CHAPTER XVI.
Monsters, Giants, Sphinx, Pegasus, Chimaera,
Centaurs, Griffin, Pygmies.
MONSTERS, in the language of mythology, were beings of
unnatural proportions or parts, usually regarded with terror, as
possessing immense strength and ferocity, which they employed
for the injury and annoyance of men. Some of them were supposed
to combine the members of different animals; such were the
Sphinx and Chimaera and to these all the terrible qualities of
wild beasts were attributed, together with human sagacity and
faculties. Others, as the giants, differed from men chiefly in
their size; and in this particular we must recognize a wide
distinction among them. The human giants, if so they may be
called, such as the
Cyclops, Antaeus, Orion, and others, must be
supposed not to be altogether disproportioned to human beings,
for they mingled in love and strife with them. But the
super-human giants, who warred with the gods, were of vastly
larger dimensions. Tityus, we are told, when stretched on the
plain, covered nine acres, and Enceladus required the whole of
Mount AEtna to be laid upon him to keep him down.
We have already spoken of the war which the giants waged
against the gods, and of its result. While this war lasted the
giants proved a formidable enemy. Some of them, like Briareus,
had a hundred arms; others, like Typhon, breathed out fire. At
one time they put the gods to such fear that they fled into
Egypt and hid themselves under various forms.
Jupiter took the
form of a ram, whence he was afterwards worshipped in Egypt as
the god Ammon, with curved horns.
Apollo became a crow,
Bacchus
a goat,
Diana a cat,
Juno a cow,
Venus a fish,
Mercury a bird.
At another time the giants attempted to climb up into heaven,
and for that purpose took up the mountain Ossa and piled it on
Pelion.* They were at last subdued by thunderbolts, which
Minerva invented, and taught
Vulcan and his
Cyclops to make for
Jupiter.
Gustave Moreau Oedipus and the Sphinx
THE SPHINX.
Laius, king of Thebes, was warned by an oracle that there was
danger to his throne and life if his new-born son should be
suffered to grow up. He therefore committed the child to the
care of a herdsman with orders to destroy him; but the herdsman,
moved with pity, yet not daring entirely to disobey, tied up the
child by the feet and left him hanging to the branch of a tree.
In this condition the infant was found by a peasant, who carried
him to his master and mistress, by whom he was adopted and
called OEdipus, or Swollen-foot.
Many years afterwards Laius being on his way to Delphi,
accompanied only by one attendant, met in a narrow road a young
man also driving in a chariot. On his refusal to leave the way
at their command the attendant killed one of his horses, and the
stranger, filled with rage, slew both Laius and his attendant.
The young man was Oedipus who thus unknowingly became the slayer
of his own father.
Shortly after this event the city of Thebes was afflicted
with a monster which infested the highroad. It was called the
Sphinx. It had the body of a lion and the upper part of a woman.
It lay crouched on the top of a rock, and arrested all
travellers who came that way, proposing to them a riddle, with
the condition that those who could solve it should pass safe,
but those who failed should be killed. Not one had yet succeeded
in solving it, and all had been slain. OEdipus was not daunted
by these alarming accounts, but boldly advanced to the trial.
The Sphinx asked him, "What animal is that which in the morning
goes on feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?"
Oedipus replied, "Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and
knees, in manhood walks erect, and in old age with the aid of a
staff." The Sphinx was so mortified at the solving of her riddle
that she cast herself down from the rock and perished.
The gratitude of the people for their deliverance was so
great that they made Oedipus their king, giving him in marriage
their queen Jocasta. Oedipus, ignorant of his parentage, had
already become the slayer of his father; in marrying the queen
he became the husband of his mother. These horrors remained
undiscovered, till at length Thebes was afflicted with famine
and pestilence, and the oracle being consulted, the double crime
of Oedipus came to light. Jocasta put an end to her own life,
and Oedipus, seized with madness, tore out his eyes and wandered
away from Thebes, dreaded and abandoned by all except his
daughters, who faithfully adhered to him, till after a tedious
period of miserable wandering he found the termination of his
wretched life.
Boris
Vallejo Perseus and Pegasus.
PEGASUS AND THE CHIMAERA.
When
Perseus cut off
Medusa's head, the blood sinking into
the earth produced the winged horse Pegasus.
Minerva caught and
tamed him and presented him to the Muses. The fountain
Hippocrene, on the Muse's mountain Helicon, was opened by a kick
from his hoof.
The Chimaera was a fearful monster, breathing fire. The fore
part of its body was a compound of the lion and the goat, and
the hind part a dragon's. It made great havoc in Lycia, so that
the king, Iobates, sought for some hero to destroy it. At that
time there arrived at his court a gallant young warrior, whose
name was Bellerophon. He brought letters from Proetus, the
son-in-law of Iobates, recommending Bellerophon in the warmest
terms as an unconquerable hero, but added at the close a request
to his father-in-law to put him to death. The reason was that
Proetus was jealous of him, suspecting that his wife Antea
looked with too much admiration on the young warrior. From this
instance of Bellerophon being unconsciously the bearer of his
own death warrant, the expression "Bellerophontic letters"
arose, to describe any species of communication which a person
is made the bearer of, containing matter prejudicial to himself.
Iobates, on perusing the letters, was puzzled what to do, not
willing to violate the claims of hospitality, yet wishing to
oblige his son-in-law. A lucky thought occurred to him, to send
Bellerophon to combat with the Chimaera. Bellerophon accepted
the proposal, but before proceeding to the combat consulted the
soothsayer Polyidus, who advised him to procure if possible the
horse Pegasus for the conflict. For this purpose he directed him
to pass the night in the temple of Minerva. He did so, and as he
slept
Minerva came to him and gave him a golden bridle. When he
awoke the bridle remained in his hand. Minerva also showed him
Pegasus drinking at the well of Pirene, and at sight of the
bridle the winged steed came willingly and suffered himself to
be taken. Bellerophon mounted him, rose with him into the air,
soon found the Chimaera, and gained an easy victory over the
monster.
After the conquest of the Chimaera Bellerophon was exposed to
further trials and labours by his unfriendly host, but by the
aid of Pegasus he triumphed in them all, till at length Iobates,
seeing that the hero was a special favourite of the gods, gave
him his daughter in marriage and made him his successor on the
throne. At last Bellerophon by his pride and presumption drew
upon himself the anger of the gods; it is said he even attempted
to fly up into heaven on his winged steed, but Jupiter sent a
gadfly which stung Pegasus and made him throw his rider, who
became lame and blind in consequence. After this Bellerophon
wandered lonely through the Aleian field, avoiding the paths of
men, and died miserably.
Milton alludes to Bellerophon in the beginning of the seventh
book of "Paradise Lost":
"Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing.
Upled by thee,
Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air
(Thy tempering); with like safety guided down
Return me to my native element;
Lest, from this flying steed unreined (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime),
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander and forlorn."
Young, in his "Night Thoughts," speaking of the sceptic,
says:
"He whose blind thought futurity denies,
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon, like thee
His own indictment; he condemns himself.
Who reads his bosom reads immortal life,
Or nature there, imposing on her sons,
Has written fables; man was made a lie."
Vol. II., p. 12.
Pegasus, being the horse of the Muses, has always been at the
service of the poets. Schiller tells a pretty story of his
having been sold by a needy poet and put to the cart and the
plough. He was not fit for such service, and his clownish master
could make nothing of him. But a youth stepped forth and asked
leave to try him. As soon as he was seated on his back the
horse, which had appeared at first vicious, and afterwards
spirit-broken, rose kingly, a spirit, a god, unfolded the
splendour of his wings, and soared towards heaven. Our own poet
Longfellow also records adventure of this famous steed in his
"Pegasus in Pound."
Shakespeare alludes to Pegasus in "Henry IV.," where Vernon
describes Prince Henry:
"I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuishes on this thighs, gallantly armed,
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship."
Guido
Reni Centaur and Dejanira.
Centaurs
These monsters were represented as men from the head to the
loins, while the remainder of the body was that of a horse. The
ancients were too fond of a horse to consider the union of his
nature with man's as forming a very degraded compound, and
accordingly the Centaur is the only one of the fancied monsters
of antiquity to which any good traits are assigned. The Centaurs
were admitted to the companionship of man, and at the marriage
of Pirithous with Hippodamia they were among the guests. At the
feast Eurytion, one of the Centaurs, becoming intoxicated with
the wine, attempted to offer violence to the bride; the other
Centaurs followed his example, and a dreadful conflict arose in
which several of them were slain. This is the celebrated battle
of the Lapithae and Centaurs, a favourite subject with the
sculptors and poets of antiquity.
But not all the Centaurs were like the rude guests of
Pirithous. Chiron was instructed by
Apollo and
Diana, and was
renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, music, and the art
of prophecy. The most distinguished heroes of Grecian story were
his pupils. Among the rest the infant Aesculapius was intrusted
to his charge by Apollo, his father. When the sage returned to
his home bearing the infant, his daughter Ocyrhoe came forth to
meet him, and at sight of the child burst forth into a prophetic
strain (for she was a prophetess), foretelling the glory that he
was to achieve. Aesculapius when grown up became a renowned
physician, and even in one instance succeeded in restoring the
dead to life. Pluto resented this, and Jupiter, at his request,
struck the bold physician with lightning, and killed him, but
after his death received him into the number of the gods.
Chiron was the wisest and justest of all the Centaurs, and at
his death Jupiter placed him among the stars as the
constellation Sagittarius.
THE PYGMIES
The Pygmies were a nation of dwarfs, so called from a Greek
word which means the cubit or measure of about thirteen inches,
which was said to be the height of these people. They lived near
the sources of the Nile, or according to others, in India. Homer
tells us that the cranes used to migrate every winter to the
Pygmies' country, and their appearance was the signal of bloody
warfare to the puny inhabitants, who had to take up arms to
defend their cornfields against the rapacious strangers. The
Pygmies and their enemies the Cranes form the subject of several
works of art.
Later writers tell of an army of Pygmies which finding
Hercules asleep, made preparations to attack him, as if they
were about to attack a city. But the hero, awaking, laughed at
the little warriors, wrapped some of them up in his lion's skin,
and carried them to Eurystheus.
Milton uses the Pygmies for a simile, "Paradise Lost," Book
I.:
"...like that Pygmaean race
Beyond the Indian mount, of fairy elves
Whose midnight revels by a forest side,
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees
(Or dreams he sees), while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course; they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear.
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."
Griffin fresco in the "Throne Room", Palace of
Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age
THE GRIFFIN, OR GRYPHON.
The Griffin is a monster with the body of a lion, the head and
wings of an eagle, and back covered with feathers. Like birds it
builds its nest, and instead of an egg lays an agate therein. It
has long claws and talons of such a size that the people of that
country make them into drinking-cups. India was assigned as the
native country of the Griffins. They found gold in the mountains
and built their nests of it, for which reason their nests were
very tempting to the hunters, and they were forced to keep
vigilant guard over them. Their instinct led them to know where
buried treasures lay, and they did their best to keep plunderers
at a distance. The Arimaspians, among whom the Griffins
flourished, were a one-eyed people of Scythia.
Milton borrows a simile from the Griffins, "Paradise Lose,"
Book II.:
"As when a Gryphon through the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill and moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold," etc.
