Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK which is sometimes exercised by her, is little more than a
IL
„ being of the same class with Kronos. The same necessity
which produced the one evoked the other. Zens mnst have a
father, and the name of this father was suggested by the epi-
thet Kronides or Kronion. In like manner he must have a
wife, and her name must denote her abode in the pure and
brilliant ether. Accordingly the name Here points to the
Sanskrit svar, the gleaming heaven, and the Zend hvar, the
sun, which m Sanskrit appears in the kindred form Surya,
and in Latin as Sol. 1 She is thus strictly the consort of
Zeus, with rather the semblance than the reality of any inde-
pendent powers. In the Iliad she speaks of herself as the
eldest daughter of Kronos, by whom, like the rest of his
progeny, she was swallowed, and as having been given by
Rheia into the charge of Okeanos and Tethys, who nursed
and tended her after Kronos had been dethroned and imprisoned
by Zeus beneath the earth and sea. 2 This myth
passed naturally into many forms, and according to some
she was brought up by the daughters of the river Asterion
(a phrase which points to the bright blue of heaven coming
into sight in the morning over the yet starlit waters), while
others gave her as her nurses the beautiful Horai, 3 to whose
charge are committed the gates of heaven, the clouds which
they scatter from the summits of Olympos and then bring
to it again. 4 In other words, the revolving seasons all
sustain the beauty and the splendour of the bright ether.
When she became the bride of Zeus, she presented him with
the golden apples, the glistening clouds of the morning, 5
guarded first by the hundred-headed offspring of Typhon
1 Welcker, Gricchische Gotterlehre, i.
4 In this case we hare the authority
363, regards the name as a cognate form of the Iliad itself for an interpretation
of epa, earth, and traces it through a which would otherwise he probably
large number of words which he sup- censured as a violent straining of the
poses to be akin to it, Of this and
other explanations, Preller, who refers
the name to the Sanskrit sv:u\ says
briefly
text : but the office of the gatekeeper of
Olympos is expressly stated to be
, „
' Die gewohnlichen Erklarongen
von %oa, die Erde, oder yon aiip, die Luft,
oder-Hpo, d. i. Hera, die Fran, die Herrin
W* v «"««*"«« »^ »*$! 7,8 ImOeiuac
v. 751.
*ritaj. Gr. Myth. 374.
schlechthin, lassen sich weder etymolo- Jhis myth, which arose from the
confusion of the
giseh noch dem Sinne nach
word ^Xov an
rechtferti-
apple,
th
%*:--Gricchische Mythology, i. 124. M^, a aheap, » really only ano-
-
* 7/ v on! tner torm of the legend which gave the
' „ !. ,„' story of Phaethousa and Lampetie.
3 y J
l aus. n. r
13, 3.