Heathen mythology, Illustrated by extracts from the most celebrated writers, both ancient and modern
by Various · English · Gutenberg #34170 · 605,492 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Heathen mythology, Illustrated by extracts from the most celebrated writers, both ancient and modern
Author: Various
Release date: October 30, 2010 [eBook #34170]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34170
Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Keith Edkins and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY, ILLUSTRATED BY EXTRACTS FROM THE MOST CELEBRATED WRITERS, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN ***
Produced by David Edwards, Keith Edkins and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they
are listed at the end of the text.
* * * * *
HEATHEN
MYTHOLOGY:
ILLUSTRATED
BY EXTRACTS FROM THE MOST CELEBRATED WRITERS, BOTH ANCIENT
AND MODERN, ON THE
GODS OF GREECE, ROME, INDIA, SCANDINAVIA, ETC. ETC.
[Illustration]
AND EMBELLISHED WITH
NEARLY TWO HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS.
AFTER DESIGNS BY M. BARON.
* * * * *
LONDON:
WILLOUGHBY & CO., 22, WARWICK LANE;
AND 26, SMITHFIELD.
* * * * *
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLOUGHBY & CO., 26, SMITHFIELD.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
{v}
PREFACE.
------
Upon a subject which has occupied the thoughts, and employed the pens of
our most profound thinkers, and our ablest writers, it is perhaps difficult
to say much that is likely to interest the reader, without the chance of
being irksome from its proving a thrice told tale: and yet the subject is
in itself so interesting, and so intimately connected with all that is most
fascinating to our remembrances, and so blended with all that reminds us of
departed greatness, that it is scarcely possible to pass it coldly by, or
to speak in the language of others those ideas which excite our own
imaginations.
There was something very pleasing and very poetical in the thought, that
each river had its nymph, and every wood its god: that a visible power
watched over even the domestic duties of the people, ready to punish or
reward; and that, too in a manner so strange and immediate, that it must
have greatly affected their minds in stimulating to good, or deterring from
evil. They were, indeed, the days of "visible poetry;" the "young hunter,"
in the pursuit of his favourite sport, might image to his mind the form and
figure of Diana, accompanying him in the chase, not perhaps without a holy
fear lest she should become visible to him, and the fate of Acteon should
prove to be his. {vi}
The lover, as he sought the presence of his mistress, might, in his
enamoured idea of her beauty, fancy that his idolatry was a real one, and
that he wooed Venus in the form of a mortal: or, in the tremor which then
as now pervaded the lover's bosom, he might fear that Jove himself would
prove a rival, and, swan-like, or in some other as picturesque a form, win
her he sought for his own: and thus, every class of society, from the
patrician to the peasant, must have been imbued with feelings which, while
they believed them to be religious, we regard but as poetical.
Leigh Hunt, who has said many things upon Mythology, quite as beautiful as
his subject, remarks:--
"From having a different creed of our own, and always encountering the
Heathen Mythology in a poetical and fabulous shape, we are apt to have a
false idea of the religious feeling of the ancients. We are in the habit of
supposing, that they regarded their fables in the same poetical light as
ourselves; that they could not possibly put faith in Jupiter, Neptune, and
Pluto; in the sacrifice of innocent turtle doves, the libation of wine, and
the notions about Tartarus and Ixion.
"The greatest pleasure arising to a modern imagination from the ancient
Mythology, is in a mingled sense of the old popular belief, and of the
philosophical refinements upon it. We take Apollo, and Mercury and Venus,
as shapes that existed in popular credulity, as the greater fairies of the
ancient world: and we regard them, at the same time, as personifications of
all that is beautiful and genial in the forms and tendencies of creation.
But the result, coming, as it does too, through avenues of beautiful
poetry, both ancient and modern, is so entirely cheerful, that we are apt
to think it must have wanted gravity to more believing eyes. Every forest,
to the mind's eye of a Greek, was haunted with superior intelligences.
Every stream had its presiding nymph, who was thanked for her draught of
water. Every house had its protecting gods which had blessed the inmate's
ancestors; and which would bless him {vii} also, if he cultivated the
social affections: for the same word which expressed piety towards the
Gods, expressed love towards relations and friends. If in all this there
was nothing but the worship of a more graceful humanity, there may be
worships much worse as well as better.
"Imagine the feelings with which an ancient believer must have gone by the
oracular oaks of Dodona, or the calm groves of the Eumenides, or the
fountain where Proserpine vanished under ground with Pluto; or the
laurelled mountain Parnassus, on the side of which was the temple of
Delphi, where Apollo was supposed to be present in person. Imagine
Plutarch, a devout and yet a liberal believer, when he went to study
theology and philosophy at Delphi: with what feelings must he not have
passed along the woody paths of the hill, approaching nearer every instant
to the presence of the divinity, and not sure that a glance of light
through the trees was not the lustre of the god himself going by. This is
mere poetry to us, and very fine it is; but to him it was poetry, and
religion, and beauty, and gravity and hushing awe, and a path as from one
world to another."
G. Moir Bussey has also observed, with much elegance and feeling:--"The
Mythology of the Ancients is one long romance in itself, full of poetry and
passion--a mysterious compound of supernatural wonders and of human
thoughts and feelings. It entrances us by its marvels in childhood; and in
manhood we ponder over it, if not with the same rapturous delight as
formerly, yet at least with such a sense of pleasure as that inspired by
the perusal of a magnificent poem--the product of immortal
mind--refreshing, invigorating, exalting. Beauty and strength--the might of
man, and the majesty and sublimity of the misunderstood intelligences of
the godhead, not only constituted the worship of the Greeks of old, but
governed their lives, their actions, their laws, and the very aspirations
of their hearts. They aimed at excellence in the highest, in order that
their statues might be installed in their national temples as {viii} those
of demi-gods, and the struggle brought them sufficient knowledge and energy
to win deathless renown among men. All that they achieved, all that they
meditated, bespeaks the soaring of a race bent upon conquering every
obstacle--natural or artificial--which stood between them and absolute
perfection, whether in legislation, in philosophy, in art, in science, in
literature, in poetry, in war, or in dominion."
The reality of an every day world has now set its seal upon all that
delighted the days of our youth, and would even arouse us from our reveries
on this most charming of subjects: we will conclude with the words of Barry
Cornwall--
"Oh! ye delicious fables, where the wave,
And wood, were peopled; and the air, with things
So lovely--why, ah! why has science grave
Scattered afar your secret imaginings?
Why seared the delicate flowers that genius gave,
And dash the diamond drops from fancy's wings.
Alas! the spirit languishes and lies
At mercy of life's dull realities.
"No more by well or bubbling fountain clear
The Naiad dries her tresses in the sun,
Nor longer may we in the branches hear
The Dryad talk, nor see the Oread run
Along the mountains, nor the Nereid steer
Her way among the waves when day is done.
Shadows nor shape remain--"
* * * * *
{1} [Illustration]
HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY.
INTRODUCTION.
In the earlier part of the history of nations, Mythology has always been
found to exist; imaginary beings have been adored, and a system of worship
established, which, though imperfect in itself, was satisfactory to those,
who, looking beyond the abstract circumstance of its idolatry, discovered
the grand truth, that however rude, and however barbarous the people, there
was a principle evidently acknowledged in their actions, of the necessity
of a supreme being; and a feeling, of which they could not dispossess
themselves, that a divine being watched over, and was the rewarder of their
good, or the punisher of their evil deeds.
The priests of Phoenicia and Egypt were the origin of the elements of this
profane faith, and through their means, its transmission may be traced to
the Greeks, who, after adopting, purified, or at least assisted in greatly
refining it, before its reception by the Romans who multiplied their Gods
in about the same degree that their vices increased; while their armies,
which overran the {2} world, doubtless gave to the Scandanavians and the
Gauls their ideas of the faith of Odin; and the fables of the Hindoos, and
those of the American people, must be ascribed to the same source.
It has been with many an endeavour to trace, in the mythologies of various
nations, a resemblance to the more holy histories of our own faith; and
they assert that, in many of the fables with which we are familiar, are to
be traced the types or symbols of part of that revelation which is the
ground-work of our own belief. But this is, at best, so vague and shadowy,
that its inculcators get lost in their own inventions, and their followers
scarcely comprehend the assertions they are called on implicitly to
believe. With this we have nothing to do; the object of the present work
being the endeavour to offer a brief and succinct history of those Gods
whose adventures have created most interest, and by means of them to give
an additional zest to the perusal of the great poets and writers of
antiquity, whose works are either founded on these actual adventures, or
abound with allusions to them, and without the knowledge of which, it may
be asserted, that the mind is scarcely able to do justice to them any more
than to modern writers, since the works of the latter teem with images
drawn from classical subjects. Nor indeed is this to be wondered at, when
we consider the various subjects connected with fable; and in this view of
our subject we are borne out by a distinguished writer in the following
elegant remarks:
"Men of a phlegmatic disposition," observes Dr. Turner, "or of a censorious
temper, never cease to rail against the delightful fictions with which
Homer and Hesiod, and their poetical imitators, have enriched and
embellished their works; but although these fictions did not contain many
useful instructions, and important truths, would there be any reason to
attack and destroy a system, which peoples and animates nature, and which
makes a solemn temple of the vast universe? These flowers, whose varied and
shining beauty you so much admire, are the tears of Aurora. It is the
breath of Zephyrus which gently agitates the leaves. The soft murmurings of
the waters are the sighs of the Naiades. A god impels the wind; a god pours
out the rivers; grapes are the gift of Bacchus; Ceres presides over the
harvest; orchards are the care of Pomona. Does a shepherd sound his reed on
the summit of a mountain, it is Pan, who with his pastoral pipe returns the
amorous lay. {3}
"When the sportsman's horn rouses the attentive ear, it is Diana, armed
with her bow and quiver, and more nimble than the stag that she pursues,
who takes the diversion of the chase. The sun is a god, who, riding in a
car of fire, diffuses his light through the world; the stars are so many
divinities, who measure with their golden beams the regular progress of
time; the moon presides over the silence of night, and consoles the world
for the absence of her brother. Neptune reigns in the sea, surrounded by
the Naiades, who dance to the joyous shells of the Tritons. In the highest
heaven is seated Jupiter, master and father of men and gods. Under his feet
roll the thunders, in the caverns of Etna, forged by the Cyclops; his smile
rejoices nature; and his nods shakes the foundation of Olympus. Surrounding
the throne of their sovereign, the other divinities quaff nectar, from a
cup presented them by the young and beautiful Hebe. In the middle of the
great circle shines, with distinguished lustre, the unrivalled beauty of
Venus, alone adorned with a splendid girdle in which the Graces for ever
play, and in her hand is a smiling boy whose power is universally
acknowledged by heaven and earth. Sweet illusions of the fancy! pleasing
errors of the mind! what objects of pity are those cold and insensible
hearts who have never felt your charms! and what objects of pity and
indignation those fierce and savage spirits, who would destroy a world that
has so long been the treasury of the arts! a world, imaginary indeed, but
delightful, and whose ideal pleasures are so well fitted to compensate for
the real troubles and miseries of the world in which we live."
If we turn to a still higher authority (and we acknowledge that the subject
has been treated of so often and in so masterly a style by men of whom the
world was scarcely worthy, that we are willing rather to present their
mature opinions, than to obtrude our own) we shall find that Lord Bacon
treats upon the subject in a manner which maintains his high character as a
profound thinker. "I am not ignorant," he says, "how uncertain fiction is,
and how liable to be wrested to this or that sense, nor how prevalent wit
and discourse are, so as ingeniously to apply such meanings as were not
thought of originally; but let not the follies and license of a few lessen
the esteem due to parables; for that would be profane and bold, since
religion delights in such veils and shadows: but, reflecting on human
wisdom, I ingenuously confess my real opinion is, that {4} mystery and
allegory were from the original intended in many fables of the ancient
poets, this appears apt and conspicuous to me; whether ravished with a
veneration for antiquity, or because I find such coherence in the
similitude with the things signified, in the very texture of the fable, and
in the propriety of the names which are given to the persons or actors in
the fables; and no man can positively deny that this was the sense proposed
from the beginning, and industriously veiled in this manner.... No one
should be moved, if he sometimes finds any addition for the sake of
history, or by way of embellishment; or if chronology should happen to be
confounded, or if part of one fable should be transferred to another, and a
new allegory introduced: for these were all necessary, and to be expected,
seeing they are the inventions of men of different ages, and who writ to
different ends; some with a view to the nature of things and others to
civil affairs. We have another sign, and that no small one, of this hidden
sense which we have been speaking of, which is that some of these fables
are in the narration so foolish and absurd, that they seem to claim a
parable at a distance. Such as are probable may be feigned for amusement,
and in imitation of history; but where no such designs appear, but they
seem to be what none would imagine or relate, they must be calculated for
other uses. What has a great weight with me is, that many of these fables
seem not to be invented by those who have related them, Homer, Hesiod, and
other writers; for were they the fictions of that age and of those who
delivered them down to us, nothing great and exalted, according to my
opinion, could be expected from such an origin; but if any one will
deliberate on this subject attentively, these will appear to be delivered
and related as what were before believed and received, and not as tales
then first invented and communicated; besides, as they are told in
different manners, by authors of almost the same times, they are easily
perceived to be common, and derived from old tradition, and are various
only from the additional embellishments diverse writers have bestowed on
them.... The wisdom of the ancients was either great or happy, great if
these figures were the fruits of their industry; and happy if they looked
no further, that they have afforded matter and occasion so worthy of
contemplation."
* * * * *
{5}
THE DIVINITIES OF FABLE.
------
The stars were the first recipients of the homage of mankind; and thus
Heaven is the most ancient of the Gods. As the world increased they deified
heroes.
The Gods of the ancients were divided into many classes. The principal, or
Gods of the first order, amounted to twenty, viz:--Jupiter, Juno, Neptune,
Ceres, Mercury, Minerva, Vesta, Apollo, Diana, Venus, Mars, Vulcan,
Destiny, Saturn, Genius, Pluto, Bacchus, Love, Cybele, and Proserpine.
Besides these more important ones, they had others, such as Chaos; which
did not belong to any particular class, and which were not the object of
any faith.
"Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heaven's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of nature--if a face;
Rather a rude and indigested mass;
A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,
Of jarring seeds; and justly CHAOS named.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew;
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky;
Nor poised, did on her own foundations lie;
Nor seas about their shores the arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And waters dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confused, and each disturbed the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fix'd;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mix'd.
But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end:
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driven,
And grosser air sunk from ethereal Heaven.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a numerous throng
Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had formed the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round:
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blew;
And bade the congregated waters flow:
{6}
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes,
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part in earth are swallowed up; the most
In ample oceans disembogued, are lost:
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
And as five zones the ethereal regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to earth assigned:
The sun with rays, directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain."
OVID.
CHAOS is often mentioned in the history of the Gods, but seems only to have
had a momentary reign. He is the most ancient of all, for he presided over
the elements that composed the universe. He is usually represented at the
moment that he assigned to each element its place. To create the light of
day, he repelled all the dark and thick clouds, and then formed the zodiac,
glittering with stars above his head.
[Illustration]
The poetic idea of Chaos is found in sacred history, in the creation, as
well as in all mythology, where we see the names of Bramah, Vishnu, and
Siva.
* * * * *
{7}
URANUS, OR HEAVEN.
------
Uranus, or Heaven, was the Day. Espousing his sister Titaea, from their
union sprang the Titans, those giants of antiquity who occupy so important
a position in the annals of Fable. Of these children of the earth the
principal were Titan, Saturn, and Hyperion, of the males; whilst among the
females were comprised Thea, Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne. After this Titaea
bore the Cyclops, three of whom became servants to Vulcan, forging, under
his direction, the thunderbolts of the great Jove; while the remainder
wandered around the coast, leading the lives of shepherds.
"Three sons are sprung from Heaven and Earth's embrace,
The Cyclops bold, in heart a haughty race,
Brontes and Steropes, and Arges brave,
Who to the hands of Jove the thunder gave;
They for almighty power did lightning frame,
All equal to the gods themselves in fame;
One eye was placed (a large round orb, and bright)
Amidst their forehead to receive the light;
Hence were they Cyclops called."
HESIOD.
[Illustration]
Uranus, however, as time passed, began to fear lest the offspring, which
rose to such gigantic strength, should dethrone him; and by his power he
threw them down an abyss, into which the light of day could never
penetrate. This tyranny, however, only ripened the spirit of rebellion
which he feared, and their frightful confinement but urged them to greater
efforts to escape. They all arose against him, but were compelled to yield
after a desperate struggle {8} for supremacy; while rebellion brought its
accustomed curse in heavier chains and more rigorous captivity, to all save
Saturn, who, led by ambition and vengeance, and assisted by his mother in
his schemes, dethroned his sire, usurped his empire, and delivered his
brethren.
The defeated monarch fell beneath his son's parricidal hand; and from the
blood thus shed sprang the Giants and the Furies, rendering fruitful also
the foam of the sea, of which was born Venus Aphrodite.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
SATURN.
------
By right of succession the sceptre of Uranus belonged to Titan, the eldest
of the sons of the murdered monarch.
---- "Titan, heaven's first born,
With his enormous brood, and birthright seized
By younger Saturn; he from mightier Jove
His own and Rhea's son like measure found
* * * * * *
---- Or who with Saturn old
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields,
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost Isles."
MILTON.
[Illustration: The Dance of the Corybantes.]
{9} Compelled to renounce his claim in favour of Saturn, who delivered them
all from their confinement; but with the condition that whatever children
might be born to him, should be destroyed. Saturn, faithful to his promise,
swallowed, at their birth, all the male children brought to him by his wife
Cybele. But a mother's yearning for her offspring, appears to have filled
even the breast of a goddess; and when delivered of Jupiter and Juno, she
placed a stone instead of the newly-born, in the arms of the god, habited
in an infant's dress.
[Illustration]
---- "Jealous of the infant's future power,
A stone the mother gave him to devour;
Greedy he seized the imaginary child,
And swallowed heedless, by the dress beguiled;
Nor thought the wretched god of aught to fear,
Nor knew the day of his disgrace was near;
Invincible remains his Jove alive,
His throne to shake, and from his kingdom drive
The cruel parent; for to him 'tis given
To rule the gods, and mount the throne of heaven."
HESIOD.
Saturn devoured this, as he had the previous offerings; and emboldened by
her success, Cybele delivered in the same manner Pluto and Neptune, and
afterwards, by administering a potion, compelled him to yield up those he
had already swallowed. Jupiter, the first whom the Goddess had saved by her
artifice, was brought up secretly in the Isle of Crete, by the Corybantes,
or warrior priests, who, making a deafening noise with their drums and
cymbals, prevented for a period the cries of the infant from reaching the
ears of Titan: when, however, the latter discovered, as he eventually did,
that his hopes had been deceived, and his {10} agreement broken, he
assembled an army, marched against Saturn, (who by this time was made aware
of the deception, but refused to destroy his children), took him prisoner,
and threw him into Tartarus, from whence he was delivered by Jupiter, and
replaced upon his throne. But the fears of Saturn rendered him ungrateful
to his deliverer, for Destiny having prophesied that Saturn should be
dethroned by his son, the God attacked Jupiter in ambush, and finished, by
declaring open war against him. Jupiter, however, again proved conqueror,
chasing from heaven his father and his king, who took refuge in that part
of Italy known as Latium; Janus, monarch of this city of refuge, succoured
and received him, and Saturn, to recompense his hospitality, granted to him
the gift of memory, and of looking into the future. From this cause, Janus
is represented with a double face. The time which Saturn passed on earth is
known as the age of gold.
"Ere Saturn's rebel son usurped the skies;
When beasts were only slain in sacrifice;
While peaceful Crete enjoyed her ancient lord;
Ere sounding hammers forged the inhuman sword;
Ere hollow drums were beat; before the breath
Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death,
The good old God his hunger did assuage
With roots and herbs, and gave the _golden age_."
VIRGIL.
------
"The Golden age was first; when man yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And with a native bent did good pursue!
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere.
