Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE MOLIOXES AND AKTORIDAI. 253
But Hermes, Orpheus, Amphion, and Pan, are not the CHAP,
only conceptions of the effects of air in motion to be found .
in Greek mythology. The Vedic Ma-ruts are the winds, not The
as alternately soothing- and furious, like the capricious action
of Hermes, not as constraining everything- to do their magic
bidding, like the harping of Orpheus and Amphion, nor yet
as discoursing their plaintive music among the reeds, like
the pipe of Pan ;
but simply in their force as the grinders or
crushers of everything that comes in their way. These
crushers are found in more than one set of mythical beings
in Greek legends. They are the Moliones, or mill-men, or
the Aktoridai, the pounders of grain, who have one body but
two heads, four hands, and four feet,—who first undertake to
aid Herakles in his struggle with Augeias, and then turning
against the hero are slain by him near Kleonai. These
representatives of Thor Miolnir we see also in the Aloadai, 1
the sons of Iphimedousa, whose love for Poseidon led her to
roam along the sea-shore, pouring the salt water over her
body. The myth is transparent enough. They are as
mighty in their infancy as Hermes. When they are nine
years old, their bodies are nine cubits in breadth and twenty-
seven in height— a rude yet not inapt image of the stormy
wind heaping up in a few hours its vast masses of angry
vapour. It was inevitable that the phenomena of storm
should suggest their warfare with the gods, and that one
version should represent them as successful, the other as
vanquished. The storm-clouds scattered by the sun in his
might are the Aloadai when defeated by Phoibos before
their beards begin to be seen, in other words, before the
1 The identity of the names Aloadai, analogies of /J.6trxos and oo-^os, a tender
and Moliones must be determined by shoot or branch, Xa for nia in Homer, the
the answer to be given to the question, Latin mola, and the Greek ovKai, meal,
whether a\wt), a threshing-floor, can be adding that 'instead of our very word
traced back to the root mid which indu- frXevpov, wheaten flour, another form,
bitably yields Molione, /j.v\t], the Latin /xaXevpov, is mentioned by Helladius.'
mola, our mill and meal. There is no Led. Lang, second series, 323. The
proof that certain words may in Greek same change is seen in fthr as correspondassume
an initial fx which is merely ing to the numeral eV.
euphonic : but there is abundant evi- The idea of the storm as crushing and
dence that Greek words, which origin- pounding is seen in molnija, a name for
ally began with /x. occasionally drop it. lightning among the Slavonic tribes,
This, Professor Max Midler admits, is and in Munja, the sister of Grom, the
a violent change, and it would seem phy- thunderer, in Serbian songs. Max
sically unnecessary ; but he adduces the Muller, ib. 322.
V "
,Jtorms *
.