A Book of Myths
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Title: A Book of Myths
Author: Jean Lang
Illustrator: Helen Stratton
Release date: September 21, 2007 [eBook #22693]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF MYTHS ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sam W. and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
A
BOOK OF MYTHS
BY JEAN LANG
(MRS. JOHN LANG)
WITH SIXTEEN ORIGINAL
DRAWINGS IN COLOUR
BY HELEN STRATTON
[Illustration]
THOMAS NELSON & SONS
NEW YORK
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[Illustration: "WHAT WAS HE DOING, THE GREAT GOD PAN, DOWN IN THE
REEDS BY THE RIVER?" (See page 209)]
PREFACE
Just as a little child holds out its hands to catch the sunbeams, to
feel and to grasp what, so its eyes tell it, is actually there, so,
down through the ages, men have stretched out their hands in eager
endeavour to know their God. And because only through the human was
the divine knowable, the old peoples of the earth made gods of their
heroes and not unfrequently endowed these gods with as many of the
vices as of the virtues of their worshippers. As we read the myths of
the East and the West we find ever the same story. That portion of the
ancient Aryan race which poured from the central plain of Asia,
through the rocky defiles of what we now call "The Frontier," to
populate the fertile lowlands of India, had gods who must once have
been wholly heroic, but who came in time to be more degraded than the
most vicious of lustful criminals. And the Greeks, Latins, Teutons,
Celts, and Slavonians, who came of the same mighty Aryan stock, did
even as those with whom they owned a common ancestry. Originally they
gave to their gods of their best. All that was noblest in them, all
that was strongest and most selfless, all the higher instincts of
their natures were their endowment. And although their worship in time
became corrupt and lost its beauty, there yet remains for us, in the
old tales of the gods, a wonderful humanity that strikes a vibrant
chord in the hearts of those who are the descendants of their
worshippers. For though creeds and forms may change, human nature
never changes. We are less simple than our fathers: that is all. And,
as Professor York Powell[1] most truly says: "It is not in a man's
creed, but in his deeds; not in his knowledge, but in his sympathy,
that there lies the essence of what is good and of what will last in
human life."
The most usual habits of mind in our own day are the theoretical and
analytical habits. Dissection, vivisection, analysis--those are the
processes to which all things not conclusively historical and all
things spiritual are bound to pass. Thus we find the old myths
classified into Sun Myths and Dawn Myths, Earth Myths and Moon Myths,
Fire Myths and Wind Myths, until, as one of the most sane and vigorous
thinkers of the present day[2] has justly observed: "If you take the
rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun and the lamb
the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both in religion and
astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary to school one
day."
In this little collection of Myths, the stories are not presented to
the student of folklore as a fresh contribution to his knowledge.
Rather is the book intended for those who, in the course of their
reading, frequently come across names which possess for them no
meaning, and who care to read some old stories, through which runs the
same humanity that their own hearts know. For although the old worship
has passed away, it is almost impossible for us to open a book that
does not contain some mention of the gods of long ago. In our
childhood we are given copies of Kingsley's _Heroes_ and of
Hawthorne's _Tanglewood Tales_. Later on, we find in Shakespeare,
Spenser, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Longfellow, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning,
and a host of other writers, constant allusion to the stories of the
gods. Scarcely a poet has ever written but makes mention of them in
one or other of his poems. It would seem as if there were no get-away
from them. We might expect in this twentieth century that the old gods
of Greece and of Rome, the gods of our Northern forefathers, the gods
of Egypt, the gods of the British race, might be forgotten. But even
when we read in a newspaper of aeroplanes, someone is more than likely
to quote the story of Bellerophon and his winged steed, or of Icarus,
the flyer, and in our daily speech the names of gods and goddesses
continually crop up. We drive--or, at least, till lately we drove--in
Phaetons. Not only schoolboys swear by Jove or by Jupiter. The silvery
substance in our thermometers and barometers is named Mercury.
Blacksmiths are accustomed to being referred to as "sons of Vulcan,"
and beautiful youths to being called "young Adonises." We accept the
names of newspapers and debating societies as being the "Argus,"
without perhaps quite realising who was Argus, the many-eyed. We talk
of "a panic," and forget that the great god Pan is father of the word.
Even in our religious services we go back to heathenism. Not only are
the crockets on our cathedral spires and church pews remnants of
fire-worship, but one of our own most beautiful Christian blessings is
probably of Assyrian origin. "The Lord bless thee and keep thee....
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee.... The Lord lift up the
light of His countenance upon thee...." So did the priests of the
sun-gods invoke blessings upon those who worshipped.
We make many discoveries as we study the myths of the North and of the
South. In the story of Baldur we find that the goddess Hel ultimately
gave her name to the place of punishment precious to the Calvinistic
mind. And because the Norseman very much disliked the bitter, cruel
cold of the long winter, his heaven was a warm, well-fired abode, and
his place of punishment one of terrible frigidity. Somewhere on the
other side of the Tweed and Cheviots was the spot selected by the Celt
of southern Britain. On the other hand, the eastern mind, which knew
the terrors of a sun-smitten land and of a heat that was torture, had
for a hell a fiery place of constantly burning flames.
In the space permitted, it has not been possible to deal with more
than a small number of myths, and the well-known stories of Herakles,
of Theseus, and of the Argonauts have been purposely omitted. These
have been so perfectly told by great writers that to retell them would
seem absurd. The same applies to the Odyssey and the Iliad, the
translations of which probably take rank amongst the finest
translations in any language.
The writer will feel that her object has been gained should any
readers of these stories feel that for a little while they have left
the toilful utilitarianism of the present day behind them, and, with
it, its hampering restrictions of sordid actualities that are so
murderous to imagination and to all romance.
"Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
JEAN LANG.
POSTSCRIPT
We have come, in those last long months, to date our happenings as
they have never until now been dated by those of our own generation.
We speak of things that took place "_Before the War_"; and between
that time and this stands a barrier immeasurable.
This book, with its Preface, was completed in 1914--"_Before the
War._"
Since August 1914 the finest humanity of our race has been enduring
Promethean agonies. But even as Prometheus unflinchingly bore the
cruelties of pain, of heat and of cold, of hunger and of thirst, and
the tortures inflicted by an obscene bird of prey, so have endured the
men of our nation and of those nations with whom we are proud to be
allied. Much more remote than they seemed one little year ago, now
seem the old stories of sunny Greece. But if we have studied the
strange transmogrification of the ancient gods, we can look with
interest, if with horror, at the Teuton representation of the GOD in
whom we believe as a GOD of perfect purity, of honour, and of love.
According to their interpretation of Him, the God of the Huns would
seem to be as much a confederate of the vicious as the most degraded
god of ancient worship. And if we turn with shame from the Divinity so
often and so glibly referred to by blasphemous lips, and look on a
picture that tears our hearts, and yet makes our hearts big with
pride, we can understand how it was that those heroes who fought and
died in the Valley of the Scamander came in time to be regarded not as
men, but as gods.
There is no tale in all the world's mythology finer than the tale that
began in August 1914. How future generations will tell the tale, who
can say?
But we, for whom Life can never be the same again, can say with all
earnestness: "It is the memory that the soldier leaves behind him,
like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun--that is all
which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave
or the ignoble."
And, surely, to all those who are fighting, and suffering, and dying
for a noble cause, the GOD of gods, the GOD of battles, who is also
the GOD of peace, and the GOD of Love, has become an ever near and
eternally living entity.
"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be,
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, oh Lord, art more than they."
JEAN LANG.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Teutonic Heathendom._
[2] John Kelman, D.D., _Among Famous Books_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA 1
PYGMALION 11
PHAETON 16
ENDYMION 26
ORPHEUS 31
APOLLO AND DAPHNE 42
PSYCHE 46
THE CALYDONIAN HUNT 69
ATALANTA 78
ARACHNE 82
IDAS AND MARPESSA 90
ARETHUSA 100
PERSEUS THE HERO 105
NIOBE 124
HYACINTHUS 129
KING MIDAS OF THE GOLDEN TOUCH 134
CEYX AND HALCYONE 144
ARISTAEUS THE BEE-KEEPER 154
PROSERPINE 161
LATONA AND THE RUSTICS 169
ECHO AND NARCISSUS 174
ICARUS 181
CLYTIE 189
THE CRANES OF IBYCUS 192
SYRINX 197
THE DEATH OF ADONIS 202
PAN 209
LORELEI 220
FREYA, QUEEN OF THE NORTHERN GODS 227
THE DEATH OF BALDUR 234
BEOWULF 244
ROLAND THE PALADIN 266
THE CHILDREN OF LIR 289
DEIRDRE 306
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?" _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Then Pygmalion covered his eyes 12
She checked her hounds, and stood beside Endymion 28
Swiftly he turned, and found his wife behind him 38
Thus did Psyche lose her fear, and enter the golden doors 52
She stopped, and picked up the treasure 80
Marpessa sat alone by the fountain 92
They whimpered and begged of him 112
Darkness fell on the eyes of Hyacinthus 132
A grey cold morning found her on the seashore 152
She haunted him like his shadow 176
Freya sat spinning the clouds 228
"Baldur the Beautiful is dead!" 240
A stroke shivered the sword 262
Roland seized once more his horn 282
One touch for each with a magical wand of the Druids 294
A BOOK OF MYTHS
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA
Those who are interested in watching the mental development of a child
must have noted that when the baby has learned to speak even a little,
it begins to show its growing intelligence by asking questions. "What
is this?" it would seem at first to ask with regard to simple things
that to it are still mysteries. Soon it arrives at the more
far-reaching inquiries--"Why is this so?" "How did this happen?" And
as the child's mental growth continues, the painstaking and
conscientious parent or guardian is many times faced by questions
which lack of knowledge, or a sensitive honesty, prevents him from
answering either with assurance or with ingenuity.
As with the child, so it has ever been with the human race. Man has
always come into the world asking "How?" "Why?" "What?" and so the
Hebrew, the Greek, the Maori, the Australian blackfellow, the
Norseman--in a word, each race of mankind--has formed for itself an
explanation of existence, an answer to the questions of the groping
child-mind--"Who made the world?" "What is God?" "What made a God
think of fire and air and water?" "Why am I, _I_?"
Into the explanation of creation and existence given by the Greeks
come the stories of Prometheus and of Pandora. The world, as first it
was, to the Greeks was such a world as the one of which we read in the
Book of Genesis--"without form, and void." It was a sunless world in
which land, air, and sea were mixed up together, and over which
reigned a deity called Chaos. With him ruled the goddess of Night and
their son was Erebus, god of Darkness. When the two beautiful children
of Erebus, Light and Day, had flooded formless space with their
radiance, Eros, the god of Love, was born, and Light and Day and Love,
working together, turned discord into harmony and made the earth, the
sea, and the sky into one perfect whole. A giant race, a race of
Titans, in time populated this newly-made earth, and of these one of
the mightiest was Prometheus. To him, and to his brother Epimethus,
was entrusted by Eros the distribution of the gifts of faculties and
of instincts to all the living creatures in the world, and the task of
making a creature lower than the gods, something less great than the
Titans, yet in knowledge and in understanding infinitely higher than
the beasts and birds and fishes. At the hands of the Titan brothers,
birds, beasts, and fishes had fared handsomely. They were Titanic in
their generosity, and so prodigal had they been in their gifts that
when they would fain have carried out the commands of Eros they found
that nothing was left for the equipment of this being, to be called
Man. Yet, nothing daunted, Prometheus took some clay from the ground
at his feet, moistened it with water, and fashioned it into an image,
in form like the gods. Into its nostrils Eros breathed the spirit of
life, Pallas Athene endowed it with a soul, and the first man looked
wonderingly round on the earth that was to be his heritage.
Prometheus, proud of the beautiful thing of his own creation, would
fain have given Man a worthy gift, but no gift remained for him. He
was naked, unprotected, more helpless than any of the beasts of the
field, more to be pitied than any of them in that he had a soul to
suffer.
Surely Zeus, the All Powerful, ruler of Olympus, would have compassion
on Man? But Prometheus looked to Zeus in vain; compassion he had none.
Then, in infinite pity, Prometheus bethought himself of a power
belonging to the gods alone and unshared by any living creature on the
earth.
"We shall give Fire to the Man whom we have made," he said to
Epimethus. To Epimethus this seemed an impossibility, but to
Prometheus nothing was impossible. He bided his time and, unseen by
the gods, he made his way into Olympus, lighted a hollow torch with a
spark from the chariot of the Sun and hastened back to earth with this
royal gift to Man. Assuredly no other gift could have brought him more
completely the empire that has since been his. No longer did he
tremble and cower in the darkness of caves when Zeus hurled his
lightnings across the sky. No more did he dread the animals that
hunted him and drove him in terror before them.
Armed with fire, the beasts became his vassals. With fire he forged
weapons, defied the frost and cold, coined money, made implements for
tillage, introduced the arts, and was able to destroy as well as to
create.
From his throne on Olympus, Zeus looked down on the earth and saw,
with wonder, airy columns of blue-grey smoke that curled upwards to
the sky. He watched more closely, and realised with terrible wrath
that the moving flowers of red and gold that he saw in that land that
the Titans shared with men, came from fire, that had hitherto been the
gods' own sacred power. Speedily he assembled a council of the gods to
mete out to Prometheus a punishment fit for the blasphemous daring of
his crime. This council decided at length to create a thing that
should for evermore charm the souls and hearts of men, and yet, for
evermore, be man's undoing.
To Vulcan, god of fire, whose province Prometheus had insulted, was
given the work of fashioning out of clay and water the creature by
which the honour of the gods was to be avenged. "The lame Vulcan,"
says Hesiod, poet of Greek mythology, "formed out of the earth an
image resembling a chaste virgin. Pallas Athene, of the blue eyes,
hastened to ornament her and to robe her in a white tunic. She dressed
on the crown of her head a long veil, skilfully fashioned and
admirable to see; she crowned her forehead with graceful garlands of
newly-opened flowers and a golden diadem that the lame Vulcan, the
illustrious god, had made with his own hands to please the puissant
Jove. On this crown Vulcan had chiselled the innumerable animals that
the continents and the sea nourish in their bosoms, all endowed with a
marvellous grace and apparently alive. When he had finally completed,
instead of some useful work, this illustrious masterpiece, he brought
into the assembly this virgin, proud of the ornaments with which she
had been decked by the blue-eyed goddess, daughter of a powerful
sire." To this beautiful creature, destined by the gods to be man's
destroyer, each of them gave a gift. From Aphrodite she got beauty,
from Apollo music, from Hermes the gift of a winning tongue. And when
all that great company in Olympus had bestowed their gifts, they named
the woman Pandora--"Gifted by all the Gods." Thus equipped for
victory, Pandora was led by Hermes to the world that was thenceforward
to be her home. As a gift from the gods she was presented to
Prometheus.
But Prometheus, gazing in wonder at the violet blue eyes bestowed by
Aphrodite, that looked wonderingly back into his own as if they were
indeed as innocent as two violets wet with the morning dew, hardened
his great heart, and would have none of her. As a hero--a worthy
descendant of Titans--said in later years, "Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes,"--"I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts." And
Prometheus, the greatly-daring, knowing that he merited the anger of
the gods, saw treachery in a gift outwardly so perfect. Not only would
he not accept this exquisite creature for his own, but he hastened to
caution his brother also to refuse her.
But well were they named Prometheus (Forethought) and Epimethus
(Afterthought). For Epimethus it was enough to look at this peerless
woman, sent from the gods, for him to love her and to believe in her
utterly. She was the fairest thing on earth, worthy indeed of the
deathless gods who had created her. Perfect, too, was the happiness
that she brought with her to Epimethus. Before her coming, as he well
knew now, the fair world had been incomplete. Since she came the
fragrant flowers had grown more sweet for him, the song of the birds
more full of melody. He found new life in Pandora and marvelled how
his brother could ever have fancied that she could bring to the world
aught but peace and joyousness.
Now when the gods had entrusted to the Titan brothers the endowment of
all living things upon the earth, they had been careful to withhold
everything that might bring into the world pain, sickness, anxiety,
bitterness of heart, remorse, or soul-crushing sorrow. All these
hurtful things were imprisoned in a coffer which was given into the
care of the trusty Epimethus.
To Pandora the world into which she came was all fresh, all new, quite
full of unexpected joys and delightful surprises. It was a world of
mystery, but mystery of which her great, adoring, simple Titan held
the golden key. When she saw the coffer which never was opened, what
then more natural than that she should ask Epimethus what it
contained? But the contents were known only to the gods. Epimethus was
unable to answer. Day by day, the curiosity of Pandora increased. To
her the gods had never given anything but good. Surely there must be
here gifts more precious still. What if the Olympians had destined her
to be the one to open the casket, and had sent her to earth in order
that she might bestow on this dear world, on the men who lived on it,
and on her own magnificent Titan, happiness and blessings which only
the minds of gods could have conceived? Thus did there come a day when
Pandora, unconscious instrument in the hands of a vengeful Olympian,
in all faith, and with the courage that is born of faith and of love,
opened the lid of the prison-house of evil. And as from coffers in the
old Egyptian tombs, the live plague can still rush forth and slay, the
long-imprisoned evils rushed forth upon the fair earth and on the
human beings who lived on it--malignant, ruthless, fierce,
treacherous, and cruel--poisoning, slaying, devouring. Plague and
pestilence and murder, envy and malice and revenge and all
viciousness--an ugly wolf-pack indeed was that one let loose by
Pandora. Terror, doubt, misery, had all rushed straightway to attack
her heart, while the evils of which she had never dreamed stung mind
and soul into dismay and horror, when, by hastily shutting the lid of
the coffer, she tried to undo the evil she had done.
And lo, she found that the gods had imprisoned one good gift only in
this Inferno of horrors and of ugliness. In the world there had never
been any need of Hope. What work was there for Hope to do where all
was perfect, and where each creature possessed the desire of body and
of heart? Therefore Hope was thrust into the chest that held the
evils, a star in a black night, a lily growing on a dung-heap. And as
Pandora, white-lipped and trembling, looked into the otherwise empty
box, courage came back to her heart, and Epimethus let fall to his
side the arm that would have slain the woman of his love because there
came to him, like a draught of wine to a warrior spent in battle, an
imperial vision of the sons of men through all the aeons to come,
combatting all evils of body and of soul, going on conquering and to
conquer. Thus, saved by Hope, the Titan and the woman faced the
future, and for them the vengeance of the gods was stayed.
"Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward."
So spoke Milton, the blind Titan of the seventeenth century; and
Shakespeare says:
"True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings."
Upon the earth, and on the children of men who were as gods in their
knowledge and mastery of the force of fire, Jupiter had had his
revenge. For Prometheus he reserved another punishment. He, the
greatly-daring, once the dear friend and companion of Zeus himself,
was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus by the vindictive deity.
There, on a dizzy height, his body thrust against the sun-baked rock,
Prometheus had to endure the torment of having a foul-beaked vulture
tear out his liver, as though he were a piece of carrion lying on the
mountain side. All day, while the sun mercilessly smote him and the
blue sky turned from red to black before his pain-racked eyes, the
torture went on. Each night, when the filthy bird of prey that worked
the will of the gods spread its dark wings and flew back to its eyrie,
the Titan endured the cruel mercy of having his body grow whole once
more. But with daybreak there came again the silent shadow, the smell
of the unclean thing, and again with fierce beak and talons the
vulture greedily began its work.
Thirty thousand years was the time of his sentence, and yet Prometheus
knew that at any moment he could have brought his torment to an end. A
secret was his--a mighty secret, the revelation of which would have
brought him the mercy of Zeus and have reinstated him in the favour of
the all-powerful god. Yet did he prefer to endure his agonies rather
than to free himself by bowing to the desires of a tyrant who had
caused Man to be made, yet denied to Man those gifts that made him
nobler than the beasts and raised him almost to the heights of the
Olympians. Thus for him the weary centuries dragged by--in suffering
that knew no respite--in endurance that the gods might have ended.
Prometheus had brought an imperial gift to the men that he had made,
and imperially he paid the penalty.
"Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair,--these are mine empire.
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!"
Shelley.
"Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless."
Byron.
"Yet, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown
By years of solitude,--that holds apart
The past and future, giving the soul room
To search into itself,--and long commune
With this eternal silence;--more a god,
In my long-suffering and strength to meet
With equal front the direst shafts of fate,
Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism ...
Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type
Of what all lofty spirits endure that fain
Would win men back to strength and peace through love:
Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart
Envy, or scorn or hatred tears lifelong
With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left;
And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love
And patience, which at last shall overcome."
Lowell.
