Stories of Old Greece and Rome — Appendices 31-40

XXXI

There were many versions of the creation of the world among the Greeks and Romans, but the most popular was the following: At first there was nothing but a confused mass in which land, sea, and air were all merged in one substance.

Over this shapeless mass reigned a careless deity named Chaos who shared his throne with his wife Nyx (or Nox) the goddess of Night.

They were dethroned by their son Erebus (Darkness) who ruled over the universe with his children Æther (Light) and Hemera (Day).

These two then succeeded to the throne, and by their combined efforts, together with the help of their own child Eros (Amor or Love) created Pontus (the Sea) and Gæa (the Earth), also called Ge, Tellus, Terra.

The earth was divided into two equal parts by Pontus, and around it flowed the great river Oceanus.

Soon Gæa created Uranus (Heaven), and these two powerful deities took possession of all the universe, and became the parents of twelve gigantic children, the Titans, whose strength was so great that their father Uranus grew much afraid of them.

To prevent their ever uniting against him he hurled them, soon after their birth, into the dark abyss called Tartarus, which was situated far under the earth.

Here he chained his six sons, Oceanus, Cœus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Saturn (Cronos or Time) and his six daughters (also called the Titanides), Ilia, Rhea, Themis, Thetis, Mnemosyne, and Phœbe.

Later on, Uranus thrust into Tartarus his other children, the Cyclops, who made the darkness hideous with their incessant clamor.

Gæa was not pleased at this treatment of her children, so she descended into Tartarus to urge the Titans to conspire against their father.

But they were all too fearful of the great Uranus and none dared defy him except Saturn, who, having been released from his chains by his mother, went out of Tartarus armed with a scythe that Gæa had given him.

He came upon Uranus unawares, bound him fast, and took possession of the throne.

Then he released his sisters and brothers, and the Titans, glad to escape from their dreadful bondage, agreed to accept Saturn as their ruler.

He chose his sister Rhea (Cybele) for his wife, and gave his brothers and sisters different parts of the universe to govern.

Meanwhile old Uranus had told Saturn, when the latter wrested from him his throne, that he himself would one day be dethroned by his children.

So when Rhea bore her first son, Saturn determined to defy the prophecy and promptly swallowed him.

One child after another was thus disposed of; and at last Rhea resolved to save her youngest son by stratagem.

As soon as Jupiter was born, his mother concealed him, and was able to persuade Saturn into swallowing a large stone which she had wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Then Rhea intrusted her child to the care of the Melian nymphs, who bore him off to a cave on Mount Ida.

Here a goat (Amalthea) was procured as nurse, and it fulfilled its duties so well that it was later placed in the heavens as a constellation.

When Rhea considered her son strong enough to cope with his powerful father, she urged him to attack Saturn, who, surprised at the sudden appearance of a son of whose existence he was unaware, was defeated and forced to resign his power to Jupiter.

Then by means of a nauseous drink prepared by Metis, a daughter of Oceanus, Saturn was made to disgorge the unfortunate children he had swallowed: Neptune, Pluto, Vesta, Ceres, and Juno.

XXXII

Poems:-- Demeter and Persephone ALFRED TENNYSON Hymns to Proserpine ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE

Demeter HELEN H. JACKSON

The Search after Proserpine AUBREY DE VERE Proserpine DANTE G. ROSSETTI

Persephone in "Epic of Hades" LEWIS MORRIS Persephone JEAN INGELOW Song of Proserpina PERCY B. SHELLEY

The Search for Persephone RICHARD H. STODDARD

The following stanza is from Shelley's "Arethusa:"-- "Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,-- From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks, With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams;-- Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing She went ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered toward the deep."

The river Alpheus does, in fact, disappear underground in part of its course, finding its way through subterranean channels until it again appears on the surface.

It was said that the Sicilian fountain Arethusa was the same stream that, after passing under the sea, came up again in Sicily.

Hence the story arose that a cup thrown into the Alpheus appeared again in Arethusa.

It is this fable of the underground course of the Alpheus that Coleridge alludes to in his poem of Kubla Khan:-- "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."

XXXIII

Many beautiful temples were dedicated to Ceres and Proserpina, both in Greece and Italy; and their yearly festivals, the Cerealia and Thesmophoria, were celebrated with great pomp.

To commemorate her long search for her daughter, Ceres instituted at Eleusis the Eleusinian Festivals and Mysteries.

The Festivals were held in February and September.

The lesser festival, in February, represented the restoration of Proserpina to her mother; the greater, held in September, lasted nine days and represented the abduction of Proserpina.

All classes might participate in these festivals.

The Mysteries of Eleusis were witnessed only by the initiated, and were surrounded with a veil of secrecy that has never been fully withdrawn.

The initiates passed through certain symbolic ceremonies from one degree of mystic enlightenment to another till the highest was attained.

The Mysteries apparently resembled the ceremonies of the modern masonic orders.

XXXIV

The following stanzas are from Swinburne's "Garden of Proserpine":-- "We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure;

To-day will die to-morrow;

Time stoops to no man's lure;

And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful, Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure.

"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be, That no life lives forever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."

XXXV

Besides Pluto, god of the Infernal Regions, the Greeks also worshiped Plutus, a son of Ceres and Jason, who was known exclusively as a god of wealth.

Abandoned in infancy, he was reared by Pax, goddess of peace, who is often represented as holding him in her lap.

Because Plutus would bestow his favors only upon good and worthy mortals, Jupiter deprived him of his sight; and he then distributed his wealth indiscriminately.

Virgil thus describes the crowd of spirits that wait to be ferried by Charon across the river:-- "The shivering army stands, And press for passage with extended hands, Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore;

The rest he drove to distance from the shore."

XXXVI

The Furies visited the earth to punish filial disobedience, irreverence to old age, perjury, murder, treachery to guests, and even unkindness toward beggars.

They avenged the ghosts of those who died by a violent death and had no one to avenge them.

Therefore they persecuted Orestes, who killed his mother, and brought to punishment the murderers of Ibycus.

This poet, beloved by Apollo, was journeying to the musical contest at Corinth, and was attacked by two robbers.

As he lay dying he called upon a flock of cranes, that were passing overhead, to take up his cause and avenge his death.

When his body was found, there was great lamentation among the Greeks, and every effort was made to discover the murderers, but without success.

Later on, when a vast assemblage was witnessing a play in which the Chorus personated the Furies, the people sat terrified and still as death when the Choristers, clad in black, appeared bearing in their fleshless hands torches blazing with a pitchy flame.

As they advanced with measured step, the company could see their bloodless cheeks and the writhing serpents that curled--in place of hair--around their brows.

Then they began to sing: "Woe, woe to him who has done the deed of secret murder.

We, the fearful brood of night, fasten ourselves upon him, flesh and soul.

Unwearied we pursue him; no pity checks our course; still on to the end of life, we give no peace, no rest."

As the Furies finished their weird chant a number of dark objects came sailing across the sky, and in the solemn stillness that had fallen over the assembly a terrified cry arose from one of the benches, "Look, comrade, the cranes of Ibycus!"

Having informed thus far against themselves, it was not long before the murderers were seized, and, having confessed their crime, were put to death.

The effect upon the audience of this appearance of the Furies (as related in the story of Ibycus) is not exaggerated, for it is recorded 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.

Poem:-- Cranes of Ibycus SCHILLER XXXVII

The story of the true and false Dreams and the horn and ivory gates rests on a double play of words: ἐλέφας (elephas), ivory, and ἐλεφαιρομαι (elephairomai), to cheat with false hope; κερας (keras), horn, and κραίνειν (krainein), to fulfill.

Poem:-- The Ivory Gate MORTIMER COLLINS Dreams were sometimes sent through the gates of horn to prepare mortals for misfortunes, as was the case of Halcyone.

Ceÿx, king of Thessaly, once left his beloved wife, Halcyone, to go on a journey to the oracle of Delphi.

On the outgoing voyage, a tempest struck the ship on which the king was sailing, and he with all his crew perished in the waves.

Every day the queen went down to the seashore to watch for the returning vessel, and every night she prayed to the gods to bring her husband safely back to her.

Juno, knowing that these prayers were in vain, pitied the faithful Halcyone, and wished to prepare her for the great sorrow that must soon come with the news of Ceÿx's death.

So she sent Iris to the cave of sleep, and the rainbow goddess bade one of the Dreams go forth from the gate of horn to visit the sleeping queen.

The Dream glided to Halcyone's bedside, and, assuming the form of Ceÿx, appeared before her pale, like a dead man, and dripping with the salt sea.

He told his wife that the storm had sunk his ship, and that he himself was dead.

Terrified at this vision, Halcyone sprang from her couch and hastened to the beach, where she found the body of her husband washed up by the waves.

In pity for her grief, the gods changed both Halcyone and Ceÿx into birds that ever afterward lived on the waters, and were known as the Halcyon birds.

These birds uttered shrill cries of warning to all seamen whenever a storm threatened, but were themselves so fearless of the sea that they built their nests and hatched their young on the ever-tossing waves.

XXXVIII

The Nereides trained Arion, the wonderful winged steed that had the power of speech, to draw his father's chariot over the waves.

He was said to be the first and the fleetest of horses, and passed successively into the hands of Cepreus (Pelops' son), Hercules, and Adrastus--the last of whom won all the chariot races, thanks to the fleetness of Arion.

Neptune was a patron of horse trainers, and was himself especially devoted to horses.

The Cyclops are described differently by different authors.

Homer speaks of them as a gigantic and lawless race of shepherds who dwelt in Sicily.

Each of them had a single eye in the center of his forehead.

The chief of the Cyclops was Polyphemus who fell in love with the Nereid Galatea.

He took great care of his appearance, harrowed his coarse hair with a currycomb and mowed his beard with a sickle.

When he looked into the sea, he smiled complacently and said: "Beautiful seems my beard, beautiful also my one eye--as I count beauty--and the sea reflects the gleam of my teeth whiter than Parian Stone" (Theocritus, Idyll VI.

) Galatea did not return the Cyclops's affection, however, for she loved the river god Acis.

Polyphemus came upon the lovers one day in the woods, and was so enraged at the sight of them that he killed his rival with a rock.

As the blood of Acis crept in a stream from under the rock it grew paler and paler until it turned into water.

Soon it became a river which still bears the name of the unfortunate Acis.

XXXIX

Milton alludes to the ocean deities in the song at the conclusion of "Comus."

"Sabrina fair ...

Listen and appear to us, In name of great Oceanus, By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace, And Tethy's 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 song of Sirens sweet;" etc. Proteus is called the Carpathian wizard because his cave was on the island of Pharos, or Carpathos.

XL

Wordsworth's sympathy with the classical conception of nature is shown in the following sonnet:-- "The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.

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."