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

140. The Cranes of Ibycus.182 The Furies, called also Diræ (the terrible ones), Erinyes (the persecutors, or the angered ones), and finally, by way of euphemism, Eumenides (the well-meaning), though they were spirits of the underworld, visited earth to punish filial disobedience, irreverence to old age, perjury, murder, treachery to guests, even unkindness toward beggars. They avenged the ghosts of such as, dying violent deaths, possessed on earth no representatives either by law or by kindred to avenge them. Therefore, as we shall see, they persecuted Orestes, who had slain his mother. Therefore, like the accusing voice of conscience, they marshaled to punishment the murderers of Ibycus.

Fig. 111. A Rustic

This poet, beloved of Apollo, was, while journeying to the musical contest of the Isthmus at Corinth, attacked by two robbers in the Corinthian grove of Neptune. Overcome by them, he commended his cause as he fell to a flock of cranes that happened to be screaming hoarsely overhead. But when his body was found, all Greece, then gathered at the festival, demanded vengeance on the murderer.

Soon afterward, the vast assemblage in the amphitheater sat listening to a play in which the Chorus personated the Furies. The Choristers, clad in black, bore in their fleshless hands torches blazing with a pitchy flame. Advancing with measured step, they formed ranks in the orchestra. Their cheeks were bloodless, and in place of hair writhing serpents curled around their brows. Forming a circle, these awful beings sang their hymn. High it swelled, overpowering the sound of the instruments:

"Happy the man whose heart is pure from guilt and crime! Him we avengers touch not; he treads the path of life secure from us. But woe! woe! to him who has done the deed of secret murder. We, the fearful brood of Night, fasten ourselves upon him, soul and flesh. Thinks he by flight to escape us? Fly we still faster in pursuit, twine our snakes around his feet, and bring him to the ground. Unwearied we pursue; no pity checks our course; still on, still on to the end of life, we give no peace, no rest."

Stillness like the stillness of death sat over the assembly. Suddenly a cry burst from one of the uppermost benches, – "Lo, comrade, the avengers of Ibycus!" A flock of cranes crossed the sky. "The murderer has informed against himself," shouted the assemblage. The inference was correct. The criminals, straightway seized, confessed the crime and suffered the penalty.

CHAPTER XIII

MYTHS OF LESSER DIVINITIES OF THE WATERS

141. Galatea and Polyphemus. The water-gods may be roughly classed as dwellers in the sea and dwellers in the streams. Of the former, daughters of Nereus and Doris, none was fairer than Galatea, sister of Amphitrite and Thetis. She loved Acis, the son of Faunus by a Naiad, and was loved in return; but her happiness was disturbed and finally ruined by the persistent and jealous attentions of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

For the first time in his life the Cyclops began to care for his appearance; he harrowed his coarse locks with a currycomb, mowed his beard with a sickle, and, looking into the sea when it was calm, soliloquized, "Beautiful seems my beard, beautiful my one eye, – as I count beauty, – and the sea reflects the gleam of my teeth whiter than the Parian stone."183

… He loved, not with apples, not roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy; and all things else he held but trifles by the way. Many a time from the green pastures would his ewes stray back, self-shepherded, to the fold. But he was singing of Galatea; and pining in his place, he sat by the seaweed of the beach from the dawn of day with the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty Cypris' sending, – the wound of her arrow in his heart!

Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff and looking to the deep, 'twas thus he would sing:

"Oh, milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More white than is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb art thou, than the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened grape! Here dost thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses me, and home straightway dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go, fleeing me like an ewe that has seen the gray wolf. I fell in love with thee, maiden, I, on the day when first thou camest, with my mother, and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from the hill, and I was thy guide on the way. But to leave loving thee when once I had seen thee, neither afterward, nor now at all, have I the strength, even from that hour. But to thee all this is as nothing, by Zeus, nay, nothing at all!

"I know, thou gracious maiden, why it is that thou dost shun me. It is all for the shaggy brow that spans my forehead, from this to the other ear, one long, unbroken eyebrow. And but one eye is on my forehead, and broad is the nose that overhangs my lip. Yet I (even such as thou seest me) feed a thousand cattle, and from these I draw and drink the best milk in the world. And cheese I never lack, in summer time or autumn, nay, nor in the dead of winter, but my baskets are always overladen.

