Ixion

“ Ganymede ran forward, and dashed open the door. Ixion was alone.
‘Seize him!’ said Jove.
‘Juno is not here,’ said Mercury, with an air of blended congratulation and disappointment.
‘Never mind,’ said Jove; ‘seize him! He kept me waiting for dinner.’
‘Is this your hospitality, Ægiochus?’ exclaimed Ixion, in a tone of bullying innocence. ‘I shall defend myself.’
‘Seize him, seize him!’ exclaimed Jupiter. ‘What! do you all falter? Are you afraid of a mortal?’
‘And a Thessalian?’ added Ganymede. ”

“ Ixion shook his head.
‘It must be a widow, then,’ continued Cupid. ‘Who ever heard before of such a piece of work about a widow!’
‘Have pity upon me, dread Cupid!’ exclaimed the King of Thessaly, rising suddenly from the ground, and falling on his knee before the God. ‘Thou art the universal friend of man, and all nations alike throw their incense on thy altars. Thy divine discrimination has not deceived thee. I am in love; desperately, madly, fatally enamoured. The object of my passion is neither my own wife nor another man’s. ”

“ Between Ixion and the rail two horses nearly on even terms with him; in front Satanelli on Hotspur, and Blashford, the second choice, carrying the black and white “magpie” colors; on Ixion’s whip side a beautiful brown filly, with gray and magenta, the filly so tired she was ready to lean against Ixion’s heaving flank. ”

“ But far above, in the pure heaven, Zeus beheld the deed of Ixion, and the tidings were sent abroad to all the gods of Olympos, and to all the sons of men, that Ixion had slain Hesioneus by craft and guile. A horror of great blackness fell on the heaven above and the earth beneath for the sin of which Zeus alone can purge away the guilt. Once more Dia made ready her husband's chariot, and once more he sped on his fiery journey; but all men turned away their faces, and the trees bowed their scorched and withered heads to the ground. ”

“ And Ganymede, too?’
‘Oh! quite shocking, I assure you, sire,’ said the beautiful cupbearer, leaning over the chair of Jove with all the easy insolence of a privileged favourite. ‘Really, sire, if Ixion is to go on in the way he does, either he or I must quit.’
‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed Jupiter. ‘But I can believe anything of a man who keeps me waiting for dinner. Two and three make five.’
‘It is Juno that encourages him so,’ said Ganymede. ”

“ We mortals grow callous.’
‘So I have heard. How very odd!’ So saying, the Goddess glided away and saluted Mars, who at that moment entered the hall. Ixion was presented to the military hero, who looked fierce and bowed stiffly. The King of Thessaly turned upon his heel. Minerva opened her album, and invited him to inscribe a stanza. ”

“ As a punishment, Ixion was seized with madness, until Zeus purified him of his crime and admitted him as a guest to Olympus. Ixion abused his pardon by trying to seduce Hera; but the goddess substituted for herself a cloud, by which he became the father of the Centaurs. Zeus bound him on a fiery wheel, which rolls unceasingly through the air or (according to the later version) in the underworld (Pindar, Pythia, ii. 21; Ovid, Metam. iv. 461; Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 601) . Ixion is generally taken to represent the eternally moving sun. ”

“ There was no craft in her smile, for on her rested the love and the wisdom of Athene. Many a chieftain sought to win her for his bride; but her heart beat with love only for Ixion the beautiful and mighty, who came to the halls of Hesioneus with horses which can not grow old or die. The golden hair flashed a glory from his head dazzling as the rays which stream from Helios when he drives his chariot up the heights of heaven, and his flowing robe glistened as he moved like the vesture which the sun-god gave to the wise maiden Medeia, who dwelt in Kolchis. ”

“ There are no fine women now. Ixion, I drink to the health of your wife.’
‘With all my heart, and may we never be nearer than we are at present.’
‘Good! i’faith; Apollo, your arm. Now for the ladies. La, la, la, la! la, la, la, la!’
The Thunderer entered the saloon of Juno with that bow which no God could rival; all rose, and the King of Heaven seated himself between Ceres and Latona. The melancholy Apollo stood apart, and was soon carried off by Minerva to an assembly at the house of Mnemosyne. Mercury chatted with the Graces, and Bacchus with Diana. ”

