CHAPTER XXVI.
ENDYMION- ORION-
Aurora
and TITHONUS- ACIS and GALATEA.
ENDYMION
ENDYMION was a beautiful youth who fed his flock on Mount
Latmos. One calm, clear night
Diana, the moon, looked down and
saw him sleeping. The cold heart of the virgin goddess was
warmed by his surpassing beauty, and she came down to him,
kissed him, and watched over him while he slept.
Another story was that
Jupiter bestowed on him the gift of
perpetual youth united with perpetual sleep. Of one so gifted we
can have but few adventures to record. Diana, it was said, took
care that his fortunes should not suffer by his inactive life,
for she made his flock increase, and guarded his sheep and lambs
from the wild beasts.
The story of Endymion has a peculiar charm from the human
meaning which it so thinly veils. We see in Endymion the young
poet, his fancy and his heart seeking in vain for that which can
satisfy them, finding his favourite hour in the quiet moonlight,
and nursing there beneath the beams of the bright and silent
witness the melancholy and the ardour which consume him. The
story suggests aspiring and poetic love, a life spent more in
dreams than in reality, and an early and welcome death.- S. G.
B.
Sebastiano Ricci Endymion and Selene
The "Endymion" of Keats is a wild and fanciful poem,
containing some exquisite poetry, as this, to the moon:
"...The sleeping kine
Couched in thy brightness dream of fields divine.
Innumerable mountains rise, and rise,
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes,
And yet thy benediction passeth not
One obscure hiding-place, one little spot
Where pleasure may be sent; the nested wren
Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken;" etc., etc.
Dr. Young, in the "Night Thoughts," alludes to Endymion thus:
"...These thoughts, O Night, are thine;
From thee they came like lovers' secret sighs,
While others slept. So Cynthia, poets feign,
In shadows veiled, soft, sliding from her sphere,
Her shepherd cheered, of her enamoured less
Than I of thee."
Fletcher, in the "Faithful Shepherdess," tells:
"How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest."
Daniel Seiter Diana next to the corpse of
Orion
ORION.
Orion was the son of
Neptune. He was a handsome giant and a
mighty hunter. His father gave him the power of wading through
the depths of the sea, or, as others say, of walking on its
surface.
Orion loved Merope, the daughter of OEnopion, king of Chios,
and sought her in marriage. He cleared the island of wild
beasts, and brought the spoils of the chase as presents to his
beloved; but as OEnopion constantly deferred his consent, Orion
attempted to gain possession of the maiden by violence. Her
father, incensed at this conduct, having made Orion drunk,
deprived him of his sight and cast him out on the seashore. The
blinded hero followed the sound, of a Cyclops' hammer till he
reached Lemnos, and came to the forge of Vulcan, who, taking
pity on him, gave him Kedalion, one of his men, to be his guide
to the abode of the sun. Placing Kedalion on his shoulders,
Orion proceeded to the east, and there meeting the sun-god, was
restored to sight by his beam.
After this he dwelt as a hunter with
Diana, with whom he was
a favourite, and it is even said she was about to marry him. Her
brother was highly displeased and often chid her, but to no
purpose. One day, observing Orion wading through the sea with
his head just above the water, Apollo pointed it out to his
sister and maintained that she could not hit that black thing on
the sea. The archer-goddess discharged a shaft with fatal aim.
The waves rolled the dead body of Orion to the land, and
bewailing her fatal error with many tears,
Diana placed him
among the stars, where he appears as a giant, with a girdle,
sword, lion's skin, and club. Sirius, his dog, follows him, and
the Pleiads fly before him.
The Pleiads were daughters of Atlas, and nymphs of Diana's
train. One day Orion saw them and became enamoured and pursued
them. In their distress they prayed to the gods to change their
form, and Jupiter in pity turned them into pigeons, and then
made them a constellation in the sky. Though their number was
seven, only six stars are visible, for Electra, one of them, it
is said left her place that she might not behold the ruin of
Troy, for that city was founded by her son Dardanus. The sight
had such an effect on her sisters that they have looked pale
ever since.
Mr. Longfellow has a poem on the "Occultation of Orion." The
following lines are those in which he alludes to the mythic
story. We must premise that on the celestial globe Orion is
represented as robed in a lion's skin and wielding a club. At
the moment the stars of the constellation, one by one, were
quenched in the light of the moon, the poet tells us
"Down fell the red skin of the lion
Into the river at his feet.
His mighty club no longer beat
The forehead of the bull; but he
Reeled as of yore beside the sea,
When blinded by OEnopion
He sought the blacksmith at his forge,
And climbing up the narrow gorge,
Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun."
Tennyson has a different theory of the Pleiads:
"Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow
shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."
Locksley Hall.
Byron alludes to the lost Pleiad:
"Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below."
See also Mrs. Hemans's verses on the same subject.
Adolphe-William
Bouguereau Aurore.
Aurora
and TITHONUS.
The goddess of the Dawn, like her sister the Moon, was at
times inspired with the love of mortals. Her greatest favourite
was Tithonus son of Laomedon, king of Troy. She stole him away,
and prevailed on Jupiter to grant him immortality; but,
forgetting to have youth joined in the gift, after some time she
began to discern, to her great mortification, that he was
growing old. When his hair was quite white she left his society;
but he still had the range of her palace, lived on ambrosial
food, and was clad in celestial raiment. At length he lost the
power of using his limbs, and then she shut him up in his
chamber, whence his feeble voice might at times be heard.
Finally she turned him into a grasshopper.
Memnon was the son of
Aurora and Tithonus. He was king of the
AEthiopians, and dwelt in the extreme east, on the shore of
Ocean. He came with his warriors to assist the kindred of his
father in the war of Troy. King Priam received him with great
honours, and listened with admiration to his narrative of the
wonders of the ocean shore.
The very day after his arrival, Memnon, impatient of repose,
led his troops to the field. Antilochus, the brave son of
Nestor, fell by his hand, and the Greeks were put to flight,
when Achilles appeared and restored the battle. A long and
doubtful contest ensued between him and the son of Aurora; at
length victory declared for Achilles, Memnon fell, and the
Trojans fled in dismay.
Aurora, who from her station in the sky had viewed with
apprehension the danger of her son, when she saw him fall,
directed his brothers, the Winds, to convey his body to the
banks of the river Esepus in Paphlagonia. In the evening Aurora
came, accompanied by the Hours and the Pleiads, and wept and
lamented over her son. Night, in sympathy with her grief, spread
the heaven with clouds; all nature mourned for the offspring of
the Dawn. The AEthiopians raised his tomb on the banks of the
stream in the grove of the Nymphs, and Jupiter caused the sparks
and cinders of his funeral pile to be turned into birds, which,
dividing into two flocks, fought over the pile till they fell
into the flames. Every year at the anniversary of his death they
return and celebrate his obsequies in like manner. Aurora
remains inconsolable for the loss of her son. Her tears still
flow, and may be seen at early morning in the form of dew-drops
on the grass.
Unlike most of the marvels of ancient mythology, there still
exist some memorials of this. On the banks of the river Nile, in
Egypt, are two colossal statues, one of which is said to be the
statue of Memnon. Ancient writers record that when the first
rays of the rising sun fall upon this statue a sound is heard to
issue from it, which they compare to the snapping of a
harp-string. There is some doubt about the identification of the
existing statue with the one described by the ancients, and the
mysterious sounds are still more doubtful. Yet there are not
wanting some modern testimonies to their being still audible. It
has been suggested that sounds produced by confined air making
its escape from crevices or caverns in the rocks may have given
some ground for the story. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, a late
traveller, of the highest authority, examined the statue itself,
and discovered that it was hollow, and that "in the lap of the
statue is a stone, which on being struck emits a metallic sound,
that might still be made use of to deceive a visitor who was
predisposed to believe its powers."
Francesco de Mura Aurora, goddess of the
morning and Tithonus, Prince of Troy
The vocal statue of Memnon is a favourite subject of allusion
with the poets. Darwin, in his "Botanic Garden," says:
"So to the sacred Sun in Memnon's fane
Spontaneous concords choired the matin strain;
Touched by his orient beam responsive rings
The living lyre and vibrates all its strings;
Accordant aisles the tender tones prolong,
And holy echoes swell the adoring song."
Book I., 1. 182.
Johann Heinrich The Elder Tischbein
Acis and Galatea
ACIS and GALATEA.
Scylla was a fair virgin of Sicily, a favourite of the
Sea-Nymphs. She had many suitors, but repelled them all, and
would go to the grotto of Galatea, and tell her how she was
persecuted. One day the goddess, while Scylla dressed her hair,
listened to the story, and then replied, "Yet, maiden, your
persecutors are of the not ungentle race of men, whom, if you
will, you can repel; but I, the daughter of Nereus, and
protected by such a band of sisters, found no escape from the
passion of the Cyclops but in the depths of the sea;" and tears
stopped her utterance, which when the pitying maiden had wiped
away with her delicate finger, and soothed the goddess, "Tell
me, dearest," said she, "the cause of your grief." Galatea then
said, "Acis was the son of Faunus, and a Naiad. His father and
mother loved him dearly, but their love was not equal to mine.
For the beautiful youth attached himself to me alone, and he was
just sixteen years old, the down just beginning to darken his
cheeks. As much as I sought his society, so much did the Cyclops
seek mine; and if you ask me whether my love for Acis or my
hatred of Polyphemus was the stronger, I cannot tell you; they
were in equal measure. O Venus, how great is thy power! this
fierce giant, the terror of the woods, whom no hapless stranger
escaped unharmed, who defied even Jove himself, learned to feel
what love was, and, touched with a passion for me, forgot his
flocks and his well-stored caverns. Then for the first time he
began to take some care of his appearance, and to try to make
himself agreeable; he harrowed those coarse locks of his with a
comb, and mowed his beard with a sickle, looked at his harsh
features in the water, and composed his countenance. His love of
slaughter, his fierceness and thirst of blood prevailed no more,
and ships that touched at his island went away in safety. He
paced up and down the sea-shore, imprinting huge tracks with his
heavy tread, and, when weary, lay tranquilly in his cave.
Alexandre Charles Guillemot The Loves of
Acis and Galatea
"There is a cliff which projects into the sea, which washes
it on either side. Thither one day the huge Cyclops ascended,
and sat down while his flocks spread themselves around. Laying
down his staff, which would have served for a mast to hold a
vessel's sail, and taking his instrument compacted of numerous
pipes, he made the hills and the waters echo the music of his
song. I lay hid under a rock by the side of my beloved Acis, and
listened to the distant strain. It was full of extravagant
praises of my beauty, mingled with passionate reproaches of my
coldness and cruelty.
"When he had finished he rose up, and, like a raging bull
that cannot stand still, wandered off into the woods. Acis and I
thought no more of him, till on a sudden he came to a spot which
gave him a view of us as we sat. 'I see you,' he exclaimed, 'and
I will make this the last of your love-meetings.' His voice was
a roar such as an angry Cyclops alone could utter. AEtna
trembled at the sound. I, overcome with terror, plunged into the
water. Acis turned and fled, crying, 'Save me, Galatea, save me,
my parents!' The Cyclops pursued him, and tearing a rock from
the side of the mountain hurled it at him. Though only a corner
of it touched him, it overwhelmed him.
"All that fate left in my power I did for Acis. I endowed him
with the honours of his grandfather, the river-god. The purple
blood flowed out from under the rock, but by degrees grew paler
and looked like the stream of a river rendered turbid by rains,
and in time it became clear. The rock cleaved open, and the
water, as it gushed from the chasm, uttered a pleasing murmur."
Nicolas Poussin Acis and Galatea
Thus Acis was changed into a river, and the river retains the
name of Acis.
Dryden, in his "Cymon and Iphigenia," has told the story of a
clown converted into a gentleman by the power of love, in a way
that shows traces of kindred to the old story of Galatea and the
Cyclops.
"What not his father's care nor tutor's art
Could plant with pains in his unpolished heart,
The best instructor, Love, at once inspired,
As barren grounds to fruitfulness are fired.
Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life."
Elsie Russell Acis and Galatea