Fig. 112. Galatea and Polyphemus

"Also I am skilled in piping, as none other of the Cyclopes here, and of thee, my love, my sweet apple, and of myself, too, I sing, many a time, deep in the night. And for thee I tend eleven fawns, all crescent browed, and four young whelps of the bear. Nay, come thou to me and thou shalt lack nothing that now thou hast…

"But if thou dost refuse because my body seems shaggy and rough, well, I have faggots of oak-wood, and beneath the ashes is fire unwearied, and I would endure to let thee burn my very soul, and this my one eye, the dearest thing that is mine.

"Ah me, that my mother bore me not a finny thing, so would I have gone down to thee, and kissed thy hand, if thy lips thou would not suffer me to kiss! And I would have brought thee either white lilies or the soft poppy with its scarlet petals. Nay, these are summer's flowers, and those are flowers of winter, so I could not have brought thee them all at one time.

"Now, verily, maiden, now and here will I learn to swim, if perchance some stranger come hither, sailing with his ship, that I may see why it is so dear to thee to have thy dwelling in the deep. Come forth, Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I that sit here have forgotten, the homeward way!..

"Oh, Cyclops, Cyclops, whither are thy wits wandering? Ah, that thou wouldst go and weave thy wickerwork and gather broken boughs to carry to thy lambs: in faith, if thou didst this, far wiser wouldst thou be!

"Milk the ewe that thou hast; why pursue the thing that shuns thee? Thou wilt find, perchance, another, and a fairer, Galatea. Many be the girls that bid me stay with them, and softly they all laugh, if perchance I answer them. On land it is plain that I, too, seem to be somebody!"184

Having, one day, in such wise sung, Polyphemus wandered, beside himself for passion, into the woods. On a sudden he came in sight of Galatea and Acis in the hollow of a rock, where they had hearkened to the strains of the Cyclops. The monster, infuriate, crying that this should be the last of their love-meetings, overwhelmed his rival with a tremendous rock. Purple blood spirted from under the stone, by degrees grew paler, and finally became the stream that still bears the name of the unfortunate youth. But Galatea remained inconsolable.185

Fig. 113. A Sea-God

142. Glaucus and Scylla. 186 Another deity of the sea was Glaucus, the son of that Sisyphus who was punished in Hades for his treachery to the gods. Glaucus had been a comely young fisherman; but having noticed that a certain herb revived fishes after they were brought to land, he ate of it and suffered metamorphosis into something new and strange, half man, half fish, and after the fashion of a sea-god. Of his experience during this "sea change" the following is an account:

I plunged for life or death. To interknitOne's senses with so dense a breathing stuffMight seem a work of pain; so not enoughCan I admire how crystal-smooth it felt,And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dweltWhole days and days in sheer astonishment;Forgetful utterly of self-intent,Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow.Then like a new-fledged bird that first doth showHis spreaded feathers to the morrow chill,I tried in fear the pinions of my will.'Twas freedom! and at once I visitedThe ceaseless wonders of this ocean bed.187

He became guardian of fishes and divers and of those who go down to the sea in ships. Later, being infatuated of the fair virgin Scylla (daughter of the sea-god Phorcys and granddaughter of Pontus), he paid his court to her, but the maiden rejected him. Whereupon, in desperation, Glaucus sought the aid of Circe, an enchantress. She, because she coveted for herself the handsome sea-green god, transformed her rival into a monster hideously fashioned of serpents and barking dogs.188 In this shape Scylla thereafter infested the shore of Sicily and worked evil to mariners,189 till finally she was petrified as a reef, none the less perilous to all seafarers.