“ Here in Tartarus, too, was Ixion, king of the Lapithæ, who had been given the hand of Dia in marriage on condition that he would give her father a stipulated sum of money in exchange, but who, as soon as the maiden was his, refused to keep his promise. The father-in-law was an avaricious man, and clamored so loudly for his money, that Ixion, to be rid of his importunities, slew him. Such an act of violence could not be overlooked by the gods: so Jupiter summoned Ixion to appear before him and state his case. ”

“ Ixion had been admitted, all human as he was, to the company of the gods as their equal. He had faith in the good faith and the love of Zeus, and for acting upon it was cast from Olympus to Erebus. Man conceived Zeus as possessing his own virtues: he trusted, loved him because Zeus aspired to be equal in goodness to man. Ixion defies him, tells him he apes the man who made him; it is Zeus who is hollowness. The iris, born of Ixion’s tears, sweat and blood, bursting to vapour above, arching his torment, glorifies his pain; and man, even from hell’s triumph, may look up and rejoice. ”

“ The boar made in upon his bold enemy, and, as the nearest point for death, he fiercely struck at the upper part of the groins with his two tusks Ancaeus fell; his entrails poured out amid streams of blood and the ground was soaked with gore Then Ixion's son, Pirithoüs, advanced against the foe, brandishing a hunting-spear in his strong right hand. To him Theseus cried out in alarm: Keep away, O dearer to me than my own self, my soul's other half; it is no shame for brave men to fight at long range. ”

“ The name of Ixion has been identified with the Sanskrit word Akshanah, denoting one who is bound to a wheel, and has been proved akin “to the Greek axôn, the Latin axis, and the English axle.” This whirling wheel of fire is the bright orb of day, to which he was bound by order of Jupiter (the sky) because he dared insult Juno (the queen of the blue air) ; while Dia, his wife, is the dawn, the counterpart of Europa, Coronis, Daphne, Procris, Eurydice, and Venus, in the foregoing illustrations. ”

“ Into the blackest depths of Hades the sounds sped on their way, and the hands of Time stood still. From his bitter task of trying to quaff the stream that ever receded from the parched and burning lips, Tantalus ceased for a moment. The ceaseless course of Ixion's wheel was stayed, the vulture's relentless beak no longer tore at the Titan's liver; Sisyphus gave up his weary task of rolling the stone and sat on the rock to listen, the Danaïdes rested from their labour of drawing water in a sieve. ”

“ He stands on the bank of a beautiful stream clear as crystal, or in the midst of the water, but when he attempts to quench his raging thirst it is impossible even to wet his lips. Sisyphus, once king of Corinth, and a great sinner, was condemned to roll a block of stone up a high mountain, but, soon as the top was reached, the huge stone, by some sudden impulse, rolled back to the plain, and with weary limbs he must continue the fruitless struggle. Ixion, also an insolent offender, is chained, hands and feet, to an ever revolving wheel and tortured without respite or hope of release. ”

“ There Ixion, murderer of his father-in-law, is racked upon the ever-turning wheel, and Tantalus, who slew his son, endures eternal hunger in sight of food and eternal fear from the stone ever ready to fall. There the daughters of Danaüs cease not to pour water into bottomless urns. There Sisyphus, who broke faith with the gods when they permitted him to return a little while to the upper world, evermore rolls up a steep hill a great stone that, falling back from the summit, crushes the wretch in its downward rush. ”

“ Sidgwick’s view [212] that this legend originated in an attempt to derive the name Ixion from the root ἴκ as found in the words ἱκέτης and ἱκετεύειν (which refer to suppliant-rights) seems to us very probable. Pindar has perhaps been misinterpreted by Verrall [213] in the translation of ἐμφύλιον αἷμα as kindred-murder. We have seen [214] that the word ἔμφυλος sometimes carries this meaning in Homer. But in the Pindaric narrative it was his father-in-law whom Ixion slew, and fathers-in-law are not, as a rule, akin in blood to their sons-in-law, though they may belong to the same tribe (φυλή) . ”

“ In the meantime affairs went on swimmingly in Tartarus. The obstinate Fates and the sulky Furies were unwittingly the cause of universal satisfaction. Everyone enjoyed himself, and enjoyment when it is unexpected is doubly satisfactory. Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion, for the first time during their punishment, had an opportunity for a little conversation.
‘Long live our reforming Queen,’ said the ex-king of Lydia. ”

