3

4

Γλαύκος. Glaukos.

Glaukos, as is evident from his name, was an original god of the sea, probably only another form of Poseidón, whose son he is in some accounts.1 Like the marine gods in general, he had the gift of prophecy; we find him appearing to the Argonauts2 and to Menelaos, and telling them what had happened, or what was to happen. In later times sailors were continually making reports of his soothsaying. Some said he dwelt with the Néréides at Délos, where he gave responses to all who sought them;5 according to others, he visited each year all the isles and coasts with a train of monsters of the deep (kýтea), and unseen foretold in the Æolic dialect all kinds of evil. The fishermen watched for his approach, and endeavoured by fastings, prayer and fumigations to avert the ruin with which his prophecy menaced the fruits and cattle. At times he was seen among the waves, and his body appeared covered with mussels, sea-weed and stones. He was heard evermore to lament his fate in not being able to die."

This last circumstance refers to the common pragmatic history of Glaukos. He was a fisherman, it was said,' of Anthédón in Bœótia, and observing one day the fish which he had caught and thrown on the grass to bite it, and then to jump into the sea, his curiosity excited him to taste it also; immediately on his doing so he followed their example, and thus became a sea-god. It was also said that he obtained his immortality by tasting the grass which had revived a hare he had run down in Ætólia; also9 that he built and steered the Argó, and that during the voyage Zeus made him a god of the sea.

Glaukos, we are told,1o seeing Ariadné in Naxos, where she had been abandoned by Theseus, became enamoured of her; but Dionýsos seized him, bound him with a vine-band, and drove him from the island. His love for Skylla we shall presently relate.

Λευκοθέα καὶ Παλαίμων. (Matuta et Portunus.)

Inó, the daughter of Kadmos and wife of Athamas, flying from her husband, with her little son Melikertés in her arms, sprang from a cliff into the sea. The gods out of compassion made her a goddess of the sea under the name of Leukothea, and him a god

1 Euanthés ap. Athén. vii. 296.

3 Eur. Orest. 362 seq.

5 Aristot. ap. Athén. ut supra.

7 Paus. ut supra. Ov. Met. xiii. 904 seq.

9 Possis ap. eund.

2 Apoll. Rh. i. 1310 seq.

4 Paus. ix. 22, 7.

6 Plat. Rep. x. 611, cum Schol. 8 Nikander ap. Athén. ut supra.

10 Euanthés ap. eund. Several other opinions about Glaukos will be found

in this place of Athénæos.

under that of Palamón. Both were held powerful to save from shipwreck, and were invoked by sailors. The fable appears to be ancient; as Leukothea, who gives her veil to Odysseus when tossed in a storm, is called 'fair-ankled Inó, daughter of Kadmos,' and her transformation is mentioned.1

Palamón was usually represented riding on a porpoise. The Isthmian games were celebrated in his honour.2

We should suppose it hardly necessary to remind the reader, that, according to all analogy of Grecian mythology, Palæmón and Inó-Leukothea (a form like Phobos-Apolló, Pallas-Athéné) were original water-deities. Leukothea is supposed to be derived from the white waves, and Inó may be merely Iló, and be connected with "^^w to roll.3 Palæmón (Champion) seems to refer to the Isthmian games. Melikertés is said to be a name of Poseidón; it may however be the Phoenician Melcart, introduced into the Kadmeian cycle when Kadmos had become a Sidónian.

Пóraμo. Fluvii. River-gods.

Each river was held to have its presiding deity, who dwelt in it and directed its waters. These gods had their houses and children; and the love-adventures of some of them, such as Alpheios and Achelóos, are recorded by the poets. The rivers were all the sons of O'keanos and Téthys.5

The River-gods were represented of a handsome human form, crowned with reeds, and wearing dark-blue mantles of fine texture. They were often given the head or horns of a bull, indicative of their roaring or winding, of their strength or of their influence on agriculture; or it may have been that the earth being regarded as a cow, the rivers which fecundate her were viewed as bulls. A bull was the sacrifice to them, as to Poseidón.

