IDEA OF NECESSITY. 13 thus she has that power of hastening or retarding a birth CHAP. which is used to give Eurystheus priority over Herakles. II. Juno. In these functions she is practically identical with the The Latin Latin Juno (a name closely akin to that of Zeus).1 But Juno not only presides over marriage. She is the special protectress of women from the cradle to the grave, and as such, is Matrona and Virginalis. As Moneta, the guardian of the mint, she bears a name which connects her functions with those of Minerva. SECTION IX.-THE ERINYES. In the whole cycle of Greek mythology no idea perhaps is more prominent than that of the inevitable doom of toil, sorrow, and suffering which is laid without exception on every one of the heroes, and on all the gods, unless it be Zeus himself. For none is there any permanent rest or repose. Phoibos may not tarry in his brilliant birthplace, and his glance must be fatal to the maiden whom he loves. Nay, more, he must fight with, and destroy the Kyklôpes, the loathsome giants or storm-clouds; but these are the children of Zeus, and Phoibos must therefore atone for his deed by a long servitude in the house of Admêtos. But on this house there rests the same awful fate. In the midst of all her happiness and wealth Alkêstis must die if her husband is to live, and the poet who tells the tale declares in the anguish of his heart that he has searched the heaven above and the earth beneath, and found nothing so mighty, so invincible, as this iron force, which makes gods and men bow beneath her sway. The history of Phoibos is the history of all who are of kin to him. Herakles, with all his strength and spirit, must still be a slave, and the slave of one infinitely weaker and meaner than himself. Perseus must be torn away from his mother Danaê, to go and face strange perils and fight with fearful monsters. He must even unwittingly do harm to others, and his mischief must end in the disorder of his own mind, and the loss of power over his own will. He must 1 Vol. i. p. 354. Doctrine of Neces sity. BOOK The conflict between light and darkness. show certain dispositions, and do certain acts. The sun must rise in the heavens, must seem to woo the queen of the deep blue ether, must rouse the anger of her lord, must be hurled down from his lofty place. Hence, Ixîôn must writhe on his fiery cross, and Sisyphos must roll the huge stone to the hilltop only to see it dash down again to the plain beneath. There would not be wanting more terrible crimes and more mysterious complications. The Sun must be united again in the evening to the mother from whom he was parted in the morning; and hence that awful marriage of Oidipous with Iokastê, which filled his house with woe and brought his lineage to an end in blood. Iphigeneia must die that Helen may be brought back, as the evening twilight must vanish away if the light of dawn is to come again. But Iphigeneia has done no wrong. She is the darling of her father's heart, and the memories linked with her image are those only of tenderness and love. Must there not then be vengeance taken for the outpouring of her innocent blood? And can Atê rest till she has visited on Agamemnon himself the death of his guiltless child ? Without going further, we have here the germs, and more than the germs, of doctrines which, from the time that these ideas were awakened in the human mind, have moulded the theology of the world-the doctrines of irresistible force, of the doom which demands blood for blood, of the destiny which shapes a man's life even before he is born. These doctrines necessarily assume at an early age a moral or a spiritual character; but the ideas which underlie them were evoked by the physical phenomena of nature. The moral conflict and antagonism between Ormuzd and Ahriman points to the earlier struggle in which Indra fights with and slays the biting snake, the thief, the seducer, who hides away his prey in his dismal cave; and the battle between spiritual good and evil takes form from the war between the light of the Sun and the darkness of the night. But while these ideas were passing more and more into the region of things spiritual, and were becoming crystallized in theological systems, the growth of a physical mythology was not wholly arrested. The vengeance for iniquity may belong THE FATAL SISTERS. to the fearful Erinyes; but the Erinys is still a being who wanders in the air. The wrath of Atê may never slumber, so long as the murderer remains unpunished; but she is still the tangible being whom Zeus seizes by her long-flowing locks, and hurls from the portals of Olympos. But the impulse to a moral mythology once given could not but call into existence other beings answering to Atê or the Erinyes in their purely spiritual aspects. From the idea of a being who can see all that is done by the children of men would come the notion of three beings, each having as its province severally the past, the present, and the future; while the lot which is each man's portion, and the doom which he cannot avoid would be apportioned to him by beings whose names would denote their functions or the gentler qualities which men ascribed to them in order to deprecate their wrath. 