The Dryads, in dismay at the loss of their companion, and at
seeing the pride of the forest laid low, went in a body to Ceres,
all clad in garments of mourning, and invoked punishment upon
Erisichthon. She nodded her assent, and as she bowed her head
the grain ripe for harvest in the laden fields bowed also. She
planned a punishment so dire that one would pity him, if such a
culprit as he could be pitied to deliver him over to Famine.
As Ceres herself could not approach Famine, for the Fates have
ordained that these two goddesses shall never come together, she
called an Oread from her mountain and spoke to her in these
words: "There is a place in the farthest part of ice-clad
Scythia, a sad and sterile region without trees and without
crops. Cold dwells there, and Fear, and Shuddering, and Famine.
Go to Famine and tell her to take possession of the bowels of
Erisichthon. Let not abundance subdue her, nor the power of my
gifts drive her away. Be not alarmed at the distance," (for
Famine dwells very far from Ceres,) "but take my chariot. The
dragons are fleet and obey the rein, and will take you through
the air in a short time." So she gave her the reins, and she
drove away and soon reached Scythia. On arriving at Mount
Caucasus she stopped the dragons and found Famine in a stony
field, pulling up with teeth and claws the scanty herbage. Her
hair was rough, her eyes sunk, her face pale, her lips blanched,
her jaws covered with dust, and her skin drawn tight, so as to
show all her bones. As the Oread saw her afar off (for she did
not dare to come near) she delivered the commands of Ceres; and
though she stopped as short a time as possible, and kept her
distance as well as she could, yet she began to feel hungry, and
turned the dragons' heads and drove back to Thessaly.
In obedience to the commands of Ceres, Famine sped through the
air to the dwelling of Erisichthon, entered the bed-chamber of
the guilty man, and found him asleep. She enfolded him with her
wings and breathed herself into him, infusing her poison into his
veins. Having discharged her task, she hastened to leave the
land of plenty and returned to her accustomed haunts.
Erisichthon still slept, and in his dreams craved food, and moved
his jaws as if eating. When he awoke his hunger was raging.
Without a moment's delay he would have food set before him, of
whatever kind earth, sea, or air produces; and complained of
hunger even while he ate. What would have sufficed for a city or
a nation was not enough for him. The more he ate, the move he
craved. His hunger was like the sea, which receives all the
rivers, yet is never filled; or like fire that burns all the fuel
that is heaped upon it, yet is still voracious for more.
His property rapidly diminished under the unceasing demands of
his appetite, but his hunger continued unabated. At length he
had spent all, and had only his daughter left, a daughter worthy
of a better parent. HER TOO HE SOLD. She scorned to be the
slave of a purchaser, and as she stood by the seaside, raised her
hands in prayer to Neptune. He heard her prayer, and, though her
new master was not far off, and had his eye upon her a moment
before, Neptune changed her form, and made her assume that of a
fisherman busy at his occupation. Her master, looking for her
and seeing her in her altered form, addressed her and said, "Good
fisherman, whither went the maiden whom I saw just now, with hair
dishevelled and in humble garb, standing about where you stand?
Tell me truly; so may your luck be good, and not a fish nibble at
your hook and get away." She perceived that her prayer was
answered, and rejoiced inwardly at hearing the question asked her
of herself. She replied, "Pardon me, stranger, but I have been
so intent upon my line, that I have seen nothing else; but I wish
I may never catch another fish if I believe any woman or other
person except myself to have been hereabouts for some time." He
was deceived and went his way, thinking his slave had escaped.
Then she resumed her own form. Her father was well pleased to
find her still with him, and the money too that he got by the
sale of her; so he sold her again. But she was changed by the
favor of Neptune as often as she was sold, now into a horse, now
a bird, now an ox, and now a stag, got away from her purchasers
and came home. By this base method the starving father procured
food; but not enough for his wants, and at last hunger compelled
him to devour his limbs, and he strove to nourish his body by
eating his body, till death relieved him from the vengeance of
Ceres.
