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And such a thing could be – such a thing was! For at the kiss of Love the Sleep of Death began to slowly pass away. Back came the color to her lips and cheeks; her heart fluttered and beat; she breathed; she opened her eyes. And then she woke in his arms, glad and alive.

This is the story of Cupid and Psyche, of which there is nothing more to tell except that Psyche’s troubles had a very happy and glorious ending indeed. For Jupiter, to make her a fitting wife for Cupid, received her into heaven, and on her arrival gave her with his own hands a goblet of nectar to drink – the wine of the gods, which makes all who taste of it immortal. Even Venus became reconciled to her, and the wedding-feast of Cupid and Psyche is one of the most famous festivals in the whole history of the skies.

I said a little way back that most of these stories have some sort of meaning, and people have found more meaning in the story of Psyche than in most of them. “Psyche” is the Greek for “soul,” and I have already told you that “Cupid” means “love.” So the story may show how the soul of man is loved by heaven; but how it has to pass through many sufferings and trials, and at last through death, before it reaches immortal happiness.

“Psyche” also means “butterfly,” and Psyche herself, after she was received into heaven, always appears in pictures with a butterfly’s wings. It seems curious at first that the same word means “soul” and “butterfly”; but it is not so curious when one thinks a little of the story. Just as the caterpillar that crawls on the earth seems to die when it becomes a chrysalis and then rises again as a winged butterfly, so man, bound down to earth like a caterpillar, seems to die, and then lives again, only changed.

In some very old pictures you may see a butterfly flying out from between a man’s lips. That means that he is dying, and that his “Psyche,” his “soul” or “butterfly,” is leaving him.

MERCURY AND IRIS

VERY often, in these stories, you have met with Mercury, and have heard that he was Jupiter’s chief messenger. The office he held made him so busy with all the affairs of heaven, earth, and Hades, that there is scarcely a story without Mercury in it; and it is therefore time to know something more about him.

Now you must know that the people who, ages ago, made these stories about the gods and goddesses in whom they believed, thought that the earth (which you know to be a globe) was a large island surrounded by a boundless ocean. The sky – so they imagined – was a solid dome, on which the sun, moon, and stars made their various journeys. Every morning Phœbus drove the chariot of the Sun forth from the stable beyond the ocean in the east, across the blue dome, till it sank beyond the western ocean, and then passed underground back to the eastern stable, so as to be ready to start again. The Moon, that is to say, the chariot of Diana, also had her proper course across the dome, and so had every planet and star. And this dome, or sky, with all its wonders, was supported on the shoulders of Atlas, a gigantic Titan, condemned to this task (some say) for having helped the giants in their war against the gods.

This Atlas was a great king, and his kingdom stretched westward till it touched the ocean which surrounds the earth. And that is why this part of the sea is called the Ocean of Atlas, or Atlantic Ocean. The name of his kingdom was Mauritania, now called Morocco, where he owned a thousand flocks, and orchards with apples of gold. And he had seven beautiful daughters, whose names were Alcyone, Asterope, Celæno, Electra, Maia, Merope, and Taygeta. Six of these married gods; Merope alone married a mortal. After their death they were honored by being set as stars in the sky, where you may often see the seven sisters clustered together in a beautiful constellation called the Pleiades. But it is very difficult to see Merope, because she married a mortal instead of a god, and therefore shines dimly. If you can see more than six of the seven sisters you have good eyes.

Of all the Pleiades Maia is the brightest, for she was chosen by Jupiter. She had a son named Mercury, and a promising child he must have been. For on the very day he was born he stole the oxen of King Admetus of Thessaly, although (as you may remember) Apollo himself was then the king’s herdsman. And Mercury not only stole the oxen, but ran away with Apollo’s quiver of arrows. Proud of this feat, he stole the zone of Venus, the sword of Mars, and the hammer of Vulcan; and at last he carried off the very scepter of Jupiter. Instead of punishing him, however, Jupiter was so delighted with his cleverness and impudence that he made Mercury his chief messenger and cup-bearer. He also gave him a winged cap, wings for his heels, a short sword, and a scepter called caduceus– a rod round which two living serpents coiled. The winged cap was called petasus, and whenever he put it on he became invisible; the wings for his heels were called talaria, and made him able to fly faster than lightning to any place he pleased. The caduceus was a magic wand. It first belonged to Apollo, who used to drive the flocks of King Admetus with it. But when Mercury invented the lyre, he gave the lyre to Apollo in exchange for the caduceus. The lyre became Apollo’s favorite instrument, and Mercury used the caduceus to drive the flocks of dead souls to Hades, for that was one of his duties. He could also send people to sleep with it, and could bring back the dead to life by touching them with its point. You will always know a picture or statue of Mercury from his caduceus, and from the wings on his cap and heels.

