BOOK II. Of the one Saipedon it is said that Zeus granted to him, as to Nestor,^ a Hfe stretching over three generations of men ; of the other the beautiful story is told which we find in the Iliad. The legend is transparent throughout. If his grandsire Hipponoos received the name by which he was commonly known from his slaying of a monster answering to the Pythian dragon or the Theban Sphinx, his mother Laodameia is as clearly the beautiful evening weaving to- gether her tinted clouds, and slain by Artemis before her web is finished. To her son, the chief of Lykia, the land of light, as to Achilleus, a brief but a brilliant career is allotted. With his friend Glaukos (a name denoting the bright day as Sarpedon is the creeping light of early morning) he leaves the banks of the golden stream of Xanthos, and throws in his lot with the brave and pure-minded Hektor ; but the designs of Here require that he must die, and the tears of Zeus fall in big raindrops from the sky because it is not possible for him to avert the doom. So Sarpedon falls beneath the spear of Patroklos ; but no decay may be suffered to mar his beauty. Phoibos himself is charged to bathe the body in Simoeis, and wrap it in ambrosial robes, while Thanatos and Hypnos, death and sleep, are bidden to bear it away to his Lykian home, which they reach just as Eos is spreading her rosy light through the sky, — an exquisite variation on the myth of Endymion plunged beneath the waters, or Narkissos in his profound lethargy, or Helios moving in his golden cup from the western to the eastern ocean.
Memnon From the story of Sarpedon the legend of Memnon, it is scarcely necessary to say, differs only in the greater clearness with which it represents the old phrases. Sarpedon, though a being akin to
' If the myth of Odysseus, as con- removed, he becomes as helpless as trasted with that of Achilleus, points to Tithonos. With the wisdom of Phoibos the slow sinking of the unclouded sun Nestor retains the vigour of Herakles, in perfect repose after the weary battle whose friend he had been, and whose and wanderings of a stormy day, and skill in the management of chariots and thus suggests the idea of the tranquil horses he has inherited in double portion, evening of life for the chief who has Like Phoibos, again, he has the gift of grown old in fighting, the notion of age honeyed eloquence, the gift of Hermes thus given is brought out more pronii- to the sun-god ; and more particularly nently in other legends, whether of the as he grows in wisdom, he becomes (ircek or the Teutonic nations. The more keen-sighted, more prudent, more decrepitude precetling the death of the sagacious. Nestor then and Odysseus sun, a notion as familiar as that of his stand as an idea altogether distinct from undying vigour and everlasting youth, that which is embodied in the concep- is exhibited in the story of Tithonos, tions of Achilleus and Siegfried, and which (lifTers from that of Nestor oidy the two types may be traced through in the weakness which paralyses the the Aryan mythology generally, in the being once so powerful. In the story Godmund who lives live hundred years, of Olger the Dane the weakness which as in the .Sigurd who falls in the full comes from age is kept away while the glory of his youth. —Grimm, D. M. magic ring is on his finger: if it be 365 ; Max Miillcr, Chips, &c., ii. 84. the Ethio- pian,
