Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

DAPHNE AND BOLINA. 29
she prays that the earth or the waters may deliver her from CHAP,
her persecutor ; and so the story went that the laurel tree
grew up on the spot where she disappeared, or that Daphne
herself was changed into the laurel tree, from which Apollon
took his incorruptible and glorious wreath. 1
The same fatal pursuit is the burden of the legend of the Alpheios
huntsman Alpheios. Like Daphne and Aphrodite
6
Ana- Xrasa.
"
dyomene, he is the child of the waters, whether he be de-
scribed as a son of Okeanos and Thetis, or of Helios himself.
He is in short the Elf, or water-sprite, whose birthplace is
the Elbe or flowing stream. But Arethousa must fly from
him as Daphne flies from Phoibos ;
and Pausanias takes her
to the Syracusan Ortygia, where she sinks into a well with
which the waters of Alpheios become united. This is but
saying, in other words, that she fled to the Dawnland, where
Eos closes as she begins the day, and where the sun again
greets the love whom he has lost,
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky,
Where they live but love no more. 2
In another version she is aided by Artemis, who, herself
also loved by Alpheios, covers her own face and the faces of
her companions with mud, and the huntsman departs baflled ;
or, to recur to old phrases, the sun cannot recognise the
dawn on whom he gazes, because her beauty is faded and
gone. With these legends are closely connected the stories
of Hippodameia, Atalante, and the Italian Camilla, who
become the prize only of those who can overtake them in
fair field ; a myth which reappears in the German story,
< How Six travelled through the World.' It is repeated of
Phoibos himself in the myth of Bolina, who, to escape from
his pursuit, threw herself into the sea near the mouth of the
1 The story of the Sicilian Daphnis is unfaithful to her. This blindness is the
simply a weak version of that of Daphne, blindness of Oidipous. The sequel is
with some features derived from other that of the legends of Prokris or
myths. Like Telephos, Oidipous, and Koronis, and the blinded Daphnis falls
others, Daphnis is exposed in his infancy from a rock (the Leukadian cliff of
;
and, like Apollon, whose favourite he is, Kephalos) and is slain. If the sun
he is tended by nymphs, one of whom would but remain with the dawn, the
(named in one version Lyke, the shin- blindness of night would not follow,
2
ing) loves him, and tells him that Shelley, Arethusa.
blindness will be his punishment if he is