The three oxen of the three-headed monster Geryon, the three heads of Cerberus, the three apples of the Hesperides, the tripod stolen from Apollo, &c., allude to the ancient tripartite division of the seasons. The far-famed pillars, the limits of the earthly career of Hercules, correspond to the solstitial points, dividing the year into the two hemispheres of Hermes. The Egyptians expressed at once physical and geographical ideas by placing the images of the sun and moon in boats 52; and instead of the golden couch on which some supposed Helios to be carried asleep from the land of the Hesperides to Ethiopia, Hercules navigated the circumambient ocean in a golden cup to his rising in the East 53. In the land of Læstrygonia beyond the western horizon, where night and day met and saluted each other, were placed the herds of the sun, and the gardens of the Hesperides adjoined the isle of Erythia, ruddy with the setting ray. There lived the aged Geryon or Cronus 56, the three-bodied giant of the West, guarding as Hades" in a darksome lair 58 his herds of oxen, or the years sunk beneath the wave; but Hercules, in character of the vernal sun, and perhaps, too, of Greek heroism warring against the gods of Phoenician superstition, slays the dog Orthros and the gloomy (Idyll. xxiv. 1. 90) is only ten months old when he destroys the two serpents at midnight; his labours too were at first ten only, two more having been afterwards added.

55

51 Teiμigns & xgovos. Laur. Lydus, p. 220, Roth. Diod. S. i. 16.

52 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 34. Porphyr. de Antr. Notæ. p. 99. Macrob. i. 23.

$3 Stesichori, Frag. 3. Comp. Pherecyd. Sturz. 103. Athenæus, xi. 469.

54 Hom. Ody. x. 86, p. 3, 4. Schol. Arat. v. 62. Hes. Theog. 746.

55 According to Hesiod (Th. 215. 274. 518) they were in the ocean or beyond it, or among the Hyperboreans. Apollod. ii. 5. 11.

56 Hes. Works, 169.

57 Apollod. ii. 5. 10. 7. Strabo, vii. 452; or of Moloch-Saturn, the Phoenician ancient of days, whose throne or citadel, famous in the mystical physiology of the East (see particularly the 14th chapter of the book of Enoch), still continued among the Phoenician settlements of the Western Mediterranean. Comp. Daumer, "Molochdienst der Hebraër, p. 9. Movers, "Phænizier," p. 436.

58 Theog. 294.

se On the connection of Cronus with Chronos, see Movers, ib. p. 262. Böttiger, Ideen, i. 225, note 11, and supr.

herdsman Eurytion", and brings back the lost kine to Argos". Under the guidance of Minerva, or divine wisdom presiding over Nature, he is enabled to wield his arms of light against the prince of darkness in his proper person 2, and to achieve the task justly esteemed the most arduous, though really the most familiar, of all 63, the dragging Cerberus, the guardian of the lower world, into the light of day. Yet these labours are but exhibitions of solar power which have ever to be repeated, for both the apples and the dog are carefully restored by Minerva to their original and rightful places.

§ 15.

LIBERATION OF PROMETHEUS BY HERCULES.

Hercules ingeniculus, who bending on one knee uplifts his club, and tramples on the serpent's head', was sometimes not unreasonably confounded with Prometheus or Tantalus', for all these are only varying aspects of the struggling and declining sun3. The true scene of the punishment of Prometheus is the dark or underworld, the abode of night and winter, of the Homeric Titans', the Tartarean depth to which Prometheus himself is at last condemned. Tartarus, however, is itself only an imaginative reflection of the real". Acheron and Avernus

60. q. Eurystheus (?). Hes. Theog. 294.

In the mythology of the Vedas it is a personification of devotion and prayer. Brihaspiti, who rescues the kine "dropping fertility" from the caverns of Bala. (Roth in the Zeitschrift der D. M. Gesellschaft, i. 73. Lassen, Antiq. i. 757. 766.) 62 Pind. Ol. ix. 43. Hom. Iliad, v. 395. Paus. vi. 33.

63 Odyss. a. 623. Paus. ix. 34.

Eratosthenis, Catast. 4. Aratus, v. 70, and Schol. to v. 62. Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 63.

2 Theon to Arat. 12. Hygin. ii. 6, fin.

3.66 Οὐρανόθεν καταβαινων.”

• "Tains by usulpv.." Hes. Th. 157; comp. 717. 818. 851. Strabo, xi. 495.

Iliad, viii. 478; xiv. 274.

* Prom. 1004, Bothe.

6 Lucret. iii. 992.

» 10

were rivers of Campania or Thesprotia' before they were transferred to the lower world, as the Tigris, Euphrates, or Nile had long fertilized the plains of Mesopotamia and Egypt before they became part of the Eden of the Hebrews. With the extension of geographical knowledge it became easy to find many localities appropriate for the exile of Cronus, the hiding-place of Hercules or Ulysses, the punishment of Typhon or Atlas". The scene was at length removed from Sipylus or Hæmus to the inhospitable mountains or Scythia, where the pinnacle of Caucasus, called the "couch of Boreas,' seemed as it were to overlook the confines of the world, its summit being rarely deserted by the sun", anticipating as it were his rising, and illuminated through a portion of the night'. The arrival of Hercules to the liberation of Prometheus belongs to the same period in his astronomical career, the season of winter and cold", which witnessed his descent to the shades; it was as he drove the oxen of the West towards the gates of morning, and bore the golden apples stolen by the Atlantides or Hesperides" once more to make the circuit of the seasons. For the voyage of Hercules, like that of the Argo, brought the West into proximity with the East, so that he sailed from Libya to Perge13, and left his name on both extremes of the boundary of Oceanus. The Greek colonists of the Euxine interwove into the story of their favourite hero analogous local legends, and increased his accumulated glory by referring every heroic achievement to his name. They conceived, therefore, that as while navigating the circumfluent ocean, and coasting the extremities of the earth, the sun prepares the renewal of time and light for its inhabitants, so the earth-encircling champion at

16

7 Comp. Müller, Mythol. 298.

8 "AITOS." Odyss. i. 235.

