The remarkable circumstance of the two brothers living and dying alternately leads at once to a suspicion of their being personifications of natural powers or objects. This is confirmed by the names in the mythe, all of which seem to refer to light, or its opposite. Thus Léda differs little from Létó, and may therefore be regarded as darkness; she is married to Tyndareós, a name which seems to be of a family of words relating to light, flame or heat; her children by him or Zeus, that is by ZeusTyndareós, the bright-god, are Helené, Brightness (êλa, light), Kastór, Adorner (KA'ZQ), and Polydeukés, Dewful (devw, devкýs). In Helené therefore we have only another form of Seléné;2 the Adorner is a very appropriate term for the day, whose light adorns all nature; and nothing can be more apparent than the suitableness of Dewful to the night. It is somewhat remarkable that in the legend Helené is connected by birth with Polydeukés rather than with Kastór. The brothers may, however, be also regarded as sun and moon, to which their names and the form of the mythe are equally well adapted,3 Kastór being the Illumer (from ków, kaiw), and the moon being regarded in her character of mother of dew. To proceed to the other names of the legend, Idas and Lynkeus, that is, Sight and Light, are the children of Aphareus or Phareus, that is Shiner (páw); and the two daughters of Leukippos, or White-horsed (an epithet of the Dioskuri),* are Phœbé, Brightness, and Hilaeira, Joyful (iλapòs), which last is an epithet given to the moon by Empedoklés. In the Kypria they were called the daughters of Apolló." That these were original divinities is demonstrated by their being objects of worship. The Tyndarids, Dioskuri, or Kings ("Avakes), as they were named, had their temples and statues ;7 as also had the Leukippides, who, in perhaps the more correct 1 It is apparently connected with Salw and tada, v being inserted as in Lynkeus from ATKH (see Schwenk, 193). Possibly there may have been a Pelasgian word akin to the German zünden and A.-Sax. tendan, whence tinder. 2 As the moon, from her supposed watery nature, may have been held to have sprung from the ocean, Helené is made a child of O'keanos and Téthys. In Scandinavian mythology Freya (moon) is one of the children of Niordr, the god of the waters. 3 Welcker (Tril. 130, 226) makes Kastór the same as Astór (Starry), and Polydeukes the same as Polyleukés (Lightful), and views them as sun and moon. Ib. 271. Eurip. Hel. 639. 5 Ηλιος ὀξυβελὴς, ἡ δ ̓ αὖ ἱλάειρα σελήνη. Ap. Plut. de Fac. in Orb. Lunæ, 2. 6 Paus. iii. 16, 1. The moon was the daughter of the sun see above, p. 55. Id. i. 18, 1; ii. 22, 5; iii. 14, 6. 20, 2. Id. iii. 16, 1. Léda's egg hung in their temple. form of the legend, are their wives.1 Helené, in like manner had her temples;2 and there is some reason to suppose that she was identified with Eileithyia; Euripidés unites her with Héra and Hébé in Olympos. The Apharids were not objects of worship; perhaps because they had merely been devised as opponents to the Tyndarids, to give a mythic ground for the alternate life and death of these last, or possibly because in the legend they are Messénians. The Dioskuri were afterwards confounded with the Kabeirean deities, and were with Helené regarded as the protectors of ships in tempests; and the St. Elmo's fire was ascribed to them. They were also said to be the constellation of the Twins. CHAPTER X. MYTHES OF ELIS. THE mythic tales of which E'lis is the scene are confined to the district between the Alpheios and the Neda, formerly called Pylos, where the Néleids reigned; and to Pisátis, the ancient realm of the Pelopids. Between the former and the part of Thessaly about the Pagasaïc bay there appears to have been a very early connexion, as its mythic heroes are all Æolids. It was probably colonised by the Minyans. Σαλμωνεύς. Salmoneus. Salmóneus, one of the sons of Eolos, settled in E'lis, where he built a city. He was a bold impious man, who asserted himself to be Zeus, and claimed all the honours due to that god. He fastened dried hides and brazen kettles to his chariot, and their clatter, he said, was thunder; and flinging lighted torches against the sky, he called them his lightnings. Zeus, incensed 1 Apollod. iii. 11, 2. Paus. ii. 22, 5. Apollodóros unites Hilaeira with Kastór, but Propertius (i. 2, 15) says, Non sic Leucippis succendit Castora Phoebe, 2 Eur. Hel. 1666. Paus. iii. 15, 3. 