Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/71

THE GREEK GODS 57 one foot is raised, a characteristic attitude of fishermen and sailors ; in the works of art belonging to more ancient times he is entirely clothed, afterwards the upper part of his body is uncovered. 76. Like the waves of the sea, rapid rivers, by their ungovernable power, and their roaring, which resembles bellowing, gave rise to the idea that in every such stream a prodigious bull manifested his activity. Therefore in very ancient times the representations of river gods were formed like bulls, with a human countenance. But as early as the time of Homer, they appear in human form throughout ; and only rarely does the later art indicate their nature by little bulls' horns, but usually makes them recognizable by the attribute of an urn. The most important of them are Achelous, the opponent of Her- cules, and Alpheiis, the lover of the fountain nymph Arethusa, who fled before his wooing through the sea to the peninsula Ortygia at Syracuse. The most beautiful statue of a river god which can be definitely identified is that of the Nile, now in the Vatican museum. 77. The Centaurs and Sileni also were probably river gods, and may originally have come to be considered companions of Dionysus on account of the insatiable thirst implied by their nature ; of course they are also very closely connected with him on account of the rela- tion of water to the fruitfulness of the earth. The Aeolic-Thessalian Centaurs, sons of Ixion and Nephele (' cloud 7 ), were natives of the mountains of Thessaly, particularly of Pelion and Ossa, also of Pholoe on the western border of Arcadia, and are probably to be re- garded as embodiments of the wild, rushing streams of these mountains. So their origin is the cloud; they