Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

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MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK dragon or the Theban Sphinx, his daughter Laodameia is as
n -
. clearly the beautiful evening weaving together her tinted
clouds, and slain by Artemis, the cold moon, 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 fierce-minded Hektor; but the
designs of Here requi¥e 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 suf-
fered 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 ex-
quisite 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.
M?mnAn From the story of Sarpedon the legend of Memnon, it is
the^Etiro- scarceiv necessary to say, differs only in the greater clearness
with which it represents the old phrases. Sarpedon, though
a being akin to Phoibos and Helios, is yet regarded as the
ruler of mortal Lykians, and his cairn is raised high to keep
alive his name amongst his people. With Memnon the myth
has not gone so far. He is so transparently the son of Eos
that he must rise again. Like Zeus, Eos weeps tears of dew
. at the death of her child, but her prayers avail to bring him
back, like Adonis or Tammuz, from the shadowy region, to
dwell always in Olympos. If again Sarpedon is king of the
land of light (Lykia), Memnon rules over the glistening
country of Aithiopia (Ethiopia), the ever youthful child of
Tithonos, the sun whose couch Eos leaves daily to bring
back morning to the earth. Nay, so clear is the meaning of
the story, that he is by some called the child of Hem era, the
day; and his gleaming armour, like that of Achilleus, is