Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

296 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK Persephone, as we have seen, is not his only mother ; nor
« r—* is the myth which makes him born of his mother Semele
The mo- amidst the blaze of the thunderbolts the only legend of his
Dionysos birth. He is spoken of sometimes as a son of 16, or of Arge,
of Dione, or Amaltheia, the nurse of Zeus ; and there was a
tale which related how, when Kadmos heard that Zeus had
made his child Semele a mother, he placed her and her babe
in a chest, and launched them, as Akrisios launched Danae
and her infant, upon the sea. The chest, according to local
tradition, was carried to Brasiai, where the babe was rescued
by Ino ;
on the shore. 1
Semele, who was found dead, being solemnly buried
Section II.—DEMETEB,
The story The myth which gives most fully and most clearly the
of Pprsfi -
phone, history of the earth through the changing year is to be
found not so much in the legend of Adonis as in the legend
of Persephone herself. This story as related in the Hymn to
Demeter tells us how the beautiful maiden (and in her rela-
tions with the upper world she is pre-eminently the maiden,
Kore), was playing with her companions on the flowery
Nysian plain, when far away across the meadow her eye
caught the gleam of a narcissus flower. As she ran towards
it alone, a fragrance, which reached to the heaven and made
the earth and sea laugh for gladness, filled her with delight
but when she stretched out her arms to seize the stalk with
its hundred flowers, the earth gaped, and before her stood
the immortal horses bearing the car of the king Polydegmon,
who placed her by his side. In vain the maiden cried aloud,
and made her prayer to the son of Kronos ; for Zeus was far
away> receiving the prayers and offerings of men in his
holy place, and there was none to hear save Hekate, who in
her secret cave heard the wail of her agony, and Helios, the
bright son of Hyperion, and one other—the loving mother,
1 £reller, Gr. Myth. i. r>23, regards jenes Leibethron am Makedonischen
the name Dionysos as simply an epithet Olymp, wo Dionysos und Orpheus seit
of Zeus as the Nysaian or ripening god alter Zeit in der Umgebung der Musen
' Der Name scheint einen feuchten, vcrehrt mirden.'
saftig fruchtbaren Ort zu bedeuten, "wie