RHOECUS
The Hamadryads could appreciate services as well as punish
injuries. The story of Rhoecus proves this. Rhoecus, happening
to see an oak just ready to fall, ordered his servants to prop it
up. The nymph, who had been on the point of perishing with the
tree, came and expressed her gratitude to him for having saved
her life, and bade him ask what reward he would have for it.
Rhoecus boldly asked her love, and the nymph yielded to his
desire. She at the same time charged him to be constant, and
told him that a bee should be her messenger, and let him know
when she would admit his society. One time the bee came to
Rhoecus when he was playing at draughts, and he carelessly
brushed it away. This so incensed the nymph that she deprived
him of sight.
Our countryman, James Russell Lowell, has taken this story for
the subject of one of his shorter poems. He introduces it thus:
"Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece,
As full of freedom, youth and beauty still,
As the immortal freshness of that grace
Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze."
THE WATER DEITIES
Oceanus and Tethys were the Titans who ruled over the Sea. When
Jove and his brothers overthrew the Titans and assumed their
power, Neptune and Amphitrite succeeded to the dominion of the
waters in place of Oceanus and Tethys.
NEPTUNE
Neptune was the chief of the water deities. The symbol of his
power was the trident, or spear with three points, with which he
used to shatter rocks, to call forth or subdue storms, to shake
the shores, and the like. He created the horse, and was the
patron of horse races. His own horses had brazen hoofs and
golden manes. They drew his chariot over the sea, which became
smooth before him, while the monsters of the deep gambolled about
his path.
AMPHITRITE
Amphitrite was the wife of Neptune. She was the daughter of
Nereus and Doris, and the mother of Triton. Neptune, to pay his
court to Amphitrite, came riding on the dolphin. Having won her,
he rewarded the dolphin by placing him among the stars.
NEREUS AND DORIS
Nereus and Doris were the parents of the Nereids, the most
celebrated of whom were Amphitrite, Thetis, the mother of
Achilles, and Galatea, who was loved by the Cyclops Polyphemus.
Nereus was distinguished for his knowledge, and his love of truth
and justice, and is described as the wise and unerring Old Man of
the Sea. The gift of prophecy was also ascribed to him.
TRITON AND PROTEUS
Triton was the son of Neptune and Amphitrite, and the poets make
him his father's trumpeter. Proteus was also a son of Neptune.
He, like Nereus, is styled a sea-elder for his wisdom and
knowledge of future events. His peculiar power was that of
changing his shape at will.
THETIS
Thetis, the daughter of Nereus and Doris, was so beautiful that
Jupiter himself sought her in marriage; but having learned from
Prometheus the Titan, that Thetis should bear a son who should be
greater than his father, Jupiter desisted from his suit and
decreed that Thetis should be the wife of a mortal. By the aid
of Chiron the Centaur, Peleus succeeded in winning the goddess
for his bride, and their son was the renowned Achilles. In our
chapter on the Trojan war it will appear that Thetis was a
faithful mother to him, aiding him in all difficulties, and
watching over his interests from the first to the last.
LEUCOTHEA AND PALAEMON
Ino, the daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas, flying from her
frantic husband, with her little son Melicertes in her arms,
sprang from a cliff into the sea. The gods, out of compassion,
made her a goddess of the sea, under the name of Leucothea, and
him a god under that of Palaemon. Both were held powerful to
save from shipwreck, and were invoked by sailors. Palaemon was
usually represented riding on a dolphin. The Isthmian games were
celebrated in his honor. He was called Portumnus by the Romans,
and believed to have jurisdiction of the ports and shores.
Milton alludes to all these deities in the song at the conclusion
of Comus.
"Sabrina fair,
Listen and appear to us,
In name of great Oceanus;
By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,
And Tethys' grave, majestic pace,
By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,
And the Carpathian wizard's hook (Proteus)
By scaly Triton's winding shell,
And old soothsaying Glaucus; spell,
By Leucothea's lovely hands,
And her son who rules the strands,
By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet,
And the songs of Sirens sweet."
Armstrong, the poet of the Art of preserving Health, under the
inspiration of Hygeia, the goddess of health, thus celebrates the
Naiads. Paeon is a name both of Apollo and Aesculapius.
"Come, ye Naiads! To the fountains lead!
