Zoological Mythology Volume I Part 19

"Nox abiit, oriturque Aurora. Palilia poscor, Non poscor frustra, si favet alma Pales.

Alma Pales, faveas pastoria sacra canenti; Prosequor officio si tua festa pio.

Certe ego de vitulo cinerem, stipulasque fabales, Saepe tuli plena februa casta, manu."

The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and as a means of purification. As to the excrements of the cow, they are still used to form the so-called _eau de millefleurs_, recommended by several pharmacop?ias as a remedy for cachexy.[511]

I have noticed above the myth of Herakles, in which, having pa.s.sed the sea upon the golden cup, he finds the oxen upon the sh.o.r.e. These oxen are thus described by Theokritos, in the myth of King Augeias, as the child of the sun. The sun, says Theokritos, granted to his son the honour of being richer than all other men in herds. All these herds are healthy, and multiply without limit, always becoming better. Among the bulls, three hundred have white legs (like the alba of morning), two hundred are red (like the sun's rays), with curved horns. These bulls are to be used for purposes of reproduction; besides them there are twelve sacred to the sun, which s.h.i.+ne like swans. One of them is superior to all the rest in size, and is called a star, or Phaethon (the luminous, an epithet given to Helios, the sun, in the _Odyssey_, the guider of the chariot of the sun, who, after finis.h.i.+ng his diurnal course, is unable to rein in the horses, and is precipitated with the chariot into the water, in order that the burning horses may not set fire to the world. Instead of solar oxen, which draw the chariot, and fall, at evening, into the nocturnal marsh, we find in this myth the chariot drawn by horses overturned into the waves; but the Phaethon, the very luminous and excellent ox, as represented by Theokritos, justifies our identification of the two mythical episodes of the ox and of the horse which falls into the water). The bull Phaethon of Theokritos sees Herakles, and, taking him for a lion, rushes upon him and endeavours to wound him with his horns. The sun, as a golden-haired hero, is a very strong lion (Herakles, Samson); as a golden-horned hero, he is a very strong bull; enclosed in the cloud, they roar and bellow. The two images of the sun-lion and of the sun-bull are now in harmony and now in discordance, and fight with one another. In the _Ramaya?am_ we found the two brother-heroes Ramas and Lakshma?as, an epic form of the two Acvinau, represented respectively as a bull and a lion. In the h.e.l.lenic fables we frequently find the lion and the bull together, and afterwards in discordance, as happens in the legend of the two brother-heroes. In aesop and in Avia.n.u.s, the bull (perhaps the moon) fleeing from the lion (_i.e._, from the sun in its monstrous evening or autumnal form of a lion), enters the hiding-place of the goat (the moon in the grotto of night), and is insulted and provoked by it. In another aesopian fable, on the contrary, it is the lion who fears the horns of the bull, and induces him to part with them, in order that the bull may become his prey.[512] In yet another aesopian fable taken from Syntipa, the bull kills the lion, while asleep, with his horns. In Phaedrus, the wild boar with his tusks, the bull with his horns, and the a.s.s with kicks, put an end to the old and infirm lion. In Phaedrus's fable of the ox and the a.s.s drawing together, the ox falls inert upon the ground when he loses his horns. Aristoteles, in the third book on the Parts of Animals, censures the Momos of aesop, who laughs at the bull because he has his horns on his forehead instead of on his arms, showing that if the bull had his horns on any other part of his body, they would be a useless weight, and would impede his other functions without aiding him in anything. The ox and the lion were also painted together in Christian churches.[513]

To continue the legend of the solar hero and the oxen, we find again in Herakles, as employed among the herds in the service of King Augeias, the sun, the usual hostler-hero; he is not only to guard the herds well, but in one day to cleanse them thoroughly, and make them s.h.i.+ne.

Defrauded of the price by Augeias, he kills him, and ravages all his country. In the same way, in Homer, Apollo guards, for a stipulated price, the herds of King Laomedon upon Mount Ida, and is cheated of his reward. In the same way, Hermes takes the herds of King Admetos to pasture; he leads them to browse near the herds of Apollo, from whom he steals a hundred bulls and twelve cows, preventing the dogs from barking (as Herakles does when he leads away Geryon's oxen). This Hermes, this G.o.d Mercury, G.o.d of merchants, this merchant and robber, is the same as the skilful and cunning thief of the stories who carries off horses, draught oxen, caskets, and ear-rings from the king; he is the hero-thief; but a shade distinguishes him from the monster brigand or Vedic demoniacal Pa?is; the hero who hides himself and the monster that hides things both do a furtive action. When Hermes leads away the herds stolen from the solar G.o.d, the sun, he also takes care to fasten branches of trees to their tails, which, by sweeping the road, shall destroy the track of the bulls and cows that have been led away. The shepherd Battos plays the spy, although, as the price of his silence, Hermes has promised him a white cow (the moon, and perhaps Battos himself, the spy, is the moon). Hermes tests him, by disguising himself and promising him a bull and a cow if he speaks. Battos speaks, and Hermes punishes him by transforming him into a stone:--

