The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911). Bulfinch Thomas
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is thickest, there he rushes in without hesitation, without question as to which side is right. In battle array he is resplendent, – on his head the gleaming helmet and floating plume, on his arm the leathern shield, in his hand the redoubtable spear of bronze. Well-favored, stately, swift, unwearied, puissant, gigantic, he is still the foe of wisdom, the scourge of mortals. Usually he fights on foot, sometimes from a chariot drawn by four horses, – the offspring of the North Wind and a Fury. In the fray his sons attend him, – Terror, Trembling, Panic, and Fear, – also his sister Eris, or Discord (the mother of Strife), his daughter Enyo, ruiner of cities, and a retinue of bloodthirsty demons. As typifying the chances of war, Mars is, of course, not always successful. In the battles before Troy, Minerva and Juno bring him more than once to grief; and when he complains to Jupiter, he is snubbed as a renegade most hateful of all the gods.27 His loved one and mistress is the goddess of beauty herself. In her arms the warrior finds repose. Their daughter Harmonia is the ancestress of the unquiet dynasty of Thebes. The favorite land of Mars was, according to Homer, the rough, northerly Thrace. His emblems are the spear and the burning torch; his chosen animals are haunters of the battle field, – the vulture and the dog.
Fig. 11. Ares Ludovisi
29. Vulcan (Hephæstus), son of Jupiter and Juno, was the god of fire, especially of terrestrial fire, – volcanic eruption, incendiary flame, the glow of the forge or the hearth. But as the fires of earth are derived from that of heaven, perhaps the name Hephæstus (burning, shining, flaming) referred originally to the marvelous brilliance of the lightning. Vulcan was the blacksmith of the gods, the finest artificer in metal among them. His forge in Olympus was furnished not only with anvils and all other implements of the trade, but with automatic handmaidens of silver and gold, fashioned by Vulcan himself. Poets later than Homer assign to Vulcan workshops under various volcanic islands. From the crater of Mount Ætna poured forth the fumes and flames of his smithy. He built the dwellings of the gods; he made the scepter of Jove, the shields and spears of the Olympians, the arrows of Apollo and Diana, the breastplate of Hercules, the shield of Achilles.
Fig. 12. Ares (Mars)
He was lame of gait, – a figurative suggestion, perhaps, of the flickering, unsteady nature of fire. According to his own story,28 he was born halt; and his mother, chagrined by his deformity, cast him from Heaven out of the sight of the gods. Yet, again,29 he says that, attempting once to save his mother from Jupiter's wrath, he was caught by the foot and hurled by the son of Cronus from the heavenly threshold: "All day I flew; and at the set of sun I fell in Lemnos, and little life was left in me." Had he not been lame before, he had good reason to limp after either of these catastrophes. He took part in the making of the human race, and in the special creation of Pandora. He assisted also at the birth of Minerva, to facilitate which he split Jupiter's head open with an ax.
Fig. 13. The Forge of Vulcan
His wife, according to the Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony, is Aglaia, the youngest of the Graces; but in the Odyssey it is Venus. He is a glorious, good-natured god, loved and honored among men as the founder of wise customs and the patron of artificers; on occasion, as a god of healing and of prophecy. He seems to have been, when he chose, the cause of "inextinguishable laughter" to the gods, but he was by no means a fool. The famous god of the strong arms could be cunning, even vengeful, when the emergency demanded.
Fig. 14. Apollo in the Vatican
30. Apollo, or Phœbus Apollo, the son of Jupiter and Latona, was preëminently the god of the sun. His name Phœbus signifies the radiant nature of the sunlight; his name Apollo, perhaps, the cruel and destructive heat of noonday. Soon after his birth, Jupiter would have sent him to Delphi to inculcate righteousness and justice among the Greeks; but the golden god Apollo chose first to spend a year in the land of the Hyperboreans, where for six continuous months of the year there is sunshine and spring, soft climate, profusion of herbs and flowers, and the very ecstasy of life. During this delay the Delphians sang pæans, – hymns of praise, – and danced in chorus about the tripod (or three-legged stool), where the expectant priestess of Apollo had taken her seat. At last, when the year was warm, came the god in his chariot drawn by swans, – heralded by songs of springtide, of nightingales and swallows and crickets. Then the crystal fount of Castalia and the stream Cephissus overflowed their bounds, and mankind made grateful offerings to the god. But his advent was not altogether peaceful. An enormous serpent, Python, had crept forth from the slime with which, after the flood, the Earth was covered; and in the caves of Mount Parnassus this terror of the people lurked. Him Apollo encountered and after fearful combat slew, with arrows, weapons which the god of the silver bow had not before used against any but feeble animals, – hares, wild goats, and such game. In commemoration of this illustrious conquest, he instituted the Pythian games, in which the victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot, or in the chariot race, should be crowned with a wreath of beech leaves. Apollo brought not only the warm spring and summer, but also the blessings of the harvest. He warded off the dangers and diseases of summer and autumn; and he healed the sick. He was patron of music and of poetry. Through his oracle at Delphi, on the slopes of Parnassus in Phocis, the Pythian god made known the future to those who consulted him. He was a founder of cities, a promoter of colonization, a giver of good laws, the ideal of fair and manly youth, – a pure and just god, requiring clean hands and pure hearts of those that worshiped him. But though a god of life and peace, the far-darter did not shun the weapons of war. When presumption was to be punished, or wrong righted, he could bend his bow and slay with the arrows of his sunlight. As in the days of his youth he slew the Python, so, also, he slew the froward Tityus, and so the children of Niobe. While Phœbus Apollo is the Olympian divinity of the sun, fraught with light and healing, spiritual, creative, and prophetic, he must not be confounded with a god of the older dynasty, Helios (offspring of Hyperion, Titanic deity of light), who represented the sun in its daily and yearly course, in its physical rather than spiritual manifestation. The bow of Apollo was bound with laurel in memory of Daphne, whom he loved. To him were sacred, also, many creatures, – the wolf, the roe, the mouse, the he-goat, the ram, the dolphin, and the swan.30
31. Shelley's Hymn of Apollo.
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, —
Waken me when their mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.
Fig. 16. Apollo
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of night.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers
With
Iliad, 5, 590. See also 21, 395.
Iliad, 18, 395.
Iliad, 1, 390.
On the birth of Apollo, his adventures, names, festivals, oracles, and his place in literature and art, see Commentary. For other particulars, see sections on