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A
BOOK OF MYTHS
BY JEAN LANG
(MRS. JOHN LANG)
WITH SIXTEEN ORIGINAL
DRAWINGS IN COLOUR
BY HELEN STRATTON
[Illustration]
THOMAS NELSON & SONS
NEW YORK
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[Illustration: "WHAT WAS HE DOING, THE GREAT GOD PAN, DOWN IN THE
REEDS BY THE RIVER?" (See page 209)]
PREFACE
Just as a little child holds out its hands to catch the sunbeams, to
feel and to grasp what, so its eyes tell it, is actually there, so,
down through the ages, men have stretched out their hands in eager
endeavour to know their God. And because only through the human was
the divine knowable, the old peoples of the earth made gods of their
heroes and not unfrequently endowed these gods with as many of the
vices as of the virtues of their worshippers. As we read the myths of
the East and the West we find ever the same story. That portion of the
ancient Aryan race which poured from the central plain of Asia,
through the rocky defiles of what we now call "The Frontier," to
populate the fertile lowlands of India, had gods who must once have
been wholly heroic, but who came in time to be more degraded than the
most vicious of lustful criminals. And the Greeks, Latins, Teutons,
Celts, and Slavonians, who came of the same mighty Aryan stock, did
even as those with whom they owned a common ancestry. Originally they
gave to their gods of their best. All that was noblest in them, all
that was strongest and most selfless, all the higher instincts of
their natures were their endowment. And although their worship in time
became corrupt and lost its beauty, there yet remains for us, in the
old tales of the gods, a wonderful humanity that strikes a vibrant
chord in the hearts of those who are the descendants of their
worshippers. For though creeds and forms may change, human nature
never changes. We are less simple than our fathers: that is all. And,
as Professor York Powell[1] most truly says: "It is not in a man's
creed, but in his deeds; not in his knowledge, but in his sympathy,
that there lies the essence of what is good and of what will last in
human life."
The most usual habits of mind in our own day are the theoretical and
analytical habits. Dissection, vivisection, analysis--those are the
processes to which all things not conclusively historical and all
things spiritual are bound to pass. Thus we find the old myths
classified into Sun Myths and Dawn Myths, Earth Myths and Moon Myths,
Fire Myths and Wind Myths, until, as one of the most sane and vigorous
thinkers of the present day[2] has justly observed: "If you take the
rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun and the lamb
the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both in religion and
astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary to school one
day."
In this little collection of Myths, the stories are not presented to
the student of folklore as a fresh contribution to his knowledge.
Rather is the book intended for those who, in the course of their
reading, frequently come across names which possess for them no
meaning, and who care to read some old stories, through which runs the
same humanity that their own hearts know. For although the old worship
has passed away, it is almost impossible for us to open a book that
does not contain some mention of the gods of long ago. In our
childhood we are given copies of Kingsley's _Heroes_ and of
Hawthorne's _Tanglewood Tales_. Later on, we find in Shakespeare,
Spenser, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Longfellow, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning,
and a host of other writers, constant allusion to the stories of the
gods. Scarcely a poet has ever written but makes mention of them in
one or other of his poems. It would seem as if there were no get-away
from them. We might expect in this twentieth century that the old gods
of Greece and of Rome, the gods of our Northern forefathers, the gods
of Egypt, the gods of the British race, might be forgotten. But even
when we read in a newspaper of aeroplanes, someone is more than likely
to quote the story of Bellerophon and his winged steed, or of Icarus,
the flyer, and in our daily speech the names of gods and goddesses
continually crop up. We drive--or, at least, till lately we drove--in
Phaetons. Not only schoolboys swear by Jove or by Jupiter. The silvery
substance in our thermometers and barometers is named Mercury.
Blacksmiths are accustomed to being referred to as "sons of Vulcan,"
and beautiful youths to being called "young Adonises." We accept the
names of newspapers and debating societies as being the "Argus,"
without perhaps quite realising who was Argus, the many-eyed. We talk
of "a panic," and forget that the great god Pan is father of the word.
Even in our religious services we go back to heathenism. Not only are
the crockets on our cathedral spires and church pews remnants of
fire-worship, but one of our own most beautiful Christian blessings is
probably of Assyrian origin. "The Lord bless thee and keep thee....
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee.... The Lord lift up the
light of His countenance upon thee...." So did the priests of the
sun-gods invoke blessings upon those who worshipped.
We make many discoveries as we study the myths of the North and of the
South. In the story of Baldur we find that the goddess Hel ultimately
gave her name to the place of punishment precious to the Calvinistic
mind. And because the Norseman very much disliked the bitter, cruel
cold of the long winter, his heaven was a warm, well-fired abode, and
his place of punishment one of terrible frigidity. Somewhere on the
other side of the Tweed and Cheviots was the spot selected by the Celt
of southern Britain. On the other hand, the eastern mind, which knew
the terrors of a sun-smitten land and of a heat that was torture, had
for a hell a fiery place of constantly burning flames.
In the space permitted, it has not been possible to deal with more
than a small number of myths, and the well-known stories of Herakles,
of Theseus, and of the Argonauts have been purposely omitted. These
have been so perfectly told by great writers that to retell them would
seem absurd. The same applies to the Odyssey and the Iliad, the
translations of which probably take rank amongst the finest
translations in any language.
The writer will feel that her object has been gained should any
readers of these stories feel that for a little while they have left
the toilful utilitarianism of the present day behind them, and, with
it, its hampering restrictions of sordid actualities that are so
murderous to imagination and to all romance.
"Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
JEAN LANG.
POSTSCRIPT
We have come, in those last long months, to date our happenings as
they have never until now been dated by those of our own generation.
We speak of things that took place "_Before the War_"; and between
that time and this stands a barrier immeasurable.
This book, with its Preface, was completed in 1914--"_Before the
War._"
Since August 1914 the finest humanity of our race has been enduring
Promethean agonies. But even as Prometheus unflinchingly bore the
cruelties of pain, of heat and of cold, of hunger and of thirst, and
the tortures inflicted by an obscene bird of prey, so have endured the
men of our nation and of those nations with whom we are proud to be
allied. Much more remote than they seemed one little year ago, now
seem the old stories of sunny Greece. But if we have studied the
strange transmogrification of the ancient gods, we can look with
interest, if with horror, at the Teuton representation of the GOD in
whom we believe as a GOD of perfect purity, of honour, and of love.
According to their interpretation of Him, the God of the Huns would
seem to be as much a confederate of the vicious as the most degraded
god of ancient worship. And if we turn with shame from the Divinity so
often and so glibly referred to by blasphemous lips, and look on a
picture that tears our hearts, and yet makes our hearts big with
pride, we can understand how it was that those heroes who fought and
died in the Valley of the Scamander came in time to be regarded not as
men, but as gods.
There is no tale in all the world's mythology finer than the tale that
began in August 1914. How future generations will tell the tale, who
can say?
But we, for whom Life can never be the same again, can say with all
earnestness: "It is the memory that the soldier leaves behind him,
like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun--that is all
which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave
or the ignoble."
And, surely, to all those who are fighting, and suffering, and dying
for a noble cause, the GOD of gods, the GOD of battles, who is also
the GOD of peace, and the GOD of Love, has become an ever near and
eternally living entity.
"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be,
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, oh Lord, art more than they."
JEAN LANG.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Teutonic Heathendom._
[2] John Kelman, D.D., _Among Famous Books_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA 1
PYGMALION 11
PHAETON 16
ENDYMION 26
ORPHEUS 31
APOLLO AND DAPHNE 42
PSYCHE 46
THE CALYDONIAN HUNT 69
ATALANTA 78
ARACHNE 82
IDAS AND MARPESSA 90
ARETHUSA 100
PERSEUS THE HERO 105
NIOBE 124
HYACINTHUS 129
KING MIDAS OF THE GOLDEN TOUCH 134
CEYX AND HALCYONE 144
ARISTAEUS THE BEE-KEEPER 154
PROSERPINE 161
LATONA AND THE RUSTICS 169
ECHO AND NARCISSUS 174
ICARUS 181
CLYTIE 189
THE CRANES OF IBYCUS 192
SYRINX 197
THE DEATH OF ADONIS 202
PAN 209
LORELEI 220
FREYA, QUEEN OF THE NORTHERN GODS 227
THE DEATH OF BALDUR 234
BEOWULF 244
ROLAND THE PALADIN 266
THE CHILDREN OF LIR 289
DEIRDRE 306
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?" _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Then Pygmalion covered his eyes 12
She checked her hounds, and stood beside Endymion 28
Swiftly he turned, and found his wife behind him 38
Thus did Psyche lose her fear, and enter the golden doors 52
She stopped, and picked up the treasure 80
Marpessa sat alone by the fountain 92
They whimpered and begged of him 112
Darkness fell on the eyes of Hyacinthus 132
A grey cold morning found her on the seashore 152
She haunted him like his shadow 176
Freya sat spinning the clouds 228
"Baldur the Beautiful is dead!" 240
A stroke shivered the sword 262
Roland seized once more his horn 282
One touch for each with a magical wand of the Druids 294
A BOOK OF MYTHS
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA
Those who are interested in watching the mental development of a child
must have noted that when the baby has learned to speak even a little,
it begins to show its growing intelligence by asking questions. "What
is this?" it would seem at first to ask with regard to simple things
that to it are still mysteries. Soon it arrives at the more
far-reaching inquiries--"Why is this so?" "How did this happen?" And
as the child's mental growth continues, the painstaking and
conscientious parent or guardian is many times faced by questions
which lack of knowledge, or a sensitive honesty, prevents him from
answering either with assurance or with ingenuity.
As with the child, so it has ever been with the human race. Man has
always come into the world asking "How?" "Why?" "What?" and so the
Hebrew, the Greek, the Maori, the Australian blackfellow, the
Norseman--in a word, each race of mankind--has formed for itself an
explanation of existence, an answer to the questions of the groping
child-mind--"Who made the world?" "What is God?" "What made a God
think of fire and air and water?" "Why am I, _I_?"
