SINIS, THE PINE-BENDER. travellers below. But Sinis the robber, or plunderer, is his kinsman, being like himself a son of Poseidôn, and from his name Pityokamptes is the stormwind which bends the pine trees. Hence the myth went that he slew his victims by compelling them to bend a fir tree which he allowed to fly back upon them, and that Theseus who caught him in his own trap nevertheless felt that he needed to purify himself for the death of one who was also a son of the sea. The same idea gave rise to the myth of Phaia, the dark or ashencoloured sow of Krommyon, who shares the fate of all such monsters, and again to that of Skeiron, who hurls from the cliffs the travellers whom he has constrained to kneel and wash his feet,' and who in his turn is in like manner destroyed by Theseus. In Kerkyon, whose name apparently connects him with the Kerkôpes, we have a reflection of Laios, Akrisios, Amulius, and other beings who seek from fear for themselves to destroy their children or their children's children. The story of his daughter Alopê is simply the story of Augê, Semelê, Danaê, and many others; but Kerkyon himself is the Eleusinian wrestler, who is defeated by Theseus in his own art and slain. The robber Prokroustes is a being of the same kind; but the myth attached to his name does not explain itself like the rest, and may perhaps have been suggested by the meaning of the word which may denote either the process of beating or hammering out, or simply a downright blow. In the latter case Prokroustes would simply be Sinis or Periphêtês under another name; in the former, the story of a bed to which he fitted the limbs of his victims by stretching them or cutting them off might not unnaturally spring up. 63 СНАР. II. Theseus now enters the dawn city with a long flowing Theseus at robe, and with his golden hair tied gracefully behind his Athens. head; and his soft beauty excites the mockery of some workmen, who pause in their work of building to jest upon the maiden who is unseemly enough to walk about alone. It is the story of the young Dionysos or Achilleus in woman's Preller has no doubt on this head. 'Es scheint wohl dass dieser Skeiron. . . ein Bild für die heftigen Stürme ist, welche den Wanderer von den Skeiron ischen Felsen, so hiess dieser Pass, BOOK II. Theseus and the Minotauros. garb; but Theseus is mightier than they, and, without saying a word, he unspans the oxen of the builders' wagon, and hurls the vehicle as high above the temple pillars as these rose above the ground. In the house of his fathers he was still surrounded by enemies. Aigeus was now wedded to the wise woman Medeia, who in her instinctive jealousy of the beautiful youth makes Aigeus an accomplice in her scheme for poisoning him. The deadly draught is placed on the banquet-table, but Aigeus recognises the sword which Theseus bears, and, embracing him as his, bids Medeia depart with her children to her own land. He encounters foes more formidable in the fifty gigantic sons of Pallas, who have thrust themselves into the place of Aigeus, as the suitors in Ithaka usurp the authority of Odysseus; but by the aid of the herald Leos, who betrays them, Theseus is again the conqueror.2 He is, however, scarcely more than at the beginning of his toils. The fields of Marathon are being ravaged by a bull,3 in whom we see a being akin to the terrible Cretan Minotauros, the malignant power of darkness hidden away in its labyrinth of stars. In his struggle with this monster he is aided by the prayers and offerings of the benign and aged Hekalê, whose eyes are not permitted to look again on the youth whom she has so tenderly loved-a myth which brings before us the gentle Têlephassa sinking down in utter weariness, before her heart can be gladdened once more by the sight of her child Eurôpê. He has now before him a still harder task. The bull which now fills Athenian hearts with grief and fear has his abode not at Marathon, but at Knossos. In the war waged by Minos in revenge for the death of his son Androgeos, who had been slain on Attic soil, the Cretan king was the conqueror. With the war had come famine and pestilence; 1 Paus. i. 19, 1; Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 291. 2 These fifty sons of Pallas must be compared with the fifty sons and daughters of Ægyptos, Danaos, Asterodia and Selênê. But these are clearly images of the starry heavens; and thus the myth of the Pallantides is simply a story of the night vieing with, or usurping the prerogatives of, the day. In the story of Krishna this bull is animated by the demon Arishta. Vishnu Purana, H. H. Wilson, 536. The name Hekalê is the same as Hekatê and Hekatos, and thus, like Têlephassa, has simply the meaning of rays shot from a distant orb. The myth of Androgeôs has many versions. The most important exhibits him as a youth of great beauty and THE TRIBUTE CHILDREN. and thus the men of Athens were driven to accept terms which bound them for nine years to send yearly a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens, as victims to feed the Minotauros. The period named is the nine years' cycle, while the tribute children may represent the months of the lunar year. Twice had the black-sailed ship departed from the haven with its doomed freight when Theseus offered himself as one of the tribute children, to do battle with the monster. In this task he succeeds only through the aid of Ariadnê, as Iasôn does the bidding of Aiêtês only because he has the help of Medeia. The thread which the maiden places in his hand leads him through all the mazes of the murky labyrinth,' and when the beast is slain, she leaves her home with the man to whom she has given her love. But she herself must share the woes of all who love the bright sun. Beautiful as she is, she must be abandoned in Naxos, while Theseus, like Sigurd, goes upon his way; and in his place must come the vine-crowned Dionysos, who shall