Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/499

CHAP. V

Professor Max Müller's words, "We need but walk with our eyes open along the diffs of Bournemouth to see the meaning of that legend,"—the tale of Pitys, the "pine-tree wooed by Pan, the gentle wind, and struck down by jealous Boreas, the north wind." Of Boreas himself we need say but little. His true character was as little forgotten as that of Selênê, and thus the name remained comparatively barren. The Athenian was scarcely speaking in mythical language when he said that Boreas had aided his forefathers by scattering the fleets of Xerxes. The phrases were almost as transparent which spoke of him as a son of Astraios and Eôs, the star-god and the dawn, or as carrying off Oreithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, the king of the dawn-city.

Pan and Syrinx. Another myth made Pan the lover of the nymph Syrinx; but this ran and is but a slight veil thrown over the phrase which spoke of the wind playing on its pipe of reeds by the river's bank; and the tale which related how Syrinx, flying from Pan, like Daphne from Phoibos, was changed into a reed, is but another form of the story which made Pan the lover of the nymph Echo, just as the unrequited love of Echo for Narkissos is but the complement of the unrequited love of Selene for Endymiôn.

The Thebean Orpheus. The same power of the wind which is signified by the harp of Orpheus is seen in the story of Amphiên, a being localised in the traditions of Thebes. But Amphiên is a tmn-brother of Zethos, and the two are, in the words of Euripides, simply the Dioskouroi, riding on white horses, and thus fall into the ranks of the correlative deities of Hindu and Greek mythology. But the myth runs into many other legends, the fortunes of their mother Antiopê differing but little from those of Augê, Tyrô, Evadnê, or Korônis. The tale is told in many versions. One of these calls her a daughter of Nykteus, the brother of Ivykos, another speaks of Lykos, as her husband ; but this is only saying that Artemis Hekatê may be regarded as either the child of the darkness or the bride of the light. A third version makes her a daughter of the river Asôpos, a parentage which shows her affinity with Athênê, Aphrodite, and all other deities of the light and the dawn. Her children, like Oidipous, Telephos, and many others, are exposed on their birth, and like them found and brought up by shepherds, among whom Antiopê herself is said to have long remained a captive, like Danaê in the house of Polydektes. We have now the same distinction of office or employment which marks the other twin-