took root in the popular belief. If it had done so, the deed of the Danaids would hardly have become proverbial for impious cruelty, nor would the story of their punishment in Hades have gained currency. Besides, when we remember that some of the poets attribute to the Danaids a certain Amazon-like harshness and ferocity, it is easier to believe that in the popular legends, at any rate, they are always bloodthirsty monsters. (Cf. Melanippides, ap. Ath. XIV., p. 651, and the fragment of the Danais quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Strom. IV. 19, 122.)

The original form of the story about the crime of the Danaids may have been something like this. Fifty brothers, known to the later story as the sons of Aegyptus, are entertained by fifty maidens and their father, whom the later account identified with the eponymous hero of the Danaäns. During the night, at their father's instigation, the women kill the youths by cutting off their heads; only one escapes. The marriage, as is often the case in rude popular stories, is a mere euphemism.

Now compare with this ancient legend a folk-story current among many modern peoples. A band of brothers lose their way in a forest, and take refuge in the hut or cavern of an ogre or witch. The youths pass the night with the daughters of their host. The youngest and shrewdest of the brothers suspects that treachery is intended, and by a trick, such as an exchange of head-dress or a shifting of positions, causes the ogre to cut off the heads of his own daughters. Thus the youths escape.

I have seen no fewer than twelve versions of this latter story. It seems to be known to all European peoples, from the Avars of the Caucasus and the modern Greeks to the Basques of the Pyrenees and the Icelanders. In the nurseries of England and America it is the story of Hop o' my Thumb. There are of course many insignificant variations, and in most versions, as in "Hop o' my Thumb," the story has been suited to juvenile hearers by representing the persons concerned as little children. In most cases also the story has been filled out by the addition of new adventures.

The chief difference between these modern stories and what I believe to have been the older form of the Danaid myth consists in the introduction of the trick by means of which all the brothers make their escape. This is a new motive. Then in most of the modern stories the escape is entirely owing to the cleverness of the youngest brother; but in one (the Icelandic version) he is warned and assisted by a personage corresponding to Hypermestra in the Danaidmyth.

The resemblance of these modern stories to the Danaidmyth had been noted by one writer on folk-lore, Ludwig Laistner, in his Das Rätsel der Sphinx, a work from which I have drawn a large part of my information about these stories. Laistner, however, notices the resemblance only in passing, and adopts for the Danaid-myth a less satisfactory explanation which cannot be discussed here.

It seems probable, then, that the earlier form of the Danaid-myth was not widely different from folk-stories of modern races. That the Greeks had such stories of demoniac women is proved by the accounts of the Thracian King Diomedes, who used to compel strangers to satisfy the desires of his monstrous daughters and then put them to death. (See Schol. Ar. Eccles. 1029, and Hesychius, s.v. Διομήδειος ἀνάγκη.) A similar conception may underlie the story of Heracles's adventure with the fifty daughters of Thestius, told by Pausanias (IX. 27, 6).

Even if it be admitted that the Danaid-myth was originally a coarse story of this sort, the question of an explanation arises again. But it seems useless further to analyze such rough, simple folk-tales. Their origin concerns the psychologist more than the philologist. The close resemblance of the different versions to one another suggests a common origin. There are no traces of a literary tradition, and the wide diffusion of the stories militates against the assumption of a transmission from one people to another within historical times. (Exceptions may of course be made in the case of closely related and neighboring communities.) So, we may regard this ancient legend as a folk-story common to the

primitive Indo-European tribes, or, perhaps better, adopt Professor Gardner's phrase and say that such resemblances as exist between the Danaid-myth on the one hand and the modern stories on the other, or the resemblances among the widely separated modern stories, are due to "parallel workings of the mythopoeic instinct" rather than to a common origin.

The story that the heads of the sons of Aegyptus were thrown into the Lernaean marsh is best regarded as an aetiological myth growing out of some religious ceremony practised in that neighborhood. This view is expressed by Gruppe (Griech. Mythologie, p. 180), who seems to refer to the statement of some of the paroemiographers, that it was customary to throw expiatory offerings into the lake or marsh of Lerna. (Zenobius, IV. 86; Apostolius, X. 57; cf. Strab. VIII., p. 371, and Suidas, s.v. Aépvŋ deatŵv.)

