The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911)

The accompanying table will indicate the connections and descendants of Aurora.

Interpretative. According to one account, Ceyx and Halcyone, by likening their wedded happiness to that of Jupiter and Juno, incurred the displeasure of the gods. The myth springs from observation of the habits of the Halcyone-bird, which nests on the strand and is frequently bereft of its young by the winter waves. The comparison with the glory of Jupiter and Juno is suggested by the splendid iris hues of the birds. Halcyone days have become proverbial as seasons of calm. Æolus I, the son of Hellen, is here identified with Æolus III, the king of the winds. According to Diodorus, the latter is a descendant, in the fifth generation, of the former. (See Genealogical Table I.)

Illustrative. Chaucer, The Dethe of Blaunche; E. W. Gosse, Alcyone (a sonnet in dialogue); F. Tennyson, Halcyone; Edith M. Thomas, The Kingfisher; Margaret J. Preston, Alcyone. Morpheus: see Milton, Il Penseroso; Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia's Day.

126-127. Interpretative. Tithonus may be the day in its ever-recurring circuit of morning freshness, noon heat, final withering and decay (Preller); or the gray glimmer of the heavens overspread by the first ruddy flush of morning (Welcker); or, as a solar myth, the sun in his setting and waning, —Tithonus meaning, by derivation, the illuminator (Max Müller). The sleep of Tithonus in his ocean-bed, and his transformation into a grasshopper, would then typify the presumable weariness and weakness of the sun at night.

Illustrative. Spenser, Epithalamion; Faerie Queene, 1, 11, 51.

128. Textual. Mysia: province of Asia Minor, south of the Propontis, or Sea of Marmora. There is some doubt about the identification of the existing statue with that described by the ancients, and the mysterious sounds are still more doubtful. Yet there is not wanting modern testimony to their being still audible. It has been suggested that sounds produced by confined air making its escape from crevices or caverns in the rocks may have given some ground for the story. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, a traveler of the highest authority, examined the statue itself, and discovered that it was hollow, and that "in the lap of the statue is a stone, which, on being struck, emits a metallic sound that might still be made use of to deceive a visitor who was predisposed to believe its powers."

Table H. The Ancient Race of Luminaries and Winds

Interpretative. Memnon is generally represented as of dark features, lighted with the animation of glorious youth. He is king of the mythical Æthiopians who lived in the land of gloaming, where east and west met, and whose name signifies "dark splendor." His birth in this borderland of light and darkness signifies either his existence as king of an eastern land or his identity with the young sun, and strengthens the theory according to which his father Tithonus is the gray glimmer of the morning heavens. The flocks of birds have been explained as the glowing clouds that meet in battle over the body of the dead sun.

Illustrative. Milton, Il Penseroso; Drummond, Summons to Love, "Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed"; Akenside, Pleasures of the Imagination (analogy between Memnonian music and spiritual appreciation of truth); Landor, Miscellaneous Poems, 59, "Exposed and lonely genius stands, Like Memnon in the Egyptian sands," etc.

In Art. Fig. 101, from a vase in the Louvre.

129-130. Textual. Doric pillar: the three styles of pillars in Greek architecture were Dorian, Ionic, Corinthian (see English Dictionary). Trinacria: Sicily, from its three promontories. Ægon and Daphnis: idyllic names of Sicilian shepherds (see Idyls of Theocritus and Virgil's Eclogues). Naïs: a water-nymph. For Cyclops, Galatea, Silenus, Fauns, Arethusa, see Index. Compare, with the conception of Stedman's poem, Wordsworth's Power of Music.

Illustrative. Ben Jonson, Pan's anniversary; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4. 266, 707; Paradise Regained, 2, 190; Comus, 176, 268; Pope, Autumn, 81; Windsor Forest, 37, 183; Summer, 50; Dunciad, 3, 110; Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, "Fair Tempe! haunt beloved of sylvan Powers," etc.; On Leaving Holland, 1, 2. Poems: Fletcher, Song of the Priest of Pan, and Song of Pan (in The Faithful Shepherdess); Landor, Pan and Pitys, "Pan led me to a wood the other day," etc.; Landor, Cupid and Pan; R. Buchanan, Pan; Browning, Pan and Luna; Swinburne, Pan and Thalassius; Hon. Roden Noël, Pan, in the Modern Faust. Of course Mrs. Browning's Dead Pan cannot be appreciated unless read as a whole; nor Schiller's Gods of Greece.

131. Fauns. Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 708; 10. 573, 597; 11. 472, 788; Paradise Regained, 2, 257; Mrs. Browning, Flush or Faunus (sonnet). Dryads: Pope, Moral Essays, 4, 94; Winter, 12; Collins, The Passions; Keats, Nightingale, Psyche. Satyrs: Milton, Lycidas; Dryden, Mrs. Anne Killigrew, 6; Hawthorne, Marble Faun.

