flocks and allowed no one to share his wealth or even enter his estates.
Atlas' chief pride was his orchard whose fruits were all of gold, hung
on golden branches and folded from sight by golden leaves. Perseus had
no ambition to take this golden harvest.
"I stop in your domain only as a guest," he explained to the giant, "I
am of noble birth, having sprung from the gods, and I have just
accomplished the brave deed of destroying the terror Medusa wrought on
the sea. I ask only rest and food of you."
But Atlas could think of nothing but his greed for his gold apples.
"Be gone, boaster!" he cried, "or I will crush you like a worm beneath
my heel. Neither your parentage or your valor shall avail you anything."
Perseus did not attempt to meet the force of the giant's greater
strength, but he held up the head of the Gorgon full in his face. Then
the massive bulk of Atlas was slowly but surely turned to stone. His
iron muscles, his brawny limbs, his huge body and head increased in size
and petrified until he towered above Perseus, a mighty mountain. His
beard and hair became forests, his arm and shoulders cliffs, his head a
summit, and his bones rocks. For all the rest of the centuries Atlas was
to stand there holding the sky with its weight of stars on his
shoulders.
Perseus continued his flight and he came to the country of the
Ethiopians. The sea was as ruthless here as it had been when Medusa
ruled the billows in her cave on the coast of Greece. As Perseus
approached the coast he saw a terrible sight.
A sea monster was lashing the waves to fury and coming closer and closer
to the shore. And a beautiful girl was chained to the rocks, waiting to
be devoured by this dragon. She hung there, so pale and motionless that
if it had not been for her tears that flowed in a long stream down the
rocks, and her bright hair that the breezes from the sea blew about her
like a cloud, Perseus would have thought her a marble statue carved and
placed there on the rocks.
Perseus alighted beside her, startled at her horrible plight, and
entranced with her beauty.
"Why are you fastened here in such danger?" he asked.
The girl did not speak at first, trying to cover her face, but her hands
were also chained. At last she explained to Perseus.
"I am Andromeda, the princess of Ethiopia," she said, "and I must be a
sacrifice to the sea because my mother, Queen Cassiopeia, has enraged
the sea by comparing her beauty to that of the nymphs. I am offered here
to appease the deities. Look, the monster comes!" she ended in a shriek.
Almost before she had finished speaking, a hissing sound could be heard
on the surface of the water and the sea monster appeared with his head
above the surf and cleaving the waves with his broad breast. The shore
filled with people who loved Andromeda and shrieked their lamentations
at the tragedy which was about to take place. The sea monster was in
range of a cliff at last and Perseus, with a sudden bound of his winged
feet, rose in the air.
He soared above the waters like an eagle and darted down upon this
dragon of the sea. He plunged his sword into its shoulder, but the
creature was only pricked by the thrust and lashed the sea into such a
fury that Perseus could scarcely see to attack him. But as he caught
sight of the dragon through the mist of spray, Perseus pierced it
between its scales, now in the side, then in the flank, and then in the
head. At last the monster spurted blood from its nostrils. Perseus
alighted on a rock beside Andromeda and gave it a death stroke. And the
people who had gathered on the shore shouted with joy until the hills
re-echoed their glad cries.
Like the prince of a fairy tale, Perseus asked for the fair Andromeda as
his bride to reward him for this last victory over the sea, and his wish
was granted. It seemed as if his tempestuous adventures were going to
reach a peaceful ending as he took his bride. There was a banquet spread
for the wedding feast in the palace of Andromeda's father and all was
joy and festivity when there came a sound of warlike clamor from
outside the gates. Phineas, a warrior of Ethiopia, who had loved
Andromeda, but had not had the courage to rescue her from the terror of
the sea, had arrived with his train to take her away from Perseus.
"You should have claimed her when she was chained to the rock," Perseus
said. "You are a coward to attack us here with so overpowering an army."
Phineas made no reply but raised his javelin to hurl it at Perseus. The
hero had a sudden thought to save him from destruction.
"Let my friends all depart, or turn away their eyes," he said, and he
held aloft the hideous snaky head of the Gorgon.
