Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

274 .MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK madness of Herakles falls on Athamas, who carries ont the
v_ ,J . sentence of the Pythia by slaying his son Learchos. The
drought has reached its height; and Ino, with her other
child, Melikertes, casts herself into the sea. Left alone,
Athamas now asks whither he must go and where he may
find a home: and the answer is that he must make his
abode where wild beasts receive him hospitably. This welcome
he finds in a spot where wolves, having torn some
sheep, leave for him the untasted banquet. The beasts must
needs be wolves, and the country of which he thus becomes
the lord is the Aleian plain, through which the lonely Belle-
rophen wandered in the closing days of his life.
Section II.—THE CLOUD-LAND.
The Phal- Nephele then is the mist of morning tide, which vanishes,
,.
like Daphne and Arethousa, when the sun becomes Chrysaor.
The myths of the earth under its many names bring the
clouds before us in other forms, as the Kouretes, who weave
their mystic dances round the infant Zeus ; the Idaian Dak-
tyls, who impart to the harp of Orpheus its irresistible power ;
and the marvellous Telchines, who can change their forms
at will. 1 But the cloud-land in all its magnificence and
imperial array is displayed not so much in these isolated
stories as in the great Phaiakian legend of the Odyssey. It
may be safely said that there is scarcely a single detail in
this marvellous narrative which fails to show the nature and
the origin of the subjects of Alkinoos. We may, if we
please, regard them as a people settled historically in the
island known to us as Korkyra or Corfu ; and with Preller or
other writers we may lay stress on the fact that they are
altogether a people of ships and of the sea, living far away
from mortal men near the western Okeanos; but no one who
wishes really to get at the truth of facts can thus convince
himself that he has solved the problem. Whether Scheria
be or be not the Mediterranean Korkyra, the meaning of
most of the names occurring in the myth is beyond all
doubt ; and we have simply to follow the poet as he tells the
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ieep. 2G4,