dite, protectress of lovers, born of the
sea-foam in the East near Cyprus. The clouds were no bodies of vaporized
water: they were cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking by
Hermes, the summer wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by
the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flitting
across the firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battle-field to
receive the souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty
mountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses the
divining-wand of the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. The
yellow-haired sun, Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his flaming
chariot; or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from
the sight of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole),
which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazing
funeral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a blood-stained bath; or,
as the fish-god, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters,
to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaethon, his rash,
inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot too
near the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither,
and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity,
in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorching
arrows, causing pestilence to spread over the land. Still other
conceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the wonderful
treasure-house, into which no one could look and live; and again it
was Ixion himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for violence
offered to Here, the queen of the blue air.

This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful and plausible,
it is, in its essential points, demonstrated. It stands on as firm a
foundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the undulatory theory in
molecular physics. It is philology which has here enabled us to read the
primitive thoughts of mankind. A large number of the names of Greek gods
and heroes have no meaning in the Greek language; but these names occur
also in Sanskrit, with plain physical meanings. In the Veda we find
Zeus or Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and Sarameias or Hermes,
meaning the breeze of a summer morning. We find Athene (Ahana), meaning
the light of daybreak; and we are thus enabled to understand why the
Greek described her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. There too
we find Helena (Sara