Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology

by Thomas Bulfinch

  Jove, and his labors by which he had exceeded the exactions of Juno, his step-

  mother. I, on the other hand, said to the father of the maiden. 'Behold me, the king of

  the waters that flow through your land. I am no stranger from a foreign shore, but

  belong to the country, a part of your realm. Let it not stand in my way that royal Juno

  owes me no enmity, nor punishes me with heavy tasks. As for this man, who boasts

  himself the son of Jove, it is either a false pretence, or disgraceful to him if true, for it

  cannot be true except by his mother's shame.' As I said this Hercules scowled upon

  me, and with difficulty restrained his rage. 'My hand will answer better than my

  tongue,' said he. 'I yield you the victory in words, but trust my cause to the strife of

  deeds.' With that he advanced towards me, and I was ashamed, after what I had said,

  to yield. I threw off my green vesture, and presented myself for the struggle. He tried

  to throw me, now attacking my head, now my body. My bulk was my protection, and

  he assailed me in vain. For a time we stopped, then returned to the conflict. We each

  kept our position, determined not to yield, foot to foot, I bending over him, clinching his

  hands in mine, with my forehead almost touching his. Thrice Hercules tried to throw

  me off, and the fourth time he succeeded, brought me to the ground and himself upon

  my back. I tell you the truth, it was as if a mountain had fallen on me. I struggled to get

  my arms at liberty, panting and reeking with perspiration. He gave me no chance to

  recover, but seized my throat. My knees were on the earth and my mouth in the dust.

  "Finding that I was no match for him in the warrior's art, I resorted to others, and

  glided away in the form of a serpent. I curled my body in a coil, and hissed at him with

  my forked tongue. He smiled scornfully at this, and said, 'It was the labor of my

  infancy to conquer snakes. So saying he clasped my neck with his hands. I was

  almost choked, and struggled to get my neck out of his grasp. Vanquished in this

  form, I tried what alone remained to me, and assumed the form of a bull. He grasped

  my neck with his arm, and dragging my head down to the ground, overthrew me on the

  sand. Nor was this enough. His ruthless hand rent my horn from my head. The

  Naiades took it, consecrated it, and filled it with fragrant flowers. Plenty adopted my

  horn and made it her own, and called it Cornucopia."

  The ancients were fond of finding a hidden meaning in their mythological tales.

  They explain this fight of Achelous with Hercules by saying, Achelous was a river that

  in seasons of rain overflowed its banks. When the fable says that Achelous loved

  Dejanira, and sought a union with her, the meaning is, that the river in its windings

  flowed through part of Dejanira's kingdom. It was said to take the form of a snake

  because of its winding, and of a bull because it made a brawling or roaring in its

  course. When the river swelled, it made itself another channel. Thus its head was

  horned. Hercules prevented the return of these periodical overflows, by embankments

  and canals; and therefore he was said to have vanquished the river-god and cut off his

  horn. Finally, the lands formerly subject to overflow, but now redeemed, became very

  fertile, and this is meant by the horn of plenty.

  There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia. Jupiter at his birth was

  committed by his mother Rhea to the care of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan

  king. They fed the infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke off

  one of the horns of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the

  wonderful power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might wish.

  The name of Amalthea is also given by some writers to the mother of Bacchus. It

  is thus used by Milton, P. L., Book IV.: -

  ". . . That Nyseian isle,

  Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,

  Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove,

  Hid Amalthea and her florid son,

  Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye."

  Admetus And Alcestis.

  Aesculapius, the son of Apollo, was endowed by his father with such skill in the

  healing art that he even restored the dead to life. At this Pluto took alarm, and prevailed

  on Jupiter to launch a thunderbolt at Aesculapius. Apollo was indignant at the

  destruction of his son, and wreaked his vengeance on the innocent workmen who had

  made the thunderbolt. These were the Cyclopes, who have their workshop under Mount

  Aetna, from which the smoke and flames of their furnaces are constantly issuing. Apollo

  shot his arrows at the Cyclopes, which so incensed Jupiter that he condemned him as a

  punishment to become the servant of a mortal for the space of one year. Accordingly

  Apollo went into the service of Admetus, king of Thessaly, and pastured his flocks for

  him on the verdant banks of the river Amphrysos.