8

The rivers of Greece, it may be here observed, derived in general their appellations from their physical characters. Thus some were named from their nutritive or fecundating power, as the Alpheios, the Péneios and the Pamísos; others from their rapidity, as the Spercheios, Ilyssos, Inachos, Inópos, Selléeis, Asópos,

1 Od. v. 333. Nitzsch in loc.

2 Paus. i. 44, 88.

as,

* Or with ἰλὺς, ἕλος. Völck. Myth. der Jap. 125. Welcker, Nach. zur Tril. 134. Others make it quasi åλaíuwv, from äλs (Völck. ut sup. and Schwenck, 184); and this was probably the original form, and the change was made after the institution of the Isthmian games. above, p. 118, note9. 5 Hés. Theog. 237.

Sch. Eur. Orest. 1573. Ælian, Var. Hist. ii. 33.

See

7 "Apidem in theologia et cultu Ægyptiorum habitum fuisse symbolum sacrosanctum Nili, aut potius fertilitatis quam fluvius hicce agris Ægyptiorum inducebat," Jablonski, Panth. Egypt. ii. 215. 8 Il. xi. 728.

Apidanos, Amphrýsos, Eurótas, Keladón; others simply from the flowing of their waters, as the Neda, the Nedón, the Anápos, the Anauros, and perhaps the Enípeus.1 The Ladón, like our Mole, was probably named from its secret course, and the Képhissos may have been the Hollower or Digger-away (σкáñτw, like káπeтoS), and Achelóos, like our Exe, Esk, simply the Water (aqua). The rivers of our own country and of most others have obtained their names in a similar manner.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DEITIES OF THE ISLES AND COAST OF OCEAN:-HESPERIDES, GRÆÆ, GORGONS, HARPIES, WINDS.

'ЕoTeрides. Hesperides. Western-Maids.

ACCORDING to Hésiod the 'clear-voiced' Hesperides dwelt 'out in (épny) the bright Ocean' opposite where Atlas stood supporting the heaven, and they had charge of the trees that bore the golden fruit. In this task they were aided by a serpent named Ladón. These apples were said to have been the gift of Earth to Héra on her wedding-day. One of the tasks imposed on Héraklés was that of procuring some of them for Eurystheus.

6

Hésiod says that the Hesperides were the daughters of Night without a father. Others, however, to assimilate. them to their neighbours, the Grææ and Gorgons, gave them Phorkys and Kétó for parents. Their names are said to have been Æglé, Erytheia, Hestia, and Arethusa, or rather Æglé, Hesperé, and Erythéis.7 The abode of these Western-Maids was evidently an island in 1 The verbs from which these names are derived are ΠΑ'Ω, σπέρχω, ἴλλω, ΑΙΩ, ἀΐσσω, πιδύω, ῥώομαι, κελαδέω, νάω. On the principle of double termination (above, p. 15), Erasínos may come from péw.

2 Theog. 215, 274, 518.

3 Lurker, from λnow. Hésiod (Theog. 333) enumerates among the progeny of Phorkys and Kétó the 'dread serpent which in a cavern of dark earth at its great extremity watches the golden apples,' but he does not intimate any connexion between him and the Hesperides. Peisander, it would seem (Sch. Apoll. Rh. iv. 1396) first named him Ladón, and called him the offspring of Earth. Pherekýdés ap. Sch. Apoll. ut sup.

5 Sch. Apoll. Rh. iv. 1399.

6 Apollod. ii. 5, 11.

Apoll. Rh. iv. 1427 seq. Milton, following Apollónios, has

Hesperus and his daughters three

That sing about the golden tree.-Comus, 981.

the Ocean, and not the gloomy land beyond it;1 for the poets, led by the analogy of the lovely appearance of the western sky at sunset, viewed the West as a region of brightness and glory. Hence they placed in it the Isles of the Blest, the ruddy isle Erytheia, on which the bright oxen of Hadés and Géryoneus pastured, and the isle of the Hesperides, in which grew the golden fruit,―all places of light and bliss.

2

When Atlas had been fixed as a mountain in the extremity of Libya, the dwelling of the Hesperides was usually placed in his vicinity; some, however, set it on the shores of lake Tritón; others in the country of the Hyperboreans. Their apples are supposed by some to have been a fiction, indebted for its origin to the accounts of the oranges of Africa and Spain; but this fruit was, we believe, first brought to the West from Asia; and, as far as we can at present discern, the Western-Maids and their trees are a pure poetic creation belonging to the mythology of Héraklés.

6

Tpalai. Græc. Grey-Maids.