Needless was written law, when none oppressed,
The law of man was written in his breast;
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard;
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard:
The mountain trees in distant prospects please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;
Ere sails were spread new oceans to explore,
And happy mortals unconcerned for more,
Confined their wishes to their native shore:
No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpets' angry sound;
Nor swords were forged, but void of care or crime,
The soft creation slept away their time;
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked did fruitful stores allow;
{11}
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed:
The flowers unsown in fields and meadows reigned,
And western winds immortal spring maintained;
In following years the bearded corn ensued,
From earth unasked, nor was that earth renewed;
From veins of valleys, milk and nectar broke,
And honey sweating thro' the pores of oak."
OVID.
From the gaieties and fetes which then took place arose the name of
Saturnalia, or fetes of Saturn, which lasted three, four, and five days,
and took place in December. All work was stayed, friend interchanged gifts
with friend, the preparations for war and the execution of criminals were
alike suspended, while masters waited on their slaves at table, in
remembrance of the ideas of liberty and equality, which existed in ancient
days.
Janus was represented supported by a staff, with a key in his hand, as he
was believed to be the inventor of doors and of locks. From his name came
the month of January. He worshipped at twelve altars, to represent the
twelve months; and wore occasionally four faces, as tokens of the four
seasons of the year. At Rome, in which his temple was placed, it was open
in the time of war, and shut during that of peace.
Saturn, or Time, is represented sometimes on a flying chariot, and
sometimes on a throne, under the figure of an old and bearded man, severe
in aspect, thin and yet robust, his eyes marked by a stern light; a veil on
his head, and a serpent round his waist; while in his hand he carries a
harp. In later times he is represented with a scythe.
"Unfathomable sea! whose waves are years;
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears;
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest wrecks on its inhospitable shore.
Treacherous in calm and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable sea?"
SHELLEY.
With his scythe and with his wings, our eyes are familiar, as, to the
present day, he is never drawn without these accompaniments. {12}
"To one that marks the quick and certain round
Of year on year, and finds that every day
Brings its grey hair, or bears a leaf away
From the full glory with which life is crowned,
Ere youth becomes a shade, and fame a sound:
Surely to one that feels his foot on sand
Unsure, the bright and ever visible hand
Of Time, points far above the lowly bound
Of pride that perishes: and leads the eye
To loftier objects and diviner ends;
A tranquil strength, sublime humility,
A knowledge of ourselves, a faith in friends,
A sympathy for all things born to die,
With cheerful love for those whom truth attends."
LAMAN BLANCHARD.
[Illustration]
This fable is easy of explanation. Time is the child of heaven and earth;
he has wings because he flies rapidly, a scythe because he destroys all, an
hour-glass to measure his course equally; and the serpent is the symbol of
eternity, which has neither a beginning nor an end. He slew his father,
because, the world and time once created, he could exist no longer; he
devoured his infants because time destroys all, and he threw them from his
stomach because time returns with the years and days; and this part of the
fable is also an image of the operations which nature accomplishes under
the influence of time. He did not devour Jupiter, as he represents the
celestial regions, nor Juno, she being the prototype of the air: Time,
mighty and all-destroying as he is, having no influence over the elements.
* * * * *
{13}
CYBELE, VESTA.
------
This goddess was the daughter of Uranus, being the sister and wife of
Saturn. As soon as she was born, she was exposed on a mountain, but being
preserved and suckled by some of the wild beasts of the forest, she
received the name of Cybele from the mountain where her life had been
preserved. She is called also the ancient Vesta, to distinguish her from
her daughter Vesta, who, with her mother, is also called Cybele. But the
Deity of whom we now write is the earth, and is easy to distinguish from
her daughter. In several temples of the ancients, the statues of Cybele
were only a piece of stone, meant to represent the stability of the earth.
This great Goddess saw and became enamoured of a shepherd, who repulsed her
affection, being in love with a mortal nymph; and rather than submit to the
tyrannical passion of Cybele, he is said to have destroyed himself, and the
goddess metamorphosed him into a pine-tree.
[Illustration]
In the mythology of every country, this Deity is found, though under
various names. She is represented with keys in her hand, her head crowned
with rising turrets, and sometimes with the leaves {14} of an oak. She is
also seen with many breasts, to intimate that the earth gives aliment to
all living creatures.
To her daughter, who presided over the fiery element, Numa Pompilius
consecrated an altar, where virgins, named Vestals, maintained perpetual
fire. At Delphi and at Athens the priestesses were not virgins, as at the
other temples, but widows who were past the time of marriage.
[Illustration]
It was the employment of the Vestals to take care that the sacred fire of
Vesta was not extinguished, for if it ever happened, it was deemed the
prognostic of great calamities to the state: the offender was punished for
negligence, and severely scourged by the high priest. The privileges of the
Vestals were great: they had the most honourable seats at the public games
and festivals, a lictor preceded them when they walked in public; they were
carried in chariots when they pleased, and had the power of pardoning
criminals if they encountered them on the way to execution, and the meeting
was declared to be purely accidental.
Such of them as forgot their vow, were placed in a large hole under the
earth, where a bed was placed, with a little bread, wine, {15} oil, and a
lighted lamp: the guilty Vestal was stripped of the habit of her order, and
compelled to descend into the subterranean cavity, which was immediately
shut, and she was left to die of hunger.
_Vestal._ Spare me! oh spare!
_Priest._ Speak not, polluted one.
_Vestal._ Yet spare me!
_Priest._ Thou pleadst in vain--thy destiny is fixed.
_Vestal._ Mercy--oh! mercy; tho' my sin be great,
Life is so beautiful I cannot die;
And earth seems smiling with intenser light,
And flowers give forth an odour ever new,
The stars look brighter still than when of old
I watched them fading from the mountain top:
Earth, sky and air, are all so beautiful,
I cannot, dare not, will not, think of death!
_Priest._ It is thy doom! thy living grave is near.
Thou hast despoiled the Goddess of her due,
The vow thou gavest to her thou hast broken,
And thou must pay the awful penalty!
_Vestal._ The grave--a living grave--thou meanst it not--
To ope my eyes in th' ever during dark,
To breathe a thick and frightful atmosphere,
Drawn from my sighs and dampened with my tears!
_Priest._ The Gods demand their victim!
_Vestal._ 'Tis blasphemy to think it;
Oh! if thou ever knew'st a father's love,
A mother's sigh, a sister's soft caress,
If but one human sympathy be left,
Pardon, oh! pardon!
_Priest._ Cling not around me, girl, touch, touch me not;
The power to pardon lieth not in man.
Thy hour hath come.
_Vestal, (clasping him)._ I will not quit thee;
Thou art a man with human sympathies;
Madness will touch my brain; I cannot, will not yield.
Grant me some other death: poison or steel,
Or aught that sends me suddenly from earth;
But to be wrapt in clay, and yet not of it,
To feel the earth crumbling around my brow,
To scent its foul and noisome atmosphere,
Is more than frail mortality can bear.
ANON.
[Illustration] {16}
JUPITER.
------
The nymphs of mount Ida, to whom Cybele had confided her son, educated him
with great care; but his cries being likely to call the attention of Saturn
and Titan, the priests invented a dance accompanied with noise, called the
Dactyl, in which they interchanged blows on steel bucklers. His nourishment
was received from a goat, who was afterwards placed among the heavenly
constellations, having given his skin to form a shield, and one of his
horns, which was presented to the nymphs, and named the Horn of Plenty. As
Jupiter emerged from infancy, we have seen he had to strive with the
Titans, who disputed with him the right to reign in Heaven.
The first of their feats was to heap mountain on mountain in order to scale
the walls of Heaven; they then threw fragments of rocks and burning trees
against "high Olympus."
"But vainly came Typhaeus on,
And vainly huge Porphyrion,
Fierce Rhoetus of the vengeful stroke,
And Minias strong as mountain oak,
With bold Encelaedas, to heaven who strove
To dart the trees, uprooted, from the grove:
For weak their might against the shield
Which Pallas' matchless arm did wield;
While quick against the giant foes
Juno, and ardent Vulcan, rose;
And to the fight the young Apollo sped,
Glittering afar with bows and arrows dread,
Who bathing in Castalian dew,
His tresses loose of golden hue,
Rejoicing in his youth is seen
Amid the Lycian valleys green,
Or in the Delian groves will sport oftwhile
Amid the flowers that deck his native isle."
HORACE.
The Gods at first defended themselves with great courage, but at the
appearance of the hundred-headed Typhon, all, save Bacchus, sought safety
in flight, and hid themselves in Egypt, where they obtained refuge under
various forms: from the different disguises they then assumed, may be
traced the worship rendered by the Egyptians to both animals and
vegetables. {17}
Typhon, who thus, by his mere appearance, seemed to turn the tide of war,
is thus described:
----------------"Typhon, whose hands
Of strength are fitted to tremendous deeds;
And indefatigable are the feet
Of the strong God: and from his shoulders rise
A hundred snaky heads of dragon growth."
HESIOD.
Notwithstanding the dire appearance of this monster, Bacchus fought bravely
against the foes of Heaven, and took the form of a Lion, while animated by
the cries of Jupiter, who shouted "Courage, courage!" his bravery turned
the tide of war.
"And now the murmur of incitement flies,
All ranged in martial order, through the skies;
Here Jove above the rest conspicuous shined,
In valour equal to his strength his mind;
Erect and dauntless see the thunderer stand,
The bolts red hissing from his vengeful hand;
He walks majestic round the starry frame;
And now the lightnings from Olympus flame.
The earth wide blazes with the fires of Jove,
Nor the flash spares the verdure of the grove."
HESIOD.
The invaders, at length, were overthrown, and crushed beneath the mountains
which they themselves had prepared to execute their vengeance on Jupiter.
Many times, though vainly, the Titans sought to avenge their defeat; and
Olympus, from this time, was only troubled by internal dissensions.
--------------"The bruised Titans mourned
Within a den where no insulting light
Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans
They felt, but heard not; hard flint they sat upon,
Couches of rugged stone and slaty ridge,
Stubborned with iron.
Coeus and Gyges and Briareus,
With many more, the brawniest in assault,
Were pent in regions of laborious breath;
Dungeoned in opague element to keep
Their clenched teeth still clenched, and all their limbs
Locked up like veins of metal cramped and screwed:
Without a motion save of their big hearts,
Heaving in pain."
KEATS' HYPERION.
After his victory, Jupiter, who had driven Saturn from Heaven, and was in
consequence its undisputed king, espoused Juno his sister. {18} The
commencement of their union was a happy one, and was called the age of
silver, being an era of virtue, less pure, however, than that of the age of
gold.
"But when good Saturn banished from above
Was driven to hell, the world was under Jove.
Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold;
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear,
And spring was but a season of the year.
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted and enlarged the bad.
Then air with sultry heat began to glow;
The wings of winds were clogged with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals into houses driven,
Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses then were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds:
Then ploughs for seed the fruitful farrows broke,
And oxen laboured first beneath the yoke."
OVID.
Nor was crime long in making its appearance. Hyacon, King of Arcadia,
violated all the laws of hospitality by the massacre of his guests. He had
the cruelty to offer up to Jupiter, in one of the high festivals, the
members of a slave, as an offering to the God. But his punishment was as
swift as his conduct had been atrocious: his palace was reduced to ashes,
and his form was changed into that of a wolf. From this Jupiter took the
name which denotes him an avenger of the laws of hospitality.
Jupiter is also distinguished by the name of Ammon from the following
circumstance:
Bacchus being in the midst of the sands of Arabia, was seized with a thirst
so burning, that he was reduced to long even for a drop of water. Jupiter
presented himself to him under the form of a battering-ram, and striking
the earth, caused the grateful liquid to spring forth in abundance.
Bacchus, to commemorate the deed, erected a temple to his benefactor in the
deserts of Lybia, under the name of Jupiter Ammon, i. e.--sandy.
By this time mankind had owed their creation to the King of the Gods.
Prometheus, grand-son of Uranus, having deceived Jupiter, he was punished
by being withheld from the element of fire; and to enrage his sovereign, he
formed a being of clay, of workmanship so exquisite, that it scarcely
seemed to need life to add to its beauty, and to complete his performance,
assisted {19} by Minerva, he stole fire from the chariot of the sun,
wherewith to animate his image.
[Illustration]
Enraged at this daring, Jupiter had him conveyed to Mount Caucasus, where
being chained to the rock, a vulture preyed upon his entrails, which grew
as fast as they were devoured, thus subjecting him to a never dying
torture.
------------------"Awful sufferer!
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge.
Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself,
That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, heaven seems hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent: as yon clear lamps,
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach. Even now the Torturer arms
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in hell;
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Oh that we might be spared: I to inflict,
And thou to suffer! once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?
_Prometheus._ I know but this, that it must come.
_First Fury._ Prometheus!
_Second Fury._ Immortal Titan!
_Third Fury._ Champion of Heaven's slaves!
_Pro._ He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
Whence and what are ye? Never yet there came
{20}
Phantasms so foul thro' monster-teeming hell,
From the all miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
_First Fury._ We are ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and, as lean dogs pursue
Thro' wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great king betrays them to our will.
_Pro._ Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathed selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep!
_Second Fury._ We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice! rejoice!
_Pro._ Can aught exult in its deformity?
_Second Fury._ The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
Gazing on one another: so are we,
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for a festal crown of flowers,
The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
So from our victim's destined agony,
The shade which is our form invests us round;
Else we are shapeless as our mother night.
_Pro._ I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
_First Fury._ Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within!
_Pro._ Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
Ye rend me now; I care not.
_Second Fury._ Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?
_Pro._ I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
Being evil. Cruel is the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched into light!
_Third Fury._ Thou think'st we will live through thee one by one,
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain, loud multitude,
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins,
Crawling like agony.
_Pro._ Why use me thus now,
Yet am I king over my self's rule,
The torturing and conflicting throes within,
As Jove rules you when hell grows mutinous."
SHELLEY.
This provoked the vengeance of Jupiter, and he ordered Vulcan to create a
female, whom they called Pandora. All the Gods vied in making presents.
Venus gave her beauty, and the art of pleasing; {21} Apollo taught her to
sing; Mercury instructed her in eloquence; Minerva gave her the most rich
and splendid ornaments. From these valuable presents which she received
from the Gods, the woman was called Pandora, which intimates that she had
received every necessary gift. Jupiter, after this, gave her a beautiful
box, which she was ordered to present to the man who married her; and by
the command of the god, Mercury conducted her to Prometheus. The artful
mortal was sensible of the deceit; and as he had always distrusted Jupiter,
he sent away Pandora without suffering himself to be captivated by her
charms.
"He spoke, and told to Mulciber his will,
And smiling bade him his command fulfil;
To use his greatest art, his nicest care,
To frame a creature exquisitely fair;
To temper well the clay with water, then
To add the vigour and the voice of men;
To let her first in virgin lustre shine,
In form a goddess, with a bloom divine;
And next the sire demands Minerva's aid,
In all her various skill to train the maid
Bids her the secrets of the loom impart,
To cast a curious thread with happy heart;
And golden Venus was to teach the fair
The wiles of love, and to improve her air;
And then in awful majesty to shed
A thousand graceful charms around her head.
Next Hermes, artful god, must form her mind,
One day to torture, and the next be kind:
With manners all deceitful, and her tongue
Fraught with abuse, and with detraction hung;
Jove gave the mandate, and the gods obeyed:
First Vulcan formed of earth the blushing maid;
Minerva next performed the task assigned,
With every female art adorned her mind;
To her the Beauties and the Graces join,
Around her person, lo! the diamonds shine.
To deck her brows the fair tressed seasons bring,
A garland breathing all the sweets of spring:
Each present Pallas gives its proper place,
And adds to every ornament a grace!
Next Hermes taught the fair the heart to move
With all the false alluring arts of love,
Her manners all deceitful, and her tongue
With falsehoods fruitful, and detraction hung;
The finished maid the gods Pandora call,
Because a tribute she received from all;
And thus 'twas Jove's command the sex began
A lovely mischief to the soul of man!
Within her hand the nymph a casket bears,
Full of diseases and corroding cares:
{22}
Which opened, they to taint the world begin
And Hope alone remained entire within!
Such was the fatal present from above,
And such the will of cloud compelling Jove:
And now unnumbered woes o'er mortals reign
Alike infected is the land and main;
O'er human race distempers silent stray,
And multiply their strength by night and day!
'Twas Jove's decree they should in silence rove,
For who is able to contend with Jove?"
HESIOD.
When the box was opened, there issued from it a multitude of evils and
distempers, which dispersed themselves over the world, and which from that
fatal moment have never ceased to afflict the human race. Hope alone
remained at the bottom, and that only has the power of easing the labours
of man, and rendering his troubles less painful.
"But thou, oh! Hope, with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!
Still would her touch the strain prolong,
And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,
She called on Echo still throughout the song;
And where her sweetest theme she chose
A soft responsive voice was heard at every close,
And Hope, enchanted, smiled and waved her golden hair!"
COLLINS.
------
"Hope sets the stamp of vanity on all,
That men have deemed substantial since the fall,
Yet has the wondrous virtue to educe,
From emptiness itself, a real use;
And while she takes, as at a father's hand,
What health and sober appetite demand,
From fading good derives with chemic art
That lasting happiness, a thankful heart.
Hope with uplifted foot set free from earth
Pants for the place of her ethereal birth;
Hope, as an anchor firm and sure, holds fast
The Christian vessel, and defies the blast.
Hope! nothing else can nourish and secure
His new born virtue, and preserve him pure.
Hope! let the wretch once conscious of the joy,
Whom now despairing agonies destroy,
Speak, for he can, and none so well as he,
What treasures centre, what delights in thee.
Had he the gems, the spices, and the land
That boasts the treasure, all at his command,
The fragrant grove, th' inestimable mine,
Were light when weighed against one smile of thine."
COWPER.
{23}
After this commenced the age of steel, when even Jupiter abandoned himself
to the fiery passions of love, jealousy, and vengeance.
----------"Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame the world forsook;
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.
Then sails were spread to every wind that blew,
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new;
Trees, rudely hollowed, did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph, ploughed the watery plain.
Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light:
Nor was the ground alone required to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,
But greedy mortals rummaging her store,
Dug from her entrails first the precious ore,
Which next to hell the prudent Gods had laid,
And that alluring ill to sight displayed.
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made the mischief bold,
And double did wretched man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed.
Now (brandished weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands:
No right of hospitality remain;
The guest, by him who harboured him, is slain.
The son-in-law pursues the father's life,
The wife her husband murders, he the wife;
The step-dame poison for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father's years.
Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here opprest, to heaven returns."
OVID.
He was enamoured of Antiope, Alcmena, Danae, Leda, Semele, Europa, Calista,
and a crowd of other goddesses and mortals.
The principal names given to Jupiter are the Thunderer, the Avenger, the
God of Day, the God of the Worlds, and lastly of Olympus, in which he
dwelt, and on which poets and painters have exercised their imaginations.
The figures of Jupiter have varied according to the circumstances and the
times in which they have appeared. He has been represented as a swan, a
bull, a shower of gold, and as a cuckoo: but Homer appears to have inspired
ideas of the most noble kinds to the sculptors of antiquity. The divine
poet represents the King of Gods seated on a golden throne, at the feet of
which are two cups, containing the principle of good and evil. His brow
laden with {24} dark clouds; his eyes darting lightning from beneath their
lids; and his chin covered with a majestic beard. In one hand the sceptre,
in the other a thunderbolt. The virtues are at his side: at his feet the
eagle who bears the thunderbolt. One frown from his eyes makes the whole
earth tremble.
[Illustration]
The Olympian games in Greece were instituted in honour of this God, from
those celebrated at Olympus. The following, perhaps the finest description
we have of Jupiter, while granting the prayer of Achilles, is from Homer's
Iliad.
"Twelve days were passed, and now the dawning light,
The Gods had summoned to the Olympian height.
Jove first ascending from the watery bowers,
Leads the long order of ethereal powers.
When like the morning mist in early days,
Rose from the flood the daughter of the seas;
And to the seats divine her flight addressed.