  Admetus was a suitor, with others, for the hand of Alcestis, the daughter of

  Pelias, who promised her to him who should come for her in a chariot drawn by lions and

  boars. This task Admetus performed by the assistance of his divine herdsman, and was

  made happy in the possession of Alcestis. But Admetus fell ill, and being near to death,

  Apollo prevailed on the Fates to spare him on condition that some one would consent to

  die in his stead. Admetus in his joy at this reprieve, thought little of the ransom, and

  perhaps remembering the declarations of attachment which he had often heard from his

  courtiers and dependents, fancied that it would be easy to find a substitute. But it was

  not so. Brave warriors, who would willingly have perilled their lives for their prince,

  shrunk from the thought of dying for him on the bed of sickness; and old servants who

  had experienced his bounty and that of his house from their childhood up, were not

  willing to lay down the scanty remnant of their days to show their gratitude. Men asked,

  - "Why does not one of his parents do it? They cannot in the course of nature live much

  longer, and who can feel like them the call to rescue the life they gave, from an untimely

  end?" But the parents distressed though they were at the thought of losing him, shrunk

  from the call. Then Alcestis, with a generous self-devotion, proffered herself as the

  substitute. Admetus, fond as he was of life, would not have submitted to receive it at

  such a cost; but there was no remedy. The condition imposed by the Fates had been

  met, and the decree was irrevocable. Alcestis sickened as Admetus revived, and she

  was rapidly sinking to the grave.

  Just at this time Hercules arrived at the palace of Admetus, and found all the

  inmates in great distress for the impending loss of the devoted wife and beloved

  mistress. Hercules, to whom no labor was too arduous, resolved to attempt her rescue.

  He went and lay in wait at the door of the chamber of the dying queen, and when Death

  came for his prey, he seized him and forced him to resign his victim. Alcestis recovered,

  and was restored to her husband.

  Milton alludes to the story of Alcestis in his Sonnet "on his deceased wife."

  "Methought I saw my late espoused saint

  Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

  Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,

  Rescued from
death by force, though pale and faint."

  J. R. Lowell has chosen the "Shepherd of King Admetus" for the subject of a

  short poem. He makes that event the first introduction of poetry to men.

  "Men called him but a shiftless youth,

  In whom no good they saw,

  And yet unwittingly, in truth,

  They made his careless words their law.

  "And day by day more holy grew

  Each spot where he had trod,

  Till after-poets only knew

  Their first-born brother was a god."

  Antigone.

  A large proportion, both of the interesting persons and of the exalted acts of

  legendary Greece belongs to the female sex. Antigone was as bright an example of filial

  and sisterly fidelity as was Alcestis of connubial devotion. She was the daughter of

  Oedipus and Jocasta, who with all their descendants were the victims of an unrelenting

  fate, dooming them to destruction. Oedipus in his madness had torn out his eyes, and

  was driven forth from his kingdom Thebes, dreaded and abandoned by all men, as an

  object of divine vengeance. Antigone, his daughter, alone shared his wanderings and

  remained with him till he died, and then returned to Thebes.

  Her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had agreed to share the kingdom between

  them, and reign alternately year by year. The first year fell to the lot of Eteocles, who,

  when his time expired, refused to surrender the kingdom to his brother. Polynices fled to

  Adrastus king of Argos, who gave him his daughter in marriage, and aided him with an

  army to enforce his claim to the kingdom. This led to the celebrated expedition of the

  "Seven against Thebes," which furnished ample materials for the epic and tragic poets of

  Greece.

  Amphiaraus, the brother-in-law of Adrastus, opposed the enterprise, for he was a

  soothsayer, and knew by his aet that no one of the leaders except Adrastus would live to

  return. But Amphiaraus, on his marriage to Eriphyle, the king's sister, had agreed that

  whenever he and Adrastus should differ in opinion, the decision should be left to

  Eriphyle. Polynices, knowing this, gave Eriphyle the collar of Harmonia, and thereby

  gained her to his interest. This collar or necklace was a present which Vulcan had given

  to Harmonia on her marriage with Cadmus, and Polynices had taken it with him on his

  flight from Thebes. Eriphyle could not resist so tempting a bribe, and by her decision the

  war wau resolved on, and Amphiaraus went to his certain fate. He bore his part bravely

  in the contest, but could not avert his destiny. Pursued by the enemy he fled along the

  river, when a thunderbolt launched by Jupiter opened the ground, and he, his chariot

  and his charioteer were swallowed up.

  It would not be in place here to detail all the acts of heroism or atrocity which

  marked the contest; but we must not omit to record the fidelity of Evadne as an offset to

  the weakness of Eriphyle. Capaneus, the husband of Evadne, in the ardor of the fight

  declared that he would force his way into the city in spite of Jove himself. Placing a

  ladder against the wall he mounted, but Jupiter, offended at his impious language struck

  him with a thunderbolt. When his obsequies were celebrated, Evadne cast herself on

  his funeral pile and perished.

  Early in the contest Eteocles consulted the soothsayer Tiresias as to the issue.