Into the explanation of creation and existence given by the Greeks
come the stories of Prometheus and of Pandora. The world, as first it
was, to the Greeks was such a world as the one of which we read in the
Book of Genesis--"without form, and void." It was a sunless world in
which land, air, and sea were mixed up together, and over which
reigned a deity called Chaos. With him ruled the goddess of Night and
their son was Erebus, god of Darkness. When the two beautiful children
of Erebus, Light and Day, had flooded formless space with their
radiance, Eros, the god of Love, was born, and Light and Day and Love,
working together, turned discord into harmony and made the earth, the
sea, and the sky into one perfect whole. A giant race, a race of
Titans, in time populated this newly-made earth, and of these one of
the mightiest was Prometheus. To him, and to his brother Epimethus,
was entrusted by Eros the distribution of the gifts of faculties and
of instincts to all the living creatures in the world, and the task of
making a creature lower than the gods, something less great than the
Titans, yet in knowledge and in understanding infinitely higher than
the beasts and birds and fishes. At the hands of the Titan brothers,
birds, beasts, and fishes had fared handsomely. They were Titanic in
their generosity, and so prodigal had they been in their gifts that
when they would fain have carried out the commands of Eros they found
that nothing was left for the equipment of this being, to be called
Man. Yet, nothing daunted, Prometheus took some clay from the ground
at his feet, moistened it with water, and fashioned it into an image,
in form like the gods. Into its nostrils Eros breathed the spirit of
life, Pallas Athene endowed it with a soul, and the first man looked
wonderingly round on the earth that was to be his heritage.
Prometheus, proud of the beautiful thing of his own creation, would
fain have given Man a worthy gift, but no gift remained for him. He
was naked, unprotected, more helpless than any of the beasts of the
field, more to be pitied than any of them in that he had a soul to
suffer.
Surely Zeus, the All Powerful, ruler of Olympus, would have compassion
on Man? But Prometheus looked to Zeus in vain; compassion he had none.
Then, in infinite pity, Prometheus bethought himself of a power
belonging to the gods alone and unshared by any living creature on the
earth.
"We shall give Fire to the Man whom we have made," he said to
Epimethus. To Epimethus this seemed an impossibility, but to
Prometheus nothing was impossible. He bided his time and, unseen by
the gods, he made his way into Olympus, lighted a hollow torch with a
spark from the chariot of the Sun and hastened back to earth with this
royal gift to Man. Assuredly no other gift could have brought him more
completely the empire that has since been his. No longer did he
tremble and cower in the darkness of caves when Zeus hurled his
lightnings across the sky. No more did he dread the animals that
hunted him and drove him in terror before them.
Armed with fire, the beasts became his vassals. With fire he forged
weapons, defied the frost and cold, coined money, made implements for
tillage, introduced the arts, and was able to destroy as well as to
create.
From his throne on Olympus, Zeus looked down on the earth and saw,
with wonder, airy columns of blue-grey smoke that curled upwards to
the sky. He watched more closely, and realised with terrible wrath
that the moving flowers of red and gold that he saw in that land that
the Titans shared with men, came from fire, that had hitherto been the
gods' own sacred power. Speedily he assembled a council of the gods to
mete out to Prometheus a punishment fit for the blasphemous daring of
his crime. This council decided at length to create a thing that
should for evermore charm the souls and hearts of men, and yet, for
evermore, be man's undoing.
To Vulcan, god of fire, whose province Prometheus had insulted, was
given the work of fashioning out of clay and water the creature by
which the honour of the gods was to be avenged. "The lame Vulcan,"
says Hesiod, poet of Greek mythology, "formed out of the earth an
image resembling a chaste virgin. Pallas Athene, of the blue eyes,
hastened to ornament her and to robe her in a white tunic. She dressed
on the crown of her head a long veil, skilfully fashioned and
admirable to see; she crowned her forehead with graceful garlands of
newly-opened flowers and a golden diadem that the lame Vulcan, the
illustrious god, had made with his own hands to please the puissant
Jove. On this crown Vulcan had chiselled the innumerable animals that
the continents and the sea nourish in their bosoms, all endowed with a
marvellous grace and apparently alive. When he had finally completed,
instead of some useful work, this illustrious masterpiece, he brought
into the assembly this virgin, proud of the ornaments with which she
had been decked by the blue-eyed goddess, daughter of a powerful
sire." To this beautiful creature, destined by the gods to be man's
destroyer, each of them gave a gift. From Aphrodite she got beauty,
from Apollo music, from Hermes the gift of a winning tongue. And when
all that great company in Olympus had bestowed their gifts, they named
the woman Pandora--"Gifted by all the Gods." Thus equipped for
victory, Pandora was led by Hermes to the world that was thenceforward
to be her home. As a gift from the gods she was presented to
Prometheus.
But Prometheus, gazing in wonder at the violet blue eyes bestowed by
Aphrodite, that looked wonderingly back into his own as if they were
indeed as innocent as two violets wet with the morning dew, hardened
his great heart, and would have none of her. As a hero--a worthy
descendant of Titans--said in later years, "Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes,"--"I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts." And
Prometheus, the greatly-daring, knowing that he merited the anger of
the gods, saw treachery in a gift outwardly so perfect. Not only would
he not accept this exquisite creature for his own, but he hastened to
caution his brother also to refuse her.
