Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN XATIOXS.
BOOK
II.
doom of death ; but they died as though they were merely
going to sleep, and became the righteous demons who, wandering
like the Erinyes everywhere through the air, watch
the ways and works of men, to uphold the righteous and
overturn the wicked. The second is the silver age, the men
of which incurred the wrath of Zeus, and were hidden by
him beneath the earth for impiously witholding the honours
due to the immortal gods. Still when they die they are
reckoned among the blessed, and are not without honours
themselves. 1 The brazen age which followed exhibits a
race of men who ate no corn and had hearts of adamant,
and whose hands sprung from their vast shoulders. These
were the workers in brass (for men had not yet needed or
come to know the use of iron), and their weapons were used
to their own destruction. Like the men sprung from the
dragon's teeth in the Theban and Argonautic myths, they
fought with and slaughtered each other, and went down
without a name to the gloomy underworld of Hades. But
it must not be forgotten that the Hesiodic poet knows of no
transitional periods. The old age does not fade away insensibly
into the new. It is completely swept off, and the new
takes its place as virtually a new creation. Thus the earth
becomes the possession of a series of degenerating inhabitants,
the race of the poet's own day being the worst of all. These
1 The portions thus allotted to the reason, therefore, why they should not
departed of the golden and silver races be represented by others as evil demons ;
tended to foster and develope that idea and this step which, as Mr. Grote reof
a moral conflict between good and marks, was taken by Empedokles and
evil which first took distinct shape on Xenokratcs, led to that systematic dis-
Iranian soil. The evil spirits are there tinction of which the Christian teachers
the malignant powers of darkness who availed themselves for the overthrow
represent both in name and in attributes or rather the transformation of the
the gloomy antagonist of the sun-god system itself. It only remained for
Indra. The Hesiodic myth coincides them to insist on the reality of the evil
completely with this sentiment, while it demons thus brought into existence, and
extends it. Here the spirits of the men then, as the gods themselves are in the
belonging to the golden age are the Iliad and Odyssey and elsewhere called
good demons, these demons being gene- demons, to include all together in the
rically different from the blessed gods one class of malignant devils : and at
ofOlympos: but it was easy to assign once the victory of the new creed was
to the departed souls of the silver age a insured. The old mythology was not
lower, or even a positively malignant, killed, but it took a different shape, and,
character. They are not called Dai- losing all its ancient beauty, acquired
mones by the Hesiodic poet, but they new powers of mischief and corruption,
have a recognised position and dignity — Grote, Hist. Greece, i. 96, &e.
in the realm of the air. There was no