Arion

“ In their present form, the first two are translated from the German, Arion from Schlegel, and Ibycus from Schiller.
ARION
Arion was a famous musician, and dwelt in the court of Periander, king of Corinth, with whom he was a great favorite. There was to be a musical contest in Sicily, and Arion longed to compete for the prize. He told his wish to Periander, who besought him like a brother to give up the thought. "Pray stay with me," he said, "and be contented. He who strives to win may lose." Arion answered, "A wandering life best suits the free heart of a poet. ”

“ The three leaders of Romanticism, A. W. Schlegel, Tieck, and Novalis, all sang the praises of Arion, and somewhat later he was hymned in Danish by P. L. Möller. It was natural that the hearts of the Romanticists should be stirred by the legend of the poet-subduer of nature, who roused the enthusiasm of the very monsters of the sea, rode upon dolphins, was invulnerable, invincible, of immortal fame. He was their symbol, their hero. All their poetry is, in a certain sense, an attempt to expound the legend of Arion ”

“ Arion went to Italy with Periander, tyrant of Corinth, where he obtained immense riches by his profession. Wishing to revisit his native country, the sailors of the ship in which he embarked resolved to murder him, and get possession of his wealth. ”

“ As allegories abound, and as in fact there is a suspicion that the whole Romance may be only an allegory, an "Apotheosis of Poetry,"--the reader must keep open his internal eye.
Arion is the Spirit of Poetry as embodied in any age, whether in a single voice, or many. This the age always attempts to drown,--seldom with applause. The sailors are the exponents of an age, or its critics. In the case of Arion, they belonged to a certain tribe of Philistines,--not yet extinct.5 There is a deep significance in the fact, that they resolutely stopped their ears against the Poet's song. ”

“ Periander, however, disbelieved the story, and put Arion in ward, to prevent his leaving Corinth, while he watched anxiously for the return of the mariners. On their arrival he summoned them before him and asked them if they could give him any tiding of Arion. They returned for answer that he was alive and in good health in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was doing well. Thereupon Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the vessel: the men, astonished and detected in falsehood, could no longer deny their guilt. ”

“ See B. iv. c. 2.
2276 The people of Tarentum. See B. iii. c. 16.
2277 Ovid tells the story of Arion more fully, and in beautiful language, in the Fasti, B. ii. l. 92, et seq.
2278 A promontory in the south of Laconia, now Cape Matapan. See B. iv. c. 7. Solinus, c. 7, tells us that there was a temple of Arion of Methymna, situate on this spot, in which there was a figure of him seated on a dolphin’s back, and made of bronze; with an inscription stating that this wonderful circumstance took place in the 29th Olympiad, in which year Arion had been victorious in the Sicilian games. ”

“ The son was irritated at this, and threw Arion into prison. But when Arion's wife had informed Cleopatra of this, with her entreaty, that she would rebuke the child for what he had done, (for Arion was in great esteem with her,) Cleopatra informed the king of it. And Ptolemy sent for Hyrcanus, and told him that he wondered, when he was sent to him by his father, that he had not yet come into his presence, but had laid the steward in prison. ”

“ Arion entreated him, saying,—“I wish to make the people better and happier by the gift which the gods have given me. It is my duty to Apollo to sing in his honor.”
So Arion went to Sicily, and his music was so excellent and so sweet that he won the great prize. The gold and the laurel wreath were put on board the ship, and he embarked for home. Wind and wave were favorable, the sky was clear. He gave thanks to Apollo for his good fortune, and promised to offer sacrifices in the temple.
The wicked sailors, however, knew that Arion had a large amount of gold and jewels in his chests. ”

“ They answered glibly that they had seen that most fortunate of men at Tarentum making golden profits and applauded by all, his profession being to sing to the lyre; and that his stay was prolonged by reason of his popularity, [10] his profits, and his praises. As they were saying this, Arion sprang in safe and sound, just as he had stood on the ship's stern with his gold-embroidered robe and his famous lyre. ”

“ A story is related by Herodotus of a remarkable escape made by Arion at sea, which occurred during the reign of Alyattes, the father of Crœsus. We will give the story as Herodotus relates it, leaving the reader to judge for himself whether such tales were probably true, or were only introduced by Herodotus into his narrative to make his histories more entertaining to the Grecian assemblies to whom he read [Pg 109] them. Arion was a celebrated singer. ”

“ Periander, who disclosed the oracle’s answer to Thrasybulus, was the son of Cypselus, and sovereign lord of Corinth. As the Corinthians and Lesbians agree in relating, there happened to him a thing which was the most marvellous in his life, namely, the landing of Arion of Methymna on Taenarus, borne thither by a dolphin. This Arion was a lyre-player second to none in that age ”

“ If the Aryans, as some think, roamed the wide steppes of Russia or Central Asia with their flocks and herds before they plunged into the gloom of the European forests, they may have worshipped the god of the blue or cloudy firmament and the flashing thunderbolt long before they thought of associating him with the blasted oaks in their new home. ”

“ The higher consciousness is choice, and the most solemn and impressive symbol for physical pain and religious dread is found in the sensation of choking. The last head reveals to us the boundless region of comparative mythology. Here we read the unconscious literature of the Aryans, the sacred books of the race. It has the same physical basis as the terms for mental operations. The cardinal fact of the Aryan's simple existence was the ever-ending, ever-beginning struggle of the bright sun, eternal type of his own lot. ”

“ When we first hear of them, they had been living along the shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day they had packed their tents and they had wandered forth in search of a new home. Some of them had moved into the mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had lived among the peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and that is why we call them Aryans. Others had followed the setting sun and they had taken possession of the plains of Europe as I shall tell you when I give you the story of Greece and Rome.
For the moment we must follow the Aryans. ”

“ It chiefly interests us here as giving the latest word on the original Aryan mythology, which, twenty years ago, was going to give us the key to all the mythologies. Judging from Dr. Schrader’s results, the key has broken in the wards. He declines to grant a single god common to the whole of Aryan-speaking peoples.
The resemblances in names are reduced to two or three notably Zeus = Dyaus, and these are explained away without the resort to the hypothesis of a common worship of the early Aryans. Thus, of the great mythological myth of the sixties one great stronghold is taken. ”

“ Meanwhile another branch of the Aryan family had found its way into Italy, and there, in the eighth century before our era, had founded the city of Rome. It is noticeable that the pitch darkness in which the early doings of all the Aryans are lost often seems to flash into a spark of myth or legend at those moments when they come into contact with other races. ”

“ If we are to judge of the primitive religion of the European Aryans by comparing the religions of the different branches of the stock, the highest place in their pantheon must certainly be assigned to the oak. The result, then, of our inquiry is to make it probable that, down to the time of the Roman Empire and the beginning of our era, the primitive worship of the Aryans was maintained nearly in its original form in the sacred grove at Nemi, as in the oak woods of Gaul, of Prussia, and of Scandinavia ”

“ The Arians are rejoiced by any occurrence that gives them a pretext for railing at me; the orthodox Christians have the unblushing impudence to attempt to sit in judgment upon the actions of the emperor that rescued them from persecutions, and affect to be shocked thereby, just as if they were fit to judge his deeds or comprehend his policy; the implacable flamens hope to make such use of these accidents as to lead the world back to paganism without my aid. The Arians hate me because I would not permit them to establish a kingdom in the empire of which I was not to be the king. ”

“ Arius appears before us as a strange figure—a tall, gaunt man, wearing his hair in a tangled mass, with a wild look in his eyes, and restless convulsive movements in his limbs, ascetic in his habits, generally grave and silent, but capable of fierce excitement when fairly roused, and very attractive in the earnestness of his manner and the sweetness of his voice. ”

“ In this home-land, wherever it may have been, the Aryans lived in barbaric but not savage clans, tilling the soil and grazing their flocks and herds, workers in metal and skilled in many arts of life, a warlike folk who went forth to fight in chariots, a people able to govern and obey, to make laws and abide by them, a religious people earnest in the worship of the sun, and sky, and fire, and waters, and with pious faith in the divine spirits of their ancestors. ”

“ Thus the new theory made a great sensation at Alexandria, and it was not without much hesitation and delay that Alexander ventured to excommunicate his heterodox presbyter with his chief followers, like Pistus, Carpones, and the deacon Euzoius—all of whom we shall meet again. Arius was a dangerous enemy. His austere life and novel doctrines, his dignified character and championship of 'common sense in religion,' made him the idol of the ladies and the common people. ”

“ The Aryan settler lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred by the glory and mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so filled his mind, that when he praises any one of his Shining Gods, he can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the supreme ruler. Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater deities to be the One Supreme: "Neither gods nor men reach unto thee, O Indra!" ”

“ We have found anomalies among Aryans. We have seen the gens an odd, decaying institution. We have seen Greek families claim descent from various animals, said to be Zeus in disguise. We have found them tracing kinship and deriving names from the mother. We have found stocks with animal and vegetable names. We have found half-brothers and sisters marrying. We have noted prohibition to marry anyone of the same family name. All these institutions are odd, anomalous, decaying things among Aryans, and the more civilised the Aryans the more they decay. ”

“ The folklore of the early Aryans is largely composed of tales concerning heroes who had saved their people from the ravages of those fierce men of the North, the Touranians. Century after century the wandering hordes of the great northern plains hovered, like threatening clouds, along the boundaries of Iran, [3] looking across the mountains from their own arid and wind-swept abodes to the rich and pleasant hills and valleys of the South. ”

“ They have horses, but no cavalry; they use the horse, which is a comparatively recent addition to Aryan resources, to drag a rude fighting chariot into battle. The horse is still novel enough to be something of a terror in itself. For ordinary draught purposes, as{v1-178} in the quotation from the Iliad we have just made, oxen were employed.
The only priests of these Aryans are the keepers of shrines and sacred places. There are chiefs, who are heads of families and who also perform sacrifices, but there does not seem to be much mystery or sacramental feeling in their religion. ”

“ The noble inspector of sacrifices of the temple of Anion has not been deceived in his judgment; a ram's heart was in fact found in the pious breast of Rui. I heard distinctly the voice of the Divinity in the sanctuary, and strange indeed was the speech that met my ear. Wolves tore the sacred ram of Anion in his sanctuary on the other bank of the river, but the heart of the divine beast found its way into the bosom of the saintly Rui. A great miracle has been worked, and the Gods have shown a wonderful sign. ”

“ Hosius, Marcellus, Alexander, and others of the same party, seemed to have been stricken dumb by the clear, incisive, fearless, and uncompromising declarations of Arius. Only Athanasius seemed to preserve his marvelous self-possession, and laughed musically, while, in order to distract attention from the dangerous question which the old heretic seemed determined to bring up at every possible turn of the discussion, he cried aloud: "But hast thou not commonly taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three, and not one God, and thereby made thy heresy assume the complexion of polytheism? ”

“ But why may not the pro-ethnic Aryans, as well as the savages, have had at one stage of their development a fear of dead kindred?"—a question arising simply from the fact that Mr. Jevons cannot bring himself to believe that the ancient Aryans ever borrowed any of the savage practices of the peoples they conquered. But, so far as I am concerned, I have never suggested that the Aryans have been wholesale borrowers of all the nasty and unpleasant customs and beliefs which are now found to survive amongst the nations who speak an Aryan language. ”