Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/361

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AIAKOS AND AIGINA.
329

CHAP. II.

a name which reminds us of Horatius Codes[1] and which seems to denote simply the eyeless gloom of night.

Rhadamanthys and Aiakos. Of Rhadamanthys, who in the ordinary version is like Minos, a son of Zeus and Eurôpê, Uttle more is told us, apart from the seemingly later story of ApoUodorus, than that for the righteousness of his life he was made the judge of Elysion, and that Minos was after- wards joined with him in this office. In name then, as in office, he is the Khemic Rhot-amenti, the judge of the dead.[2] Pausanias, who gives this priority to Rhadamanthys, adds that some spoke of him as a son of Hephaistos, who in this myth was a son of Talos, a son of the eponymos Krês.[3] The same reputation for impartial justice added to their number Aiakos, who in one version is a brother of Minos and Rhadamanthys, in another a son of Zeus and Aigina, the nymph whose name denotes the beating of the surf on the island which was called after her.[4] In this island Aiakos, ruling over a race of Myrmidons, or ant-born men,[5] plays the part of Oidipous at Thebes or Phoibos at Delphoi. For the Virtra or dragon which shuts up the waters is sent by Hêrê, who is jealous of the love of Zeus for Aigina, to desolate the island; and when they send to learn the will of the god at Pytho, the answer is that the plague can be removed only by the prayers of the righteous Aiakos. At their entreaty he offers up a solemn sacrifice, and the rain falls once more upon Hellas.[6] With Poseidon and Phoibos he takes part in the work of building the Ilian walls; and here also the dragons are seen again. Three of them rush against the walls, and one makes its way through the portion built by Aiakos, while the other two fall dead beneath the structure of the gods,—a myth which was interpreted to mean the future overthrow of Ilion by the descendants of Aiakos.

Nestor and and Sarpêdôn. In the Cretan myth Sarpêdôn also is a brother of Minos, and therefore a son of Zeus and Eurôpê. Other versions told of a Sarpedon who was the child of Laodameia, the daughter of Bellerophontes. As in the case of Minos, mythographers made two beings out of one, as they might indefinitely have extended the number.

  1. ↑ This word seems to be akin to the Latin adjective citcus, and possibly with Kaikias, the word which seems to have suggested the myth of Cacus. It is made up of the particle denoting separation, ha, and the root oc, which we find in the Lalin ociilus, the German auge, the English eye. The same formation has given us the words halt, half, celibacy, &c.—Bopp, Comp. Gr. §308.
  2. ↑ Brown, Great Dionysiak Mylh, i. 208.
  3. ↑ Paus. viii. 53, 2.
  4. ↑ Its former name is said to have been Oinônê or Oinopia. Aigina belongs to the same root with Aigai, Aigaiôn, and Aigeus, the eponymos of the Aigaian (Egean) sea.
  5. ↑ See p. 82, et seq.
  6. ↑ Paus. ii. 29, 6.
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