BOOK II. had the characteristics of the Greek Herakles and the Vedic Indra; and hence when the Roman became acquainted with the Greek hero, whose name so closely resembled that of one amongst his own ancient gods, he attributed to his own Hercules the deeds which were rightly told of the son of Alkmênê, and doubtless also of the god into whose place he was thus intruded. The god thus displaced was, in M. Bréal's judgment, the deity known as Sancus or Recaranus. The former, answering to Zeus Pistios of the Greek and the Dius Fidius of the Latins, imparted to the Ara Maxima the peculiar sanction which rendered all oaths there taken inviolable.' The name Recaranus, which is actually given by Aurelius Victor as that of the slayer of Cacus,2 must in M. Bréal's judgment be referred to the root cri, or kri, which has furnished to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin a large number of words denoting the ideas of creation and power. M. Bréal cites from Festus the word cerus as an epithet of Janus,3 and connects with it the Greek Kronos and the Kêres, who have power over the life and death of men.^ If then Caranus or Garanus, is the maker, Recaranus must be the god who makes again, or who, like Dahanâ, renders all things young; and thus Recaranus would denote the Re-creator, and so the Recuperator or recoverer of the cattle stolen by Cacus, Geryon or Vritra. When, however, the Roman, becoming acquainted with Greek myths, found the word Alexikakos among the epithets of Herakles, he naturally came to regard Recaranus as only another name for that hero. But the quantity of the name Cacus leaves no room for this identification. The first syllable is long, and the word, given by Diodoros under the Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 57. The name Semo with which that of Sancus is so often connected is an epithet denoting fertility and wealth, as in 'semen:' and Herculus himself is necessarily included in the number of the Semones, along with Ceres, Pales, and Flora. 2 Orig. Gen. Rom. vi. 'Recaranus quidam, Græcæ originis, ingentis corporis et magnarum virium pastor. Hercules appellatus.' That Victor should look on Recaranus as strictly a Greek word is not surprising; but as it does not occur in any Greek myths, the evidence becomes conclusive that he has CÆCUS AND KAIKIAS. X. 341 form Kakios, and reappearing in the Prænestine Cæculus, CHAP. leads M. Bréal to the conclusion that the true Latin form was Cæcius, as Sæturnus answers to Saturnus. What then is Cæcius? The idea of the being who bears this name is clearly that of the Sanskrit Vritra, the being who steals the beautiful clouds and blots out the light from the sky. Such is Paris; such also is Typhon; and the latter word suggests to M. Bréal a comparison of Cacus with Cæcus, the blind or eyeless being. But in a proverb cited by Aulus Gellius from Aristotle, a being of this name is mentioned as possessing the power of drawing the clouds towards him; and thus we have in M. Bréal's judgment the explanation of an incident which, translated into the conditions of human life, becomes a clumsy stratagem. In storms, when contrary currents are blowing at different elevations, the clouds may often appear from the earth to be going against or right towards the wind. Then it is that Cacus is drawing the cattle of Herakles by their tails towards his cave. SECTION III-BELLEROPHON. Belleros. Virgil notes especially the rough and shaggy (villosa) The breast of the monster Cacus: and this epithet carries us to monster the names of similar beings in the mythology of other Aryan tribes. That the root var, to hide or cover, has furnished names for Varuna the brooding heaven, as well as for Vritra, the enemy who hides away or imprisons the rain, we have already seen. We may follow Professor Max Müller as he traces the root further through the Sanskrit ura in ura-bhra, a ram (in other words, the wool-bearer), to ûrnâ, wool, the Greek sipos and ep-cov, in ûrnâyu, a goat and a spider (the Greek ȧp-áxvý), the one as supplying wool, the other as If this can be established (and the affinity of Cacus, Cæcius, Kakios, and the Greek Kaikías seems to leave no room for doubt), the word Cacus is at once accounted for. Cæcus is one of many words in which the negative is expressed by the particle ha denoting the number 1, which Bopp discovers in the Gothic haihs=cæcus, blind, hanfs, one-handed, halts, lame, halbs, half. Cæcus, then, is made up of this 2 κάκ' ἐφ ̓ αὑτὸν ἕλκων, ὡς ὁ Καικίας BOOK II. appearing to weave it, in Aurnavâbha, the wool-provider, one of the enemies slain by Indra, in the Russian vòlna, the Gothic vulla, the English wool, in the Latin villus and vellus, and the English fleece. But as in Varuna the idea of covering gives place to that of guarding or shielding, so úranah is a ram, but urânah is a protector. The meaning of the word is further modified from hairiness or woolliness into that of mere roughness, and the term varvara was applied by the Aryan invaders to the negro-like aboriginal tribes, whom the Greeks would have termed barbarians. That this last word can be referred to no other root is further proved by a comparison of the Sanskrit lomasya with the Greek Saoúrns, words in which the shagginess of hair furnishes a metaphor denoting roughness of pronunciation.' But the Sanskrit varvara transliterated into Greek would yield the word Belleros: and thus we retain some notion of a being of whom the Greek myth gives otherwise no account whatever. The invention of a noble Corinthian of this name, to serve as the victim of Hipponoös the son of Glaukos, is on a par with the explanations given by mythographers for such names as Pan, Odysseus, Oidipous, or Aias. Belleros then is some shaggy or hairy monster, slain by the hero named from this exploit,-in short, another Cacus, or Ahi or Vritra; and as Indra is Vritra-han, the slayer of Indra, so is Bellerophôn the slayer of Belleros. Although no mythical being is actually found bearing this name in the Rig Veda, yet the black cloud is one of the chief enemies (dasas) of Indra. This cloud is sometimes called the black skin, sometimes the rain-giving and fertilising skin, while the demon of the cloud appears as a ram, or a shaggy and hairy creature, with ninety-nine arms. This wool- or fleece-covered animal is therefore reproduced not only in the monster Belleros, but in the Chimaira which 3 It is needless for me to do more than refer the reader to Professor Max Müller's chapter on Bellerophôn (Chips, vol. ii.), where he will find the subject treated at length and most convincingly. Were I to repeat my obligations as often as I feel that I ought to repeat them, I might become wearisome. 