THE BIRTH OF HERAKLES. long as we remember that such systematic arrangements are results of recent ages, we may adopt any such plan as the most convenient way of dealing with the endless series of legends, all of them more or less transparent, and all pointing out with unmistakeable clearness the character of the hero who is the greatest representation of Indra on Hellenic soil. From first to last, his action is as beneficent to the children of men as it is fatal to the enemies of light, and the child who strangles in his cradle the deadly snakes of darkness grows up into the irresistible hero whom no danger can daunt and no difficulties can baffle. 43 CHAP. II. and Eu The immense number of exploits attributed to him, the Herakles arrangement of which seems to have afforded a special rystheus. delight to more recent mythographers, would lead us to expect a large variety of traditions modified by local associations. To go through them all would be an endless and an unprofitable task; and we may safely accept the notices of the Homeric and lyric poets as the more genuine forms of the myth. Like Phoibos, Hermes, Dionysos, and others, he is a son of Zeus, born, as some said, in brilliant Argos, or as others related, in the Boiotian Thebes. With him is born his twin brother Iphiklês, the son-so the tale went-of Amphitryon; and thus the child of the mortal father stands to the son of the undying king of Olympos in the relation of Phaethon to Helios, of Patroklos to Achilleus, or of Telemachos to the chieftain of Ithaka. The subjection of the hero to his kinsman was brought about by the folly of Zeus, who, on the day of his birth, boasted himself as the father of one who was to rule over all the house of Perseus. Hêrê thereupon, urged on by Atê, the spirit of mischief, made him swear that the child that day to be born of his lineage should be this ruler, and summoning the Eileithyiai bade them see that Eurystheus came into the world before Herakles. So wroth was Zeus when Hêrê told him that the good man Eurystheus must, according to his oath, be king of Argos, that he seized Atê by the hair of her head, and swearing that she should never again darken the courts of heaven, hurled her from Olympos. Thus the weaker came to be tyrant over the stronger; but when the mythographers had systematized his BOOK II. labours, they related that Zeus made a compact by which Herakles should become immortal when he had brought his twelve tasks to a successful issue. The story of his birth tells us not only of the child in his cradle strangling the horrid snakes of darkness which seek to destroy their enemy, but of an infancy as troubled as that of Telephos or Oidipous. Like them, Alkmênê, favouring the jealousy of Hêrê, exposed the babe on the plain which thence received the name of Herakles; and it is picked up, of course, by the dawn-goddess Athênê, who beseeches Hêrê, the queen of the blue heaven, to nourish it. The child bites hard, and Hêrê flings it back to Athênê, who carries it to her mother.' The boy grows up the model of human strength and power; and his teachers point to the cloudland to which he himself belongs. Autolykos and Eurytos, by whom he is taught to wrestle and to shoot with the bow, denote the light and splendour of morning; Kastor, who shows him how to fight in heavy armour, is the twin brother of Polydeukes, these twins answering to the Vedic Asvins or horsemen; and Linos, who teaches him music, is akin to Hermes, Pan, Orpheus, and Amphion. The harper is slain by his pupil, and Amphitryon, fearing that his son might use his strength in a like way again, sends him to tend cattle, and in this task, which in other myths is performed by Saramâ or the daughters of Neiara, he lives until he has reached the full strength of youth. Thus far we have a time answering to the bright period in which Phoibos is tended by the nymphs in his infancy, when his face is unsoiled, and his raiment all white, and his terrible sword is not yet belted to his side. It is the picture of the unclouded sun rising in pure splendour, seeing the heavens which he must climb, and ready for the conflicts which may await him-gloomy mists and angry stormclouds. The moral aspect which this myth may be made to assume must be that of self-denial. The smooth road of indulgence is the easiest on which to travel; he who takes the rugged path of duty must do so from deliberate choice; and thus the brave Herakles, going forth to his long series of labours, suggests to the sophist Prodikos the beautiful apologue in 1 Diod. iv. 9. THE TOILS OF HERAKLES. which Aretê and Kakia, virtue and vice, each claim his obedience, as Aphroditê and Athênê each claim the golden prize which Paris must adjudge. The one promises endless pleasures here and hereafter; the other holds out the prospect of hard days followed by healthful slumbers, and warns him that nothing good was ever won without labour, nothing great ever done without toil. The mind of Herakles is made up at once; and the greatest of all mythical heroes is thus made to inforce the highest lessons of human duty, and to present the highest standard of human action. The apologue is full of beauty and truth, and there is manifestly no harm in such applications of myths when the myths themselves are not strained or distorted in the process. The images of self-restraint, of power used for the good of others, are prominent in the lives of all or almost all the Zeus-born heroes; but these are not their only aspects, and it is as necessary to remember that other myths told of Herakles can no more be reconciled with this standard of generous self-devotion than the conduct of Odysseus as he approaches the Seirens' island with the Christian duty of resisting temptation. 