Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

270 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS.
BOOK ginallv these alternations of flood and drought. The dovvn-
II .
v ^1_ ward rush of the winter torrents is the w T
ild pursuit of the
sons of Aigyptos, who threaten to overwhelm the Danaides,
or nymphs of the fountains ;
but as their strength begins to
fail, they offer themselves as their husbands, and are taken
at their w T ord. But the time for vengeance has come ; the
waters of the torrents fail more and more, until their stream
is even more scanty than that of the springs. In other
words, they are slain by their wives, who draw or cut off the
waters from their sources. These sources are the heads of
the rivers, and thus it is said that the Danaides cut off their
husbands' heads. A precise parallel to this myth is fur-
nished by the Arkadian tale, which speaks of Skephros (the
droughty) as slandering or reviling Leimon (the moist or
watery being), and as presently slain by Leimon, who in
his turn is killed by Artemis. If in place of the latter we
substitute the Danaides, and for the former the sons of
Aigyptos, we have at once the Argive tradition. The mean-
ing becomes still more obvious when we mark the fact that
the Danaides threw the heads into the marsh-grounds of
Lernai (in other words, that there the sources of the waters
were preserved according to the promise of Poseidon that
that fountain should never fail), while the bodies of the sons
of Aigyptos, the dry beds of the rivers, were exposed in the
sight of all the people. It may therefore well be doubted
whether the name Aigyptos itself be not a word which may
in its earlier form have shown its affinity with Aigai, Aigaion,
Aigialos, Aigaia, and other names denoting simply the break-
ing or dashing of water against the shores of the sea or the
banks of a river. 1
The Lyr- But one of the Danaides refused or failed to slav her
keios.
husband. The name of this son of Aigyptos is Lynkeus, a
myth to which Pausanias furnishes a clue by giving its other
form Lyrkeios. But Lyrkeios was the name given to the
river Inachos in the earlier j^ortion of its course, and thus
this story would simply mean that although the other streams
1 Preller thinks that when the idea in^s presented an obvious point of oomof
a foreign origin for Aigyptos and parison with the Cheimarroi or winter-
Danaos was once suggested, the Nile torrents of the Poloponnesos. Gr.
with its yearly inundations and shrink- Myth. ii. 47.