There far apart, and high above the rest
The Thunderer sat; where old Olympus shrouds
His hundred heads in heaven, and props the clouds.
Suppliant the Goddess stood: one hand she placed
Beneath his beard, and one his knees embraced:
'If e'er, O father of the Gods!' she said,
'My words could please thee, or my actions aid;
Some marks of honour on my son bestow,
And pay in glory what in life you owe.
Fame is at least by heavenly promise due,
To life so short, and now dishonoured too.
Avenge this wrong, oh ever just and wise;
Let Greece be humbled, and the Trojans rise;
Till the proud king, and all the Achaian race,
Shall heap with honours him they now disgrace.'"
HOMER.
[Illustration: OLYMPUS.]
{25}
Jupiter is often described by the ancients as visiting the earth in
disguise, and distributing to its inhabitants his punishments or rewards.
Ovid relates one in connexion with the luxury of Rome, and in which the
hospitality of Baucis and Philemon saved them from the fate of their
friends. He is represented as the guardian of man, and dispenser of good
and evil.
"While we to Jove select the holy victim,
Whom after shall we sing than Jove himself?
The God for ever great, for ever king,
Who slew the earth-born race, and measures right
To heaven's great habitants.
Swift growth and wondrous grace, oh! heavenly Jove,
Waited thy blooming years: inventive wit,
And perfect judgment crowned thy youthful act.
Thou to the lesser gods hast well assigned
Their proper shares of power; thy own, great Jove,
Boundless and universal. Each monarch rules
His different realm, accountable to thee,
Great ruler of the world; these only have
To speak and be obeyed; to those are given
Assistant days to ripen the design;
To some whole months; revolving years to some;
Others, ill-fated, are condemned to toil
Their tedious life, and mourn their purpose blasted,
With fruitless act and impotence of counsel.
Hail! greatest son of Saturn, wise disposer
Of every good; thy praise what man yet born
Has sung? or who that may be born shall sing?
Again, and often, hail! indulge our prayer,
Great Father! grant us virtue, grant us wealth,
For without virtue, wealth to man avails not,
And virtue without wealth exerts less power,
And less diffuses good. Then grant us, Gracious,
Virtue and wealth, for both are of thy gift!"
PRIOR.
* * * * *
JUNO.
------
Juno, who was the daughter of Saturn and Cybele, was also sister and wife
to Jupiter. Her pride protected her beauty: for when the God, to seduce
her, took the form of a cuckoo, she recognised him in his disguise, and
refused to submit to his wishes, unless he would consent to marry her. At
their nuptials, invitations were sent to all the Gods, and beings of even a
lower order were not forgotten. But one nymph, by the insolence of her
refusal, merited {26} the punishment she received of being changed into a
tortoise, and became the symbol of silence.
As might be expected, the marriage of Jupiter and Juno, was not productive
of much happiness, the jealousy of the latter being a never-failing source
of misery; it was this which caused the celebrated Trojan war; and this
that caused Jupiter to suspend her from Heaven by a golden cord, in the
attempt to rescue her from which, Vulcan achieved the wrath of his sire,
the Thunderer.
[Illustration]
The intrigue of Jupiter with Io, is also celebrated in the history of his
amours. Juno became jealous as usual, discovered the object of his
affections, and surprised him in the company of Io; a change soon took
place in the appearance of the latter, when, through the {27} influence of
the God, she assumed the form of a white heifer. Juno instantly discovered
the fraud, and requested Jupiter to give her possession of an animal she so
much admired.
The request was too reasonable to be refused, and Io became the property of
Juno, who placed her under the control of the hundred-eyed Argus: but
Jupiter, anxious for the situation of Io, sent Mercury, who destroyed
Argus, and restored her to liberty.
"Down from the rock fell the dissevered head,
Opening its eyes in death, and falling bled,
And marked the passage with a crimson trail;
Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold and pale,
And all his hundred eyes with all their light
Are closed at once in one perpetual night;
These Juno takes, that they no more may fail,
And spreads them in her peacock's gaudy tail."
OVID.
After undergoing the vengeance of Juno, who unrelentingly pursued her, she
gave birth to an infant on the banks of the Nile, and was restored by
Jupiter to her natural shape.
All who seemed to be favoured by, or who favoured Jupiter, she persecuted
with the utmost rigour: but when it is remembered what cause Juno had for
her jealousy, and that her husband metamorphosed himself into a swan for
Leda, into a shepherd for Mnemosyne, into a shower of gold for Danae, and
into a bull for Europa, she may easily be pardoned her restless spirit.
When Jupiter had assumed the form of a bull, he mingled with the herds
belonging to Agenor, father of Europa, while the latter, with her female
attendants, was gathering flowers in the surrounding meadows.
Europa caressed the beautiful animal, and at last had the courage to sit
upon his back. Jupiter took advantage of her situation, and with
precipitate steps retired towards the shore, crossed the sea with Europa on
him, and arrived safe in Crete. Here he adopted his original shape, and
declared his love. The nymph consented, though she had previously taken the
vows of perpetual celibacy; and became the mother of Minos, Sarpedon, and
Rhadamanthus.
"The ruler of the skies, the thundering God,
Who shakes the world's foundation with a nod,
Among a herd of lowing heifers ran,
Frisked in a bull, and gallopped o'er the plain;
{28}
His skin was whiter than the snow that lies
Unsullied by the breath of southern skies,
His every look was peaceful, and expressed
The softness of the lover in the beast.
Agenor's royal daughter, as she played
Among the fields, the milk white bull surveyed,
And viewed his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him still in sight;
At length she plucked the rising flowers, that fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroked his head.
She placed herself upon his back, and rode
O'er fields and meadows, seated on the God.
He gently marched along, and by degrees,
Left the dry meadows and approached the seas,
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize."
OVID.
At length Juno, unable to bear the many injuries her love had sustained,
left Jupiter, and retired to the Isle of Samos, announcing, at the same
time, that she should return no more to the court of the King of Heaven.
The latter, not disheartened, dressed a statue as Queen of Olympus, placed
it in his chariot, and declared it should be the future wife of the ruler
of the Gods. This induced Juno to quit her hiding place; for, unable to
restrain her jealousy, she rushed back with all speed, destroyed the
statue, laughingly acknowledged her error, and was reconciled to her
husband.
The wife of Jupiter is always represented as superbly arrayed, in a chariot
drawn by two peacocks, where she sat with a sceptre in her hand, having
always a peacock beside her. She was adored above all at Argos, where her
feasts were celebrated by the sacrifice of a hundred bulls. At Rome, hers
were the Lupercalian feasts. She was believed to preside over the
birth-pangs of the Roman women, and the priests, to render the time
fruitful, struck these grave matrons with a portion of the skin of a kid,
which they asserted had formed one of the vestments of the Goddess.
In the spirit of a high mythology, Juno may be considered as representing
the sublunary atmosphere; and, as opposed to Jupiter, the active origin and
organizer of all, she is of a passive nature. These ideas are allied with
those of Hymen, who is called Juno, the virtuous wife.
A statue of Juno recently discovered, is thus described:--
"The countenance expresses a stern unquestioned severity of {29}
dominion, with a certain sadness. The lips are beautiful, susceptible
of expressing scorn, but not without sweetness. With fine lips a person
is never wholly bad, and they never belong to the expression of
emotions purely selfish, lips being the seat of imagination. The
drapery is finely conceived; and the manner in which the act of
throwing back one leg is expressed in the diverging folds of the
drapery of the left breast, fading in bold, yet graduated lines, into a
skirt, as it descends from the left shoulder, is admirably imagined."
SHELLEY.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
CERES.
------
Ceres, daughter of Saturn and Cybele, was goddess of the productions of the
earth. She taught man the art of agriculture, and is represented crowned
with wheat, holding a torch in one hand, and in the other an ear of corn;
sometimes she carries a sceptre, and sometimes a sickle, and her chariot is
drawn by lions or by serpents.
------------"As tempered suns arise
Sweet beamed, and shedding through the lucid clouds
A pleasing calm: while broad and brown, below
Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.
Rich, silent, deep, they stand: for not a gale
Rolls its light billows o'er the bending plain:
A calm of plenty; till the ruffled air
Falls from its poise, and gives the breeze to blow.
{30}
Rent is the fleecy mantle of the sky,
And back by fits the shadows sweep along.
A gaily chequered, heart-expanding view,
Far as the circling eye can shoot around,
Unbounded, tossing in a flood of corn."
THOMSON.
Loved by Jupiter, she had by the God a daughter called Proserpine, whom
Pluto, God of Hell, seized near the beautiful vale of Enna, in Sicily, and
carried with him to his dismal kingdom. Ceres, whose love for her child,
almost surpassed even the usual love of mothers, placed on Mount Etna two
torches, and sought her "from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,"
throughout the world. At last, when she deemed her search well nigh
hopeless, she was informed by the nymph Arethusa of the dwelling place of
her child, and of the name of him who had torn her beloved one from her
paternal care.
Ceres implored Jupiter to interfere, and withdraw her from the infernal
regions, which he agreed to do, but found it would be beyond his power, as,
by a decree of Destiny, she would not be able to quit her place of
concealment, should she have partaken of any nourishment while there; and
it was discovered that though she had refused all ordinary food, she had
been tempted while in the gardens of Pluto, to pluck a pomegranate, and to
eat a few of its seeds. This was sufficient; and the utmost Ceres could
obtain, was that she should pass six months of the year with her mother and
six months with Pluto, when she became his wife.
"Near Enna's walls a spacious lake is spread,
Famed for the sweetly singing swans it bred;
Pergusa is its name: and never more
Were heard, or sweeter sounds than on Cayster's shore.
Woods crown the lake, and Phoebus ne'er invades
The tufted fences or offends the shades:
Fresh fragrant breezes fan the verdant bowers,
And the moist ground smiles with enamelled flowers,
The cheerful birds their airy carols sing,
And the whole year is one eternal spring.
Here while young Proserpine, among the maids,
Diverts herself in these delicious shades;
While like a child with busy speed and care,
She gathers lilies here, and violets there;
While first to fill her little lap she strives,
Hell's grizzly monarch at the shades arrives;
Sees her thus sporting on the flowery green,
And loves the blooming maid as soon as seen.
{31}
The frighted Goddess to her mother cries:
But all in vain, for now far off she flies;
His urgent flame impatient of delay,
Swift as his thought he seized the beauteous prey,
And bore her in his sooty car away.
Far she behind her leaves her virgin train;
To them too cries, and cries to them in vain.
And while with passion she repeats her call,
The violets from her lap and lilies fall:
She misses them, poor heart! and makes new moan:
Her lilies, oh! are lost, her violets gone.
O'er hills the ravisher, and valleys speeds,
By name encouraging his foamy steeds;
He rattles o'er their necks the rusty reins,
And ruffles with the stroke their shaggy manes
Throws to his dreadful steeds the slackened rein,
And strikes his iron sceptre through the main;
The depths profound thro' yielding waves he cleaves,
And to hell's centre a free passage leaves;
Down sinks his chariot, and his realms of night
The God soon reaches with a rapid flight."
OVID.
The attempts of Ceres to encourage the art of agriculture were not always
favourably received: the King of the Scythians, who loved the sword more
than the ploughshare, and the spear more than the reaping hook, having
attempted to smother the art taught by Ceres in its infancy, was
metamorphosed into a lynx. Nor was this the only instance of the vengeance
of the Goddess, who was irritable, and prompt to punish. A young child,
whose chief crime was having laughed to see her eat with avidity, was
changed into a lizard: while a Thessalian, who had desecrated and attempted
to destroy a sacred forest, was doomed to an hunger so cruel, that he
devoured his own limbs, and died in the midst of fearful torments.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
{32}
DESTINY.
------
We have already seen that the decrees of Destiny, or Fate, were superior
even to the will of Jupiter, as the King of the Gods could not restore
Proserpine to her mother, Destiny having decreed otherwise. But of this
being, as possessing a place among the heroes of mythology, we are left in
considerable ignorance. Scarcely knowing even if he were a God, or only the
name or symbol whereby to represent an immutable and unchangeable law. In
the antique bas-reliefs he is often to be seen, with a bandage over his
eyes, and near him an open book which the gods alone might consult: and in
which are written those events which must inevitably come to pass, and
which all are so anxious to discover.
"Thou power which all men strive to look into!
Thou power which dost elude all human search!
To thee alone is given the right to gaze
Into the fate prepared for all who live.
Oh! wilt thou ne'er unlock thine iron bars,
Oh! wilt thou ne'er enable us to look
Into the volume clasped at thy right hand?
The past is known to us, and doth contain
So much of evil and so little good,
So much of wrong, and oh! so little right,
So much of suffering, and so little peace,
That we would fain turn o'er the leaves which speak
Of future things to our sore troubled souls.
Yet no! perchance the burden is too much,
And is in mercy hidden from our eyes.
Earth is made up of so much care and woe,
The past, the present, and the future known,
Would sink us into deep and desperate sorrow."
[Illustration] {33}
APOLLO.
------
This Deity, whose name still lives with us, as the presiding divinity of
the art of song, was the son of Jupiter, by the beautiful Latona, daughter
of the Titan, Coeus. Asteria, her sister, disdaining the embraces of the
God, threw herself into the sea, and was changed into the isle which bears
the name of Delos; where Latona afterwards sought refuge from the fury of
Juno, when about to overwhelm her, for her frailty with her husband. The
irritated Goddess, to punish Latona for her crime, excited against her the
serpent Python, who pursued her wheresoever she went; until at last, in the
Isle of Delos, alone and unfriended, bearing in her bosom the fruit of her
weakness, she gave birth to Apollo and Diana. Weary of her confinement, and
wishing to return to her father Coeus, she arrived near his dominions,
where, fatigued with her journey, she begged a drop of water from the
peasants, whose cruel refusal to aid her she punished by changing them into
frogs.
[Illustration] {34}
"The Goddess came, and kneeling on the brink,
Stooped at the fresh repast, prepared to drink:
Then thus, being hindered by the rabble race,
In accents mild expostulates the case:
'Water I only ask, and sure 'tis hard
From Nature's common rights to be debarred.
This, as the genial sun, and vital air,
Should flow alike to every creature's share;
One draught, as dear as life I should esteem,
And water, now I thirst, would nectar seem:
Oh! let my little babes your pity move,
And melt your hearts to charitable love:
They (as by chance they did) extend to you
Their little hands, and my request pursue!'
Yet they the goddess's request refuse,
And, with rude words, reproachfully abuse.
Her thirst by indignation was suppressed;
Bent on revenge, the Goddess stood confessed!
'And may you live,' she passionately cried,
'Doomed in that pool for ever to abide!'
The Goddess has her wish----"
OVID.
[Illustration]
During her residence at her father's court, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus,
had the insolence to prefer herself to Latona, who had but two children,
while Niobe possessed seven sons and seven daughters. She even ridiculed
the worship which was paid to Latona, observing, that she had a better
claim to altars and sacrifices than the mother of Apollo. This insolence
provoked Latona, and she entreated her children to punish the arrogant
Niobe. Her prayers were granted, and immediately all the sons of Niobe
expired by the {35} darts of Apollo, and all the daughters, except one, who
was married, were equally destroyed by Diana; while Niobe, stricken by the
greatness of the misfortune which had overwhelmed her, was changed into
stone.
The bodies of Niobe's children were left unburied in the plains for nine
successive days, because Jupiter changed into stones all such as attempted
to inter them. On the tenth, they were honoured with a funeral by the Gods.
While Apollo resided at the court of Jupiter, he retained the title of the
God of Light; and though many writers consider Phoebus and Apollo to be
different deities, there can be no doubt that the worship which is offered
to Phoebus, as the sun, is due also to Apollo; and indeed, under both
titles is he addressed by ancients, as well as moderns.
"Giver of glowing light!
Though but a God of other days,
The kings and sages,
Of wiser ages,
Still live and gladden in thy genial rays!
"King of the tuneful lyre!
Still poets hymns to thee belong,
Though lips are cold,
Whereon of old,
Thy beams all turned to worshipping and song!
"Lord of the dreadful bow!
None triumph now for Python's death
But thou dost save
From hungry grave,
The life that hangs upon a summer's breath!
"Father of rosy day!
No more thy clouds of incense rise;
But waking flowers,
At morning hours,
Give out their sweets to meet thee in the skies!
"God of the Delphic fane!
No more thou listenest to hymns sublime;
But they will leave,
On winds at eve,
A solemn echo to the end of time!"
HOOD.
By the invention of Phoebus, medicine became known to the world, as he
granted to Aesculapius the secrets of this miraculous art, who afterwards
sought to raise the dead, and while in the act of bringing {36} to life
Hippolitus, son of Theseus, Jupiter enraged with his impiety, smote him
with a thunderbolt. Indignant at the punishment which had been awarded
Aesculapius, Apollo sought the isle of Lemnos, to immolate the Cyclops to
his indignation, who had forged the thunderbolt.
[Illustration]
But so insolent an act could not remain unpunished, and Jupiter exiled him
from Heaven. While on earth, he loved the nymph Daphne, and Mercury who had
invented the lyre, gave it to him that he might the more effectually give
vent to his passion. This lyre, was formed of the shell of a tortoise, and
composed of seven cords, while to its harmonious tones were raised the
walls of Troy. In vain, however, were the sweet sounds of the lyre tuned,
to soften Daphne whose affection rested with another, and was insensible to
that of Apollo, though he pursued her with fervour for a year. Daphne,
still inexorable, was compelled to yield to the fatigue which oppressed
her, when the Gods, at her entreaty, changed her into a laurel. Apollo took
a branch and formed it into a crown, and to this day the laurel remains one
of the attributes of the God. The leaves of this tree are believed to
possess the property of preserving from thunder, and of making dreams an
image of reality to those who place it beneath their pillow.
--------------------"Her feet she found
Benumbed with cold, and fastened to the ground,
A filmy rind about her body grows,
Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs,
{37}
The nymph is all into a laurel gone,
The smoothness of her skin remains alone;
To whom the God: "Because thou canst not be
My mistress, 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!
Thou shalt returning Caesar's triumph grace,
When pomp shall in a long procession pass;
Wreathed on the posts before his palace wait,
And be the sacred guardian of the gate;
Secure from thunder and unharmed by Jove,
Unfading as the immortal powers above;
And as the locks of Phoebus are unshorn
So shall perpetual green thy boughs adorn."
OVID.
However earnest Apollo might have been in his pursuit of Daphne, he did not
long remain inconsolable, but formed a tender attachment for Leucothoe,
daughter of king Orchamus, and to introduce himself with greater facility,
he assumed the shape and features of her mother. Their happiness was
complete, when Clytie, her sister, who was enamoured of the God, and was
jealous of his amours with Leucothoe, discovered the whole intrigue to her
father, who ordered his daughter to be buried alive. Apollo passing by
accident over the tomb which contained her, heard her last melancholy
cries, but unable to save her from death, he sprinkled nectar and ambrosia
over her tomb, which penetrating as far as the body, changed it into the
beautiful tree that bears the frankincense; while the unhappy Clytie,
tormented by remorse, and disdained by the God, was changed into a
sunflower, the plant which turns itself without ceasing, towards its deity,
the sun.
"On the bare earth she lies, her bosom bare,
Loose her attire, dishevelled is her hair;
Nine times the morn unbarred the gates of light,
As oft were spread the alternate shades of night,
So long no sustenance the mourner knew,
Unless she drank her tears, or sucked the dew,
She turned about, but rose not from the ground,
Turned to the sun still as he rolled his round;
On his bright face hung her desiring eyes,
Till fixed to earth, she strove in vain to rise,
Her looks their paleness in a flower retained,
But here and there, some purple streaks they gained.
Still the loved object the fond leaves pursue,
Still move their root, the moving sun to view
And in the Heliotrope the nymph is true."
OVID.
{38}
These unhappy endeavours of Apollo, determined him to take refuge in
friendship, and he attached himself to the young Hyacinth;
----"Hyacinth, long since a fair youth seen,
Whose tuneful voice turned fragrance in his breath,
Kissed by sad Zephyr, guilty of his death."
HOOD.