His enemy's arm that held the javelin stiffened so that he could neither
thrust it forward nor pull it back. His limbs became rigid, his mouth
opened but no sound came from it. He and all his followers were turned
to stone.
So Perseus was able to claim Andromeda as his bride after all, and they
both had a great desire after a while to go to Argos and visit Perseus'
old grandfather, the king of that country who had been so afraid of a
baby that he had sent his grandson drifting across the sea in a chest.
"I want to show him that he has nothing to fear from me," Perseus said.
It happened that they found the old king in a sad plight. He had been
driven from the throne and was a prisoner of state. But Perseus slew the
usurper and restored his grandfather to his rightful place.
In time, Perseus took the throne and his reign in Argos was so wise and
kind that the gods at last made a place for him and beautiful Andromeda
among the stars. You may see them on any clear night in the
constellation of Cassiopeia.
PEGASUS, THE HORSE WHO COULD FLY
A very strange thing happened when Perseus so heroically cut off the
head of Medusa, the Gorgon. On the spot where the blood dripped into the
earth from Perseus' sword there arose a slender limbed, wonderful horse
with wings on his shoulders. This horse was known as Pegasus, and there
was never, before or since, so marvellous a creature.
At that time, a young hero, Bellerophon by name, made a journey from his
own country to the court of King Iobates of Lycia. He brought two sealed
messages in a kind of letter of introduction from the husband of this
king's daughter, one of Bellerophon's own countrymen. The first message
read,
"The bearer, Bellerophon, is an unconquerable hero. I pray you welcome
him with all hospitality."
The second was this,
"I would advise you to put Bellerophon to death."
The truth of the matter was that the son-in-law of King Iobates was
jealous of Bellerophon and really desired to have him put out of the way
in order to satisfy his own ambitions.
The King of Lycia was at heart a friendly person and he was very much
puzzled to know how to act upon the advice in the letter introducing
Bellerophon. He was still puzzling over the matter when a dreadful
monster, known as the Chimaera, descended upon the kingdom. It was a
beast far beyond any of mortal kind in terror. It had a goat's rough
body and the tail of a dragon. The head was that of a lion with wide
spreading nostrils which breathed flames and a gaping throat that
emitted poisonous breath whose touch was death. As the subjects of King
Iobates appealed to him for protection from the Chimaera a sudden
thought came to him. He decided to send the heroic stranger,
Bellerophon, to meet and conquer the beast.
The hero had expected a period of rest at the court of Lycia. He had
looked forward to a feast that might possibly be given in his honor and
a chance to show his skill in throwing the discus and driving a chariot
at the court games. But the day after Bellerophon arrived at the palace
of King Iobates, he was sent out to hunt down and kill the Chimaera.
He had not the slightest idea where he was to go, and neither had he any
plan for destroying the creature, but he decided that it would be a good
plan to spend the night in the temple of Minerva before he met the
danger face to face. Minerva was the goddess of wisdom and might give
him help in his hopeless adventure.
So Bellerophon journeyed to Athens, the chosen city of Minerva, and
tarried for a night in her temple there, so weary that he fell asleep in
the midst of his supplications to the goddess. But when he awoke in the
morning, he found a golden bridle in his hands, and he heard a voice
directing him to hasten with it to a well outside of the city.
[Illustration: "Bellerophon took the golden reins firmly in his hand."]
Pegasus, the winged horse, had been pasturing meanwhile in the meadows
of the Muses. There were nine of these Muses, all sisters and all
presiding over the arts of song and of memory. One took care of poets
and another of those who wrote history. There was a Muse of the dance,
of comedy, of astronomy, and in fact of whatever made life more worth
while in the sight of the gods. They needed a kind of dream horse like
Pegasus with wings to carry them on his back to Mount Olympus whenever
they wanted to return from the earth.
Bellerophon had never known of the existence even of Pegasus, but when
he reached the well to which the oracle had directed him, there stood
Pegasus, or, rather, this horse of the Muses poised there, for his wings
buoyed him so that his hoofs could scarcely remain upon the earth. When
Pegasus saw the golden bridle that the goddess of Wisdom had given
Bellerophon, he came directly up to the hero and stood quietly to be
harnessed. A dark shadow crossed the sky just then; the dreaded Chimaera
hovered over Bellerophon's head, its fiery jaws raining sparks down upon
him.
