Читать книгу Heathen mythology, Illustrated by extracts from the most celebrated writers, both ancient and modern - Various - Страница 25

"Giver of glowing light!

Though but a God of other days,

The kings and sages,

Of wiser ages,

Still live and gladden in thy genial rays!

"King of the tuneful lyre!

Still poets hymns to thee belong,

Though lips are cold,

Whereon of old,

Thy beams all turned to worshipping and song!

"Lord of the dreadful bow!

None triumph now for Python's death

But thou dost save

From hungry grave,

The life that hangs upon a summer's breath!

"Father of rosy day!

No more thy clouds of incense rise;

But waking flowers,

At morning hours,

Give out their sweets to meet thee in the skies!

"God of the Delphic fane!

No more thou listenest to hymns sublime;

But they will leave,

On winds at eve,

A solemn echo to the end of time!"

Hood.

By the invention of Phœbus, medicine became known to the world, as he granted to Æsculapius the secrets of this miraculous art, who afterwards sought to raise the dead, and while in the act of bringing to life Hippolitus, son of Theseus, Jupiter enraged with his impiety, smote him with a thunderbolt. Indignant at the punishment which had been awarded Æsculapius, Apollo sought the isle of Lemnos, to immolate the Cyclops to his indignation, who had forged the thunderbolt.

But so insolent an act could not remain unpunished, and Jupiter exiled him from Heaven. While on earth, he loved the nymph Daphne, and Mercury who had invented the lyre, gave it to him that he might the more effectually give vent to his passion. This lyre, was formed of the shell of a tortoise, and composed of seven cords, while to its harmonious tones were raised the walls of Troy. In vain, however, were the sweet sounds of the lyre tuned, to soften Daphne whose affection rested with another, and was insensible to that of Apollo, though he pursued her with fervour for a year. Daphne, still inexorable, was compelled to yield to the fatigue which oppressed her, when the Gods, at her entreaty, changed her into a laurel. Apollo took a branch and formed it into a crown, and to this day the laurel remains one of the attributes of the God. The leaves of this tree are believed to possess the property of preserving from thunder, and of making dreams an image of reality to those who place it beneath their pillow.

——————————"Her feet she found

Benumbed with cold, and fastened to the ground,

A filmy rind about her body grows,

Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs,

The nymph is all into a laurel gone,

The smoothness of her skin remains alone;

To whom the God: "Because thou canst not be

My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree;

Be thou the prize of honour and renown,

The deathless poet and the poem crown!

Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,

And after poets, be by victors worn!

Thou shalt returning Cæsar's triumph grace,

When pomp shall in a long procession pass;

Wreathed on the posts before his palace wait,

And be the sacred guardian of the gate;

Secure from thunder and unharmed by Jove,

Unfading as the immortal powers above;

And as the locks of Phœbus are unshorn

So shall perpetual green thy boughs adorn."

Ovid.

However earnest Apollo might have been in his pursuit of Daphne, he did not long remain inconsolable, but formed a tender attachment for Leucothoe, daughter of king Orchamus, and to introduce himself with greater facility, he assumed the shape and features of her mother. Their happiness was complete, when Clytie, her sister, who was enamoured of the God, and was jealous of his amours with Leucothoe, discovered the whole intrigue to her father, who ordered his daughter to be buried alive. Apollo passing by accident over the tomb which contained her, heard her last melancholy cries, but unable to save her from death, he sprinkled nectar and ambrosia over her tomb, which penetrating as far as the body, changed it into the beautiful tree that bears the frankincense; while the unhappy Clytie, tormented by remorse, and disdained by the God, was changed into a sunflower, the plant which turns itself without ceasing, towards its deity, the sun.

"On the bare earth she lies, her bosom bare,

Loose her attire, dishevelled is her hair;

Nine times the morn unbarred the gates of light,

As oft were spread the alternate shades of night,

So long no sustenance the mourner knew,

Unless she drank her tears, or sucked the dew,

She turned about, but rose not from the ground,

Turned to the sun still as he rolled his round;

On his bright face hung her desiring eyes,

Till fixed to earth, she strove in vain to rise,

Her looks their paleness in a flower retained,

But here and there, some purple streaks they gained.