Propitious maids! The task remains to sing
Your gifts (so Paeon, so the powers of health
Command), to praise your crystal element.
Oh, comfortable streams! With eager lips
And trembling hands the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew,
None warmer sought the sires of humankind;
Happy in temperate peace their equal days
Felt not the alternate fits of feverish mirth
And sick dejection; still serene and pleased,
Blessed with divine immunity from ills,
Long centuries they lived; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death."
THE CAMENAE
By this name the Latins designated the Muses, but included under
it also some other deities, principally nymphs of fountains.
Egeria was one of them, whose fountain and grotto are still
shown. It was said that Numa, the second king of Rome, was
favored by this nymph with secret interviews, in which she taught
him those lessons of wisdom and of law which he embodied in the
institutions of his rising nation. After the death of Numa the
nymph pined away and was changed into a fountain.
Byron, in Childe Harold, Canto IV., thus alludes to Egeria and
her grotto:
"Here didst thou dwell in this enchanted cover,
Egeria! All thy heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
The purple midnight veiled that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy."
Tennyson, also, in his Palace of Art, gives us a glimpse of the
royal lover expecting the interview.
"Holding one hand against his ear,
To list a footfall ere he saw
The wood-nymph, stayed the Tuscan king to hear
Of wisdom and of law."
THE WINDS
When so many less active agencies were personified, it is not to
be supposed that the winds failed to be so. They were Boreas or
Aquilo, the north wind, Zephyrus or Favonius, the west, Notus or
Auster, the south, and Eurus, the east. The first two have been
chiefly celebrated by the poets, the former as the type of
rudeness, the latter of gentleness. Boreas loved the nymph
Orithyia, and tried to play the lover's part, but met with poor
success. It was hard for him to breathe gently, and sighing was
out of the question. Weary at last of fruitless endeavors, he
acted out his true character, seized the maiden and carried her
off. Their children were Zetes and Calais, winged warriors, who
accompanied the Argonautic expedition, and did good service in an
encounter with those monstrous birds the Harpies.
Zephyrus was the lover of Flora. Milton alludes to them in
Paradise Lost, where he describes Adam waking and contemplating
Eve still asleep:
"He on his side
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamored, and beheld
Beauty which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice,
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus, 'Awake!
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven's last, best gift, my ever-new delight.'"
Dr. Young, the poet of the Night Thoughts, addressing the idle
and luxurious, says:
"Ye delicate! Who nothing can support
(Yourselves most insupportable), for whom
The winter rose must blow, . .
. . . . And silky soft
Favonious breathe still softer or be chid!"
Fortuna is the Latin name for Tyche, the goddess of Fortune. The
worship of Fortuna held a position of much higher importance at
Rome than did the worship of Tyche among the Greeks. She was
regarded at Rome as the goddess of good fortune only, and was
usually represented holding the cornucopia.
Victoria, the Latin form for the goddess Nike, was highly honored
among the conquest-loving Romans, and many temples were dedicated
to her at Rome. There was a celebrated temple at Athens to the
Greek goddess Nike Apteros, or Wingless Victory, of which remains
still exist.
Chapter XVI
Achelous and Hercules. Admetus and Alcestis. Antigone.
Penelope
The river-god Achelous told the story of Erisichthon to Theseus
and his companions, whom he was entertaining at his hospitable
board, while they were delayed on their journey by the overflow
of his waters. Having finished his story, he added, "But why
should I tell of other persons' transformations, when I myself am
an instance of the possession of this power. Sometimes I become
a serpent, and sometimes a bull, with horns on my head. Or I
should say, I once could do so; but now I have but one horn,
having lost one." And here he groaned and was silent.
Theseus asked him the cause of his grief, and how he lost his
horn. To which question the river-god replied as follows: "Who
likes to tell of his defeats? Yet I will not hesitate to relate
mine, comforting myself with the thought of the greatness of my
conqueror, for it was Hercules. Perhaps you have heard of the
fame of Dejanira, the fairest of maidens, whom a host of suitors
strove to win. Hercules and myself were of the number, and the
rest yielded to us two. He urged in his behalf his descent from
Jove, and his labors by which he had exceeded the exactions of
Juno, his step-mother. I, on the other hand, said to the father
of the maiden, 'Behold me, the king of the waters that flow
through your land. I am no stranger from a foreign shore, but
belong to the country, a part of your realm. Let it not stand in
my way that royal Juno owes me no enmity, nor punishes me with
heavy tasks. As for this man, who boasts himself the son of
Jove, it is either a false pretence, or disgraceful to him if
true, for it cannot be true except by his mother's shame.' As I
said this Hercules scowled upon me, and with difficulty
restrained his rage. 'My hand will answer better than my
tongue,' said he. 'I yield you the victory in words, but trust
my cause to the strife of deeds. With that he advanced towards
me, and I was ashamed, after what I had said, to yield. I threw
off my green vesture, and presented myself for the struggle. He
tried to throw me, now attacking my head, now my body. My bulk
was my protection, and he assailed me in vain. For a time we
stopped, then returned to the conflict. We each kept our
position, determined not to yield, foot to foot, I bending over
him, clinching his hands in mine, with my forehead almost
touching his. Thrice Hercules tried to throw me off, and the
fourth time he succeeded, brought me to the ground and himself
upon my back. I tell you the truth, it was as if a mountain had
fallen on me. I struggled to get my arms at liberty, panting and
reeking with perspiration. He gave me no chance to recover, but
seized my throat. My knees were on the earth and my mouth in the
dust.
"Finding that I was no match for him in the warrior's art, I
resorted to others, and glided away in the form of a serpent. I
curled my body in a coil, and hissed at him with my forked
tongue. He smiled scornfully at this, and said, 'It was the
labor of my infancy to conquer snakes.' So saying he clasped my
neck with his hands. I was almost choked, and struggled to get
my neck out of his grasp. Vanquished in this form, I tried what
alone remained to me, and assumed the form of a bull. He grasped
my neck with his arm, and, dragging my head down to the ground,
overthrew me on the sand. Nor was this enough. His ruthless
hand rent my horn from my head. The Naiades took it, consecrated
it, and filled it with fragrant flowers. Plenty adopted my horn,
and made it her own, and called it Cornucopia.
The ancients were fond of finding a hidden meaning in their
mythological tales. They explain this fight of Achelous with
Hercules by saying Achelous was a river that in seasons of rain
overflowed its banks. When the fable says that Achelous loved
Dejanira, and sought a union with her, the meaning is, that the
river in its windings flowed through part of Dejanira's kingdom.
It was said to take the form of a snake because of its winding,
and of a bull because it made a brawling or roaring in its
course. When the river swelled, it made itself another channel.
Thus its head was horned. Hercules prevented the return of these
periodical overflows, by embankments and canals; and therefore he
was said to have vanquished the river-god and cut off his horn.
Finally, the lands formerly subject to overflow, but now
redeemed, became very fertile, and this is meant by the horn of
plenty.
There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia.
Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care
of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the
infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke
off one of the horns of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and
endowed it with the wonderful power of becoming filled with
whatever the possessor might wish.
The name of Amalthea is also given by some writers to the mother
of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV.:
"That Nyseian isle,
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid son,
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye."
ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS
Aesculapius, the son of Apollo, was endowed by his father with
such skill in the healing art that he even restored the dead to
life. At this Pluto took alarm, and prevailed on Jupiter to
launch a thunderbolt at Aesculapius. Apollo was indignant at the
destruction of his son, and wreaked his vengeance on the innocent
workmen who had made the thunderbolt. These were the Cyclopes,
who have their workshop under Mount Aetna, from which the smoke
and flames of their furnaces are constantly issuing. Apollo shot
his arrows at the Cyclopes, which so incensed Jupiter that he
condemned him as a punishment to become he servant of a mortal
for the space of one year. Accordingly Apollo went into the
service of Admetus, king of Thessaly, and pastured his flocks for
him on the verdant banks of the river Amphrysus.