Bellerophon mounted upon Pegasus and took the golden reins firmly in one
hand as he brandished his sword in the other. He rose swiftly in the air
and met the ravening creature in a fierce battle in the clouds. Not for
an instant did the winged horse falter, and Bellerophon killed the
Chimaera easily. It was a great relief to the people of Lycia, and
indeed to people of all time. You may have heard of a Chimaera. It means
nowadays any kind of terror that is not nearly so hard to conquer as it
seemed in the beginning when people were afraid of it.
This story ought to end with the hero returning his winged steed to the
Muses and entering the kingdom of Lycia in great triumph, but something
very different happened. Bellerophon decided to keep Pegasus, and he
rode him so long and so hard that he grew very full of pride and
presumption in his success. One day Bellerophon made up his mind to
drive Pegasus to the gates of the gods in the sky which was too great an
ambition for a mortal who had received no invitation as yet from the
dwellers on Mount Olympus. Jupiter saw this rider of the skies mounting
higher and higher and he became very angry with him. He sent a gadfly
which stung Pegasus and made him throw Bellerophon to the earth. He was
always lame and blind after that.
It really had not been the fault of Pegasus at all. He was only the
steed of those who followed dreams, even if he did have wings. When his
rider fell, Pegasus fell too, and he landed unhurt but a long distance
from his old pastures. He did not know in which direction they lay or
how to find the road that led back to his friends, the Muses. Pegasus'
wings seemed to be of no use to him. He roamed from one end of the
country to the other, driven from one field to the next by the rustics
who mistook him for some sort of a dragon because of his wings. He grew
old and lost his fleetness. It even seemed to him that his wings were
nothing but a dragging weight and that he would never be able to use
them again.
Finally the same thing happened to Pegasus that happens to old horses
to-day that have enjoyed a wonderful youth as racers. He was sold to a
farmer and fastened to a plough.
Pegasus was not used to this heavy work of the soil; his strength was
better suited to climbing through the air than plodding along the
surface of the earth. He used all the strength he could put forth in
pulling the plough, but his wings dragged and were in the way and his
master beat his aching back with an ox whip. That might have been the
end of this winged horse, but one day good fortune came to him.
There was a youth passing by who was beloved of the Muses. He was so
poor that he had often no other shelter than the woods and hedges
afforded, or any food save wild fruits and the herbs of the field. But
this youth could put the beauties of the earth, its hills and valleys,
its temples, flowers, and the desires and loves of its people into words
that sang together as the notes of a lute sang. He was a young poet.
The poet felt a great compassion for the horse he saw in the field, bent
low under the blows of his clownish master, and with wings dragging and
tattered.
"Let me try to drive your horse," he begged, crossing the field and
mounting upon Pegasus' back.
It was suddenly as if one of the gods were riding Pegasus. He lifted his
head high, and his heavy feet left the clods of earth. His wings
straightened and spread wide. Carrying the youth, Pegasus arose through
the air as the country people gathered from all the neighboring farms to
watch the wonder, a winged horse with a flowing golden mane rising and
then hidden within the clouds that opened upon Mount Olympus.
HOW MARS LOST A BATTLE
Terminus was the god of boundaries, and a kind of picnic was being held
in his honor one day in the long-ago myth time on the edge of a little
Roman town.
No one had ever really seen Terminus but every farmer who owned a few
acres of land, and the men who governed the cities were quite sure as to
how he looked. It was likely that he wore such garb as did Pan, they had
decided, and carried instruments for measuring similar to those that a
surveyor uses to-day. His chariot was loaded with large stones and
finely chiselled posts for marking the limits of a man's farm, or that
of a town. There were no fences in those days, but the gods had
appointed Terminus to protect land holders and to safeguard citizens by
keeping all boundaries sacred from invasion by an enemy.
No wonder the Terminalia, as they called this holiday, was a joyous
time. All through the neighboring vineyards and fields and on the edge
of the village stones had been placed to mark the boundaries, and there
were stone pillars, also, having carved heads to make them beautiful.
