§ 57. The first love of Zeus was Metis, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. She is Prudence or Foreknowledge. She warned Zeus that if she bore him a child, it would be greater than he. Whereupon Zeus swallowed her; and, in time, from his head, sprang Athene, "the virgin of the azure eyes, Equal in strength, and as her father wise" (Hesiod, Theog.). On Latona, see §§ 37, 72, and Commentary.

§ 58. For Danaë, see § 134; for Alcmene, § 139; for Leda, § 165 c.

§ 59. In the following general table of the Race of Inachus, marriages are indicated in the usual manner (by the sign, or by parentheses); the more important characters mentioned in this work are printed in heavy-face type. While numerous less important branches, families, and mythical individuals have been intentionally omitted, it is hoped that this reduction of various relationships, elsewhere explained or tabulated to a general scheme, may furnish the reader with a clearer conception of the family ties that motivate many of the incidents of mythical adventure, and that must have been commonplaces of information to those who invented and perpetuated these stories. It should be borne in mind that the traditions concerning relationships are by no means consistent, and that consequently the collation of mythical genealogies demands the continual exercise of discretion, and a balancing of probabilities.

Inachus is the principal river of Argolis in the Peloponnesus.

Interpretative. — Io is explained as the hornèd moon, in its various changes and wanderings.1 Argus is the heaven with its myriad stars, some of them shut, some blinking, some always agleam. The wand of Hermes and his music may be the morning breeze, at the coming of which the eyes of heaven close (Cox 2: 138; Preller 2:40). The explanation would, however, be just as probable if Mercury (Hermes) were a cloud-driving wind. Pan and the Syrinx: naturally the wind playing through the reeds, if (with Müller and Cox) we take Pan to be the all-purifying, but, yet, gentle wind. But see p. 200. Illustrative. Shelley, To the Moon: "Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth?" Milton's "To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray, Through the heaven's wide pathless way" (Il Penseroso). See also for Io, Shelley's Prometheus Bound. Argus: Pope, Dunciad 2: 374; 4:637.

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In Art. - Correggio's painting, Jupiter and Io; not a pleasant conception. § 60. Interpretative. The myth of Callisto and Arcas is of Arcadian origin. If the Arcadians, in very remote times, traced their descent from a she-bear, and if they also, like other races, recognized a bear in a certain constellation, they might naturally mix the fables and combine them later with the legend of the all-powerful Zeus (Lang 2:181). According to

1 But see p. 415, § 34.

another account, Callisto was punished for her love of Jupiter by Diana (Artemis). Her name has been identified with the adjective Calliste (most fair), which was certainly applied to Artemis herself. That Artemis was protectress of she-bears is known; also that, in Attica, she was served by girls who imitated, while dancing, the gait of bears. It is quite possible, therefore, that Artemis inherited a more ancient worship of the bear, that may have been the totem, or sacred animal, from which the Arcadians traced a mythological descent. Others hold that the word arksha, a star, became confused with the Greek arktos, a bear. So the myth of the son Arcas (the star and the bear) may have arisen (Max Müller). The last star in the tail of the Little Bear is the Pole-Star, or Cynosure (dog's tail).

Illustrative. Milton's "Let my lamp at midnight hour Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear" (Il Penseroso); and his "Where perhaps some beauty lies The Cynosure of neighb'ring eyes" (L'Allegro); also his "And thou shalt be our star of Arcady, Or Tyrian Cynosure" (Comus). Note Lowell's "The Bear that prowled all night about the fold Of the North-star hath shrunk into his den" (Prometheus). See also the song beginning "Hear ye, ladies, that despise What the mighty Love hath done," in Beaumont and Fletcher's drama, Valentinian,- for Callisto, Leda, and Danaë.

§ 61. The Descendants of Agenor. For general table, see § 59 C.

Textual. Moschus lived about the close of the third century B.C. in Syracuse. He was a grammarian and an idyllic poet. He calls himself a pupil of Bion, whose Lament for Adonis is given in § 93. Both Bion and Moschus belong to the School of Theocritus- the Idyllic or Pastoral School of Poetry. Cypris: Venus, by whom the island of Cyprus was beloved.

Mygdonian flutes: the ancients had three species or modes of music, depending, respectively, upon the succession of musical intervals which was adopted as the basis of the system. The Lydian measures were shrill and lively; the Dorian deep in tone, grave, and solemn; the Mygdonian, or Phrygian, were supposed by some to have been the same as the Lydian; but more probably they were a combination of Lydian and Dorian. Shaker of the World: Neptune. Crete: where Jupiter had been concealed from his father Cronus, and nourished by the goat Amalthea.