But well were they named Prometheus (Forethought) and Epimethus
(Afterthought). For Epimethus it was enough to look at this peerless
woman, sent from the gods, for him to love her and to believe in her
utterly. She was the fairest thing on earth, worthy indeed of the
deathless gods who had created her. Perfect, too, was the happiness
that she brought with her to Epimethus. Before her coming, as he well
knew now, the fair world had been incomplete. Since she came the
fragrant flowers had grown more sweet for him, the song of the birds
more full of melody. He found new life in Pandora and marvelled how
his brother could ever have fancied that she could bring to the world
aught but peace and joyousness.
Now when the gods had entrusted to the Titan brothers the endowment of
all living things upon the earth, they had been careful to withhold
everything that might bring into the world pain, sickness, anxiety,
bitterness of heart, remorse, or soul-crushing sorrow. All these
hurtful things were imprisoned in a coffer which was given into the
care of the trusty Epimethus.
To Pandora the world into which she came was all fresh, all new, quite
full of unexpected joys and delightful surprises. It was a world of
mystery, but mystery of which her great, adoring, simple Titan held
the golden key. When she saw the coffer which never was opened, what
then more natural than that she should ask Epimethus what it
contained? But the contents were known only to the gods. Epimethus was
unable to answer. Day by day, the curiosity of Pandora increased. To
her the gods had never given anything but good. Surely there must be
here gifts more precious still. What if the Olympians had destined her
to be the one to open the casket, and had sent her to earth in order
that she might bestow on this dear world, on the men who lived on it,
and on her own magnificent Titan, happiness and blessings which only
the minds of gods could have conceived? Thus did there come a day when
Pandora, unconscious instrument in the hands of a vengeful Olympian,
in all faith, and with the courage that is born of faith and of love,
opened the lid of the prison-house of evil. And as from coffers in the
old Egyptian tombs, the live plague can still rush forth and slay, the
long-imprisoned evils rushed forth upon the fair earth and on the
human beings who lived on it--malignant, ruthless, fierce,
treacherous, and cruel--poisoning, slaying, devouring. Plague and
pestilence and murder, envy and malice and revenge and all
viciousness--an ugly wolf-pack indeed was that one let loose by
Pandora. Terror, doubt, misery, had all rushed straightway to attack
her heart, while the evils of which she had never dreamed stung mind
and soul into dismay and horror, when, by hastily shutting the lid of
the coffer, she tried to undo the evil she had done.
And lo, she found that the gods had imprisoned one good gift only in
this Inferno of horrors and of ugliness. In the world there had never
been any need of Hope. What work was there for Hope to do where all
was perfect, and where each creature possessed the desire of body and
of heart? Therefore Hope was thrust into the chest that held the
evils, a star in a black night, a lily growing on a dung-heap. And as
Pandora, white-lipped and trembling, looked into the otherwise empty
box, courage came back to her heart, and Epimethus let fall to his
side the arm that would have slain the woman of his love because there
came to him, like a draught of wine to a warrior spent in battle, an
imperial vision of the sons of men through all the aeons to come,
combatting all evils of body and of soul, going on conquering and to
conquer. Thus, saved by Hope, the Titan and the woman faced the
future, and for them the vengeance of the gods was stayed.
"Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward."
So spoke Milton, the blind Titan of the seventeenth century; and
Shakespeare says:
"True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings."
Upon the earth, and on the children of men who were as gods in their
knowledge and mastery of the force of fire, Jupiter had had his
revenge. For Prometheus he reserved another punishment. He, the
greatly-daring, once the dear friend and companion of Zeus himself,
was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus by the vindictive deity.
There, on a dizzy height, his body thrust against the sun-baked rock,
Prometheus had to endure the torment of having a foul-beaked vulture
tear out his liver, as though he were a piece of carrion lying on the
mountain side. All day, while the sun mercilessly smote him and the
blue sky turned from red to black before his pain-racked eyes, the
torture went on. Each night, when the filthy bird of prey that worked
the will of the gods spread its dark wings and flew back to its eyrie,
the Titan endured the cruel mercy of having his body grow whole once
more. But with daybreak there came again the silent shadow, the smell
of the unclean thing, and again with fierce beak and talons the
vulture greedily began its work.
Thirty thousand years was the time of his sentence, and yet Prometheus
knew that at any moment he could have brought his torment to an end. A
secret was his--a mighty secret, the revelation of which would have
brought him the mercy of Zeus and have reinstated him in the favour of
the all-powerful god. Yet did he prefer to endure his agonies rather
than to free himself by bowing to the desires of a tyrant who had
caused Man to be made, yet denied to Man those gifts that made him
nobler than the beasts and raised him almost to the heights of the
Olympians. Thus for him the weary centuries dragged by--in suffering
that knew no respite--in endurance that the gods might have ended.
Prometheus had brought an imperial gift to the men that he had made,
and imperially he paid the penalty.
"Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair,--these are mine empire.
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!"
Shelley.
"Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless."
Byron.