45 CHAP. II. of Kithairon and With this high heroic temper Herakles sets forth for his The lions first great fight with the lion of Kithairon, and whether from its carcase or from that of the Nemean beast, he obtains the Nemea. lion's skin with which he is seen so commonly represented, and which reappears in the jackal's skin in the story of the enchanted Hindoo rajah.' The myth of the fifty daughters of Thestios or Thespios, which in some versions is connected with his first great exploit, is akin to that of the fifty daughters of Danaos and the fifty children whom Asterodia bare to Endymiôn. It is but one instance out of many in 2 I With this lion's skin must be compared the fish-skin with which the sungod is represented in the characters of Proteus and Onnes or Dagon, and which might be worn by Phoibos Delphinios. With the later, it is simply a sign of the sun as rising like Aphroditê from the sea; the lion's skin may denote perhaps the raiment of tawny cloud which the sun seems to trail behind him as he fights his way through the vapours whom he is said to overcome. See vol. i. p. 135. In his chapters on Ancient Faiths and Legends, M. Maury enters 2 See p. 30. BOOK II. Herakles and Kerberos. which we have the sun under an aspect altogether inconsistent with the ideal of Prodikos. Herakles is no longer the hero who imposes on himself a hard discipline, but the voluptuous wanderer who has many loves in many lands. In his attack on the envoys of Ergînos he is armed with a coat of mail brought to him by the dawn-goddess Athênê, as Achilleus and Sigurd wear the armour brought to them by Thetis and Hjordis.' The same thought suggested the gift of the bow and arrows from Phoibos, the lord of the spearlike sunbeams, of the sword from Hermes, whose stroke can split the forest trees, of the peplos from Athênê, the clearfaced morning. The arrows bestowed on him by Apollôn it must specially be noted are poisoned; and these poisoned barbs are used by Philoktêtês, who receives them from Neoptolemos, the child of Achilleus, the brilliant but shortlived sun, and by Odysseus, whom Athênê restores to youthful beauty as his life's labour draws towards its end. But we have no historical evidence that poisoned arrows were used by any Hellenic tribes, or that they would not have regarded the employment of such weapons with the utmost horror. How then comes it to pass that the poets of the Iliad and Odyssey can attribute to the Achaian heroes practices from which their kinsmen would have shrunk with disgust? The mystery is easily solved. The equivocation which turned the violet-tinted rays of morning into spears was inevitable; the change of the spears or arrows into poisoned barbs was, at the least, as natural and necessary.2 As the conquest of the lion of Kithairon is the first great exploit, so according to the systematising mythographers the bringing up of the dog Kerberos from Hades is the last. This story is mentioned by the poet of the Odyssey, Erginos is the father of Trophônios and Agamêdês, the builders of the Delphian shrine-the myth of the children of darkness raising the sanctuary of the lord of light answering to the legend which makes Apollôn himself the child of (Lêtô) the sombre night. 2 The word iós, tov, which furnished a name for the violet hue, for a spear, and for poison, is really a homonym traceable to two or three roots; and thus far the equivocation differs from that which turned Lykâôn into a wolf, and Arkas into a bear, these names being in fact of the same signification, although the men who uttered them had ceased to be conscious of it. The name Kerberos is the Sanskrit Sarvara, or Sambara, one of the enemies slain by Indra.-Max Müller, Chips, ii. 182, 188. HERAKLES AND LAOMEDÔN. who makes Herakles tell Odysseus that his sufferings are but a reflection of the toils which he had himself undergone by the tyranny of the mean Eurystheus, and that this task of bringing up the hound had been achieved by the aid of Athênê and Hermes, the dawn and the breeze of morning.1 On this framework was built an elaborate superstructure, which we need not examine closely, but of which some at least of the details are significant. The slaughter of the Kentaurs by Herakles, for which he needed purification before descending to Hades, is the conquest and dispersion of the vapours by the sun as he rises in the heaven; and the crime of Herakles is only another form of that of Ixîôn. As he returns to the upper world he rescues Theseus, himself one of the great solar heroes, and the child of Aithra, the pure air; but Peirithoös must remain behind, as Patroklos must die even though he be the friend of Achilleus. The dog of Yama thus brought back is, of course, carried down again by Herakles to the nether world. 47 CHAP. II. Herakles. But the sun as he rises in the heaven acquires a fiercer The madpower; and thus Apollôn becomes Chrysâôr, and Herakles ness of becomes mad. It is the raging of the heat which burns up the fruits of the earth which it has fostered, and so Herakles slays his own children by Megara, and two also of the sons of Iphiklês. At this point he is represented by some as asking the Pythian priestess where he should make his abode, and as receiving from her, instead of his former title, Alkaios or Alkîdes, the sturdy, the name of Herakles, the heavenly. As such, he is the avenger of the fraud of Laomedôn, who had refused to pay the promised recompense to Poseidon and Phoibos for building his walls and tending his flocks. As in the case of Kepheus or of Oineus, the offended deities send a monster to ravage the fields of Ilion, and Laomedôn promises to bestow his immortal horses on any one who will slay it. But again he breaks his oath, by giving mortal steeds to Herakles when the beast has been killed. The 1 Od. xi. 626; П. viii. 369. latter passage is especially noteworthy as indicating that clashing of wills between Athênê and Zeus which Mr. Gladstone is anxious to keep as much as possible in the background. Athênê here speaks of Zeus as mad, hard of 2 The name Herakles is the same as |