Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology Part 16

Mythologists pretend that Pluto is the earth, the natural powers and faculties of which are under his direction, so that he is monarch not only of all riches which come from thence, and are at length swallowed up by it, but likewise of the dead; for as all living things spring from the earth, so are they resolved into the principles whence they arose.

Proserpine is by them reputed to be the seed or grain of fruits or corn, which must be taken into the earth, and hid there before it can be nourished by it.

PLUTUS, the G.o.d of riches. Though Plutus be not an infernal G.o.d, yet as his name and office were similar to Pluto's, we shall here distinguish them, although both were G.o.ds of riches. Pluto was born of Saturn and Ops, or Rhea, and was brother of Jupiter and Neptune; but Plutus, the G.o.d of whom we here speak, was son of Jason or Jasion by Ceres. He is represented blind and lame, injudicious and fearful. Being lame, he confers estates but slowly: for want of judgment, his favors are commonly bestowed on the unworthy; and as he is timorous, so he obliges rich men to watch their treasures with fear. Plutus is painted with wings, to signify the swiftness of his retreat, when he takes his departure. Little more of him remains in story, than that he had a daughter named Euriba; unless the comedy of Aristophanes, called by his name, be taken into the account.

Aristophanes says that this deity, having at first a very clear sight, bestowed his favors only on the just and good: but that after Jupiter deprived him of vision, riches fell indifferently to the good and the bad. A design being formed for the recovery of his sight, Penia or poverty opposed it, making it appear that poverty is the mistress of arts, sciences, and virtues, which would be in danger of perishing if all men were rich; but no credit being given to her remonstrance, Plutus recovered his sight in the temple of aesculapius, whence the temples and altars of other G.o.ds, and those of Jupiter himself, were abandoned, the whole world sacrificing to Plutus alone.

PROSERPINE, the daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, was educated with Minerva and Diana. By reason of this familiar intercourse, each chose a place in the island of Sicily for her particular residence. Minerva look the parts near Himera; Diana those about Syracuse; and Proserpine, in common with her sister G.o.ddesses, enjoyed the pleasant fields of Enna. Near at hand are groves and gardens, surrounded with mora.s.ses and a deep cave, with a pa.s.sage under ground, opening towards the north. In this happy retirement was Proserpine situated, when Pluto, pa.s.sing in his chariot through the cave, discovered her whilst busy in gathering flowers, with her attendants, the daughters of Ocea.n.u.s. Proserpine he seized, and having placed her in his chariot, carried her to Syracuse, where the earth opening, they both descended to the infernal regions.

She had not been long there when the fame of her charms induced Theseus and Pirithous to combine for the purpose of carrying her thence; but in this they failed. When Ceres, who was disconsolate for the loss of her daughter, discovered where she was, Jupiter upon her repeated solicitations, promised that Proserpine should be restored, provided she had not yet tasted any thing in h.e.l.l. Ceres joyfully descended, and Proserpine, full of triumph, prepared for her return, when lo!

Ascalaphus, son of Acheron and Gorgyra, discovered that he saw Proserpine, as she walked in the garden of Pluto, eat some grains of a pomegranate, upon which her departure was stopped. At last, by the repeated importunity of her mother to Jupiter, she extorted as a favor, in mitigation of her grief, that Proserpine should live half the year in heaven, and the other half in h.e.l.l.

Proserpine is represented under the form of a beautiful woman, enthroned, having something stern and melancholy in her aspect. Statius has found out a melancholy employment for her, which is, to keep a sort of register of the dead, and to mark down all that should be added to that number. The same poet mentions another of her offices of a more agreeable nature: he says, when any woman dies who had been a remarkably good wife in this world, Proserpine prepares the spirits of the best women in the other to make a procession to welcome her into Elysium with joy, and to strew all the way with flowers where she is to pa.s.s.

Some represent Proserpine, Luna, Hecate, and Diana, as one; the same G.o.ddess being called Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Hecate in h.e.l.l: and they explain the fable of the moon, which is hidden from us in the hemisphere of the countries beneath, just so long as it shines in our own. As Proserpine was to stay six months with her mother, and six with her husband, she was the emblem of the seed corn, which lies in the earth during the winter, but in spring sprouts forth, and in summer bears fruit.