Still the loved object the fond leaves pursue,

Still move their root, the moving sun to view

And in the Heliotrope the nymph is true."

Ovid.

These unhappy endeavours of Apollo, determined him to take refuge in friendship, and he attached himself to the young Hyacinth;

——"Hyacinth, long since a fair youth seen,

Whose tuneful voice turned fragrance in his breath,

Kissed by sad Zephyr, guilty of his death."

Hood.

But misfortune appeared to cling to all who were favoured by Apollo, for as they played at quoits with Zephyr, the latter fired by jealousy, blew the quoit of Apollo on the forehead of the unhappy mortal, who fell dead upon the green turf on which they were playing; while his blood sinking into the ground, produced the flower which still bears his name.

"Flower! with a curious eye we scan

Thy leaf, and there discover

How passion triumphed—pain began—

Or in the immortal, or the man,

The hero, or the lover.

"The disk is hurled:—ah! fatal flight!

Low droops that beauteous brow:

But oh! the Delian's pang! his light

Of joy lies quenched in sorrow's night:

The deathless record thou.

"Or, do they tell, these mystic signs,

The self destroyer's madness?

Phrensy, ensanguined wreaths entwines:

The sun of chivalry declines;—

The wreck of glory's gladness!"

Apollo was so disconsolate at the death of Hyacinth, that, as we have seen, he changed his blood into a flower which bore his name, and placed his body among the constellations.

The Spartans established yearly festivals in his honour, which continued for three days; they did not adorn their hair with garlands during their festivals, nor eat bread, but fed only upon sweetmeats. They did not even sing Pæans in honour of Apollo, or observe any of the solemnities usual at other sacrifices.

——"Pitying the sad death

Of Hyacinthus when the cruel breath

Of Zephyr slew him, Zephyr, penitent,

Who now, ere Phœbus mounts the firmament,

Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain."

Keats.

Saddened by his efforts to form an endearing friendship, Apollo once more sighed for the nymph Perses, daughter of Ocean, and had by her the celebrated Circe, remarkable for her knowledge of magic and venomous herbs.

Bolina, another nymph to whom he was attached, wishing to escape from his pursuit, threw herself into the waves, and was received by the nymphs of Amphitrion.

"I staid awhile to see her throw

Her tresses back, that all beset

The fair horizon of her brow,

With clouds of jet.

"I staid a little while to view

Her cheek, that wore in place of red,

The bloom of water, tender blue,

Daintily spread.

"I staid to watch a little space

Her parted lips, if she would sing;

The waters closed above her face,

With many a ring.

"And still I stayed a little more—

Alas! she never comes again,

I throw my flowers from the shore

And watch in vain."

Hood.

After this, Apollo lost the young Cyparissus, who had replaced Hyacinth in his favour, and guarded his flocks; this young shepherd having slain by accident a stag of which Apollo was fond, expired of grief, and was changed into the tree which bears his name.

Apollo now attached himself to the sybil of Cumes, and granted to her the boon of prolonging her life as many years as there were grains in a handful of sand which she held. But she lived to repent of this frightful gift.

Alone in the world, her friends departed, and none to remind her of the days of the past, she implored the Gods to release her from the misery which overwhelmed her. Cassandra, daughter of Priam, consented to her prayer, if Apollo would grant to her the power of divination. Apollo agreed, and swore to the truth of his promise by the river Styx. Scarcely had he uttered the oath, than the gods, who could not absolve him from it, rallied him on his folly. Irritated at the ridicule they poured upon him, he added to this gift, the restriction, that she should never believe her own prophecies. After this he again yielded to the power of love, and sought to please Clymene, who was the mother of Phæton. To this nymph succeeded the chaste Castalia, whom he pursued to the very foot of Parnassus, where the Gods metamorphosed her into a fountain. As Apollo was lamenting his loss on the bank of that river, he heard an exquisite melody escaping from the depth of the wood. He approached the place from whence the sound seemed to issue, and recognized the nine muses, children of Jupiter and Mnemosyne.