Everyone who came to the picnic brought an offering for the god
Terminus, a wreath of bright roses, a garland of green laurel, or a
basket of grapes and pomegranates which they placed on one of these
boundary stones or posts. The law of the gods that prevented invasion
was the greatest blessing these people had, for it made them free to
till the earth and build homes and keep their hearth fires burning.
Suddenly the merrymaking was interrupted. The children who had been
gathering wild flowers ran, crying, to their fathers and mothers, for
the sky was darkened in an instant as if a hurricane was approaching.
The young men who had been playing games and the maidens who had been
dancing huddled together in frightened groups, for they saw between
rifts in the clouds the tracks of dark chariot wheels making their swift
way down to earth from the sky. And the older folk, who knew the meaning
of the rumblings and dull roar and occasional darts of fire that parted
the clouds, shuddered.
"See who stands in our midst in his black cloak, scattering hoar frost
that blights the fields and freezes us!" they exclaimed. "It is Dread,
the courier of Mars, the god of war, who is approaching in his chariot."
There came dreadful sounds soon that almost drowned the voices of the
people, the crashing of swords and shields, and the cries of women and
little children as a chariot plunged through their midst, its wheels
dripping with blood. It was driven by two other attendants of war, Alarm
and Terror, the face of one as dark as a thunder cloud, and the other
with a countenance as pale as death.
"What shall we do; we are unarmed and will perish?" one man cried. And
another answered him.
"Look to yourself and your own safety. Why did you leave your sword at
home, and what care is it of mine that you have no means of protecting
yourself?"
Strange words for a noble people to speak to one another in a time of
such need, were they not? But it was not the heart or the soul speech
of these Romans. The two other attendants of war, Fear and Discord in
tarnished armor, had appeared in their midst and had put these thoughts
into the minds of the men.
"Mars comes!" they said then, and the air grew dense and suffocating
with smoke, only pierced at intervals by fiery arrows. Thunderbolts
forged by the black, one-eyed Cyclopes in their workshops under the
volcanoes fell all about, tearing up the earth and bursting in thousands
of burning pieces. Through this slaughter and carnage rode the mailed
Mars, one of the gods of war.
His steeds were hot and bleeding, and his own eyes shone like fire in
his dark, cruel face, for Mars had no pity and took pleasure in war for
the sake of itself. It was never the purpose but always the battle that
gave him pleasure. With his attendants he sat on a throne that was
stained with blood, and the worship that delighted his ears like music
was the crash of strife and the cries of those who were sorely wounded.
Mars' palace on Mount Olympus was a most terrible place. Fancy a grim
old stronghold built for strength only, without a chink or a crack for
letting in Apollo's cheerful sunlight, and never visited by the happy
Muses or by Orpheus with his sweet toned lute, or by jolly old Momus,
the god of laughter. The palace was guarded, night and day, by a huge
hound and a vulture, both of them the constant visitants of battle
fields. Mars sat on his throne, waited upon by a company of sad
prisoners of war, and holding forever the insignia of his office, a
spear and a flaming torch. Why had he left his abode and descended upon
the peaceful merrymaking of the Terminalia?
Mars was a very ruthless kind of god. In fact he was so cruel and
thoughtless that the family of the gods was rather sorry that Jupiter
had appointed him to so important a position, and they decided at last
to have two war-gods. But who the other one was and what happened when
this second chariot of war crashed down through the clouds is another
story that you shall hear presently. The reason for Mars riding out with
those frightful friends of his, Dread, Alarm, Fear, and Discord, was
that he had not the slightest respect for Terminus, the god of
boundaries. He had decided to knock down his stones and shatter his
pillars.
Everyone, from the days of the myths down to the present time, has
believed in a fair fight. It is about the greatest adventure a man can
have, that of using all his strength and giving up his life perhaps in a
battle to right a wrong or protect a defenseless people. But fancy this
old fight of Mars when he rode down in the chariot that the gods had
given him upon a people who were without arms and with the purpose of
violating their boundaries.
