Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable

Ch. 19: Endymion, Orion, Aurora, g*****a

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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 favorite hour in the quiet moonlight, and

nursing there beneath the beams of the bright and silent witness

the melancholy and the ardor which consumes 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. Bulfinch

"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."

"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 enamored less

Than I of thee."

"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."

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 sea shore. The blinded

hero followed the sound of the 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

favorite, 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 though 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 enamored, 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 numbers 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."

"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

Aurora, the goddess of the Dawn, like her sister the Moon, was at

times inspired with the love of mortals. Her greatest favorite

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

honors, 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

victor 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 flame. 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 will 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."

"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."

Scylla was a fair virgin of Sicily, a favorite of the Sea-Nymphs.

She had many suitors, but repelled them all, and would go to the

grotto of g*****a, 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." g*****a 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 for Polyphemus was the

stronger, I cannot tell you; they were in equal measure. Oh,

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.

"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, g*****a, 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 honors 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."

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