Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

60 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK of tlie sea, rides on the billows which are his snow-crested
_ **•
.. horses.
This god of the waters is reflected in Amphitrite,
the wife of Poseidon in some versions, who is present at the
birth of Phoibos in Delos. In the Odyssey she is simply the
sea, purple-faced and loud- sounding.
he Another aspect of the great deep is presented in the Sei-
rens, who by their beautiful singing lure mariners to their
ruin. As basking among the rocks in the sunlit waters, they
may represent, as some have supposed, the belts (Seirai) of
deceitful calms against which the sailor must be ever on his
guard, lest he suffer them to draw his ship to sandbanks or
quicksands. But apart from the beautiful passage in the
Odyssey, which tells us how their song rose with a strange
power through the still air when the god had lulled the
waves to sleep, the mythology of these beings is almost
wholly artificial. They are children of Acheron and Sterope,
of Phorkos, Melpomene, and others, and names were de-
vised for them in accordance with, their parentage. In
form they were half women, half fishes, and thus are akin
to Echidna and Melusina ; and their doom was that they
should live only until some one should escape their toils.
Hence by some mythographers they are said to have flung
themselves into the sea and to have been changed into
rocks, when Odysseus had effected his escape, while others
ascribe their defeat to Orpheus. 1 Other versions gave them
wings, and again deprived them of them, for aiding or re-
fusing to aid Demeter in her search for Persephone.
Nor are there wanting mythical beings who work their
will among storm-beaten rocks and awful whirlpools.
Among the former dwells Skylla, and in the latter the more
terrible Charybdis. These creatures the Odyssey places on
two rocks, distant about an arrow's flight from each other,
and between these the ship of Odysseus must pass. If he
goes near the one whose smooth scarped sides run up into a
covering of everlasting cloud, he will lose six of his men as a
prey to the six mouths which Skylla will open to engulf
them. But better thus to sacrifice a few to this monster
with six outstretching necks and twelve shapeless feet, as she
1 See page 242.