Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE NYMPHS. 257
Theogony lie is a son of Gaia alone, as Typhoeus springs CHAP.
only from Here and Athene has no mother. In
VL
the Iliad > _.
and Odyssey, Pontos is a mere name for the sea ; and the
phrases itovtos a\o9 7ro\ir]s and Oakaaaa ttovtov show that
the poets were not altogether unconscious of its meaning
and of its affinity with their word irdros, a path. It is
therefore a name applied to the sea by a people who, till
they had seen the great water, had used it only of roadways
on land. In the myth of Thaumas, the son of Pontos and
the father of Iris and the Harpyiai, we are again carried
back to the phenomena of the heavens ;
the latter being the
greedy storm-clouds stretching out their crooked claws for
their prey, the former the rainbow joining the heavens and
the earth with its path of light.
Another son of Poseidon, whose home is also in the waters, Giaukos.
is the Boiotian Giaukos, the builder of the divine ship Argo
and its helmsman. After the fight of Iason with the
Tyrrhenians, Giaukos sinks into the sea, and thenceforth
is endowed with many of the attributes of Nereus. Like
him, he is continually roaming, and yearly he visits all the
coasts and islands of Hellas ; like him, he is full of wisdom,
and his words may be implicitly trusted.
The domain in which these deities dwell is thickly peopled. Naiads
Their subjects and companions are the nymphs, whose name, and T
.
as denoting simply water, belongs of right to no beings who
live on dry land, or in caves or trees. 1 The classification of
the nymphs as Oreads, Dryads, or others, is therefore in
strictness an impossible one ; and the word Naiad, usually
confined to the nymphs of the fresh waters, is as general a
term as the name Nymph itself. Nor is there any reason
beyond that of mere usage why the Nereides should not be
called Naiads as well as Nymphs. But the tendency was to
multiply classes : and seldom perhaps has the imagination
of man been exercised on a more beautiful or harmless
subject than the nature and tasks of these beautiful beings
who comfort Prometheus in his awful agony and with Thetis
cheer Achilleus when his heart is riven with grief for his
1 vv^cpT] answers precisely .to the lymphaticus corresponds to the Greek
Latin lympha, and thus the Latin vvjx(p6Kt)TTTos.
VOL. II. S