The mythological sense of the fable is this: the name of Proserpine, or Persephone, among the Egyptians, was used to denote the change produced in the earth by the deluge, which destroyed its former fertility, and rendered tillage and agriculture necessary to mankind.

PARCae, _or_ FATES, were G.o.ddesses supposed to preside over the accidents and events, and to determine the date or period of human life. They were reckoned by the ancients to be three in number, because all things have a beginning, progress, and end. They were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis, and sisters to the Horae, or Hours.

Their names, amongst the Greeks, were Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis, and among the Latins, Nona, Decima, Morta. They are called Parcae, because, as Varro thinks, they distributed to mankind good and bad things at their birth; or, as the common and received opinion is, because they spare n.o.body. They were always of the same mind, so that though dissensions sometimes arose among the other G.o.ds, no difference was ever known to subsist among these three sisters, whose decrees were immutable. To them was intrusted the spinning and management of the thread of life; Clotho held the distaff, Lachesis turned the wheel, and Atropos cut the thread.

Plutarch tells us they represented the three parts of the world, viz.

the firmament of the fixed stars, the firmament of the planets, and the s.p.a.ce of air between the moon and the earth; Plato says they represented time past, present, and to come. There were no divinities in the pagan world who had a more absolute power than the Fates. They were looked upon as the dispensers of the eternal decrees of Jupiter, and were all of them sometimes supposed to spin the party-colored thread of each man's life. Thus are they represented on a medal, each with a distaff in her hand. The fullest and best description of them in any of the poets, is in Catullus: he represents them as all spinning, and at the same time singing, and foretelling the birth and fortunes of Achilles, at Peleus'

wedding.

An ingenious writer, in giving the true mythology of these characters, apprehends them to have been, originally, nothing more than the mystical figure or symbols which represented the months of January, February, and March, among the Egyptians, who depicted them in female dresses, with the instruments of spinning and weaving, which was the great business carried on in that season. These images they called _Parc_, which signifies _linen cloth_, to denote the manufacture produced by this temporary industry. The Greeks, ever fertile in invention, and knowing nothing of the true sense of these allegorical figures, gave them a turn suitable to their genius.

FURIES, EUMENIDES _or_ DIRae, were the daughters of Nox and Acheron.

Their names were Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. As many crimes were committed in secret, which could not be discovered from a deficiency of proof, it was necessary for the judges to have such officers as by wonderful and various tortures should force from the criminals a confession of their guilt. To this end the Furies, being messengers both of the celestial and terrestrial Jupiter, were always attendant on their sentence.

In heaven they were called Dirae, (_quasi Deorum irae_) or ministers of divine vengeance, in punishing the guilty after death; on earth _Furies_, from that madness which attends the consciousness of guilt; _Erynnis_, from the indignation and perturbations they raise in the mind; _Eumenides_, from their placability to such as supplicate them, as in the instance of Orestes, and Argos, upon his following the advice of Pallas, and in h.e.l.l, _Stygian dogs_.

The furies were so dreaded that few dared so much as to name them. They were supposed to be constantly hovering about those who had been guilty of any enormous crime. Thus Orestes, having murdered his mother Clytemnestra, was haunted by the Furies. dipus, indeed, when blind and raving, went into their grove, to the astonishment of all the Athenians, who durst not so much as behold it. The Furies were reputed so inexorable, that if any person polluted with murder, incest, or any flagrant impiety, entered the temple which Orestes had dedicated to them in Cyrenae, a town of Arcadia, he immediately became mad, and was hurried from place to place, with the most restless and dreadful tortures.

Mythologists have a.s.signed to each of these tormentresses their proper department. Tisiphone is said to punish the sins arising from hatred and anger; Megaera those occasioned by envy; and Alecto the crimes of ambition and l.u.s.t. The statues of the Furies had nothing in them originally different from the other divinities. It was the poet aeschylus who, in one of his tragedies, represented them in that hideous manner which proved fatal to many of the spectators. The description of these deities by the poet pa.s.sed from the theatre to the temple: from that time they were exhibited as objects of the utmost horror, with Terror, Rage, Paleness, and Death, for their attendants; and thus seated about Pluto's throne, whose ministers they were, they awaited his orders with an impatience congenial to their natures.