"Vert.i.t In durum silicem, qui nunc quoque dicitur index."[514]

This G.o.d Mercury, who steals the bulls from Apollo (as Herakles leads away the oxen of Geryon), is the divine form of the thief. His demoniacal form, is--Cacus, the son of Vulcan (as the Vedic V?itras is the son of Tvash?ar), who vomits fire; a giant who envelops himself in darkness, in Virgil; three-headed (like the Vedic monster), in Propertius;[515] who inhabits in the Aventine forest a cavern full of human bones (like the monster of fairy tales); who thunders (flammas ore sonante vomit), who fights with rocks and trunks of trees, in Ovid[516] (like the heroes in the Hindoo, Slavonic, German, and Homeric tradition); who steals the cows from Herakles, and hides their footprints by dragging them backwards into the cavern, in Livy; who also tells us that the cows in the cavern low, wis.h.i.+ng for the bulls from whom they are separated (as in the Vedic hymns). The hero, hearing them, finds the cavern, overturns with a great noise the rock which five pair of oxen yoked together could scarcely have moved (like the Marutas who break the rock, like Indras who splits the crag open), and with the three-knotted club (trinodis) kills the monster and frees the cows. The solar hero who at evening leads away oxen or cows, or who at morning steals them from the stable, is a skilful robber who has acted meritoriously, and marries, in reward, the princess aurora; the cloudy or gloomy monster who steals the solar cows to shut them up in the cavern, whence he then throws out smoke and flames, is an infamous criminal. The divine thief steals almost out of playfulness, either to show his craftiness or to prove his valour; the demoniacal thief steals because of his malevolent character, and instinct to devour what he steals, as does the fabled worm of the river Indus (the Vedic Sindhus, or heavenly ocean), who draws into the abyss and devours the thirsty oxen who go to drink.[517]

The monster of the clouds who whistles and thunders only terrifies; the G.o.d who whistles and thunders in the cloud, on the other hand, is _par excellence_ a celestial musician; his musical instrument, the thunder, astonishes us by its marvels,[518] and makes stones and plants tremble, that is, makes stones and plants move, especially celestial ones (_i.e._, cloud-mountains and cloud-trees); it draws after it the wild animals (of the heavenly forest), tames and subdues them. The bellowing bull terrifies the lion himself. We, therefore, also read in Nonnos,[519] that Dionysos gives a bull in reward to aeagros, who has won in the compet.i.tion of song and of the lyre, whilst he reserves a hirsute he-goat for him who loses; on this account we find on the capitals of columns in old Milanese churches, calves and bulls represented as playing on the lyre.[520] It is a variation of the myth of the a.s.s and the lyre, which has the same meaning. The bull and the a.s.s, for the same reason, are found represented together, because they bellow and bray (like Christian Corybantes) near the cradle of the new-born G.o.d, in order to hide, by their noise, his birth from the old king or deity who is to be dethroned.[521] The conch of Bhimas, the elephant-horn of Orlando, the Greek war-bugle tauraia, by means of which armies were moved, derived their character and their name from the mythical bull, the thundering G.o.d. The voice of the bull is compared in Euripides to the voice of Zeus;[522] the music which pleases the heroes is certainly not the air of the _Casta diva_; it is the braying of the a.s.s,[523] the roar of the lion, the bellowing of the bull, who occupies the first place in the heavens, and has occupied us so long, because the supreme G.o.d took his form, after having carried off Europe. Zeus left on the earth his divine form, and the more generally preferred heroic form of a bull took him up to heaven:--

"Litoribus tactis stabat sine cornibus ullis Juppiter, inque deum de bove versus erat.

Taurus init c?lum."[524]

We thus, after a long pilgrimage in the fields of tradition, return to the Vedic bull Indras, from whom we started, and to his female form, which, having a human nature, became a cow, and being a cow, a.s.sumed a divine shape:--

"Quae bos ex homine, ex bove facta Dea."[525]

FOOTNOTES:

[483] According to Eustatius, "Io gar he selene kata ten ton Argeton dialekton."

[484] Cfr. Pott, _Studien zur griechischen Mythologie_, Leipzig, Teubner, 1859; and c.o.x, the work quoted before.

[485] _Dionysiakon_, i. 45, and following; iii. 306, and following.

[486] _Metamorphoseon_, iv. 754.

[487] In England, as I have already noticed, the bull or ox is sacred to St Luke; in Russia, to the saints Froh and Laver. In Sicily, the protector of oxen is San Cataldo, who was bishop of Taranto. (For the notices relating to Sicilian beliefs concerning animals, I am indebted to my good friend Giuseppe Pitre.) In Tuscany, and in other parts of Italy, oxen and horses are recommended to the care of St Antony, the great protector of domestic animals. In the rural parts of Tuscany, it was the custom, on the 17th of February, to lead oxen and horses to the church-door, that they might be blessed. Now, to save trouble, only a basket of hay is carried to be blessed; which done, it is taken to the animals that they may eat it and be preserved from evil. On Palm Sunday, to drive away every evil, juniper is put into the stables in Tuscany.

[488] Taurous pammelanai, in the _Odyssey_; the commentator explains that the bulls are black because they resemble the colour of water.

[489] Kelainefes-nefelegereta Zeus; _Odyssey_, xiii. 147 and 153.

[490]

Signatus tenui media inter cornua nigro Una fuit labes; c?tera lactis erant.

Ovidius, _De Arte Amandi_.

[491] In _Diodoros_, Hammon loves the virgin Amalthea, who has a horn resembling that of an ox. The goat and the cow in the lunar and cloudy myth are the same; and on this account we find them both in connection with the apple-tree, a vegetable form, and with the cornucopia, since both are seers, and spies, and guides. The golden doe is a variation of the same lunar myth.

[492] _Argonantikon_, iii. 410, 1277.

[493] Nonnos, _Dionysiakon_, xi. 113 and following.

[494] _Orestes_, 1380.

[495] _Ergazomenous Boas._--In the twelfth book of his _History of Animals_, aelianos writes: "Among the Phrygians, if any one kills a working ox, he atones for it with his life." And Varro, _De Re Rustica_: "Bos socius hominum in rustico opere et Cereris minister. Ab hoc antiqui ita ma.n.u.s abstineri voluerunt ut capite sanxerint si quis occidisset."

[496] _Scriptores Historiae Augustae_, Lampridius, in the life of Heliogabalus.

[497] vii. 3.

[498] _Fasti_, iii. 800.

[499] Cfr. the chapter on the Hare.

[500] Plutarch, in the Life of Marcellus, Arrianos and Appianos among the Greeks, Livy, Cicero (De Divinatione), Pliny the elder, Julius Capitolinus, Julius Obsequens among the Latins.

[501] _eba kai tauros an hulan_, xiv. 43. In Theokritos, the proverb is used to intimate that he is gone to other and perfidious loves; he, too, is a traitor.

[502] _Rerum gestarum_, xxii.--Cfr. the episode of the ox which lets itself fall into the marsh or swamp, in the various versions of the first book of the _Pancatantram_.--The astrologers placed the brain under the protection of the moon, and the heart under that of the sun; Celoria, _La Luna_, Milano, 1871.

[503] Kadmeion Basileas egeinato; _Phoinissai_, 835.

[504] _Boiotia._

[505] _Metam._, iii. 10.--Cfr. Nonnos, _Dionys._, iv. 290, and following.

[506] Or, on the path of the sun in the sky.

[507] In an unpublished Piedmontese story, which is very widely spread, the girl carried off by robbers escapes from their hands, and hides in the trunk of a tree.

[508] _De Quadrupedibus Bisulcis_, i.

[509] _De Vocabulis_, i., quoted by Aldrovandi.

[510] _Fasti_, iv. 721.

[511] Cfr. Ott. Targioni Tozzetti, _Lezioni di Materia Medica_, Firenze, 1821.

[512] In an aesopian fable taken from Syntipa, which corresponds to the first of Lokman, two bulls combine against the lion, and resist him; the lion excites them against each other, and tears them to pieces. In the sixth fable of Aphtonios, the bulls are three; in the eighteenth of Avia.n.u.s, they are four. The lion already knew the motto of kings: "Divide et impera."

[513] Durandus, _Rational._ i. 3, quoted by Du Cange.

[514] Ovidius, _Metam._, ii. 706.

[515] Per tria part.i.tos qui dabat ora sonos; _Ecl._ iv.

[516] _Fasti_, i. 550.

[517] Phile, _Stichoi peri zoon idiotetos_, lix.