dance and sing hymns to the gods. Apolló beheld her dancing with them, and fell in love with her. He changed himself into a tortoise, with which they began to play and amuse themselves. Dryopé placing it in her bosom, the god changed himself into a serpent: the nymphs fled in affright, and he gained his object. The maid returned home, and shortly afterwards married Andræmón the son of Mylos. Her son by Apolló was named Amphissos, who founded at the foot of Eta a town of the same name, and ruled over the whole of that part of the country. He built a temple to his sire; at which when Dryopé appeared one day, the Hamadryades carried her away and concealed her in the wood. In her stead they caused a poplar to grow up, and a spring of water to gush out beside it. The nymphs communicated their own nature to Dryopé; and her son Amphissos out of gratitude raised them a temple,. and instituted games, at which no woman was permitted to be present; because when Dryopé was taken away, two maidens who were present informed the people of it, and the incensed nymphs turned them both into fir-trees.1

Terambos, who dwelt at the foot of Mount Othrys, abounded in flocks, which he himself fed on the mountains. The nymphs assisted him, for they were charmed with his singing and his music, in which he excelled all the men of his time, being the inventor of the lyre and the shepherd's pipe, and they often danced to his melody. Pan also loved him, and one time warned him to drive his flocks down into the plain, as a most terrific winter was coming on: but Terambos, elate with youth and confidence, despised the admonition of the friendly deity, and even mocked at and ridiculed the gentle amiable nymphs, saying that they were not the children of Zeus at all, but of Deinó daughter of the Spercheios, and that Poseidon had once when in love with one of them turned the rest into poplars, and kept them in that form as long as he thought proper. Soon however the presage of Pan proved true: the winter came on; all the streams and torrents were frozen, the snow fell in great quantities, and the flocks of Terambos vanished along with the paths and the trees. The nymphs then changed Terambos himself into the animal called by the Thessalians kerambyx (κepáμßuέ), or cockchafer, of which the boys make a plaything, and cutting off the head carry it about; and the head with the horns is like the lyre made from the tortoise."'

1 Nikand. ap. Ant. Lib. 32. Ov. Met. viii. 330.

2 Nikander, ap. Ant. Lib. 22. Ovid, Met. vii. 354. We need hardly observe that the legend was invented to account for the origin of the cockchafer. Ovid (ut sup.) tells of Kerambus that at the time of Deukalión's flood he sustained himself in the air with wings furnished by the nymphs, and thus escaped.

The word Nymph (vúμpŋ) seems to have originally signified bride, and was probably derived from a verb NYBQ, to cover or veil. It was gradually applied to married2 or marriageable young women, for the idea of youth was always included. It is in this last sense that the goddesses of whom we treat were called Nymphs.3

CHAPTER XVII.

WATER-DEITIES:-OKEANIDES, NEREUS, NEREÏDES, PHORKYS, TRITON, PROTEUS, GLAUKOS, LEUKOTHEA AND PALEMON, RIVER-GODS.

Ωκεανίδες, Ωκεανῖναι. Oceanidæ. Ocean-nymphs.

THE Ocean-nymphs, three thousand in number, were daughters of O'keanos and Téthys, and sisters of the rivers. Their office was to rear the children of men. From their names they appear to be personifications of the various qualities and appearances of the water of the Ocean-stream.*

Nnpeús. Nereus.

Néreus, though not mentioned by name in Homer, is frequently alluded to under the title of the Sea-elder (äλɩos yépwv), and his daughters are called Néréides. According to Hesiod he was the son of Pontos and Earth, and was distinguished for his knowledge and his love of truth and justice, whence he was termed an elder :6 the gift of prophecy was also assigned him. When Héraklés was in quest of the apples of the Hesperides, he was directed by the nymphs to Néreus. He found the god asleep, and seized him; Néreus on awaking changed himself into a variety of forms, but in vain he was obliged to instruct him how to proceed before the hero would release him. He also, if we may credit a Latin poet,3

1 Akin to the Latin nubo and nubes.

2 Il. iii. 130. Od. iv. 743. In this last place it is used of Pénelope, who was not very young; but it is the old nurse who speaks.