He needed to be quick, active, and clever, for he had a great deal to do – so much that Jupiter relieved him of the office of cup-bearer and gave it to a young Phrygian shepherd, named Ganymede. This is what Mercury had to do. He had to carry all Jupiter’s messages, which, of course, obliged him to be almost everywhere at once; he had to see that the laws of the great council of the gods were properly carried out; to keep Jupiter’s secrets; to know everything that was going on all over the world; to conduct the souls of the dead to Hades – each one of which things was enough, one would think, to take up his whole time. However, he managed to do it all, and a great deal more, and was not very particular how. For it must be owned that Mercury, though a god, was not above lying and cheating whenever it suited his purpose. He was wonderfully eloquent, and could make anybody believe anything. And he was the patron, that is to say, the friend and protector, of merchants, travelers, orators, and thieves.

Juno also had a chief messenger – a goddess named Iris. The path of Iris from heaven to earth and back again is the rainbow; so whenever you see a rainbow you may know that Iris is bringing a message down from Juno. Indeed “Iris” means “Rainbow.”

I ought to tell you that the planet nearest to the sun is called Mercury, and that Mercury is another name for the metal quicksilver.

NEPTUNE

IF you look back at the second of these stories – that of Jupiter and Juno – you will read that “when Jupiter became god and king of the whole world, he made his two brothers, Neptune and Pluto, kings under him. He made Neptune god and king of the sea: Pluto he made god and king of Hades.” You will read the story of Pluto presently. This is about Neptune, of whom there is much less to say. You have already read, in the story of Minerva, how Neptune contended with the goddess of Wisdom for the honor of naming the capital of Attica, and how he produced the first horse by striking the earth with his trident– that is to say, with his scepter in the shape of a fork with three prongs, by which he may always be known. You will remember that the honor was given to Minerva, because she produced the olive, the emblem of peace, and therefore better for mankind than the horse, the emblem of war. This decision, however, did not satisfy Neptune. So when the people of Argolis also built a capital city, he disputed with Minerva for the honor of naming that. Jupiter, however, settled the matter by giving it a name which had nothing to do with either god or goddess – that is to say, Trœzene – and by making Minerva its patroness and Neptune its patron. But this did not please Neptune either. He wanted to have some city or piece of dry land all to himself, which was natural enough for a god who had nothing of his own but the sea. So he went to law with Apollo for the possession of the isthmus of Corinth. The case was tried before Briareus, the Cyclops with fifty heads and a hundred hands, as judge. Briareus decided that Neptune should have the isthmus, all except a certain headland, which was given to Apollo.

But Neptune was not even yet satisfied. What was the sea and one little isthmus when Jupiter had all earth and air and sky, and when Pluto had the still greater world below? Then Jupiter ruled over the immortal gods and living men and women, and Pluto over all the dead; but Neptune had neither gods nor men, dead or alive, for subjects – only fishes and sea-monsters, creatures really not worth the ruling. It is true he had all sorts of treasures got from shipwrecks; but what is the good of gold and jewels at the bottom of the sea? And he had many wonderful and beautiful things belonging to him by nature – pearls, and sea-weed, and coral, and amber; but he had no use for them. At any rate he was thoroughly discontented, and thought Jupiter’s division of the universe exceedingly unfair.

It so happened that, while he was in this envious state of mind, Juno was furious against Jupiter for throwing Vulcan out of heaven, and Apollo was seeking revenge for the death of Æsculapius. So these three – Neptune, Juno, and Apollo – made a conspiracy against Jupiter. Their plot was to excite all the gods and goddesses to rebel against their king, to take him by surprise, to imprison him forever, and to get – I do not know what they meant to get by it; most likely, like all rebels, they did not know that themselves. However, in one way and another, by promises, and by working up all sorts of grievances, they drew nearly every god and goddess into their treason, of which Jupiter, in his trust of them all, had not the faintest suspicion. He went on ruling and feasting, little guessing that his own wife, his own brother, and the whole of his court, were secret traitors. Even Minerva, in spite of her wisdom and her old quarrel with Neptune, is said to have joined in the plot against her own father, though this is hard to believe.

The plotters made only one mistake – they forgot that traitors must expect treachery. There was a certain sea-nymph named Thetis, married to a mortal, and she, having been admitted into the plot, tried to think of some way of saving the king of gods and men. But what could one sea-nymph do? If she went and told Jupiter, he would not believe her; he would most likely only punish her for lying and slander. So, in her trouble, she went for advice to the giant Briareus, who had fifty heads to think with instead of only one. Having thought with them all, one after another, he said at last, “Leave it to me.”