Apollod. i. 6. 3.

10 Ps. Plutarch de Fluv. p. 11, in Hudson. Geogr. Minor.

Aristot. Meteor. i. 13. 18.

12 Comp. Plin. N. H. vi. 22. Uckert, Skythien, 105.

13 Herod. iv. 8.

14 The daughters of evening. Hyg. A. ii. 6. Eratosthenis Catast. 3.

15 Uckert, Skythien, 331.

16 Hes. Theog. 530.

length arrived among the Hyperboreans" and Scythians among whom they lived, and many of whose traditions had a resemblance to their own. They went on to tell how his foot, the measure of the Olympic stadium, imprinted that memorial on the banks of the Borysthenes which to many nations of the East was the same token of divine favour as the pledge of the bow given to the Hebrew patriarch 18; that there, divested of his lion's skin, he lay down to sleep, and for a time lost the horses of his chariot; and again, that wandering in search of them through those gloomy regions he met the dragon Echidna in her cavern, and passing in her arms the winter night became father of the patriarch of the Scythians "". Henceforth that northern region of gloom, called the "place of the death and revival of Adonis,' that Caucasus whose summit was so lofty, that, like the Indian Meru, it seemed to be the goal and commencement of the sun's career", became to Greek imaginations the final bourne of all things", the abode of winter and desolation, the pinnacle of the arch connecting the upper and lower

20

"The gardens of Atlas and the Hesperides were sometimes placed among the Hyperboreans (Apollod. ii. 5. 11. 2. Pherecyd. Frag. Didot. 33, 33a), who were "servants of Apollo," and " Titans." Pherenicus in Schol. Pind. Ol. iii. 28. 18 Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 232 sq. The sign of fertility denoted by the foot of Buddha, or the gigantic sandal of Perseus at Chemmis. Herod. ii. 91; iv. 82; or the sandals of geus hid with the sword beneath a stone. Apollod. iii. 15. 7. Comp. the "xaaxorous dos" at Colonos, called “squo' Abnvwv." Wunder, Pref. to Edip. Colon. p. 24.

19 Another story told how during his stay in the cavern he slew the giants. (Strabo, xi. 495.) In Diodorus, Zeus takes the part of Hercules as father by Echidna of the Scythian kings. (ii. 43.)

20

Guigniaut, Rel. ii. 42. The daughters of Israel looked for the return of Adonis from the North (Ezek. viii. 14), and while Cybele in company with the Sun-God was absent among the Hyperboreans, Phrygia abandoned by its protectress suffered the horrors of famine. (Diod. S. iii. 58.) Delos and Delphi awaited the return of Apollo from the Hyperboreans, and from thence Hercules brought the olive to Olympia. (Pind. Ol. Paus. x. 19. 2. Herod. viii. 55.) The north is thus the mythical equivalent of Hades. In the climate of Egypt, the dominion of Typhon was over the dry places of Libya, his agents the heats and simoom of Ethiopia.

21 Photius, Hoeschl. 998.

22 “ Παντων πηγαι και πειρατ.” Theog. 738.

VOL. II.

G

27

world, and consequently the appropriate place for the banishment of Prometheus 23. The sun's proper home is the place from which he comes and to which he returns. Wherever that may be, whether in the East or West (for between these two the distinction is merely relative and conventional), whether in the Ambracian gulf, in Sicily, or the Eastern Erithya in the district of the Tauric Hypanis", there are found the land or city of Helios, his herds guarded by Titanic or giant keepers 25, stalls for the repose of his wearied horses, and pastures where they feed. Scythia became what Thrace had been before, the ideal of the extreme north, the place of the sun's concealment, that dwelling of Boreas to which Cronus, after the Titan war, withdrew, in order to escape the observation of Zeus 26. There were preserved in the ancient names of Corocandame and Phanagoria traces of an ancient sun worship, and it was there that the memorable passage of the "bull-stealing Titan" over the waters gave its well-known name to the Cimmerian Bosphorus 28. Heraclitus compared the stars to boats floating in æther with the keels outwards, so that we are enabled to behold the luminous meteors within them; and through the imaginary voyage of the Argo, a fable probably constructed out of a similar idea of stellar navigation, the most distant regions were connected, and it was easy to bring the waters of Cuban (the Antikites or HypanisPhasis) to the Colchian home of the children of the sun, Eetes, Perses, Medea, Hecate, Asterie "", on the banks of that river (the Phasis), which, like the Cyrus", was supposed to bear the name of their celestial parent". But the idea which placed a 23 44 'Tegμorios rayos." Prom. Bothe, 117; comp. v. 282. 645.

24 Strabo, 494. Orph. Argon. 1050.

29

25 Alcyoneus, Geryiones, &c. Apollod. i. 6. 1. 4.

26 Ps. Plutarch, de Fluv. et. Mont. p. 11.

27 From Coros and Phanes. Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 194 sq. 206. Kanda, city, and ayoga, market; one name being a translation of the other.

28 Orph. Argon. 1060. Porphyr. de Antro. Mithras, Hercules, or Alcyoneus;

i. e. Helios.

Orph. Argon. 1040. Hes. Th. 377. 409.956. Diod. S. iv. 45.

30 Kur, Koros.

21 Ritter, ib. 203. Plut. de Fluv. 10.