Admetus was a suitor, with others, for the hand of Alcestis, the
daughter of Pelias, who promised her to him who should come for
her in a chariot drawn by lions and boars. This task Admetus
performed by the assistance of his divine herdsman, and was made
happy in the possession of Alcestis. But Admetus fell ill, and
being near to death, Apollo prevailed on the Fates to spare him
on condition that some one would consent to die in his stead.
Admetus, in his joy at this reprieve, thought little of the
ransom, and perhaps remembering the declarations of attachment
which he had often heard from his courtiers and dependents,
fancied that it would be easy to find a substitute. But it was
not so. Brave warriors, who would willingly have perilled their
lives for their prince, shrunk from the thought of dying for him
on the bed of sickness; and old servants who had experienced his
bounty and that of his house from their childhood up, were not
willing to lay down the scanty remnant of their days to show
their gratitude. Men asked, "Why does not one of his parents
do it? They cannot in the course of nature live much longer, and
who can feel like them the call to rescue the life they gave from
an untimely end?" But the parents, distressed though they were
at the thought of losing him, shrunk from the call. Then
Alcestis, with a generous self-devotion, proffered herself as the
substitute. Admetus, fond as he was of life, would not have
submitted to receive it at such a cost; but there was no remedy.
The condition imposed by the Fates had been met, and the decree
was irrevocable. Alcestis sickened as Admetus revived, and she
was rapidly sinking to the grave.
Just at this time Hercules arrived at the palace of Admetus, and
found all the inmates in great distress for the impending loss of
the devoted wife and beloved mistress. Hercules, to whom no
labor was too arduous, resolved to attempt her rescue. He went
and lay in wait at the door of the chamber of the dying queen,
and when Death came for his prey, he seized him and forced him to
resign his victim. Alcestis recovered, and was restored to her
husband.
Milton alludes to the story of Alcestis in his Sonnet on his
deceased wife.
"Methought I saw my late espoused saint,
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint."
James Russell Lowell has chosen the "Shepherd of King Admetus"
for the subject of a short poem. He makes that event the first
introduction of poetry to men.
"Men called him but a shiftless youth,
In whom no good they saw,
And yet unwittingly, in truth,
They made his careless words their law.
And day by day more holy grew
Each spot where he had trod,
Till after poets only knew
Their first-born brother was a god."
In The Love of Alcestis, one of the poems in The Earthly
Paradise, Mr. Morris thus tells the story of the taming of the
lions:
"---- Rising up no more delay he made,
But took the staff and gained the palace-door
Where stood the beasts, whose mingled whine and roar
Had wrought his dream; there two and two they stood,
Thinking, it might be, of the tangled wood,
And all the joys of the food-hiding trees.
But harmless as their painted images
'Neath some dread spell; then, leaping up, he took
The reins in hand and the bossed leather shook,
And no delay the conquered beasts durst make,
But drew, not silent; and folk just awake,
When he went by as though a god they saw,
Fell on their knees, and maidens come to draw
Fresh water from the fount, sank trembling down,
And silence held the babbling, wakened town."
ANTIGONE
The poems and histories of legendary Greece often relate, as has
been seen, to women and their lives. Antigone was as bright an
example of filial and sisterly fidelity as was Alcestis of
connubial devotion. She was the daughter of OEdipus and Jocasta,
who, with all their descendants, were the victims of an
unrelenting fate, dooming them to destruction. OEdipus in his
madness had torn out his eyes, and was driven forth from his
kingdom Thebes, dreaded and abandoned by all men, as an object of
divine vengeance. Antigone, his daughter, alone shared his
wanderings, and remained with him till he died, and then returned
to Thebes.
Her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had agreed to share the
kingdom between them, and reign alternately year by year. The
first year fell to the lot of Eteocles, who, when his time
expired, refused to surrender the kingdom to his brother.
Polynices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, who gave him his
daughter in marriage, and aided him with an army to enforce his
claim to the kingdom. This led to the celebrated expedition of
the "Seven against Thebes," which furnished ample materials for
the epic and tragic poets of Greece.
Amphiaraus, the brother-in-law of Adrastus, opposed the
enterprise, for he was a soothsayer, and knew by his art that no
one of the leaders except Adrastus would live to return. But
Amphiaraus, on his marriage to Eriphyle, the king's sister, had
agreed that whenever he and Adrastus should differ in opinion,
the decision should be left to Eriphyle. Polynices, knowing
this, gave Eriphyle the collar of Harmonia, and thereby gained
her to his interest. This collar or necklace was a present which
Vulcan had given to Harmonia on her marriage with Cadmus, and
Polynices had taken it with him on his flight from Thebes.
Eriphyle could not resist so tempting a bribe, and by her
decision the war was resolved on, and Amphiaraus went to his
certain fate. He bore his part bravely in the contest, but could
not avert his destiny. Pursued by the enemy he fled along the
river, when a thunderbolt launched by Jupiter opened the ground,
and he, his chariot, and his charioteer, were swallowed up.
It would not be in place here to detail all the acts of heroism
or atrocity which marked the contest; but we must not omit to
record the fidelity of Evadne as an offset to the weakness of
Eriphyle. Capaneus, the husband of Evadne, in the ardor of the
fight, declared that he would force his way into the city in
spite of Jove himself. Placing a ladder against the wall, he
mounted, but Jupiter, offended at his impious language, struck
him with a thunderbolt. When his obsequies were celebrated,
Evadne cast herself on his funeral pile and perished.
Early in the contest Eteocles consulted the soothsayer Tiresias
as to the issue. Tiresias, in his youth, had by chance seen
Minerva bathing. The goddess in her wrath deprived him of his
sight, but afterwards relenting gave him in compensation the
knowledge of future events. When consulted by Eteocles, he
declared that victory should fall to Thebes if Menoeceus, the son
of Creon, gave himself a voluntary victim. The heroic youth,
learning the response, threw away his life in the first
encounter.
The siege continued long, with various success. At length both
hosts agreed that the brothers should decide their quarrel by
single combat. They fought and fell by each other's hands. The
armies then renewed the fight, and at last the invaders were
forced to yield, and fled, leaving their dead unburied. Creon,
the uncle of the fallen princes, now become king, caused Eteocles
to be buried with distinguished honor, but suffered the body of
Polynices to lie where it fell, forbidding every one, on pain of
death, to give it burial.
Antigone, the sister of Polynices, heard with indignation the
revolting edict which consigned her brother's body to the dogs
and vultures, depriving it of those rites which were considered
essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading
counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to
procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard and to
bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in the act,
and Creon gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having
deliberately set at nought the solemn edict of the city. Her
love, Haemon, the son of Creon, unable to avert her fate, would
not survive her, and fell by his own hand.
Antigone forms the subject of two fine tragedies of the Grecian
poet Sophocles. Mrs. Jameson, in her Characteristics of Women,
has compared her character with that of Cordelia, in
Shakespeare's King Lear. The perusal of her remarks cannot fail
to gratify our readers.
The following is the lamentation of Antigone over OEdipus, when
death has at last relieved him from his sufferings:
"Alas! I only wished I might have died
With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
For longer life?
Oh, I was fond of misery with him;
E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved
When he was with me. Oh, my dearest father,
Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
Wast dear, and shalt be ever."
Francklin's Sophocles
PENELOPE
Penelope is another of those mythic heroines whose beauties were
rather those of character and conduct than of person. She was
the daughter of Icarius, a Spartan prince. Ulysses, king of
Ithaca, sought her in marriage, and won her over all competitors.
When the moment came for the bride to leave her father's house,
Icarius, unable to bear the thoughts of parting with his
daughter, tried to persuade her to remain with him, and not
accompany her husband to Ithaca. Ulysses gave Penelope her
choice, to stay or go with him. Penelope made no reply, but
dropped her veil over her face. Icarius urged her no further,
but when she was gone erected a statue to Modesty on the spot
where they parted.