PYGMALION
In days when the world was young and when the gods walked on the
earth, there reigned over the island of Cyprus a sculptor-king, and
king of sculptors, named Pygmalion. In the language of our own day, we
should call him "wedded to his art." In woman he only saw the bane of
man. Women, he believed, lured men from the paths to which their
destiny called them. While man walked alone, he walked free--he had
given no "hostages to fortune." Alone, man could live for his art,
could combat every danger that beset him, could escape, unhampered,
from every pitfall in life. But woman was the ivy that clings to the
oak, and throttles the oak in the end. No woman, vowed Pygmalion,
should ever hamper him. And so at length he came to hate women, and,
free of heart and mind, his genius wrought such great things that he
became a very perfect sculptor. He had one passion, a passion for his
art, and that sufficed him. Out of great rough blocks of marble he
would hew the most perfect semblance of men and of women, and of
everything that seemed to him most beautiful and the most worth
preserving.
When we look now at the Venus of Milo, at the Diana of Versailles, and
at the Apollo Belvidere in the Vatican, we can imagine what were the
greater things that the sculptor of Cyprus freed from the dead blocks
of marble. One day as he chipped and chiselled there came to him,
like the rough sketch of a great picture, the semblance of a woman.
How it came he knew not. Only he knew that in that great mass of pure
white stone there seemed to be imprisoned the exquisite image of a
woman, a woman that he must set free. Slowly, gradually, the woman
came. Soon he knew that she was the most beautiful thing that his art
had ever wrought. All that he had ever thought that a woman _should_
be, this woman was. Her form and features were all most perfect, and
so perfect were they, that he felt very sure that, had she been a
woman indeed, most perfect would have been the soul within. For her he
worked as he had never worked before. There came, at last, a day when
he felt that another touch would be insult to the exquisite thing he
had created. He laid his chisel aside and sat down to gaze at the
Perfect Woman. She seemed to gaze back at him. Her parted lips were
ready to speak--to smile. Her hands were held out to hold his hands.
Then Pygmalion covered his eyes. He, the hater of women, loved a
woman--a woman of chilly marble. The women he had scorned were
avenged.
[Illustration: THEN PYGMALION COVERED HIS EYES]
Day by day his passion for the woman of his own creation grew and
grew. His hands no longer wielded the chisel. They grew idle. He would
stand under the great pines and gaze across the sapphire-blue sea, and
dream strange dreams of a marble woman who walked across the waves
with arms outstretched, with smiling lips, and who became a woman of
warm flesh and blood when her bare feet touched the yellow sand, and
the bright sun of Cyprus touched her marble hair and turned it into
hair of living gold. Then he would hasten back to his studio to find
the miracle still unaccomplished, and would passionately kiss the
little cold hands, and lay beside the little cold feet the presents he
knew that young girls loved--bright shells and exquisite precious
stones, gorgeous-hued birds and fragrant flowers, shining amber, and
beads that sparkled and flashed with all the most lovely combinations
of colour that the mind of artist could devise. Yet more he did, for
he spent vast sums on priceless pearls and hung them in her ears and
upon her cold white breast; and the merchants wondered who could be
the one upon whom Pygmalion lavished the money from his treasury.
To his divinity he gave a name--"Galatea"; and always on still nights
the myriad silver stars would seem to breathe to him "Galatea" ... and
on those days when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia
and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of Cyprus, the very
spirit of the storm seemed to moan through the crash of waves in
longing, hopeless and unutterable--"Galatea!... Galatea!..." For her
he decked a couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest of pillows he
laid the beautiful head of the marble woman that he loved.
So the time wore on until the festival of Aphrodite drew near. Smoke
from many altars curled out to sea, the odour of incense mingled with
the fragrance of the great pine trees, and garlanded victims lowed and
bleated as they were led to the sacrifice. As the leader of his
people, Pygmalion faithfully and perfectly performed all his part in
the solemnities and at last he was left beside the altar to pray
alone. Never before had his words faltered as he laid his petitions
before the gods, but on this day he spoke not as a sculptor-king, but
as a child who was half afraid of what he asked.
"O Aphrodite!" he said, "who can do all things, give me, I pray you,
one like my Galatea for my wife!"
"Give me my Galatea," he dared not say; but Aphrodite knew well the
words he would fain have uttered, and smiled to think how Pygmalion at
last was on his knees. In token that his prayer was answered, three
times she made the flames on the altar shoot up in a fiery point, and
Pygmalion went home, scarcely daring to hope, not allowing his
gladness to conquer his fear.
The shadows of evening were falling as he went into the room that he
had made sacred to Galatea. On the purple-covered couch she lay, and
as he entered it seemed as though she met his eyes with her own;
almost it seemed that she smiled at him in welcome. He quickly went up
to her and, kneeling by her side, he pressed his lips on those lips of
chilly marble. So many times he had done it before, and always it was
as though the icy lips that could never live sent their chill right
through his heart, but now it surely seemed to him that the lips were
cold no longer. He felt one of the little hands, and no more did it
remain heavy and cold and stiff in his touch, but lay in his own hand,
soft and living and warm. He softly laid his fingers on the marble
hair, and lo, it was the soft and wavy burnished golden hair of his
desire. Again, reverently as he had laid his offerings that day on
the altar of Venus, Pygmalion kissed her lips. And then did Galatea,
with warm and rosy cheeks, widely open her eyes, like pools in a dark
mountain stream on which the sun is shining, and gaze with timid
gladness into his own.
There are no after tales of Pygmalion and Galatea. We only know that
their lives were happy and that to them was born a son, Paphos, from
whom the city sacred to Aphrodite received its name. Perhaps Aphrodite
may have smiled sometimes to watch Pygmalion, once the scorner of
women, the adoring servant of the woman that his own hands had first
designed.
PHAETON
"The road, to drive on which unskilled were Phaeton's hands."
Dante--_Purgatorio_.
To Apollo, the sun-god, and Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph, there
was born in the pleasant land of Greece a child to whom was given the
name of Phaeton, the Bright and Shining One. The rays of the sun
seemed to live in the curls of the fearless little lad, and when at
noon other children would seek the cool shade of the cypress groves,
Phaeton would hold his head aloft and gaze fearlessly up at the brazen
sky from whence fierce heat beat down upon his golden head.
"Behold, my father drives his chariot across the heavens!" he proudly
proclaimed. "In a little while I, also, will drive the four snow-white
steeds."
His elders heard the childish boast with a smile, but when Epaphos,
half-brother to Apollo, had listened to it many times and beheld the
child, Phaeton, grow into an arrogant lad who held himself as though
he were indeed one of the Immortals, anger grew in his heart. One day
he turned upon Phaeton and spoke in fierce scorn:
"Dost say thou art son of a god? A shameless boaster and a liar art
thou! Hast ever spoken to thy divine sire? Give us some proof of thy
sonship! No more child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the
vermin his children, that the sun breeds in the dust at my feet."
For a moment, before the cruel taunt, the lad was stricken into
silence, and then, his pride aflame, his young voice shaking with rage
and with bitter shame, he cried aloud: "Thou, Epaphos, art the liar. I
have but to ask my father, and thou shalt see me drive his golden
chariot across the sky."
To his mother he hastened, to get balm for his hurt pride, as many a
time he had got it for the little bodily wounds of childhood, and with
bursting heart he poured forth his story.
"True it is," he said, "that my father has never deigned to speak to
me. Yet I know, because thou hast told me so, that he is my sire. And
now my word is pledged. Apollo must let me drive his steeds, else I am
for evermore branded braggart and liar, and shamed amongst men."
Clymene listened with grief to his complaint. He was so young, so
gallant, so foolish.
"Truly thou art the son of Apollo," she said, "and oh, son of my
heart, thy beauty is his, and thy pride the pride of a son of the
gods. Yet only partly a god art thou, and though thy proud courage
would dare all things, it were mad folly to think of doing what a god
alone can do."
But at last she said to him, "Naught that I can say is of any avail.
Go, seek thy father, and ask him what thou wilt." Then she told him
how he might find the place in the east where Apollo rested ere the
labours of the day began, and with eager gladness Phaeton set out upon
his journey. A long way he travelled, with never a stop, yet when the
glittering dome and jewelled turrets and minarets of the Palace of the
Sun came into view, he forgot his weariness and hastened up the steep
ascent to the home of his father.
Phoebus Apollo, clad in purple that glowed like the radiance of a
cloud in the sunset sky, sat upon his golden throne. The Day, the
Month, and the Year stood by him, and beside them were the Hours.
Spring was there, her head wreathed with flowers; Summer, crowned with
ripened grain; Autumn, with his feet empurpled by the juice of the
grapes; and Winter, with hair all white and stiff with hoar-frost. And
when Phaeton walked up the golden steps that led to his father's
throne, it seemed as though incarnate Youth had come to join the court
of the god of the Sun, and that Youth was so beautiful a thing that it
must surely live forever. Proudly did Apollo know him for his son, and
when the boy looked in his eyes with the arrogant fearlessness of
boyhood, the god greeted him kindly and asked him to tell him why he
came, and what was his petition.
As to Clymene, so also to Apollo, Phaeton told his tale, and his
father listened, half in pride and amusement, half in puzzled
vexation. When the boy stopped, and then breathlessly, with shining
eyes and flushed cheeks, ended up his story with: "And, O light of the
boundless world, if I am indeed thy son, let it be as I have said, and
for one day only let me drive thy chariot across the heavens!" Apollo
shook his head and answered very gravely:
"In truth thou art my dear son," he said, "and by the dreadful Styx,
the river of the dead, I swear that I will give thee any gift that
thou dost name and that will give proof that thy father is the
immortal Apollo. But never to thee nor to any other, be he mortal or
immortal, shall I grant the boon of driving my chariot."
But the boy pled on:
"I am shamed for ever, my father," he said. "Surely thou wouldst not
have son of thine proved liar and braggart?"
"Not even the gods themselves can do this thing," answered Apollo.
"Nay, not even the almighty Zeus. None but I, Phoebus Apollo, may
drive the flaming chariot of the sun, for the way is beset with
dangers and none know it but I."
"Only tell me the way, my father!" cried Phaeton. "So soon I could
learn."
Half in sadness, Apollo smiled.
"The first part of the way is uphill," he said. "So steep it is that
only very slowly can my horses climb it. High in the heavens is the
middle, so high that even I grow dizzy when I look down upon the earth
and the sea. And the last piece of the way is a precipice that rushes
so steeply downward that my hands can scarce check the mad rush of my
galloping horses. And all the while, the heaven is spinning round, and
the stars with it. By the horns of the Bull I have to drive, past the
Archer whose bow is taut and ready to slay, close to where the
Scorpion stretches out its arms and the great Crab's claws grope for a
prey...."
"I fear none of these things, oh my father!" cried Phaeton. "Grant
that for one day only I drive thy white-maned steeds!"
Very pitifully Apollo looked at him, and for a little space he was
silent.
"The little human hands," he said at length, "the little human
frame!--and with them the soul of a god. The pity of it, my son. Dost
not know that the boon that thou dost crave from me is Death?"
"Rather Death than Dishonour," said Phaeton, and proudly he added,
"For once would I drive like the god, my father. I have no fear."
So was Apollo vanquished, and Phaeton gained his heart's desire.
From the courtyard of the Palace the four white horses were led, and
they pawed the air and neighed aloud in the glory of their strength.
They drew the chariot whose axle and pole and wheels were of gold,
with spokes of silver, while inside were rows of diamonds and of
chrysolites that gave dazzling reflection of the sun. Then Apollo
anointed the face of Phaeton with a powerful essence that might keep
him from being smitten by the flames, and upon his head he placed the
rays of the sun. And then the stars went away, even to the Daystar
that went last of all, and, at Apollo's signal, Aurora, the
rosy-fingered, threw open the purple gates of the east, and Phaeton
saw a path of pale rose-colour open before him.
With a cry of exultation, the boy leapt into the chariot and laid hold
of the golden reins. Barely did he hear Apollo's parting words: "Hold
fast the reins, and spare the whip. All thy strength will be wanted to
hold the horses in. Go not too high nor too low. The middle course is
safest and best. Follow, if thou canst, in the old tracks of my
chariot wheels!" His glad voice of thanks for the godlike boon rang
back to where Apollo stood and watched him vanishing into the dawn
that still was soft in hue as the feathers on the breast of a dove.
Uphill at first the white steeds made their way, and the fire from
their nostrils tinged with flame-colour the dark clouds that hung over
the land and the sea. With rapture, Phaeton felt that truly he was the
son of a god, and that at length he was enjoying his heritage. The day
for which, through all his short life, he had longed, had come at
last. He was driving the chariot whose progress even now was awaking
the sleeping earth. The radiance from its wheels and from the rays he
wore round his head was painting the clouds, and he laughed aloud in
rapture as he saw, far down below, the sea and the rivers he had
bathed in as a human boy, mirroring the green and rose and purple, and
gold and silver, and fierce crimson, that he, Phaeton, was placing in
the sky. The grey mist rolled from the mountain tops at his desire.
The white fog rolled up from the valleys. All living things awoke; the
flowers opened their petals; the grain grew golden; the fruit grew
ripe. Could but Epaphos see him now! Surely he must see him, and
realise that not Apollo but Phaeton was guiding the horses of his
father, driving the chariot of the Sun.
Quicker and yet more quick grew the pace of the white-maned steeds.
Soon they left the morning breezes behind, and very soon they knew
that these were not the hands of the god, their master, that held the
golden reins. Like an air-ship without its accustomed ballast, the
chariot rolled unsteadily, and not only the boy's light weight but his
light hold on their bridles made them grow mad with a lust for speed.
The white foam flew from their mouths like the spume from the giant
waves of a furious sea, and their pace was swift as that of a bolt
that is cast by the arm of Zeus.
Yet Phaeton had no fear, and when they heard him shout in rapture,
"Quicker still, brave ones! more swiftly still!" it made them speed
onwards, madly, blindly, with the headlong rush of a storm. There was
no hope for them to keep on the beaten track, and soon Phaeton had his
rapture checked by the terrible realisation that they had strayed far
out of the course and that his hands were not strong enough to guide
them. Close to the Great Bear and the Little Bear they passed, and
these were scorched with heat. The Serpent which, torpid, chilly and
harmless, lies coiled round the North Pole, felt a warmth that made it
grow fierce and harmful again. Downward, ever downward galloped the
maddened horses, and soon Phaeton saw the sea as a shield of molten
brass, and the earth so near that all things on it were visible. When
they passed the Scorpion and only just missed destruction from its
menacing fangs, fear entered into the boy's heart. His mother had
spoken truth. He was only partly a god, and he was very, very young.
In impotent horror he tugged at the reins to try to check the horses'
descent, then, forgetful of Apollo's warning, he smote them angrily.
But anger met anger, and the fury of the immortal steeds had scorn
for the wrath of a mortal boy. With a great toss of their mighty heads
they had torn the guiding reins from his grasp, and as he stood,
giddily swaying from side to side, Phaeton knew that the boon he had
craved from his father must in truth be death for him.
And, lo, it was a hideous death, for with eyes that were like flames
that burned his brain, the boy beheld the terrible havoc that his
pride had wrought. That blazing chariot of the Sun made the clouds
smoke, and dried up all the rivers and water-springs. Fire burst from
the mountain tops, great cities were destroyed. The beauty of the
earth was ravished, woods and meadows and all green and pleasant
places were laid waste. The harvests perished, the flocks and they who
had herded them lay dead. Over Libya the horses took him, and the
desert of Libya remains a barren wilderness to this day, while those
sturdy Ethiopians who survived are black even now as a consequence of
that cruel heat. The Nile changed its course in order to escape, and
nymphs and nereids in terror sought for the sanctuary of some watery
place that had escaped destruction. The face of the burned and
blackened earth, where the bodies of thousands of human beings lay
charred to ashes, cracked and sent dismay to Pluto by the lurid light
that penetrated even to his throne.
All this Phaeton saw, saw in impotent agony of soul. His boyish folly
and pride had been great, but the excruciating anguish that made him
shed tears of blood, was indeed a punishment even too heavy for an
erring god.
From the havoc around her, the Earth at last looked up, and with
blackened face and blinded eyes, and in a voice that was harsh and
very, very weary, she called to Zeus to look down from Olympus and
behold the ruin that had been wrought by the chariot of the Sun. And
Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, looked down and beheld. And at the sight of
that piteous devastation his brow grew dark, and terrible was his
wrath against him who had held the reins of the chariot. Calling upon
Apollo and all the other gods to witness him, he seized a lightning
bolt, and for a moment the deathless Zeus and all the dwellers in
Olympus looked on the fiery chariot in which stood the swaying,
slight, lithe figure of a young lad, blinded with horror, shaken with
agony. Then, from his hand, Zeus cast the bolt, and the chariot was
dashed into fragments, and Phaeton, his golden hair ablaze, fell, like
a bright shooting star, from the heavens above, into the river
Eridanus. The steeds returned to their master, Apollo, and in rage and
grief Apollo lashed them. Angrily, too, and very rebelliously did he
speak of the punishment meted to his son by the ruler of the
Immortals. Yet in truth the punishment was a merciful one. Phaeton was
only half a god, and no human life were fit to live after the day of
dire anguish that had been his.
Bitter was the mourning of Clymene over her beautiful only son, and so
ceaselessly did his three sisters, the Heliades, weep for their
brother, that the gods turned them into poplar trees that grew by the
bank of the river, and, when still they wept, their tears turned into
precious amber as they fell. Yet another mourned for Phaeton--Phaeton
"dead ere his prime." Cycnus, King of Liguria, had dearly loved the
gallant boy, and again and yet again he dived deep in the river and
brought forth the charred fragments of what had once been the
beautiful son of a god, and gave to them honourable burial. Yet he
could not rest satisfied that he had won all that remained of his
friend from the river's bed, and so he continued to haunt the stream,
ever diving, ever searching, until the gods grew weary of his restless
sorrow and changed him into a swan.
And still we see the swan sailing mournfully along, like a
white-sailed barque that is bearing the body of a king to its rest,
and ever and anon plunging deep into the water as though the search
for the boy who would fain have been a god were never to come to an
end.
To Phaeton the Italian Naiades reared a tomb, and inscribed on the
stone these words:
"Driver of Phoebus' chariot, Phaeton,
Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone,
He could not rule his father's car of fire,
Yet was it much, so nobly to aspire."
Ovid.
ENDYMION
To the modern popular mind perhaps none of the goddesses of
Greece--not even Venus herself--has more appeal than has the huntress
goddess, Diana. Those who know but little of ancient statuary can
still brighten to intelligent recognition of the huntress with her
quiver and her little stag when they meet with them in picture gallery
or in suburban garden. That unlettered sportsman in weather-worn pink,
slowly riding over the fragrant dead leaves by the muddy roadside on
this chill, grey morning, may never have heard of Artemis, but he is
quite ready to make intelligent reference to Diana to the handsome
young sportswoman whom he finds by the covert side; and Sir Walter's
Diana Vernon has helped the little-read public to realise that the
original Diana was a goddess worthy of being sponsor to one of the
finest heroines of fiction.
But not to the sportsman alone, but also to the youth or maid who
loves the moon--they know not why--to those whom the shadows of the
trees on a woodland path at night mean a grip of the heart, while
"pale Dian" scuds over the dark clouds that are soaring far beyond the
tree-tops and is peeping, chaste and pale, through the branches of the
firs and giant pines, there is something arresting, enthralling, in
the thought of the goddess Diana who now has for hunting-ground the
blue firmament of heaven where the pale Pleiades
"Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."
Tennyson.
"She gleans her silvan trophies; down the wold
She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee
Mixed with the music of the hunting roll'd,
But her delight is all in archery,
And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she
More than her hounds that follow on the flight;
The goddess draws a golden bow of might
And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay.
She tosses loose her locks upon the night,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way."
Andrew Lang.
Again and again in mythological history we come on stories of the
goddess, sometimes under her best known name of Diana, sometimes under
her older Greek name of Artemis, and now and again as Selene, the
moon-goddess, the Luna of the Romans. Her twin brother was Apollo, god
of the sun, and with him she shared the power of unerringly wielding a
bow and of sending grave plagues and pestilences, while both were
patrons of music and of poetry.
When the sun-god's golden chariot had driven down into the west, then
would his sister's noiseless-footed silver steeds be driven across the
sky, while the huntress shot from her bow at will silent arrows that
would slay without warning a joyous young mother with her newly-born
babe, or would wantonly pierce, with a lifelong pain, the heart of
some luckless mortal.
