CHAP.
morning from a beautiful lake by the deep-flowing stream of Ocean,
and having accomplished his journey across the heaven plunges again
into the western waters. Elsewhere this lake becomes a magnificent
palace, on which poets lavished all their wealth of fancy ; but
this splendid abode is none other than the house of Tantalos,
the treasury of Ixion, the palace of Allah-ud-deen in the Arabian tale.
Through the heaven his chariot was borne by gleaming steeds,
the Rohits and Harits of the Veda ; but his nightly journey from the
west to the east is accomplished in a golden cup wrought by
Hephaistos, or, as others had it, on a golden bed.^ But greater
than his wealth is his wisdom. He sees and knows all things ; and
thus when Hekate cannot answer her question, Helios tells Demeter
to what place Kore has been taken, and again informs Hephaistos of
the faithlessness of Aphrodite. It is therefore an inconsistency when
the poet of the Odyssey represents him as not aware of the slaughter
of his oxen by Eurylochos, until the daughters of Neaira bring him
the tidings ; but the poet returns at once to the true myth, when he
makes Helios utter the threat that unless he is avenged, he will
straightway go and shine among the dead. These cattle, which in
the Vedic hymns and in most other Greek myths are the beautiful
clouds of the Phaiakian land, are here (like the gods of the Arabian
Kaaba), the days of the lunar year, seven herds of fifty each, the
number of which is never increased or lessened ; and their death
is the wasting of time or the killing of the days by the comrades
of Odysseus.
The same process which made Helios a son of Hyperion made Helios and him also the father of Phaethon.^ In the Iliad he is Helios Phaethon P^aethon. not less than Helios Hyperion ; but when the name had come to denote a distinct personality, it served a convenient purpose in accounting for some of the phenomena of the year. The hypothesis of madness was called in to explain the slaughter of the boy Eunomos by Herakles : but it was at the least as reasonable to say that if the sun destroyed the fruits and flowers which his genial warmth had
' Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 303. by the stariy, spotted Leopard of the The incident is the same as that which night, and where the noble beast is is signified by the myth of Uionysos caught while going down the dark Dithyreites, the two doors being those, passage and perishes, although only to necessarily, of the East and the West. be reborn in triumph at the Eastern It is also exhibited in the contest of the Gate. The two animals, as protagonists
heraldic Lion and Leopard, the simple of night and day, are thus naturally interpretation being that "the Lion, hostile." — Brown, The Unicorn, 76. type of the hunting, radiate, diurnal ^ Some have held that the name Sun, speeds across heaven towards his Helios reappears in the Slavonic Volos, fate and death in the Den of the Two the god of cattle. — Ralston, Songs of Entrances, the nocturnal cave tenanted the Russian People, 252.