But misfortune appeared to cling to all who were favoured by Apollo, for as
they played at quoits with Zephyr, the latter fired by jealousy, blew the
quoit of Apollo on the forehead of the unhappy mortal, who fell dead upon
the green turf on which they were playing; while his blood sinking into the
ground, produced the flower which still bears his name.
[Illustration]
"Flower! with a curious eye we scan
Thy leaf, and there discover
How passion triumphed--pain began--
Or in the immortal, or the man,
The hero, or the lover.
"The disk is hurled:--ah! fatal flight!
Low droops that beauteous brow:
But oh! the Delian's pang! his light
Of joy lies quenched in sorrow's night:
The deathless record _thou_.
"Or, do they tell, these mystic signs,
The self destroyer's madness?
Phrensy, ensanguined wreaths entwines:
The sun of chivalry declines;--
The wreck of glory's gladness!"
Apollo was so disconsolate at the death of Hyacinth, that, as we have seen,
he changed his blood into a flower which bore his name, and placed his body
among the constellations. {39}
The Spartans established yearly festivals in his honour, which continued
for three days; they did not adorn their hair with garlands during their
festivals, nor eat bread, but fed only upon sweetmeats. They did not even
sing Paeans in honour of Apollo, or observe any of the solemnities usual at
other sacrifices.
----"Pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him, Zephyr, penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain."
KEATS.
Saddened by his efforts to form an endearing friendship, Apollo once more
sighed for the nymph Perses, daughter of Ocean, and had by her the
celebrated Circe, remarkable for her knowledge of magic and venomous herbs.
Bolina, another nymph to whom he was attached, wishing to escape from his
pursuit, threw herself into the waves, and was received by the nymphs of
Amphitrion.
"I staid awhile to see her throw
Her tresses back, that all beset
The fair horizon of her brow,
With clouds of jet.
"I staid a little while to view
Her cheek, that wore in place of red,
The bloom of water, tender blue,
Daintily spread.
"I staid to watch a little space
Her parted lips, if she would sing;
The waters closed above her face,
With many a ring.
"And still I stayed a little more,--
Alas! she never comes again,
I throw my flowers from the shore
And watch in vain."
HOOD.
After this, Apollo lost the young Cyparissus, who had replaced Hyacinth in
his favour, and guarded his flocks; this young shepherd having slain by
accident a stag of which Apollo was fond, expired of grief, and was changed
into the tree which bears his name.
Apollo now attached himself to the sybil of Cumes, and granted to her the
boon of prolonging her life as many years as there were grains in a handful
of sand which she held. But she lived to repent of this frightful gift.
Alone in the world, her friends departed, and none to remind {40} her of
the days of the past, she implored the Gods to release her from the misery
which overwhelmed her. Cassandra, daughter of Priam, consented to her
prayer, if Apollo would grant to her the power of divination. Apollo
agreed, and swore to the truth of his promise by the river Styx. Scarcely
had he uttered the oath, than the gods, who could not absolve him from it,
rallied him on his folly. Irritated at the ridicule they poured upon him,
he added to this gift, the restriction, that she should never believe her
own prophecies. After this he again yielded to the power of love, and
sought to please Clymene, who was the mother of Phaeton. To this nymph
succeeded the chaste Castalia, whom he pursued to the very foot of
Parnassus, where the Gods metamorphosed her into a fountain. As Apollo was
lamenting his loss on the bank of that river, he heard an exquisite melody
escaping from the depth of the wood. He approached the place from whence
the sound seemed to issue, and recognized the nine muses, children of
Jupiter and Mnemosyne.
[Illustration]
"Mnemosyne, in the Pierian grove,
The scene of her intrigue with mighty Jove,
The empress of Eleuther, fertile earth,
Brought to Olympian Jove the Muses forth;
Blessed offsprings, happy maids, whose powerful art
Can banish cares, and ease the painful heart.
* * * * * *
Clio begins the lovely tuneful race,
Which Melpomene and Euterpe grace;
Terpischore, all joyful in the choir,
And Erato, to love whose lays inspire;
To these Thalia and Polymnia join,
Urania and Calliope divine."
HESIOD.
{41}
The taste and feelings of Apollo responded to those of these noble sisters:
they received him in their palace, and assembled together with him to
converse on the arts and sciences.
Among their possessions, the Muses and Apollo had a winged horse, named
Pegasus. This courser, born of the blood of Medusa, fixed his residence on
Mount Helicon, and, by striking the earth with his foot, caused the spring
of Hippocrene to gush from the ground. While the courser was thus occupied,
Apollo mounted his back, placed the Muses with him, and Pegasus, lifting
his wings, carried them to the court of Bacchus.
[Illustration]
Envious of the fame of Apollo at this court, Marsyas, the Phrygian,
declared that, with his flute, he could surpass the melody of the God's
divine lyre, and challenged Apollo to a trial of his skill as a musician;
the God accepted the challenge, and it was mutually agreed, that he who was
defeated should be flayed alive. The Muses were appointed umpires. Each
exerted his utmost skill, and the victory was adjudged to Apollo. The God,
upon this, tied his opponent to a tree, and punished him as had been
agreed. The {42} death of Marsyas was universally lamented; the fauns,
satyrs and dryads, wept at his fate, and from their abundant tears flowed a
river of Phrygia, well known by the name of Marsyas.
[Illustration]
Undeterred by this example, Pan, favourite of Midas, King of Lydia, wished
also to compete with Apollo in the art of which the latter was master. Pan
began the struggle, and Midas repeated his songs with enthusiasm, without
paying the least attention to his celestial rival. Pan again sang, and
Midas repeated; when, to his surprise, the latter felt, pressing through
his hair, a pair of ears, long and shaggy. Alarmed at this phenomenon, Pan
took to flight, and the prince, desolate at the loss of his favourite, made
one of his attendants, some say his wife, the confidant of his misfortune,
begging her not to betray his trust. The secret was too great for the bosom
of its holder; she longed to tell it, but dared not, for fear of
punishment; and as the only way of consoling herself, sought a retired and
lonely spot, where she threw herself on the earth, whispering "King Midas
has the ears of an ass, King Midas has the ears of an ass." Not long after
her visit, some reeds arose in this place; and as the wind passed through
them, they repeated, "King Midas has the ears of an ass." Enraged, no less
than terrified, at this extraordinary occurrence, Midas sacrificed to
Bacchus, who, to console, granted him the special favour of turning all
that he touched into fine gold.
"Midas the king, as in the book appears,
By Phoebus was endowed with ass's ears,
Which under his long locks he well concealed;
As monarch's vices must not be revealed:
For fear the people have them in the wind.
Who long ago were neither dumb nor blind:
{43}
Nor apt to think from heaven their title springs,
Since Jove and Mars left off begetting kings.
This Midas knew, and durst communicate,
To none but to his wife his ears of state:
One must be trusted, and he thought her fit,
As passing prudent, and a parlous wit.
To this sagacious confessor he went,
And told her what a gift the Gods had sent:
But told it under matrimonial seal,
With strict injunction never to reveal.
The secret heard, she plighted him her troth,
(And secret sure is every woman's oath,)
The royal malady should rest unknown,
Both for her husband's honour and her own.
But ne'ertheless she pined with discontent,
The counsel rumbled till it found a vent.
The thing she knew she was obliged to hide:
By interest and by oath the wife was tied:
But if she told it not the woman died.
Loth to betray her husband and a prince,
But she must burst or blab, and no pretence
Of honour tied her tongue in self defence.
The marshy ground commodiously was near,
Thither she ran, and held her breath for fear
Lest, if a word she spoke of any thing,
That word might be the secret of the king.
Thus full of council to the fen she went,
Full all the way, and longing for a vent.
Arrived, by pure necessity compelled,
On her majestic marrow-bones she kneeled,
Then to the water's brink she laid her head,
And, as a bittern sounds within a reed,
'To thee alone, oh! lake,' she said, 'I tell,
And as thy queen, command thee to conceal,
Beneath his locks, the king my husband wears
A goodly, royal pair of ass's ears.
Now I have eased my bosom of the pain,
Till the next longing fit returns again!'"
OVID.
The story of Phaeton, (son of Apollo under the name of Phoebus) is as
follows: Venus becoming enamoured of Phaeton, entrusted him with the care
of one of her temples. This distinguished favour of the Goddess rendered
him vain and aspiring; and when told, to check his pride, that he was not
the son of Phoebus, Phaeton resolved to know his true origin; and at the
instigation of his mother, he visited the palace of the sun, to beg that
Phoebus, if he really were his father, would give him proofs of his
paternal tenderness, and convince the world of his legitimacy. Phoebus
swore by the Styx that he would grant him whatever he required; and Phaeton
demanded of him to drive his chariot (that of the sun) for one day. In vain
Phoebus represented the impropriety of his request, and {44} the dangers to
which it would expose him; the oath must be complied with. When Phaeton
received the reins from his father, he immediately betrayed his ignorance
and incapacity. The flying horses took advantage of his confusion, and
departed from their accustomed track. Phaeton repented too late of his
rashness, for heaven and earth seemed threatened with an universal
conflagration, when Jupiter struck the rider with a thunderbolt, and hurled
him headlong into the river Po. His body, consumed by fire, was found by
the nymphs of the place, and honoured with a decent burial.
The Heliades, his sisters wept for four months, without ceasing, until the
Gods changed them into poplars, and their tears into grains of amber; while
the young king of the Ligurians, a chosen friend of Phaeton, was turned
into a swan at the very moment he was yielding to his deep regrets. Aurora
is also the daughter of Apollo. She granted the gift of immortality to
Tithonus, her husband, son of the king of Troy; but soon perceiving that
the gift was valueless, unless the power of remaining ever young was joined
with it, she changed him into a grasshopper. From their union sprang
Memnon, who was killed by Achilles at the siege of Troy. The tears of his
mother were the origin of the early dew, and the Egyptians formed, in
honour of him, the celebrated statue which possessed the wonderful property
of uttering a melodious sound every morning at sunrise, as if in welcome of
the divine luminary, like that which is heard at the breaking of the string
of a harp when it is wound up. This was effected by the rays of the sun
when they fell on it. At its setting, the form appeared to mourn the
departure of the God, and uttered sounds most musical and melancholy; this
celebrated statue was dismantled by the order of Cambyses, when he
conquered Egypt, and its ruins still astonish modern travellers by their
grandeur and beauty.
"Unto the sacred sun in Memnon's fane,
Spontaneous concords quired the matin strain;
Touched by his orient beam, responsive rings
The living lyre, and vibrates all its strings;
Accordant aisles the tender tones prolong,
And holy echoes swell the adoring song."
DARWIN.
Apollo having slain with his arrows, Python, a monstrous serpent which
desolated the beautiful country around Parnassus, his victory was
celebrated in all Greece by the young Pythians; where crowns, {45} formed
at first of the branches of oak, but afterwards of laurel, were distributed
to the conquerors, and where they contended for the prize of dancing, music
and poetry.
It is from his encounter with this serpent, that in the statues which
remain of him, our eyes are familiar with the bow placed in his grasp.
----------------"The lord of the unerring bow,
The god of life, and poesy, and light,
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow,
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow, bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might,
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
"But in his delicate form, a dream of love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision, are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever blest
The mind with, in its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest,
A ray of immortality, and stood
Star like, around, until they gathered to a God!
"And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
The fire which we endure, it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given,
Which this poetic marble hath arrayed
With an eternal glory, which if made
By human hands, is not of human thought,
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust, nor hath it caught
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought."
BYRON.
But the gods grew jealous of the homage shewn to Apollo, and recalling him
from earth, replaced him in his seat at Olympus.
The fable of Apollo is, perhaps, that which is most spread over the faith
of antiquity. Paeans were the hymns chanted in his honour, and this was the
war cry he shouted in his onset against the serpent Python. On his altars
are immolated a bull or a white lamb--to him is offered the crow, supposed
to read the future, the eagle who can gaze on the sun, the cock whose cry
welcomes his return, and the grasshopper, who sings during his empire.
This God is represented in the figure of a young man without beard, with
curling locks of hair, his brow wreathed with laurels, and his head
surrounded with beams of light. In his right hand {46} he holds a bow and
arrows; in the left, a lyre with seven chords, emblem of the seven planets
to which he grants his celestial harmony. Sometimes he carries a buckler,
and is accompanied by the three Graces, who are the animating deities of
genius and the fine arts, and at his feet is placed a swan.
[Illustration]
He had temples and statues in every country, particularly in Egypt, Greece,
and Italy; the most famous was that of Delos, where they celebrated the
Pythian games, that of Soractes, where the priests worshipped by treading
with their naked feet on burning coals, though without feeling pain, and
that of Delphi, in which the youth of the place offered to the gods their
locks of hair, possibly because this offering was most difficult to the
vanity of youth. Apollo made known his oracles through the medium of a
sibyl. This was a female, named also a Pythoness, on account of her seat
being formed of massive gold resembling the skin of the serpent Python. The
history of the tripod will be found to afford much interest. The fishermen
who had found it in their nets, sought the oracle to consult its responses.
This was to offer it to the wisest man in Greece. They presented it to
Thales, who had told them that the most difficult of all human knowledge
was the art of knowing ourselves. Thales offered the tripod to Bias. When
the enemy was reducing his native city to ashes, he withdrew, leaving
behind him his wealth, saying, "I carry all that is worthy within myself."
After frequent adventures, and passing into the possession of many, the
tripod finally returned to Thales, and was deposited in the temple; where,
as we have seen, it served the sibyl for a seat. {47} This story shows us
at a glance, the principles and the conduct of the greatest philosophers of
Greece. These sages who considered philosophy to consist in the science of
practising virtue, and living happily, endeavoured to show by the
adventures of the tripod that, though the way was sometimes different, the
end was the same.
The sibyl delivered the answer of the god to such as came to consult the
oracle, and while the divine inspiration was on her, her eyes sparkled, her
hair stood on end, and a shivering ran through her body. In this convulsive
state, she spoke the oracles of the deity, often with loud howlings and
cries, and her articulations were taken down by the priest, and set in
order. Sometimes the spirit of inspiration was more gentle, and not always
violent, yet Plutarch mentions one of the priestesses who was thrown into
such excessive fury, that not only those who consulted the oracle, but also
the priests who conducted her to the sacred tripod, and attended her during
her inspiration, were terrified and forsook the temple; and so violent was
the fit, that she continued for some days in the most agonizing situation,
and at last died.
It was always required that those who consulted this oracle should make
presents to Apollo, and from thence arose the opulence, splendour, and
magnificence, of the temple of Delphi.
There were other temples of Apollo more celebrated, such as that at
Palmyra, which was constructed of the most gigantic proportions; and for
which nothing was spared to give it a magnificence hitherto unknown.
Augustus, who pretended to be the son of Apollo, built a temple to him on
Mount Palatine. Delian feasts were those which the Athenian, and the other
Greek states celebrated every four years at Delos.
The history of the Muses is so closely allied to that of Apollo that we
shall present some of their adventures in this part of our work.
The first is the struggle which the Muses maintained against the nine
daughters of Pierus, King of Macedon, who dared to dispute with them the
palm of singing; being overcome, they were turned into magpies, and since
their transformation, they have preserved the talent so dear to beauty, of
being able in many words to express very little.
[Illustration]
One day when the Muses were distant from their place of abode, a storm
surprised them, and they took shelter in the palace of Pyrenaeus: but
scarcely had they entered, when the tyrant shut the {48} gates, and sought
to offer them insult. They immediately spread their wings and flew away.
The king wishing to fly after them, essayed the daring adventure, and
throwing himself from the top of the tower as if he had wings, was killed
in the attempt. Notwithstanding the high reputation of the Muses, it is
pretended by some, that Rheseus was the son of Terpsichore, Linus of Clio,
and Orpheus of Calliope. Arion and Pindar were also stated to be the
children of the Muses, to whom the Romans built a temple and consecrated a
fountain.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
{49}
DIANA.
------
The goddess Diana was daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and twin sister to
Apollo. In heaven she bore another name, and conducted the chariot of the
Moon, while on earth she presided over the chase, was the peculiar deity of
hunters, and called Diana. In Hell she is named Hecate and revered by
magicians.
-----------"Hecate, loved by Jove,
And honour'd by the inhabitants above,
Profusely gifted from the almighty hand,
With power extensive o'er the sea and land;
And great the honour, she, by Jove's high leave,
Does from the starry vault of heaven receive.
When to the gods the sacred flames aspire,
Does from the starry vault of heaven receive.
From human offerings, as the laws require,
To Hecate the vows are first prefer'd;
Happy of men whose prayers are kindly heard,
Success attends his every act below,
Honour, wealth, power, to him abundant flow."
HESIOD.
[Illustration]
She was also the Goddess of chastity, and it was in this character that her
vengeance fell so heavily on Actaeon, who following the chase one day with
all the ardour of his profession, unhappily came {50} suddenly on the
retired spot, in which the pure Diana, with her nymphs, was enjoying, in
the heat of the summer's day, the luxury of bathing. Horrified by this
violation, though unintentional, of her privacy, she changed him into a
stag, and inspiring with madness the dogs that accompanied him to the
chase, they turned upon their metamorphosed master, who, in horrible dread
of the fate he had himself so often inflicted, fled rapidly from them. True
to their breed, however, the dogs succeeded in running him down and
devouring him.
Calista, nymph of Diana was seduced by Jupiter, who taking one of the
innumerable shapes, which he is described as assuming when his passions
were inflamed towards any particular nymph, introduced himself to her in
the form of her mistress, and in this shape, what wonder that the nymph
lost her virtue, or that the God was successful! Diana herself, however,
took a very different view, and though Calista concealed the effects of her
divine intrigue from her mistress for a long time, the latter noticed the
alteration in her person when bathing in
"Such streams as Dian loves,
And Naiads of old frequented; when she tripped
Amidst her frolic nymphs, laughing, or when
Just risen from the bath, she fled in sport,
Round oaks and sparkling fountains,
Chased by the wanton Orcades."
BARRY CORNWALL.
To evince her detestation of the crime, her divine mistress changed her
into a bear. This however was before
"The veiled Dian lost her lonely sphere,
And her proud name of chaste, for him whose sleep
Drank in Elysium on the Latmos steep."
BULWER.
In great horror at this transformation, Calista fled to the forests and
brought forth a son, with whom she dwelt, until one day she was induced to
enter a temple at Lycaen (where, with her son Arcas, she had been brought),
and which it was not lawful to enter. The dwellers in the city, among whom
was Arcas, enraged at the desecration, attacked her, and in all
probability, she would have perished by the hands of her son, had not
Jupiter snatched both to the sky, and placed them among the constellations,
Calista being called "the Great Bear," and Arcas, "the Little Bear." {51}
Aeneas, king of Calydon, neglecting the worship of Diana, the Goddess
revenged it by sending into his kingdom a monstrous wild boar; and to rid
their country of its ravages, he caused the Greek princes to assemble to
the chase. Atalanta, daughter of the king of Arcadia, wounded him first,
but she would have fallen beneath the fury of its revenge, had it not been
for Meleager, son of Aeneas, who slew the boar. A quarrel having arisen for
the possession of the head of this monster, Meleager killed his brothers.
Indignant at this crime, the wife of Aeneas threw into the flames a brand
which bore with it the life of Meleager; a fire immediately spread itself
through the vitals of the prince, and he expired in the midst of torments,
the most cruel and excruciating, and his mother, stricken with despair at
the sight of them, destroyed herself, and the sisters of the unhappy victim
were changed into fowls.
Diana is usually represented in the costume of a huntress, with a quiver on
her shoulder, and a bow in her hand; her dress is lifted, and her dog is
always by her side ready for his prey. Her hair is banded over her brow,
while sometimes a crescent is painted on her head, of which the points are
turned towards Heaven. Sometimes she is seen in a chariot trained by stags,
and in her hand is a torch which serves to frighten away the wild beasts.
The affection of this Goddess for Endymion--
------------------"Whom she,
The moonlit Dian on the Latmian hill,
When all the woods, and all the winds were still,
Kissed with the kiss of immortality"
BARRY CORNWALL.
has been the cause of many an ode, and many a touching story, and is
perhaps, one of the most chaste, or at least most chastely told in
Mythology:
"He was a poet, sure a lover too
Who stood on Latmos top, what time there blew
Soft breezes from the Myrtle vale below
And brought in faintness, solemn, sweet, and slow
A hymn from Dian's Temple; while up-swelling
The incense went to her own starry dwelling.
But though her face was clear as infant's eyes,
Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice,
The poet wept at her so piteous fate,
Wept that such beauty should be desolate:
So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,
And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion."
KEATS.
{52}
The beautiful Endymion, grandchild of Jupiter, having dared to offer his
guilty love to Juno, he was condemned to live for ever in the infernal
regions. However, smitten with his charms, as Diana saw him sleeping on the
mountain of Latmos, she snatched him from the power of Pluto, and placed
him in a grotto, where she came down from Heaven every night to enjoy his
society.
[Illustration]
----------"Crescented Dian, who
'Tis said once wandered from the wastes of blue,
And all for love; filling a shepherd's dreams
With beauty and delight. He slept, he slept,
And on his eyelids white, the huntress wept
Till morning, and looked thro', on nights like this
His lashes dark, and left her dewy kiss;
But never more upon the Latmos hill
May she descend to kiss that forest boy,
And give--receive, gentle and innocent joy
When clouds are distant far and winds are still:
Her bound is circumscribed, and curbed her will.
Those were immortal stories: are they gone?
The pale queen is dethroned--Endymion
Hath vanished--; and the worship of this earth
Is vowed to golden gods of vulgar birth!"
BARRY CORNWALL.
The fable of Endymion's amours with Diana, or the Moon, arises from his
knowledge of astronomy: and as he passed the night {53} on some high
mountain, to observe the heavenly bodies, it has been reported that he was
courted by the Moon.
----------------"Oh! woodland Queen,
What smoothest air, thy smoother forehead woos?
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos
Of thy departed nymphs? Through what dark tree
Glimmers thy crescent? Whatsoe'er it be
'Tis in the breath of Heaven: thou dost taste
Freedom, as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements.
But finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully."
KEATS.
[Illustration]
The mode of worship to Diana, differs in different nations. The most
celebrated of her temples was that at Ephesus, which from its grandeur and
magnificence has been placed among the seven wonders of the world, but was
burned by Erostratus, the same day that Alexander the Great was born. This
madman had no other end, than to render his name for ever notorious, and he
succeeded, notwithstanding the Ephesians having decreed that his name
should never be mentioned.
In one of the temples where Diana was worshipped, the presiding priest was
always a slave who had slain his predecessor in office, and warned by the
fate he had inflicted on others, he never went without a dagger, to protect
himself from those who might be ambitious of his office, and reckless of
his crime. {54}
In another, she had an altar, whereon they immolated all those whom
shipwreck had thrown on their inhospitable shores.
[Illustration]
"Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go
Over those hoary crests, divinely led!
Art thou that huntress of the silver bow
Fabled of old?---- ---- ---- ----
* * * * * *
What art thou like? sometimes I see thee ride
A far bound galley on its perilous way,
Whilst breezy waves toss up their silvery spray--
Sometimes I watch thee on from steep to steep,
Timidly lighted by thy vestal torch,
Till in some Latmian cave I see thee creep
To catch the young Endymion asleep,
Leaving thy splendour at the jagged porch!
"Oh! thou art beautiful, however it be,
Huntress, or Dian, or whatever named,
And he the veriest Pagan, that first framed
A silver idol, and ne'er worshipped thee!
It is too late, or thou shouldst have my knee;
Too late now for the old Ephesian vows,
And not divine the crescent on thy brows:
Yet call thee nothing but the mere, mild moon,
Behind those chesnut boughs
Casting their dappled shadows at my feet;
I will be grateful for that simple boon
In many a thoughtful verse, and anthem sweet,
And bless thy dainty face whene'er we meet.
"So let it be: before I lived to sigh,
Thou wert in Avon, and a thousand rills,
Beautiful Dian! and so whene'er I lie
Trodden, thou wilt be gazing from thy hills.
Blest be thy loving light, where'er it spills,
And blessed thy fair face, O mother mild!
Still shine, the soul of rivers as they run,
Still lend thy lonely lamp, to lovers fond,
And blend their plighted shadows into one:
Still smile at even on the bedded child,
And close his eyelids with thy silver wand."
HOOD.
* * * * *
{55}
BACCHUS.
------
[Illustration]
Semele, daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes, had yielded to the licentious
Jupiter, and felt within her the effect of her indiscretion. Jealous at the
object who had again taken her lord's affections, Juno sought for some mode
in which to punish her, and taking the form of a nurse, suggested the
desire of beholding the king of the Gods, arrayed in all his celestial
glory. In vain did Jupiter, when pressed by Semele, implore her not to ask
him to assume that form, which was too much for mortal eye to bear. Woman's
wit and woman's fondness prevailed, and, in a moment of weakness, the God
swore by the Styx, he would perform her request, and by this oath he was
forced to abide. Armed with thunder, as a proof of his divinity, and in all
the glory and majesty of his godhead, he presented himself to the
presumptuous mortal, who, unable to bear his presence, fell scorched by his
thunderbolt.
Jupiter, however, took the infant which Semele bore him, and confided it to
the guardianship of the nymphs of the mountain of Nysa, who, for their care
of the son of Jupiter, in process of time, were translated into heaven.
When Bacchus, for thus was he {56} named, had grown out of their guidance,
Silenus became his preceptor and foster-father. This god, who is generally
represented as fat and jolly, riding on an ass, crowned with flowers, and
always intoxicated, could scarcely be considered as a tutor from whom
Bacchus was likely to derive much good. In spite of the education he
received through the medium of this being, however, the love of glory shone
forth conspicuously in Bacchus.
After having valiantly combatted for Jupiter against the Giants when they
invaded Olympus, he undertook his celebrated expedition into the East, to
which he marched at the head of an army, composed of men as well as of
women, all inspired with divine fury, armed with thyrsuses, and bearing
cymbals, and other musical instruments. The leader was drawn in a chariot
by a lion and a tiger, and was accompanied by Pan, Silenus, and all the
satyrs. His conquests were easy and without bloodshed; the people easily
submitted, and gratefully elevated to the rank of a god, the hero who
taught them the use of the Vine, the cultivation of the earth, and the
manner of making honey; amidst his benevolence to mankind, he was
relentless in punishing all want of respect to his divinity. The refusal of
Pentheus to acknowledge the godhead of Bacchus was fatal. He forbad his
subjects to pay adoration to this new God, and when the Theban women had
gone out of the city to celebrate his orgies, he ordered the God himself
who conducted the religious multitude, to be seized. His orders were
obeyed, but the doors of the prison in which Bacchus was confined, opened
of their own accord. Pentheus became more irritated, and commanded his
soldiers to destroy the band of Bacchanals. Bacchus, however, inspired the
monarch himself with an ardent desire of witnessing the orgies.
Accordingly he hid himself in a wood on Mount Cithoeron, from whence he
hoped to view all the ceremonies unperceived. But his curiosity proved
fatal; he was descried by the Bacchanals, who rushed upon him. His mother
was the first to attack him, her example was instantly followed by his two
sisters, and his body was torn to pieces.
As Bacchus was returning triumphantly in his ship, from the conquest we
have recorded, crowned with vine leaves, and flushed with victory, in
passing near a beautiful island, he heard a plaintive {57} voice and beheld
a female, who implored him to yield her his support.
[Illustration]
"Oh! think of Ariadne's utter trance,
Crazed by the flight of that disloyal traitor,
Who left her gazing on the green expanse,
That swallowed up his track; oh! what could mate her
Even in the cloudy summit of her woe,
When o'er the far sea-brine she saw him go!
"For even now she bows and bends her gaze,
O'er the eternal waste, as if to sum
Its waves by weary thousands; all her days,
Dismally doom'd! meanwhile the billows come,
And coldly dabble with her quiet feet,
Like any bleaching stones they wont to greet.
And thence into her lap have boldly sprung,
Washing her weedy tresses to and fro,
That round her crouching knees have darkly hung,
But she sits careless of waves' ebb and flow:
Like a lone beacon on a desert coast
Showing where all her hope was wrecked and lost."
HOOD.
It was Ariadne who addressed him, daughter of Memnos, whom Theseus,
conqueror of the minotaur had abandoned after having seduced her. The God
was so smitten with the candour and beauty of his youthful petitioner, that
he married her, and offered to her acceptance a crown of seven stars, which
after her death, was formed into a constellation. {58}
"Where the rude waves in Dian's harbour play
The fair forsaken Ariadne lay;
Here first the wretched maid was taught to prove,
The bitter pangs of ill-rewarded love,
Here saw just freed from a fallacious sleep,
Her Theseus flying o'er the distant deep;
Wistful she looked, nor what she saw, believed,
Hoped some mistake, and wished to be deceived:
While the false youth his way securely made,
His faith forgotten, and his vows unpaid;
Then sick with grief, and frantic with despair,
Her dress she rent, and tore her golden hair.
The gay tiara on her temples placed,
The fine wrought cincture that her bosom graced,
The fillets, which her heaving breasts confined,
Are rent, and scattered in the lawless wind.
Such trivial cares, alas! no room can find,
Her dear, deceitful Theseus fills her mind;
For him alone she grieves the live-long day,
Sickens in thought, and pines herself away.
* * * * * *
To her relief the blooming Bacchus ran,
And with him brought his ever jovial train:
Satyrs and Fauns, in wanton chaces strove,
While the God sought his Ariadne's love.
Around in wild distorted airs they fly,
And make the mountains echo to their cry:
Some brandish high an ivy woven spear,
The limbs, some scatter, of a victim steer:
Others in slippery folds of serpents shine,
Others apart, perform the rites divine.
To wicked men denied. These, tabors take,
These in their hands, the twinkling cymbals shake;
While many swell the horn in hoarser strain,
And make the shrill, discordant pipe complain,
While Bacchus, now enamoured of his prize,
Resolved to make her partner of the skies:
She, sweetly blushing, yielded to the God,
His car he mounted and sublimely rode:
And while with eager arms he grasped the fair,
Lashed his fleet tigers through the buxom air."
DRYDEN.
It was not long before Bacchus formed an attachment to Erigone, the
daughter of Icarius, and to accomplish his purpose took the form of a bunch
of grapes; scarcely was it pressed upon her lips, than she felt thrilling
through her frame, the effects of the sweet intoxication.
The shepherds residing in the neighbourhood of Athens, having come into the
vine-yard of Icarius, drank to such excess of the juice which was so
temptingly presented to their sight, that, in the fury of their
intoxication, they slew their host, and threw him into a deep well. {59} To
expiate his crime, the Icarian games were instituted, and Mera the trusty
dog of Icarius, having conducted Erigone to the fatal well, she hung
herself in the first madness of her grief; while Mera, the faithful animal,
overwhelmed with consternation at the loss of all he loved, died in sorrow.
Icarius was changed into the star Bootes, Erigone took the sign of the
Virgin, and Mera that of the Dog-star.
To console himself for his loss, the God of the Grape paid a visit to
Proserpine, and the beautiful wife of Pluto, was by no means insensible to
his merits; but after an absence of three years, Bacchus returned to
Ariadne, whose truth and sweetness of disposition, were untouched by his
forgetfulness; and from this time it is pleasing to relate that her wisdom
and her faithfulness were rewarded by a constancy, which never afterwards
deceived her.
One of the most pleasant stories in the whole range of Mythology, is
related of the youth Bacchus.
When dwelling in the Isle of Naxos, where he had been for some years,
becoming oppressed with the heat of the sun, he threw himself on the
sea-shore, and fell fast asleep; some pirates who called there for water,
struck with his extreme beauty, seized the dreaming boy with the
determination of selling him for a slave: and so sound was the sleep of the
God, that they had proceeded for a long space on their journey before he
awoke.
Fully aware of his divine origin, the deity determined to make a sport of
these bold robbers; and pretending the utmost terror, he implored them to
say how he came there, and what they were going to do with him.
"You have nothing to fear," was the reply, "only tell us what your wish is,
and it shall be complied with."
"I live at Naxos," said the boy, "and there I would fain find myself."
Perceiving that they continued to steer the wrong course for Naxos, Bacchus
threw himself at their feet, as they made for shore.
"Those are not the trees of Naxos," he exclaimed, "I do not see the hills
and valleys of my native land."
A speech like this, only drew forth the laughter of his captors, while they
continued to row merrily to the shore with their prize. {60}
"The beauteous youth now found himself betrayed,
And from the deck the rising waves surveyed,
And seemed to weep, and as he wept he said,
'And do you thus my easy faith beguile?
Thus, do you bear me to my native isle?
Will such a multitude of men employ
Their strength against a weak defenceless boy?'"
But behold! the vessel becomes motionless; in vain they plied their oars,
their bark moved not: and suddenly vine trees seemed to spring from the
planks of the ship, mingling with the cordage and the sails, and twining
round the oars, which also became immoveable.
Much as the sailors were astonished at this phenomenon, it was equalled by
their horror, when Bacchus waved a spear he held in his hand, in answer to
which, tigers and panthers, with others of the most savage beasts of the
desert, seemed to swim round the vessel and wanton with the waters.
"The God we now behold with opened eyes,
An herd of spotted panthers round him lies,
In glaring forms: the grapy clusters spread,
On his fair brows and dangle on his head."
Unable to bear the horror of the sight, the robbers threw themselves into
the sea, and Bacchus turned them into Dolphins, then seizing the helm
steered the ship towards Naxos, attended by his train of Dolphins and wild
beasts!
[Illustration]
On the altar of Bacchus the goat was immolated, because he destroyed the
bark and leaves of the vine, and the magpie, because wine makes the tongue
of man to chatter like that of the bird. The ivy was consecrated to him, on
account of its coolness, which dissipated the fumes of wine, and he carried
in his hand a dart called the thyrsis, twined round with leaves of ivy, and
of vine. The Bacchantes, his ordinary priestesses, bore also in their hands
the thyrsis. His feasts were celebrated every three years, and were called
orgies, from a word which signifies fury and impetuosity.
[Illustration: The feast of Bacchus.]
{61}
[Illustration]
The Bacchantes went into the mountains with torches in their hands, covered
with the skins of tigers and panthers.
"And as I sat over the light blue hills,
There came a noise of revellers; the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue,
'Twas Bacchus and his crew.
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
'Twas Bacchus and his kin.
"Like to a moving vintage down they came,
Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame;
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
To scare thee, melancholy!
O then, o then, thou wast a simple name!
And I forgot thee as the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when in June,
Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon,
I rushed into the folly!
"Within his car aloft, young Bacchus stood.
Trifling his ivy dart, in dancing mood,
With sidelong laughing,
And little rills of crimson wine embrued
His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white,
For Venus pearly bite;
And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass,
Tipsily quaffing.
{62}
"Whence came ye merry damsels! whence came ye,
So many, and so many, and such glee?
"Why have ye left your bowers desolate,
Your lutes and gentler nature?
We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing,
A conquering!
Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide,
We dance before him through kingdoms wide:
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be,
To our wild minstrelsy!
"Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye,
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
Your nuts in oak tree cleft?
For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath and yellow brooms,
And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth,
Come hither lady fair, and joined be,
To our mad minstrelsy.
"Over wide streams and mountains great we went,
And save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent,
Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,
With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads--with song and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers, mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
Nor care for wind or tide.
"Mounted on panthers' furs, and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three days' journey in a moment done,
And always at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt, with spear and horn,
On spleenful unicorn.
"I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown,
Before the vine-wreathed crown;
I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing,
To the silver cymbal's ring!
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
Old Tartary the fierce,
The kings of eld their jewel sceptres vail,
And from their treasures scatter pearled hail;
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,
And all his priesthood moans,
Before young Bacchus' eye-wink, turning pale!"
KEATS.
However, Bacchus was often found to be inspired by sentiments of a
profoundly tender nature. Coressus, one of his favourite priests, {63}
having unhappily formed a violent attachment to a maiden named Callirhoe,
found his love returned with hatred, and the more he sought to impress her
with his affection, the more hateful did he become. Unable to gain her, the
priest sought the aid of his God, who, to avenge his sufferings, struck the
Calydonians with a continual drunkenness, many of them dying of it as of a
disease. In the height of their misery they sought the oracle, which
declared that their calamity would not cease, until Callirhoe was
sacrificed, unless some one could be found to pay the penalty for her.
[Illustration]
The oracle must be obeyed: but who would be the substitute? Parents wept,
and kindred mourned, but none would offer in her stead: and the hour
arrived when the unhappy maiden, guilty only of not loving, was crowned and
led to the altar, where he who had once been her lover, stood ready to be
her slayer. At sight of her, his passion, which had slumbered for a while,
burst forth anew, and in an agony of transport, rather than strike one so
loved, he {64} determined to be her substitute, and on the instant slew
himself in her stead.
"Great father Bacchus, to my song repair,
For clustering grapes are thy peculiar care;
For thee large bunches load the bending vine,
And the last blessings of the year are thine;
To thee his joys the jolly autumn owes,
While the fermenting juice the vat o'erflows,
Come steep with me, my god; come drench all o'er
Thy limbs in wine, and drink at every pore!"
* * * * * *
Thus Roman youth, derived from ruined Troy,
In rude Saturnian rhymes express their joy;
With taunts and laughter loud their audience please,
Deformed with vizards cut from bark of trees:
In jolly hymns they praise the god of wine,
Whose earthen images adorn the pine;
And there are hung on high, in honour of the vine
A madness so devout the vineyard fills,
In hollow valleys, and on rising hills,
On whate'er side he turns his honest face,
And dances in the wind, those fields are in his grace.
To Bacchus, therefore, let us tune our lays,
And in our mother tongue resound his praise."
VIRGIL.
As Bacchus was the god of vintage, of wine and of drinkers, he is generally
represented crowned with vine and ivy leaves, with a thyrsus in his hand.
His figure is that of an effeminate young man, to denote the joys which
commonly prevail at feasts; and sometimes an old man, to teach us that wine
taken immoderately, will enervate us, consume our health, render us
loquacious and childish, like old men, and unable to keep secrets.
Bacchus is sometimes represented like an infant, holding a thyrsus and
clusters of grapes, with a horn.
His beauty is compared to that of Apollo, and like him, he is represented
with fine hair, flowing loosely down his shoulders; the roundness of his
limbs and visage, evidence the generous life he leads; while his smiling
countenance and laughing eye, are meant to indicate the merry thoughts that
are inspired by the juice of the grape. All writers agree in their
delineation of the wild madness which distinguished his festivals: witness
the following description of a pedestal, on which was an imitation of an
altar to Bacchus.
"Under the festoons of fruits and flowers that grace the pedestal, the
corners of which are ornamented by the sculls of goats, are sculptured
some figures of moenads, under the inspiration of the {65} God. Nothing
can be conceived more wild and terrible than their gestures, touching,
as they do, the verge of distortion, into which their fine limbs and
lovely forms are thrown. There is nothing, however, which exceeds the
possibility of nature, though it borders on its utmost line.
"The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by drunkenness, producing
something beyond insanity, seems to have caught them in its whirlwinds,
and to bear them over the earth, as the rapid volutions of a tempest
have the everchanging trunk of a waterspout; or as the torrent of a
mountain river whirls the autumnal leaves resistlessly along, in its
full eddies.
"The hair, loose and floating, seems caught in the tempest of their own
tumultuous motion; their heads are thrown back, leaning with a kind of
delirium upon their necks, and looking up to heaven, whilst they totter
and stumble, even in the energy of their tempestuous dance.
"One represents a faun, with the head of Pentheus in one hand, and in
the other a great knife. Another has a spear with its pine cane, which
was the thyrsus; another dances with mad voluptuousness; the fourth is
beating a kind of tambourine.
"This was indeed a monstrous superstition, even in Greece, where it was
alone capable of combining ideal beauty, and poetical and abstract
enthusiasm, with the wild errors from which it sprung. In Rome it had a
more familiar, wicked, and dry appearance; it was not suited to the
severe and exact apprehensions of the Romans, and their strict morals
were violated by it, and sustained a deep injury, little analagous to
its effect upon the Greeks, who turned all things--superstition,
prejudice, murder, madness--to beauty."
SHELLEY.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
{66}
VENUS.
------
Venus, one of the most celebrated deities of the ancients, was the goddess
of beauty, the mother of love, the queen of laughter, the mistress of the
graces, and the patroness of pleasure. Some mythologists speak of more than
one. Of these, however, the Venus sprung from the froth of the sea
"Where the moist Zephyrs to the favoured shore,
From Ocean's foam the lovely goddess bore,"
after the mutilated body of Uranus had been thrown there by Saturn, is the
most known, and of her in particular, ancient mythologists, as well as
painters, make mention. She arose from the sea near the island of Cyprus,
"Cytherea! whom the favoured earth
Of Cyprus claims, exulting in thy birth
Bright queen! adorned with every winning grace,
The smile enchanting, and the blooming face.
Goddess! o'er Cyprus fragrant groves who reigns,
And Salamis high cultivated plains."
HORACE.
Hither she was wafted by Zephyr in a sea-shell, which served as a chariot,
and received on the shore by the Seasons, daughters of Jupiter and Themis.
[Illustration]
She was soon after carried to heaven, where all the gods admired her
beauty, and all the goddesses became jealous of her personal charms.
Jupiter even attempted to gain her affections, but Venus refused, and the
god, to fulfil her destiny, gave her in marriage to Vulcan, the most ugly
and deformed of the Gods. This {67} marriage did not prevent the goddess of
love from gratifying her inclinations, and her conduct frequently tended to
cast dishonour on her husband. Her love for Mars is perhaps the most
notorious on account of the disgrace which accompanied it, while her great
partiality for Adonis, induced her to abandon her seat in Olympus. This
mortal, who was fond of the chase, was often cautioned by his mistress not
to hunt wild beasts, fearful of his being killed in the attempt; this
advice he however slighted, and at last received a mortal wound from a wild
boar which he had speared; and great was the misery evinced by Venus at his
loss.
"Over one shoulder doth she hang her head;
Dumbly she passions, frantickly she doteth,
She thinks he could not die, he is not dead;
Her voice is stopped, her joints forget to bow,
Her eyes are mad, that they have wept till now.
* * * * * *
"She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
She takes him by the hand, that is cold;
She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,
As if they heard the woeful words she told:
She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,
Where, lo! two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies."
SHAKSPERE.
Venus, after shedding many tears at his death, changed him into a flower.
"And in his blood, that on the ground lay spilled,
A purple flower sprung up, checkered with white;
Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood,
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood."
SHAKSPERE.
Proserpine is said to have restored him to life, on condition of his
spending six months of the year with her, and six with Venus, but this is a
fable meant to apply to the alternate return of summer and winter.
"There is a flower, Anemone,
The mourner's path it cheers:
Lo! Venus, bowed with agony,
By the slain huntsman bends the knee:--
It springs, a child of tears.
"Then hither, meekest flower!--here blow
With Hyacinth:--whate'er
The legend, 'tis of ruth, of woe:
Companions meet, together grow,
Twin nurslings of Despair."
ANON.
The affection also which Venus entertained for Anchises, a youth
distinguished by the most exquisite beauty, again drew her {68} from
heaven, and induced her often to visit, in all her glory, the woods and
solitary retreats of Mount Ida.
"She comes! the Goddess; through the whispering air,
Bright as the morn, descends her blushing car,
Each circling wheel a wreath of flowers entwines,
And gemmed with flowers, the silken harness shines;
The golden bits with flowery studs are decked,
And knots of flowers the crimson reins connect.
And now on earth the silver axle rings,
And the shell sinks upon its slender springs;
Light from her airy seat the Goddess bounds,
And steps celestial, press the pansied grounds."
DARWIN.
Anchises, however, though warned by her not to speak of their intimacy,
boasted of it one day at a feast, and was struck by thunder as a punishment
for his disobedience. The power of Venus over the heart, was supported and
assisted by a celebrated girdle, called _zone_ by the Greeks, and _cestus_
by the Latins. This mysterious girdle which gave beauty, grace, and
elegance when worn even by the most deformed, was irresistible when around
beauty: it excited love, and kindled even extinguished flames. Juno herself
was indebted to this powerful ornament in gaining the favours of Jupiter;
and Venus, though possessed of every charm, no sooner put on her cestus,
than Vulcan, unable to resist the influence of love, forgot all the
intrigues and infidelities of his wife, and fabricated arms even for her
illegitimate children.
"In this was every art and every charm,
To win the wisest, and the coldest warm,
Kind love, the gentle vow, the gay desire,
The kind deceit, the still reviving fire,
Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs,
Silence that spoke and eloquence of eyes."
HOMER.
The contest of Venus for the golden apple is well known. The Goddess of
Discord, not having been invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis,
evinced her disappointment, by throwing among the assembly of the gods, who
were celebrating the nuptials, a golden apple, on which was inscribed,
_Detur pulchriori_. All the goddesses claimed it as their own, and the
contention at first became general; however, Juno, Venus, and Minerva, were
left at last to decide between them, their respective right to beauty.
Neither of the gods was willing, by deciding in favour of one, to draw on
him {69} the enmity of the remaining two, they therefore appointed Paris to
the unenviable task.
[Illustration]
The goddesses appeared before their judge, and endeavoured, by profuse
offers, to influence his decision. Juno promised a kingdom, Minerva glory,
and Venus the fairest woman in the world for a wife. When Paris had heard
their several claims, he adjudged the prize to Venus, and gave her the
apple, to which she seems entitled from her beauty.
The worship of Venus was universally established; statues and temples were
erected to her in every kingdom; and the ancients were fond of paying
homage to a divinity who presided over love, and by whose influence alone,
mankind existed. In her sacrifices, and at the festivals celebrated in her
honour, too much licentiousness prevailed: victims, however, were seldom
offered to her, or her altars stained with blood. The rose, the myrtle, and
the apple, were sacred to Venus; among birds, the dove, the swan, and the
sparrow, were her favourites. The goddess of beauty was represented among
the ancients in different forms. Among the most highly valued, was that in
the temple of Jupiter Olympus, where she was represented by Phidias, as
rising from the sea, and crowned by the goddess of Persuasion.
----------"Phidias his keen chisel swayed
To carve the marble of the matchless maid,
That all the youth of Athens, in amaze,
At that cold beauty, with sad tears did gaze."
THURLOW.
She is generally imaged with her son Cupid, in a chariot drawn by doves, or
at other times by swans or sparrows. The surnames of the goddess are
numerous, and serve to show how well established her worship was all over
the earth. She was called Cypria, {70} because particularly worshipped in
the island of Cyprus; and received the name of Paphia, because at Paphos,
she had a temple with an altar, on which it was asserted rain never fell,
though exposed in the open air.
"O queen of love! whose smile all bright
Glads Paphos and the Cyprian isle,
Forsake those loved retreats awhile,
And to the temple bend thy flight,
Where Glycera, the young, the fair,
Invokes thy presence high,
While clouds of incense fill the air,
And waft her suppliant sigh.
"Bring in thy train the vengeful boy,
And Graces (while their robes loose flow
Gives glances of a breast of snow;)
Wantoning in their thoughtless joy.
Let Hermes grace the jocund scene,
And youth so gay and free;
For what is youth, though fair, oh! queen,
If destitute of thee?"
HORACE.
The Cnidians worshipped her under the name of Venus Acraea, of Doris, and
of Euploca. In her temple of Euploca, at Cnidos, was the most admired of
her statues, being the most perfect piece of Praxiteles. It was formed of
white marble, and appeared so much like life, that, according to some
historians, a youth of the place secretly introduced himself into her
temple, to offer his vows of adoration before the lifeless image.
Hero, in pursuit of whom, Leander braved the Hellespont, and whose touching
story will be more minutely given hereafter, was one of the priestesses of
Venus, and it was in this occupation that Leander first saw and loved her:
a love which led to results so disastrous.
"Come hither, all sweet maidens, soberly,
Down looking, aye, and with a chastened light,
Hid in the fringes of your eye-lids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see
Untouched, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit's night,
Sinking bewildered mid the dreary sea:
'Tis young Leander toiling to his death;
Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips,
Dead--heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile:
He's gone--up bubbles all his amorous breath."
KEATS.
{71}
Venus was also surnamed Cytheraea, because she was the chief deity of
Cythera; Phillommeis, as the queen of laughter; Tellesigama, because she
presided over marriage; Verticordia, because she could turn the hearts of
women to cultivate chastity; Basilea, as the queen of love; Myrtea, from
the myrtle being sacred to her; Mechanitis, in allusion to the many
artifices practised in love; and also goddess of the sea, because born in
the bosom of the waters;
"Behold a nymph arise, divinely fair,
Whom to Cythera first the surges bear;
Hence is she borne, safe o'er the deeps profound,
To Cyprus, watered by the waves around:
And here she walks, endowed with every grace
To charm, the goddess blooming in her face;
Her looks demand respect, and where she goes
Beneath her tender feet the herbage blows;
And Aphrodite, from the foam, her name,
Among the race of gods and men the same;
And Cytheraea from Cythera came;
Whence, beauteous crown'd, she safely cross'd the sea,
And call'd, O Cyprus, Cypria from thee;
Nor less by Philomeda known on earth,
A name derived immediate from her birth:
Her first attendants to the immortal choir
Were Love, the oldest god, and fair Desire;
The virgin whisper, and the tempting smile,
The sweet allurements that can hearts beguile,
Soft blandishments which never fail to move,
Friendship, and all the fond deceits in love,
Constant her steps pursue, or will she go
Among the gods above, or men below."
HESIOD.
As rising from the sea, the name of Anadyomine is applied to her, and
rendered immortal by the celebrated painting of Apelles, which represented
her issuing from the bosom of the waves, and wringing her tresses on her
shoulder.
DESCRIPTION OF THE ANADYOMINE VENUS.
"She has just issued from the bath, and yet is animated with the enjoyment
of it. She seems all soft and mild enjoyment, and the curved lines of her
fine limbs, flow into each other with a never ending sinuosity of
sweetness. Her face expresses a breathless yet passive and innocent
voluptuousness, free from affectation. Her lips, without the sublimity of
lofty and impetuous passion, the grandeur of enthusiastic imagination of
the Apollo of the capital, or the union of both like the Apollo Belvidere,
have the tenderness of arch, yet pure and affectionate desire; and the mode
in which the ends {72} of the mouth are drawn in, yet lifted or half
opened, with the smile that for ever circles round them, and the tremulous
curve into which they are wrought, by inextinguishable desire, and the
tongue lying against the lower lip, as in the listlessness of passive joy,
express love, still love!
"Her eyes seem heavy and swimming with pleasure, and her small forehead
fades on both sides into that sweet swelling, and then declension of the
bone over the eye, in the mode which expresses simple and tender feelings.
"The neck is full and panting, as with the aspiration of delight, and flows
with gentle curves into her perfect form.
"Her form is indeed perfect. She is half sitting and half rising from a
shell, and the fullness of her limbs, and their complete roundness and
perfection, do not diminish the vital energy with which they seem to be
animated. The position of the arms, which are lovely beyond imagination, is
natural, unaffected and easy. This perhaps is the finest personification of
Venus, the deity of superficial desire, in all antique statuary. Her
pointed and pear-like person, ever virgin, and her attitude modesty
itself."
SHELLEY.
----------"Breathe softly, flutes;
Be tender of your strings, ye soothing lutes;
Nor be the trumpet heard! O vain, O vain!
Nor flowers budding in an April rain,
Nor breath of sleeping dove, nor river's flow--
No, nor the Oeolian twang of Love's own bow,
Can mingle music fit for the soft ear
Of goddess Cytheraea!
Yet deign, white queen of beauty, thy fair eyes
On our souls' sacrifice."
KEATS.
[Illustration]
{73}
VULCAN.
------
[Illustration]
Vulcan, the son of Jupiter and Juno, was thrown from heaven by the former,
for attempting to assist the queen of Olympus when under her husband's
displeasure. The whirlwind employed by Jove, precipitated him into the
island of Lemnos.
---------"I felt his matchless might,
Hurled headlong downward from the ethereal height;
Tossed all the day in rapid circles round;
Nor till the sun descended, touched the ground;
Breathless I fell in giddy motion lost;
The Sinthians raised me on the Lemnian coast."
HOMER.
He fell with sufficient velocity to break his thigh, an accident, which, as
it made him lame, did not at all tend to render his appearance less ugly
than it is usually described.
--------------"His hand was known
In heaven, by many a towered structure high,
Where sceptred angels held their residence,
And sate as princes;
Nor was his name unheard, or unadored,
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the chrystal battlements: from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun,
Dropped from the zenith like a falling star,
On Lemnos, the Aegean isle."
MILTON.
He was educated by the nymphs of the sea, and trained in his {74} youth in
the art of working metals, and was able to cultivate those mechanical
abilities which he is represented to possess.
-------------------"He taught
Man's earth-born race, that, like the bestial brood,
Haunted the rugged cave, or sheltering wood,
Th' inventive powers of doedal art to know,
And all the joys from social life that flow;
In search no more of casual seats to roam,
But rear with skilful hand the lasting dome."
HORACE.
In his labours he was assisted by the Cyclops, who are said by some, to
have possessed but one eye, placed in the middle of the forehead. They
inhabited the western part of the island of Sicily; but the tradition of
their only having one eye originated, in all probability, from their custom
of wearing small bucklers of steel which covered their faces, with a small
aperture in the middle, corresponding exactly to the eye. They were
sometimes reckoned among the Gods, and had a temple at Corinth, where
worship and sacrifices were solemnly offered.
"The Cyclops brethren, arrogant of heart,
Who forged the lightning shaft, and gave to Jove
His thunder; they were like unto the gods,
Save that a single ball of sight was fixed
In their mid forehead. Cyclops was their name,
From that round eye-ball in their brow infixed;
And strength, and force, and manual craft were theirs."
HESIOD.
------
"Thou trusty pine!
"Prop of my God-like steps, I lay thee by--
Bring me a hundred reeds of decent growth
To make a pipe for my capacious mouth--"
GAY.
[Illustration]
The first fruit of the mechanical skill of Vulcan, was invented as a
punishment for Juno, to whom, as it was through her he fell from heaven, he
attributed his deformity. This was a throne of gold, with secret springs,
on which the goddess no sooner sate, than she {75} found herself unable to
move. In vain the Gods attempted to deliver her; with Vulcan, only rested
the secret and the power to disenthral her; and as the price of her
freedom, Juno promised to procure him a wife from amongst the heavenly
conclave. Vulcan fixed his desires on Minerva; the Goddess of Wisdom,
however, laughed his suit to scorn, and Vulcan is represented as having
been very violent at his rejection.
Juno then pressed the suit of her son on Venus, whose power was already
established at the celestial court. The beautiful Goddess rejected him with
horror, and Juno overwhelmed her with supplications; but as these could not
subdue the ugliness of the suitor, she implored Jupiter to exercise his
power; and with all the determination of a Goddess, poured so many
entreaties, accompanied with tears, that the king of heaven must have
complied, had it not been for the more touching and feminine attributes of
Venus, the soft eyes of whom filled with tears, and whose downy cheek grew
pale, at the idea of the union.
But Destiny, the irrevocable, interposed, and pronounced the decree by
which the most beautiful of the Goddesses, was united to the most unsightly
of the Gods. During the festival which followed their union, the altar of
Hymen was that which received all the offerings.
[Illustration]
A marriage thus assorted, however, was not likely to prove a happy one, and
ere long it was followed by a discovery which {76} created an ecstacy among
the scandal-mongers of Olympus. This was no less than an improper liason
between Mars, God of War, and the charming Venus. Vulcan, suspecting the
infidelity of his wife, formed an invisible net around them, and drew upon
the lovers the laughter of the remaining divinities. Mars, betwixt rage and
confusion, retired for a time to Thrace, and Venus took refuge in the isle
of Cyprus, where she gave birth to Cupid.
Vulcan, as we have recorded, was celebrated for the ingenious works and
automatical figures which he made, and many speak of two golden statues,
which not only seemed animated, but which walked by his side, and assisted
him in working metals.
"Then from the anvil the lame artist rose,
Wide with distorted leg, oblique he goes;
And stills the bellows, and in order laid,
Locks in their chests his instruments of trade:
With his huge sceptre graced, and red attire,
Came halting forth the sovereign of the fire:
The monarch's steps two female forms uphold,
That moved and breathed in animated gold.
To whom was voice, and sense, and science given
Of works divine, such wonders are in heaven!"
VIRGIL.
The most known of the works of Vulcan, which were presented to mortals, are
the arms of Achilles, those of Aeneas, and the shield of Hercules described
by Hesiod. The chariot of the sun was also by this deity.
"A golden axle did the work uphold,
Gold was the beam, the wheels were orbed with gold:
The spokes in rows of silver pleased the sight,
The seat with parti-coloured gems was bright."
OVID.
The worship of Vulcan was well established, particularly in Egypt, at
Athens, and at Rome. It was customary to burn the whole victim to him and
not reserve part of it, as in the immolations to the remainder of the Gods.
He was represented as blowing with his nervous arm the fires of his forges.
His vast breast hairy, and his forehead blackened with smoke; while his
enormous shoulders seemed borrowed from the Cyclops. Some represent him
lame and deformed, holding a hammer in his hand, ready to strike; while
with the other, he turns a thunderbolt on his anvil, for which an eagle
waits by his side to carry it to Jupiter. {77}
He appears on some monuments with a long beard, dishevelled hair, half
naked, and a small round cap on his head, while he holds a hammer and
pincers in his hand.
"------The Vulcanean dome, eternal frame,
High, eminent, amidst the works divine,
Where Heavens far beaming mansions shine,
There the lame architect the goddess found
Obscure in smoke, his forges flaming round;
While bathed in sweat, from fire to fire he flew,
And puffing loud, the roaring bellows blew."
HOMER.
It is stated that Bacchus made him intoxicated after he had been expelled
from Olympus, and then prevailed on him to return, where he was reconciled
to his parents. He seems, however, to have been retained there more for
ridicule than any other purpose; and was indeed the great butt of Olympus,
even his wife laughing at his deformities, and mimicking his lameness to
gain the smiles of her lovers.
"Vulcan with awkward grace, his office plies,
And unextinguished laughter shakes the skies."
HOMER.
In the month of August, the Vulcanalia took place at Rome, streets were
illuminated, fires kindled, and animals thrown into the flames as a
sacrifice. Romulus caused a temple to be erected in his honour, and Tarquin
presented to him the arms and spoils of the conquered; and to him also, was
dedicated the lion.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
{78}
CUPID.
------
This Deity, "the boy-god," as poets love to call him, was the offspring of
Venus and Mars; when Venus had given birth to him, Jupiter foresaw the
mischief he would create in the world, as well as in his more immediate
kingdom; he therefore banished him from his court, and menaced him with his
wrath, should he return. The Goddess conveyed him to the isle of Cyprus,
where he was suckled by the wild beasts of the forest.
No sooner had strength come with years, than Cupid, forming a bow of the
ash tree, and arrows of the cypress, ungratefully turned against the
animals who had supported him.
"His quiver, sparkling bright with gems and gold,
From his fair plumed shoulder graceful hung,
And from its top in brilliant chords enrolled,
Each little vase resplendently was slung,
Still as he flew, around him sportive clung
His frolic train of winged Zephyrs light,
Wafting the fragrance which his tresses flung:
While odours dropped from every ringlet bright,
And from his blue eyes beamed ineffable delight."
MRS. TIGHE.
Experience gave confidence to the youthful deity, and when an opportunity
offered, he sent his arrows to the hearts of men, so bold did he even
become, that he ventured to dart one, dipped in the subtle poison against
his mother.
"Love! oh! he breathes and rambles round the world
An idol and idolator: he flies
Touching, with passing beauty, ringlets curled,
Ripe lips, and bosoms white, and starry eyes,
And wheresoe'er his colours are unfurled,
Full many a young and panting spirit lies."
BARRY CORNWALL.
The nymph Perestere felt his vengeance in a different manner. Cupid was
wandering with his mother over a meadow, beautifully enamelled with flowers
"all fragrance and of various hues," when, in a playful mood, the youthful
deity challenged Venus to see which could gather the greatest number in the
least time. Cupid would have been triumphant, had not Perestere, who
accompanied them, attempted to win the favour of the goddess, by assisting
to fill her basket. In revenge, Cupid changed her into a dove.
The beautiful fable of the winged deity's love for Psyche, is the most
pleasing of those related of him. {79}
The nymph Psyche was one of those exquisite beings, so seldom met with in
the present degenerate days; and even then, so rare was her beauty, that
the people of earth looked on her almost as a divinity, and in some
instances would have worshipped her in the belief that she was Venus,
visiting the earth.
"In her bower she lay, like a snow-wreath flung,
Mid flowers of brightest hue:
Pouting roses about her hung,
Violets 'neath her mantle sprung,
Shedding their light of blue.
"Pillowed on one fair arm she lay,
Beneath her silver veil;
Her golden locks in wanton play,
As sunbeams through the mist make way,
Stole round her bosom pale!
"Falling waters afar were heard,
To lull the slumb'ring fair:
Yet ever and aye, her soul seemed stirred,
In dove-like murmurs, as if the bird
Of dreams sat brooding there.
"All rude winds were hushed to rest;
Only the enamoured south,
Wantoning round her swan-like breast--
The silken folds of her azure vest
Kissed with its fragrant mouth."
ANON.
To one so jealous as Venus, this homage paid to Psyche was an enormous
crime, and she determined to take vengeance for the offence, by punishing
her in the tenderest part of a woman's nature; for she commanded Cupid to
make her fall deeply in love, with the ugliest being he could find.
With the intention of fulfilling this commission, Cupid visited Psyche, but
so beautiful was the being he came to see, that he found himself compelled
to pay the same homage to her which others had done; and finished by
becoming deeply enamoured himself, as he saw
"Upon her purple couch sweet Psyche laid,
Her radiant lips a downy slumber sealed,
In light transparent veil alone arrayed,
Her bosom's opening charms were half revealed,
And scarce the lucid folds her polished limbs concealed.
"He half relenting on her beauties gazed,
Just then awaking with a sudden start,
Her opening eye in humid lustre blazed,
Unseen he still remained, enchanted and amazed."
MRS. TIGHE.
Fearful, however, of his mother's displeasure, he carried on the {80}
affair with great secrecy, and by his divine power, conveyed her to a
palace he had formed in a region full of beauty: here, when the shadows of
night had visited the earth, Cupid sought the presence of his love.
[Illustration]
"--------Who first told how Psyche went
On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment?
What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips
First touched; * * * *
* * * With all their sighs
And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes:
The silver lamp--the ravishment--the wonder--
The darkness--loneliness, and fearful thunder."
KEATS.
But the happiness which had fallen to the lot of the beautiful Psyche, was
too delightful and too pure, not to meet with something which should
realize the after thought of the poet, that "the course of true love never
did run smooth." The restless nature of the nymph would not allow her to
remain quietly in possession or her beautiful lot, or in the enchanted
place which the power of the God had raised for her, though few could be so
delightful, when,
"In broad pinions from the realms above,
Descending Cupid seeks the Cyprian grove;
To his wide arms enamoured Psyche springs
And clasps her lover with Aurelian wings,
A purple sash across his shoulder bends,
And fringed with gold the quivered shafts suspends;
The bending bow obeys the silken string,
And, as he steps, the silver arrows ring.
Thin folds of gauze, with dim transparence flow,
O'er her fair forehead and her neck of snow;
The winding woof her graceful limbs surrounds
Swells in the breeze, and sweeps the velvet grounds;
{81}
As hand in hand along the flowery meads,
His blushing bride the quivered hero leads;
Charmed round their heads pursuing Zephyrs throng,
And scatter roses as they move along;
Bright beams of spring in soft effusion play,
And halcyon hours invite them on their way.
Delighted Hymen hears their whispered vows,
And binds his chaplets round their polished brows,
Guides to his altar, ties the flowery bands,
And as they kneel unites their willing hands."
DARWIN.
The love which had fallen upon Psyche, and the affection which dropped in
honied words from Cupid's lips, was so endearing, that the nymph longed to
communicate the delightful story of her good fortune to her less gifted,
but envious sisters.
She therefore told them of the glories of her marriage; though her
bridegroom had never made himself visible to her, and though to her he had
no name save that fond one of husband, yet still she could talk of the
beauties of her magic palace, of the musical voice of her invisible lover,
and of the heart-touching and passionate endearments he bestowed on her.
But all this was no pleasant intelligence to them, for with the malice of
ill-nature, they determined to be revenged on her for a happiness which was
no fault. They affected to believe that her husband had wicked designs in
his concealment, and that he would desert his Psyche if he became visible
to her--or they asserted that they had no doubt though the lips and skin of
this mysterious being seemed so soft to their sister, it was by the power
of enchantment, and that the light would reveal a monster whose presence
would astonish no less than it would frighten: and succeeded in persuading
her, by their next meeting, to provide herself with the means of procuring
a light, and a dagger to stab him, should he prove the monstrous being they
averred.
The next night came, and Psyche, when she heard the thrilling tones of her
husband's voice, could scarcely keep her secret. Dreading the anger of her
sisters, however, she waited until Cupid was locked in slumber, and from
its hiding place procured the light and the dagger.
--------------"She softly rose,
And seized the lamp--where it obscurely lay,
With hand too rashly daring to disclose
The sacred veil which hung mysterious o'er her woes."
TIGHE.
{82}
For a time the nymph scarcely dared to cast a glance on the being she was
so anxious to view; and stood half shrinking from the desired sight.
----"In her spiritual divinity,
Young Psyche stood the sleeping Eros by,
What time she to the couch had, daring, trod;
And, by the glad light, saw her bridegroom God!
O'er him she knelt enamoured, and her sigh
Breathed near and nearer to his silent mouth,
Rich with the hoarded odours of the south!"
BULWER.
But who can conceive her rapturous delight, when, instead of the fearful
being she dreaded, she beheld one whose every limb, and every feature,
shone with a radiant and celestial beauty.
"All imperceptibly to human touch,
His wings display celestial essence light;
The clear effulgence of the blaze is such,
The brilliant plumage shines so heavenly bright,
That mortal eyes turn dazzled from the sight;
A youth he seems in manhood's freshest years;
Round his fair neck, as changing with delight,
Each golden curl resplendently appears,
Or shades his darker brow, which grace majestic wears."
TIGHE.
Her eyes were rivetted on his exquisite form, until they forgot all else;
even her love, her kindness, and her passionate endearments, all vanished
in that long, earnest, and delighted gaze.
"Speechless with awe; in transport strangely lost,
Long Psyche stood, with fixed, adoring eye;
Her limbs immoveable, her senses tossed
Between amazement, fear, and ecstacy,
She hangs enamoured o'er the deity."
TIGHE.
In the trembling transport which pervaded her, however, there fell a drop
of burning wax from the light which she held, on the marble-like shoulder
of Cupid, and he awoke.
"From her trembling hand extinguished falls
The fatal lamp. He starts--and suddenly
Tremendous thunders echo through the halls,
While ruins hideous crash bursts o'er the affrighted walls."
TIGHE.
The spell was broken--the palace vanished--the God disappeared, and Psyche,
mourning in bitter tears for her foolish curiosity, found herself standing
on a desolate rock. {83}
"Dread horror seizes on her sinking heart,
A mortal chillness shudders at her breast,
Her soul shrinks, fainting, from death's icy dart,
The groan scarce uttered, dies, but half expressed,
And down she sinks in deadly swoon oppressed:
But when at length, awaking from her trance,
The terrors of her fate stood all confessed,
In vain she casts around her timid glance,
The rudely frowning scenes, her former joys enhance.
"No traces of those joys, alas! remain;
A desert solitude alone appears.
No verdant shade relieves the sandy plain,
The wide spread waste, no gentle fountain cheers;
One barren face the dreary prospect wears;
Nought thro' the vast horizon meets her eye
To calm the dismal tumult of her fears,
No trace of human habitation nigh,
A sandy wild beneath, above a threatening sky."
TIGHE.
The abandoned Psyche attempted to drown herself in the neighbouring waters.
The stream, fearing the power of the God, returned her to earth upon a bank
of flowers.
She then went through the world in search of her lost love, persecuted, and
subjected to numerous trials by Venus; who, determined on destroying, sent
her to Proserpine with a box to request some of her beauty. The mission was
accomplished in safety, but Psyche nearly fell a victim to curiosity and
avarice; for she opened the box to look at its contents, and endeavoured to
take a portion of it to herself, that she might appear more beautiful in
the eyes of her lost husband. On opening it, a deep slumber fell on the
unwary mortal, and she lay upon the earth, until Cupid, luckily escaping
from the confinement to which his mother had subjected him, found his lost
love, and reproached her for her curiosity.
In addition to this, Venus imposed upon Psyche the most difficult tasks;
she poured upon the nymph torments the most excruciating, and took delight
in rendering her miserable, who, not content with being taken for the
goddess of beauty, had concluded by seducing from her the duty of her son.
Jupiter, however, was moved to pity by this relentless rigour, and by the
touching nature of the story; he took her up to heaven, restored Cupid to
his place, and making Psyche immortal, gave her in marriage to the God of
love, in the presence of the celestial inhabitants. To use the elegant
language of Mr. Keightley, {84}
"The hours shed roses through the sky, the Graces sprinkled the halls of
heaven with fragrant odours, Apollo plays on his lyre, the Arcadian God on
his reeds, the Muses sing in chorus, while Venus dances with grace and
elegance, to celebrate the nuptials of her son."
"So pure, so soft, with sweet attraction shone
Fair Psyche, kneeling at the ethereal throne;
Won with coy smiles the admiring court of Jove,
And warmed the bosom of unconquered love.
Beneath a moving shade of fruits and flowers,
Onward they march to Hymen's sacred bowers;
With lifted torch he lights the festive strain,
Sublime, and leads them in his golden chain;
Joins the fond pair, indulgent to their vows,
And hides with mystic veil their blushing brows.
Round their fair forms their mingling arms they fling,
Meet with warm lip, and clasp with nestling wing.
Hence plastic nature, as oblivion whelms
Her fading forms, repeoples all her realms;
Soft joys disport on purple plumes unfurled,
And love and beauty rule the willing world."
DARWIN.
Thus Cupid was at length re-united to his beloved Psyche, and their loves
were speedily crowned by the birth of a child, whom his parents named
Pleasure.
* * * * *
PSYCHE.
------
"Oh! Goddess, hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung,
Even into thine own soft-couched ear:
Surely I dreamt to day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awakened eyes?
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side,
In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:
'Mid hushed, cool rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft handed slumber,
And ready still, past kisses to outnumber,
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
{85}
O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebus sapphire-regioned star
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, tho' temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heaped with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet,
From chain swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.
O brightest! though too late for antique vows
Too, too late for the fond, believing lyre
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water and the fire."
KEATS.
Of this deity, poets have written until the God, become identified with the
passion, which is addressed by many as immortal.
"They sin who tell us Love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity;
In heaven ambition cannot dwell
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell:
Earthly these passions of the earth
They perish where they have their birth;
But Love is indestructible:
Its holy flame for ever burneth,
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times opprest,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of Love is there."
SOUTHEY.
Cupid is usually represented as a winged infant, naked, armed with a bow
and quiver full of arrows. On gems and all other pieces of antiquity, he is
represented as amusing himself with childish diversions. Sometimes, like a
conqueror, he marches triumphantly with a helmet on his head, a spear on
his shoulder, and a buckler on his arm, intimating that even Mars himself
owns the superiority of love.
"To Love, the soft and blooming child,
I touch the harp in descant wild;
To Love, the babe of Cyprian bowers,
The boy who breathes and blushes flowers,
To Love, for heaven and earth adore him,
And gods and mortals bow before him!"
ANACREON.
Among the ancients, he was worshipped with the same solemnity {86} as his
mother Venus; and as his influence was extended over the heavens, the sea
and the earth, and even the empire of the dead, his divinity was
universally acknowledged, and vows, prayers and sacrifices, were daily
offered to him.
------------"Bright-winged child!
Who has another care when thou hast smiled?
Unfortunates on earth, we see at last
All death-shadows, and glooms that overcast
Our spirits, fanned away by thy light pinions.
O sweetest essence! sweetest of all minions!
God of warm pulses, and dishevelled hair;
Dear unseen light in darkness! eclipser
Of light in light! delicious poisoner!
Thy venomed goblet will we quaff, until
We fill--we fill!"
KEATS.
One of the most beautiful of his temples was built within a myrtle grove,
the God being extended in the attitude of a sleeping child, under the title
of L'Amore Dominatore.
"They built a temple for the God,
'Twas in a myrtle grove,
Where the sweet bee and butterfly,
Vied for each blossom's love.
"I looked upon the altar,--there
The pictured semblance lay,
Of him the temple's lord, it shone
More beautiful than day.
"It was a sleeping child, as fair
As the first-born of spring:
Like Indian gold waved the bright curls,
In many a sunny ring.
"I heard them hymn his name, his power,
I heard them, and I smiled:
How could they say the earth was ruled,
By but a sleeping child?
"I went then forth into the world,
To see what might be there;
And there I heard a voice of woe,
Of weeping, and despair.
"I saw a youthful warrior stand
In his first light of fame,
His native city, filled the air
With her deliverer's name:
"I saw him hurry from the crowd,
And fling his laurel crown,
In weariness, in hopelessness,
In utter misery down.
"And what the sorrow, then I asked.
Can thus the warrior move,
To scorn his meed of victory?
They told me it was Love!
{87}
"I sought the Forum, there was one,
With dark and haughty brow,
His voice was as the trumpet's tone,
Mine ear rings with it now.
"They quailed before his flashing eye,
They watched his lightest word:
When suddenly that eye was dim,
That voice no longer heard.
"I looked upon his lonely hour,
The weary solitude:
When over dark, and bitter thoughts,
The sick hearts' left to brood.
"I marked the haughty spirit's strife,
To rend its bonds in vain:
Again I heard the cause of ill,
And heard loves name again.
"I saw an Urn, and round it hung,
An April diadem
Of flowers, telling they mourned one,
Faded and fair like them.
"I turned to tales of other days,
They spoke of breath and bloom:
And proud hearts that were bowed by love,
Into an early tomb.
"I heard of every suffering,
That on this earth can be:
How can they call a sleeping child,
A likeness, love, of thee?
"They cannot paint thee, let them dream
A dark and nameless thing:
Why give the likeness of the dove,
Where is the serpent's sting?
L. E. L.
We cannot better conclude our account of this important Deity, than by the
following epigram, written under one of his statues.
"Whoe'er thou art, thy master see,
Who was, or is,--or is to be."
VOLTAIRE.
[Illustration] {88}
MINERVA.
------
Minerva, the Goddess of wisdom, war, and all the liberal arts, came forth,
armed and grown up, from her father's brain, and was immediately admitted
into the association of the Gods, becoming one of the most faithful
counsellors of her father. She was indeed the only one of all the
divinities whose authority, and consequence, were equal to those of
Jupiter.
"From Jove's awful head sprang forth to light,
In golden panoply superbly dight;
And while the glittering spear thy hands essayed,
Olympus trembled at the martial maid.
Affrighted earth sounds from her deepest caves,
And swell of Ocean tides the sable waves;
The turgid billows sink; in heaven's high plains
His steeds the son of Hyperion reins,
Till Pallas lays her arms divine aside,
While Jove his daughter views with conscious pride."
HORACE.
The strife of this Goddess with Neptune is worthy attention: each of them
claimed the right of giving a name to the capital of Cecropia, and the
assembly of the Gods decided the dispute by promising preference to
whichever could produce the most useful and necessary present to the
inhabitants of the earth.
Neptune, upon hearing this, struck the ground with his trident, and
immediately a horse issued therefrom. Minerva produced the olive, and
obtained the victory by the unanimous voice of the gods, who considered the
olive, as the emblem of peace, to be far preferable to the horse, the
symbol of war and bloodshed. The victorious deity called the capital
Athenoe, and became the tutelar divinity of the place.
--------"The sandals of celestial mould,
Fledged with ambrosial plumes and rich with gold
Surround her feet: with these sublime she sails
Th' aerial space, and mounts the winged gales;
O'er earth and ocean wide, prepared to soar,
Her dreaded arm a beaming javelin bore,
Ponderous and vast: which, when her fury burns,
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns."
HOMER.
Arachne, a woman of Colophon, having acquired great perfection in working
with her needle, became impressed with a belief that her powers were
superior to those of Minerva, goddess of the art. {89} This wounded
Minerva's jealous pride, which was increased by Arachnes challenging her to
a trial of skill.
"From famed Pactolus' golden stream,
Drawn by her art the curious Naiads came
Nor would the work, when finished, please so much
As, while she wrought, to view each graceful touch:
Whether the shapeless wool in balls she wound,
Or with quick motion turned the spindle round,
Or with her pencil drew the neat design,
Pallas, her mistress, shone in every line.
This the proud maid, with scornful air denies,
And e'en the goddess at her work defies,
Disowns her heavenly mistress every hour,
Nor asks her aid, nor deprecates her power."
OVID.
Beautiful as the production of Arachne was, which recorded the intrigues of
Jove, yet it could not compete with that of Minerva, who by her divine
skill, surpassed all her rival's efforts.
"Pallas in figures wrought the heavenly powers,
And Mars's skill among the Athenean bowers,
Each god, by proper features was exprest;
Jove with majestic mien, excelled the rest,
His nine forked mace the dewy sea-god shook,
And, looking sternly, smote the ragged rock;
When, from the stone, leaped forth the sprightly steed
And Neptune claims the city for the deed.
Herself she blazons with a glittering spear,
And crested helm that veiled her braided hair,
With shield, and scaly breast-plate, implements of war.
Struck with her pointed lance, the teeming earth
Seemed to produce a new surprising birth,
When from the glebe, the pledge of conquest sprung,
A tree, pale green with fairest olives hung."
OVID.
Although her work was perfect and masterly, the Goddess was so vexed at the
subjects Arachne had chosen, that she struck her two or three times on the
forehead.
"The bright goddess, passionately moved,
With envy saw, yet inwardly approved,
The scene of heavenly guilt, with haste she tore,
Nor longer the affront with patience bore;
A boxen shuttle in her hand she took,
And more than once, Arachne's forehead struck."
The high spirited mortal, indignant at the blows, and in despair at her
defeat, hung herself, and was changed into a spider by Minerva.
--------"She sprinkled her with juice,
Which leaves of baleful aconite produce.
Touched with the poisonous drug, her flowing hair
Fell to the ground, and left her temples bare.
{90}
Her usual features vanished from their place,
Her body lessened--but the most, her face,
Her slender fingers, hanging on each side,
With many joints the use of legs supplied,
A spider's bag, the rest, from which she gives
A thread, and still, by constant spinning lives."
OVID.
Minerva when amusing herself by playing upon her favourite flute before
Juno and Venus, was ridiculed by the goddesses for the distortion of her
face while blowing the instrument; Minerva convinced of the truth of their
remarks, by looking at herself in a fountain near Mount Ida, threw the
flute away, and denounced a melancholy death to him who should find it.
Marsyas was the unfortunate being, and in the history of Apollo may be
found the fate he experienced through the veracity of her decree.
Minerva was called Athena Pallas, either from her killing the giant Pallas,
or because the spear which she seems to brandish in her hands is called
"_pallein_."
According to the different characters in which she has appeared, has the
goddess been represented. Usually with a helmet on her head, and a large
plume nodding in the air. In one hand she holds a spear, and in the other,
a shield, with the dying head of Medusa upon it.
"With bright wreaths of serpent tresses crowned,
Severe in beauty, young Medusa frowned;
Erewhile subdued, round Wisdom's Aegis rolled,
Hissed the dread snakes, and flamed in burnished gold
Flashed on her brandished arm the immortal shield,
And terror lightened o'er the dazzled field."
DARWIN.
Sometimes the Gorgon's head was on her breast-plate, with living serpents
writhing round it, as well as on her shield and helmet.
It was in one of her temples that the following occurrence took place, from
which she adopted this device.
Medusa was the only one of the Gorgons who was subject to mortality, and
was celebrated for her personal charms; particularly for the beauty of her
hair. Neptune became enamoured of her
Medusa once had charms, to gain her love
A rival crowd of envious lovers strove.
They who have seen her, own they ne'er did trace,
More moving features, in a sweeter face:
Yet above all, her length of hair they own,
In golden ringlets waved, and graceful shone.
{91}
Her, Neptune saw: and with such beauties fired,
Resolved to compass what his soul desired.
The bashful goddess turned her eyes away,
Nor durst such bold impurity survey."
This violation of the sanctity of her temple provoked Minerva, and she
changed the beautiful locks of Medusa, which had inspired the love of
Neptune, into ghastly and living serpents, as a punishment for the
desecration of that sanctuary, where only worship and incense should have
been offered.
[Illustration]
"It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, the far lands are seen tremblingly:
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie,
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
"Yet it is less the horror than the grace,
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone:
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
"And from its head as from one body grow,
As grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow,
And their long tangles in each other lock:
And with unending involutions show,
Their mailed radiance as it were to mock,
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw,
{92}
"'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleam a brazen glare,
Kindled by that inextricable error,
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a strange, and ever shifting mirror
Of all the beauty, and the terror there--
A woman's countenance, with serpent locks,
Gazing in death on heaven, from those evil rocks."
SHELLEY.
Some of the statues of Minerva represented her helmet with a sphinx in the
middle, supported on either side by griffins. In some medals, a chariot
drawn by four horses, appears at the top of her helmet.
But it was at the Panathenaea, instituted in her behalf, that she received
the greatest honour. On the evening of the first day, there was a race with
torches, in which men on foot, and afterwards on horseback, contended.
To celebrate these festivals, also, the maidens divided into troops, and
armed with sticks and stones, attacked each other with fury. Those who were
overcome in this combat, were devoted to infamy, while they who conquered,
and had received no wounds, were honoured with triumphant rejoicings.
These fetes, established in Lybia, were transferred to Athens, the city to
which Minerva had granted the olive tree, and which she had taken under her
protection.
She was adored at Troy by the title of Pallas, and her statue guarded the
city under the name of Palladium. Some authors maintain that this was made
with the bones of Pelops--while Apollodorus asserts, it was no more than a
piece of clock-work which moved of itself. To its possession, was attached
the safety of the city; and during the Trojan war, Ulysses and Diomedes
were commissioned to steal it away.
DESCRIPTION OF MINERVA IN THE FLORENCE GALLERY.
"The head is of the highest beauty. It has a close helmet from which
the hair, delicately parted on the forehead, half escapes. The attitude
gives entire effect to the perfect form of the neck, and to that full
and beautiful moulding of the lower part of the face and mouth, which
is in living beings the seat of the expression of a simplicity and
integrity of nature. Her face, upraised to heaven, is animated with a
profound, sweet, and impassioned melancholy, with an earnest, and
fervid and disinterested pleading against some vast and inevitable
wrong. It is the joy and poetry of sorrow making {93} grief beautiful,
and giving it that nameless feeling, which, from the imperfection of
language, we call pain, but which is not all pain, though a feeling
which makes not only its possessor, but the spectator of it, prefer it
to what is called pleasure, in which all is not pleasure. It is
difficult to think that this head, though of the highest ideal beauty
is the head of Minerva, although the attributes and attitude of the
lower part of the statue certainly suggest that idea.
"The Greeks rarely in their representations of the characters of their
Gods--unless we call the poetic enthusiasm of Apollo a mortal
passion--expressed the disturbance of human feeling; and here is deep
and impassioned grief animating a divine countenance. It is indeed
divine. The drapery of the statue, the gentle beauty of the feet, and
the grace of the attitude, are what may be seen in many other statues
belonging to that astonishing era which produced it: such a countenance
is seen in few."
SHELLEY.
We have already seen that Minerva, not satisfied with being goddess of
Wisdom, claimed also pre-eminence in beauty, although Paris by his
judgment, gave the palm of loveliness to Venus.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
{94}
MARS.
------
Mars, the God of War, was the son of Juno, who jealous of the birth of
Minerva, consulted Flora, and on the plains near Olenus, was shown by her a
flower, through the very touch of which she might become a mother. The
goddess tried, and from her touch sprang Mars. His education was entrusted
by Juno to the god Priapus, who instructed him in dancing, and in every
manly exercise. His trial before the celebrated court of Areopagus, for the
murder of Hallirhotius, who insulted a daughter of Mars because she
slighted his addresses, forms an important epoch in his history. The fiery
blood of Mars, which would submit to no insult, was immediately in arms at
so tender a point, and he slew the insulter. Neptune, father of the slain,
cited Mars to appear before the tribunal of justice, to answer for the
murder of his son. The cause was tried at Athens, in a place which has been
called from thence Areopagus, and Mars was acquitted.
"Mars! God of Armies! mid the ranks of war,
Known by thy golden helm, and rushing car,
Before whose lance, with sound terrific, fall
The massy fortress and embattled wall.
"Father of victory! whose mighty powers,
And brazen spears, protect Olympus' towers;
By whom the brave to high renown are led,
Whom justice honours, and whom tyrants dread.
Hail! friend to man! whose cares to youth, impart
The arm unwearied, and the undaunted heart!"
HORACE.
During the Trojan war, Mars interested himself on the side of the Trojans;
but while he defended these favourites of Venus with great activity, he was
wounded by Diomedes, and hastily retreated to Heaven, complaining to
Jupiter that Minerva had directed the unerring weapon of his antagonist.
"Wild with his pain, he sought the bright abodes,
There, sullen, sate beneath the sire of gods,
Shewed the celestial blood, and with a groan,
Thus poured his plaints before the immortal throne.
Can Jove, supine, flagitious acts survey
And brook the furies of the daring day?
For mortal men, celestial powers engage,
And gods on gods exert eternal rage.
From thee, O father! all these ills we bear,
And thy fell daughter with the shield and spear.
{95}
Thou gavest that fury to the realms of light,
Pernicious, wild, regardless of the right;
All Heaven besides, reveres thy sovereign sway,
Thy voice we hear, and thy behests obey:
'Tis hers to offend, and e'en offending, share
Thy breast, thy counsels, thy distinguished care:
So boundless she, and thou so partial grown,
Well may we deem, the wondrous birth thine own;
Now frantic Diomed, at her command,
Against the immortals lifts his raging hand;
The heavenly Venus first his fury found:
Me next encountering, me he dared to wound:
Vanquished I fled; e'en I, the god of fight,
From mortal madness, scarce was saved by flight,
Else hadst thou seen me sink on yonder plain,
Heaped round, and heaving under loads of slain,
Or pierced with Grecian darts, for ages lie
Condemned to pain, though fated not to die.'"
HOMER.
The Thunderer treated with disregard the complaint of Mars against his
favourite daughter, and thus upbraided him:
"'To me, perfidious! this lamenting strain,
Of lawless force, shall lawless Mars complain?
Of all the gods who tread the spangled skies,
Thou most unjust, most odious in our eyes!
Inhuman discord is thy dire delight,
The waste of slaughter, and the rage of fight.
No bound, no law, thy fiery temper quells,
And all thy mother in thy soul rebels.
In vain our threats, in vain our power, we use,
She gives the example, and her son pursues.
Yet long the inflicted pangs thou shalt not mourn,
Sprung since thou art from Jove, and heavenly born:
Else singed with lightning, hadst thou hence been thrown,
Where, chained on burning rocks, the Titans groan.'"
HOMER.
Under the direction of Jupiter, the God of War soon recovered.
"Thus he, who shakes Olympus with his nod,
Then gave to Poeon's care the bleeding god.
With gentle hand, the balm he poured around,
And healed th' immortal flesh, and closed the wound.
Cleansed from the dust and gore, fair Hebe dressed
His mighty limbs in an immortal vest,
Glorious he sat, in majesty restored,
Fast by the throne of Heaven's superior lord."
HOMER.
The worship of Mars, was not very universal among the ancients, nor were
his temples very numerous in Greece, but among the warlike Romans he
received great homage, as they were proud of sacrificing to a deity, whom
they considered the patron of their city, and the father of the first of
their monarchs; a faith to which {96} they loved to give credit. Among this
people, it was customary for the consul, before he went on an expedition,
to visit the temple of Mars, where he offered his prayers, and shook in a
solemn manner, the spear which was in the hand of the statue of the God,
exclaiming "_Mars vigila!_ God of War, watch over the safety of this city."
The influence of Cupid, as God of love, was felt even by Mars, who was
compelled to acknowledge his power, and the sharpness of his arrows.
"As in the Lemnian caves of fire,
The mate of her who nursed desire,
Moulded the glowing steel, to form
Arrows for Cupid, melting, warm;
Once to this Lemnian cave of flame,
The crested lord of battles came;
'Twas from the ranks of war he rushed,
His spear with many a life-drop blushed;
He saw the mystic darts, and smiled
Derision on the archer child.
'And dost thou smile?' said little Love;
'Take this dart, and thou mayest prove
That tho' they pass the breeze's flight,
My bolts are not so feathery light.'
He took the shaft--and oh! thy look,
Sweet Venus! when the shaft he took,
He sighed, and felt the urchin's art,
He sighed in agony of heart;
'It is not light, I die with pain!
Take, take thine arrow back again.'
'No,' said the child 'it must not be,
That little dart was made for thee.'"
MOORE.
The result of his amour with Venus has been related in another part of this
work.
He is usually represented in a chariot of steel, conducted by Bellona,
goddess of War: on his cuirass are painted several monsters; the figures of
Fury and Anger ornament his helmet, while Renown precedes him.
His priests, named Salii, carried small bucklers, supposed to be sacred,
and to have fallen from the skies. To him was consecrated the cock, because
it was vigilant and courageous, but they preferred offering the wolf; they
sacrificed however, to him, all kinds of animals, and even human victims.
The statues and portraits of Mars, as the God of War, and consequently the
winner of victory, have been very numerous. {97}
His most celebrated temple at Rome, was built by Augustus, after the battle
of Phillippi, and was dedicated to "Mars the avenger."
[Illustration]
"_Rivers._ And this is he, the fabled God of War.
_Evadne._ Aye, Mars the conqueror, see how he stands;
The lordly port, the eye of fierce command,
The threatening brow, and look that seems to dare
A thousand foes to battle.
--It was a beautiful faith that gave these gods
A name and office! Is he not glorious?
_Rivers._ To my poor thought, there's that within his glance
So fierce, I scarce dare meet it.
_Evadne._ It is your studious nature, yet methinks
To gaze upon that proud and haughty form,
To think upon the glorious deeds of war,
The pomp and pride and circumstance of battle,
The neighing of the steed, the clash of arms,
The banner waving in the glowing breeze,
The trumpet sound, the shout.
Oh! there is nought so beautiful as this.
_Rivers._ Aye, but to see the living and the dead,
Lying in mortal agony, side by side,
Their bright hair dabbled in unrighteous blood,
Their vestures tinctured with its gory red,
The quivering limb, the eye that's glazed in death,
The groan--
_Evadne._ 'Tis lost boy, in the drum and trumpet's voice.
'Tis lost in shouts of glorious victory,
'Tis lost in high, triumphal tones of gladness.
{98}
_Rivers._ But then to think upon the hearts that grieve.
For those who peril thus their lives in war,
The misery that sweeps along the brain,
The widows' moan, the orphans' tears of woe,
The love that watcheth at the midnight hour,
And hopeth on, but hopeth on in vain.
_Evadne._ And that is lost too in their country's shouts
The voice of gratitude for those that fell,
Drowns every thought in those who live to mourn;
The hand of charity for those who are left.
Fills every heart and dries up every fear;
The record of a nation's loud applause,
Writes on their tombs in characters of brass.
And graves within our very souls, the words,
'Here lies his country's saviour.'
_Rivers._ But these can never pay the wrung in heart:
Pride is a poor exchange for those adored:
And even a nation with its giant strength,
Cannot supply the vacant place of love!
_Evadne._ Shame on such craven thoughts,
The image of the God frowns on your words--
All glorious Mars! be thou my god and guide,
Be thou the image to fill up my heart,
Be thou the spirit leading me to glory,
And be my latest hour still cheered by thee,
While round me dwells the shout of victory!"
FLETCHER.
Mars was the presider over gladiators, and was the god of all exercises,
which have in them a manly or spirited character.
[Illustration] {99}
NEPTUNE,
------
--------"The God whose potent hand
Shakes the tumultuous sea, and solid land:
The Ocean Lord, o'er Helicon who reigns,
O'er spacious Aegae's wide extended plains;
To whom the gods, with equal skill concede,
To guide the bark and tame the fiery steed,"
HORACE.
was the son of Saturn, and brother to Jupiter, Pluto, and Juno; being
restored to life by the draught administered to Saturn, the portion of the
kingdom allotted to him was that of the sea. This, however, did not seem
equivalent to the empire of heaven and earth, which Jupiter had claimed; he
therefore conspired with the other gods to dethrone his brother. The
conspiracy was discovered, and Jupiter condemned Neptune to assist in
building the walls of Troy, and to be subservient to his sceptre for a
year. When the work was completed, Laomedon refused to reward the labours
of the god, and in retribution, his territories were soon afterwards laid
waste by the god of the sea, and his subjects visited with a pestilence
sent by Apollo.
Besides the dispute this deity had with Minerva, related in her history, he
claimed the isthmus of Corinth from Apollo; and Briareus, the Cyclops, who
was mutually chosen umpire, gave the isthmus to Neptune, and the promontory
to Apollo.
Neptune, as god of the sea, was entitled to more power than any of the
other deities, except Jupiter. Not only the oceans, rivers, and fountains,
were subjected to him, but he could also cause earthquakes at pleasure, and
raise islands from the sea by a blow of his trident.
----------------"King of the stormy sea!
Brother of Jove, and co-inheritor
Of elements Eternally before
Thee, the waves awful bow. Fast, stubborn rock;
At thy feared trident, shrinking, doth unlock
Its deep foundations, hissing into foam.
All mountain-rivers, lost, in the wide home
Of thy capacious bosom, ever flow.
Thou frownest, and old Aeolus, thy foe,
Skulks to his cavern, mid the gruff complaint
Of all his rebel tempests. Dark clouds faint
When, from thy diadem, a silver gleam
Slants over blue dominion. Thy bright team
Gulfs in the morning light, and scuds along
To bring thee nearer to that golden song
{100}
Apollo singeth, while his chariot
Waits at the door of heaven. Thou art not
For scenes like this; an empire stern hast thou;
And it hath furrowed that large front: yet now,
As newly come of heaven, dost thou sit,
To blend and inter-knit
Subdued majesty with this glad time.
O shell born king sublime!
We lay our hearts before thee evermore--
We sing and we adore!"
KEATS.
He obtained Amphitrite, daughter of Ocean, in marriage, through the skill
of a dolphin, although she had made to herself a vow of perpetual celibacy;
and had by him, Triton, one of the sea deities. To the story of Neptune,
may be attached the beautiful fable of Arion, the illustrious rival of
Amphion and Orpheus.
[Illustration]
This famous lyric poet and musician, having gone into Italy, with
Periander, tyrant of Corinth, he obtained immense treasures through his
profession. On his return to his native country with his riches, the
sailors of the vessel in which he had embarked, resolved to murder him,
that they might obtain possession of his wealth; when the poet discovered
their intention, he endeavoured to outwit them. {101}
"Allow me," said Arion, with all the earnestness of an enthusiast. "Ere I
leave this world, oh! allow me to touch once more, and for the last time,
the strings of the lyre which has so often cheered me: let the last moments
of my life, be soothed by its gentle influence."
The boon was granted, and the divine strains of the master, issued in
solemn beauty over the deep. At the sound, the traitors were struck silent,
and hesitated in their course, but they had gone too far: it was too late
to recede, and the poet was thrown into the deep. When lo! the dolphins,
attracted by the sweet tones which they had heard, gathered round him; and
Arion, mounted on the back of one, and accompanied by the remainder arrived
safely at the end of his voyage. It is added, as an instance of the
ingratitude of mortals, that the dolphin, having proceeded too far upon the
sand, was unable to get back to the water, and the ungrateful Arion allowed
his liberator to perish.
[Illustration]
The worship of Neptune was established in almost every part of the earth,
and the Libyans in particular, venerated him above all other Gods.
------"Great Neptune! I would be
Advanced to the freedom of the main,
And stand before your vast creation's plain,
And roam your watery kingdom thro' and thro'
{102}
And see your branching woods and palace blue,
Spar-built and domed with crystal: aye and view
The bedded wonders of the lonely deep;
And see on coral banks, the sea-maids sleep,
Children of ancient Nereus, and behold
Their streaming dance about their father old,
Beneath the blue Egean; where he sate,
Wedded to prophecy, and full of fate!
Or rather, as Arion harped, indeed,
Would I go floating on my billow-steed,
Over the billows, and triumphing there,
Call the white syren from her cave to share
My joy, and kiss her willing forehead fair."
KEATS.
To him was consecrated the horse, and in his honour were celebrated the
Isthmian games. His throne was a chariot drawn by four fiery steeds; his
stature is grand, and his appearance imposing; he wears the look of an old
man, his long beard and hair, wet with the vapour of the water.
In his hand he holds the trident, which bids the waves of ocean to rise,
and causes the thunder of its tempests. With this trident also, he shakes
the world, and bids the earth to tremble.
During the _Consualia_ of the Romans, horses were led through the streets,
finely equipped, and crowned with garlands, as the God in whose honour the
festivals were instituted, had produced the horse, an animal so beneficial
for the use of mankind.
As monarch of the sea, he is supposed to have had possession of the deep,
and all the treasures which the stormy winds sent to his domain.
"What hid'st thou in thy treasure-caves and cells?
Thou hollow-sounding, and mysterious main!
Pale glistening pearls, and rainbow-coloured shells,
Bright things which gleam unrecked of, and in vain;
Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea.
We ask not such from thee!
"Yet more, the depths have more! what wealth untold,
Far down, and shining thro' their stillness lies;
Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold,
Won from ten thousand royal argosies;
Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main;
Earth claims not these again!
"Yet more, the depths have more! thy waves have rolled,
Above the cities of a world gone by!
Sand hath filled up the palaces of old,
Sea-weed o'er-grown the halls of revelry.
Dash o'er them, ocean! in thy scornful play!
Man yields them to decay
{103}
Yet more! the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast!
They hear not now the booming waters roar,
The battle thunders will not break their rest;
Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave,
Give back the true and brave!
"Give back the lost and lovely! those for whom
The place was kept at board and hearth so long;
The prayer went up thro' midnight's breathless gloom,
And the vain yearning woke midst festal song!
Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'erthrown,
But all is not thine own!
"To thee the love of woman hath gone down,
Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head,
O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown,
Yet must thou hear a voice--restore the dead!
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee!
Restore the dead thou sea!"
HEMANS.
* * * * *
PLUTO.
------
The name of Pluto, as god of the kingdom of hell, and whatever is under the
earth, where
"------------Cerberus, the cruel worm of death,
Keeps watchful guard, and with his iron throat,
Affrights the spirits in their pale sojourn,"
THURLOW.
is as well known to the readers of Mythology as that of his brother
Jupiter.
The place of his residence being gloomy, and consequently unbearable to
those goddesses whose hand he sought in marriage, and who looked for a
gayer life than he could offer them, they all refused to become the sharer
of his possessions. Pluto, however, was by no means willing to sit quietly
down in single blessedness, thinking, perhaps, that the very reason which
they assigned for their refusal, was an additional one in his favour for
wishing a soother of his lot.
It was in his visit to the island of Sicily, that the God saw and became
enamoured of Proserpine, as she gathered flowers i
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