"Yet, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown
By years of solitude,--that holds apart
The past and future, giving the soul room
To search into itself,--and long commune
With this eternal silence;--more a god,
In my long-suffering and strength to meet
With equal front the direst shafts of fate,
Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism ...
Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type
Of what all lofty spirits endure that fain
Would win men back to strength and peace through love:
Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart
Envy, or scorn or hatred tears lifelong
With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left;
And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love
And patience, which at last shall overcome."
Lowell.
PYGMALION
In days when the world was young and when the gods walked on the
earth, there reigned over the island of Cyprus a sculptor-king, and
king of sculptors, named Pygmalion. In the language of our own day, we
should call him "wedded to his art." In woman he only saw the bane of
man. Women, he believed, lured men from the paths to which their
destiny called them. While man walked alone, he walked free--he had
given no "hostages to fortune." Alone, man could live for his art,
could combat every danger that beset him, could escape, unhampered,
from every pitfall in life. But woman was the ivy that clings to the
oak, and throttles the oak in the end. No woman, vowed Pygmalion,
should ever hamper him. And so at length he came to hate women, and,
free of heart and mind, his genius wrought such great things that he
became a very perfect sculptor. He had one passion, a passion for his
art, and that sufficed him. Out of great rough blocks of marble he
would hew the most perfect semblance of men and of women, and of
everything that seemed to him most beautiful and the most worth
preserving.
When we look now at the Venus of Milo, at the Diana of Versailles, and
at the Apollo Belvidere in the Vatican, we can imagine what were the
greater things that the sculptor of Cyprus freed from the dead blocks
of marble. One day as he chipped and chiselled there came to him,
like the rough sketch of a great picture, the semblance of a woman.
How it came he knew not. Only he knew that in that great mass of pure
white stone there seemed to be imprisoned the exquisite image of a
woman, a woman that he must set free. Slowly, gradually, the woman
came. Soon he knew that she was the most beautiful thing that his art
had ever wrought. All that he had ever thought that a woman _should_
be, this woman was. Her form and features were all most perfect, and
so perfect were they, that he felt very sure that, had she been a
woman indeed, most perfect would have been the soul within. For her he
worked as he had never worked before. There came, at last, a day when
he felt that another touch would be insult to the exquisite thing he
had created. He laid his chisel aside and sat down to gaze at the
Perfect Woman. She seemed to gaze back at him. Her parted lips were
ready to speak--to smile. Her hands were held out to hold his hands.
Then Pygmalion covered his eyes. He, the hater of women, loved a
woman--a woman of chilly marble. The women he had scorned were
avenged.
[Illustration: THEN PYGMALION COVERED HIS EYES]
Day by day his passion for the woman of his own creation grew and
grew. His hands no longer wielded the chisel. They grew idle. He would
stand under the great pines and gaze across the sapphire-blue sea, and
dream strange dreams of a marble woman who walked across the waves
with arms outstretched, with smiling lips, and who became a woman of
warm flesh and blood when her bare feet touched the yellow sand, and
the bright sun of Cyprus touched her marble hair and turned it into
hair of living gold. Then he would hasten back to his studio to find
the miracle still unaccomplished, and would passionately kiss the
little cold hands, and lay beside the little cold feet the presents he
knew that young girls loved--bright shells and exquisite precious
stones, gorgeous-hued birds and fragrant flowers, shining amber, and
beads that sparkled and flashed with all the most lovely combinations
of colour that the mind of artist could devise. Yet more he did, for
he spent vast sums on priceless pearls and hung them in her ears and
upon her cold white breast; and the merchants wondered who could be
the one upon whom Pygmalion lavished the money from his treasury.
To his divinity he gave a name--"Galatea"; and always on still nights
the myriad silver stars would seem to breathe to him "Galatea" ... and
on those days when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia
and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of Cyprus, the very
spirit of the storm seemed to moan through the crash of waves in
longing, hopeless and unutterable--"Galatea!... Galatea!..." For her
he decked a couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest of pillows he
laid the beautiful head of the marble woman that he loved.
So the time wore on until the festival of Aphrodite drew near. Smoke
from many altars curled out to sea, the odour of incense mingled with
the fragrance of the great pine trees, and garlanded victims lowed and
bleated as they were led to the sacrifice. As the leader of his
people, Pygmalion faithfully and perfectly performed all his part in
the solemnities and at last he was left beside the altar to pray
alone. Never before had his words faltered as he laid his petitions
before the gods, but on this day he spoke not as a sculptor-king, but
as a child who was half afraid of what he asked.
"O Aphrodite!" he said, "who can do all things, give me, I pray you,
one like my Galatea for my wife!"
"Give me my Galatea," he dared not say; but Aphrodite knew well the
words he would fain have uttered, and smiled to think how Pygmalion at
last was on his knees. In token that his prayer was answered, three
times she made the flames on the altar shoot up in a fiery point, and
Pygmalion went home, scarcely daring to hope, not allowing his
gladness to conquer his fear.
