Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

DANAE AND AITHRA. 61
games which Teutamidas the chief holds in his honour. CHAP.
Presently a quoit hurled by Perseus lights on the feet of .
Akrisios, and the prophecy is accomplished which makes
Oidipous, Komulus, and Cyrus slay their parents or their
grandsires. The sequel is given in two versions, correspond-
ing to the choice given to Achilleus. 1 In the one Perseus
returns to Argos, and there dies in peace ; in the other grief
and shame for the death of Akrisios drive him to abandon
his Argive sovereignty for that of Tiryns, where his kinsman
Megapenthes is king. In the latter, he may be compared
with Bellerophon wandering in gloom and loneliness through
the Aleian plain ; in the former we have the tranquil time
which follows the great vengeance of Achilleus and Odysseus.
Thus as the unwilling destroyer even of those whom he loves,
as the conqueror of monstrous beasts and serpents, as toiling
for a mean and cruel master, yet as coming forth in the end
victorious over all his enemies, Perseus is at once the fore-
father and the counterpart of Herakles. He is himself born
in Argos the bright land, as Phoibos springs to life in Delos
or Artemis in Ortygia ; but his mother Danae is almost as
neutral and colourless as Leto or Iokaste or Hekabe or
Semele. The Argive tradition runs in a circle, and the
Athenian myth, jealously prized as a wholly independent
history, is made up of the same materials. The practical
identity of the Athenian legend of Theseus and the Argive
legend of the son of Alkmene suggested the proverb e Another
Herakles ; ' nor, if attention had been specially fixed on the
task of tracing out such resemblances, would very keen powers
of criticism have been needed to show that the same process
might be applied to the legends of all the Hellenic tribes.
The myth of Theseus is indeed more transparent than that Birth and
of his two great kinsmen. As Perseus is the son of the Theseus,
golden shower, so is Theseus the child of Aithra, the pure air
and if in one version he is said to be a son of Aigeus, king
of Athens, in another he is called a son of Poseidon, as Athene
is Tritogeneia, and Aphrodite comes up from the sea ; but
Aigeus himself is only Poseidon under a name denoting the
dash of the waves on the shore, and when Apollodoros speaks
1
E. ix. 411; xyi. 685.
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