Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

24 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
'
BOOK Bnt in botn alike tne time of wealmess is snort - Oidipous
II. returns to Thebes, mighty in strength of arm and irresistible
r~~" in wisdom, to slay the terrible Sphinx. In one version
Phoibos is only four days old when, hurrying to Parnassos,
he slays the dragon which had chased his mother Leto in
her wanderings to Delos. The more elaborate legend of the
Hymn places the slaying of the Python later in his career
but like the Sphinx, Python l is not only the darkness of
night, but the black storm-cloud which shuts up the waters,
and thus it guards or blockades the fountain which is to
yield water for the Delphian temple. 2
In other respects the
later of the two poems woven together in the Homeric hymn
is as transparent in meaning as the earlier. In both Phoibos
journeys gradually westward ; in both riches and glory are
promised to those who will receive him. But the bribe is
held out in vain to the beautiful fountain Telphoussa, near
whose waters Phoibos had begun to lay the foundations of a
shrine. By warnings of the din of horses and of cattle
brought thither to watering she drove him away, and Phoibos
following her counsel betook himself to Parnassos, where
Trophonios and Agamedes raised his world-renowned home.
It is at this point that the author of the hymn introduces
the slaughter of the w T orm or dragon to account for the
name Pytho, as given to the sanctuary from the rotting of
its carcase in the sun 3 and thence he takes Apollon back
1 Python is here called the nurse of and bushes, and snapping them as reeds.
Typhaon, the dragon-ehild or monster, He evacuated such floods of water that the
to which Here gives birth by her own mountain torrents were full. But, after
unaided power, as Athene is the a while, his power was exhausted ; he
daughter of Zeus alone. Typhaon, one lashed no more with his tail, ejected no
of the many forms of Vritra, Ahi, and more water, and spat no more fire." I
Cacus, stands to Here, the bright goddess think it impossible not to see in this
of the upper air, in the relation of the description a spring-tide thunderstorm.'
Minotauros to the brilliant Pasiphae, —Gould, Werewolf, p. 172.
wife of Minos.
3 The word is connected by Sophokles
2 ' In a Slovakian legend the dragon not with the rotting of the snake but
sleeps in a mountain cave through the with the questions put to the oracle,
winter months, but at the equinox The latter is the more plausible conjecbursts
forth. "In a moment the heaven turo ; but the origin of the word is unwas
darkened, and became black as certain, as is also that of Apollon, of
pitch, only illumined by the fire which which Welcker (Griechisehe Gbtterlehre,
flashed from the dragon's jaws and eyes. i. 460) regards Apellon as the genuine
The earth shuddered, the stones rattled form, connecting it in meaning with the
down the mountain sides into the glens ; epithets aA.e|iWos, airoTpoiraios, a/ce'cnos,
right and left, left and right, did the
dragon lash his tail, overthrowing pines
and others. This, however, is probably
as doubtful as the derivation which con-