4

The 'fair-cheeked' Grææ were daughters of Phorkys and Kétó; they were hoary-haired from their birth, whence their name. They were two in number, 'well-robed' Pephrédó (Horrifier), and 'yellow-robed' Enýó (Urger, Driver). We find them always united with the Gorgons, whose guards they were, according to Eschylos.5 This poet describes them as 'three long-lived maids, swan-formed, having one eye and one tooth in common, on whom neither the sun with his beams nor the nightly moon ever looks.' Perseus, he says,' intercepted the eye as they were handing it from one to the other, and having thus blinded the guards was enabled to come on the Gorgons unperceived. The name of the third sister given by the later writers is Deinó (Terrifier).8

Topyóves. Gorgones. Gorgons.

Homer speaks of an object of terror which he calls Gorgó, and the Gorgeian Head. He places the former on the shield of Aga1 Πέρην merely signifies out in, as

Νήσων αἱ ναίουσι πέρην ἁλος, Ηλιδος ἄντα.

Il. ii. 626.

(Heyne, in loc.) Hés. Theog. 814.

3

Apollod. ut. sup.

Τιτῆνες ναίουσι, πέρην Χάεος ζοφεροίο.

2 See Ap. Rh. iv. 1396. 4 Hés. Theog. 270 seq. their number is only two.

Lucan, ix. 357.
See above, p. 93.

In Ovid also (Met. iv. 773)

5 Eratosth. Cat. 22. Hygin. Poet. Astr. ii. 12: see Völcker, Myth. Geog. 41. 6 Prom. 800 seq.

Eratosth. Hygin. Völcker, ut sup. Eschylos, as it would appear, said that he flung the eye into Lake Tritónis. Apollod. ii. 4, 2.

6

memnón;1 and when describing Hektór eager for slaughter, he says that he had 'the eyes of Gorgó and of man-destroying Arés."" The Gorgeian Head was on the ægis of Zeus,3 and the hero of the Odyssey fears to remain in Erebos lest 'Persephoneia should send out the Gorgeian head of the dire monster' against him.5 Euripidés says that Earth produced the Gorgón in the Giant-war, and that Pallas-Athéné killed her and placed her head on her breast-plate. Along with the Grææ, according to the Theogony,' Kétó bore to Phorkys the Gorgons, 'who dwelt out in (réρηv) the bright Ocean in the extremity toward night, where the clear-voiced Hesperides abide.' It names them Stheinó, Euryalé, and Medusa, which last alone was mortal. Poseidón, it is added, lay with her in a 'soft mead amid the spring-flowers,' and when her head was cut off by Perseus, the 'great' Chrysáór and the steed Pégasos sprang forth. Eschylos calls the Gorgons the 'three sisters of the Grææ, winged, serpent-fleeced, hateful to man, whom no one can look on and retain his breath,' i.e. live.10 They were also represented as winged on the ancient chest of Kypselos at Olympia." On the shield of Héraklés the Gorgons are girt with serpents.12 Others describe them as having their heads environed with scaly snakes, and with huge teeth like those of swine, brazen hands and golden wings. Their looks, it is added, turned all who beheld them to stone.13

8

The Gorgons and the Grææ are always mentioned together, and they seem to have been appropriated to the mythe of Perseus. We might therefore suppose them to have been a pure poetic fiction, were it not that, as we shall show, the Gorgon in that mythe, Medusa, is merely another form of Pallas-Athéné. It is therefore not improbable that the theory of some mythologists of the present day may be the true one; namely, that the two Gorgons and two Grææ are only personifications of the terrors of the sea, the former denoting the large strong billows of the wide open main, the latter the white-crested waves that dash against

2 Il. viii. 349.

3 Il. v. 741.

1 Il. xi. 36. 4 Od. xi. 633. 5 It may be doubted if Homer was acquainted with the story of Perseus: the passage in which he is mentioned (Il. xiv. 519) is, we think, justly regarded as an interpolation. Völcker (Myth. Geog. 15) refers to Пl. xix. 116, 123; but that passage, besides its being in one of the later books, is liable to objection: see Heyne and Payne Knight in loc.

• Ión, 989.

8 See below, Akrisios, etc. ad fin. 10 Prom. 800 seq.

7 Theog. 274 seq.

9 See below, Bellerophontes ad fin. 11 Paus. v. 18, 5. 12 Hés. 'Aorís, 233. Sch. Esch. Prom. ut sup.

13 Apollod. ii. 4, 2. Tzetz. Lyk. 838.