myth of the fifty daughters of Thestios or Thespios, which in some CHAP,
versions is connected with his first great exploit, is akin to that ol '
the fifty daughters of Danaos and the fifty children whom Asterodia
bare to Endymion.^ It is but one instance out of many in which
we have the sun under an aspect altogether inconsistent with the
ideal of Prodikos. Herakles is no longer the hero who imposes on
himself a hard discipline, but the voluptuous wanderer who has many
loves in many lands. In his attack on the envoys of Erginos he is
armed with a coat of mail brought to him by the dawn-goddess
Athene, as Achilleus and Sigurd wear the armour brought to them
by Thetis and Hjordis.^ The same thought suggested the gift of
the bow and arrows from Phoibos, the lord of the spear-like sunbeams,
of the sword from Hermes, whose stroke can split the forest trees,
of the peplos from Athene, the clear-faced morning. The arrows
bestowed on himby ApoUon it must specially be noted are poisoned;
and these poisoned barbs are used by Philoktetes, wlio receives them
from Neoptolemos, the child of Achilleus, the brilliant but short-lived
sun, and by Odysseus, whom Athene restores to youthful beauty as
his life's labour draws towards its end. But we have no historical evi-
dence that poisoned arrows were used by any Hellenic tribes, or that
they would not have regarded the employment of such weapons with
the utmost horror. How then comes it to pass that the poets of the
Iliad and Odyssey can attribute to the Achaian heroes practices from
which their kinsmen would have shrunk with disgust ? The mystery is
easily solved. The equivocation which turned the violet-tinted rays
of morning into spears was inevitable ; the change of the spears or
arrows into poisoned barbs was, at the least, as natural and necessary.'
As the conquest of the lion of Kithairon is the first great exploit, H-mkies so according to the systematising mythographers the bringing up of beros. the dog Kerberos * from Hades is the last. This story is mentioned
the Nemean lion is the den or cave with two openings or entrances, the gates through one of which the sun enters the land of night, while through the other he comes fortli again in the morn- ing. — Maury, Croyances et Let^endes de r Antiqiiih', 194. This lion is also represented as mortally afraid of the cock, — for an obvious reason. — Guber natis. Zoological Mythology, ii. 158. > See p'. 278.
- Erginos is the father of Trophonios
and Agamtdes, the builders of the Delphian shrine — the myth of the children of darkness raising the sanc- tuary of the lord of light answering to the legend which makes Apollon him- self the child of (Leto) the sombre night. ' The word (o's, Xov, which furnished a name for the violet hue, for a sjiear, and for poison, is really a homonym traceable to two or three roots ; and thus far the equivocation differs from that which turned Lykaon into a wolf, and Arkas into a bear, these names being in fact of the same signification, although the men who uttered them had ceased to be conscious of it.
- The name Kerberos is the Sanskrit
Sarvara, or Sambara, one of the enemies slain by Indra. — Max Midler, Chips, n. 1S2, 1S8.
