Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE CHILDREN OF TELEPHASSA. 85
The story of Europe, like that of Daphne or Arethousa, CHAP.
Psyche or Urvasi, is but one of the many forms assumed by
the myth that the sun and the dawn are soon parted. The Kadmoa
scene is here laid in the Phoinikian or purple land, a Europe.
region belonging to the same aerial geography with Lykia,
Delos, Ortygia, the Arkadia of Kallisto or the Athens of
Theseus and Peirithoos. But when Phenicia became to
the Greeks the name of an earthly country, versions were
not long wanting, which asserted that Agenor was born in
Tyre or Sidon, or some other spot in the territories of Ca-
naanite tribes. Of these we need take no account, while in
its names and incidents generally the myth explains itself.
Agenor is the husband of Telephassa, the feminine form of the
name Telephos, a word conveying precisely the same mean-
ing with Hekatos, Hekate, Hekatebolos, well known epithets
of the sun and moon. His children are Kadmos, Phoinix,
Kilix and Europe, although in some accounts Europe is
herself a daughter of Phoinix. On this maiden, the broad-
flushing light of dawn, Zeus, the heaven, looks down with
love ; and the white bull, the spotless cloud, comes to bear
her away to a new home, in Crete, the western land. She
becomes the mother of Minos, Ehadamanthys, and Sarpedon.
But in the house from which she is thus torn all is grief
and sorrow. There can be no more rest until the lost one is
found again ; the sun must journey westwards until he sees
again the beautiful tints which greeted his eyes in the morn-
ing. Kadmos therefore is bidden to go in search of his
sister, with strict charge never to return unless he finds her.
With him goes his mother, and a long and weary pilgrim-
age brings them at length to the plains of Thessaly, where
Telephassa worn out with grief and anguish lies down to die.
But Kadmos must journey yet further westward ; and at
Delphoi he learns that he must follow a cow which he would
be able to distinguish by certain signs, and where she lay
down from weariness, there he must build his city. The
cow, doubtless one of the herd to which belong the bull of
Europe and the cattle of Helios, lies down on the site of
Rome, vol. i. ; Edinburgh Review, Jan. Literature and Art, s. v. ' Tabulation of
1867, p. 130 ; Dictionary of Science, Chronology.