Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MEDEIA AND ABSYRTOS.
incidents which follow their arrival in Kolchis repeat in part CHAi
in.
the myth of Kadmos at Thebes ; and indeed the teeth of the
dragon which Aietes bids him sow are the very teeth which
Kadmos had not needed to use. The men who spring from
them fight with and slay each other as in the Theban
legend, and by the aid of Medeia Iason also tames the fire-
breathing bulls, beings which answer to the Minotauros of
Crete and the brazen bull in which Phalaris is said to
have burnt his victims. 1 Dangers thicken round them.
While Iason is thus doing the bidding of the chieftain,
Aietes is forming a plan to burn the Achaian ships, and is
anticipated only by Medeia, who has lavished her love on
Iason with all the devotion of Eos for Orion. She hastens
with her lover on board the Argo, and hurriedly leaves
Kolchis, taking with her her brother Absyrtos. But Aietes
is not yet prepared to yield. The Gorgon sisters cannot rest
without at the least making an effort to avenge Medousa on
her destroyer Perseus. Aietes is fast overtaking the Argo
when Medeia tears her brother's body limb from limb, and
casts the bleeding and mangled members into the sea— an
image of the torn and blood-red clouds reflected in the blue
waters, as the blood which streams from the body of Hera-
kles represents the fiery clouds stretched along the flaming
sky. 2 But Absyrtos is as clear to Aietes as Polyphemos
to Poseidon ; and as he stops to gather up the limbs, the
Argo makes her way onward, and the Kolchian chief has
of ice should have been formed in so the Phenieian Moloch. The iniquities
vast a "basin, borne down from the attributed to him are the horrid holo-
Northern rivers. When the lake burst causts which defiled the temples of
its barriers, they would be carried by Carthage and the valley of Hinnom.
the current towards the entrance of the His name is probably connected with
straits, and there become stranded, as Pales, Palikoi, Pallas, Palatini)], and
the story says that in fact they did.' Phallos, and would thus point to the
Pindar, introd. xxiv. Among other cruel forms which the worship of Aphmyths
pointing to physical facts of a rodite, Artemis, and the Light deities
past age Mr. Paley cites the story of the generally, often assumed,
rising of Rhodos from the sea, compar- 2 The same fate is allotted to Myrtilos,
ing with it the fact of the recent up- whom Pelops throws into that portion of
hcaval of part of Santorin, the ancient the Egean sea which was supposed to bear
Thera, and the old legend of the up- his name. It is, in fact, half the myth of
heaving of Delos, as all showing tk* Pelops himself, the difference being that
these islands lie ' within an area of while all are thrown into the water.
known volcanic disturbance.' Pelops is brought to life again —the dif-
1 Of any historical Phalaris we know ference, in other words, between Sarpeabsolutely
nothing; and the tradition d6n in the common version and Memnon,
simply assigns to him the character of between Asklepios and Osiris and Baldur.