Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MEMNON AND MIMIR. 91
wrought by the fire-god Hephaistos. When Memnon falls CHAP.
in atonement for the slaughter of Antilochos, the son of ^_ ]l ,
Nestor, his comrades are so plunged in grief that they are
changed into birds, which yearly visit his tomb to water the
ground with their tears. Not less obvious is the meaning of
another story, which brings before us the battle of the clouds
over the body of the dead sun— a fight which we see in a
darker form in the desperate struggle of the Achaians and
Trojans over the body of Achilleus. To comfort Eos, Zeus
makes two flocks of birds (the swan maidens or winged
clouds of Teutonic folk-lore) meet in the air and fight over
Memnon's funeral sacrifice, until some of them fall as victims
on the altar. Of Memnon's head the tale was told that it
retained the prophetic power of the living Helios, a story
which is found in the myth of the Teutonic Mimir, and
which might also have been related of Kephalos, the head of
the sun.
Like Minos and Sarpedon, Kephalos is assigned in dif- Kephalos
ferent versions of the myth to different parents, whose
and Eos.
names denote, however, the same idea; but there is no
other reason for dividing him into two persons. In the one
account he is a son of Hermes and Herse, the morning
breeze and the dew, and by him Eos becomes the mother of
Tithonos or, as others said, of Phaethon. In the other he is
the son of the Phokian Deion, and Herse appears as the wife
of Erechtheus, and the mother of his wife Prokris or Prokne,
who is only the dew under another name. 1 Nor is the whole
story anything more than a series of pictures which exhibit
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
1 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 145, is content the moon. But the incidents in the life
to regard the name as an abbreviated of Prokris do not point tu the course of
form of r] TrpoiceKpi/xevri, alleging the use the moon and its phenomena ; and Proof
irp6Kpiv for TvpdKpiaiu by Hesiod, a kris is not preferred or honoured, but
fact which, if proved, is but a slender throughout slighted and neglected,
warrant for the other. But Herse, the Hence there is absolutely no reason for
mother of Prokris, is confessedly the refusing to take into account the appadew,
and Prokne, the other form of rently obvious connection of Prokris
Prokris, cannot be referred to t) irpofce- and Prokne with the Greek 7rpw|, a dew-
Kpifj.4vr). Preller adduces the expression drop, and the cognate words which with
applied to Hekate, tV irepl ttolvtcov Zeus it are referred to the root prish. See
Kpovi8r)s Tifirjcre, in illustration of his ety- vol. i. p. 430.
mology and of his belief that Prokris is