It had occurred to me that the myth might have grown out of a peculiar rite briefly described by Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, 35). He says that "the Argives call the ox-born Dionysus out of the water with trumpets, throwing eis Thu ǎßvoσov a lamb as an offering to the Gate-keeper" (Hades). The aẞvooos referred to is certainly the bottomless Alcyonian lake of the Lernaean district, described by Pausanias (II. 37, 5-6. Cf. Schol. Pind. Ol. VII. 60.). Now this religious observance seems to have given rise to the story told in the Scholia to the Iliad (XIV. 319, Maass, II., p. 87) that Dionysus was slain by Perseus and his body thrown into the Lernaean lake. The story that the Danaids threw the heads of the murdered youths into the lake may also have arisen aetiologically from the same obscure ceremony. The rite described by Plutarch may of course be one of the very expiatory ceremonies that the paroemiographers mention.

The story that forty-eight of the daughters of Danaus were given in marriage to noble youths who were matched against one another in a foot-race was known even in Pindar's time (Pyth. IX. 193 ff.), and is related again by Pausanias (III. 12, 2). But there is some reason to believe that this feature of the myth is purely an invention of flattering genealogists. The

idea of the guilty sisters escaping punishment and living in peace and happiness for the rest of their days is hardly consistent with the popular conception of the Danaids as types of ferocity; and we have seen that according to one version of the story all the daughters of Danaus except Hypermestra were slain by Lynceus. I emphasize this point especially because Laistner asserts that the essential feature of the whole story is the race of the suitors, with which he combines the eternal water-pouring of the Danaids, and bases upon this combination a theory about the original form of the myth. But these two things evidently belong to different traditions which cannot be reconciled. Except the compiler Hyginus, not one of our authorities shows acquaintance with both the story of the race and that of the punishment of the Danaids in the lower world. It seems probable, therefore, that the account of the purification of the Danaids and their second marriage is an invention of Argive chroniclers, who wished to trace the noble families of Argos back to Danaus, yet strove to keep them clear of the infamy with which popular legend had branded his daughters. It was natural that Pindar should adopt this more refined version of the story, and Pausanias may have derived his information from Argive sources.

The story that the Danaids were condemned to fill a leaky vessel in Hades has been much discussed, and its antiquity has been questioned. We have seen that the first allusion to it occurs in the Axiochus. But in the Gorgias of Plato (p. 493 A-C) a similar punishment is attributed to those who die without knowledge of the mysteries. Hence some writers contend that the peculiar punishment was transferred from the uninitiated to the Danaids. Still, the absence of earlier literary evidence for the punishment of the Danaids may be fortuitous. Nor can the question of the respective ages of the two stories be decided from archaeological evidence. According to Pausanias (X. 31, 9-11) the celebrated painting of Polygnotus at Delphi contained figures of the uninitiated carrying water in leaky jars to fill a larger vessel. The punishment of the Danaids is represented on a black-figured vase in the Munich collection (153, Jahn), while the punish

ment of the uninitiated is depicted on a black-figured Attic lecythus (reproduced in Arch. Zeit. 1871, pl. 31, 22).

The opinion expressed by Rohde (Psyche,2 I., p. 326 ff.) in regard to the punishment of the Danaids and the uninitiated has been accepted by many scholars, and deserves special mention. He believes that there was an ancient popular superstition that people who died unmarried were doomed in the lower world to fill a leaky vessel. He sees a confirmation of this theory in the custom of placing the vessel called Xovτρоpóρos upon the graves of unmarried persons, — an indication that they had to perform through all eternity the ceremony of preparing the bridal bath, which they had neglected in life. Since marriage was regarded as a sacred rite, the punishment of those who had neglected it was readily transferred to the uninitiated. Later still, under poetic influence, the endless task was fastened upon the Danaids, who had scorned and outraged the marriage relation by murdering their husbands. Thus the old superstition about the fate of the ayapo was entirely forgotten.

In spite of the favor with which Rohde's view has met, objections can be raised against it. As Milchhöfer remarks (Philol. LIII, p. 397, n. 14), the vessels that the Danaids carry in works of art are not Xovтpopópoi, nor does the great jar that they are to fill bear any resemblance to a bath-tub. Besides, there is no proof that the Greeks had any such belief about the fate of unmarried people as Rohde assumes. recent writer (Waser) in the Archiv für Religions-wissenschaft (1899, p. 47 ff.) tries to strengthen Rohde's case by citing instances of German superstitions in which various fruitless labors are imposed upon the spirits of persons that die unmarried, but his examples are hardly to the point.

A

It is hard to believe that the punishment of the Danaids, which in the post-classical period of Greek literature was a hackneyed proverb, did not belong to the earlier form of the myth also. One is tempted to guess at reasons why this particular punishment was assigned to the Danaids. But it is perhaps safer to say that there is nothing in the eternal water-pouring itself that is exclusively appropriate to the