Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

254 MYTIIOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK
II.
expanding vapours have time to spread themselves over the
sky. The same clouds in their triumph are the Aloadai
when they bind Ares and keep him for months in chains, as
the gigantic ranges of vapours may be seen sometimes keep-
ing an almost motionless guard around the heaven, while
the wind seems to chafe beneath, as in a prison from which
it cannot get forth. The piling of the cumuli clouds in the
skies is the heaping up of Ossa on Olympos and of Pelion on
Ossa to scale the heavens, while their threat to make the sea
dry land and the dry land sea is the savage fury of the storm
when the earth and the air seem mingled in inextricable
confusion. The daring of the giants goes even further.
Ephialtes, like Ixion, seeks to win Here while Otos follows
Artemis, who, in the form of a stag, so runs between the
brothers that they, aiming at her at the same time, kill
each other, as the thunderclouds perish from their own
discharges. 1
Ares, the god imprisoned by the Aloadai, whose name he
shares, represents like them the storm-wind raging through
the sky. As the idea of calm yet keen intellect is inse-
parable from Athene, so the character of Ares exhibits simply
a blind force without foresight or judgment, and not un-
frequently illustrates the poet's phrase that strength without
counsel insures only its own destruction. Hence Ares and
Athene are open enemies. The pure dawn can have nothing
in common with the cloud-laden and wind-oppressed atmo-
sphere. 2 He is then in no sense a god of war, unless war is
taken as mere quarrelling and slaughtering for its own sake.
Of the merits of contending parties he has neither knowledge
nor care. Where the carcases are likely to lie thickest,
thither like a vulture will he go ; and thus he becomes preeminently
fickle and treacherous, 3 the object of hatred and
disgust to all the gods, except when, as in the lay of Demo-
dokos, he is loved by Aphrodite. But this legend implies that
1 « Otos and Ephialtes, the wind
and the hurricane,' i. e. the leaper.
Max Midler, Led. on Lang, second
series.
2 Professor Max Midler remarks, ib.
325, that ' In Area, Preller, without any
thought of tho relationship between
Ares and the Marids discovered the
personification of the sky as excited by
storm.' Athene then, according to
Preller, ' als Gfottin der reinen Luft and
des JEthers die naturiiche Feindin des
Ares ist.'— Gr. Myth. 202.
3 a\AoTrp6(Ta\hos.