Now one night as she passed Mount Latmos, there chanced to be a
shepherd lad lying asleep beside his sleeping flock. Many times had
Endymion watched the goddess from afar, half afraid of one so
beautiful and yet so ruthless, but never before had Diana realised the
youth's wonderful beauty. She checked her hounds when they would have
swept on in their chase through the night, and stood beside Endymion.
She judged him to be as perfect as her own brother, Apollo--yet more
perfect, perhaps, for on his upturned sleeping face was the silver
glamour of her own dear moon. Fierce and burning passion could come
with the sun's burning rays, but love that came in the moon's pale
light was passion mixed with gramarye. She gazed for long, and when,
in his sleep, Endymion smiled, she knelt beside him and, stooping,
gently kissed his lips. The touch of a moonbeam on a sleeping rose was
no more gentle than was Diana's touch, yet it was sufficient to wake
Endymion. And as, while one's body sleeps on, one's half-waking mind,
now and again in a lifetime seems to realise an ecstasy of happiness
so perfect that one dares not wake lest, by waking, the wings of one's
realised ideal should slip between grasping fingers and so escape
forever, so did Endymion realise the kiss of the goddess. But before
his sleepy eyes could be his senses' witnesses, Diana had hastened
away. Endymion, springing to his feet, saw only his sleeping flock,
nor did his dogs awake when he heard what seemed to him to be the
baying of hounds in full cry in a forest far up the mountain. Only to
his own heart did he dare to whisper what was this wonderful thing
that he believed had befallen him, and although he laid himself
down, hoping that once again this miracle might be granted to him, no
miracle came; nor could he sleep, so great was his longing.
[Illustration: SHE CHECKED HER HOUNDS, AND STOOD BESIDE ENDYMION]
All the next day, through the sultry hours while Apollo drove his
chariot of burnished gold through the land, Endymion, as he watched
his flocks, tried to dream his dream once more, and longed for the day
to end and the cool, dark night to return. When night came he tried to
lie awake and see what might befall, but when kind sleep had closed
his tired eyes,
"There came a lovely vision of a maid,
Who seemed to step as from a golden car
Out of the low-hung moon."
Lewis Morris.
Always she kissed him, yet when her kiss awoke him he never could see
anything more tangible than a shaft of silver moonlight on the moving
bushes of the mountain side, never hear anything more real than the
far-away echo of the baying of pursuing hounds, and if, with eager,
greatly-daring eyes, he looked skywards, a dark cloud, so it seemed to
him, would always hasten to hide the moon from his longing gaze.
In this manner time passed on. The days of Endymion were filled by
longing day-dreams. His sleeping hours ever brought him ecstasy. Ever,
too, to the goddess, the human being that she loved seemed to her to
grow more precious. For her all the joy of day and of night was
concentrated in the moments she spent by the side of the sleeping
Endymion. The flocks of the shepherd flourished like those of no other
herd. No wild beast dared come near them; no storm nor disease
assailed them. Yet for Endymion the things of earth no longer held any
value. He lived only for his dear dream's sake. Had he been permitted
to grow old and worn and tired, and still a dreamer, who knows how his
story might have ended? But to Diana there came the fear that with age
his beauty might wane, and from her father, Zeus, she obtained for the
one she loved the gifts of unending youth and of eternal sleep.
There came a night when the dreams of Endymion had no end. That was a
night when the moon made for herself broad silver paths across the
sea, from far horizon to the shore where the little waves lapped and
curled in a radiant, ever-moving silver fringe. Silver also were the
leaves of the forest trees, and between the branches of the solemn
cypresses and of the stately dark pines, Diana shot her silver arrows.
No baying of hounds came then to make Endymion's flocks move uneasily
in their sleep, but the silver stars seemed to sing in unison
together. While still those gentle lips touched his, hands as gentle
lifted up the sleeping Endymion and bore him to a secret cave in Mount
Latmos. And there, for evermore, she came to kiss the mouth of her
sleeping lover. There, forever, slept Endymion, happy in the perfect
bliss of dreams that have no ugly awaking, of an ideal love that knows
no ending.
ORPHEUS
"Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing;
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by,
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing die."
Shakespeare.
"Are we not all lovers as Orpheus was, loving what is
gone from us forever, and seeking it vainly in the
solitudes and wilderness of the mind, and crying to
Eurydice to come again? And are we not all foolish as
Orpheus was, hoping by the agony of love and the ecstasy
of will to win back Eurydice; and do we not all fail, as
Orpheus failed, because we forsake the way of the other
world for the way of this world?"
Fiona Macleod.
It is the custom nowadays for scientists and for other scholarly
people to take hold of the old myths, to take them to pieces, and to
find some deep, hidden meaning in each part of the story. So you will
find that some will tell you that Orpheus is the personification of
the winds which "tear up trees as they course along, chanting their
wild music," and that Eurydice is the morning "with its short-lived
beauty." Others say that Orpheus is "the mythological expression of
the delight which music gives to the primitive races," while yet
others accept without hesitation the idea that Orpheus is the sun
that, when day is done, plunges into the black abyss of night, in the
vain hope of overtaking his lost bride, Eurydice, the rosy dawn. And,
whether they be right or wrong, it would seem that the sadness that
comes to us sometimes as the day dies and the last of the sun's rays
vanish to leave the hills and valleys dark and cold, the sorrowful
feeling that we cannot understand when, in country places, we hear
music coming from far away, or listen to the plaintive song of the
bird, are things that very specially belong to the story of Orpheus.
In the country of Thrace, surrounded by all the best gifts of the
gods, Orpheus was born. His father was Apollo, the god of music and of
song, his mother the muse Calliope. Apollo gave his little son a lyre,
and himself taught him how to play it. It was not long before all the
wild things in the woods of Thrace crept out from the green trees and
thick undergrowth, and from the holes and caves in the rocks, to
listen to the music that the child's fingers made. The coo of the dove
to his mate, the flute-clear trill of the blackbird, the song of the
lark, the liquid carol of the nightingale--all ceased when the boy
made music. The winds that whispered their secrets to the trees owned
him for their lord, and the proudest trees of the forest bowed their
heads that they might not miss one exquisite sigh that his fingers
drew from the magical strings. Nor man nor beast lived in his day that
he could not sway by the power of his melody. He played a lullaby, and
all things slept. He played a love-lilt, and the flowers sprang up in
full bloom from the cold earth, and the dreaming red rosebud opened
wide her velvet petals, and all the land seemed full of the loving
echoes of the lilt he played. He played a war-march, and, afar off,
the sleeping tyrants of the forest sprang up, wide awake, and bared
their angry teeth, and the untried youths of Thrace ran to beg their
fathers to let them taste battle, while the scarred warriors felt on
their thumbs the sharpness of their sword blades, and smiled, well
content. While he played it would seem as though the very stones and
rocks gained hearts. Nay, the whole heart of the universe became one
great, palpitating, beautiful thing, an instrument from whose
trembling strings was drawn out the music of Orpheus.
He rose to great power, and became a mighty prince of Thrace. Not his
lute alone, but he himself played on the heart of the fair Eurydice
and held it captive. It seemed as though, when they became man and
wife, all happiness must be theirs. But although Hymen, the god of
marriage, himself came to bless them on the day they wed, the omens on
that day were against them. The torch that Hymen carried had no golden
flame, but sent out pungent black smoke that made their eyes water.
They feared they knew not what; but when, soon afterwards, as Eurydice
wandered with the nymphs, her companions, through the blue-shadowed
woods of Thrace, the reason was discovered. A bold shepherd, who did
not know her for a princess, saw Eurydice, and no sooner saw her than
he loved her. He ran after her to proclaim to her his love, and she,
afraid of his wild uncouthness, fled before him. She ran, in her
terror, too swiftly to watch whither she went, and a poisonous snake
that lurked amongst the fern bit the fair white foot that flitted,
like a butterfly, across it. In agonised suffering Eurydice died. Her
spirit went to the land of the Shades, and Orpheus was left
broken-hearted.
The sad winds that blow at night across the sea, the sobbing gales
that tell of wreck and death, the birds that wail in the darkness for
their mates, the sad, soft whisper of the aspen leaves and the leaves
of the heavy clad blue-black cypresses, all now were hushed, for
greater than all, more full of bitter sorrow than any, arose the music
of Orpheus, a long-drawn sob from a broken heart in the Valley of the
Shadow of Death.
Grief came alike to gods and to men as they listened, but no comfort
came to him from the expression of his sorrow. At length, when to bear
his grief longer was impossible for him, Orpheus wandered to Olympus,
and there besought Zeus to give him permission to seek his wife in the
gloomy land of the Shades. Zeus, moved by his anguish, granted the
permission he sought, but solemnly warned him of the terrible perils
of his undertaking.
But the love of Orpheus was too perfect to know any fear; thankfully
he hastened to the dark cave on the side of the promontory of
Taenarus, and soon arrived at the entrance of Hades. Stark and grim
was the three-headed watchdog, Cerberus, which guarded the door, and
with the growls and the furious roaring of a wild beast athirst for
its prey it greeted Orpheus. But Orpheus touched his lute, and the
brute, amazed, sank into silence. And still he played, and the dog
would gently have licked the player's feet, and looked up in his face
with its savage eyes full of the light that we see in the eyes of the
dogs of this earth as they gaze with love at their masters. On, then,
strode Orpheus, playing still, and the melody he drew from his lute
passed before him into the realms of Pluto.
Surely never were heard such strains. They told of perfect, tender
love, of unending longing, of pain too great to end with death. Of all
the beauties of the earth they sang--of the sorrow of the world--of
all the world's desire--of things past--of things to come. And ever,
through the song that the lute sang, there came, like a thread of
silver that is woven in a black velvet pall, a limpid melody. It was
as though a bird sang in the mirk night, and it spoke of peace and of
hope, and of joy that knows no ending.
Into the blackest depths of Hades the sounds sped on their way, and
the hands of Time stood still. From his bitter task of trying to quaff
the stream that ever receded from the parched and burning lips,
Tantalus ceased for a moment. The ceaseless course of Ixion's wheel
was stayed, the vulture's relentless beak no longer tore at the
Titan's liver; Sisyphus gave up his weary task of rolling the stone
and sat on the rock to listen, the Danaides rested from their labour
of drawing water in a sieve. For the first time, the cheeks of the
Furies were wet with tears, and the restless shades that came and went
in the darkness, like dead autumn leaves driven by a winter gale,
stood still to gaze and listen. Before the throne where Pluto and his
queen Proserpine were seated, sable-clad and stern, the relentless
Fates at their feet, Orpheus still played on. And to Proserpine then
came the living remembrance of all the joys of her girlhood by the
blue AEgean Sea in the fair island of Sicily. Again she knew the
fragrance and the beauty of the flowers of spring. Even into Hades the
scent of the violets seemed to come, and fresh in her heart was the
sorrow that had been hers on the day on which the ruthless King of
Darkness tore her from her mother and from all that she held most
dear. Silent she sat beside her frowning, stern-faced lord, but her
eyes grew dim.
When, with a quivering sigh, the music stopped, Orpheus fearlessly
pled his cause. To let him have Eurydice, to give him back his more
than life, to grant that he might lead her with him up to "the light
of Heaven"--that was his prayer.
The eyes of Pluto and Proserpine did not dare to meet, yet with one
accord was their answer given. Eurydice should be given back to him,
but only on one condition. Not until he had reached the light of earth
again was he to turn round and look upon the face for a sight of which
his eyes were tired with longing. Eagerly Orpheus complied, and with a
heart almost breaking with gladness he heard the call for Eurydice and
turned to retrace his way, with the light footfall of the little feet
that he adored making music behind him. Too good a thing it
seemed--too unbelievable a joy. She was there--quite close to him.
Their days of happiness were not ended. His love had won her back,
even from the land of darkness. All that he had not told her of that
love while yet she was on earth he would tell her now. All that he had
failed in before, he would make perfect now. The little limping
foot--how it made his soul overflow with adoring tenderness. So near
she was, he might even touch her were he to stretch back his hand....
And then there came to him a hideous doubt. What if Pluto had played
him false? What if there followed him not Eurydice, but a mocking
shade? As he climbed the steep ascent that led upwards to the light,
his fear grew more cruelly real. Almost he could imagine that her
footsteps had stopped, that when he reached the light he would find
himself left once more to his cruel loneliness. Too overwhelming for
him was the doubt. So nearly there they were that the darkness was no
longer that of night, but as that of evening when the long shadows
fall upon the land, and there seemed no reason for Orpheus to wait.
Swiftly he turned, and found his wife behind him, but only for a
moment she stayed. Her arms were thrown open and Orpheus would fain
have grasped her in his own, but before they could touch each other
Eurydice was borne from him, back into the darkness.
"Farewell!" she said--"Farewell!" and her voice was a sigh of hopeless
grief. In mad desperation Orpheus sought to follow her, but his
attempt was vain. At the brink of the dark, fierce-flooded Acheron the
boat with its boatman, old Charon, lay ready to ferry across to the
further shore those whose future lay in the land of Shades. To him ran
Orpheus, in clamorous anxiety to undo the evil he had wrought. But
Charon angrily repulsed him. There was no place for such as Orpheus in
his ferry-boat. Those only who went, never to return, could find a
passage there. For seven long days and seven longer nights Orpheus
waited beside the river, hoping that Charon would relent, but at last
hope died, and he sought the depths of the forests of Thrace, where
trees and rocks and beasts and birds were all his friends.
He took his lyre again then and played:
"Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice."
Milton.
Day and night he stayed in the shadow of the woodlands, all the sorrow
of his heart expressing itself in the song of his lute. The fiercest
beasts of the forest crawled to his feet and looked up at him with
eyes full of pity. The song of the birds ceased, and when the wind
moaned through the trees they echoed his cry, "Eurydice! Eurydice!"
In the dawning hours it would seem to him that he saw her again,
flitting, a thing of mist and rising sun, across the dimness of the
woods. And when evening came and all things rested, and the night
called out the mystery of the forest, again he would see her. In the
long blue shadows of the trees she would stand--up the woodland paths
she walked, where her little feet fluttered the dry leaves as she
passed. Her face was white as a lily in the moonlight, and ever she
held out her arms to Orpheus:
"At that elm-vista's end I trace,
Dimly thy sad leave-taking face,
Eurydice! Eurydice!
The tremulous leaves repeat to me
Eurydice! Eurydice!"
Lowell.
[Illustration: SWIFTLY HE TURNED, AND FOUND HIS WIFE BEHIND HIM]
For Orpheus it was a good day when Jason, chief of the Argonauts,
sought him out to bid him come with the other heroes and aid in the
quest of the Golden Fleece.
"Have I not had enough of toil and of weary wandering far and wide,"
sighed Orpheus. "In vain is the skill of the voice which my goddess
mother gave me; in vain have I sung and laboured; in vain I went down
to the dead, and charmed all the kings of Hades, to win back Eurydice,
my bride. For I won her, my beloved, and lost her again the same day,
and wandered away in my madness even to Egypt and the Libyan sands,
and the isles of all the seas.... While I charmed in vain the hearts
of men, and the savage forest beasts, and the trees, and the lifeless
stones, with my magic harp and song, giving rest, but finding
none."[3]
But in the good ship _Argo_, Orpheus took his place with the others
and sailed the watery ways, and the songs that Orpheus sang to his
shipmates and that tell of all their great adventures are called the
Songs of Orpheus, or the Orphics, to this day.
Many were the mishaps and disasters that his music warded off. With it
he lulled monsters to sleep; more powerful to work magic on the hearts
of men were his melodies than were the songs of the sirens when they
tried to capture the Argonauts by their wiles, and in their downward,
destroying rush his music checked mountains.
When the quest of the Argonauts was ended, Orpheus returned to his own
land of Thrace. As a hero he had fought and endured hardship, but his
wounded soul remained unhealed. Again the trees listened to the songs
of longing. Again they echoed, "Eurydice! Eurydice!"
As he sat one day near a river in the stillness of the forest, there
came from afar an ugly clamour of sound. It struck against the music
of Orpheus' lute and slew it, as the coarse cries of the screaming
gulls that fight for carrion slay the song of a soaring lark. It was
the day of the feast of Bacchus, and through the woods poured Bacchus
and his Bacchantes, a shameless rout, satyrs capering around them,
centaurs neighing aloud. Long had the Bacchantes hated the loyal
poet-lover of one fair woman whose dwelling was with the Shades. His
ears were ever deaf to their passionate voices, his eyes blind to
their passionate loveliness as they danced through the green trees, a
riot of colour, of fierce beauty, of laughter and of mad song. Mad
they were indeed this day, and in their madness the very existence of
Orpheus was a thing not to be borne. At first they stoned him, but his
music made the stones fall harmless at his feet. Then in a frenzy of
cruelty, with the maniac lust to cause blood to flow, to know the joy
of taking life, they threw themselves upon Orpheus and did him to
death. From limb to limb they tore him, casting at last his head and
his blood-stained lyre into the river. And still, as the water bore
them on, the lyre murmured its last music and the white lips of
Orpheus still breathed of her whom at last he had gone to join in the
shadowy land, "Eurydice! Eurydice!"
"Combien d'autres sont morts de meme! C'est la lutte eternelle de la
force brutale contre l'intelligence douce et sublime inspiree du ciel,
dont le royaume n'est pas de ce monde."
In the heavens, as a bright constellation called Lyra, or Orpheus, the
gods placed his lute, and to the place of his martyrdom came the
Muses, and with loving care carried the fragments of the massacred
body to Libetlera, at the foot of Mount Olympus, and there buried
them. And there, unto this day, more sweetly than at any other spot in
any other land, the nightingale sings. For it sings of a love that
knows no ending, of life after death, of a love so strong that it can
conquer even Death, the all-powerful.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Kingsley.
APOLLO AND DAPHNE
Conqueror of all conquerable earth, yet not always victorious over the
heart of a maid was the golden-locked Apollo.
As mischievous Eros played one day with his bow and arrows, Apollo
beheld him and spoke to him mockingly.
"What hast thou to do with the weapons of war, saucy lad?" he said.
"Leave them for hands such as mine, that know full well how to wield
them. Content thyself with thy torch, and kindle flames, if indeed
thou canst, but such bolts as thy white young arms can drive will
surely not bring scathe to god nor to man."
Then did the son of Aphrodite answer, and as he made answer he laughed
aloud in his glee. "With thine arrows thou mayst strike all things
else, great Apollo, a shaft of mine shall surely strike thy heart!"
Carefully, then, did Eros choose two arrows from his quiver. One,
sharp-pointed and of gold, he fitted carefully to his bow, drew back
the string until it was taut, and then let fly the arrow, that did not
miss its mark, but flew straight to the heart of the sun-god. With the
other arrow, blunt, and tipped with lead, he smote the beautiful
Daphne, daughter of Peneus, the river-god. And then, full joyously did
the boy-god laugh, for his roguish heart knew well that to him who
was struck by the golden shaft must come the last pangs that have
proved many a man's and many a god's undoing, while that leaden-tipped
arrow meant to whomsoever it struck, a hatred of Love and an immunity
from all the heart weakness that Love can bring. Those were the days
when Apollo was young. Never before had he loved.
But as the first fierce storm that assails it bends the young, supple
tree with its green budding leaves before its furious blast, so did
the first love of Apollo bend low his adoring heart. All day as he
held the golden reins of his chariot, until evening when its fiery
wheels were cooled in the waters of the western seas, he thought of
Daphne. All night he dreamed of her. But never did there come to
Daphne a time when she loved Love for Love's sake. Never did she look
with gentle eye on the golden-haired god whose face was as the face of
all the exquisite things that the sunlight shows, remembered in a
dream. Her only passion was a passion for the chase. One of Diana's
nymphs was she, cold and pure and white in soul as the virgin goddess
herself.
There came a day when Apollo could no longer put curbing hands on his
fierce longing. The flames from his chariot still lingered in
reflected glories on sea and hill and sky. The very leaves of the
budding trees of spring were outlined in gold. And through the dim
wood walked Daphne, erect and lithe and living as a sapling in the
early spring.
With beseeching hands, Apollo followed her. A god was he, yet to him
had come the vast humility of passionate intercession for the gift of
love to a little nymph. She heard his steps behind her and turned
round, proud and angry that one should follow her when she had not
willed it.
"Stay!" he said, "daughter of Peneus. No foe am I, but thine own
humble lover. To thee alone do I bow my head. To all others on earth
am I conqueror and king."
But Daphne, hating his words of passionate love, sped on. And when his
passion lent wings to his feet and she heard him gaining on her as she
fled, not as a lover did Daphne look on deathless Apollo, but as a
hateful foe. More swiftly than she had ever run beside her mistress
Diana, leaving the flying winds behind her as she sped, ran Daphne
now. But ever did Apollo gain upon her, and almost had he grasped her
when she reached the green banks of the river of which her father,
Peneus, was god.
