Lord, appeared in the cup; the dragon who with changeful, serpent glances[121] guarded the divine mystery of renewed rebirth in the maternal womb. In Nietzsche the old, apparently long extinct idea is again revived:[122]
"Ailing with tenderness, just as the thawing wind,
Zarathustra sits waiting, waiting on his hill,
Sweetened and cooked in his own juice,
Beneath his summits,
Beneath his ice he sits,
Weary and happy,
A Creator on his seventh day.
Silence!
It is my truth!
From hesitating eyes—
From velvety shadows
Her glance meets mine,
Lovely, mischievous, the glance of a girl.
She divines the reason of my happiness,
She divines me—ha! what is she plotting?
A purple dragon lurks
In the abyss of her maiden glance.[123]
Woe to thee, Zarathustra,
Thou seemest like some one
Who has swallowed gold,
Thy belly will be slit open."[124]
In this poem nearly all the symbolism is collected which we have elaborated previously from other connections. Distinct traces of the primitive identity of serpent and hero are still extant in the myth of Cecrops. Cecrops is himself half-snake, half-man. Originally, he probably was the Athenian snake of the citadel itself. As a buried god, he is like Erechtheus, a chthonic snake god. Above his subterranean dwelling rises the Parthenon, the temple