The shadows of evening were falling as he went into the room that he
had made sacred to Galatea. On the purple-covered couch she lay, and
as he entered it seemed as though she met his eyes with her own;
almost it seemed that she smiled at him in welcome. He quickly went up
to her and, kneeling by her side, he pressed his lips on those lips of
chilly marble. So many times he had done it before, and always it was
as though the icy lips that could never live sent their chill right
through his heart, but now it surely seemed to him that the lips were
cold no longer. He felt one of the little hands, and no more did it
remain heavy and cold and stiff in his touch, but lay in his own hand,
soft and living and warm. He softly laid his fingers on the marble
hair, and lo, it was the soft and wavy burnished golden hair of his
desire. Again, reverently as he had laid his offerings that day on
the altar of Venus, Pygmalion kissed her lips. And then did Galatea,
with warm and rosy cheeks, widely open her eyes, like pools in a dark
mountain stream on which the sun is shining, and gaze with timid
gladness into his own.
There are no after tales of Pygmalion and Galatea. We only know that
their lives were happy and that to them was born a son, Paphos, from
whom the city sacred to Aphrodite received its name. Perhaps Aphrodite
may have smiled sometimes to watch Pygmalion, once the scorner of
women, the adoring servant of the woman that his own hands had first
designed.
PHAETON
"The road, to drive on which unskilled were Phaeton's hands."
Dante--_Purgatorio_.
To Apollo, the sun-god, and Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph, there
was born in the pleasant land of Greece a child to whom was given the
name of Phaeton, the Bright and Shining One. The rays of the sun
seemed to live in the curls of the fearless little lad, and when at
noon other children would seek the cool shade of the cypress groves,
Phaeton would hold his head aloft and gaze fearlessly up at the brazen
sky from whence fierce heat beat down upon his golden head.
"Behold, my father drives his chariot across the heavens!" he proudly
proclaimed. "In a little while I, also, will drive the four snow-white
steeds."
His elders heard the childish boast with a smile, but when Epaphos,
half-brother to Apollo, had listened to it many times and beheld the
child, Phaeton, grow into an arrogant lad who held himself as though
he were indeed one of the Immortals, anger grew in his heart. One day
he turned upon Phaeton and spoke in fierce scorn:
"Dost say thou art son of a god? A shameless boaster and a liar art
thou! Hast ever spoken to thy divine sire? Give us some proof of thy
sonship! No more child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the
vermin his children, that the sun breeds in the dust at my feet."
For a moment, before the cruel taunt, the lad was stricken into
silence, and then, his pride aflame, his young voice shaking with rage
and with bitter shame, he cried aloud: "Thou, Epaphos, art the liar. I
have but to ask my father, and thou shalt see me drive his golden
chariot across the sky."
To his mother he hastened, to get balm for his hurt pride, as many a
time he had got it for the little bodily wounds of childhood, and with
bursting heart he poured forth his story.
"True it is," he said, "that my father has never deigned to speak to
me. Yet I know, because thou hast told me so, that he is my sire. And
now my word is pledged. Apollo must let me drive his steeds, else I am
for evermore branded braggart and liar, and shamed amongst men."
Clymene listened with grief to his complaint. He was so young, so
gallant, so foolish.
"Truly thou art the son of Apollo," she said, "and oh, son of my
heart, thy beauty is his, and thy pride the pride of a son of the
gods. Yet only partly a god art thou, and though thy proud courage
would dare all things, it were mad folly to think of doing what a god
alone can do."
But at last she said to him, "Naught that I can say is of any avail.
Go, seek thy father, and ask him what thou wilt." Then she told him
how he might find the place in the east where Apollo rested ere the
labours of the day began, and with eager gladness Phaeton set out upon
his journey. A long way he travelled, with never a stop, yet when the
glittering dome and jewelled turrets and minarets of the Palace of the
Sun came into view, he forgot his weariness and hastened up the steep
ascent to the home of his father.
Phoebus Apollo, clad in purple that glowed like the radiance of a
cloud in the sunset sky, sat upon his golden throne. The Day, the
Month, and the Year stood by him, and beside them were the Hours.
Spring was there, her head wreathed with flowers; Summer, crowned with
ripened grain; Autumn, with his feet empurpled by the juice of the
grapes; and Winter, with hair all white and stiff with hoar-frost. And
when Phaeton walked up the golden steps that led to his father's
throne, it seemed as though incarnate Youth had come to join the court
of the god of the Sun, and that Youth was so beautiful a thing that it
must surely live forever. Proudly did Apollo know him for his son, and
when the boy looked in his eyes with the arrogant fearlessness of
boyhood, the god greeted him kindly and asked him to tell him why he
came, and what was his petition.
As to Clymene, so also to Apollo, Phaeton told his tale, and his
father listened, half in pride and amusement, half in puzzled
vexation. When the boy stopped, and then breathlessly, with shining
eyes and flushed cheeks, ended up his story with: "And, O light of the
boundless world, if I am indeed thy son, let it be as I have said, and
for one day only let me drive thy chariot across the heavens!" Apollo
shook his head and answered very gravely:
"In truth thou art my dear son," he said, "and by the dreadful Styx,
the river of the dead, I swear that I will give thee any gift that
thou dost name and that will give proof that thy father is the
immortal Apollo. But never to thee nor to any other, be he mortal or
immortal, shall I grant the boon of driving my chariot."