3 For beings of other mythologies answering to the Grecian Nymphs, see Fairy Mythology, passim.

4 See Hés. Theog. 346 seq. Göttling in loc.

6

καλέουσι γέροντα

οὕνεκα νημερτής τε καὶ ἤπιος οὐδὲ θεμιστέων

5 Theog. 233.

λήθεται ἀλλὰ δίκαια καὶ ἤπια δήνια οἶδε. Hés. Theog. 234.

7 Apollod. ii. 5. See our notes on Milton, Par. Lost, iii. 603.

Hor. Carm. i. 15, imitating Bakchylidés, in whom the woes were announced

by Kassandra: see Porphyr. in loco.

foretold to Paris, when he was carrying away Helené, the evils he would bring on his country and family.

Néreus was married to Dóris, one of the Ocean-nymphs, and by her he had the nymphs named Néréides.1

Nnpnides. Nereides.

The Néréides, or nymphs of the sea, were fifty in number; but the mythologists do not agree exactly in the names which they put into the catalogue. The best known of them are, Amphitríté the wife of Poseidón, Thetis the mother of Achilleus, and Galateia, who was loved by the Kyklóps Polyphémos.

The sea-nymphs, like all the other female deities, were originally conceived to be of a beautiful form, with skin of a delicate whiteness and long flowing hair. A constant epithet of Thetis is silver-footed (aруʊpoñé(a); and it was for venturing to compare herself in beauty with the Néréides, that Kassiopé brought such misfortune on her daughter Andromeda. But the painters and sculptors who contributed so much to degrade the other deities, robbed the sea-nymphs also of their charms by bestowing on them green hair, and turning their lower parts into those of a fish; thus giving them a form exactly corresponding with the modern idea of a mermaid.

The individual names of the Néréides are significatory of the qualities and phænomena of the sea. According to Hermann they are personifications of the waves, and Scandinavian mythologists give the same explanation of the nine daughters of Niordr, the Eddaic god of the sea.

Φόρκυς, Φόρκος. Phorkys.

Phorkys is called by Homer a Ruler (uédwv) of the Sea and a Sea-elder. His daughter Thoósa was by Poseidon the mother of the Kyklóps Polyphémos. A harbour in Ithaka3 is said to belong to him.

Hésiod makes him a son of Pontos and Earth, and father by Kétó of the Grææ, the Gorgons, the Echidna, and the serpent which watched the golden apples.5 The Sirens were also said to be his daughters."

Hermann (Opusc. ii. 178) renders Néreus Nefluus (vn peîv), and understands by it the bottom of the sea; it rather comes from váw, to flow: see above, p. 15. 3 Od. xiii. 96. 4 Theog. 270 seq.

2 Od. i. 71.

5 Hermann (ut sup.) renders Phorkys Furcus, and makes him to signify the rocks and cliffs. We feel disposed to derive his name from pépw (see p. 15), indicative of the sway and motion of the sea. He would thus be the appropriate sire of the Grææ and Gorgons. He had, we see, a daughter named Thoósa (ówoa), i. e. Impetuous. Kétó (keîμαi), Hermann says, is the sunken rocks. Soph. ap. Plut. Sympos. ix. 14.

Tpirov. Tritón.

According to Hésiod,' Tritón was a son of Poseidón and Amphitríté, who, 'keeping to the bottom of the sea, dwelt with his mother and royal father in a golden house.' Later poets made him his father's trumpeter. He was also multiplied, and we read of Tritons in the plural number.

