. Hence the story recorded by Strabo that those of the Telchînes who went with Rhea to Crete were there called Kourêtes, the guardians of the child (Koûpos) Zeus. These are the dancers clad in everlasting youth, like the lovely cirri which career in their mystic movements through the sky, the Daktyloi, or pointers, of Ida, the nourishing earth, the bride of Dyaus the heaven.2 These also are beings endowed with a strange wisdom and with magical powers, and from them Orpheus received the charm which gave to his harp its irresistible power. Their numbers vary, sometimes only a few being seen, sometimes a troop of fifty or a hundred, like the fifty children of Danaos, Thestios, or Asterodia. That the Kabeiroi and Korybantes were sometimes regarded as exhibiting only another phase of the idea which underlies the conception of the mythical Kourêtes, is a point scarcely open to doubt. Like the latter, they have a protecting and soothing power, and hence are nourishers of the earth and its fruits, and the givers of wine to the Argonautai. They are sons or descendants of Hephaistos or Proteus, or of Zeus and Kalliope, all names pointing to the generation of vapours from the sea or the sky. But as the myths of Cacus or the Kyklôpes seem in some of their features to indicate the phenomena of volcanic action, so it is quite possible that such phenomena may have modified the stories told of the several classes of these mysterious beings. The fires of the Kyklôpes may be either the lightnings seen in the heaven or the flames which burst from the earth; and the mysterious flash which reveals the treasures of the earth to the Arabian prince or the Teutonic Tanhaüser may equally represent both. 1 Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 103. 2 The connection of dáкTUλos and digitus with the root from which sprung the Greek deĺkvvu, the Latin indico and other words, is generally admitted. The myth that they served Rhea as the fingers serve the hand would naturally grow up when the real meaning of the name was weakened or forgotten, although it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that the clouds are the fingers of the earth which she can point as she wills. |