At length the time came for carrying out the plot. The conspirators held a great meeting, and, having talked themselves into a great state of rage against Jupiter, marched in a body into the council chamber of Olympus, where they expected to find him at that time of day sleeping upon his throne, and at their mercy. And so indeed they did find him. But, to their dismay, there sat beside him a monstrous and terrible giant, with a hundred huge hands and fifty yawning mouths, and a hundred eyes wide awake and rolling. And so terrified were they by the unexpected sight, that they stood rooted to the spot by fear; and when Jupiter woke up and saw how matters were, they could only confess their treason and pray for pardon.

Thus Jupiter learned the lesson that a king must not venture to go to sleep, even on his throne, unless he is guarded by at least a hundred faithful hands, fifty shrewd brains, and a hundred vigilant eyes, which cannot happen often, since a Briareus is not to be found every day. But Jupiter thought that the plotters, or at least their ringleaders, deserved a lesson also. He thought it better to hush up the conspiracy, and not to make another scandal by punishing Juno. But he banished Apollo from Olympus for nine years as a punishment for having killed the Cyclopes, as you have read in the story of Marsyas; and he condemned Neptune, by way of hard labor, to build the walls of the famous city of Troy. And so the great Olympian conspiracy came to an end, and Jupiter remained more powerful than ever.

Neptune is chiefly known by his trident or three-pronged scepter, by means of which he causes earthquakes, and can bring up islands from the bottom of the sea. He had a great many sea-gods and sea-goddesses under him, his queen-consort being Amphitrite. There were Oceanus and Tethys, the father and mother of all the Rivers; Triton, a strange god, in shape half man and half fish, who makes storms and calms by blowing a shell as if it were a horn; Proteus, who foretells the future to anybody who can find him on the sea-shore, catch him, and chain him up so that he cannot change his shape and escape into the sea; Nereus, with his long blue hair and beard. There were also the Nereids, his fifty daughters, among whom was Thetis; the Oceanides or sea-nymphs; and the Sirens – mermaids who drew sailors to their island by their wonderful singing, and then fell upon them and devoured them. There were the Harpies also: three horrible monsters, each with a woman’s face, a vulture’s body, and feet and hands having sharp claws for toes and fingers – these were the whirlwinds. But it is impossible to make a list of the wonders of the sea.

HADES

PART I. – THE KING AND QUEEN OF THE DEAD

 
“Not far from Enna’s walls there lies a lake,
Pergus by name: than which not Cayster’s stream
Is fuller of the songs of gliding swans.
A woodland girds it with a veil of leaves
To shelter from the heat; where the fresh soil
Bears purple flowers, and keeps perpetual spring.”
 

SO the poet Ovid describes the pleasant place where the nymph Proserpine, the beautiful daughter of Ceres, goddess of the fruits of the earth, was one day with her companions, gathering violets and lilies. All were trying who should gather the most, and were very happy and merry. In her search for flowers, Proserpine wandered out of sight of her companions, who went on gathering and singing and laughing: till suddenly their merriment was stopped by a piercing scream for help; and then by another and another; till the cries grew fainter and fainter, and were at last heard no more.

Where was Proserpine? They were sure it was her cries they had heard: and, though they searched through the whole wood, they could not find her anywhere. All they could do was to go to Ceres, and tell her that her daughter had disappeared, and could not be found for all their seeking.

Ceres, who is the best and kindest of all the goddesses, loved her daughter dearly, and was disconsolate at the news. Though always so busy with seed-time and harvest, fields and orchards, she set out to seek for her lost Proserpine; or at least to find out what had become of her. “Mother!” had been Proserpine’s last cry. Ceres wandered, in her search, over the whole world, – nay, she explored the very depths of the sea, – but all in vain. She questioned gods, goddesses, nymphs, fauns, and satyrs, men and women; but none could give her any news of Proserpine. She never slept, but set fire to the pine-trees on the top of Mount Ætna to serve as torches, so that she might see to search by night as well as by day. She forgot to eat and drink, and, though the goddess of Corn and Plenty, she would have perished of hunger and thirst had not an old woman named Baubo, though ignorant who she was, taken pity on her, and given her some hot porridge, which Ceres drank eagerly – so eagerly that a boy who saw her drinking jeered at her for a glutton. This was too much for the goddess, in her despair, to bear. She for once lost her temper, and threw the rest of the hot porridge over the grinning boy, whom it turned into a spotted lizard for laughing at a stranger’s needs and an old woman’s charity.

At length, worn out and desperate, the poor mother wandered back to Sicily, so changed that nobody knew her. Nor could she say who she was, for grief had made her dumb. In this state she arrived at a place called Cyane, near to where Proserpine had been lost. And here one day, while looking at a pool (for she never ceased to look everywhere) she saw her daughter’s girdle lying at the bottom of the water. Then, giving up her last spark of hope, she found her voice again, and mourned aloud. Her grief was terrible to hear and see. She cursed the earth, so that it no longer brought forth corn: she broke the ploughs: the seeds perished in the fields, and the cattle in their stalls.