"Help me, Peneus!" she cried. "Save me, oh my father, from him whose
love I fear!"
As she spoke the arms of Apollo seized her, yet, even as his arms met
around her waist, lissome and slight as a young willow, Daphne the
nymph was Daphne the nymph no longer. Her fragrant hair, her soft
white arms, her tender body all changed as the sun-god touched them.
Her feet took root in the soft, damp earth by the river. Her arms
sprouted into woody branches and green leaves. Her face vanished, and
the bark of a big tree enclosed her snow-white body. Yet Apollo did
not take away his embrace from her who had been his dear first love.
He knew that her cry to Peneus her father had been answered, yet he
said, "Since thou canst not be my bride, at least thou shalt be my
tree; my hair, my lyre, my quiver shall have thee always, oh laurel
tree of the Immortals!"
So do we still speak of laurels won, and worn by those of deathless
fame, and still does the first love of Apollo crown the heads of those
whose gifts have fitted them to dwell with the dwellers on Olympus.
"I espouse thee for my tree:
Be thou the prize of honour and renown;
The deathless poet, and the poem, crown;
Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,
And, after poets, be by victors worn."
Ovid (_Dryden's translation_).
PSYCHE
Those who read for the first time the story of Psyche must at once be
struck by its kinship to the fairy tales of childhood. Here we have
the three sisters, the two elder jealous and spiteful, the youngest
beautiful and gentle and quite unable to defend herself against her
sisters' wicked arts. Here, too, is the mysterious bridegroom who is
never seen and who is lost to his bride because of her lack of faith.
Truly it is an old, old tale--older than all fairy tales--the story of
love that is not strong enough to believe and to wait, and so to "win
through" in the end--the story of seeds of suspicion sown by one full
of malice in an innocent heart, and which bring to the hapless reaper
a cruel harvest.
Once upon a time, so goes the tale, a king and queen had three
beautiful daughters. The first and the second were fair indeed, but
the beauty of the youngest was such that all the people of the land
worshipped it as a thing sent straight from Olympus. They awaited her
outside the royal palace, and when she came, they threw chaplets of
roses and violets for her little feet to tread upon, and sang hymns of
praise as though she were no mortal maiden but a daughter of the
deathless gods.
There were many who said that the beauty of Aphrodite herself was less
perfect than the beauty of Psyche, and when the goddess found that men
were forsaking her altars in order to worship a mortal maiden, great
was her wrath against them and against the princess who, all
unwittingly, had wrought her this shameful harm.
In her garden, sitting amongst the flowers and idly watching his
mother's fair white doves as they preened their snowy feathers in the
sun, Aphrodite found her son Eros, and angrily poured forth to him the
story of her shame.
"Thine must be the task of avenging thy mother's honour," she said.
"Thou who hast the power of making the loves of men, stab with one of
thine arrows the heart of this presumptuous maiden, and shame her
before all other mortals by making her love a monster from which all
others shrink and which all despise." With wicked glee Eros heard his
mother's commands. His beautiful face, still the face of a mischievous
boy, lit up with merriment. This was, in truth, a game after his own
heart. In the garden of Aphrodite is a fountain of sweet, another of
bitter water, and Eros filled two amber vases, one from each fountain,
hung them from his quiver, and
"Straight he rose from earth and down the wind
Went glittering 'twixt the blue sky and the sea."
In her chamber Psyche lay fast asleep, and swiftly, almost without a
glance at her, Eros sprinkled some of the bitter drops upon her lips,
and then, with one of his sharpest arrows, pricked her snowy breast.
Like a child who half awakes in fear, and looks up with puzzled,
wondering eyes, Psyche, with a little moan, opened eyes that were
bluer than the violets in spring and gazed at Eros. He knew that he
was invisible, and yet her gaze made him tremble.
"They spoke truth!" said the lad to himself. "Not even my mother is as
fair as this princess."
For a moment her eyelids quivered, and then dropped. Her long dark
lashes fell on her cheeks that were pink as the hearts of the fragile
shells that the waves toss up on western beaches, her red mouth,
curved like the bow of Eros, smiled happily, and Psyche slept again.
With heart that beat as it had never beaten before, Eros gazed upon
her perfect loveliness. With gentle, pitying finger he wiped away the
red drop where his arrow had wounded her, and then stooped and touched
her lips with his own, so lightly that Psyche in her dreams thought
that they had been brushed by a butterfly's wings. Yet in her sleep
she moved, and Eros, starting back, pricked himself with one of his
arrows. And with that prick, for Eros there passed away all the
careless ease of the heart of a boy, and he knew that he loved Psyche
with the unquenchable love of a deathless god. Now, with bitter
regret, all his desire was to undo the wrong he had done to the one
that he loved. Speedily he sprinkled her with the sweet water that
brings joy, and when Psyche rose from her couch she was radiant with
the beauty that comes from a new, undreamed-of happiness.
"From place to place Love followed her that day
And ever fairer to his eyes she grew,
So that at last when from her bower he flew,
And underneath his feet the moonlit sea
Went shepherding his waves disorderly,
He swore that of all gods and men, no one
Should hold her in his arms but he alone;
That she should dwell with him in glorious wise
Like to a goddess in some paradise;
Yea, he would get from Father Jove this grace
That she should never die, but her sweet face
And wonderful fair body should endure
Till the foundations of the mountains sure
Were molten in the sea; so utterly
Did he forget his mother's cruelty."
William Morris.
Meantime it came to be known all over that land, and in other lands to
which the fame of the fair Psyche had spread, that the mighty goddess
Aphrodite had declared herself the enemy of the princess. Therefore
none dared seek her in marriage, and although many a noble youth
sighed away his heart for love of her, she remained in her father's
palace like an exquisite rose whose thorns make those who fain would
have it for their own, fear to pluck it from the parent stem. Her
sisters married, and her father marvelled why so strange a thing
should come about and why the most beautiful by far of his three
daughters should remain unwed.
At length, laden with royal gifts, an embassy was sent by the king to
the oracle of Apollo to inquire what might be the will of the dwellers
on Olympus concerning his fairest daughter. In a horror of anxiety the
king and his queen and Psyche awaited the return of the ambassadors.
And when they returned, before ever a word was spoken, they knew that
the oracle had spoken Psyche's doom.
"No mortal lover shall fair Psyche know," said the oracle. "For
bridegroom she shall have a monster that neither man nor god can
resist. On the mountain top he awaits her coming. Woe unutterable
shall come to the king and to all the dwellers in his land if he dares
to resist the unalterable dictum of the deathless gods!"
"... Of dead corpses shalt thou be the king,
And stumbling through the dark land shalt thou go,
Howling for second death to end thy woe."
William Morris.
Only for a little while did the wretched king strive to resist the
decrees of fate. And in her own chamber, where so short a time before the
little princess had known the joy of something inexpressible--something
most exquisite--intangible--unknown--she sat, like a flower broken by the
ruthless storm, sobbing pitifully, dry-eyed, with sobs that strained her
soul, for the shameful, hideous fate that the gods had dealt her.
All night, until her worn-out body could no longer feel, her worn-out
mind think, and kind sleep came to bring her oblivion, Psyche faced
the horror for the sake of her father and of his people, that she knew
she could not avoid. When morning came, her handmaids, white-faced and
red-eyed, came to deck her in all the bridal magnificence that
befitted the most beautiful daughter of a king, and when she was
dressed right royally, and as became a bride, there started up the
mountain a procession at sight of which the gods themselves must have
wept. With bowed heads the king and queen walked before the litter
upon which lay their daughter in her marriage veil of saffron colour,
with rose wreath on her golden hair. White, white were the faces of
the maidens who bore the torches, and yet rose red were they by the
side of Psyche. Minstrels played wedding hymns as they marched
onwards, and it seemed as though the souls of unhappy shades sobbed
through the reeds and moaned through the strings as they played.
At length they reached the rocky place where they knew they must leave
the victim bride, and her father dared not meet her eyes as he turned
his head to go. Yet Psyche watched the procession wending its way
downhill. No more tears had she to shed, and it seemed to her that
what she saw was not a wedding throng, but an assembly of
broken-hearted people who went back to their homes with heavy feet
after burying one that they loved. She saw no sign of the monster who
was to be her bridegroom, yet at every little sound her heart grew
sick with horror, and when the night wind swept through the craggy
peaks and its moans were echoed in loneliness, she fell on her face in
deadly fear and lay on the cold rock in a swoon.
Yet, had Psyche known it, the wind was her friend. For Eros had used
Zephyrus as his trusty messenger and sent him to the mountain top to
find the bride of him "whom neither man nor god could resist."
Tenderly--very tenderly--he was told, must he lift her in his arms,
and bear her to the golden palace in that green and pleasant land
where Eros had his home. So, with all the gentleness of a loving nurse
to a tired little child Zephyrus lifted Psyche, and sped with her in
his strong arms to the flowery meadows behind which towered the golden
palace of Eros, like the sun behind a sky of green and amber and blue
and rose. Deeply, in the weariness of her grief, Psyche slept, and
when she awoke it was to start up with the chill hands of the
realisation of terrible actualities on her heart. But when her eyes
looked round to find the barren rocks, the utter forsakenness, the
coming of an unnameable horror, before her she saw only fair groves
with trees bedecked with fruit and blossom, fragrant meadows, flowers
whose beauty made her eyes grow glad. And from the trees sang birds
with song more sweet than any that Psyche had ever known, and with
brilliant plumage which they preened caressingly when they had dipped
their wings in crystal-sparkling fountains. There, too, stood a noble
palace, golden fronted, and with arcades of stainless marble that
shone like snow in the sun. At first all seemed like part of a dream
from which she dreaded to awake, but soon there came to her the joy of
knowing that all the exquisite things that made appeal to her senses
were indeed realities. Almost holding her breath, she walked forward
to the open golden doors. "It is a trap," she thought. "By this means
does the monster subtly mean to lure me into his golden cage." Yet,
even as she thought, there seemed to be hovering round her winged
words, like little golden birds with souls. And in her ears they
whispered, "Fear not. Doubt not. Recall the half-formed dreams that so
short a time ago brought to thy heart such unutterable joy. No evil
shall come to thee--only the bliss of loving and of being loved."
[Illustration: THUS DID PSYCHE LOSE HER FEAR, AND ENTER THE GOLDEN
DOORS]
Thus did Psyche lose her fear, and enter the golden doors. And
inside the palace she found that all the beautiful things of which she
had ever dreamed, all the perfect things for which she had ever
longed, were there to greet her. From one to another she flitted, like
a humming-bird that sucks honey from one and then from another
gorgeous flower. And then, when she was tired with so much wearing out
of her thankful mind, she found a banquet ready spread for her, with
all the dainties that her dainty soul liked best; and, as she ate,
music so perfect rejoiced her ears that all her soul was soothed and
joyous and at peace. When she had refreshed herself, a soft couch
stood before her, ready for her there to repose, and when that strange
day had come to an end, Psyche knew that, monster or not, she was
beloved by one who had thought for her every thought, and who desired
only her desire.
Night came at last, and when all was dark and still, and Psyche, wide
awake, was full of forebodings and fears lest her happy dreams might
only be misleading fancies, and Horror incarnate might come to crown
her peaceful day, Eros softly entered the palace that was his own.
Even as he had gone to the palace of her father he went now, and found
Psyche lying with violet eyes that stared into the velvety darkness,
seeking something that she hoped for, trembling before something that
brought her dread.
His voice was as the voice of spring when it breathes on the sleeping
earth; he knew each note in Love's music, every word in the great
thing that is Love's vocabulary. Love loved, and Psyche listened, and
soon she knew that her lover was Love himself.
Thus, for Psyche, did a time of perfect happiness begin. All through
the day she roamed in her Love's dominion, and saw on every side the
signs of his passion and of his tenderness. All through the night he
stayed by her, and satisfied all the longing of her heart. Yet always,
ere daybreak, Eros left her, and when she begged him to stay he only
made answer:
"I am with thee only while I keep
My visage hidden; and if thou once shouldst see
My face, I must forsake thee; the high gods
Link Love with Faith, and he withdraws himself
From the full gaze of knowledge."
Lewis Morris.
So did time glide past for Psyche, and ever she grew more in love with
Love; always did her happiness become more complete. Yet, ever and
again, there returned to her the remembrance of those sorrowful days
when her father and mother had broken their hearts over her martyrdom,
and her sisters had looked askance at her as at one whose punishment
must assuredly have come from her own misdoing. Thus at length she
asked Eros to grant her, for love's sake, a boon--to permit her to
have her sisters come to see for themselves the happiness that was
hers. Most unwillingly was her request granted, for the heart of Eros
told him that from their visit no good could come. Yet he was unable
to deny anything to Psyche, and on the following day Zephyrus was sent
to bring the two sisters to the pleasant valley where Psyche had her
home. Eagerly, as she awaited them, Psyche thought she might make the
princely palace wherein she dwelt yet fairer than it was. And almost
ere she could think, her thoughts became realities. When the two
sisters came, they were bewildered with the beauty and the
magnificence of it all. Beside this, their own possessions were paltry
trifles indeed. Quickly, in their little hearts, black envy grew. They
had always been jealous of their younger sister, and now that they
found her, whom all the world believed to have been slain by a
horrible monster, more beautiful than ever, decked with rare jewels,
radiant in her happiness, and queen of a palace fit for the gods,
their envy soon turned to hatred, and they sought how best to wreak
their malice upon the joyous creature who loaded them with priceless
gifts. They began to ply Psyche with questions. He who was her lord,
to whom she owed all her happiness, where was he? Why did he stay away
when her sisters came to be presented to him? What manner of man was
he? Was he fair or dark? Young or old? And as they questioned her,
Psyche grew like a bewildered child and answered in frightened words
that contradicted one another. And well the wicked sisters, who
brooded evil in their hearts, knew that this husband whom Psyche had
never seen must indeed be one of the deathless gods. Wily words they
spoke to her then.
"Alas! unhappy one," they said, "dost think to escape the evil fate
the gods meted out for thee? Thy husband is none other than the
monster of which the oracle spake! Oh, foolish Psyche! canst not
understand that the monster fears the light? Too great horror would
it mean for thee to see the loathsome thing that comes in the
blackness of night and speaks to thee words of love."
White-lipped and trembling, Psyche listened. Drop by drop the
poisonous words passed into her soul. She had thought him king of all
living things--worthy to rule over gods as well as men. She was so
sure that his body was worthy sheath for the heart she knew so
well.... She had pictured him beautiful as Eros, son of
Aphrodite--young and fair, with crisp, golden locks--a husband to
glory in--a lover to adore. And now she knew, with shame and dread,
that he who had won her love between the twilight and the dawn was a
thing to shame her, a monster to be shunned of men.
"What, then, shall I do?" piteously she asked of her sisters. And the
women, pitilessly, and well content, answered:
"Provide thyself with a lamp and a knife sharp enough to slay the man
or monster. And when this creature to whom, to thy undying shame, thou
belongest, sleeps sound, slip from thy couch and in the rays of the
lamp have courage to look upon him in all his horror. Then, when thou
hast seen for thyself that what we say is truth, with thy knife
swiftly slay him. Thus shalt thou free thyself from the pitiless doom
meted out by the gods."
Shaking with sobs, Psyche made answer:
"I love him so!... I love him so!"
And her sisters turned upon her with furious scorn and well-simulated
wrath.
"Shameless one!" they cried; "and does our father's daughter confess
to a thing so unutterable! Only by slaying the monster canst thou hope
to regain thy place amongst the daughters of men."
They left her when evening fell, carrying with them their royal gifts.
And while she awaited the coming of her lord, Psyche, provided with
knife and lamp, crouched with her head in her hands, a lily broken by
a cruel storm. So glad was Eros to come back to her, to find her
safely there--for greatly had he feared the coming of that treacherous
pair--that he did not note her silence. Nor did the dark night show
him that her eyes in her sad face looked like violets in a snow
wreath. He wanted only to hold her safely in his arms, and there she
lay, passive and still, until sleep came to lay upon him an omnipotent
hand. Then, very gently, she withdrew herself from his embrace, and
stole to the place where her lamp was hidden. Her limbs shook under
her as she brought it to the couch where he lay asleep; her arm
trembled as she held it aloft.
As a martyr walks to death, so did she walk. And when the yellow light
fell upon the form of him who lay there, still she gazed steadily.
And, lo, before her she saw the form of him who had ever been the
ideal of her dreams. Love himself, incarnate Love, perfect in beauty
and in all else was he whom her sisters had told her was a
monster--he, of whom the oracle had said that neither gods nor men
could resist him. For a moment of perfect happiness she gazed upon his
beauty. Then he turned in his sleep, and smiled, and stretched out
his arms to find the one of his love. And Psyche started, and,
starting, shook the lamp; and from it fell a drop of burning oil on
the white shoulder of Eros. At once he awoke, and with piteous,
pitying eyes looked in those of Psyche. And when he spoke, his words
were like daggers that pierced deep into her soul. He told her all
that had been, all that might have been. Had she only had faith and
patience to wait, an immortal life should have been hers.
"Farewell! though I, a god, can never know
How thou canst lose thy pain, yet time will go
Over thine head, and thou mayst mingle yet
The bitter and the sweet, nor quite forget,
Nor quite remember, till these things shall seem
The wavering memory of a lovely dream."
William Morris.
He left her alone then, with her despair, and as the slow hours
dragged by, Psyche, as she awaited the dawn, felt that in her heart no
sun could ever rise again. When day came at last, she felt she could
no longer endure to stay in the palace where everything spoke to her
of the infinite tenderness of a lost love. Through the night a storm
had raged, and even with the day there came no calm. And Psyche, weary
and chill, wandered away from the place of her happiness, onward and
ever on, until she stood on the bank of a swift-flowing river. For a
little she stayed her steps and listened to the sound of its wash
against the rocks and tree roots as it hurried past, and to her as she
waited came the thought that here had she found a means by which to
end her woe.
"I have lost my Love," she moaned. "What is Life to me any longer!
Come to me then, O Death!"
So then she sprang into the wan water, hoping that very swiftly it
might bear her grief-worn soul down to the shades. But the river bore
her up and carried her to its shallows in a fair meadow where Pan
himself sat on the bank and merrily dabbled his feet in the flowing
water. And when Psyche, shamed and wet, looked at him with sad eyes,
the god spoke to her gently and chid her for her folly. She was too
young and much too fair to try to end her life so rudely, he said. The
river gods would never be so unkind as to drive so beautiful a maiden
in rough haste down to the Cocytus valley.
"Thou must dree thy weird like all other daughters of men, fair
Psyche," he said. "He or she who fain would lose their lives, are ever
held longest in life. Only when the gods will it shall thy days on
earth be done."
And Psyche, knowing that in truth the gods had spared her to endure
more sorrow, looked in his face with a very piteous gaze, and wandered
on. As she wandered, she found that her feet had led her near the
place where her two sisters dwelt.
"I shall tell them of the evil they have wrought," she thought.
"Surely they must sorrow when they know that by their cruel words they
stole my faith from me and robbed me of my Love and of my happiness."
Gladly the two women saw the stricken form of Psyche and looked at her
face, all marred by grief. Well, indeed, had their plot succeeded;
their malice had drunk deep, yet deeper still they drank, for with
scornful laughter they drove her from their palace doors. Very
quickly, when she had gone, the elder sought the place where she had
stood when Zephyrus bore her in safety to that palace of pleasure
where Psyche dwelt with her Love. Now that Psyche was no longer there,
surely the god by whom she had been beloved would gladly have as her
successor the beautiful woman who was now much more fair than the
white-faced girl with eyes all red with weeping. And such certainty
did the vengeful gods put in her heart that she held out her arms, and
calling aloud:
"Bear me to him in thine arms, Zephyrus! Behold I come, my lord!" she
sprang from the high cliff on which she stood, into space. And the
ravens that night feasted on her shattered body. So also did it befall
the younger sister, deluded by the Olympians to her own destruction,
so that her sin might be avenged.
For many a weary day and night Psyche wandered, ever seeking to find
her Love, ever longing to do something by which to atone for the deed
that had been her undoing. From temple to temple she went, but nowhere
did she come near him, until at length in Cyprus she came to the place
where Aphrodite herself had her dwelling. And inasmuch as her love had
made her very bold, and because she no longer feared death, nor could
think of pangs more cruel than those that she already knew, Psyche
sought the presence of the goddess who was her enemy, and humbly
begged her to take her life away.
With flaming scorn and anger Aphrodite received her.
"O thou fool," she said, "I will not let thee die!