The Furies are described with snakes instead of hair, and eyes inflamed with madness, brandishing in one hand whips and iron chains, and in the other torches, with a smothering flame. Their robes are black, and their feet of bra.s.s, to show that their pursuit, though slow, is steady and certain. As they attended at the thrones of the Stygian and celestial Jupiter, they had wings to accelerate their progress through the air, when bearing the commands of the G.o.ds: they struck terror into mortals, either by war, famine, pestilence, or the numberless calamities incident to human life.

NOX, _or_ NIGHT, the oldest of the deities, was held in great esteem among the ancients. She was even reckoned older than Chaos. Orpheus ascribes to her the generation of G.o.ds and men, and says, that all things had their beginning from her. Pausanias has left us a description of a remarkable statue of this G.o.ddess. "We see," says he, "a woman holding in her right hand a white child sleeping, and in her left a black child likewise asleep, with both its legs distorted; the inscription tells us what they are, though we might easily guess without it: the two children are Death and Sleep, and the woman is Night, the nurse of them both."

The poets fancied her to be drawn in a chariot with two horses, before which several stars went as harbingers; that she was crowned with poppies, and her garments were black, with a black veil over her countenance, and that stars followed in the same manner as they preceded her; that upon the departure of the day she arose from the ocean, or rather from Erebus, and encompa.s.sed the earth with her sable wings. The sacrifice offered to Night was a c.o.c.k because of its enmity to darkness, and rejoicing at the light.

SOMNUS, _or_ SLEEP, one of the blessings to which the pagans erected altars, was said to be son of Erebus and, Night, and brother of Death.

Orpheus calls Somnus the happy king of G.o.ds and men; and Ovid, who gives a very beautiful description of his abode, represents him dwelling in a deep cave in the country of the Cimmerians. Into this cavern the sun never enters, and a perpetual stillness reigns, no noise being heard but the soft murmur caused by a stream of the river Lethe, which creeps over the pebbles, and invites to slumber; at its entrance grow poppies, and other soporiferous herbs. The drowsy G.o.d lies reclined on a bed stuffed with black plumes, the bedstead is of ebony, the covering is also black, and his head is surrounded by fantastic visions.

We learn from Statius, that the attendants and guards before the gates of this palace were Rest, Ease, Indolence, Silence, and Oblivion; as the ministers or attendants within are a vast mult.i.tude of Dreams in different shapes and att.i.tudes. Ovid teaches us who were the supposed governors over these, and what their particular districts or offices were. The three chiefs of all are Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos, who inspire dreams into great persons only: Morpheus inspires such dreams as relate to men, Phobetor such as relate to other animals, and Phantasos such as relate to inanimate things. They have each their particular legions under them, to inspire the common people with the sort of dreams which belong to their province.

MINOS was son of Jupiter and Europa, and brother of Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. After the death of his father, the Cretans, who thought him illegitimate, would not admit him as a successor to the kingdom, till he persuaded them it was the divine pleasure he should reign, by praying Neptune to give him a sign, which being granted, the G.o.d caused a horse to rise out of the sea, upon which he ascended the throne.

Nothing so much distinguished him as the laws he enacted for the Cretans, which obtained him the name of one of the greatest legislators of antiquity. To confer the more authority on these laws, Minos retired to a cave of Mount Ida, where he feigned that Jupiter, his father, dictated them to him; and every time he returned thence a new injunction was promulgated by him. Homer calls him Jupiter's disciple; and Horace says he was admitted to the secrets of that G.o.d. Strabo and Ephorus contend, that Minos dwelt nine years in retirement in this cave, and that it was afterwards called the cave of Jupiter.

Antiquity entertained the highest esteem for the inst.i.tutes of Minos: and the testimonies of ancient authors on this head are endless. It will, therefore, suffice to observe that Lycurgus travelled to Crete on purpose to collect the laws of Minos for the benefit of the Lacedemonians; and that Josephus, partial as he was to his own nation, has owned, that Minos was the only one among the ancients who deserved to be compared to Moses. He was reputed the judge of the supreme court of Pluto, aeacus judged the Europeans; the Asiatics and Africans fell to the lot of Rhadamanthus; and Minos, as president of the infernal court, decided the differences which arose between these two judges. He sat on a throne by himself, and wielded a golden sceptre.

