THE HEALERS. very name denotes the deadly lethargy (váρên) which makes the pleadings of Selênê fall unheeded on the ear of Endymiôn; and hence it is that when Persephonê is to be taken at the close of summer to the land of darkness, the narcissus is made the instrument of her capture. It is the narcotic which plunges Brynhild into her profound slumber on the Glistening Heath, and drowns Briar Rose and her fellows in a sleep as still as death. 33 СНАР. II. From the lot of Endymiôn, Narkissos, and Tithônos, Jamos and Apollôn is freed only because he is regarded not as the Asklepios. visible sun who dies when his day's journey is done, but as the living power who kindles his light afresh every morning. The one conception is as natural as the other, and we still speak of the tired or the unwearied sun, of his brief career and his everlasting light, without any consciousness of inconsistency. Phoibos is then the ever-bright sun, who can never be touched by age. He is emphatically the Akersekomês, the glory of whose golden locks no razor is ever to mar. He is at once the comforter and healer, the saviour and destroyer, who can slay and make alive at will, and from whose piercing glance no secret can be kept hid. But although these powers are inseparable from the notion of Phoibos Apollôn, they are also attributed separately to beings whose united qualities make up his full divinity. Thus his knowledge of things to come is given to Iamos; his healing and life-giving powers to Asklepios. The story of the latter brings before us another of the countless instances in which the sun is faithless to his love or his love is faithless to him. In every case there must be the separation; and the doom of Korônis only reflects the fate which cuts short the life of Daphnê and Arethousa, Prokris and Iokastê.1 The myth is transparent throughout. The The story of the birth of Asklepios agrees substantially with that of Dionysos; and the legends of other Aryan tribes tell the same tale of some of their mythical heroes. Of children so born, Grimm says generally, Ungeborne, d. h. aus dem Mutterleib geschnittne Kinder pflegen Helden zu werden,' and adds that this incident marks the stories of the Persian Rustem, the Tristram of VOL. II. Eilhart, the Russian hero Dobruna Nikitisch, of the Scottish Macduff, of Volsung who yet kissed his mother before she died, of Sigurd, and of Sceaf the son of Seild, the child brought in the mysterious skiff, which needs neither sail, rudder, nor oarsmen. Whence came the popular belief attested by such a phrase as that which Grimm quotes from the Chronicle of Peterhouse, 'do Ꭰ BOOK II. 2 mother of Asklepios is a daughter of Phlegyas (the flaming), and Apollôn woos her on shores of the lake Boibêis; or, if we take another version given by Apollodoros, she is Arsinoê, a daughter of Leukippos (a name in which we see the flashing steeds which draw the car of Indra or Achilleus), and a sister of Hilaeira and Phoibê, the radiant maidens whom the Dioskouroi bore away. When the myth goes on to say that when Apollôn had left her Korônis yielded herself to the Arkadian Ischys, we have a story which simply repeats that of Prokris, for as Kephalos returns disguised and wins the love of the child of Hersê (the dew), so is Ischys simply the strength or power of the lord of light (Arkas). In each case, the penalty of faithlessness is death; and the mode in which it is exacted in the myth of Korônis precisely corresponds with the legend of Semelê. Like Dionysos, Asklepios is born amidst and rescued from the flames; in other words, the light and heat of the sun which ripen the fruits of the earth, scorch and consume the clouds and the dew, or banish away the lovely tints of early morning. Throughout the myth we have to deal with different versions which, however they may differ from each other, still point to the same fountain-head of mythical speech. In one form the story ran that Korônis herself exposed her child on the slopes of mount Myrtion, as Oidipous was left to die on Kithairon. There he is nourished by a goat and a dog, incidents which are reproduced in the myths of talibus excisis literæ testantur quod, si which Orpheus vainly yearns to give to Eurydikê as she vanishes from his sight. Pind. Pyth. iii. 14. 2 Apollod: iii. 10, 3. The Dawn cannot long survive the birth of the sun. Hence the mother of Volsung dies as soon as her child has kissed her. So in Grimm's story of the Almond Tree, the mother of the sunchild, who is as white as snow and as red as blood, is so delighted at seeing her babe that she dies. The same lot is the portion of the mother in the story of Little Snow-white, the Dawn-maiden-a story which suggests a comparison with the myths of the glass of Agrippa and of the well of Apollôn Thyrxis as related by Pausanias. ASKLEPIOS. II. 35 Cyrus and Romulus. When at length the shepherd Ari- CHAP. sthanas traced the dog and goat to the spot where the infant lay, he was terrified by the splendour which surrounded the child, like the flame round the head of the infant Servius in the Roman tale. The wonder, Pausanias adds, was soon noised abroad, and throughout land and sea the tidings were carried that Asklepios healed the sick and raised the dead.' The wisdom by which he obtained this power he received from the teaching of the wise centaur Cheiron; but we have to mark that Cheiron is the teacher not only of Asklepios but of Iasôn and Achilleus, who also represent the wisdom and brightness or power of Phoibos, and the descent of Cheiron himself connects him with the phenomena of daylight. When Ixîôn in his boundless pride sought to seize Hêrê the bright queen of the air herself, Zeus placed in his way the mist-maiden Nephelê from whom was born the Kentaur, as the sun in the heights of heaven calls forth the bright clouds which move like horses across the sky. It is difficult not to see in these forms of Hellenic mythology a reflection of the Vedic Gandharvas, who are manifestly the bright sunlit clouds. Not only has Indra the Harits (the Greek Charites) as his steeds, but