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MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.


BOOK IIanything more than a series of pictures which exlnbit the dew as lovingly reflecting the rays of the sun, who is also loved by the morning, until at last his fiery rays dry up the last drops which still lurk in the deep thicket. Hence we have at once the groundwork of the jealousy of Eos for Prokris, as of Here for 16 or Europe. But the dew reflects many images of the same sun ; and thus the phrase ran that Kephalos came back in disguise to Prokris, who, though faithless to her troth, yet gave her love to her old lover, as Koronis welcomed in Ischys the reflection of Phoibos Apollon. All that was needed now was to represent Eos as tempting Kephalos to test the fidelity of Prokris, and to introduce into the legend some portion of the machinery of every solar tale. The presents which Eos bestows on Kephalos to lure Prokris to her ruin are the riches of Ixion, on which his wife Dia cannot look and live ; and when Prokris awakes to a sense of her shame, her flight to Crete and her refuge in the arms of Artemis denote the departure of the dew from the sun- scorched hills to the cool regions on which the moon looks down. But Artemis Hekate, like her brother Hekatos, is a being whose rays have a magic power, and she bestows on Prokris a hound which never fails to bring down its prey, and the spear which neer misses its mark. Prokris now appears disguised before the faithless Kephalos, who has given himself to Eos; but no entreaty can prevail on her to yield up the gifts of Artemis except in return for his love. The compact is made, and Prokris stands revealed in all her ancient loveliness. E6s for the time is baflled ; but Prokris still feels some fear of her rival's power, and as from a thicket she watches Kephalos hunting, in other words, chasing the clouds along the blue fields of heaven, she is smitten by the unerring spear and dies, like the last drop of dew lingering in the nook where it had hoped to outlive the day. The same mythical necessity which made Delos, Ortygia, or Lykia, the birthplace and home of Phoibos and Artemis, localised the story of Prokris in the land of the dawn-goddess Athene, and then carried Kephalos away on his westward journey, toiling and suffering, like Herakles, or Apollon, or Kadmos. He must aid Amphitryon in hunting the dog which, sent by Poseidon or Dionysos, like the Marathonian bull, ravaged the plain of Thebes ; he must go against the Telcboans, the sea-robbers of the Akarnanian coast ; and finally, wearied out with his toil, he must fall from the Leukadian or glisteii-

its phenomena ; and Prokris is not connexion of Prokris and Prokne with preferred or hunourec!, but throughout the Creek irpd^, a dewdrop, and the slighted and neglected. Hence there is cognate words which with it are referred absolutely no reason for refusing to take to the root prish. into account the apparently obvious