Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

PAX AXD PITYS. 249
our eyes open along the cliffs of Bournemouth to see the CHAP,
meaning of that legend/—the tale of Pitys, ' the pine-tree > ..
wooed by Pan, the gentle wind, and struck down by jealous
Boreas, the north wind.' Of Boreas himself we need say
but little. His true character was as little forgotten as that
of Selene, and thus the name remained comparatively barren.
The Athenian was scarcely speaking in mythical language
when he said that Boreas had aided the Athenians by scat-
tering the fleets of Xerxes. The phrases were almost as
transparent which spoke of him as a son of Astraios and
Eos, the star-god and the dawn, or as carrying off Oreithyia,
the daughter of Erechtheus, the king of the dawn-city.
Another myth made Pan the lover of the nymph Syrinx ; p.m anaj
but this is but a slight veil thrown over the phrase which sJnnx -
spoke of the wind playing on its pipe of reeds by the river's
bank ; and the tale which related how Syrinx, flying from
Pan, like Daphne from Phoibos, was changed into a reed, is
but another form of the story which made Pan the lover of
the nymph Echo, just as the unrequited love of Echo for
Narkissos is but the complement of the unrequited love of
Selene for Endymion.
Section V.—AMPHION AND ZETHOS.
, ' .
The same power of the wind which is signified by the The
harp of Orpheus is seen in the story of Atuphion, a being
localised in the traditions of Thebes. But Amphion is a
Tlieban
Orpheus.
twin-brother of Zethos, and the two are, in the words of
Euripides, simply the Dioskouroi, riding on white horses,
and thus fall into the ranks of the correlative deities of
Hindu and Greek mythology. But the myth runs into
many other legends, the fortunes of their mother Antiope
differing but little from those of Auge, Tyro, Evadne, or
Koronis. The tale is told in many versions. One of these
calls her a daughter of Nykteus, the brother of Lykos,
another speaks of Lykos as her husband; but this is only
saying that Artemis Hekate may be regarded as either the
child of the darkness or the bride of the light. A third
version makes her a daughter of the river Asopos, a parent-