“ This conception becomes crystallized into an anthropomorphic god; but the mind of man goes onward on its way to higher heights, and lo! there comes a day when the god-ideal of the past is lower than the human ideal of the present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion has arrived at, and his faith is equal to the strain. Since Zeus is man’s own mind-made god, Ixion’s tortures must be the natural consequences of his sin, and not the arbitrary punishment of a god; and what is Ixion’s sin as Browning has interpreted the myth? ”

“ Plainly enough, they who believe in gods that launch thunderbolts and upheave the sea in their rage and take vengeance for an insult by sending forth a pestilence, must also believe in a hell where Ixion may be affixed to the wheel and Tantalus be tortured with maddening mockeries. ”

“ Réville, and, indeed, with his school, has to be pressed into the service of the solar theory; and, if the evidence will not bear it, so much the worse for the evidence. Thus Ixion, tortured in the later Greek system on a wheel, which is sometimes represented as a burning wheel, is made (p. 105) to be the sun; the luminary whose splendor and beneficence had rendered him, according to the theory, the center of all Aryan worship. ”

“ The flowers drooped sick on their stalks and died, the corn was kindled like dried stubble on the earth, and Ixion said within himself, "My sin is great; men will not look upon my face as in the old time, and the gods of Olympos will not cleanse my hands from the guilt of my treacherous deed." So he went straightway and fell down humbly before the throne of Zeus, and said, "O thou that dwellest in the pure æther far above the dark cloud, my [534] hands are foul with blood, and thou alone canst cleanse them ”

“ Athena offers herself, not as arbitrator or sovereign judge, but as presiding over the court of jurors whom she proceeds to appoint.
504. Ixion appeared in the mythical history of Greece as the prototype of all suppliants for purification. When he had murdered Deioneus, Zeus had had compassion to him, received him as a guest, cleansed him from his guilt. His ingratitude for this service was the special guilt of his attempted outrage upon Hera. ”

“ There also lies Tityus, the huge giant who, having insulted the goddess Latona, was slain by the darts of her children, Apollo and Diana, and whose writhing body now lies extended over nine acres of ground, while insatiable vultures perpetually prey on his vitals, that are renewed as fast as they are devoured. Beyond him is Ixion, bound to a wheel that never ceases to revolve, while he is scourged by attendant Furies. He it was who, being admitted to Olympus by the generosity of Jupiter himself, dared to seek the love of the queen of the Gods. ”

“ Even the Athenian public seem to have forgotten that a dramatic poet must speak in character. Thus Plutarch tells us about the Ixion, that the audience cried out against a passage in which wealth was praised above virtue, and that the piece would have been hissed down had not the poet rushed on the scene and bid them have patience to see the punishment consequent on such principles. Whether the story be true or false of the Attic audience, it is certainly applicable to the narrow and stupid criticisms of later writers. ”

“ There is much obscurity about the significances of this ode. The poet's motive in telling the story of Ixion's sins has been variously guessed at. Some think it was meant to deter Hieron from contriving the death of his brother Polyzelos in battle in order to get possession of Polyzelos' wife (and if Hieron was to be suspected of such a thought it would be quite in Pindar's manner to mingle warning and reproof with praise) : some think that it refers to the ingratitude of Anaxilaos toward Hieron. ”

“ Thou dost mock us, but our hearts are stirred with calamity. For already on the river Phasis the son of Aeson moors his ship, he and his comrades in quest of the fleece. For all their sakes we fear terribly (for the task is nigh at hand) but most for Aeson’s son. Him will I deliver, though he sail even to Hades to free Ixion below from his brazen chains, as far as strength lies in my limbs, so that Pelias may not mock at having escaped an evil doom—Pelias who left me unhonoured with sacrifice. ”

“ LXIII. Tydeus, Parthenopaeus, and Adrastus were three of the seven heroes who fought against Thebes. The other names are taken from the Iliad.
LXXVII. The two sons of Aloeus were Otus and Ephialtes, who threatened to assail the Immortals by piling Pelion on Ossa and Ossa on Olympus. Salmoneus of Elis was punished for having presumptuously claimed divine honours.
LXXX. Ixion was king of the Lapithae, and being taken to heaven by Jupiter, made love to Juno, for which he was eternally punished. Pirithous was his son, and was guilty of having, with Theseus, attempted to carry off Proserpine. ”