But thou shalt reap the harvest thou hast sown,
And many a day that wretched lot bemoan;
Thou art my slave, and not a day shall be
But I will find some fitting task for thee."
There began then for Psyche a time of torturing misery of which only
those could speak who have knowledge of the merciless stripes with
which the goddess can scourge the hearts of her slaves. With cruel
ingenuity, Aphrodite invented labours for her.
In uncountable quantity, and mingled in inextricable and bewildering
confusion, there lay in the granary of the goddess grains of barley
and of wheat, peas and millet, poppy and coriander seed. To sort out
each kind and lay them in heaps was the task allotted for one day, and
woe be to her did she fail. In despair, Psyche began her hopeless
labour. While the sun shone, through a day that was for her too short,
she strove to separate the grains, but when the shadows of evening
made it hard for her to distinguish one sort from another, only a few
very tiny piles were the result of her weary toil. Very soon the
goddess would return, and Psyche dared not think what would be the
punishment meted out to her. Rapidly the darkness fell, but while the
dying light still lingered in some parts of the granary, it seemed to
Psyche as though little dark trickles of water began to pour from
underneath the doors and through the cracks in the wall. Trembling she
watched the ceaseless motion of those long, dark lines, and then, in
amazement, realised that what she saw were unending processions of
ants. And as though one who loved her directed their labours, the
millions of busy little toilers swiftly did for Psyche what she
herself had failed to do. When at length they went away, in those long
dark lines that looked like the flow of a thread-like stream, the
grains were all piled up in high heaps, and the sad heart of Psyche
knew not only thankful relief, but had a thrill of gladness.
"Eros sent them to me:" she thought. "Even yet his love for me is not
dead."
And what she thought was true.
Amazed and angry, Aphrodite looked at the task she had deemed
impossible, well and swiftly performed. That Psyche should possess
such magic skill only incensed her more, and next day she said to her
new slave:
"Behold, on the other side of that glittering stream, my
golden-fleeced sheep crop the sweet flowers of the meadow. To-day must
thou cross the river and bring me back by evening a sample of wool
pulled from each one of their shining fleeces."
Then did Psyche go down to the brink of the river, and even as her
white feet splashed into the water, she heard a whisper of warning
from the reeds that bowed their heads by the stream.
"Beware! O Psyche," they said. "Stay on the shore and rest until the
golden-fleeced sheep lie under the shade of the trees in the evening
and the murmur of the river has lulled them to sleep."
But Psyche said, "Alas, I must do the bidding of the goddess. It will
take me many a weary hour to pluck the wool that she requires."
And again the reeds murmured, "Beware! for the golden-fleeced sheep,
with their great horns, are evil creatures that lust for the lives of
mortals, and will slay thee even as thy feet reach the other bank.
Only when the sun goes down does their vice depart from them, and
while they sleep thou canst gather of their wool from the bushes and
from the trunks of the trees."
And again the heart of Psyche felt a thrill of happiness, because she
knew that she was loved and cared for still. All day she rested in the
wood by the river and dreamt pleasant day-dreams, and when the sun had
set she waded to the further shore and gathered the golden wool in the
way that the reeds had told her. When in the evening she came to the
goddess, bearing her shining load, the brow of Aphrodite grew dark.
"If thou art so skilled in magic that no danger is danger to thee, yet
another task shall I give thee that is worthy of thy skill," she said,
and laid upon Psyche her fresh commands.
Sick with dread, Psyche set out next morning to seek the black stream
out of which Aphrodite had commanded her to fill a ewer. Part of its
waters flowed into the Styx, part into the Cocytus, and well did
Psyche know that a hideous death from the loathly creatures that
protected the fountain must be the fate of those who risked so proud
an attempt. Yet because she knew that she must "dree her weird," as
Pan had said, she plodded onward, towards that dark mountain from
whose side gushed the black water that she sought. And then, once
again, there came to her a message of love. A whirring of wings she
heard, and
"O'er her head there flew the bird of Jove,
The bearer, of his servant, friend of Love,
Who, when he saw her, straightway towards her flew,
And asked her why she wept, and when he knew,
And who she was, he said, 'Cease all thy fear,
For to the black waves I thy ewer will bear,
And fill it for thee; but, remember me,
When thou art come unto thy majesty.'"
And, yet once again, the stricken heart of Psyche was gladdened, and
when at nightfall she came with her ewer full of water from the dread
stream and gave it to Aphrodite, although she knew that a yet more
arduous task was sure to follow, her fear had all passed away.
With beautiful, sullen eyes, Aphrodite received her when she brought
the water. And, with black brow, she said: "If thou art so skilled in
magic that no danger is known to thee, I shall now give thee a task
all worthy of thy skill."
Thereon she told her that she must seek that dark valley where no
silver nor golden light ever strikes on the black waters of Cocytus
and of the Styx; and where Pluto reigns in gloomy majesty over the
restless shades. From Proserpine she was to crave for Aphrodite the
gift of a box of magical ointment, the secret of which was known to
the Queen of Darkness alone, and which was able to bring to those who
used it, beauty more exquisite than any that the eyes of gods or of
men had as yet looked upon.
"I grow weary and careworn," said Aphrodite, and she looked like a
rose that has budded in Paradise as she spoke. "My son was wounded by
a faithless slave in whom, most weakly, he put his trust, and in
tending to his wound, my beauty has faded."
And at these scornful words, the heart of Psyche leaped within her.
"In helping his mother, I shall help him!" she thought. And again she
thought, "I shall atone." And so, when day was come, she took her way
along the weary road that leads to that dark place from whence no
traveller can ever hope to return, and still with gladness in her
heart. But, as she went onward, "cold thoughts and dreadful fears"
came to her.
"Better were it for me to hasten my journey to the shades," she
thought.
And when she came to an old grey tower, that seemed like an old man
that Death has forgotten, she resolved to throw herself down from it,
and thus swiftly to find herself at her journey's end. But as she
stood on the top of the tower, her arms outstretched, like a white
butterfly that poises its wings for flight, a voice spoke in her ear.
"Oh, foolish one," it said, "why dost thou strive to stay the hope
that is not dead?" And while she held her breath, her great eyes wide
open, the voice spoke on, and told her by what means she might
speedily reach Hades and there find means to face with courage the
King of Darkness himself and his fair wife, Proserpine.
All that she was bidden to do, Psyche did, and so at last did she
come before the throne of Proserpine, and all that Psyche endured, all
that she saw, all that through which she came with bleeding heart and
yet with unscathed soul, cannot here be written.
To her Proserpine gave the box of precious ointment that Aphrodite
described, and gladly she hastened homeward. Good, indeed, it was to
her when again she reached the fair light of day. Yet, when she had
won there, there came to Psyche a winged thought, that beat against
the stern barriers of her mind like a little moth against a window.
"This ointment that I carry with me," said Psyche to herself, "is an
ointment that will bring back to those all faded by time, or worn by
suffering, a beauty greater than any beauty that has joyed the
Immortals!" And then she thought:
"For my beauty, Eros--_Love_--loved me; and now my beauty is worn and
wasted and well-nigh gone. Were I to open this box and make use of the
ointment of Proserpine, then indeed I should be fair enough to be the
bride of him who, even now, believes that he loves me--of Eros whose
love is my life!"
So it came to pass that she opened the fateful box. And out of it
there came not Beauty, but Sleep, that put his gyves upon her limbs,
and on her eyelids laid heavy fingers. And Psyche sank down by the
wayside, the prisoner of Sleep.
But Eros, who had loved her ever, with a love that knew the ebb and
flow of no tides, rose from his bed and went in search of her who had
braved even the horrors of Hades for his dear sake. And by the wayside
he found her, fettered by sleep. Her little oval face was white as a
snowdrop. Like violets were her heavy eyelids, and underneath her
sleeping eyes a violet shadow lay. Once had her mouth been as the bow
of Eros, painted in carmine. Now either end of the bow was turned
downwards, and its colour was that of a faded rose-leaf.
And as Eros looked at her that he loved, pity stirred his heart, as
the wind sweeps through the sighing, grey leaves of the willow, or
sings through the bowing reeds.
"My _Beloved_!" he said, and he knew that Psyche was indeed his
beloved. It was her fair soul that he loved, nor did it matter to him
whether her body was like a rose in June or as a wind-scourged tree in
December. And as his lips met hers, Psyche awoke, and heard his soft
whisper:
"Dear, unclose thine eyes.
Thou mayst look on me now. I go no more,
But am thine own forever."
Lewis Morris.
Then did there spring from the fair white shoulders of Psyche, wings
of silver and of gold, and, hand in hand with Eros, she winged her way
to Olympus.
And there all the deathless gods were assembled, and Aphrodite no
longer looked upon her who had once been her slave with darkened
brows, but smiled upon her as the sun smiles upon a new-born flower.
And when into the hand of Psyche there was placed a cup of gold, the
voice of the great Father and King of Olympus rang out loud and clear:
"Drink now, O beautiful, and have no fear!
For with this draught shalt thou be born again,
And live for ever free from care and pain."
William Morris.
In this wise did Psyche, a human soul, attain by bitter suffering to
the perfect happiness of purified love.
And still do we watch the butterfly, which is her emblem, bursting
from its ugly tomb in the dark soil, and spreading joyous white and
gold-powdered wings in the caressing sunshine, amidst the radiance and
the fragrance of the summer flowers. Still, too, do we sadly watch her
sister, the white moth, heedlessly rushing into pangs unutterable,
thoughtlessly seeking the anguish that brings her a cruel death.
THE CALYDONIAN HUNT
OEneus and Althaea were king and queen of Calydon, and to them was
born a son who was his mother's joy and yet her bitterest sorrow.
Meleager was his name, and ere his birth his mother dreamed a dream
that the child that she bore was a burning firebrand. But when the
baby came he was a royal child indeed, a little fearless king from the
first moment that his eyes, like unseeing violets, gazed steadily up
at his mother. To the chamber where he lay by his mother's side came
the three Fates, spinning, ceaselessly spinning.
"He shall be strong," said one, as she span her thread. "He shall be
fortunate and brave," said the second. But the third laid a billet of
wood on the flames, and while her withered fingers held the fatal
threads, she looked with old, old, sad eyes at the new-born child.
"To thee, O New-Born," she said, "and to this wood that burns, do we
give the same span of days to live."
From her bed sprang Althaea, and, heedless of the flames, she seized
the burning wood, trod on it with her fair white feet, and poured on
it water that swiftly quenched its red glow. "Thou shalt live forever,
O Beloved," she said, "for never again shall fire char the brand that
I have plucked from the burning."
And the baby laughed.
"Those grey women with bound hair
Who fright the gods frighted not him; he laughed
Seeing them, and pushed out hands to feel and haul
Distaff and thread."
The years sped on, and from fearless and beautiful babyhood, Meleager
grew into gallant boyhood, and then into magnificent youth. When Jason
and his heroes sailed away into a distant land to win the Golden
Fleece, Meleager was one of the noble band. From all men living he won
great praise for his brave deeds, and when the tribes of the north and
west made war upon AEtolia, he fought against their army and scattered
it as a wind in autumn drives the fallen leaves before it.
But his victory brought evil upon him. When his father OEneus, at
the end of a fruitful year, offered sacrifices to the gods, he omitted
to honour the goddess Diana by sacrificing to her, and to punish his
neglect, she had sent this destroying army. When Meleager was victor,
her wrath against his father grew yet more hot, and she sent a wild
boar, large as the bulls of Epirus, and fierce and savage to kill and
to devour, that it might ravage and lay waste the land of Calydon. The
fields of corn were trampled under foot, the vineyards laid waste, and
the olive groves wrecked as by a winter hurricane. Flocks and herds
were slaughtered by it, or driven hither and thither in wild panic,
working havoc as they fled. Many went out to slay it, but went only to
find a hideous death. Then did Meleager resolve that he would rid the
land of this monster, and called on all his friends, the heroes of
Greece, to come to his aid. Theseus and his friend Pirithous came;
Jason; Peleus, afterwards father of Achilles; Telamon, the father of
Ajax; Nestor, then but a youth; Castor and Pollux, and Toxeus and
Plexippus, the brothers of Althaea, the fair queen-mother. But there
came none more fearless nor more ready to fight the monster boar of
Calydon than Atalanta, the daughter of the king of Arcadia. When
Atalanta was born, her father heard of her birth with anger. He
desired no daughter, but only sturdy sons who might fight for him, and
in the furious rage of bitter disappointment he had the baby princess
left on the Parthenian Hill that she might perish there. A she-bear
heard the baby's piteous cries, and carried it off to its lair, where
she suckled it along with her young, and there the little Atalanta
tumbled about and played with her furry companions and grew strong and
vigorous as any other wild young creature of the forest.
Some hunters came one day to raid the den and kill the foster-mother,
and found, amazed, a fearless, white-skinned thing with rosy cheeks
and brave eyes, who fought for her life and bit them as did her fierce
foster-brothers, and then cried human tears of rage and sorrow when
she saw the bear who had been her mother lying bloody and dead. Under
the care of the hunters Atalanta grew into a maiden, with all the
beauty of a maid and all the strength and the courage of a man. She
ran as swiftly as Zephyrus runs when he rushes up from the west and
drives the white clouds before him like a flock of timid fawns that a
hound is pursuing. The shafts that her strong arm sped from her bow
smote straight to the heart of the beast that she chased, and almost
as swift as her arrow was she there to drive her spear into her
quarry. When at length her father the king learned that the beautiful
huntress, of whom all men spoke as of one only a little lower than
Diana, was none other than his daughter, he was not slow to own her as
his child. So proud was he of her beauty and grace, and of her
marvellous swiftness of foot and skill in the chase, that he would
fain have married her to one of the great ones of Greece, but Atalanta
had consulted an oracle. "Marry not," said the oracle. "To thee
marriage must bring woe."
So, with untouched heart, and with the daring and the courage of a
young lad, Atalanta came along with the heroes to the Calydonian Hunt.
She was so radiantly lovely, so young, so strong, so courageous, that
straightway Meleager loved her, and all the heroes gazed at her with
eyes that adored her beauty. And Diana, looking down at her, also
loved the maiden whom from childhood she had held in her protection--a
gallant, fearless virgin dear to her heart.
The grey mist rose from the marshes as the hunt began, and the hunters
of the boar had gone but a little way when they came upon traces of
the hated boar. Disembowelled beasts marked its track. Here, in a
flowery meadow, had it wallowed. There, in rich wheat land, had it
routed, and the marks of its bestial tusks were on the gashed grey
trunks of the trees that had once lived in the peace of a fruitful
olive grove.
In a marsh they found their enemy, and all the reeds quivered as it
heaved its vast bulk and hove aside the weed in which it had wallowed,
and rooted with its tusks amongst the wounded water-lilies before it
leapt with a snort to meet and to slay the men who had come against
it. A filthy thing it was, as its pink snout rose above the green ooze
of the marshes, and it looked up lustingly, defying the purity of the
blue skies of heaven, to bring to those who came against it a cruel,
shameful death.
Upon it, first of all, Jason cast his spear. But the sharp point only
touched it, and unwounded, the boar rushed on, its gross, bristly head
down, to disembowel, if it could, the gallant Nestor. In the branches
of a tree Nestor found safety, and Telamon rushed on to destroy the
filthy thing that would have made carrion of the sons of the gods. A
straggling cypress root caught his fleeting foot and laid him prone, a
helpless prey for the rooting brute. His hounds fell before it, but
ere it could reach him, Atalanta, full of vengeful rage--the pure
angered against the filthy and cruel--let draw her bow, with a prayer
to Diana to guide her shaft aright. Into the boar's smoking flank sped
the arrow.
"The sudden string
Rang, and sprang inward, and the waterish air
Hissed, and the moist plumes of the songless reeds
Moved as a wave which the wind moves no more.
But the boar heaved half out of ooze and slime,
His tense flank trembling round the barbed wound,
Hateful; and fiery with invasive eyes
And bristling with intolerable hair
Plunged, and the hounds clung, and green flowers and white
Reddened and broke all round them where they came.
And charging with sheer tusk he drove, and smote
Hyleus; and sharp death caught his sudden soul,
And violent sleep shed night upon his eyes."
Swinburne.
More than ever terrible was the monster now that it was wounded. One
after the other the hunters fell before its mad rage, and were sent to
the shades by a bloody and merciless death.
Before its furious charge even the heart of a hero might have been
stricken. Yet Meleager, like a mighty oak of the forest that will not
sway even a little before the rush of a storm, stood full in its way
and met its onslaught.
"Aimed on the left side his well-handled spear
Grasped where the ash was knottiest hewn, and smote,
And with no missile wound, the monstrous boar
Right in the hairiest hollow of his hide
Under the last rib, sheer through bulk and bone,
Deep in; and deeply smitten, and to death,
The heavy horror with his hanging shafts,
Leapt, and fell furiously, and from raging lips
Foamed out the latest wrath of all his life."
Great was the shout that rose from those who still lived when that
grim hunt thus came to an end. And when, with his keen blade, Meleager
struck off the head, even as the quivering throat drew its last
agonised breath, louder still shouted the men of Greece. But not for
himself did Meleager despoil the body of his foe. He laid the ugly
thing at the feet of Atalanta.
"This is thy spoil, not mine," he said. "The wounding shaft was sped
by thee. To thee belongs the praise."
And Atalanta blushed rosily, and laughed low and gladly, not only
because Diana had heard her prayer and helped her slay the beast, but
for happiness that Meleager was so noble in his giving.
At that the brows of the heroes grew dark, and angrily one cried:
"Lo, now,
Shall not the Arcadian shoot out lips at us,
Saying all we were despoiled by this one girl."
Like a spark that kindles the dry grass, their kindling anger spread,
and they rushed against Atalanta, seized the trophy she had been
given, and smote her as though she were but a shameless wanton and not
the noble daughter of a king.
And because the heart of Meleager was given very wholly to the fair
huntress, and because those whom he deemed his friends had not only
dishonoured her, but had done him a very grievous wrong, a great rage
seized him. Right and left he smote, and they who had been most bitter
in their jealousy of Atalanta, the two brothers of his own mother,
were laid low in death.
Tidings of the slaying of the boar had been brought to Althaea by swift
messengers, and she was on her way to the temples bearing gifts to the
gods for the victory of her son, when she beheld the slow-footed
procession of those who bore the bodies of the dead. And when she saw
the still faces of her two dear brothers, quickly was her joy turned
into mourning. Terrible was her grief and anger when she learned by
whose hand they were slain, and her mother's love and pride dried up
in her heart like the clear water of a fountain before the scorching
of a devouring fire. No sacrifices to the gods would she offer, but
her dead brothers should have the greatest sacrifice that mother could
make to atone for the guilt of her son. Back to the palace she went,
and from its safe hiding-place drew out the brand that she had rescued
from the flames when Meleager the hero was but a babe that made his
mother's heart sing for joy. She commanded a fire to be prepared, and
four times, as its flames blazed aloft, she tried to lay the brand
upon the pile. Yet four times she drew back, and then at last she
threw into the reddest of the ashes the charred brand that for a
little she held so close to her breast that it seemed as though she
fondled her child.
A wreath of leaves as sign of victory was being placed on Atalanta's
beautiful head by the adoring hands of Meleager when his mother gave
him his doom. Through his body there rushed a pang of mortal agony.
His blood turned to fire, and the hand of Death that smote him was as
a hand of molten lead. In torture his gallant spirit passed away,
uncomplaining, loving through his pain the maid for whose dear sake he
had brought woe upon himself. As the last white ashes in the fire
crumbled and fell away into nothingness, the soul of Meleager
departed. Swiftly through the dark valley his mother's shade followed
him, for she fell upon a sword and so perished. And Diana, looking
down on the grief-stricken sisters of Meleager and on the bitter
sorrow of his father, had compassion on them and turned them into
birds.
So ended the Calydonian Hunt, and Atalanta returned to Arcadia, heavy
at heart for the evil she had wrought unwittingly. And still the Three
Fates span on, and the winds caught up the cold wood ashes and blew
them across the ravaged land that Meleager had saved and that quickly
grew fertile again.
ATALANTA
Atalanta, daughter of the king of Arcadia, returned sad at heart to
her own land. Only as comrades, as those against whose skill in the
chase she was wont to pit her own skill, had she looked upon men. But
Meleager, the hero who loved her and her fair honour more than life
itself, and whose love had made him haste in all his gallant strength
and youthful beauty to the land of the Shades, was one to touch her as
never before had she been touched. Her father, proud of her triumph in
Calydon, again besought her to marry one of her many noble suitors.