1 15 CHAP. II. and Eumenides. Of these beings the Erinyes are in the Hellenic mythology Erinyes among the most fearful-so fearful, indeed, that their worshippers, or those who had need to speak of them, called them rather the Eumenides, or merciful beings, to win from them the pity which they were but little supposed to feel. Yet these awful goddesses are but representatives of the Vedic Saranyû, the beautiful morning whose soft light steals across the heaven, and of whom it was said that she would find out the evil deeds committed during the night, and punish the wrongdoer. Still, unconscious though the Athenian may have been of the nature of the beings whom he thus dreaded or venerated, they retained some of their ancient characteristics. Terrible as they might be to others, they had only a genial welcome for the toilworn and suffering Oidipous, the being who all his life long had struggled against the doom which had pressed heavily on the Argive Herakles. Close to Athens, the city of the dawn goddess, is their sacred grove; and under the shadow of its clustering trees the blinded Oidipous will tranquilly wait until it is his time to die. Where else can the weary journey come to an end than amidst the sacred groves in which the Erinyes are seen in the evening, weaving, like Penelopê, the magic web which 1 σεμναὶ θεαί. BOOK The Fatal is to be undone again during the night? The threads of this web become in their hands, and in those of the kindred Moirai, the lines of human destiny. Having said thus much of these dreaded beings we have practically said all. Mythographers could not fail to speak of them as children of Gaia, sprung from the blood of the mutilated Ouranos, or as the daughters of the night, or of the earth and darkness-a parentage which will apply with equal truth to Phoibos or the Dioskouroi. When we are told that, in cases where their own power seems inadequate they call in the aid of Dikê or Justice, we are manifestly on the confines of allegory, which we are not bound to cross. In the conceptions of later poets, they appear, like the Gorgons, with writhing snakes in place of hair, and with blood dripping from their eyes; and as naturally, when their number was limited to three, they received names which, like Allêktô, Megaira, and Tisiphonê, imply relentless hatred, jealousy, and revenge. Their domain is thus far wider and more terrible than that of the Moirai, who weave, deal out, and cut short the thread of human life. From this point the mythology, which has grown up, such as it is, round the fatal sisters, may be regarded as thoroughly artificial. The division of time into the past, the present, and the future once made, it only remained to assign these divisions severally to one personal being, and to invest this being with attributes suited to the office which it has to perform. It may be instructive to trace the process by which the single Moira of the Iliad and Odyssey suggests the notion of many Moirai, and is represented by the Hesiodic sisters, Klôthô, Lachesis, and Atropos; but the process is altogether different from that which, starting with phrases denoting simply the action of wind or air in motion, gives us first the myths of Hermes, Orpheus, Pan, and Amphîon, and ends with the folk-lore of the Master Thief and the Shifty Lad. In the latter case, the mythmaker knew little, probably nothing, of the source and the meaning of the story, and worked in unconscious fidelity to traditions which had taken too strong a root to be lightly dislodged or materially changed. In the former we have the work rather THE FATES. of the moralist or the theologian. The course of human existence and of all earthly things is regarded as a long coil of thread, and the gods are the spinners of it. Thus this work is specially set apart to Aisa, the spoken word of Zeus, the Fatum of the Latins, or to Moira, the apportioner; for to both alike is this task of weaving or spinning assigned,' and Aisa and Moira are alike the ministers of Zeus to do his will, not the despotic and irresponsible powers before whom, as before the Anankê of Euripides, Zeus himself must bow. Nay, even a mortal may have a certain power over them, and Achilleus may choose either a brief career and a brilliant one, or a time of repose after his return home which shall stand him in the stead of glory. The dualism of the ideas of birth and death would lead us to look for two Moirai in some traditions, and accordingly we find the two at Delphoi, of whom Zeus and Apollôn are the leaders and guides.3 The three Hesiodic Moirai, who are sisters of the Erinyes, are also called the Kêres, or masters of the destinies of men. Of these three one alone is, by her name Klôthô, charged with the task of spinning; but in some later versions this task is performed by all three; nor is the same account always given of their functions with regard to the past, the present, and the future. Commonly Klôthô spins the threads, while Lachesis deals them out, and Atropos severs them at the moment of death; but sometimes Klôthô rules over the present, Atropos over the past, and Lachesis over the future." If, again, they are sometimes represented in comparative youth, they sometimes appear with all the marks of old age; 1 Пl. xx. 128; xxiv. 209. ? Il. ix. 411. Paus. x. 24, 4. These are the Kĥpes Tavηλeyéos θανάτοιο the name belonging to the same root which has yielded the words κύριος, κοίρανος, and the Latin creare, (cf. Gr. xpeíw), creator. The name Moira answers to that of the Latin Mors, the grinding, crushing power, the poîpa Kpara of the Iliad. Yet the etymology was not wholly without reason, which connected the word with μépos, a share or portion, the idea of pieces or fragments being naturally expressed by the root used to denote the working of the hammer or the millstone. Clotho præsentis temporis habet curam, quia quod torquetur in digitis, momenti præsentis indicat spatia; Atropos præteriti fatum est, quia quod in fuso perfectum est, præteriti temporis habet speciem; Lachesis futuri, quòd etiam illis, quæ futura sunt, finem suum Deus dederit.-Apuleius, de Mundo, p. 280; Grimm, Deutsche Myth. 386. The Hesiodic poet, in his usual didactic vein, makes the Moirai strictly moral beings who punish the wrong doing, or transgressions, whether of gods or men.-Theog. 220. 17 СНАР. II. |