Like the Néréides, the Tritons were degraded to the fish-form. Pausanias tells us that the women of Tanagra in Boótia, going into the sea to purify themselves for the orgies of Bakchos, were, while there, assailed by Tritón; but on praying to their god, he vanquished their persecutor. Others, he adds, said that Tritón used to carry off the cattle which were driven down to the sea, and to seize all small vessels; till the Tanagrians placing bowls of wine on the shore, he drank of them, and becoming intoxicated threw himself down on the shore to sleep; where as he lay, a Tanagrian cut off his head with an axe. He relates these legends to account for the statue of Tritón at Tanagra being headless. He then subjoins,-

"I have seen another Tritón among the curiosities of the Romans, but it is not so large as this of the Tanagrians. The form of the Tritons is this:-the hair of their head resembles the parsley that grows in marshes, both in colour and in the perfect likeness of one hair to another, so that no difference can be perceived among them: the rest of their body is rough with small scales, and is of about the same hardness as the skin of a fish: they have fish-gills under their ears: their nostrils are those of a man, but their teeth are broader, and like those of a wild beast: their eyes seem to me azure; and their hands, fingers and nails are of the form of the shells of shell-fish: they have, instead of feet, fins under their breast and belly, like those of the porpoise."

The name Tritón probably signifies Wearer-away from the corrosive power of the sea, and he thus, like so many other deities, is only an epithet of his sire. It is remarkable that the name of the Hindú god Vishnú, who is regarded as air or water, signifies Penetrator.*

Пporeus. Proteus.

In the fourth book of the Odyssey Homer introduces this seagod. He styles him, like Néreus and Phórkys, a Sea-elder, and gives him the power of foretelling the future. He calls him

1 Theog. 930.

2 Paus. ix. 20, 21.

3 From Tpów, TITpów, tero, whence also Amphitríté: see, however, Lauer's theory above, p. 159. 4 Bohlen, Das Alte Indien, i. 203.

5 Od. iv. 384.

6 Ib. v. 561 seq.

Egyptian, and the servant of Poseidón,1 and says that his task was keeping the seals or sea-calves. When Menelaos was windbound at the island of Pharos, opposite Egypt, and he and his crew were suffering from want of food, Eidothea the daughter of Próteus accosted him, and bringing seal-skins directed him to disguise himself and three of his companions in them; and when Próteus at noon should come up out of the sea and go to sleep amidst his herds, to seize and hold him till he disclosed some means of relief from his present distress.

Menelaos obeys the nymph; and Próteus drives up and counts his herds, and then lies down to rest. The hero immediately seizes him, and the god turns himself into a lion, a serpent, a pard, a boar, water, and a tree. At length, finding he cannot escape, he resumes his own form, and reveals to Menelaos the remedy for his distress. He at the same time informs him of the situation of his friends, and particularly notices his having seen Odysseus in the island of Kalypsó,—a clear proof that his own abode was not, as has been asserted, confined to the coast of Egypt. This part of the Odyssey has been beautifully imitated by Vergil in the fourth book of his Georgics, where Aristæos on the loss of his bees seeks in a similar way a remedy from Próteus. The scene is here transferred to the peninsula of Palléné, and the god is described as of a blue colour, the hue which painters had been pleased to bestow on the marine deities: he has also a chariot drawn by the biped sea-horses.

Homer does not name the parents of this marine deity, and there is no mention of him in the Theogony. Apollodoros makes him a son of Poseidón,3 and Euripidés would seem to make Néreus his sire.1

Those who embraced the theory of representing the gods as having been originally mere men, said that Próteus was a king of Egypt; and the Egyptian priests told how he detained Helené when Paris was driven to Egypt, and gave him an image or phantom in her stead, and then restored her to Menelaos.5

The name of this deity, signifying First (ро, прŵтоя), wаs too inviting to escape the mystics. They regarded him as a symbol of the original matter which developed itself into the four elements whose form he took: the lion was æther, the serpent earth, the tree air, and the water itself. The simplest derivation, however of his name is, we think, to suppose that it was originally IIλwTeus, the floater, swimmer, or sailor.

1 Od. v. 385.

3 Apollod. ii. 5, 9.

Below, Part II. chap. the last. The Returns.

2 Ib. v. 411.

4 Helené, 15.

6 See Orphic Hymn. xxv.