Interpretative. - Herodotus says that Europa was a historical princess of Tyre, carried off by Hellenes to Crete. Taurus (the bull) was euhemeristically conceived to be a king of Crete who carried off the Tyrian princess as prize of war. Others said that probably the figure-head of the ship in which Europa was conveyed to Crete was a bull. It is not improbable that the story indicates a settlement of Phoenicians in Crete and the introduction by them of cattle. Modern critics, such as Preller and Welcker, make Europa a goddess of the moon = Diana or Astarte, and translate her name "the dark, or obscured one." But she has undoubtedly a connection with the earth, perhaps as wife of Jupiter (the Heaven). H. D. Müller connects both Io and Europa with the wandering Demeter (or Ceres), and considers Demeter to be a goddess both of the moon and of the earth (Helbig, in Roscher). Cox, after his usual method, finds here the Dawn borne across the heaven by the lord of the pure ether. Europa would then be the broad-spreading flush of dawn, seen first in the purple region of morning (Phoenicia). Her brother Cadmus, who pursues her, would be the sun searching for his lost sister or bride. Very fanciful, but inconclusive. The bull occurs not infrequently in myth as an incarnation of deity.

Illustrative. W. S. Landor, Europa and her Mother; Aubrey De Vere, The Rape of Europa; E. Dowden, Europa; W. W. Story, Europa, a sonnet. See also a graceful picture in Tennyson's Palace of Art.

In Art. The marble group in the Vatican, Europa riding the Bull; painting by Paul Veronese, The Rape of Europa; Europa, by Claude Lorrain. § 62. See tables, D and E in §§ 59 and 61.

Interpretative. According to Preller, Semele is a personification of the fertile soil in spring, which brings forth the productive vine. In the irrational part of the myth, Jove takes the child Dionysus (Bacchus) after Semele's death, and sews him up in his thigh for safe keeping. Preller finds here "the wedlock of heaven and earth, the first day that it thunders in March." Exactly why, might be easy to guess, but hard to demonstrate. The thigh of Jupiter would have to be the cool moist clouds brooding over the youthful vine. The whole explanation is altogether too conjectural. See A. Lang 2:221-225, for a more plausible but less poetic theory.

Illustrative. Bowring's translation of Schiller's Semele; E. R. Sill's Semele, of which a part is given in the text.

§ 63. Textual. The son of Ægina and Jove was Æacus (for genealogy, see § 165 (1) C). Ægina: an island in the Saronic Gulf, between Attica and Argolis. Asopus: the name of two rivers, one in Achaia, one in Boeotia, of which the latter is the more important. The Greek traveller, Pausanias, tells us that Asopus was the discoverer of the river which bears his name. Sisyphus, see § 175. This description of the plague is copied by Ovid from the account which Thucydides gives of the plague of Athens. That account, much fuller than is here given, was drawn from life, and has been the source from which many subsequent poets and novelists have drawn details of similar scenes. The Myrmidons were, during the Trojan War, the soldiers of Achilles, grandson of this king Eacus.

Interpretative. The name Ægina may imply either the shore on which the waves break (Preller), or the sacred goat (Egeus), which was the totem of the Ægeus-family of Attica. The worship of Athene was introduced into Athens by this family. In sacrifices the goddess was clad in the skin of the sacred goat, but no goat might be sacrificed to her. Probably another example of the survival of a savage ritual (Lang 1. 280).

Illustrative. - Myrmidons:

"No, no, said Rhadamant, it were not well,
With loving souls to place a martialist;
He died in war, and must to martial fields,
Where wounded Hector lives in lasting pain,
And Achilles' Myrmidons do scour the plain."

Kyd, Spanish Tragedy.

On Sisyphus, read Lewis Morris' poem in the Epic of Hades.

§ 64. Textual. - Mænad: the Mænades were women who danced themselves into a frenzy in the orgies or festivals of Bacchus, from ualvoμai (mainomai), to rage. Cithæron: a mountain range south of Thebes and between Boeotia and Attica.

Interpretative. Antiope, philologically interpreted, may indicate the moon with face turned full upon us. That Antiope is a personification of some such natural phenomena would also appear from the significance of the names associated with hers in the myth: Nycteus, the night-man; Lycus, the man of light. Amphion and Zethus are thought, in like fashion, to represent manifestations of light: see also Castor and Pollux. Perhaps the method employed by Zethus and Amphion in building Thebes may merely symbolize the advantage of combining mechanical force with well-ordered or harmonious thought.

In Art. Modern painting: Correggio's Antiope.