"Mnemosyne, in the Pierian grove,

The scene of her intrigue with mighty Jove,

The empress of Eleuther, fertile earth,

Brought to Olympian Jove the Muses forth;

Blessed offsprings, happy maids, whose powerful art

Can banish cares, and ease the painful heart.

* * * * * *

Clio begins the lovely tuneful race,

Which Melpomene and Euterpe grace;

Terpischore, all joyful in the choir,

And Erato, to love whose lays inspire;

To these Thalia and Polymnia join,

Urania and Calliope divine."

Hesiod.

The taste and feelings of Apollo responded to those of these noble sisters: they received him in their palace, and assembled together with him to converse on the arts and sciences.

Among their possessions, the Muses and Apollo had a winged horse, named Pegasus. This courser, born of the blood of Medusa, fixed his residence on Mount Helicon, and, by striking the earth with his foot, caused the spring of Hippocrene to gush from the ground. While the courser was thus occupied, Apollo mounted his back, placed the Muses with him, and Pegasus, lifting his wings, carried them to the court of Bacchus.

Envious of the fame of Apollo at this court, Marsyas, the Phrygian, declared that, with his flute, he could surpass the melody of the God's divine lyre, and challenged Apollo to a trial of his skill as a musician; the God accepted the challenge, and it was mutually agreed, that he who was defeated should be flayed alive. The Muses were appointed umpires. Each exerted his utmost skill, and the victory was adjudged to Apollo. The God, upon this, tied his opponent to a tree, and punished him as had been agreed. The death of Marsyas was universally lamented; the fauns, satyrs and dryads, wept at his fate, and from their abundant tears flowed a river of Phrygia, well known by the name of Marsyas.

Undeterred by this example, Pan, favourite of Midas, King of Lydia, wished also to compete with Apollo in the art of which the latter was master. Pan began the struggle, and Midas repeated his songs with enthusiasm, without paying the least attention to his celestial rival. Pan again sang, and Midas repeated; when, to his surprise, the latter felt, pressing through his hair, a pair of ears, long and shaggy. Alarmed at this phenomenon, Pan took to flight, and the prince, desolate at the loss of his favourite, made one of his attendants, some say his wife, the confidant of his misfortune, begging her not to betray his trust. The secret was too great for the bosom of its holder; she longed to tell it, but dared not, for fear of punishment; and as the only way of consoling herself, sought a retired and lonely spot, where she threw herself on the earth, whispering "King Midas has the ears of an ass, King Midas has the ears of an ass." Not long after her visit, some reeds arose in this place; and as the wind passed through them, they repeated, "King Midas has the ears of an ass." Enraged, no less than terrified, at this extraordinary occurrence, Midas sacrificed to Bacchus, who, to console, granted him the special favour of turning all that he touched into fine gold.

"Midas the king, as in the book appears,

By Phœbus was endowed with ass's ears,

Which under his long locks he well concealed;

As monarch's vices must not be revealed:

For fear the people have them in the wind.

Who long ago were neither dumb nor blind:

Nor apt to think from heaven their title springs,

Since Jove and Mars left off begetting kings.

This Midas knew, and durst communicate,

To none but to his wife his ears of state:

One must be trusted, and he thought her fit,

As passing prudent, and a parlous wit.

To this sagacious confessor he went,

And told her what a gift the Gods had sent:

But told it under matrimonial seal,

With strict injunction never to reveal.

The secret heard, she plighted him her troth,

(And secret sure is every woman's oath,)

The royal malady should rest unknown,

Both for her husband's honour and her own.

But ne'ertheless she pined with discontent,

The counsel rumbled till it found a vent.

The thing she knew she was obliged to hide:

By interest and by oath the wife was tied:

But if she told it not the woman died.

Loth to betray her husband and a prince,

But she must burst or blab, and no pretence

Of honour tied her tongue in self defence.

The marshy ground commodiously was near,

Thither she ran, and held her breath for fear

Lest, if a word she spoke of any thing,

That word might be the secret of the king.

Thus full of council to the fen she went,

Full all the way, and longing for a vent.

Arrived, by pure necessity compelled,

On her majestic marrow-bones she kneeled,

Then to the water's brink she laid her head,

And, as a bittern sounds within a reed,

'To thee alone, oh! lake,' she said, 'I tell,

And as thy queen, command thee to conceal,

Beneath his locks, the king my husband wears

A goodly, royal pair of ass's ears.