But one day Ceres, roaming along the banks of the river Alpheus, plainly heard its waters say: —

“We have seen Proserpine! She is unhappy; but she is a great queen: she is the wife of Pluto, the King of the Underworld.”

Then Ceres knew that Proserpine had been carried off by the great and dreadful god Pluto, to whom, when Jupiter divided the world, had been given Hades – the underground kingdom of ghosts and of the souls of the dead: the greatest kingdom of all. It was true: – Pluto had seen Proserpine while she was gathering flowers in the wood, had snatched her up into his chariot with black horses, and, in spite of her struggles and cries for help, had driven off with her to his underground palace through a cavern which he opened with a touch of his two-pronged scepter: the cavern then filled up with water, and became the lake of Cyane, at the bottom of which Ceres had found the girdle. As soon as she could recover her senses, Ceres flew up to heaven, threw herself before Jupiter, and passionately demanded that her daughter should be given back to her.

It was a difficult question for Jupiter to settle. He pitied Ceres with all his heart, and wished to help her. But high reasons of state made him unwilling to offend Pluto: and then, who had ever heard of anybody coming back from Hades? That would be against all the laws of gods and men.

But there were three mysterious beings, of whom I have not yet told you, called the Fates – three sisters who rule over life and death, and whose will even the gods of heaven, even Jupiter himself, must obey. Somewhere or other they sit and spin with their distaffs the histories of nations and the lives and deaths of men. Nothing can happen without their leave; and nobody can prevent from coming to pass whatever the Fates decree. So Jupiter inquired of the Fates if it was their will that Proserpine should return from the kingdom of the grave.

“She may return,” said they. “But not if she has eaten or drunk in the kingdom of Pluto. If she has tasted the food of death, then she may not return.”

When Pluto received this message he was greatly troubled; for, though he had carried off Proserpine in that cruel way, he very deeply loved her, and hoped that, if he could keep her with him, he should at last conquer her sorrow and get her to love him in return. He had made her his wife and queen, and could not bear the thought of losing her. He anxiously inquired of every ghost and spirit in Hades if Queen Proserpine had tasted food, if ever so little; but not one had seen her touch even bread or water since she had been brought below. It was Pluto’s turn to lose Proserpine. Ceres was already rejoicing in the thought of seeing her long-lost daughter. Proserpine was just about to return to earth, when there stepped forth one of Pluto’s courtiers, named Asculaphus, and accused Proserpine of having tasted the juice of seven pomegranate seeds. And the Fates knew that it was true.

And Proserpine also knew it, and cried aloud for sorrow that she should never see her mother again; and her cry turned the treacherous, tale-bearing Asculaphus into a hooting owl. But this did not undo the work of those seven fatal pomegranate seeds. Even the Fates were filled with pity; even the heart of Pluto was touched by the mother’s and the daughter’s despair. The Fates could not change their decree. But it was settled that, though Proserpine must continue to be the wife of Pluto and the Queen of Hades, she should be allowed to spend six months out of every year on earth with Ceres. And that is the reason of summer and winter. It is summer when Ceres is happy with her daughter, and makes the earth rejoice with flowers and fruit and corn. It is winter when she is left alone, and Proserpine goes back to Pluto until next spring. Proserpine is the beauty and joy of the earth, which seems to die in winter, but only to come to life again. And she is the beauty of death besides. You will remember what you read in the story of Psyche about the beauty of Proserpine.

It was Ceres who taught men to plow, harrow, sow, and reap; and they were very grateful to her everywhere. The worship of Ceres, under many names, was the chief part of the religion of ancient times. You will know her, from pictures and statues, as a noble and stately goddess, crowned with a garland of corn, holding a lighted torch, sometimes standing in a chariot drawn by flying dragons. I have said she had many names, one of the most famous being Demeter, which means “Mother Earth”; and “Bona Dea,” that is to say, “the Good Goddess,” was another.

Proserpine, as Queen of Hades, became a very strange and mysterious goddess indeed. One of her names is Hecate, and under that name she rules over magic. She often wears a veil, and a crown of stars; and, like Pluto, carries the scepter with two prongs, differing from Neptune’s trident, which has three.

Pluto was a dark and gloomy god. No temples were ever built to him, and only black animals were sacrificed upon his altars. But he was just, although pitiless and stern. He sits upon a throne of sulphur in his underground palace, from which flow the four rivers of Hades – Cocytus, the river of Lamentation; Acheron, the river of Sorrow; Lethe, the river of Forgetfulness; and Phlegethon, the river of Fire. On his left hand sits Proserpine, near to whom stand the Furies, three fiends with snakes instead of hair; on his right stand the Fates spinning; at his feet lies the three-headed dog, Cerberus; and the Harpies hover over him, waiting for orders.

On the whole, it is not strange that Proserpine should be glad when the time for her six months’ visit to her mother comes round.