  Tiresias in his youth had by chance seen Minerva bathing. The goddess in her wrath

  deprived him of his sight, but afterwards relenting gave him in compensation the

  knowledge of future events When consulted by Eteocles, he declared that victory should

  fall to Thebes if Menoeceus the son of Creon gave himself a voluntary victim. The

  heroic youth learning the response threw away his life in the first encounter

  The siege continued long, with various success. At length both hosts agreed that

  the brothers should decide their quarrel by single combat. They fought and fell by each

  other's hands. The armies then renewed the fight, and at last the invaders were forced

  to yield, and fled leaving their dead unburied. Creon, the uncle of the fallen princes, now

  become king, caused Eteocles to be buried with distinguished honor, but suffered the

  body of Polynices to lie where it fell, forbidding every one on pain of death to give it

  burial.

  Antigone, the sister of Polynices, heard with indignation the revolting edict which

  consigned her brother's body to the dogs and vultures, depriving it of those rites which

  were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading

  counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she

  determined to brave the hazard and to bury the body with her own hands. She was

  detected in the act, and Creon gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having

  deliberately set at nought the solemn edict of the city. Her lover, Haemon, the son of

  Creon, unable to avert her fate, would not survive her, and fell by his own hand.

  Antigone forms the subject of two fine tragedies of the Grecian poet Sophocles.

  Mrs. Jameson, in her Characteristics of Women, has compared her character with that of

  Cordelia, in Shakspeare's King Lear. The perusal of her remarks cannot fail to gratify

  our readers.

  The following is the lamentation of Antigone over Oedipus, when death has at

  last relieved him from his sufferings: -

  "Alas! I only wished I might have died

  With my poor father: wherefore should I ask

  For longer life?

  O, I was fond of misery with him;

  E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved

  When he was with me. O my dearest father

  Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,

  Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still

  Wast dear, and shalt be ever."

  Francklin's Sophocles.

  Penelope.

  Penelope is another of those mythic heroines whose beauties were rather those

  of character and conduct than of person. She was the daughter of Icarius, a Spartan

  prince. Ulysses, king of Ithaca, sought her in marriage, and won her, over all

  competitors. When the moment came for the bride to leave her father's house, Icarius,

  unable to bear the thoughts of parting with his daughter, tried to persuade her to remain

  with him, and not accompany her husband to Ithaca. Ulysses gave Penelope her

  choice, to stay or go with him. Penelope made no reply, but dropped her veil over her

  face. Icarius urged her no further, but when she was gone erected a statue to Modesty

  on the spot where they parted.

  Ulysses and Penelope had not enjoyed their union more than a year when it was

  interrupted by the events which called Ulysses to the Trojan war. During his long

  absence, and when it was doubtful whether he still lived, and highly improbable that he

  would ever return, Penelope was importuned by numerous suitors, from whom there

  seemed no refuge but in choosing one of them for her husband. Penelope, however,

  employed every art to gain time, still hoping for Ulysses' return. One of her arts of delay

  was engaging in the preparation of a robe for the funeral canopy of Laertes, her

  husband's father. She pledged herself to make her choice among the suitors when the

  robe was finished. During the day she worked at the robe, but in the night she undid the

>   work of the day. This is the famous Penelope's web, which is used as a proverbial

  expression for any thing which is perpetually doing but never done. The rest of

  Penelope's history will be told when we give an account of her husband's adventures.

  Chapter XXIV: Orpheus, Eurydice, Aristaeus, Amphion, Linus, Thamyris,

  et al.

  Orpheus And Eurydice.

  Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope He was presented by his

  father with a Lyre and taught to play upon it, which he did to such perfection that

  nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only his fellow-mortals but wild

  beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by their fierceness,

  and stood entranced with his lay. Nay, the very trees and rocks were sensible to the

  charm. The former crowded round him and the latter relaxed somewhat of their

  hardness, softened by his notes.

  Hymen had been called to bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with

  Eurydice; but though he attended, he brought no happy omens with him. His very torch

  smoked and brought tears into their eyes. In coincidence with such prognostics

  Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, while wandering with the nymphs, her

  companions, was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, who was struck with her beauty,

  and made advances to her. She fled, and in flying trod upon a snake in the grass, was

  bitten in the foot and died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air,

  both gods and men, and finding it all unavailing resolved to seek his wife in the regions

  of the dead. He descended by a cave situated on the side of the promontory of

  Taenarus and arrived at the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts and

  presented himself before the throne of Pluto and Proserpine. Accompanying the words

  with the lyre, he sung, "O deities of the under world, to whom all we who live must

  come, hear my words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus,