BOOK II. Pan, the breeze. grotesque and uncouth details of the myth, which tell us of his goat's feet and horns, his noisy laughter and capricious action, the idea of wind is pre-eminent. It is the notion not so much of the soft and lulling strains of Hermes in his gentler mood, or of the irresistible power of the harp of Orpheus, as of the purifying breezes which blow gently or strong, for a long or a little while, waking the echoes now here now there, in defiance of all plan or system, and with a wantonness which baffles all human powers of calculation. To this idea the Homeric hymn adheres with a singular fidelity, as it tells us how he wanders sometimes on the mountain summits, sometimes plunging into the thickets of the glen, sometimes by the stream side or up the towering crags, or singing among the reeds at eventide. So swift is his pace that the birds of the air cannot pass him by. With him play the water-maidens, and the patter of the nymphs' feet is heard as they join in his song by the side of the dark fountain. Like Hermes again and Sarameya, he is the child of the dawn and the morning, and it is his wont to lie down at noontide in a slumber from which he takes it ill if he be rudely roused. Of his parentage we have many stories, but the same notion underlies them all. Sometimes, as in the Homeric Hymn, he is the son of Hermes and of the nymph Dryops, sometimes of Hermes and Penelopê, sometimes of Penelopê and Odysseus; but Penelopê is the bride of the toiling sun, who is parted from her whether at morning or eventide, and to be her son is to be the child of Saramâ. Nor is the idea changed if he be spoken of as the son of heaven and earth (Ouranos and Gaia), or of air and water (Aither and a Nereid). 3 Pan then is strictly the purifying breeze, the Sanskrit purifying pavana, a name which reappears in the Latin Favonius, and perhaps also in Faunus; and his real character, as the god of the gentler winds, is brought out most prominently in the story of his love for Pitys, and of the jealousy of the blustering Boreas, who hurled the maiden from a rock and changed her into a pine-tree. The myth explains itself. In Professor Max Müller's words, 'We need but walk with 1 Hymn to Pan, 7–20. Max Müller, Chips, ii. 159. 2 Theok. vii. 107. PAN AND PITYS. 249 V. our eyes open along the cliffs of Bournemouth to see the CHAP. meaning of that legend,'-the tale of Pitys, 'the pine-tree wooed by Pan, the gentle wind, and struck down by jealous Boreas, the north wind.' Of Boreas himself we need say but little. His true character was as little forgotten as that of Selênê, and thus the name remained comparatively barren. The Athenian was scarcely speaking in mythical language when he said that Boreas had aided the Athenians by scattering the fleets of Xerxes. The phrases were almost as transparent which spoke of him as a son of Astraios and Eôs, the star-god and the dawn, or as carrying off Oreithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, the king of the dawn-city. Another myth made Pan the lover of the nymph Syrinx; Pan and but this is but a slight veil thrown over the phrase which Syrinx. spoke of the wind playing on its pipe of reeds by the river's bank; and the tale which related how Syrinx, flying from Pan, like Daphnê from Phoibos, was changed into a reed, is but another form of the story which made Pan the lover of the nymph Echo, just as the unrequited love of Echo for Narkissos is but the complement of the unrequited love of Selenê for Endymion. SECTION V.-AMPHION AND ZETHOS. Theban The same power of the wind which is signified by the The harp of Orpheus is seen in the story of Amphîon, a being Orpheus. localised in the traditions of Thebes. But Amphîon is a twin-brother of Zethos, and the two are, in the words of Euripides, simply the Dioskouroi, riding on white horses, and thus fall into the ranks of the correlative deities of Hindu and Greek mythology. But the myth runs into many other legends, the fortunes of their mother Antiopê differing but little from those of Augê, Tyrô, Evadnê, or Korônis. The tale is told in many versions. One of these calls her a daughter of Nykteus, the brother of Lykos, another speaks of Lykos as her husband; but this is only saying that Artemis Hekatê may be regarded as either the child of the darkness or the bride of the light. A third version makes her a daughter of the river Asôpos, a parent BOOK Zethos and Proknê. age which shows her affinity with Athênê, Aphroditê, and all other deities of the light and the dawn. Her children, like Oidipous, Têlephos and many others, are exposed on their birth, and like them found and brought up by shepherds, among whom Antiopê herself is said to have long remained a captive, like Danaê in the house of Polydektes. We have now the same distinction of office or employment which marks the other twin brothers of Greek myths. Zethos tends the flocks, while Amphîon receives from Hermes a harp which makes the stones not merely move but fix themselves in their proper places as he builds the walls of Thebes. The sequel of the history of Antiopê exhibits, like the myths of Tyrô, Inô, and other legends, the jealous second wife or step-mother, who is slain by Amphîon and Zethos, as Sidêrô is killed by Pelias and Neleus. Amphion himself becomes the husband of Niobê, the mother who presumes to compare her children with the offspring of Zeus and Lêtô. In one tradition Zethos, the