3 See Welcker, Tril. 227. Ενθα παρ' Ηρᾳ τῇ θ' Ηρακλέος 5 Eur. Orest. 1636, 1689. Hel. 1664. at his impiety, struck him with thunder, and consumed his city and all its inhabitants.1 Tupa. Tyro. Tyró, the daughter of Salmóneus was, after the death of her father, brought up in Thessaly by his brother Déión. She was in love with the river Enípeus, to whose waves she often made her moan. Poseidón saw and loved her; and assuming the form of the river-god, embraced her at the mouth of the stream, whose bright waves arched over them, concealing the god and the mortal maid. The god declared then who he was, and enjoining secrecy dived into the sea. Tyró conceived from the divine embrace two sons, whom when born she exposed. A troop of mares, followed by the herdsmen, passing by where they lay; one of the mares touched the face of one of the infants with her hoof, and made it livid (ñéλɩov). The herdsmen took and reared the babes, naming the one with the mark Pelias, the other Néleus. When they grew up they discovered their mother, and resolved to kill her step-mother Sidéró (Iron, i. e. Iron-hearted), by whom she was cruelly treated. They pursued her to the altar of Héra; and Pelias, who never showed any regard for that goddess, slew her before it. The brothers afterwards fell into discord, and Pelias abode at Iolkos, while Néleus settled in E'lis, where he built a town named Pylos. Tyró afterwards married her uncle Krétheus, to whom she bore three sons, Æson, Pherés, and Amytháón.2 Νηλεὺς καὶ Περικλύμενος. Neleus et Periclymenus. 4 Néleus married Chlóris the daughter of Amphíón, the son of Iasos of the Minyan Orchomenos.3 By her he had several sons, of whom the principal were Periklymenos and Nestór, and one daughter named Péró. When Héraklés attacked Pylos, he killed Néleus and all his sons but Nestór, who was a child, and reared among the Gerenians. Periklymenos had been endowed by Poseidon with the power of changing himself into various forms; and he took successively those of an eagle, a lion, a serpent, an ant, and other animals. He was detected by Athéna as he was sitting in the form of a bee or a fly on the pole of Héraklés' chariot, and he was killed by the hero.5 1 Apollod. i. 9, 7. Eudocia, 372. Diodor. iv. 68. Verg. Æn. vi. 585. Hésiod (Fr. 23) calls him adikos, while Homer (Od. xi. 235) styles him auúuwv. 2 Od. xi. 235 seq. Apollod. ut supra. 3 Od. xi. 281 seq. 4 See above, p. 324. 5 Il. xi. 690. Hesiod, Fr. 30. Apollod. i. 9, 8. Ov. Met. xii. 556 seq. The mythic family of the Néleids seem all to relate to the sea and water. At the head of the genealogy is Æolos (Wind-man), whose son is Salmóneus, i. e. Halmóneus (Sea-man), by whose daughter Poseidón is the father of Néleus, i. e. Néreus,' whose sons are Nestór (Flower)2 and Periklymenos, a name answering to an epithet of Poseidón, kλUTÓS. The wisdom of Nestór, and his brother's power of changing his form, remind us also of the sea-deities. Péró may be of common origin with the fount Peiréné; Tyró may be Tryó (Wearer-away), and connected with Tritón and Amphitríté.