With a rumble like that of all the thunder storms in the world rolled
into one and a crashing like the sound of a thousand spears, Mars
touched the earth and rode across Terminus' carefully laid out boundary
lines and destroyed them. The wheels of his chariot ground the stones
Terminus had so honestly placed to powder, and the beautifully carved
pillars were shattered, and the pieces buried in the dust. The shouts of
Mars and his followers drowned all the peaceful melody of earth, the
singing of birds, the laughter of the children, and the pleasant sounds
of spinning and mowing and grinding.
It was indeed a most dreadful invasion and for a while it seemed as if
it was going to end in nothing but destruction of the people and the
industry on the earth which the gods loved and had helped. But in an
instant something happened.
There was a roar as if wild beasts of the forests for miles around had
been captured, and the earth trembled as it did when the giants were
thrown out of the home of the gods, for Mars had fallen and was crying
about it. He had thought himself invulnerable, but whether an arrow from
some unseen hero had hit him or whether his steeds had stumbled over one
of Terminus' boundary posts, the invincible Mars lay prostrate on the
field he had himself invaded, and before he could pick himself up,
something else happened.
It was really rather amusing, for Mars was not hurt. He was only taught
a much needed lesson.
Just beyond the lines of Terminus which Mars had violated there lived
two giant planters, Otus and Ephialtes, whose father had been a planter
also and his father before him. They had been much too busy to attend
the Terminalia picnic. In fact they almost never took a holiday, but
toiled from sunrise to sunset on their farm which supplied the nearby
market with fruits and bread stuffs. Otus and Ephialtes were very much
surprised to hear the thundering crash that Mars made when he tumbled
down; and they dropped their tools and ran to see what was the matter.
It is said that the fallen Mars covered seven acres of ground, but the
two giants started at once picking him up and he began to shrink then
like a rubber balloon when the air leaks out of it.
"What shall we do with this troublemaker?" Otus asked his brother.
"We must put him where he will not interfere with our work or the other
work of the earth for a while at least," Ephialtes said as they tugged
Mars, still roaring, home.
"That's a good idea," Otus agreed. "We will shut him up."
And so they crammed the troublesome Mars into a great bronze vase and
took turns sitting on the cover so that he was not able, by any chance,
to get out for thirteen months. That gave everyone an opportunity to
plant and gather another harvest, and to place Terminus' boundary stones
again.
These giant planters would have liked to keep this god of war bottled up
in the vase for all the rest of time, but he was one of the family of
the Olympians and so this was not possible. In time he was allowed to
drive home and both the Greek and the Roman people tried to make the
best of him, not as a protecting deity, but as the god of strength and
brawn.
The Greeks named a hill for him near Athens, and here was held a court
of justice for the right decision of cases involving life and death.
That put Mars to work in a very different way. And the Romans gave him a
great field for military manoeuvres and martial games. We would call it
a training camp to-day. There, in Mars Field, chariot races were held
twice a year and there were competitions in riding, in discus and spear
throwing, and in shooting arrows at a mark. Once in five years the
able-bodied young men of Rome came to Mars Field to enlist for the army,
and no Roman general started out to war without first swinging a sacred
shield and spear which hung there and saying,
"Watch over me, O Mars." For Mars could put muscle into a man's arm, and
the heroes themselves were learning to choose the good fight.
HOW MINERVA BUILT A CITY
The sea that broke in surf on the shore of Attica became suddenly as
smooth as a floor of crystal. Over it, as if he had leaped from the
caverns of rock in its depths, dashed Neptune, the god of the sea, his
trident held high, his horses' golden manes flowing in the wind, and
their bronze hoofs scarcely touching the water as they galloped toward
the shore.
At the same moment a war-like goddess appeared on the edge of the land.
She was as tall and straight and strong as Mars, but her armor shone
like gold while his was often tarnished. She held the storm shield of
her father, Jupiter and carried a dart of lightning for her spear.
Minerva, the other god of war, she was, as fearful and powerful as a
storm, but also as gentle and peaceful as the warmth of the sky when it
shines down on the fields when the storm is over.
"Why have Neptune and Minerva met?" the fishermen and sailors who
crowded the beach asked.
"They have come together for a contest to see which shall have the
honor of building a City," some of the wise men told them, and then
these Greeks drew aside and waited to see what would happen, for with
them was to rest the judgment in the matter.