the morning herself as the bride of the sun is spoken of as a horse, and a hymn addressed to the sunhorse says, 'Yama brought the horse, Trita harnessed him, 4 ii. 26, 4. To this marvel of the flame was referred his title Aiglaêr, the gleaming, which simply reproduces the Lykian epithet of his father Phoibos. The healing powers of Asklepios are seen in the German stories of Grandfather Death and Brother Lustig. Pind. Pyth. ii. 80. question de ces divinités, M. Kuhn a M. Bréal, in his masterly analysis Professor Max Müller cites the explanation of Yaska: Saranyû, the daughter of Tvashtar, had twins from Vivasvat, the sun. She placed another like her in her place, changed her form into that of a horse, and ran off. Vivasvat the sun likewise assumed the form of a horse, followed her, and embraced her. Hence the two Asvins were born, and the substitute (Savarna) bore Manu.' Lectures on Language, second series, 482. These Asvins are BOOK II. The stories of Ixión Indra first sat on him, the Gandharva took hold of his rein.'1 It was inevitable that, when the word ceased to be understood in its original sense, the brightness of the clouds which seem to stretch in endless ranks to the furthermost abyss of heaven should suggest the notion of a wisdom which Phoibos receives from Zeus but cannot impart in its fulness to Hermes. What part of the heaven is there to which the cloud may not wander? what secret is there in nature which Cheiron cannot lay bare? There were, however, other traditions, one of which asserted that Asklepios wrought his wonderful cures through the blood of Gorgo, while another related of him the story which is assigned elsewhere to Polyidos the son of Koiranos. But like almost all the other beings to whose kindred he belonged, Asklepios must soon die. The doom of Patroklos and Achilleus, Sarpêdôn and Memnôn, was upon him also. Either Zeus feared that men, once possessed of the secret of Asklêpios, might conquer death altogether, or Plouton complained that his kingdom would be left desolate; and the thunderbolt which crushed Phaëthôn smote down the benignant son of Phoibos, and the sun-god in his vengeance slew the Kyklôpes, the fashioners of the fiery lightnings for the lord of heaven.3 But throughout Hellas Asklepios remained the healer and the restorer of life, and accordingly the serpent is everywhere his special emblem, as the mythology of the Lingu would lead us to expect. 4 The myth of Ixîôn exhibits the sun as bound to the fourand Atlas. spoked wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky. In that of Sisyphos we see the same being condemned 1 Max Müller, Lectures, second series, 515. Apollod. iii. 10, 3, and iii. 3, 1. This story, as we have already seen, is that of the Snake Leaves, and reappears in Hindu as well as in Teutonic fairy tales. See vol. i. p. 160. Apollod. iii. 10, 4. Diod. iv. 71. In the Iliad, Asklepios is simply the blameless healer, who is the father of Machâôn and Podaleirios, the wise physicians, who accompany the Achaians to Ilion. These are descendants of Paiêôn. See section xii. of this chapter. 5 τετράκναμον δεσμόν. Pind. Pyth ii. 80. This wheel reappears in the Gaelic story of the Widow and her Daughters, Campbell, ii. 265, and in Grimm's German tale of the Iron Stove. The treasure-house of Ixîôn, which none may enter without being either destroyed like Hesioneus or betrayed by marks of gold or blood, reappears in a vast number of popular stories, and is the foundation of the story of Bluebeard. Compare the Woodcutter's Child in Grimm's collection. The sequel of the Gaelic tale already mentioned represents Grimm's legend of the Feather Bird, THE WISDOM OF ATLAS. to the daily toil of heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately rolls down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural operations as accomplished by means of punishment, is found also in the myth of Atlas, a name which like that of Tantalos denotes endurance and suffering, and so passes into the notion of arrogance or presumption. But the idea of a being who supported the heaven above the earth, as of a being who guides the horses of the sun, was awakened in the human mind long before the task was regarded as a penalty. Indeed, it can scarcely be said that this idea is clearly expressed in the Odyssey, which says of Atlas that he knows all the depths of the sea and that he holds or guards the lofty pillars which keep the heaven from falling to crush the earth. It is scarcely prominent even when the Hesiodic poet speaks of him as doing his work under a strong necessity, for this is no more than the force which compels Phoibos to leave Delos for Pythô, and carries Kephalos, Bellerophôn, and Odysseus to their doom in the far west. Nor in either of these poems is there anything to warrant the inference that the poet regarded Atlas as a mountain. This idea comes up in the myth of Perseus, who sees the old man bowing beneath his fearful load, and holding the Gorgon's face before his eyes, turns him into stone; and the stone which is to bear up the brazen heaven must needs be a great mountain, whether in Libya or in other regions, for the African Atlas was not the only mountain which bore the name. But the phrase in the Odyssey which speaks of him as knowing all the depths of the sea points to a still earlier stage of the myth, in which Atlas was possessed of the wisdom of Phoibos and was probably Phoibos himself. Regarded thus, the myths which make the Okeanid Plêionê his wife and the Pleiades his children, or which give him Aithra for his bride and make her the 'It can scarcely be doubted that the ποτὰς ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν, Od. i. 54, do not mean that these columns surround the earth, for in this case they must be not only many in number, but it would be obvious to the men of a mythmaking and mythspeaking age, that a being stationed in one spot could not keep up, or hold, or guard, a number of pillars surrounding either a square or a circular simply the Vedic Skambha, vol. i. p. 388, 37 CHAP. II. |