CHAP. II The tomb of Endymion was shown in Elis, and the Cretans pointed to the grave of Zeus ; but no man could say in what precise ' ' spot the bones of Oidipous reposed. It was enough to know that a special blessing would rest on the land which contained his sepulchre ; and what place could be more meet for this his last abode than the dearest inheritance of Athene ?
The Theban myth of Oidipous is repeated substantially in the The story Arkadian tradition. As Oidipous is the son of Laios and lokaste, ph^f^' the darkness and the violet-tinted sky, so is Telephos (who has the same name with Telephassa, the far-shining) the child of Aleos the blind, and Auge the brilliant : and as Oidipous is left to die on the slopes of Kithairon, so Telephos is exposed on mount Parthenion. There the babe is suckled by a doe,^ which represents the wolf in the myth of Romulus and the dog of the Persian story of Cyrus, and is afterwards brought up by the Arkadian king Korythos. Like Oidipous, he goes to Delphoi to learn who is his mother, and is there bidden to go to Teuthras, king of Mysia. But thither Auge had gone before him, and thus in one version Teuthras promised her to Telephos as his wife, if he would help him against his enemy Idas. This service he performs, and Auge differs from lokaste only in the steadiness with which she refuses to wed Telephos, although she knows not who he is. Telephos now determines to slay her, but Herakles reveals the mother to the child, and like Perseus, Telephos leads his mother back to her own land. In another version he becomes the husband not of Auge, but of a daughter of Teuthras, whose name Argiope shows that she is but Auge under another form. In this tradition he is king of Mysia
daughters — a story which may be corresponds exactly to that of the matched with a hundred others. When Vedic Varuna and the Hellenic Ou- in the Vedic hymn Prajapati seeks to ranos. What then, he argues, would do violence to his daughter Ushas, the they behold, who looked up to the myth is transparent ; for Prajapati is sombre heaven and saw spread on its literally the lord of light, and Ushas is unbroken surface the tender light be- the dawn. It is scarcely less obvious coming gradually fainter and fainter in in the Volsung story, where the sister the west ? Would not this bright Hush deceives the brother and becomes the be the glow on the cheeks of the dawn- mother of Sinfjotli. But the hero who maiden, now left in absolute solitude slays the slayer of the sun must himself with its parent the dark heaven ? and be the offspring of his murdered father, would not the next thought be that of and of the beautiful maiden whom he the union from which must spring the loves in the morning and greets again days that were to come? at eventide. Like that of Signy, the * Tylor, Primitive Culttire, i. 255. purpose of Lot's daughters is avowed. The only legend, perhaps, which speaks Besides themselves and their father no of the beast as intent on devouring human being is left, and the race must instead of fostering the child is that of not be suffered to die out. In both Hugdietrich. — Introduction to Com- stories there is the same necessity. parative Mythology, 296 ; Popular Etymologically, Lot, Dr. Goldziher as- Romances of the Middle Ages, t^TiZ- serts, is the coverer, and thus the name