RHADAMANTHUS was the son of Jupiter and Europa, and brother of Minos. He was one of the three judges of h.e.l.l. It is said that Rhadamanthus, having killed his brother, fled to chalia in Botia, where he married Alcmena, widow of Amphitryon. Some make Rhadamanthus a king of Lycia, who on account of his severity and strict regard to justice, was said to have been one of the three judges of h.e.l.l, where his province was to judge such as died impenitent. It is agreed, that he was the most temperate man of his time, and was exalted amongst the law-givers of Crete, who were renowned as good and just men. The division a.s.signed to Rhadamanthus in the infernal regions was Tartarus.

aeACUS, son of Jupiter and aegina, was king of nopia, which, from his mother's name, he called aegina. The inhabitants of that country being destroyed by a plague, aeacus prayed to his father that by some means he would repair the loss of his subjects, upon which Jupiter, in compa.s.sion changed all the ants within a hollow tree into men and women, who, from a Greek word signifying _ants_, were called _Myrmidons_, and actually were so industrious a people as to become famous for their ships and navigation.

The meaning of which fable is this: The pirates having destroyed the inhabitants of the island, excepting a few, who hid themselves in caves and holes for fear of a like fate, aeacus drew them out of their retreats and encouraged them to build houses, and sow corn; taught them military discipline, and how to fit out and navigate fleets, and to appear not like ants in holes, but on the theatre of the world, like men. His character for justice was such, that in a time of universal drought he was nominated by the Delphic oracle to intercede for Greece, and his prayers were heard. The pagan world also believed that aeacus, on account of his impartial justice, was chosen by Pluto, with Minos and Rhadamanthus, one of the three judges of the dead, and that it was his province to judge the Europeans, in which capacity he held a plain rod as a badge of his office.

CHAPTER IX.

_The condemned in h.e.l.l._

TYPHUS, a giant of enormous size, was, according to Hesiod, son of Erebus, or Tartarus and Terra. His stature was prodigious. With one hand he touched the east, and with the other the west, while his head reached to the stars. Hesiod has given him an hundred heads of dragons, uttering dreadful sounds, and eyes which darted fire; flame proceeded from his mouths and nostrils, his body was encircled with serpents, and his thighs and legs were of a serpentine form. When he had almost discomfited the G.o.ds, who fled from him into Egypt, Jupiter alone stood his ground, and pursued the monster to Mount Caucasus in Syria, where he wounded him with his thunder; But Typhus, turning upon him, took the G.o.d prisoner, and after having cut, with his own sickle, the muscles of his hands and feet, threw him on his shoulders, carried him into Cilicia, and there imprisoned him in a cave, whence he was delivered by Mercury, who restored him to his former vigor. Typhus afterwards fled into Sicily, where the G.o.d overwhelmed him with the enormous ma.s.s of mount aetna.

Historians report, that Typhus was brother of Osiris, king of Egypt, who in the absence of that monarch, formed a conspiracy to dethrone him; and that having accordingly put Osiris to death, Isis, in revenge of her husband, raised an army, the command of which she gave to Orus her son, who vanquished and slew the usurper: hence the Egyptians, in abhorrence of his memory, painted him under their hieroglyphic characters in so frightful a manner. The length of his arms signified his power, the serpents about him denoted his address and cunning, the scales which covered his body, expressed his cruelty and dissimulation, and the flight of the G.o.ds into Egypt showed the precautions taken by the great to screen themselves from his fury and resentment. Mythologists take Typhus and the other giants, to have been the winds; especially the subterraneous, which cause earthquakes to break forth with fire, occasioned by the sulphur enkindled in the caverns under Campania, Sicily, and the aeolian islands.

t.i.tYOS, _or_ t.i.tYUS, was son of Jupiter and Elara. He resided in Panopea, where he became formidable for rapine and cruelty, till Apollo killed him for offering violence to his mother Latona. After this he was thrown into Tartarus, and chained down on his back, his body taking up such a compa.s.s as to cover nine acres. In this posture two vultures continually preyed upon his liver, which constantly grew with the increase of the moon, that there might never be wanting matter for eternal punishment.

PHLEGYAS, son of Mars and Chryse, daughter of Halmus, was king of Lapithae, a people of Thessaly. Apollo having seduced his daughter Coronis, Phlegyas, in revenge, set fire to the temple of that G.o.d at Delphi, for which sacrilege the deity killed him with his arrows, and then cast him into Tartarus; where he was sentenced to sit under a huge rock, which threatened him with perpetual destruction.

IXION was son of Phlegyas, king of the Lapithae in Thessaly. He married Dia, daughter of Deioneus, whose consent he obtained by magnificent promises, but, failing afterwards to perform them, Deioneus seized on his horses. Ixion dissembled his resentment, and inviting Deioneus to a banquet, received him in an apartment previously prepared, from which, by withdrawing a door, his father-in-law was thrown into a furnace of fire. Stung, however, with remorse, and universally despised, Ixion was overpowered with frenzy, till Jupiter at length re-admitted him to favor, and not only took him into heaven, but intrusted him also with his counsels. So ungrateful, notwithstanding, did Ixion become, as to attempt the chast.i.ty of Juno herself. This so incensed Jupiter that the angry deity hurled him into Tartarus, and fixed him on a wheel encompa.s.sed with serpents, which was doomed to revolve without intermission.

SALMONEUS, king of Elis, was son of aeolus, (not he who was king of the winds, but another of the name) and Anarete. Not satisfied with an earthly crown, Salmoneus panted after divine honors; and, in order that the people might esteem him a G.o.d, he built a brazen bridge over the city, and drove his chariot along it, imitating, by this noise, Jupiter's thunder; at the same time throwing flaming torches among the spectators below, to represent his lightning, by which many were killed.

Jupiter, in resentment of this insolence, precipitated the ambitious mortal into h.e.l.l, where, according to Virgil, aeneas saw him.

SISIPHUS, _or_ SISYPHUS, a descendant of aeolus, married Merope, one of the Pleiades, who bore him Glaucus. He resided at Ephyra, in Peloponnesus, and was conspicuous for his craft. Some say he was a Trojan secretary, who was punished for discovering secrets of state; whilst others contend that he was a notorious robber killed by Theseus.

However, all the poets agree that he was punished in Tartarus for his crimes, by rolling a great stone to the top of a hill, which constantly recoiling and rolling down again, incessantly renewed his fatigue, and rendered his labor endless.

Ovid, in one pa.s.sage, seems to describe Sisyphus as bending under the weight of a vast stone; "but the more common way of speaking of his punishment," says the author of Polymetis, "agrees with the fine description of him in Homer, where we see him laboring to heave the stone that lies on his shoulders up against the side of a steep mountain, and which always rolls precipitately down again before he can get it to rest upon the top. Lucretius makes him only an emblem of the ambitious; as Horace too seems to make Tantalus only an emblem of the covetous."

BELIDES, _or_ DANAIDES: They were the fifty daughters of Danaus, son of Belus, surnamed the _ancient_. Some quarrel having arisen between him and Egyptus his brother, it determined Danaus on his voyage into Greece; but Egyptus having fifty sons, proposed a reconciliation, by marrying them to his brother's daughters. The proposal was agreed to, and the nuptials were to be celebrated with singular splendor, when Danaus, either in resentment of former injuries, or being told by the oracle that one of his sons-in-law should destroy him, gave to each of his daughters a dagger, with an injunction to stab her husband. They all executed the order but Hypermnestra, the eldest, who spared the life of Lyncaeus. These Belides, for their cruelty, were consigned to the infernal regions, there to draw water in sieves from a well, till they had filled, by that means, a vessel full of holes.

TANTALUS, king of Phrygia, was the son of Jupiter and Plota. Whether it was for this cause, the violation of hospitality, or for his pride, his boasting, his want of secrecy, his insatiable covetousness, his imparting nectar and ambrosia to mortals, or for all of them together, since he has been accused of them all, Tantalus was thrown into Tartarus, where the poets have a.s.signed him a variety of torments. Some represent a great stone as hanging over his head, which he apprehended to be continually falling, and was ever in motion to avoid it. Others describe him as afflicted with constant thirst and hunger, though the most delicious banquets were exposed to his view; one of the Furies terrifying him with her torch whenever he approached towards them. Some exhibit him standing to the chin in water, and whenever he stooped to quench his thirst, the water as constantly eluding his lip. Others, with fruits luxuriously growing around him, which he no sooner advanced to touch, than the wind blew them into the clouds.

CHAPTER X.

_Monsters of h.e.l.l._

HARPYIae, _or_ HARPIES, were three in number, their names, Celaeno, Aello, and Ocypete. The ancients looked on them as a sort of Genii, or Daemons.