But the boy pled on:
"I am shamed for ever, my father," he said. "Surely thou wouldst not
have son of thine proved liar and braggart?"
"Not even the gods themselves can do this thing," answered Apollo.
"Nay, not even the almighty Zeus. None but I, Phoebus Apollo, may
drive the flaming chariot of the sun, for the way is beset with
dangers and none know it but I."
"Only tell me the way, my father!" cried Phaeton. "So soon I could
learn."
Half in sadness, Apollo smiled.
"The first part of the way is uphill," he said. "So steep it is that
only very slowly can my horses climb it. High in the heavens is the
middle, so high that even I grow dizzy when I look down upon the earth
and the sea. And the last piece of the way is a precipice that rushes
so steeply downward that my hands can scarce check the mad rush of my
galloping horses. And all the while, the heaven is spinning round, and
the stars with it. By the horns of the Bull I have to drive, past the
Archer whose bow is taut and ready to slay, close to where the
Scorpion stretches out its arms and the great Crab's claws grope for a
prey...."
"I fear none of these things, oh my father!" cried Phaeton. "Grant
that for one day only I drive thy white-maned steeds!"
Very pitifully Apollo looked at him, and for a little space he was
silent.
"The little human hands," he said at length, "the little human
frame!--and with them the soul of a god. The pity of it, my son. Dost
not know that the boon that thou dost crave from me is Death?"
"Rather Death than Dishonour," said Phaeton, and proudly he added,
"For once would I drive like the god, my father. I have no fear."
So was Apollo vanquished, and Phaeton gained his heart's desire.
From the courtyard of the Palace the four white horses were led, and
they pawed the air and neighed aloud in the glory of their strength.
They drew the chariot whose axle and pole and wheels were of gold,
with spokes of silver, while inside were rows of diamonds and of
chrysolites that gave dazzling reflection of the sun. Then Apollo
anointed the face of Phaeton with a powerful essence that might keep
him from being smitten by the flames, and upon his head he placed the
rays of the sun. And then the stars went away, even to the Daystar
that went last of all, and, at Apollo's signal, Aurora, the
rosy-fingered, threw open the purple gates of the east, and Phaeton
saw a path of pale rose-colour open before him.
With a cry of exultation, the boy leapt into the chariot and laid hold
of the golden reins. Barely did he hear Apollo's parting words: "Hold
fast the reins, and spare the whip. All thy strength will be wanted to
hold the horses in. Go not too high nor too low. The middle course is
safest and best. Follow, if thou canst, in the old tracks of my
chariot wheels!" His glad voice of thanks for the godlike boon rang
back to where Apollo stood and watched him vanishing into the dawn
that still was soft in hue as the feathers on the breast of a dove.
Uphill at first the white steeds made their way, and the fire from
their nostrils tinged with flame-colour the dark clouds that hung over
the land and the sea. With rapture, Phaeton felt that truly he was the
son of a god, and that at length he was enjoying his heritage. The day
for which, through all his short life, he had longed, had come at
last. He was driving the chariot whose progress even now was awaking
the sleeping earth. The radiance from its wheels and from the rays he
wore round his head was painting the clouds, and he laughed aloud in
rapture as he saw, far down below, the sea and the rivers he had
bathed in as a human boy, mirroring the green and rose and purple, and
gold and silver, and fierce crimson, that he, Phaeton, was placing in
the sky. The grey mist rolled from the mountain tops at his desire.
The white fog rolled up from the valleys. All living things awoke; the
flowers opened their petals; the grain grew golden; the fruit grew
ripe. Could but Epaphos see him now! Surely he must see him, and
realise that not Apollo but Phaeton was guiding the horses of his
father, driving the chariot of the Sun.
Quicker and yet more quick grew the pace of the white-maned steeds.
Soon they left the morning breezes behind, and very soon they knew
that these were not the hands of the god, their master, that held the
golden reins. Like an air-ship without its accustomed ballast, the
chariot rolled unsteadily, and not only the boy's light weight but his
light hold on their bridles made them grow mad with a lust for speed.
The white foam flew from their mouths like the spume from the giant
waves of a furious sea, and their pace was swift as that of a bolt
that is cast by the arm of Zeus.
Yet Phaeton had no fear, and when they heard him shout in rapture,
"Quicker still, brave ones! more swiftly still!" it made them speed
onwards, madly, blindly, with the headlong rush of a storm. There was
no hope for them to keep on the beaten track, and soon Phaeton had his
rapture checked by the terrible realisation that they had strayed far
out of the course and that his hands were not strong enough to guide
them. Close to the Great Bear and the Little Bear they passed, and
these were scorched with heat. The Serpent which, torpid, chilly and
harmless, lies coiled round the North Pole, felt a warmth that made it
grow fierce and harmful again. Downward, ever downward galloped the
maddened horses, and soon Phaeton saw the sea as a shield of molten
brass, and the earth so near that all things on it were visible. When
they passed the Scorpion and only just missed destruction from its
menacing fangs, fear entered into the boy's heart. His mother had
spoken truth. He was only partly a god, and he was very, very young.