2 We may trace the root in the Sanskrit han, the Greek póvas, and the English bane. The precise Greek equivalent for Vritrahan would be Orthrophon, a word which is not actually found, although Herakles is really Orthrophontes, the slayer of the shaggy hound Orthros. Max Müller, Chips, ii. 180. CHIMAIRA. Hipponoös is said to have slain, a being, like Geryon, Kerberos, Orthros, and Echidna, of a double or triple body. In the Chimaira the fore-part is that of a lion, the middle that of a goat, while the hinder-part, like that of his mother Echidna and all other cognate beings, is the tail of a fish or serpent.' The death of Vritra or the wool-weaver (Aurnavâbha) is followed by the loosening or the downfall of the rain; but although it is not said that this is the effect of the slaughter of Chimaira, the idea of rain or moisture as repressed by the monster is not absent from the myth of Bellerophôn. His victory is won by means of Pêgasos, the winged horse, whom he finds feeding by the fountain or waters (ny) of Peirênê, and from its back, as he soars aloft in the air, Hipponoös pours down his deadly arrows on the offspring of Echidna, as Indra from his chariot in the heaven hurls his lance against the gloomy Vritra. 343 CHAP. tes. X. But Vritra, Ahi, the Panis and the other dark beings are Leophonall of them enemies (dasas) of the gods, and he who destroys them is dasyuhan, the slayer of the dasas-a name which translated into Greek would yield Leophontes. This epithet is applied to Hipponoös as well as that of Bellerophôn; and it is clear that he cannot be so called as killing lions, for he would then be Leontophontes. Nor is it easy to connect this Leo or Deo, of which he is the conqueror, with anything but the Sanskrit dasa, which reappears in dâsapati, the Greek Despotês, or lord of subjects, in other words, of conquered enemies.2 In the Theban legend this foe is reproduced as Laios,3 who is doomed, like Akrisios, to perish It is possible that the introduction of the word Chimaira into this myth may be the result of a confusion like those already noticed between Arkshas and Rikshas, Leukos and Lukos, &c. At the least, Chimaira is a name not for goats of any age, but only for those which are one year old. The older goats are called Aiges. Theokr. i. 6. A Chimaira then, is strictly a winterling, (i. e. a yearling), just as the Latin bimus or trimus (bi-himus, hiems), denotes things of two or three winters old. But the sun is the slayer of winter; and hence the creature which he slays would be the Chimaira. 2 With this we must compare not only the Greek Aaós, Aews, people, but the adjective dhïos, hostile. This word Professor Max Müller (Chips, ii. 187), traces to the root das, to perish, although he adds that, in its frequent application to fire the adjective dáïos might well be referred to the root dú, to burn.' The difference in meaning between them is not greater than that which separates Varuna from Vritra, or Uranah from Urânah. Laios, in the opinion both of Professor Müller and of M. Bréal, is an exact equivalent of the Sanskrit Dasyu. To the assertion of M. Comparetti that by the hand of his child, as the night must give place to the day. SECTION IV.-THE THEBAN MYTH. The close affinity of the Theban Sphinx with the Ahi, the throttling snake, is manifest from its name, which belongs to the same root with the verb opiyyw, to bind tight, to squeeze, and so to choke. In the Hesiodic Theogony this word is given under the form Phix, and points to the connexion between the words σφίγγω, πήγνυμι, and the Latin figo, to fix or fasten. If the Thebans derived this name from the mount Phikion, their mistake was but a repetition of the process which traced the surnames of Phoibos to the island of Delos and the country of Lykia. The Sphinx, then, like Vritra and the Panis, is a being who imprisons the rain in hidden dungeons. Like them, she takes her seat on a rock, and there she utters her dark sayings, and destroys the men who cannot expound them. In Hesiod, she is a daughter of Orthros and Chimaira, who with her mother Echidna exhibits the same composite form which reappears in the Sphinx. In the Sphinx the head of a woman is combined with the body of a beast, having like Typhon the claws of the lion, the wings of the bird, and the serpent's tail: and in Apollodoros Typhon is himself her father.' It is, of course, possible that the so-called Egyptian Sphinx may be an expression for the same idea which has given birth to Ahi, Vritra, the Panis, and the kindred beings of Greek mythology; but neither the name nor the figures of the Hellenic Sphinx have been borrowed from Egypt. The an Aryan d never appears in Greek as 1, into A as unheard of in Greek, must, in Professor Müller's opinion, be speaking of classical Greek, and not of the Greek dialects, which are nevertheless of the greatest importance in the interpretation of the names of local gods and heroes, and in the explanation of local legends.' But if we sought for a Greek equivalent to the Latin lavo, we might look for a form deFw, not less than for Aouw; and we find both, as in Il. ii. 471, ὅτε γλάγος ἄγγεα δεύει. 1 iii. 5. 8. |