The Greek Myths, Volume 1 Read Online Free PDF

75) was the Carian counterpart of the Egyptian god Thoth, inventor of letters, with his crane-like ibis; and Hermes was Thoth’s early Hellenic counterpart (see 162. s ). That Simonides and Epicharmus added new letters to the alphabet is history, not myth; though exactly why they did so remains doubtful. Two of the additions, xi and psi , were unnecessary, and the removal of the aspirate (H) and digamma (F) impoverished the canon.
    7 . It can be shown that the names of the letters preserved in the Irish Beth-luis-nion , which are traditionally reported to have come from Greece and reached Ireland by way of Spain (see 132. 5 ), formed an archaic Greek charm in honour of the Arcadian White Goddess Alphito who, by Classical times, had degenerated into a mere nursery bogey. The Cadmean order of letters, perpetuated in the familiar ABC, seems to be a deliberate mis-arrangement by Phoenician merchants; they used the secret alphabet for trade purposes but feared to offend the goddess by revealing its true order.
    This complicated and important subject is discussed at length in The White Goddess ( Chapters 1–15 and 21 ).
    8 . The vowels added by the priests of Apollo to his lyre were probably those mentioned by Demetrius, an Alexandrian philosopher of the first century B . C ., when he writes in his dissertation On Style :
    In Egypt the priests sing hymns to the Gods by uttering the seven vowels in succession, the sound of which produces as strong a musical impression on their hearers as if the flute and lyre were used… but perhaps I had better not enlarge on this theme.
    This suggests that the vowels were used in therapeutic lyre music at Apollo’s shrines.

85
    NARCISSUS
    N ARCISSUS was a Thespian, the son of the blue Nymph Leiriope, whom the River-god Cephisus had once encircled with the windings of his streams, and ravished. The seer Teiresias told Leiriope, the first person ever to consult him: ‘Narcissus will live to a ripe old age, provided that he never knows himself.’ Anyone might excusably have fallen in love with Narcissus, even as a child, and when he reached the age of sixteen, his path was strewn with heartlessly rejected lovers of both sexes; for he had a stubborn pride in his own beauty.
    b . Among these lovers was the nymph Echo, who could no longer use her voice, except in foolish repetition of another’s shout: a punishment for having kept Hera entertained with long stories while Zeus’s concubines, the mountain nymphs, evaded her jealous eye and made good their escape. One day when Narcissus went out to net stags, Echo stealthily followed him through the pathless forest, longing to address him, but unable to speak first. At last Narcissus, finding that he had strayed from his companions, shouted: ‘Is anyone here?’
    ‘Here!’ Echo answered, which surprised Narcissus, since no one was in sight.
    ‘Come!’
    ‘Come!’
    ‘Why do you avoid me?’
    ‘Why do you avoid me?’
    ‘Let us come together here!’
    ‘Let us come together here!’ repeated Echo, and joyfully rushed from her hiding place to embrace Narcissus. Yet he shook her off roughly, and ran away. ‘I will die before you ever lie with me!’ he cried.
    ‘Lie with me!’ Echo pleaded.
    But Narcissus had gone, and she spent the rest of her life in lonely glens, pining away for love and mortification, until only her voice remained. 1
    c . One day, Narcissus sent a sword to Ameinius, his most insistent suitor, after whom the river Ameinius is named; it is a tributary of the river Helisson, which flows into the Alpheius. Ameinius killed himself on Narcissus’s threshold, calling on the gods to avenge his death.
    d . Artemis heard the plea, and made Narcissus fall in love, though denying him love’s consummation. At Donacon in Thespia he came upon a spring, clear as silver, and never yet disturbed by cattle, birds, wild beasts, or even by branches dropping off the trees that shaded it; and as he cast himself down, exhausted, on the