Now I have eased my bosom of the pain,

Till the next longing fit returns again!'"

Ovid.

The story of Phaeton, (son of Apollo under the name of Phœbus) is as follows: Venus becoming enamoured of Phaeton, entrusted him with the care of one of her temples. This distinguished favour of the Goddess rendered him vain and aspiring; and when told, to check his pride, that he was not the son of Phœbus, Phaeton resolved to know his true origin; and at the instigation of his mother, he visited the palace of the sun, to beg that Phœbus, if he really were his father, would give him proofs of his paternal tenderness, and convince the world of his legitimacy. Phœbus swore by the Styx that he would grant him whatever he required; and Phaeton demanded of him to drive his chariot (that of the sun) for one day. In vain Phœbus represented the impropriety of his request, and the dangers to which it would expose him; the oath must be complied with. When Phaeton received the reins from his father, he immediately betrayed his ignorance and incapacity. The flying horses took advantage of his confusion, and departed from their accustomed track. Phaeton repented too late of his rashness, for heaven and earth seemed threatened with an universal conflagration, when Jupiter struck the rider with a thunderbolt, and hurled him headlong into the river Po. His body, consumed by fire, was found by the nymphs of the place, and honoured with a decent burial.

The Heliades, his sisters wept for four months, without ceasing, until the Gods changed them into poplars, and their tears into grains of amber; while the young king of the Ligurians, a chosen friend of Phaeton, was turned into a swan at the very moment he was yielding to his deep regrets. Aurora is also the daughter of Apollo. She granted the gift of immortality to Tithonus, her husband, son of the king of Troy; but soon perceiving that the gift was valueless, unless the power of remaining ever young was joined with it, she changed him into a grasshopper. From their union sprang Memnon, who was killed by Achilles at the siege of Troy. The tears of his mother were the origin of the early dew, and the Egyptians formed, in honour of him, the celebrated statue which possessed the wonderful property of uttering a melodious sound every morning at sunrise, as if in welcome of the divine luminary, like that which is heard at the breaking of the string of a harp when it is wound up. This was effected by the rays of the sun when they fell on it. At its setting, the form appeared to mourn the departure of the God, and uttered sounds most musical and melancholy; this celebrated statue was dismantled by the order of Cambyses, when he conquered Egypt, and its ruins still astonish modern travellers by their grandeur and beauty.

"Unto the sacred sun in Memnon's fane,

Spontaneous concords quired the matin strain;

Touched by his orient beam, responsive rings

The living lyre, and vibrates all its strings;

Accordant aisles the tender tones prolong,

And holy echoes swell the adoring song."

Darwin.

Apollo having slain with his arrows, Python, a monstrous serpent which desolated the beautiful country around Parnassus, his victory was celebrated in all Greece by the young Pythians; where crowns, formed at first of the branches of oak, but afterwards of laurel, were distributed to the conquerors, and where they contended for the prize of dancing, music and poetry.

It is from his encounter with this serpent, that in the statues which remain of him, our eyes are familiar with the bow placed in his grasp.

————————"The lord of the unerring bow,

The god of life, and poesy, and light,

The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow,

All radiant from his triumph in the fight;

The shaft hath just been shot—the arrow, bright

With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye

And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might,

And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,

Developing in that one glance the Deity.

"But in his delicate form, a dream of love,

Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast

Longed for a deathless lover from above,

And maddened in that vision, are exprest

All that ideal beauty ever blest

The mind with, in its most unearthly mood,

When each conception was a heavenly guest,

A ray of immortality, and stood

Star like, around, until they gathered to a God!

"And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven

The fire which we endure, it was repaid

By him to whom the energy was given,

Which this poetic marble hath arrayed

With an eternal glory, which if made

By human hands, is not of human thought,

And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid

One ringlet in the dust, nor hath it caught

A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought."

Byron.

But the gods grew jealous of the homage shewn to Apollo, and recalling him from earth, replaced him in his seat at Olympus.

