Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

OECUS AND KAIKIAS.
form Kakios, and reappearing in the Prsenestine Cseculus,
leads M. Breal to the conclusion that the true Latin form
was Csecius, as Sseturnus answers to Saturnus. What then
is Csecius ? The idea of the being who bears this name is
clearly that of the Sanskrit Yritra, the being who steals the
beautiful clouds and blots out the light from the sky. Such
is Paris ; such also is Typhon ; and the latter word suggests
to M. Breal a comparison of Cacus with Csecus, the blind or
eyeless being. 1 But in a proverb cited by Aulus Gellius
from Aristotle, a being of this name is mentioned as pos-
2
sessing the power of drawing the clouds towards him and
;
thus we have in M. Breal's judgment the explanation of an
incident which, translated into the conditions of human life,
becomes a clumsy stratagem. In storms, when contrary
currents are blowing at different elevations, the clouds may
often appear from the earth to be going against or right to-
wards the wind. Then it is that Cacus is drawing the cattle
of Herakles by their tails towards his cave.
Section III.—BELLEROPHOK
Virgil notes especially the rough and shaggy (villosa)
breast of the monster Cacus : and this epithet carries us to
the names of similar beings in the mythology of other Aryan
tribes. That the root var, to hide or cover, has furnished
names for Yaruna the brooding heaven, as well as for Yritra,
the enemy who hides away or imprisons the rain, we have
already seen. We may follow Professor Max Muller as he
traces the root further through the Sanskrit ura in ura-bhra,
a ram (in other words, the wool-bearer), to urna, wool, the
Greek slpos and ep-iov, in urnayu, a goat and a spider (the
Greek ap-ayyrj), the one as supplying wool, the other as
1 If this can be established (and the Csecus, then, is made up of this
affinity of Cacus, Csecius, Kakios, and privative particle, and iha or aiha, auge,
the Greek KaiKias seems to leave no the eye. The second compound of halts
room for doubt), the word Cacus is at
'
is found in the English phrase lithe of
once accounted for. Csecus is one of limb.' Cf. Kokalos and Codes, p. 88.
many words in which the negative is
expressed by the particle ha denoting
the number 1, which Bopp discovers in
the Gothic haihs = csecus, blind, hanfs,
2 kolk i