Ulysses and Penelope had not enjoyed their union more than a year
when it was interrupted by the events which called Ulysses to the
Trojan war. During his long absence, and when it was doubtful
whether he still lived, and highly improbable that he would ever
return, Penelope was importuned by numerous suitors, from whom
there seemed no refuge but in choosing one of them for her
husband. Penelope, however, employed every art to gain time,
still hopping for Ulysses' return. One of her arts of delay was
engaging in the preparation of a robe for the funeral canopy of
Laertes, her husband's father. She pledged herself to make her
choice among the suitors when the robe was finished. During the
day she worked at the robe, but in the night she undid the work
of the day. This is the famous Penelope's web, which is used as
a proverbial expression for anything which is perpetually doing
but never done. The rest of Penelope's history will be told when
we give an account of her husband's adventures.
Chapter XVII
Orpheus and Eurydice. Artistaeus. Amphion. Linus.
Thamyris. Marsyas. Melampus. Musaeus
Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope. He was
presented by his father with a lyre and taught to play upon it,
and he played to such perfection that nothing could withstand the
charm of his music. Not only his fellow mortals, but wild beasts
were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by
their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay. Nay, the
very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. The former
crowded round him and the latter relaxed somewhat of their
hardness, softened by his notes.
Hymen had been called to bless with his presence the nuptials of
Orpheus with Eurydice; but though he attended, he brought no
happy omens with him. His very torch smoked and brought tears
into their eyes. In coincidence with such prognostics Eurydice,
shortly after her marriage, while wandering with the nymphs, her
companions, was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, who was struck
with her beauty, and made advances to her. She fled, and in
flying trod upon a snake in the grass, was bitten in the foot and
died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air,
both gods and men, and finding it all unavailing resolved to seek
his wife in the regions of the dead. He descended by a cave
situated on the side of the promontory of Taenarus and arrived at
the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts, and
presented himself before the throne of Pluto and Proserpine.
Accompanying the words with the lyre, he sung, "O deities of the
underworld, to whom all we who live must come, hear my words, for
they are true! I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus,
nor to try my strength against the three-headed dog with snaky
hair who guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose
opening years the poisonous viper's fang has brought to an
untimely end. Love had led me here, Love, a god all powerful
with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true,
not less so here. I implore you by these abodes full of terror,
these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the
thread of Eurydice's life. We all are destined to you, and
sooner or later must pass to your domain. She too, when she
shall have filled her term of life, will rightly be yours. But
till then grant her to me, I beseech you. If you deny me, I
cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of us both."
As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears.
Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his
efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture ceased
to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaus rested from
their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his
rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks
of the Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist,
and Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice was called. She came from
among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot.
Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on one condition,
that he should not turn round to look at her till they should
have reached the upper air. Under this condition they proceeded
on their way, he leading, she following, through passages dark
and steep, in total silence, till they had nearly reached the
outlet into the cheerful upper world, when Orpheus, in a moment
of forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following,
cast a glance behind him, when instantly she was borne away.
Stretching out their arms to embrace one another they grasped
only the air. Dying now a second time she yet cannot reproach
her husband, for how can she blame his impatience to behold her?
"Farewell," she said, "a last farewell," and was hurried away,
so fast that the sound hardly reached his ears.
Orpheus endeavored to follow her, and besought permission to
return and try once more for her release but the stern ferryman
repulsed him and refused passage. Seven days he lingered about
the brink, without food or sleep; then bitterly accusing of
cruelty the powers of Erebus, he sang his complaints to the rocks
and mountains, melting the hearts of tigers and moving the oaks
from their stations. He held himself aloof from womankind,
dwelling constantly on the recollection of his sad mischance.
The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he
repulsed their advances. They bore with him as long as they
could; but finding him insensible, one day, one of them, excited
by the rites of Bacchus, exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!"
and threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came
within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his feet. So did
also the stones that they threw at him. But the women raised a
scream and drowned the voice of the music, and then the missiles
reached him and soon were stained with his blood. The maniacs
tore him limb from limb, and threw his head and his lyre into the
river Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music, to
which the shores responded a plaintive symphony. The Muses
gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at
Libethra, where the nightingale is said to sing over his grave
more sweetly than in any other part of Greece. His lyre was
placed by Jupiter among the stars. His shade passed a second
time to Tartarus, where he sought out his Eurydice and embraced
her, with eager arms. They roam through those happy fields
together now, sometimes he leads, sometimes she; and Orpheus
gazes as much as he will upon her, no longer incurring a penalty
for a thoughtless glance.