place on her head a glittering diadem to shine among the everlasting stars. Theseus himself fulfils the doom which places him among the fatal children. He forgets to hoist the white sails in token of victory, and Aigeus, seeing the black hue of the ship, throws himself into the sea which bears his name. 65 CHAP. II. and the Amazons. In another adventure he is the enemy of the Amazons, Theseus mysterious beings of whom it is enough to say that they are opposed or slaughtered not only by Theseus, but by Herakles, Achilleus, and Bellerophôn, and that thus they must be classed with the other beings in whom are seen reflected the features of the cloud enemy of Indra. Their beauty, their ferocity, their seclusion, all harmonise with the phenomena of the clouds in their varying aspects of storm and sunshine;2 and promise, unable to achieve the tasks which may be done only by the greatest heroes. On this account, he is torn by the Marathonian bull whom Aigeus has charged him to slay: in other words, he is Patroklos striving to slay an enemy who can be conquered only by Achilleus; and the war which Minos wages answers to the bloody vengeance VOL. II. F of Achilleus for the death of his This is the work of Daidalos, the 2 If the name be Greek at all, it seems to suggest a comparison with ἄδελφος; and the story of the cutting BOOK Theseus in the underworld. thus their fight with Theseus in the streets of Athens would be the struggle of dark vapours to throw a veil over the city of the dawn, and their defeat the victory of the sun which drives away the clouds. They are thus at once the natural allies of the king of Ilion, the stronghold of the robber Paris, and the friends of his enemies; for Antiopê, who is stolen away by Herakles, becomes the bride of Theseus and the mother of Hippolytos,' whose story exhibits the action of a moral sentiment which has impressed itself even more deeply on the traditions of Thebes. Hippolytos is to Theseus what Patroklos is to Achilleus, or Phaëthôn to Helios, the reflection of the sun in all its beauty, but without its strength and power; and the love of Phaidra (the gleaming) for the glorious youth is simply the love of Aphroditê for Adonis, and, like that of Aphroditê, it is repulsed. But Phaidra is the wife of Theseus, and thus her love for Hippolytos becomes doubly a crime, while the recoil of her feelings tempts her to follow the example of Anteia in the myth of Bellerophôn. Her trick is successful; and Hippolytos, going forth under his father's curse, is slain by a bull which Poseidôn sends up from the sea, the storm-cloud which Theseus had fought with on the plains of Marathon. But Hippolytos, like Adonis, is a being whom death cannot hold in his power, and Asklêpios raises him to life, as in the Italian tradition Virbius, the darling of the goddess of the groves, is brought back from the dead and entrusted to the care of the nymph Egeria. Theseus, indeed, like Herakles, is seen almost everywhere. He is one of the chiefs who sail in the divine Argo to recover the golden fleece; he joins the princes of Aitolia in the hunt off the breasts would thus be the result the Latins, and seemingly the Teutonic Ciza, Zizi, who was worshipped under the same form as the Ephesian Artemis. Some have supposed that Tacitus meant this deity, when he spoke of German tribes as worshipping Isis: others identify the name with the Greek Tiren. Nork. s. v. 1 Others make Hippolytos a son of Hippolytê, the Amazonian queen, whose girdle Herakles brings to Eurystheus, and who is thus not the enemy of Theseus, as in some versions, but his bride. THE CHILDREN OF THESEUS AND HERAKLES. of the Kalydonian boar, and takes part in the war of the Epigonoi before Thebes. But a more noteworthy myth is that which takes him, like Orpheus, into the nether world to bring back another Eurydikê in the form of the maiden Persephone. This legend exhibits another reflection of Theseus in Peirithoös, a son of Zeus or Ixîôn, the heaven or the proud sun, and Dia, the clear-shining dawn.' Peirithoös had already aided Theseus when he took Helen from Sparta and placed her in the hands of his mother Aithra, an act requited in the myth which carries Aithra to Ilion and makes her the handmaid of Helen. The attempt of Peirithoös ends as disastrously as the last exploits of Patroklos, and Theseus himself is shut up in Hades until Herakles comes to his rescue, as he does also to that of Prometheus. The presence of the Dioskouroi, the bright Asvins or horsemen, complicates the story. These carry away Helen and Aithra, and when Theseus comes back from the unseen land, he finds that his stronghold of Aphidnai has been destroyed, and that Menestheus is king in Athens. He therefore sends his sons to Euboia, and hastens to Skyros, where the chief Lykomedes hurls him from a cliff into the sea, a death which Kephalos inflicted upon himself at the Leukadian or White Cape. But though his own life closes in gloom, his children return at length with Aithra from Ilion, and are restored, like the Herakleids, to their ancient inheritance. 67 СНАР. II. Thucy This is the Theseus who, in the pages of Thucydides, con- The Thesolidates the independent Attic Demoi into one Athenian seus of state, over which he rules as a constitutional sovereign, con- dides. fining himself strictly to his definite functions. There is nothing more to be said against the method by which this satisfactory result is obtained than that it may be applied with equal profit, if not with equal pleasure, to the stories of Boots and Jack the Giant-Killer. Bellero In the Corinthian tradition, Hipponoös, the son of Glaukos Hipponoös or of Poseidôn, is known especially as the slayer of Belleros, phôntes. whom the same tradition converted into a near kinsman, The carrying off of Hippodameia, the bride of Peirithoös, at her weddingfeast, by the drunken Kentaur Eurytiôn, is a myth of the wind-driven and stag- |