"If indeed they love me as thou sayest," said Atalanta to her father,
"then must they be ready to face for my sake even the loss of dear
life itself. I shall be the prize of him who outruns me in a
foot-race. But he who tries and fails, must pay to Death his penalty."
Thereafter, for many days, a strange sight was to be seen in Arcadia.
For one after another the suitors came to race with the maiden whose
face had bewitched them, though truly the race was no more fair to him
who ran than would be a race with Death. No mortal man was as fleet as
Atalanta, who had first raced with the wild things of the mountains
and the forests, and who had dared at last to race with the winds and
leave even them behind. To her it was all a glorious game. Her
conquest was always sure, and if the youths who entered in the contest
cared to risk their lives, why should they blame her? So each day they
started, throbbing hope and fierce determination to win her in the
heart of him who ran--fading hope and despairing anger as he saw her
skimming ahead of him like a gay-hued butterfly that a tired child
pursues in vain. And each day, as the race ended, another man paid the
price of his defeat.
Daily, amongst those who looked on, stood her cousin Milanion. He
would fain have hated Atalanta for her ruthlessness and her joyousness
as he saw his friends die for her sake, yet daily her beauty, her
purity, and her gallant unconsciousness took a firmer hold upon his
heart. To himself he vowed that he would win Atalanta, but not without
help from the gods was this possible. Therefore he sought Aphrodite
herself and asked her aid.
Milanion was a beautiful youth, and to Aphrodite, who loved beauty, he
pled his cause as he told her how Atalanta had become to him more than
life, so that he had ceased to pity the youths, his friends, who had
died for love of her. The goddess smiled upon him with gentle
sympathy.
In the garden of her temple grew a tree with branches and twigs of
gold, and leaves as yellow as the little leaves of the silver birch
when the autumn sun kisses them as it sets. On this tree grew golden
apples, and Aphrodite plucked three of them and gave them to the youth
who had not feared to ask her to aid him to win the maid he loved.
How he was to use the apples she then told him, and, well content,
Milanion returned home.
Next day he spoke to Atalanta.
"So far has victory been thine, Fairest on earth," he said, "but so
far have thy little winged white feet had only the heavy-footed
laggards to outrun. Wilt have me run a race with thee? for assuredly I
shall win thee for my own."
And Milanion looked into the eyes of Atalanta with a smile as gay and
fearless as that with which a hero is wont to look in the eyes of his
fellow.
Look for look did the virgin huntress give him.
Then her cheeks grew red, as though the rosy-fingered dawn had touched
them, and the dawning of love came into her heart.
Even Meleager was not quite so goodly a youth as this. Not even
Meleager had been so wholly fearless.
"Thou art tempted by the deathless gods," she said, but her long
lashes drooped on her cheek as she spoke. "I pity you, Milanion, for
when thou dost race with me, the goal is assuredly the meadows of
asphodel near where sit Pluto and Persephone on their gloomy thrones."
But Milanion said, "I am ready, Atalanta. Wilt race with me now?" And
steadily he looked in her eyes until again they fell as though at last
they had found a conqueror.
Like two swallows that skim across a sunny sea, filled with the
joyousness of the coming of spring, Atalanta and Milanion started.
Scarcely did their feet seem to touch the solid earth, and all
those who stood by vowed that now, at length, was a race indeed, a
race worthy for the gods to behold.
[Illustration: SHE STOPPED, AND PICKED UP THE TREASURE]
But as they ran, almost abreast, so that none could tell which was the
gainer, Milanion obeyed the bidding of Aphrodite and let fall one of
the golden apples. Never before had Atalanta dreamed of such a
thing--an apple of glistening gold! She stopped, poised on one foot as
a flying bird poises for a moment on the wing, and picked up the
treasure. But Milanion had sped several paces ahead ere she was again
abreast of him, and even as she gained on him, he dropped the second
apple. Again Atalanta was tempted. Again she stopped, and again
Milanion shot ahead of her. Her breath came short and fast, as once
more she gained the ground that she had lost. But, yet a third time,
Milanion threw in her way one of the golden illusions of the gods.
And, yet again, Atalanta stooped to pick up the apple of gold.
Then a mighty shout from those who watched rent the air, and Atalanta,
half fearful, half ashamed, yet wholly happy, found herself running,
vanquished, into the arms of him who was indeed her conqueror. For not
only had Milanion won the race, but he had won the heart of the virgin
huntress, a heart once as cold and remote as the winter snow on the
peak of Mount Olympus.
ARACHNE
The hay that so short a time ago was long, lush grass, with fragrant
meadow-sweet and gold-eyed marguerites growing amongst it in the green
meadow-land by the river, is now dry hay--fragrant still, though dead,
and hidden from the sun's warm rays underneath the dark wooden rafters
of the barn. Occasionally a cat on a hunting foray comes into the barn
to look for mice, or to nestle cosily down into purring slumber. Now
and then a hen comes furtively tip-toeing through the open door and
makes for itself a secret nest in which to lay the eggs which it
subsequently heralds with such loud clucks of proud rejoicing as to
completely undo all its previous precautions. Sometimes children come
in, pursuing cat or hen, or merely to tumble each other over amongst
the soft hay which they leave in chaotic confusion, and when they have
gone away, a little more of the sky can be seen through the little
window in the roof, and through the wooden bars of the window lower
down. Yet, whatever other living creatures may come or go, by those
windows of the barn, and high up on its dark rafters, there is always
a living creature working, ceaselessly working. When, through the
skylight, the sun-god drives a golden sunbeam, and a long shaft of
dancing dust-atoms passes from the window to what was once a part of
the early summer's glory, the work of the unresting toiler is also to
be seen, for the window is hung with shimmering grey tapestries made
by Arachne, the spider, and from rafter to rafter her threads are
suspended with inimitable skill.
She was a nymph once, they say--the daughter of Idmon the dyer, of
Colophon, a city of Lydia. In all Lydia there was none who could weave
as wove the beautiful Arachne. To watch her card the wool of the
white-fleeced sheep until in her fingers it grew like the soft clouds
that hang round the hill tops, was pleasure enough to draw nymphs from
the golden river Pactolus and from the vineyards of Tymolus. And when
she drove her swift shuttle hither and thither, still it was joy to
watch her wondrous skill. Magical was the growth of the web, fine of
woof, that her darting fingers span, and yet more magical the
exquisite devices that she then wrought upon it. For birds and flowers
and butterflies and pictures of all the beautiful things on earth were
limned by Arachne, and old tales grew alive again under her creative
needle.
To Pallas Athene, goddess of craftsmen, came tidings that at Colophon
in Lydia lived a nymph whose skill rivalled that of the goddess
herself, and she, ever jealous for her own honour, took on herself the
form of a woman bent with age, and, leaning on her staff, joined the
little crowd that hung round Arachne as she plied her busy needle.
With white arms twined round each other the eager nymphs watched the
flowers spring up under her fingers, even as flowers spring from the
ground on the coming of Demeter, and Athene was fain to admire, while
she marvelled at the magic skill of the fair Arachne.
Gently she spoke to Arachne, and, with the persuasive words of a wise
old woman, warned her that she must not let her ambition soar too
high. Greater than all skilled craftswomen was the great goddess
Athene, and were Arachne, in impious vanity, to dream that one day she
might equal her, that were indeed a crime for any god to punish.
Glancing up for a moment from the picture whose perfect colours grew
fast under her slim fingers, Arachne fixed scornful eyes on the old
woman and gave a merry laugh.
"Didst say _equal_ Athene? old mother," she said. "In good sooth thy
dwelling must be with the goat-herds in the far-off hills and thou art
not a dweller in our city. Else hadst thou not spoken to Arachne of
_equalling_ the work of Athene; _excelling_ were the better word."
In anger Pallas Athene made answer.
"Impious one!" she said, "to those who would make themselves higher
than the gods must ever come woe unutterable. Take heed what thou
sayest, for punishment will assuredly be thine."
Laughing still, Arachne made reply:
"I fear not, Athene, nor does my heart shake at the gloomy warning of
a foolish old crone." And turning to the nymphs who, half afraid,
listened to her daring words, she said: "Fair nymphs who watch me day
by day, well do ye know that I make no idle boast. My skill is as
great as that of Athene, and greater still it shall be. Let Athene try
a contest with me if she dare! Well do I know who will be the victor."
Then Athene cast off her disguise, and before the frightened nymphs
and the bold Arachne stood the radiant goddess with eyes that blazed
with anger and insulted pride.
"Lo, Athene is come!" she said, and nymphs and women fell on their
knees before her, humbly adoring. Arachne alone was unabashed. Her
cheeks showed how fast her heart was beating. From rosy red to white
went the colour in them, yet, in firm, low voice she spoke.
"I have spoken truth," she said. "Not woman, nor goddess, can do work
such as mine. Ready am I to abide by what I have said, and if I did
boast, by my boast I stand. If thou wilt deign, great goddess, to try
thy skill against the skill of the dyer's daughter and dost prove the
victor, behold me gladly willing to pay the penalty."
The eyes of Athene, the grey-eyed goddess, grew dark as the sea when a
thunder-cloud hangs over it and a mighty storm is coming. Not for one
moment did she delay, but took her place by the side of Arachne. On
the loom they stretched out two webs with a fine warp, and made them
fast on the beam.
"The sley separates the warp, the woof is inserted in
the middle with sharp shuttles, which the fingers hurry
along, and, being drawn within the warp, the teeth
notched in the moving sley strike it. Both hasten on,
and girding up their garments to their breasts, they
move their skilful arms, their eagerness beguiling their
fatigue. There both the purple is being woven, which is
subjected to the Tyrian brazen vessel, and fine shades
of minute difference; just as the rainbow, with its
mighty arch, is wont to tint a long tract of sky by
means of the rays reflected by the shower; in which,
though a thousand different colours are shining, yet the
very transition eludes the eyes that look upon it....
There, too, the pliant gold is mixed with the threads."
Ovid.
Their canvases wrought, then did Athene and Arachne hasten to cover
them with pictures such as no skilled worker of tapestry has ever
since dreamed of accomplishing. Under the fingers of Athene grew up
pictures so real and so perfect that the watchers knew not whether the
goddess was indeed creating life. And each picture was one that told
of the omnipotence of the gods and of the doom that came upon those
mortals who had dared in their blasphemous presumption to struggle as
equals with the immortal dwellers in Olympus. Arachne glanced up from
her web and looked with eyes that glowed with the love of beautiful
things at the creations of Athene. Yet, undaunted, her fingers still
sped on, and the goddess saw, with brow that grew yet more clouded,
how the daughter of Idmon the dyer had chosen for subjects the tales
that showed the weaknesses of the gods. One after another the living
pictures grew beneath her hand, and the nymphs held their breath in
mingled fear and ecstasy at Arachne's godlike skill and most arrogant
daring. Between goddess and mortal none could have chosen, for the
colour and form and exquisite fancy of the pictures of the daughter of
Zeus were equalled, though not excelled, by those of the daughter of
the dyer of Colophon.
Darker and yet more dark grew the eyes of Athene as they looked on
the magical beauty of the pictures, each one of which was an insult to
the gods. What picture had skilful hand ever drawn to compare with
that of Europa who,
"riding on the back of the divine bull, with one hand
clasped the beast's great horn, and with the other
caught up her garment's purple fold, lest it might trail
and be drenched in the hoar sea's infinite spray. And
her deep robe was blown out in the wind, like the sail
of a ship, and lightly ever it wafted the maiden
onward."
Moschus.
Then at last did the storm break, and with her shuttle the enraged
goddess smote the web of Arachne, and the fair pictures were rent into
motley rags and ribbons. Furiously, too, with her shuttle of boxwood
she smote Arachne. Before her rage, the nymphs fled back to their
golden river and to the vineyards of Tymolus, and the women of
Colophon in blind terror rushed away. And Arachne, shamed to the dust,
knew that life for her was no longer worth possessing. She had
aspired, in the pride of her splendid genius, to a contest with a god,
and knew now that such a contest must ever be vain. A cord hung from
the weaver's beam, and swiftly she seized it, knotted it round her
white neck, and would have hanged herself. But ere the life had passed
out of her, Athene grasped the cord, loosened it, and spoke Arachne's
doom:
"Live!" she said, "O guilty and shameless one! For evermore shalt thou
live and hang as now, thou and thy descendants, that men may never
forget the punishment of the blasphemous one who dared to rival a
god."
Even as she spoke, Arachne's fair form dried up and withered. Her
straight limbs grew grey and crooked and wiry, and her white arms were
no more. And from the beam where the beautiful weaver of Lydia had
been suspended, there hung from a fine grey thread the creature from
which, to this day, there are but few who do not turn with loathing.
Yet still Arachne spins, and still is without a compeer.
"Not anie damzell, which her vaunteth most
In skilfull knitting of soft silken twyne,
Nor anie weaver, which his worke doth boast
In dieper, in damaske, or in lyne,
Nor anie skil'd in workmanship embost,
Nor anie skil'd in loupes of fingring fine,
Might in their divers cunning ever dare
With this so curious networke to compare."
Spenser.
Thus, perhaps, does Arachne have her compensations, and in days that
followed long after the twilight of the gods, did she not gain eternal
honour in the heart of every Scot by the tale of how she saved a
national hero? Kindly, too, are her labours for men as she slays their
mortal enemies, the household flies, and when the peasant--practical,
if not favoured by AEsculapius and Hygeia--runs to raid the loom of
Arachne in order to staunch the quick-flowing blood from the cut hand
of her little child, much more dear to her heart is Arachne the spider
than the unknown Athene.
"Also in spinners be tokens of divination, and of
knowing what weather shall fall--for oft by weathers
that shall fall, some spin or weave higher or lower.
Also multitude of spinners is token of much
rain."
Bartholomew.
The sun has not long enough shown his face to dry up the dew in the
garden, and behold on the little clipped tree of boxwood, a great
marvel! For in and out, and all over its twigs and leaves, Arachne has
woven her web, and on the web the dew has dropped a million diamond
drops. And, suddenly, all the colours in the sky are mirrored
dazzlingly on the grey tapestry of her making. Arachne has come to her
own again.
IDAS AND MARPESSA
By day, while the sun-god drove his chariot in the high heavens and
turned the blue-green AEgean Sea into the semblance of a blazing shield
of brass, Idas and Marpessa sat together in the trees' soft shades, or
walked in shadowy valleys where violets and wild parsley grew, and
where Apollo rarely deigned to come. At eventide, when, in royal
splendour of purple and crimson and gold, Apollo sought his rest in
the western sky, Idas and Marpessa wandered by the seashore watching
the little wavelets softly kissing the pebbles on the beach, or
climbed to the mountain side from whence they could see the first
glimpse of Diana's silver crescent and the twinkling lights of the
Pleiades breaking through the blue canopy of the sky. While Apollo
sought in heaven and on earth the best means to gratify his imperial
whims, Idas, for whom all joys had come to mean but one, sought ever
to be by the side of Marpessa. Shadowy valley, murmuring sea, lonely
mountain side, or garden where grew the purple amaranth and where
roses of pink and amber-yellow and deepest crimson dropped their
radiant petals on the snowy marble paths, all were the same to
Idas--Paradise for him, were Marpessa by his side; without her, dreary
desert.
More beautiful than any flower that grew in the garden was Marpessa.
No music that Apollo's lute could make was as sweet in the ears of
Idas as her dear voice. Its music was ever new to him--a melody to
make his heart more quickly throb. New, too, ever was her beauty. For
him it was always the first time that they met, always the same fresh
ravishment to look in her eyes. And when to Idas came the knowledge
that Marpessa gave him love for love, he had indeed won happiness so
great as to draw upon him the envy of the gods.
"The course of true love never did run smooth," and, like many and
many another father since his day, Evenos, the father of Marpessa, was
bitterly opposed to a match where the bridegroom was rich only in
youth, in health, and in love. His beautiful daughter naturally seemed
to him worthy of something much more high. Thus it was an unhappy day
for Marpessa when, as she sat alone by the fountain which dripped
slowly down on the marble basin, and dreamed of her lover, Idas,
Apollo himself, led by caprice, noiselessly walked through the rose
bushes, whose warm petals dropped at his feet as he passed, and beheld
a maiden more fair than the fairest flower that grew. The hum of bees,
the drip, drip of the fountain, these lulled her mind and heart and
soothed her day-dreams, and Marpessa's red lips, curved like the bow
of Eros, smiled as she thought of Idas, the man she loved. Silently
Apollo watched her. This queen of all the roses was not fit to be the
bride of mortal man--Marpessa must be his.
To Evenos Apollo quickly imparted his desire. He was not used to
having his imperial wishes denied, nor was Evenos anxious to do so.
Here, indeed, was a match for his daughter. No insignificant mortal,
but the radiant sun-god himself! And to Marpessa he told what Apollo
wished, and Marpessa shyly looked at her reflection in the pool of the
fountain, and wondered if she were indeed beautiful enough to win the
love of a god.
"Am I in truth so wondrous fair?" she asked her father.
"Fair enough to mate with Apollo himself!" proudly answered Evenos.
And joyously Marpessa replied, "Ah, then am I happy indeed! I would be
beautiful for my Idas' sake!"
An angry man was her father. There was to be no more pleasant dallying
with Idas in the shadowy wood or by the seashore. In the rose garden
Apollo took his place and charmed Marpessa's ears with his music,
while her eyes could not but be charmed by his beauty. The god had no
doubts or fears. Only a little time he would give her, for a very
little only would he wait, and then undoubtedly this mortal maiden
would be his, her heart conquered as assuredly as the rays from his
chariot conquered the roses, whose warm crimson petals they strewed at
his feet. Yet as Marpessa looked and listened, her thoughts were often
far away and always her heart was with Idas. When Apollo played most
exquisitely to her it seemed that he put her love for Idas into music.
When he spoke to her of his love she thought, "Thus, and thus did Idas
speak," and a sudden memory of the human lad's halting words brought
to her heart a little gush of tenderness, and made her eyes sparkle
so that Apollo gladly thought, "Soon she will be mine."
[Illustration: MARPESSA SAT ALONE BY THE FOUNTAIN]
And all this while Idas schemed and plotted and planned a way in which
he could save his dear one from her obdurate father, and from the
passion of a god. He went to Neptune, told his tale, and begged him to
lend him a winged chariot in which he could fly away with Marpessa.
Neptune good-naturedly consented, and when Idas flew up from the
seashore one day, like a great bird that the tempests have blown
inland, Marpessa joyously sprang up beside her lover, and swiftly they
took flight for a land where in peace they might live and love
together. No sooner did Evenos realise that his daughter was gone,
than, in furious anger against her and her lover, he gave chase. One
has watched a hawk in pursuit of a pigeon or a bird of the moors and
seen it, a little dark speck at first, gradually growing larger and
more large until at length it dominated and conquered its prey,
swooping down from above, like an arrow from a bow, to bring with it
sudden death.
So at first it seemed that Evenos must conquer Idas and Marpessa in
the winged chariot of Neptune's lending. But onwards Idas drove the
chariot, ever faster and faster, until before the eyes of Marpessa the
trees of the forest grew into blurs of blue and brown, and the streams
and rivers as they flew past them were streaks of silver. Not until he
had reached the river Lycormas did the angry father own that his
pursuit had been in vain. Over the swift-flowing stream flew the
chariot driven by Idas, but Evenos knew that his horses, flecked with
white foam, pumping each breath from hearts that were strained to
breaking-point, no longer could go on with the chase. The passage of
that deep stream would destroy them. The fierce water would sweep the
wearied beasts down in its impelling current, and he with them. A
shamed man would he be forever. Not for a moment did he hesitate, but
drew his sharp sword from his belt and plunged it into the breast of
one steed and then of the other who had been so willing and who yet
had failed him in the end. And then, as they, still in their traces,
neighed shrilly aloud, and then fell over and died where they lay,
Evenos, with a great cry, leaped into the river. Over his head closed
the eddies of the peat-brown water. Once only did he throw up his arms
to ask the gods for mercy; then did his body drift down with the
stream, and his soul hastened downwards to the Shades. And from that
day the river Lycormas no more was known by that name, but was called
the river _Evenos_ forever.
Onwards, triumphantly, drove Idas, but soon he knew that a greater
than Evenos had entered in the chase, and that the jealous sun-god's
chariot was in pursuit of the winged car of Neptune. Quickly it gained
on him--soon it would have swept down on him--a hawk indeed, this
time, striking surely its helpless prey--but even as Apollo saw the
white face of Marpessa and knew that he was the victor, a mighty
thunderbolt that made the mountains shake, and rolled its echoes
through the lonely fastnesses of a thousand hills, was sent to earth
by Jupiter. While the echoes still re-echoed, there came from Olympus
the voice of Zeus himself.