The story of Orpheus has furnished Pope with an illustration of
the power of music, for his Ode for St. Cecelia's Day. The
following stanza relates the conclusion of the story:
"But soon, too soon the lover turns his eyes;
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
All alone,
He makes his moan,
And calls her ghost,
Forever, ever, ever lost!
Now with furies surrounded,
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's snows.
See, wild as the winds o'er the desert he flies;
Hark! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries.
Ah, see, he dies!
Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue;
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung."
The superior melody of the nightingale's song over the grave of
Orpheus, is alluded to by Southey in his Thalaba:
"Then on his ear what sounds
Of harmony arose!
Far music and the distance-mellowed song
From bowers of merriment;
The waterfall remote;
The murmuring of the leafy groves;
The single nightingale
Perched in the rosier by, so richly toned,
That never from that most melodious bird
Singing a love-song to his brooding mate,
Did Thracian shepherd by the grave
Of Orpheus hear a sweeter melody,
Though there the spirit of the sepulchre
All his own power infuse, to swell
The incense that he loves."
ARISTAEUS, THE BEE-KEEPER
Man avails himself of the instincts of the inferior animals for
his own advantage. Hence sprang the art of keeping bees. Honey
must first have been known as a wild product, the bees building
their structures in hollow trees or holes in the rocks, or any
similar cavity that chance offered. Thus occasionally the
carcass of a dead animal would be occupied by the bees for that
purpose. It was no doubt from some such incident that the
superstition arose that the bees were engendered by the decaying
flesh of the animal; and Virgil, in the following story (From the
Georgies, Book IV.1.317), shows how this supposed fact may be
turned to account for renewing the swarm when it has been lost by
disease or accident.
The shepherd Aristaeus, who first taught the management of bees,
was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene. His bees had perished,
and he resorted for aid to his mother. He stood at the river
side and thus addressed her: "Oh, mother, the pride of my life is
taken from me! I have lost my precious bees. My care and skill
have availed me nothing, and you, my mother, have not warded off
from me the blow of misfortune." His mother heard these
complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom of the river
with her attendant nymphs around her. They were engaged in
female occupations, spinning and weaving, while one told stories
to amuse the rest. The sad voice of Aristaeus interrupting their
occupation, one of them put her head above the water and seeing
him, returned and gave information to his mother, who ordered
that he should be brought into her presence. The river at her
command opened itself and let him pass in, while it stood curled
like a mountain on either side. He descended to the region where
the fountains of the great rivers lie; he saw the enormous
receptacles of waters and was almost deafened with the roar,
while he surveyed them hurrying off in various directions to
water the face of the earth. Arriving at his mother's apartment
he was hospitably received by Cyrene and her nymphs, who spread
their table with the richest dainties. They first poured out
libations to Neptune, then regaled themselves with the feast, and
after that Cyrene thus addressed him: "There is an old prophet
named Proteus, who dwells in the sea and is a favorite of
Neptune, whose herd of sea-calves he pastures. We nymphs hold
him in great respect, for he is a learned sage, and knows all
things, past, present, and to come. He can tell you, my son, the
cause of the mortality among your bees, and how you may remedy
it. But he will not do it voluntarily, however you may entreat
him. You must compel him by force. If you seize him and chain
him, he will answer your questions in order to get released, for
he cannot, by all his arts, get away if you hold fast the chains.
I will carry you to his cave, where he comes at noon to take his
midday repose. Then you may easily secure him. But when he
finds himself captured, his resort is to a power he possesses of
changing himself into various forms. He will become a wild boar
or a fierce tiger, a scaly dragon, or lion with yellow mane. Or
he will make a noise like the crackling of flames or the rush of
water, so as to tempt you to let go the chain, when he will make
his escape. But you have only to keep him fast bound, and at
last when he finds all his arts unavailing, he will return to his
own figure and obey your commands." So saying she sprinkled her
son with fragrant nectar, the beverage of the gods, and immediately an unusual vigor filled his frame and courage his heart, while perfume breathed all around him. |
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