In impotent horror he tugged at the reins to try to check the horses'
descent, then, forgetful of Apollo's warning, he smote them angrily.
But anger met anger, and the fury of the immortal steeds had scorn
for the wrath of a mortal boy. With a great toss of their mighty heads
they had torn the guiding reins from his grasp, and as he stood,
giddily swaying from side to side, Phaeton knew that the boon he had
craved from his father must in truth be death for him.
And, lo, it was a hideous death, for with eyes that were like flames
that burned his brain, the boy beheld the terrible havoc that his
pride had wrought. That blazing chariot of the Sun made the clouds
smoke, and dried up all the rivers and water-springs. Fire burst from
the mountain tops, great cities were destroyed. The beauty of the
earth was ravished, woods and meadows and all green and pleasant
places were laid waste. The harvests perished, the flocks and they who
had herded them lay dead. Over Libya the horses took him, and the
desert of Libya remains a barren wilderness to this day, while those
sturdy Ethiopians who survived are black even now as a consequence of
that cruel heat. The Nile changed its course in order to escape, and
nymphs and nereids in terror sought for the sanctuary of some watery
place that had escaped destruction. The face of the burned and
blackened earth, where the bodies of thousands of human beings lay
charred to ashes, cracked and sent dismay to Pluto by the lurid light
that penetrated even to his throne.
All this Phaeton saw, saw in impotent agony of soul. His boyish folly
and pride had been great, but the excruciating anguish that made him
shed tears of blood, was indeed a punishment even too heavy for an
erring god.
From the havoc around her, the Earth at last looked up, and with
blackened face and blinded eyes, and in a voice that was harsh and
very, very weary, she called to Zeus to look down from Olympus and
behold the ruin that had been wrought by the chariot of the Sun. And
Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, looked down and beheld. And at the sight of
that piteous devastation his brow grew dark, and terrible was his
wrath against him who had held the reins of the chariot. Calling upon
Apollo and all the other gods to witness him, he seized a lightning
bolt, and for a moment the deathless Zeus and all the dwellers in
Olympus looked on the fiery chariot in which stood the swaying,
slight, lithe figure of a young lad, blinded with horror, shaken with
agony. Then, from his hand, Zeus cast the bolt, and the chariot was
dashed into fragments, and Phaeton, his golden hair ablaze, fell, like
a bright shooting star, from the heavens above, into the river
Eridanus. The steeds returned to their master, Apollo, and in rage and
grief Apollo lashed them. Angrily, too, and very rebelliously did he
speak of the punishment meted to his son by the ruler of the
Immortals. Yet in truth the punishment was a merciful one. Phaeton was
only half a god, and no human life were fit to live after the day of
dire anguish that had been his.
Bitter was the mourning of Clymene over her beautiful only son, and so
ceaselessly did his three sisters, the Heliades, weep for their
brother, that the gods turned them into poplar trees that grew by the
bank of the river, and, when still they wept, their tears turned into
precious amber as they fell. Yet another mourned for Phaeton--Phaeton
"dead ere his prime." Cycnus, King of Liguria, had dearly loved the
gallant boy, and again and yet again he dived deep in the river and
brought forth the charred fragments of what had once been the
beautiful son of a god, and gave to them honourable burial. Yet he
could not rest satisfied that he had won all that remained of his
friend from the river's bed, and so he continued to haunt the stream,
ever diving, ever searching, until the gods grew weary of his restless
sorrow and changed him into a swan.
And still we see the swan sailing mournfully along, like a
white-sailed barque that is bearing the body of a king to its rest,
and ever and anon plunging deep into the water as though the search
for the boy who would fain have been a god were never to come to an
end.
To Phaeton the Italian Naiades reared a tomb, and inscribed on the
stone these words:
"Driver of Phoebus' chariot, Phaeton,
Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone,
He could not rule his father's car of fire,
Yet was it much, so nobly to aspire."
Ovid.
ENDYMION
To the modern popular mind perhaps none of the goddesses of
Greece--not even Venus herself--has more appeal than has the huntress
goddess, Diana. Those who know but little of ancient statuary can
still brighten to intelligent recognition of the huntress with her
quiver and her little stag when they meet with them in picture gallery
or in suburban garden. That unlettered sportsman in weather-worn pink,
slowly riding over the fragrant dead leaves by the muddy roadside on
this chill, grey morning, may never have heard of Artemis, but he is
quite ready to make intelligent reference to Diana to the handsome
young sportswoman whom he finds by the covert side; and Sir Walter's
Diana Vernon has helped the little-read public to realise that the
original Diana was a goddess worthy of being sponsor to one of the
finest heroines of fiction.
But not to the sportsman alone, but also to the youth or maid who
loves the moon--they know not why--to those whom the shadows of the
trees on a woodland path at night mean a grip of the heart, while
"pale Dian" scuds over the dark clouds that are soaring far beyond the
tree-tops and is peeping, chaste and pale, through the branches of the
firs and giant pines, there is something arresting, enthralling, in
the thought of the goddess Diana who now has for hunting-ground the
blue firmament of heaven where the pale Pleiades
"Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."
Tennyson.