"_Let her decide!_" he said.
Apollo, like a white flame blown backward by the wind, withheld his
hands that would have seized from Idas the woman who was his heart's
desire.
And then he spoke, and while his burning gaze was fixed upon her, and
his face, in beautiful fury, was more perfect than any exquisite
picture of her dreams, his voice was as the voice of the sea as it
calls to the shore in the moonlit hours, as the bird that sings in the
darkness of a tropic night to its longing mate.
"Marpessa!" he cried, "Marpessa! wilt thou not come to me? No woe nor
trouble, never any pain can touch me. Yet woe indeed was mine when
first I saw thy fairest face. For even now dost thou hasten to sorrow,
to darkness, to the dark-shadowed tomb. Thou art but mortal! thy
beauty is short-lived. Thy love for mortal man shall quickly fade and
die. Come to me, Marpessa, and my kisses on your lips shall make thee
immortal! Together we shall bring the sunbeams to a cold, dark land!
Together shall we coax the spring flowers from the still, dead earth!
Together we shall bring to men the golden harvest, and deck the trees
of autumn in our liveries of red and gold. I love thee, Marpessa--not
as mere mortal loves do I love thee. Come to me, Marpessa--my Love--my
Desire!"
When his voice was silent, it seemed as if the very earth itself with
all its thousand echoes still breathed his words: "Marpessa--my
Love--my Desire."
Abashed before the god's entreaties stood Idas. And the heart of
Marpessa was torn as she heard the burning words of the beautiful
Apollo still ringing through her head, and saw her mortal lover,
silent, white-lipped, gazing first at the god and then into her own
pale face. At length he spoke:
"After such argument what can I plead?
Or what pale promise make? Yet since it is
In woman to pity rather than to aspire,
A little I will speak. I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
Nor for that face that might indeed provoke
Invasion of old cities; no, nor all
Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep.
Nor for this only do I love thee, but
Because Infinity upon thee broods;
And thou art full of whispers and of shadows.
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell;
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.
Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.
It has the strangeness of the luring West,
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far-back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear
In this dark country of the world! Thou art
My woe, my early light, my music dying."
Stephen Phillips.
Then Idas, in the humility that comes from perfect love, drooped low
his head, and was silent. In silence for a minute stood the three--a
god, a man, and a woman. And from on high the watching stars looked
down and marvelled, and Diana stayed for a moment the course of her
silver car to watch, as she thought, the triumph of her own invincible
brother.
From man to god passed the eyes of Marpessa, and back from god to man.
And the stars forgot to twinkle, and Diana's silver-maned horses pawed
the blue floor of the sky, impatient at the firm hand of the mistress
on the reins that checked their eager course.
Marpessa spoke at last, in low words that seemed to come "remembered
from other worlds."
For all the joys he offered her she thanked Apollo. What grander fate
for mortal woman than to rule the sunbeams--to bring bliss to the
earth and to the sons of men? What more could mortal woman crave than
the gift of immortality shared with one whose power ruled the vast
universe, and who still had stooped to lay the red roses of his
passionate love at her little, human feet? And yet--and yet--in that
sorrow-free existence that he promised, might there not still be
something awanting to one who had once known tears?
"Yet I, being human, human sorrow miss."
Then were he indeed to give her the gift of immortal life, what value
were life to one whose beauty had withered as the leaves in autumn,
whose heart was tired and dead? What uglier fate than this, to endure
an endless existence in which no life was, yoked to one whose youth
was immortal, whose beauty was everlasting?
Then did she turn to Idas, who stood as one who awaits the judgment of
the judge in whose hands lies the power of meting out life or death.
Thus she spoke:
"But if I live with Idas, then we two
On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand
In odours of the open field, and live
In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch
The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.
And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite,
But clambering limbs and little hearts that err.
... So shall we live,
And though the first sweet sting of love be past,
The sweet that almost venom is; though youth,
With tender and extravagant delight,
The first and secret kiss by twilight hedge,
The insane farewell repeated o'er and o'er,
Pass off; there shall succeed a faithful peace;
Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind,
Durable from the daily dust of life."
The sun-god frowned as her words fell from her lips. Even now, as she
looked at him, he held out his arms. Surely she only played with this
poor mortal youth. To him she must come, this rose who could own no
lesser god than the sun-god himself.
But Marpessa spoke on:
"And thou beautiful god, in that far time,
When in thy setting sweet thou gazest down
On his grey head, wilt thou remember then
That once I pleased thee, that I once was young?"
So did her voice cease, and on the earth fell sudden darkness. For to
Apollo had come the shame of love rejected, and there were those who
said that to the earth that night there came no sunset, only the
sullen darkness that told of the flight of an angry god. Yet, later,
the silver moonbeams of Diana seemed to greet the dark earth with a
smile, and, in the winged car of Neptune, Idas and Marpessa sped on,
greater than the gods, in a perfect harmony of human love that feared
nor time, nor pain, nor Death himself.
ARETHUSA
"We have victualled and watered," wrote Nelson from Syracuse in 1798,
"and surely, watering at the fountain of Arethusa, we must have
victory. We shall sail with the first breeze; and be assured I will
return either crowned with laurel or covered with cypress." Three days
later, he won the Battle of the Nile, one of the greatest sea-fights
of history.
Here in our own land the tales of the Greek gods seem very remote.
Like the colours in an old, old portrait, the humanity of the stories
seems to have faded. But in Sicily they grow vivid at once. Almost, as
we stand above Syracuse, that long yellow town by the sea--a
blue-green sea, with deep purple shadows where the clouds above it
grow dark, and little white-sailed boats, like white butterflies, wing
their way across to the far horizon--can we
"Have glimpse of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
Here, to this day, one of the myths most impossible of acceptance to
the scientific modern mind lives on, and Arethusa is not yet forgotten.
"In Ortygia," says Cicero, "is a fountain of sweet water, the name of
which is Arethusa, of incredible flow, very full of fish, which would
be entirely overwhelmed by the sea, were its waters not protected from
the waves by a rampart and a wall of stone." White marble walls have
taken the place of the protecting barrier, but the spring bubbles up to
this day, and Ortygia (Quail Island) is the name still given to that
part of Syracuse. Fluffy-headed, long, green stalks of papyrus grow in
the fountain, and red and golden fish dart through its clear water.
Beyond lie the low shores of Plemmgrium, the fens of Lysimeleia, the
hills above the Anapus, and above all towers Etna, in snowy and
magnificent serenity and indifference to the changes wrought by the
centuries to gods and to men. Yet here the present is completely
overshadowed by the past, and even the story of Arethusa knocks loudly
at the well-barricaded doors of twentieth-century incredulity.
The beautiful Arethusa was a nymph in Diana's train, and many a time
in the chase did she thread her way through the dim woodland, as a
stream flows down through the forest from the mountains to the sea.
But to her, at last, there came a day when she was no longer the
huntress but the hunted.
The flaming wheels of the chariot of Apollo had made the whole land
scintillate with heat, and the nymph sought the kind shelter of a wood
where she might bathe in the exquisite coolness of the river that
still was chilled by the snows of the mountain. On the branch of a
tree that bent over the stream she hung her garments, and joyously
stepped into the limpid water. A ray of the sun glanced through the
leaves above her and made the soft sand in the river's bed gleam like
gold and the beautiful limbs of the nymph seem as though carved from
pure white marble by the hand of Pygmalion himself. There was no sound
there but the gentle sound of the stream that murmured caressingly to
her as it slowly moved on through the solitude, and so gently it
flowed that almost it seemed to stand still, as though regretful to
leave for the unknown forest so beautiful a thing as Arethusa.
"The Earth seemed to love her
And Heaven smiled above her."
But suddenly the stillness of the stream was ruffled. Waves, like the
newly-born brothers of the billows of the sea, swept both down-stream
and up-stream upon her, and the river no longer murmured gently, but
spoke to her in a voice that thrilled with passionate longing.
Alpheus, god of the river, had beheld her, and, beholding her, had
loved her once and forever. An uncouth creature of the forest was he,
unversed in all the arts of love-making. So not as a supplicant did he
come to her, but as one who demanded fiercely love for love. Terror
came upon Arethusa as she listened, and hastily she sprang from the
water that had brought fear upon her, and hastened to find shelter in
the woodlands. Then the murmur, as of the murmur of a river before a
mighty flood comes to seize it and hold it for its own, took form in a
voice that pled with her, in tones that made her tremble as she heard.
"Hear me, Arethusa!" it said. "I am Alpheus, god of the river that now
thou hast made sacred. I am the god of the rushing streams--the god of
the thundering cataracts. Where the mountain streams crash over the
rocks and echo through the shadowy hollows of the hills, I hold my
kingship. Down from Etna I come, and the fire of Etna is in my veins.
I love thee! I love but thee, and thou shalt be mine, and I thine
forever."
Then Arethusa, in blind panic, fled before the god who loved her.
Through the shadowy forest she sped, while he swiftly gained upon her.
The asphodel bent under her flying feet, and the golden flowers of the
_Fiori Maggio_ were swept aside as she fled. Yet ever Alpheus gained
upon her, until at length she felt that the chase was ended, and cried
to Diana to save her. Then a cloud, grey and thick and blinding as the
mist that wraps the mountain tops, suddenly descended and enfolded
her, and Alpheus groped for her in vain.
"Arethusa!" she heard him cry, in a voice of piteous
longing--"Arethusa!--my beloved!"
Patiently he waited, with the love that makes uncouth things
beautiful, until at length a little breath from Zephyrus blew aside
the soft grey veil that hid his beloved from his sight, and he saw
that the nymph had been transformed into a fountain. Not for a moment
did Alpheus delay, but, turning himself into a torrent in flood, he
rushed on in pursuit of Arethusa. Then did Diana, to save her votary,
cleave a way for her through the dark earth even into the gloomy realm
of Pluto himself, and the nymph rushed onward, onward still, and then
upward, until at length she emerged again to the freedom of the blue
sky and green trees, and beheld the golden orange groves and the grey
olives, the burning red geranium flowers and the great snow-capped
mountain of Sicily.
But Alpheus had a love for her that cast out all fear. Through the
terrible blackness of the Cocytus valley he followed Arethusa, and
found a means of bursting through the encumbering earth and joining
her again. And in a spring that rises out of the sea near the shore he
was able at last to mingle his waters with those of the one for whom
he had lost his godship.
"And now from their fountains
In Enna's mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks,
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more."
Shelley.
PERSEUS THE HERO
"We call such a man a hero in English to this day, and
call it a 'heroic' thing to suffer pain and grief, that
we may do good to our fellow-men."
Charles Kingsley.
In the pleasant land of Argos, now a place of unwholesome marshes,
once upon a time there reigned a king called Acrisius, the father of
one fair daughter. Danae was her name, and she was very dear to the
king until a day when he longed to know what lay hid for him in the
lap of the gods, and consulted an oracle. With hanging head he
returned from the temple, for the oracle had told him that when his
daughter Danae had borne a son, by the hand of that son death must
surely come upon him. And because the fear of death was in him more
strong than the love of his daughter, Acrisius resolved that by
sacrificing her he would baffle the gods and frustrate Death itself. A
great tower of brass was speedily built at his command, and in this
prison Danae was placed, to drag out her weary days.
But who can escape the designs of the gods? From Olympus great Zeus
himself looked down and saw the air princess sighing away her youth.
And, full of pity and of love, he himself entered the brazen tower in
a golden shower, and Danae became the bride of Zeus and happily passed
with him the time of her imprisonment.
To her at length was born a son, a beautiful and kingly child, and
great was the wrath of her father when he had tidings of the birth.
Did the gods in the high heavens laugh at him? The laugh should yet be
on his side. Down to the seashore he hurried Danae and her newly-born
babe, the little Perseus, put them in a great chest, and set them
adrift to be a plaything for winds and waves and a prey for the cruel
and hungry sea.
"When in the cunningly-wrought chest the raging blast
and the stirred billow and terror fell upon her, with
tearful cheeks she cast her arm around Perseus and
spake, 'Alas, my child, what sorrow is mine! But thou
slumberest, in baby-wise sleeping in this woeful ark;
midst the darkness of the brazen rivet thou shinest and
in the swart gloom sent forth; thou heedest not the deep
foam of the passing wave above thy locks nor the voice
of the blast as thou liest in thy purple covering, a
sweet face. If terror had terrors for thee, and thou
wert giving ear to my gentle words--I bid thee sleep, my
babe, and may the sea sleep and our measureless woe; and
may change of fortune come forth, Father Zeus, from
thee. For that I make my prayer in boldness and beyond
right, forgive me.'"
Simonides of Keos.
For days and nights the mother and child were tossed on the billows,
but yet no harm came near them, and one morning the chest grounded on
the rocky beach of Seriphos, an island in the AEgean Sea. Here a
fisherman came on this strange flotsam and jetsam of the waves and
took the mother and child to Polydectes, the king, and the years that
followed were peaceful years for Danae and for Perseus. But as Perseus
grew up, growing each day more goodly to look upon, more fearless,
more ready to gaze with serene courage into the eyes of gods and of
men, an evil thing befell his mother. She was but a girl when he was
born, and as the years passed she grew ever more fair. And the crafty
eyes of old Polydectes, the king, ever watched her more eagerly,
always more hotly desired her for his wife. But Danae, the beloved of
Zeus himself, had no wish to wed the old king of the Cyclades, and
proudly she scorned his suit. Behind her, as she knew well, was the
stout arm of her son Perseus, and while Perseus was there, the king
could do her no harm. But Perseus, unwitting of the danger his mother
daily had to face, sailed the seas unfearingly, and felt that peace
and safety surrounded him on every side. At Samos one day, while his
ship was lading, Perseus lay down under the shade of a great tree, and
soon his eyelids grew heavy with sleep, and there came to him, like
butterflies that flit over the flowers in a sunlit garden, pleasant,
light-winged dreams. But yet another dream followed close on the merry
heels of those that went before. And before Perseus there stood one
whose grey eyes were as the fathomless sea on the dawn of a summer
day. Her long robes were blue as the hyacinths in spring, and the
spear that she held in her hand was of a polished brightness, as the
dart with which the gods smite the heart of a man, with joy
inexpressible, with sorrow that is scarcely to be borne. To Perseus
she spoke winged words.
"I am Pallas Athene," she said, "and to me the souls of men are known.
Those whose fat hearts are as those of the beasts that perish do I
know. They live at ease. No bitter sorrow is theirs, nor any fierce
joy that lifts their feet free from the cumbering clay. But dear to my
heart are the souls of those whose tears are tears of blood, whose joy
is as the joy of the Immortals. Pain is theirs, and sorrow.
Disappointment is theirs, and grief. Yet their love is as the love of
those who dwell on Olympus. Patient they are and long-suffering, and
ever they hope, ever do they trust. Ever they fight, fearless and
unashamed, and when the sum of their days on earth is accomplished,
wings, of whose existence they have never had knowledge, bear them
upwards, out of the mist and din and strife of life, to the life that
has no ending."
Then she laid her hand on the hand of Perseus. "Perseus," she said,
"art thou of those whose dull souls forever dwell in pleasant ease, or
wouldst thou be as one of the Immortals?"
And in his dream Perseus answered without hesitation:
"Rather let me die, a youth, living my life to the full, fighting
ever, suffering ever," he said, "than live at ease like a beast that
feeds on flowery pastures and knows no fiery gladness, no
heart-bleeding pain."
Then Pallas Athene, laughing for joy, because she loved so well a
hero's soul, showed him a picture that made even his brave heart sick
for dread, and told him a terrible story.
In the dim, cold, far west, she said, there lived three sisters. One
of them, Medusa, had been one of her priestesses, golden-haired and
most beautiful, but when Athene found that she was as wicked as she
was lovely, swiftly had she meted out a punishment. Every lock of her
golden hair had been changed into a venomous snake. Her eyes, that had
once been the cradles of love, were turned into love's stony tombs.
Her rosy cheeks were now of Death's own livid hue. Her smile, which
drew the hearts of lovers from their bosoms, had become a hideous
thing. A grinning mask looked on the world, and to the world her
gaping mouth and protruding tongue meant a horror before which the
world stood terrified, dumb. There are some sadnesses too terrible for
human hearts to bear, so it came to pass that in the dark cavern in
which she dwelt, and in the shadowy woods around it, all living things
that had met the awful gaze of her hopeless eyes were turned into
stone. Then Pallas Athene showed Perseus, mirrored in a brazen shield,
the face of one of the tragic things of the world. And as Perseus
looked, his soul grew chill within him. But when Athene, in low voice,
asked him:
"Perseus, wilt even end the sorrow of this piteous sinful one?" he
answered, "Even that will I do--the gods helping me."
And Pallas Athene, smiling again in glad content, left him to dream,
and Perseus awoke, in sudden fear, and found that in truth he had but
dreamed, yet held his dream as a holy thing in the secret
treasure-house of his heart.
Back to Seriphos he sailed, and found that his mother walked in fear
of Polydectes the king. She told her son--a strong man now, though
young in years--the story of his cruel persecution. Perseus saw red
blood, and gladly would he have driven his keen blade far home in the
heart of Polydectes. But his vengeance was to be a great vengeance,
and the vengeance was delayed.
The king gave a feast, and on that day every one in the land brought
offerings of their best and most costly to do him honour. Perseus
alone came empty-handed, and as he stood in the king's court as though
he were a beggar, the other youths mocked at him of whom they had ever
been jealous.
"Thou sayest that thy father is one of the gods!" they said. "Where is
thy godlike gift, O Perseus!"
And Polydectes, glad to humble the lad who was keeper of his mother's
honour, echoed their foolish taunt.
"Where is the gift of the gods that the noble son of the gods has
brought me?" he asked, and his fat cheeks and loose mouth quivered
with ugly merriment.
Then Perseus, his head thrown back, gazed in the bold eyes of
Polydectes.
Son of Zeus he was indeed, as he looked with royal scorn at those whom
he despised.
"A godlike gift thou shalt have, in truth, O king," he said, and his
voice rang out as a trumpet-call before the battle. "The gift of the
gods shall be thine. The gods helping me, thou shalt have the head of
Medusa."
A laugh, half-born, died in the throats of Polydectes and of those who
listened, and Perseus strode out of the palace, a glow in his heart,
for he knew that Pallas Athene had lit the fire that burned in him
now, and that though he should shed the last drop of his life's blood
to win what he sought, right would triumph, and wrong must be worsted.
Still quivering with anger, Perseus went down to the blue sea that
gently whispered its secrets to the shore on which he stood.
"If Pallas Athene would but come," he thought--"if only my dreams
might come true."
For, like many a boy before and since, Perseus had dreamed of gallant,
fearless deeds. Like many a boy before and since, he had been the hero
of a great adventure.
So he prayed, "Come to me! I pray you, Pallas Athene, come! and let me
dream true."
His prayer was answered.
Into the sky there came a little silver cloud that grew and grew, and
ever it grew nearer, and then, as in his dream, Pallas Athene came to
him and smiled on him as the sun smiles on the water in spring. Nor
was she alone. Beside her stood Hermes of the winged shoes, and
Perseus knelt before the two in worship. Then, very gently, Pallas
Athene gave him counsel, and more than counsel she gave.
In his hand she placed a polished shield, than which no mirror shone
more brightly.
"Do not look at Medusa herself; look only on her image here
reflected--then strike home hard and swiftly. And when her head is
severed, wrap it in the goatskin on which the shield hangs. So wilt
thou return in safety and in honour."
"But how, then, shall I cross the wet grey fields of this watery
way?" asked Perseus. "Would that I were a white-winged bird that skims
across the waves."
And, with the smile of a loving comrade, Hermes laid his hand on the
shoulder of Perseus.
"My winged shoes shall be thine," he said, "and the white-winged
sea-birds shalt thou leave far, far behind."
"Yet another gift is thine," said Athene. "Gird on, as gift from the
gods, this sword that is immortal."
For a moment Perseus lingered. "May I not bid farewell to my mother?"
he asked. "May I not offer burnt-offerings to thee and to Hermes, and
to my father Zeus himself?"
But Athene said Nay, at his mother's weeping his heart might relent,
and the offering that the Olympians desired was the head of Medusa.
Then, like a fearless young golden eagle, Perseus spread out his arms,
and the winged shoes carried him across the seas to the cold northern
lands whither Athene had directed him.
Each day his shoes took him a seven days' journey, and ever the air
through which he passed grew more chill, till at length he reached the
land of everlasting snow, where the black ice never knows the
conquering warmth of spring, and where the white surf of the moaning
waves freezes solid even as it touches the shore.
It was a dark grim place to which he came, and in a gloomy cavern by
the sea lived the Graeae, the three grey sisters that Athene had told
him he must seek. Old and grey and horrible they were, with but one
tooth amongst them, and but one eye. From hand to hand they passed
the eye, and muttered and shivered in the blackness and the cold.
[Illustration: THEY WHIMPERED AND BEGGED OF HIM]
Boldly Perseus spoke to them and asked them to guide him to the place
where Medusa and her sisters the Gorgons dwelt.
"No others know where they dwell," he said. "Tell me, I pray thee, the
way that I may find them."
But the Grey Women were kin to the Gorgons, and hated all the children
of men, and ugly was their evil mirth as they mocked at Perseus and
refused to tell him where Medusa might be found.
But Perseus grew wily in his desire not to fail, and as the eye passed
from one withered, clutching hand to another, he held out his own
strong young palm, and in her blindness one of the three placed the
eye within it.
Then the Grey Women gave a piteous cry, fierce and angry as the cry of
old grey wolves that have been robbed of their prey, and gnashed upon
him with their toothless jaws.
And Perseus said: "Wicked ye are and cruel at heart, and blind shall
ye remain forever unless ye tell me where I may find the Gorgons. But
tell me that, and I give back the eye."
Then they whimpered and begged of him, and when they found that all
their beseeching was in vain, at length they told him.
"Go south," they said, "so far south that at length thou comest to the
uttermost limits of the sea, to the place where the day and night
meet. There is the Garden of the Hesperides, and of them must thou
ask the way." And "Give us back our eye!" they wailed again most
piteously, and Perseus gave back the eye into a greedy trembling old
hand, and flew south like a swallow that is glad to leave the gloomy
frozen lands behind.
To the garden of the Hesperides he came at last, and amongst the
myrtles and roses and sunny fountains he came on the nymphs who there
guard the golden fruit, and begged them to tell him whither he must
wing his way in order to find the Gorgons. But the nymphs could not
tell.
"We must ask Atlas," they said, "the giant who sits high up on the
mountain and with his strong shoulders keeps the heavens and earth
apart."
And with the nymphs Perseus went up the mountain and asked the patient
giant to guide him to the place of his quest.
"Far away I can see them," said Atlas, "on an island in the great
ocean. But unless thou wert to wear the helmet of Pluto himself, thy
going must be in vain."
"What is this helmet?" asked Perseus, "and how can I gain it?"
"Didst thou wear the helmet of the ruler of Dark Places, thou wouldst
be as invisible as a shadow in the blackness of night," answered
Atlas; "but no mortal can obtain it, for only the Immortals can brave
the terrors of the Shadowy Land and yet return; yet if thou wilt
promise me one thing, the helmet shall be thine."
"What wouldst thou?" asked Perseus.
And Atlas said, "For many a long year have I borne this earth, and I
grow aweary of my burden. When thou hast slain Medusa, let me gaze
upon her face, that I may be turned into stone and suffer no more
forever."
And Perseus promised, and at the bidding of Atlas one of the nymphs
sped down to the land of the Shades, and for seven days Perseus and
her sisters awaited her return. Her face was as the face of a white
lily and her eyes were dark with sadness when she came, but with her
she bore the helmet of Pluto, and when she and her sisters had kissed
Perseus and bidden him a sorrowful farewell, he put on the helmet and
vanished away.
Soon the gentle light of day had gone, and he found himself in a place
where clammy fog blotted out all things, and where the sea was black
as the water of that stream that runs through the Cocytus valley. And
in that silent land where there is "neither night nor day, nor cloud
nor breeze nor storm," he found the cave of horrors in which the
Gorgons dwelt.
Two of them, like monstrous swine, lay asleep,
"But a third woman paced about the hall,
And ever turned her head from wall to wall,
And moaned aloud and shrieked in her despair,
Because the golden tresses of her hair
Were moved by writhing snakes from side to side,
That in their writhing oftentimes would glide
On to her breast or shuddering shoulders white;
Or, falling down, the hideous things would light
Upon her feet, and, crawling thence, would twine
Their slimy folds upon her ankles fine."
William Morris.
In the shield of Pallas Athene the picture was mirrored, and as
Perseus gazed on it his soul grew heavy for the beauty and the horror
of Medusa. And "Oh that it had been her foul sisters that I must
slay!" he thought at first, but then--"To slay her will be kind
indeed," he said. "Her beauty has become corruption, and all the joy
of life for her has passed into the agony of remembrance, the torture
of unending remorse."
And when he saw her brazen claws that still were greedy and lustful to
strike and to slay, his face grew stern, and he paused no longer, but
with his sword he smote her neck with all his might and main. And to
the rocky floor the body of Medusa fell with brazen clang, but her
head he wrapped in the goatskin, while he turned his eyes away. Aloft
then he sprang, and flew swifter than an arrow from the bow of Diana.
With hideous outcry the two other Gorgons found the body of Medusa,
and, like foul vultures that hunt a little song-bird, they flew in
pursuit of Perseus. For many a league they kept up the chase, and
their howling was grim to hear. Across the seas they flew, and over
the yellow sand of the Libyan desert, and as Perseus flew before them,
some blood-drops fell from the severed head of Medusa, and from them
bred the vipers that are found in the desert to this day. But bravely
did the winged shoes of Hermes bear Perseus on, and by nightfall the
Gorgon sisters had passed from sight, and Perseus found himself once
more in the garden of the Hesperides. Ere he sought the nymphs, he
knelt by the sea to cleanse from his hands Medusa's blood, and still
does the seaweed that we find on sea-beaches after a storm bear the
crimson stains.
And when Perseus had received glad welcome from the fair dwellers in
the garden of the Hesperides, he sought Atlas, that to him he might
fulfil his promise; and eagerly Atlas beheld him, for he was aweary of
his long toil.
So Perseus uncovered the face of Medusa and held it up for the Titan
to gaze upon.
And when Atlas looked upon her whose beauty had once been pure and
living as that of a flower in spring, and saw only anguish and
cruelty, foul wickedness, and hideous despair, his heart grew like
stone within him. To stone, too, turned his great, patient face, and
into stone grew his vast limbs and strong, crouching back. So did
Atlas the Titan become Atlas the Mountain, and still his head,
white-crowned with snow, and his great shoulder far up in misty
clouds, would seem to hold apart the earth and the sky.
Then Perseus again took flight, and in his flight he passed over many
lands and suffered weariness and want, and sometimes felt his faith
growing low. Yet ever he sped on, hoping ever, enduring ever. In Egypt
he had rest and was fed and honoured by the people of the land, who
were fain to keep him to be one of their gods. And in a place called
Chemmis they built a statue of him when he had gone, and for many
hundreds of years it stood there. And the Egyptians said that ever and
again Perseus returned, and that when he came the Nile rose high and
the season was fruitful because he had blessed their land.
Far down below him as he flew one day he saw something white on a
purple rock in the sea. It seemed too large to be a snowy-plumaged
bird, and he darted swiftly downward that he might see more clearly.
The spray lashed against the steep rocks of the desolate island, and
showered itself upon a figure that at first he took to be a statue of
white marble. The figure was but that of a girl, slight and very
youthful, yet more fair even than any of the nymphs of the Hesperides.
Invisible in his Helmet of Darkness, Perseus drew near, and saw that
the fragile white figure was shaken by shivering sobs. The waves,
every few moments, lapped up on her little cold white feet, and he saw
that heavy chains held her imprisoned to that chilly rock in the sea.
A great anger stirred the heart of Perseus, and swiftly he took the
helmet from his head and stood beside her. The maid gave a cry of
terror, but there was no evil thing in the face of Perseus. Naught but
strength and kindness and purity shone out of his steady eyes.
Thus when, very gently, he asked her what was the meaning of her cruel
imprisonment, she told him the piteous story, as a little child tells
the story of its grief to the mother who comforts it. Her mother was
queen of Ethiopia, she said, and very, very beautiful. But when the
queen had boasted that no nymph who played amongst the snow-crested
billows of the sea was as fair as she, a terrible punishment was sent
to her. All along the coast of her father's kingdom a loathsome
sea-monster came to hold its sway, and hideous were its ravages. Men
and women, children and animals, all were equally desirable food for
its insatiate maw, and the whole land of Ethiopia lay in mourning
because of it. At last her father, the king, had consulted an oracle
that he might find help to rid the land of the monster. And the oracle
had told him that only when his fair daughter, Andromeda, had been
sacrificed to the creature that scourged the sea-coast would the
country go free. Thus had she been brought there by her parents that
one life might be given for many, and that her mother's broken heart
might expiate her sin of vanity. Even as Andromeda spoke, the sea was
broken by the track of a creature that cleft the water as does the
forerunning gale of a mighty storm. And Andromeda gave a piteous cry.
"Lo! he comes!" she cried. "Save me! ah, save me! I am so young to
die."
Then Perseus darted high above her and for an instant hung poised like
a hawk that is about to strike. Then, like the hawk that cannot miss
its prey, swiftly did he swoop down and smote with his sword the
devouring monster of the ocean. Not once, but again and again he
smote, until all the water round the rock was churned into slime and
blood-stained froth, and until his loathsome combatant floated on its
back, mere carrion for the scavengers of the sea.
Then Perseus hewed off the chains that held Andromeda, and in his arms
he held her tenderly as he flew with her to her father's land.
Who so grateful then as the king and queen of Ethiopia? and who so
happy as Andromeda? for Perseus, her deliverer, dearest and greatest
hero to her in all the world, not only had given her her freedom, but
had given her his heart.
Willingly and joyfully her father agreed to give her to Perseus for
his wife. No marriage feast so splendid had ever been held in Ethiopia
in the memory of man, but as it went on, an angry man with a band of
sullen-faced followers strode into the banqueting-hall. It was
Phineus, he who had been betrothed to Andromeda, yet who had not dared
to strike a blow for her rescue. Straight at Perseus they rushed, and
fierce was the fight that then began. But of a sudden, from the
goatskin where it lay hid, Perseus drew forth the head of Medusa, and
Phineus and his warriors were turned into stone.
For seven days the marriage feast lasted, but on the eighth night
Pallas Athene came to Perseus in a dream.
"Nobly and well hast thou played the hero, O son of Zeus!" she said;
"but now that thy toil is near an end and thy sorrows have ended in
joy, I come to claim the shoes of Hermes, the helmet of Pluto, the
sword, and the shield that is mine own. Yet the head of the Gorgon
must thou yet guard awhile, for I would have it laid in my temple at
Seriphos that I may wear it on my shield for evermore."
As she ceased to speak, Perseus awoke, and lo, the shield and helmet
and the sword and winged shoes were gone, so that he knew that his
dream was no false vision.
Then did Perseus and Andromeda, in a red-prowed galley made by cunning
craftsmen from Phoenicia, sail away westward, until at length they
came to the blue water of the AEgean Sea, and saw rising out of the
waves before them the rocks of Seriphos. And when the rowers rested on
their long oars, and the red-prowed ship ground on the pebbles of the
beach, Perseus and his bride sought Danae, the fair mother of Perseus.
Black grew the brow of the son of Danae when she told him what cruel
things she had suffered in his absence from the hands of Polydectes
the king. Straight to the palace Perseus strode, and there found the
king and his friends at their revels. For seven years had Perseus been
away, and now it was no longer a stripling who stood in the palace
hall, but a man in stature and bearing like one of the gods.
Polydectes alone knew him, and from his wine he looked up with mocking
gaze.
"So thou hast returned? oh nameless son of a deathless god," he said.
"Thou didst boast, but methinks thy boast was an empty one!"
But even as he spoke, the jeering smile froze on his face, and the
faces of those who sat with him stiffened in horror.
"O king," Perseus said, "I swore that, the gods helping me, thou
shouldst have the head of Medusa. The gods have helped me. Behold the
Gorgon's head."
Wild horror in their eyes, Polydectes and his friends gazed on the
unspeakable thing, and as they gazed they turned into stone--a ring of
grey stones that still sit on a hillside of Seriphos.
With his wife and his mother, Perseus then sailed away, for he had a
great longing to take Danae back to the land of her birth and to see
if her father, Acrisius, still lived and might not now repent of his
cruelty to her and to his grandson. But there he found that the sins
of Acrisius had been punished and that he had been driven from his
throne and his own land by a usurper. Not for long did the sword of
Perseus dwell in its scabbard, and speedily was the usurper cast
forth, and all the men of Argos acclaimed Perseus as their glorious
king. But Perseus would not be their king.
"I go to seek Acrisius," he said. "My mother's father is your king."
Again his galley sailed away, and at last, up the long Euboean Sea
they came to the town of Larissa, where the old king now dwelt.
A feast and sports were going on when they got there, and beside the
king of the land sat Acrisius, an aged man, yet a kingly one indeed.
And Perseus thought, "If I, a stranger, take part in the sports and
carry away prizes from the men of Larissa, surely the heart of
Acrisius must soften towards me."
Thus did he take off his helmet and cuirass, and stood unclothed
beside the youths of Larissa, and so godlike was he that they all
said, amazed, "Surely this stranger comes from Olympus and is one of
the Immortals."
In his hand he took a discus, and full five fathoms beyond those of
the others he cast it, and a great shout arose from those who watched,
and Acrisius cried out as loudly as all the rest.
"Further still!" they cried. "Further still canst thou hurl! thou art
a hero indeed!"
And Perseus, putting forth all his strength, hurled once again, and
the discus flew from his hand like a bolt from the hand of Zeus. The
watchers held their breath and made ready for a shout of delight as
they saw it speed on, further than mortal man had ever hurled before.
But joy died in their hearts when a gust of wind caught the discus as
it sped and hurled it against Acrisius, the king. And with a sigh like
the sigh that passes through the leaves of a tree as the woodman fells
it and it crashes to the earth, so did Acrisius fall and lie prone. To
his side rushed Perseus, and lifted him tenderly in his arms. But the
spirit of Acrisius had fled. And with a great cry of sorrow Perseus
called to the people:
"Behold me! I am Perseus, grandson of the man I have slain! Who can
avoid the decree of the gods?"
For many a year thereafter Perseus reigned as king, and to him and to
his fair wife were born four sons and three daughters. Wisely and well
he reigned, and when, at a good old age, Death took him and the wife
of his heart, the gods, who had always held him dear, took him up
among the stars to live for ever and ever. And there still, on clear
and starry nights, we may see him holding the Gorgon's head. Near him
are the father and mother of Andromeda--Cepheus and Cassiopeia, and
close beside him stands Andromeda with her white arms spread out
across the blue sky as in the days when she stood chained to the rock.
And those who sail the watery ways look up for guidance to one whose
voyaging is done and whose warfare is accomplished, and take their
bearings from the constellation of Cassiopeia.
NIOBE
"... Like Niobe, all tears."
Shakespeare.
The quotation is an overworked quotation, like many another of those
from _Hamlet_; yet, have half of those whose lips utter it more than
the vaguest acquaintance with the story of Niobe and the cause of her
tears? The noble group--attributed to Praxiteles--of Niobe and her
last remaining child, in the Uffizi Palace at Florence, has been so
often reproduced that it also has helped to make the anguished figure
of the Theban queen a familiar one in pictorial tragedy, so that as
long as the works of those Titans of art, Shakespeare and Praxiteles,
endure, no other monument is wanted for the memory of Niobe.
Like many of the tales of mythology, her tragedy is a story of
vengeance wreaked upon a mortal by an angry god. She was the daughter
of Tantalus, and her husband was Amphion, King of Thebes, himself a
son of Zeus. To her were born seven fair daughters and seven beautiful
and gallant sons, and it was not because of her own beauty, nor her
husband's fame, nor their proud descent and the greatness of their
kingdom, that the Queen of Thebes was arrogant in her pride. Very sure
she was that no woman had ever borne children like her own children,
whose peers were not to be found on earth nor in heaven. Even in our
own day there are mortal mothers who feel as Niobe felt.
But amongst the Immortals there was also a mother with children whom
she counted as peerless. Latona, mother of Apollo and Diana, was
magnificently certain that in all time, nor in eternity to come, could
there be a son and daughter so perfect in beauty, in wisdom, and in
power as the two that were her own. Loudly did she proclaim her proud
belief, and when Niobe heard it she laughed in scorn.
"The goddess has a son and a daughter," she said. "Beautiful and wise
and powerful they may be, but I have borne seven daughters and seven
sons, and each son is more than the peer of Apollo, each daughter more
than the equal of Diana, the moon-goddess!"
And to her boastful words Latona gave ear, and anger began to grow in
her heart.
Each year the people of Thebes were wont to hold a great festival in
honour of Latona and her son and daughter, and it was an evil day for
Niobe when she came upon the adoring crowd that, laurel-crowned, bore
frankincense to lay before the altars of the gods whose glories they
had assembled together to celebrate.
"Oh foolish ones!" she said, and her voice was full of scorn, "am I
not greater than Latona? I am the daughter of a goddess, my husband,
the king, the son of a god. Am I not fair? am I not queenly as Latona
herself? And, of a surety, I am richer by far than the goddess who has
but one daughter and one son. Look on my seven noble sons! behold the
beauty of my seven daughters, and see if they in beauty and all else
do not equal the dwellers in Olympus!"
And when the people looked, and shouted aloud, for in truth Niobe and
her children were like unto gods, their queen said, "Do not waste thy
worship, my people. Rather make the prayers to thy king and to me and
to my children who buttress us round and make our strength so great,
that fearlessly we can despise the gods."
In her home on the Cynthian mountain top, Latona heard the arrogant
words of the queen of Thebes, and even as a gust of wind blows
smouldering ashes into a consuming fire, her growing anger flamed into
rage. She called Apollo and Diana to her, and commanded them to avenge
the blasphemous insult which had been given to them and to their
mother. And the twin gods listened with burning hearts.
"Truly shalt thou be avenged!" cried Apollo. "The shameless one shall
learn that not unscathed goes she who profanes the honour of the
mother of the deathless gods!"
And with their silver bows in their hands, Apollo, the smiter from
afar, and Diana, the virgin huntress, hasted to Thebes. There they
found all the noble youths of the kingdom pursuing their sports. Some
rode, some were having chariot-races, and excelling in all things were
the seven sons of Niobe.
Apollo lost no time. A shaft from his quiver flew, as flies a bolt
from the hand of Zeus, and the first-born of Niobe fell, like a young
pine broken by the wind, on the floor of his winning chariot. His
brother, who followed him, went on the heels of his comrade swiftly
down to the Shades. Two of the other sons of Niobe were wrestling
together, their great muscles moving under the skin of white satin
that covered their perfect bodies, and as they gripped each other, yet
another shaft was driven from the bow of Apollo, and both lads fell,
joined by one arrow, on the earth, and there breathed their lives
away.
Their elder brother ran to their aid, and to him, too, came death,
swift and sure. The two youngest, even as they cried for mercy to an
unknown god, were hurried after them by the unerring arrows of Apollo.
The cries of those who watched this terrible slaying were not long in
bringing Niobe to the place where her sons lay dead. Yet, even then,
her pride was unconquered, and she defied the gods, and Latona, to
whose jealousy she ascribed the fate of her "seven spears."
"Not yet hast thou conquered, Latona!" she cried. "My seven sons lie
dead, yet to me still remain the seven perfect lovelinesses that I
have borne. Try to match them, if thou canst, with the beauty of thy
two! Still am I richer than thou, O cruel and envious mother of one
daughter and one son!"
But even as she spoke, Diana had drawn her bow, and as the scythe of a
mower quickly cuts down, one after the other, the tall white blossoms
in the meadow, so did her arrows slay the daughters of Niobe. When one
only remained, the pride of Niobe was broken. With her arms round the
little slender frame of her golden-haired youngest born, she looked up
to heaven, and cried upon all the gods for mercy.
"She is so little!" she wailed. "So young--so dear! Ah, spare me
_one_," she said, "only one out of so many!"
But the gods laughed. Like a harsh note of music sounded the twang of
Diana's bow. Pierced by a silver arrow, the little girl lay dead. The
dignity of Latona was avenged.
Overwhelmed by despair, King Amphion killed himself, and Niobe was
left alone to gaze on the ruin around her. For nine days she sat, a
Greek Rachel, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,
because they were not. On the tenth day, the sight was too much even
for the superhuman hearts of the gods to endure. They turned the
bodies into stone and themselves buried them. And when they looked on
the face of Niobe and saw on it a bleeding anguish that no human hand
could stay nor the word of any god comfort, the gods were merciful.
Her grief was immortalised, for Niobe, at their will, became a stone,
and was carried by a wailing tempest to the summit of Mount Sipylus,
in Lydia, where a spring of Argos bore her name. Yet although a rock
was Niobe,
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