Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

311
Section IV.—THE PRIESTS OF THE GREAT MOTHER.
Tlie earth itself, as the soil distinguished from the fruits CHAP.
. . VIII
which grow from it or the power which nourishes them, is --—,
known as Gaia in the Hesiodic Theosfony, where she is Ga,a and
° J
Ouranos.
described seemingly as self-existent, for no parents are
assigned either to her or to Chaos, Tartaros, and Eros. All
this, however, with the assignment of Erebos and Nyx as
children of Chaos, and of Aither and Hemera as children of
Nyx, the night, may have been to the poet as mere an
allegory as the birth, of the long hills which together with
the troubled sea are brought into being by Gaia. Then
follows the bridal of the earth and sky, and Gaia becomes
the mother of a host of children, representing either the sun
under the name of Hyperion, or the forces at work in the
natural world, the thunders and lightnings, here called the
round-eyed giants, and the hundred-handed monsters, one
of whom, Briareos, rescues Zeus from the wiles of Here,
Athene and Poseidon. But in all this there is really not
much more mythology than in the little which has to be
said of the Latin Tellus or Terra, a name, the meaning of
which was never either lost or weakened. It was otherwise
with Mars, a god who, worshipped originally as the ripener
of fruits and grain, was afterwards from the accident of his
name invested with the attributes of the fierce and brutal
Ares of the Greeks. 1 In his own character, as fostering
wealth of corn and cattle, he was worshipped at Prseneste,
as Herodotos would have us believe that Scythian tribes
worshipped Ares, with the symbol of a sword, one of the
many forms assumed by the Hindu Linga. As such, he was
pre-eminently the father of all living things, Marspiter, or
Maspiter, the parent of the twin-born Romulus and Remus.
1 The root is mar, which yields the ' Mannar and Marmor, old Latin names
name of the Maruts and many other for Mars, are reduplicated forma : and
mythical beings. See vol. i. p. 32, &c.
Mars, with his common epithet Silvanus,
in the Oscan Mamers the
reduplicated syllable is lost.
r of the
Mayors iis
the softener
ripener of its
of the earth and the
harvests. The name
more difficult to explaia, for th^re is no
instance in Latin of m in the middle of
occurs under the forms Mamers and a word being changed to i\' Lectures,
Mavors. Of these Professor Miiller says, second series, 324.