Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

38 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK mother of the Hyades and the Hesperides, are at once ex-
^__,_L_. plained. He is thus naturally the father of Hesperos, the
most beautiful star of the heavens, who appears as the herald
of Eos in the morning and is again seen by her side in the
evening. The Hellenic Heosphoros, the Latin Lucifer, the
Lightbringer, who is Phosphoros, is also called a son of
Astraios and Eos, the starlit skies of dawn. !
The gar- Far away in the west by the stream of the placid Ocean is
Hespeie
^ne dwelling of the Hesperides, the children or sisters of
nde*. Hesperos, the evening star, or, as they might also be termed,
of Atlas or of Phorkys. This beautiful island which no bark
ever approaches, and where the ambrosial streams flow per-
petually by the couch of Zeus, is nevertheless hard by the
land of the Gorgons and near the bounds of that everlasting
darkness which is the abode of Ahi and Pani, of Geryon,
Cacus, and Echidna. Hence the dragon Ladon guards with
them the golden apples which Gaia gave to Here when she
became the bride of Zeus, these apples being the golden
tinted clouds or herds of Helios, the same word being used
to denote both. 2
It remained only to give them names easily
supplied by the countless epithets of the morning or evening
twilight, and to assign to them a local habitation, which was
found close to the pillars or the mountain of Atlas which
bears up the brazen heaven above the earth.
Atlas and Atlas is thus brought into close connection with Helios,
Hyperion. the bright god? the Latin g i and our sun> jn the Iliad and
Odyssey he is himself Hyperion, the climber : in the Hesiodic
Theogony, Hyperion becomes his father by the same process
which made Zeus the son of Kronos,—his mother being
Theia, the brilliant, or Euryphaessa, the shedder of the
broad light. In the former poems he rises every morning
from a beautiful lake by the deep-flowing stream of Ocean,
and having accomplished his journey across the heaven
plunges again into the western waters. Elsewhere this
lake becomes a magnificent palace, on which poets lavished
all their wealth of fancy ; but this splendid abode is none
1 So transparent are all these names, been altogether unaware of the sources
and so many the combinations in which of the materials with which they haa to
they are presented to us, that even the deal.
later mythographers can scarcely have - See note 5, p. 10.