In Art. Fauns (sculpture): The Barberini Faun (Munich); the Drunken Faun, Sleeping Faun, Faun and Bacchus, and Dancing Faun (National Museum, Naples); the Dancing Faun (Lateran, Rome); the so-called Faun of Praxiteles or Marble Faun (Fig. 106 in text – a Satyr – best copy in the Capitoline, Rome). Pan and Apollo: Græco-Roman sculpture (Museum, Naples). Pan: Fig. 102, in text; and Fig. 103, from an original perhaps of the School of Scopas or Praxiteles (Florence). Silenus and Bacchus (Glyptothek, Munich). Nymphs (pictures): Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, and Nymphs; Burne-Jones, Nymphs; Giorgione, Nymphs pursued by a Satyr. Satyrs: Michelangelo (picture) (Uffizi, Florence), Mask of a Satyr; Rubens, Satyrs (Munich); Satyrs (sculpture), relief from theater of Dionysus; Satyr playing a flute (Vatican); and Figs. 103, 104, and 106-108 in the text.

132-133. Textual. Cephissus: four rivers in Phocis, Attica, and Argolis bear this name. The most famous runs near Athens.

Illustrative. Echo: Chaucer, Romaunt of the Rose, 1468 et seq.; Spenser, Prothalamion; Milton, Comus, 237; Collins, The Passions. Poems: L. Morris (Epic of Hades), Narcissus; Goldsmith, On a Beautiful Youth, etc.; Cowper, On an Ugly Fellow; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 449-470 (illus.); and Comus. In Art: Narcissus (sculpture), and Fig. 109, in text (Museum, Naples).

137. Dryope (poem), by W. S. Landor.

138. Rhœcus. Poems by Landor, The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.

139. Pomona. Phillips, a poem on Cider. See Index. In Art: the painting by J. E. Millais.

Interpretative. The various guises and transformations of Vertumnus signify the succession of the seasons and the changing characteristics of each. The name itself implies turning, or change.

140. Textual. In order to understand the story of Ibycus, it is necessary to remember, first, that the theaters of the ancients were immense fabrics, capable of containing from ten to thirty thousand spectators, and as they were used only on festal occasions and admission was free to all, they were usually filled. They were without roofs and open to the sky, and performances were in the daytime. Secondly, that the appalling representation of the Furies is not exaggerated in the story. It is fabled that Æschylus, the tragic poet, having on one occasion represented the Furies in a chorus of fifty performers, the terror of the spectators was such that many fainted and were thrown into convulsions, and the magistrates forbade a like representation for the future (Pollux, 4, 110). Usually the chorus in a single tragedy consisted of only fifteen performers.

Illustrative. On the Furies see C. 49. On Ibycus see translation of Schiller's Cranes of Ibycus, by E. A. Bowring.

141. Textual. The adventures of the water-divinities turn largely on the idea of metamorphosis, which would readily be suggested to the imaginative mind by contemplation of the ever-changing aspect of fountain, stream, lake, or ocean. For genealogies of water-deities, see Table C.

Interpretative. The Cyclops, Polyphemus, does not possess much in common with Steropes, Brontes, and Arges, the offspring of Uranus and Gæa, save his one eye and his monstrous size. The sons of Gæa are personifications of thunder and lightning; Polyphemus is the heavy vapor that rolls its clouds along the hillside. The clouds are the sheep that he pastures; the sun glowering through the vapor is his single eye (Cox). More probably he is a mere giant of folklore.

Illustrative. John Gay, Song of Polypheme (in Acis and Galatea); A. Dobson, A Tale of Polypheme; R. Buchanan, Polypheme's Passion; Shelley, The Cyclops of Euripides; Translations of Theocritus by Mrs. Browning and by Calverley; J. S. Blackie, Galatea; B. W. Procter, The Death of Acis. See also on the Cyclops, Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, IV, iii; Hamlet, II, ii.

In Art. Fig. 112, text; Carracci's frescoes in the Farnese Palace, Rome, of Polyphemus, Acis and Galatea; Claude Lorrain's painting, Evening, Acis and Galatea; Raphael's Triumph of Galatea.

142. Textual. For descent of Glaucus, see Tables G and I. For Scylla's descent, see Table C. See Keats, Endymion, Bk. 3.

Interpretative. Glaucus is explained by some as the calm gleaming sea; by others, as the angry sea that reflects the lowering heavens (see Roscher, p. 1690). Scylla is a personification of treacherous currents and shallows among jagged cliffs and hidden rocks.

144. For genealogy of Ino, see Table E. "Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed The Earth" (Milton, Paradise Lost, 11, 135).

145. Cyrene was sister to Daphne. 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 bees were engendered by the decaying flesh of the animal. Virgil assigns to Proteus the isle of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes; Homer, the isle of Pharus, near the river Nile.

Illustrative. See C. 50. Proteus, a poem by R. Buchanan. On Aristæus, Cowper's Task, comparison of the ice-palace of Empress Anne of Russia with Cyrene's palace. Milton probably thought of Cyrene in describing Sabrina (Comus). He calls Proteus "the Carpathian Wizard."

