Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

M MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK
II.
Theseus
in the
underworld.
thus their fight with Theseus in the streets of Athens would
be the struggle of dark vapours to throw a veil over the city
of the dawn, and their defeat the victory of the sun which
drives away the clouds. They are thus at once the natural
allies of the king of Ilion, the stronghold of the robber Paris,
and the friends of his enemies; for Antiope, who is stolen
away by Herakles, becomes the bride of Theseus and the
mother of Hippolytos, 1 whose story exhibits the action of a
moral sentiment which has impressed itself even more deeply
on the traditions of Thebes. Hippolytos is to Theseus what
Patroklos is to Achilleus, or Phaethon to Helios, the re-
flection of the sun in all its beauty, but without its strength
and power ; and the love of Phaidra (the gleaming) for the
glorious youth is simply the love of Aphrodite for Adonis,
and, like that of Aphrodite, it is repulsed. But Phaidra is
the wife of Theseus, and thus her love for Hippolytos becomes
doubly a crime, while the recoil of her feelings tempts her to
follow the example of Anteia in the myth of Bellerophon.
Her trick is successful ; and Hippolytos, going forth under
his father's curse, is slain by a bull which Poseidon sends
up from the sea, the storm-cloud which Theseus had fought
with on the plains of Marathon. But Hippolytos, like Adonis,
is a being whom death cannot hold in his power, and Askle-
pios raises him to life, as in the Italian tradition Virbius,
the darling of the goddess of the groves, is brought back
from the dead and entrusted to the care of the nymph Egeria.
Theseus, indeed, like Herakles, is seen almost everywhere.
He is one of the chiefs who sail in the divine Argo to recover
the golden fleece ; he joins the princes of Aitolia in the hunt
off the breasts would thus be the result
of a mistaken etymology. It should
be added that some see in the name an
intensive force which makes it the
equivalent of the German ' vielbebriistete,'
and thus identify it with the
Ephesian Artemis whose images answer
to this description, and who was
worshipped as Amazo. The Amazon
would thus be further identified with
Isis, the horned moon; and her wanderings
would follow as a matter of course,
as in the myth of 16. With this must
be compared the Fortuna Mammosa of
the Latins, and seemingly the Teutonic
Ciza, Zizi, who was worshipped under
the same form as the Ephesian Artemis.
Some have supposed that Tacitus meant
this deity, when he spoke of German
tribes as worshipping Isis : others iden-
tify the name with the Greek t£t0tj.
Nork. s. v.
1 Others make Hippolytos a son of
Hippolyte, the Amazonian queen, whose
girdle Herakles brings to Eurystheus,
and who is thus not the enemy of The-
seus, as in some versions, but his bride.