brother Amphîon, is the husband of Proknê, the daughter of the Athenian Pandion; and in this version the story ran that she killed her own child by mistake, when through envy of her fertility she proposed to slay the eldest son of her sister-in-law Niobê. But in its more complete form the myth makes her a wife of Tereus, who is king either of the hill-country (Thrace) or of the Megarian Pegai. When her son Itys was born, Tereus cut out his wife's tongue and hid her away with her babe, and then married her sister Philomela, whom he deceived by saying that Proknê was dead. When the sisters discovered his guilt, Proknê killed her own child Itys, and served up his flesh as a meal for Tereus. Tereus in his turn, learning what had been done, pursues the sisters as they fly from him, and he has almost seized them when they pray that they may be changed into birds. Tereus thus became a hoopoe, Proknê a swallow, and Philomêla a nightingale.' Hence it is that as the spring comes round, the bride mourns for her lost child with an inconsolable sorrow, as in the Megarian 1 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 141. PHILOMÊLA AND PROKNÉ. legend the living Proknê wept herself to death, like Niobê mourning for her sons and daughters. The story is easily taken to pieces. The transformation is the result of the same process which turned Lykâôn into a wolf, and Kallistô into a bear; and as Philomêla was a name for the nightingale, so the daughter of Pandion is said to have been changed into that bird. With the nightingale as a bird of spring the swallow is closely associated, and this fitting transformation was at once suggested for Proknê. But it becomes at the least possible that in its earlier shape the myth may have known only one wife of Tereus, who might be called either Proknê or Philomêla. Of these two names Proknê is apparently only another form of Prokris, who is also the daughter of an Athenian king; and thus the legend seems to explain itself, for as in Tantalos and Lykâôn we have the sun scorching up and destroying his children, so here the dew is represented as offering the limbs of her murdered child to her husband, the sun, as he dries up the dewdrops. The myth is thus only another version of the tale of Kephalos or Prokris. The name Philomêla, again, may denote one who loves the flocks, or one who loves apples; but we have already seen how the sheep or flocks of Helios becomes the apples of the Hesperides, and thus Philomela is really the lover of the golden-tinted clouds, which greet the rising sun, and the name might well be given to either the dawn or the dew. The mournful or dirge-like sound of the wind is signified by another Boiotian tradition, which related how the matrons and maidens mourned for Linos at the feast which was called Arnis because Linos had grown up among the lambs, in other words, the dirge-like breeze had sprung up while the heaven was flecked with the fleecy clouds which, in the German popular stories, lured the rivals of Dummling to their destruction in the waters. The myth that Linos was torn to pieces by dogs points to the raging storm which may follow the morning breeze. Between these two in force would come Zephyros, the strong wind from the eveningland, the son of Astraios the starry heaven, and of Eôs who closes, as she had begun, the day. The wife of Zephyros is 251 CHAP. V. Linos and the Harpyia Podargê, the white-footed wind, Notos Argêstês, who drives before her the snowy vapours, and who is the mother of Xanthos and Balios, the immortal horses of Achilleus. But as the clouds seem to fly before Podargê or Zephyros, so the phenomenon of clouds coming up seemingly against the wind is indicated in the myth of the wind Kaikias, a name which seems to throw light on the story of Hercules and Cacus. SECTION VI.-AIOLOS AND ARÊS. In the Odyssey all the winds are placed by Zeus under the charge of Aiolos, who has the power of rousing or stilling them at his will. But beyond this fact the poem has nothing more to say of him than that he was the father of six sons and six daughters, and that he dwelt in an island which bore his name. With the mythology which grew up around the persons of his supposed descendants we are not here concerned. As a local or a tribal name, it has as much and as little value as that of Hellen, Ion, or Achaios. In itself the word is connected apparently with the names Aia and Aiêtês, and may denote the changeful and restless sky from which the winds are born. But the ingenuity of later mythographers was exercised in arranging or reconciling the pedigrees of the several children assigned to Aiolos, and their efforts were rewarded by complications which were relieved of intolerable weariness only by the mythical interest attaching to some of the many names thus grouped in a more or less arbitrary connexion. With them this association was valuable, chiefly as accounting for the historical distribution of certain Hellenic clans; and this supposed fact has been imported into the controversy respecting the date and composition of our Homeric poems, by some critics who hold that Homer was essentially an Aiolic poet, who wished to glorify his tribesmen over all the other members of the Hellenic race. It may be enough to say that there is no trace of such a feeling in either our Iliad or our Odyssey, which simply speak of Aiolos as a son of Hippotês and the steward of the winds of heaven. |