The fable of Apollo is, perhaps, that which is most spread over the faith of antiquity. Pæans were the hymns chanted in his honour, and this was the war cry he shouted in his onset against the serpent Python. On his altars are immolated a bull or a white lamb—to him is offered the crow, supposed to read the future, the eagle who can gaze on the sun, the cock whose cry welcomes his return, and the grasshopper, who sings during his empire.

This God is represented in the figure of a young man without beard, with curling locks of hair, his brow wreathed with laurels, and his head surrounded with beams of light. In his right hand he holds a bow and arrows; in the left, a lyre with seven chords, emblem of the seven planets to which he grants his celestial harmony. Sometimes he carries a buckler, and is accompanied by the three Graces, who are the animating deities of genius and the fine arts, and at his feet is placed a swan.

He had temples and statues in every country, particularly in Egypt, Greece, and Italy; the most famous was that of Delos, where they celebrated the Pythian games, that of Soractes, where the priests worshipped by treading with their naked feet on burning coals, though without feeling pain, and that of Delphi, in which the youth of the place offered to the gods their locks of hair, possibly because this offering was most difficult to the vanity of youth. Apollo made known his oracles through the medium of a sibyl. This was a female, named also a Pythoness, on account of her seat being formed of massive gold resembling the skin of the serpent Python. The history of the tripod will be found to afford much interest. The fishermen who had found it in their nets, sought the oracle to consult its responses. This was to offer it to the wisest man in Greece. They presented it to Thales, who had told them that the most difficult of all human knowledge was the art of knowing ourselves. Thales offered the tripod to Bias. When the enemy was reducing his native city to ashes, he withdrew, leaving behind him his wealth, saying, "I carry all that is worthy within myself." After frequent adventures, and passing into the possession of many, the tripod finally returned to Thales, and was deposited in the temple; where, as we have seen, it served the sibyl for a seat. This story shows us at a glance, the principles and the conduct of the greatest philosophers of Greece. These sages who considered philosophy to consist in the science of practising virtue, and living happily, endeavoured to show by the adventures of the tripod that, though the way was sometimes different, the end was the same.

The sibyl delivered the answer of the god to such as came to consult the oracle, and while the divine inspiration was on her, her eyes sparkled, her hair stood on end, and a shivering ran through her body. In this convulsive state, she spoke the oracles of the deity, often with loud howlings and cries, and her articulations were taken down by the priest, and set in order. Sometimes the spirit of inspiration was more gentle, and not always violent, yet Plutarch mentions one of the priestesses who was thrown into such excessive fury, that not only those who consulted the oracle, but also the priests who conducted her to the sacred tripod, and attended her during her inspiration, were terrified and forsook the temple; and so violent was the fit, that she continued for some days in the most agonizing situation, and at last died.

It was always required that those who consulted this oracle should make presents to Apollo, and from thence arose the opulence, splendour, and magnificence, of the temple of Delphi.

There were other temples of Apollo more celebrated, such as that at Palmyra, which was constructed of the most gigantic proportions; and for which nothing was spared to give it a magnificence hitherto unknown. Augustus, who pretended to be the son of Apollo, built a temple to him on Mount Palatine. Delian feasts were those which the Athenian, and the other Greek states celebrated every four years at Delos.

The history of the Muses is so closely allied to that of Apollo that we shall present some of their adventures in this part of our work.

The first is the struggle which the Muses maintained against the nine daughters of Pierus, King of Macedon, who dared to dispute with them the palm of singing; being overcome, they were turned into magpies, and since their transformation, they have preserved the talent so dear to beauty, of being able in many words to express very little.

One day when the Muses were distant from their place of abode, a storm surprised them, and they took shelter in the palace of Pyrenæus: but scarcely had they entered, when the tyrant shut the gates, and sought to offer them insult. They immediately spread their wings and flew away. The king wishing to fly after them, essayed the daring adventure, and throwing himself from the top of the tower as if he had wings, was killed in the attempt. Notwithstanding the high reputation of the Muses, it is pretended by some, that Rheseus was the son of Terpsichore, Linus of Clio, and Orpheus of Calliope. Arion and Pindar were also stated to be the children of the Muses, to whom the Romans built a temple and consecrated a fountain.