* Μελάμπους καὶ Βίας. Melampus et Bias. Amytháón the son of Krétheus and Tyró settled at Pylos. He married Eidomené the daughter of his brother Pherés, by whom he had two sons, Bias and Melampus. This last lived in the country. Before his house stood an oak-tree, in a hole of which abode some serpents. His servants finding these animals, killed the old ones, whose bodies Melampus burned; but he saved and reared the young ones. As he was sleeping one day, these serpents, which were now grown to full size, came, and getting each on one of his shoulders, licked his ears with their tongues. He awoke in some terror; and to his astonishment, found that he understood the voices of the birds which were flying around; and learning from their tongues the future, he was able to declare it to mankind. Happening to meet with Apolló on the banks of the Alpheios, he was taught by him the art of reading futurity in the entrails of victims, and he thus became an excellent soothsayer.5 Meanwhile his brother Bias fell in love with Péró the daughter of Néleus. As the hand of this beautiful maiden was sought by most of the neighbouring princes, her father declared that he would give her only to him who should bring him from Thessaly the cows of his mother Tyró, which Iphiklos of Phylaké detained, and had them guarded by a dog whom neither man nor beast could venture to approach. Bias, relying on the aid of his brother, undertook the adventure. Melampus, previously declaring that he knew he should be caught and confined for a year but then get the cattle, set out for Phylaké. Everything 1 Hence his union with Chlóris, the Green-earth (above, p. 299) is of the same kind as that of Poseidón with Démétér. 2 As μήστωρ comes from ΜΑ'Ω, so Νήστωρ, Νέστωρ, may come from νάω, to flow: see above, p. 15. 3 From Tepάw, Teiрw, to penetrate. 5 Apollod. i. 9, 11. Sch. Apoll. Rh. i. 118. 4 See above, p. 217. fell out as he had said. The herdsmen of Iphiklos took him, and he was thrown into prison, where he was attended by a man and a woman. The man served him well, the woman badly. Toward the end of the year he heard the worms in the timber conversing with each other. One asked how much of the beam was now gnawed through; the others replied that there was little remaining. Melampus immediately desired to be removed to some other place; the man took up the bed at the head, the woman at the foot, Melampus himself at the middle. They had not gotten quite out of the house, when the roof fell in and killed the woman. This coming to the ears of Iphiklos, he inquired, and learned that Melampus was a mantis. He therefore, as he was childless, consulted him about having offspring. Melampus agreed to tell him, on condition of his giving him the COWS. The seer then sacrificing an ox to Zeus, divided it, and called all the birds to the feast. All came but the vulture; but none was able to tell how Iphiklos might have children. They therefore brought the vulture, who said that Phylakos the father of Iphiklos had pursued him with a knife when he was a child, for having done something unseemly; but not being able to catch him, had stuck the knife in a wild pear-tree, where the bark grew over it. The terror, he said, had deprived Iphiklos of his generative power; but if this knife were gotten, and Iphiklos, scraping off the rust, drank it for ten mornings, he would have a child. All was done as the prophet desired, and Iphiklos had a son named Podarkés. Melampus drove the kine to Pylos, and Péró was given to his brother.1 The cure of the Prœtids by Melampus has been already related.2 The Melampods, of whose Eponymos the history is here related, were a soothsaying family of the mythic ages belonging to the Peloponnése. Amytháón or Mytháón (Speaker, pûbos) and Eidomené (Seer) are appropriate names for the parents of a soothsayer. Melampus is (like Edipus) an ambiguous name; and Black-foot is as dubious an interpretation as Swollen-foot. Its true meaning seems to be the Son of Darkness, i. e. the Darkor Obscure-one,3 in allusion to the nature of prophecy. "Iapos. Iamus. The nymph Pitané, the daughter of the river-god Eurótas, conceived by Poseidón the 'violet-tressed' Euadné. 1 Od. xi. 287 seq. Sch. on Od. xv. 225. Apollod. ut supra. 43. There was a poem named Melampodia ascribed to Hésiod. was only a part of the E'œæ. 2 See above, p. 367. She con Sch. Theocr. iii. Heyne thinks it 3 See above, p. 15. |