146-147. Textual. Acheloüs: the largest river in Greece, rose in Mount Lacmon, flowed between Acarnania and Ætolia, and emptied into the Ionian Sea. It was honored over all Greece. Calydon: a city of Ætolia, famed for the Calydonian Hunt. Parthenope, see 238. Ligea (Ligeia): the shrill-sounding maiden; here a Siren; sometimes a Dryad.

Interpretative. Even among the ancients such stories as this were explained on a physical basis: the river Acheloüs flows through the realm of Dejanira, hence Acheloüs loves Dejanira. When the river winds it is a snake, when it roars it is a bull, when it overflows its banks it puts forth new horns. Hercules is supposed to have regulated the course of the stream by confining it within a new and suitable channel. At the same time the old channel, redeemed from the stream, subjected to cultivation, and blossoming with flowers, might well be called a 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, breaking off one of the horns of the goat, gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might wish.

148. (5)

Table I. The Race of Iapetus, Deucalion, Atlas, and Hellen

Illustrative. The name Amalthea is given also to the mother of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 275:

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.

See also Milton, Paradise Regained, 2, 356.

148. For the general genealogy of the race of Inachus, see Table D. For the general race of Iapetus, Deucalion, Hellen, Æolus, Ætolus, etc., see below, Table I (based in part on the table given in Roscher, article Deukalion). For the descendants of Agenor, see Table E. For the houses of Minos and of Labdacus, see Tables L and N. For the descendants of Belus (house of Danaüs), see Tables I and J; of Cecrops and Erechtheus, Table M.

149-154. Textual. Seriphus: an island of the Ægean.

The House of Danaüs is as follows:

Table J. The House of Danaüs

Interpretative. While Danaüs is, in fact, a native mythical hero of Argos, the story of his arrival from Egypt is probably an attempt to explain the influence of Egyptian civilization upon the Greeks. The name Danaüs means drought, and may refer to the frequently dry condition of the soil of Argos. The fifty daughters of Danaüs would then be the nymphs of the many springs which in season refresh the land of Argolis. Their suitors, the fifty sons of Ægyptus, would be the streams of Argolis that in the rainy months threaten to overflow their banks. But the springs by vanishing during the hot weather deprive the streams of water and consequently of life. That is to say, when the sources (Danaïds) choose to stop supplies, the heads of the streams (the fifty youths of Argolis) are cut off. The reference to Ægyptus and the sons of Ægyptus would indicate a reminiscence of the Nile and its tributaries, alternately overflowing and exhausted. The unsuccessful toil of the Danaïds in Tartarus may have been suggested by the sandy nature of the Argive soil, and the leaky nature of the springs, now high, now low. Or it may typify, simply, any incessant, fruitless labor. The name Hypermnestra signifies constancy and love. Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, has been regarded as the dry earth, which under the rains of the golden springtime bursts into verdure and bloom; or as the dark depths of the earth; or as the dawn, from which, shot through with the golden rays of heaven, the youthful Sun is born.[428 - This dawn theory is certainly far-fetched.] Advocates of the last theory would understand the voyage of Danaë and Perseus as the tossing of the sunbeams on the waters of the eastern horizon. The young Sun would next overcome the Gray-women, forms of the gloaming, and then slay with his sword of light the black cloud of the heavenly vault, the Gorgon, whose aspect is night and death.

The Grææ and the Gorgons may, with greater probability, be taken as personifications of the hidden horrors of the unknown night-enveloped ocean and the misty horizon whence storms come. In that case the Grææ will be the gray clouds, and their one tooth (or one eye) the harmless gleam of the lightning; the Gorgons will be the heavy thunderclouds, and their petrifying gaze the swift and fatal lightning flash.

But there are still others who find in the Gorgon Medusa the wan visage of the moon, empress of the night, slain by the splendor of morning. The sandals of Hermes have, accordingly, been explained as the morning breeze, or even as the chariot of the sun. The invisible helmet may be the clouds under which the sun disappears. Compare the cloak of darkness in the Three Daughters of King O'Hara; and the Sword of Sharpness in the Weaver's Son and the Giant of White Hill (Curtin, Myths of Ireland).

Andromeda is variously deciphered: the tender dawn, which a storm-cloud would obscure and devour; the moon, which darkness, as a dragon, threatens to swallow; or some historic character that has passed into myth. Compare the contests of Perseus and the Dragon, Apollo and Pytho, Hercules and the Serpents, Cadmus and the Dragon of Mars, St. George and the Dragon, Siegfried and the Worm (Fafnir). For a Gaelic Andromeda and Perseus, see The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin (Curtin, Myths of Ireland).

Perseus' flight to the Gardens of the Hesperides suggests, naturally, the circuit of the sun toward the flushing western horizon; and, of course, he would here behold the giant Atlas, who, stationed where heaven and earth meet, sustains upon his shoulders the celestial vault.

The Doom of Acrisius reminds one of that of Hyacinthus. The quoit suggests the rays of the sun, and the name Acrisius may be construed to mean the "confused or gloomy heavens" (Roscher, Preller, Müller, etc.).