Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

52 MYTHOLOGY .OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK Orpheus, who, like Hermes, discourses of all things from
n ;_ , Chaos downwards, of Eros and Kronos and the giants, like
the song of the winds which seem to speak of things incomprehensible
by man.
Setting out from Iolkos, the confederate chiefs reach
Lemnos, while the island is seemingly suffering from the
plagues which produced the myths of the Danaides in Argos.
Like them, the Lemnian women all kill their husbands,
one only, Thoas, being saved, like Lynkeus, by his daughters
and his wife Hypsipyle. These women yield themselves to
the Argonautai, as the Danaides take other husbands when
they have slain the sons of Aigyptos. 1 In the country of the
Doliones they are welcomed by the chief Kyzikos, who, how-
ever, is subsequently slain by them unwittingly and to their
regret. In Amykos, the king of the Bebrykes, or roaring
winds, they encounter Namuki, one of the Vedic adevas
or enemies of the bright gods, 2 who slays Polydeukes, the
twin brother of Kastor. In the Thrakian Salmydessos
they receive further counsel from Phineus the seer, who
suffers from the attacks of the Harpyiai, a foe akin to the
Bebrykes. In gratitude for his deliverance from these
monsters, Phineus tells them that if they would avoid beir.£
crushed by the Symplegades, or floating rocks, which part
asunder and close with a crash like thunder, they must mark
the flight of a dove, and shape their course accordingly. The
dove loses only the feathers of its tail ; and the Argo, urged
on by the power of Here, loses only some of its stern ornaments,
and henceforth the rocks remain fixed for ever. 3 The
1 That this incident is precisely the in the ages during "which the myth was
same as the story of the sojourn of developed were seen in the Black Sea.
Odysseus in the land of the Lotophagoi, and which melted away at the mouth oi
is manifest from the phrase used in the the Bosporos. In support of the posi-
Argonautics. They all, we are told, tion that the myth thus points to phyforgot
the duty set before them, nor sical phenomena now no longer known
would they have left the island, hut for in that sea, Mr. Paley remarks thai
the strains of Orpheus which recalled their name Kyaneai is very significant,
them to their sense of right and law. and that ' they are described as rolling
490. Thus this incident throws light and plunging precisely as icebergs are
on the nature of the enjoyments signi- often seen to do.' 'When the Pontus
fied by the eating of the lotos. See was a closed lake, as even human tradip.
120. tion distinctly states that it once was
- Max Miiller, Chips, &c. ii. 188. (Diod. S. v. 4*7), it was very likely in-
3 It has been supposed that the deed, especially towards the close of a
Symplegades represent icebergs which glacial period, that a great accumulation.