Page images
PDF
EPUB

ing, the sceptre of Zeus, also. And, if the thunder-bolt were not a little too heavy, and had a good deal of fire in it, he would have filched that too.

Hephaestus. The child you describe is a regular Gorgon. Apollo. Not only so, but already he is a musical genius, also.

Hephaestus. From what can you draw your inference as to that?

Apollo. Somewhere or other he found a dead tortoise, and from it formed a musical instrument: for, having fitted in the horns (or side-pieces) and joined them by a bar, he next fixed pegs, and inserted a bridge beneath them; and, after stretching seven strings upon it, he set about playing a very pretty and harmonious tune, so that even I, practised as I have long been in playing the cithara,' envied him. And Maia assured us that not even his nights would he pass in heaven, but from mere busybodyness he would descend as far as Hades, to steal something from thence, I suppose. He is furnished with wings, and has made for himself a sort of staff of wonderful virtue, with which he chaperones the souls of dead men, and conducts them down to the infernal regions.

Hephaestus. I gave him that for a plaything.

Apollo. Then he has paid you back: your fire-tongs-
Hephaestus. Well remembered.

So I will march off to recover it, if, as you say, it is anywhere to be found among his cradle-clothes.

1 Kilapilεw. The cithara differed somewhat from the lyra and resembled rather the modern guitar. Originally, the lyre had three or four strings only: but (650 B.C.) it received the full complement of seven strings. From the tortoiseshell material it received its Latin name, testudo. See Smith's Dict. of Ant. art. Lyra.

[ocr errors]

2 The Caduceus (as the páßdog was called by the Latins). By a slight change formed, apparently, from Kapvкɛiov, a herald's wand". whence the epithet of caducifer. See IX. xxiv. 343; Od. v. 47; Virg. En. iv. 247-253.

1

VIII.

HEPHÆSTUS ASSISTS AT THE PARTURITION OF ZEUS AND

THE BIRTH OF ATHENA.

Hephaestus and Zeus.

Hephaestus. What have I to do, Zeus? For I am come, as you ordered me, with my sharpest axe, sharp enough, even though it were wanted to cut through a stone at one stroke (displaying his tool).

Zeus. Well done, my dear Hephaestus. But don't waste time, but bring it down with a will, and split my head in two.

Hephaestus. You are trying me, if I am in my right senses ? Order, pray, something else, whatever it is you really want done to you.

Zeus. I desire my skull to be split open-that and nothing else. If you will not obey me, it is not the first time you will tempt my anger. Well, now you must come down with all your soul and strength, and that without delay; for I am simply dying under the pangs of labour, which rack my poor brain terribly.

Hephaestus. Look out, Zeus, that we don't do you some injury; for the axe is sharp, and not unattended with blood, nor will it act the midwife for you after the fashion of Eileithuia.3

Zeus. Bring it down boldly, without more ado, sir. I know what's best.

Hephaestus. 'Tis sorely against my will, but I will down with it, however: for what's one to do, when you order a thing? (Starting back in alarm.) What's this? A girl

1 The part here assumed by the blacksmith god by other authorities is attributed to Prometheus or Hermes. Lucian follows Pindar, OX. vii. 35 (Jacob.). For an etymological disquisition on the name of Athena see Plato, Κρατύλος.

2 Hephaestus had been expelled, in an ignominious fashion, from heaven on the memorable occasion recorded in IX. i. ad fin.

3 The goddess who comes with help to women in childbirth. See IX. xi. 270, where the poet speaks of more than one Eileithuia, and represents the sisters as daughters of Hera :

“ μογοστόκοι Εἴλείθυιαι •

Ηρης θυγάτερες, πικρὰς ὠδῖνας ἔχουσαι.”

Cf. IX. xix. 119. Hesiod knows only one, Oɛoy. 886-900, 922.

с

1

in armour! A mighty pain you had in your head, Zeus. With good reason, I admit, you were so short-tempered, maintaining alive in the pia mater of your brain a virgin of such proportions, and that too, in a suit of armour! It was a camp, surely, not a head you have had all this while without its being known. Why! she leaps and dances the Pyrrhic dance, and clashes her shield, and brandishes her spear, and is all on fire with martial excitement; and, what is more, in this short time, she has become a very beautiful woman, and is in her full bloom already. She has a fierceness in her bluish-gray eyes' to be sure, but her helmet sets off that, too, to advantage. So, Zeus, pay me my midwife-fee, by betrothing her to me now at once.

Zeus. You ask impossibilities, Hephaestus, for she chooses to remain ever a virgin: but I, however, as far as I am concerned, offer no opposition.

Hephaestus. That's all I wanted. The rest shall be my care, and I will carry her off even now.

Zeus. If you find it an easy affair, do so: but I know that you are indulging a hopeless passion.3

IX.

HERMES REFUSES POSEIDON ADMISSION TO ZEUS, AND ASSIGNS AS THE REASON THE LYING-IN OF THE KING OF GODS AND MEN WITH BACCHUS.

Poseidon and Hermes.

Poseidon. May one have an interview with Zeus just now, Hermes ?

1 Πυῤῥιχίζει. The Pyrrhic dance (ἡ πυῤῥίχη) was the famous military dance performed in full armour to the sound of the flute or rather pipe. At Athens it formed part of the Panathenaic festival. The birth of Athena occupied a conspicuous place on the sculptures of the Parthenon. See Pausanias, i. 24.

2 Γλαυκῶπις. The well-known Homeric epithet of the goddess of War and Wisdom. The exact colour implied in yλaúкog is disputed. As applied to Athena, it included a certain flashing or fierceness of the eyes. Plutarch, Bío IIapaλ., in his description of Sulla, records of his eyes:—“ τὴν τῶν ὀμμάτων γλαυκότητα, δεινῶς καὶ πικρὰν καὶ ἄκρατον οὖσαν, ἡ χρόα τοῦ προσώπου φοβερωτέραν ἐποίει προσιδεῖν.” Cf. Ov. Amores, ii. 659; Statius, Theb. ii. 715.

3 For a description of a famous Greek painting of this subject see

Hermes. By no means, my dear Poseidon.

Poseidon. At all events announce me to him (making a forward movement).

Hermes. (Interposing himself.) Don't be a nuisance, I say for it is quite an unseasonable moment, so you could not possibly see him at present.

Poseidon. He is not engaged with Hera, is he?

Hermes. No, but it is quite another sort of affair.

Poseidon. I understand. Ganymedes is closeted with

him.

Hermes. Not that, either. The fact is, he is rather poorly.

Poseidon. From what cause, my dear Hermes ? For this is strange news you report.

Hermes. I blush to tell it, such is its nature.

Poseidon. But you need not blush to tell me, your uncle. Hermes. He has but just now been brought to bed, Poseidon.

Poseidon. Get away with you. He brought to bed? By whom? Is he an hermaphrodite,1 without our knowing it all this time? Yet his person did not discover any symptoms of it.

Hermes. You are right, for the usual part did not hold the embryo.

Poseidon. Ah! I know. He has given birth again through his head-piece, as he did to Athena-it's his head he keeps for a breeding-place.

Hermes. No, it was in his thigh that he was pregnant with Semele's 2 infant.

Philostratus, Elkovec, in the French version, Philostrate Ancien, Une Galerie Antique, par A. Bougot, Paris, 1881. The highly interesting pictures, described by Philostratus as having been seen by him in a gallery at Naples, appear to have been not frescoes but painted in the studio.

1 'Avdpóyvvos. Plato's Dialogue, the Evμπóσtov, has given celebrity to the word. Another form of it is yvvávdpos. Hermaphrodite, which frequently appears in Greek Art, is compounded of Hermes and Aphrodite. See Ov. Metam. iv. 5, for the story of the Naiad Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.

2 The story of Semele is to be found in Ovid, Metam. iii. 4, 5. Cf. Apollod. iii. 4. It forms the subject of one of the Eikoves of Philostratus, where Semele is represented mounting to Heaven.

Poseidon. Well done, the excellent parent! How productive he is all over, and in every part of his body! But who is this Semele ?

Hermes. A lady of Thebes, one of the daughters of Kadmus. He paid her a visit, and made her enceinte. Poseidon. Then, did he take her place in the straw, Hermes ?

Hermes. Exactly, however strange and paradoxical it appears to you. For Hera-you know how jealous she is -secretly laid a trap for her, and persuaded her to request from Zeus that he would come to her with thunder and lightning. And when he complied, and came with his thunderbolt, the roof of the house was set all on fire, and burnt up, and poor Semele perished in the flames. And he orders me to cut open the lady's womb, and to bring up to him the still imperfect embryo of seven months. When I had so done, he cuts open his own thigh and inserts it, that it might there receive its completion; and now, exactly in the third month, he has given birth to the child and is feeling poorly after the pangs of parturition.

Poseidon. Where, then, is the baby now?

Hermes. I took it off to Nysa, and delivered it to the Nymphs to bring up, after giving it the name of Dionysus.' Poseidon. And is my brother really both father and mother of this Dionysus?

Hermes. So it seems. But I am now off to fetch water for his wound, and to perform the other services which are customary, just as for a lady after confinement.2

1 The Greek alternative name for Bacchus, said to be be derived from Mt. Nysa in Thrace or India, with paternal prefix. One of the most famous statues of Hermes, by Praxiteles, represents the youthful god bearing away the infant, as here described. It was discovered by the German Excavation Commission, in 1877, at Olympia, mutilated, but with the features entire. It is one of the most valued discoveries of Greek sculpture of the present time. See Pausanias, v. 17.

2 Λεχοῖ. Cf. Aristoph. Εκκλης. 530 ; Euripides, ̓́Ηλεκτρα, 652 ; and see Ter. Andria, iii. 2, in the case of Glycerium.

« PreviousContinue »