A modern version of the fate of Glaucus and Scylla is given by Keats in the Endymion. Glaucus consents to Circe's blandishments for a season, but becoming disgusted with her treachery and cruelty, he endeavors to escape from her. The attempt proving unsuccessful, he is brought back and sentenced to pass a thousand years in decrepitude and pain. Consequently, returning to the sea, he there discovers the body of Scylla, whom the goddess has not transformed, but drowned, and learns that if he passes his thousand years in collecting the bodies of drowned lovers, a youth beloved of the gods will, in time, appear and help him. This prophecy is fulfilled by Endymion, who aids in restoring Glaucus to youth, and Scylla and the drowned lovers to life.

143. Nisus and Scylla. 190 The daughter of Phorcys is frequently confounded with another Scylla, daughter of King Nisus of Megara. Scylla of Megara betrayed her father to his enemy, Minos II of Crete, with whom, although the kings were at war, she had fallen violently in love. It seems that Nisus had on his head a purple lock of hair, upon which depended his fortune and his life. This lock his daughter clipped and conveyed to Minos. But recoiling from the treacherous gift, that king, after he had conquered Megara, bound Scylla to the rudder of his ship and so dragged her through the waves toward Crete. The girl was ultimately transformed into the monster of the barking dogs, or, according to another authority, into a bird continually the prey of the sea eagle, whose form her father Nisus had assumed.

144. Leucothea. 191 Another sea change was that of Ino, the daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas, who, flying from her frantic husband, sprang, with her child Melicertes in her arms, from a cliff into the sea. The gods, out of compassion, made her a goddess of the sea under the name of Leucothea, and her son a god under that of Palæmon. Both were held powerful to save from shipwreck and were invoked by sailors. Palæmon was usually represented as riding on a dolphin. In his honor the Isthmian games were celebrated. By the Romans he was called Portumnus, and had jurisdiction of ports and shores.

145. Proteus and Aristæus. 192 Though Aristæus, the lover of Eurydice, was son of Apollo and guardian himself of herds and flocks, protector of vine and olive, and keeper of bees, still he was son of Cyrene, a water-nymph, and his most interesting adventure brought him into contact with another deity of the sea.

His bees having perished, Aristæus resorted for aid to his mother. She, surrounded by her maidens in the crystalline abode under her river, overheard his complaints and ordered that he should be brought into her presence. The stream at her command opened itself and let him enter, while it stood heaped like a mountain on either side. Cyrene and her nymphs, having poured out libations to Neptune, gave the youth to eat and listened to his complaint, then informed him that an aged prophet named Proteus, who dwelt in the sea and pastured the sea calves of Neptune, could explain the cause of the mortality among the bees and how to remedy it; but that the wizard would have to be chained and compelled to answer, and that even when chained, he would try to escape by assuming a series of dreadful forms. "Still, thou hast but to keep him fast bound," concluded Cyrene, "and at last, when he finds his arts of no avail, he will obey thy behest." The nymph then sprinkled her son with nectar, whereupon an unusual vigor filled his frame and courage his heart.

Cyrene led her son to the prophet's cave, which was in the island of Pharos, or of Carpathos,193 and concealed him. At noon issued Proteus from the water, followed by his herd of sea calves, which spread themselves along the shore. He, too, stretched himself on the floor of the cave and went to sleep. Aristæus immediately clapped fetters on him and shouted at the top of his voice. Proteus, finding himself captured, resorted to his craft, becoming first a fire, then a flood, then a horrible wild beast, in rapid succession; nor did he succumb till all schemes had failed to set him free. Then he resumed his old form and, in response to the questioning of Aristæus, said: "Thou receivest the merited reward of thy deed, by which Eurydice met her death. To avenge her, the nymphs have sent this destruction on thy bees. Their anger thou must appease. Four bulls shalt thou select, of perfect form and size, and four cows of equal beauty; and four altars shalt thou build to the nymphs, and shalt sacrifice the animals, leaving their carcasses in the leafy grove. To Orpheus and Eurydice thou shalt pay such funeral honors as may allay their resentment. Returning after nine days, examine the bodies of the cattle slain and see what has befallen." Aristæus faithfully obeyed these directions. Returning to the grove on the ninth day he found that a swarm of bees had taken possession of one of the carcasses and were pursuing their labors there as in a hive.194

146. Acheloüs and Hercules. 195 A similar contest took place between Hercules and the river-god Acheloüs. The cause of the strife was Dejanira of Calydon, whom both heroes loved. Hercules boasted his divine descent. Acheloüs, not content with advancing his claim as lord of the mightiest and most ancient river of Greece, insinuated suspicions with regard to the value of Hercules' pretensions. Then began a mighty struggle. Finding he was no match for Hercules in the wrestler's art, Acheloüs glided away in the form of a serpent. Hercules, remarking that it was the labor of his infancy to strangle snakes,196 clasped the neck of Acheloüs and choked him. Then Acheloüs assumed the seeming of a bull. Whereupon Hercules, seizing him by the horns, dragged his head to the ground, overthrew him, and rent one horn away. This trophy the Naiads consecrated and filled with flowers for the goddess of Plenty, who, adopting it as her symbol, named it Cornucopia.

Fig. 114. Nereïds and Sea Monsters

147. Milton's Sabrina Fair. No writer in modern times has made more graceful poetic use of the divinities of the streams than has Milton. The following song, chanted by a Spirit in invocation of "the gentle nymph" (of the poet's invention) "that with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream," is but one refrain of many caught by the poet from the far-echoing chorus of classical verse:

Sabrina fair,Listen where thou art sittingUnder the glassy, cool, translucent wave,In twisted braids of lilies knittingThe loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;Listen for dear honor's sake,Goddess of the silver lake,Listen and save.Listen and appear to usIn name of great Oceanus.By th' earth-shaking Neptune's mace,And Tethys' grave, majestic pace,By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,And the Carpathian wizard's hook,By scaly Triton's winding shell,And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell,By Leucothea's lovely hands,And her son that rules the strands,By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet,And the songs of Sirens sweet,By dead Parthenope's[1] dear tombAnd fair Ligea's197 golden comb,Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks,Sleeking her soft, alluring locks,By all the nymphs that nightly danceUpon thy streams with wily glance;Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy headFrom thy coral-paven bed,And bridle in thy headlong wave,Till thou our summons answered have.Listen and save.198

CHAPTER XIV

MYTHS OF THE OLDER HEROES: THE HOUSE OF DANAÜS, AND ITS CONNECTIONS

148. The Older and the Younger Heroes. We have already narrated the adventures of certain demigods and heroes, such as Prometheus, Deucalion, Cadmus, Amphion, Orpheus. Others of importance were Perseus, Hercules, Minos, Œdipus, Theseus, Jason, Meleager, Peleus, Pelops, Castor and Pollux. These and their contemporaries may be called the Older Heroes. They are renowned either for individual exploits or for the part played by them in one or more of three great expeditions, – the War against Laomedon of Troy, the Voyage for the Golden Fleece, and the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar.

The Younger Heroes were of a later generation, which was concerned in four important enterprises, – the War of the Seven against Thebes, the Trojan War, the Wanderings of Ulysses, and the Adventures of Æneas.

The exploits of the Older Heroes may be arranged in respect of their probable sequence in time, and of their grouping according to families of heroes. If we observe the principle of genealogy, one race, that of Inachus of Argos, attracts our notice in the heroes descended from Pelasgus,199 Belus, and Agenor. The family of Belus gives us the famous House of Danaüs, the family of Agenor the Houses of Minos and Labdacus. Another race, that of Deucalion, gives us the heroes of the Hellenic branch, most notably those descended from Æolus. With these families most of the Older Heroes are, by blood or by adventure, to some extent connected. Bearing this fact in mind and at the same time observing the chronological sequence of adventures, we obtain an arrangement of myths as illustrating the races, families, or houses – (1) of Danaüs of Argos, (2) of Æolus of Thessaly, (3) of Ætolus, (4) of Minos of Crete, (5) of Cecrops and of Erichthonius of Attica, (6) of Labdacus of Thebes.200

149. The Genealogy of Danaüs. As the Hellenes, in the north, traced their descent from Deucalion and Pyrrha of Thessaly, so the Pelasgic races of the south from the river-god Inachus, son of Oceanus. The son of Inachus, Phoroneus, lived in the Peloponnesus and founded the town of Argos. This Phoroneus conferred upon the Argives the benefits attributed by other Greeks to Prometheus. He was succeeded by his son Pelasgus, from whom a division of the Greek people derive their name. With the love of Jupiter for the sister of Phoroneus, the fair Io, we are already acquainted. Her son was Epaphus, king of Egypt, from whom were descended (1) Agenor of Phœnicia, father of Europa and Cadmus, and (2) Belus of Egypt, father of Ægyptus and Danaüs. To the family of Agenor we shall return in the history of Minos, son of Europa, and of Œdipus, descendant of Cadmus.

Fig. 115. The Danaïds

150. The Danaïds. 201 Ægyptus and his fifty sons drove Danaüs and his fifty daughters back to Argos, the ancestral home of the race. Finally, a reconciliation was arranged by means of a fiftyfold marriage between the sons of Ægyptus and the Danaïds. But in accordance with a treacherous command of Danaüs, all his daughters save Hypermnestra slew their husbands on the wedding night. For this crime the forty-nine Danaïds were condemned to spend eternity in Tartarus, trying to fill with water a vessel full of holes. From Hypermnestra and her husband, Lynceus, was sprung the royal house of Argos. Their son was Abas, their grandson, Acrisius, – of whom the following narrative is told.

Fig. 116. Danaë and Perseus and the Chest

151. The Doom of King Acrisius. 202 The daughter of Acrisius was Danaë, of surpassing loveliness. In consequence of an oracle which had prophesied that the son of Danaë would be the means of his grandfather's death, the hapless girl was shut in an underground chamber, that no man might love or wed her. But Jupiter, distilling himself into a shower of gold, flooded the girl's prison, wooed, and won her. Their son was Perseus. King Acrisius, in dismay, ordered mother and child to be boxed up in a chest and set adrift on the sea. The two unfortunates were, however, rescued at Seriphus by a fisherman, who conveyed the mother and infant to Polydectes, king of the country, by whom they were treated at first with kindness, but afterwards with cruelty.

152. Perseus and Medusa. 203 When Perseus was grown up, Polydectes sent him to attempt the conquest of the Gorgon Medusa,204 a terrible monster who had laid waste the country. She had once been a maiden whose hair was her chief glory, but as she dared to vie in beauty with Minerva, the goddess deprived her of her charms and changed her ringlets into hissing serpents. She became a monster of so frightful an aspect that no living thing could behold her without being turned into stone. All around the cavern where she dwelt might be seen the stony figures of men and animals that had chanced to catch a glimpse of her and had been petrified at the sight. Perseus, favored by Minerva and Mercury, set out against the Gorgon, and approached first the cave of the three Grææ:

Fig. 117. Medusa

There sat the crones that had the single eye,Clad in blue sweeping cloak and snow-white gown;While o'er their backs their straight white hair hung downIn long thin locks; dreadful their faces were,Carved all about with wrinkles of despair;And as they sat they crooned a dreary song,Complaining that their lives should last so long,In that sad place that no one came anear,In that wan place desert of hope and fear;And singing, still they rocked their bodies bent,And ever each to each the eye they sent.205

Fig. 118. Medusa

Snatching the eye, Perseus compelled the Grææ, as the price of its restoration, to tell him how he might obtain the helmet of Hades that renders its wearer invisible, and the winged shoes and pouch that were necessary. With this outfit, to which Minerva added her shield and Mercury his knife, Perseus sped to the hall of the Gorgons. In silence sat two of the sisters, —

But a third woman paced about the hall,And ever turned her head from wall to wallAnd moaned aloud, and shrieked in her despair;Because the golden tresses of her hairWere moved by writhing snakes from side to side,That in their writhing oftentimes would glideOn to her breast, or shuddering shoulders white;Or, falling down, the hideous things would lightUpon her feet, and crawling thence would twineTheir slimy folds about her ankles fine.206

Fig. 119. Perseus

From the sculpture by Cellini

This was Medusa. Her, while she was praying the gods to end her misery, or, as some say, while she was sleeping, Perseus approached, and, guided by her image reflected in the bright shield which he bore, cut off her head, and so ended her miserable existence. Thus are described the horror and the grace of her features in death: