answers this question by a reference to the physical geography of chap.
Argolis. Not much, he thinks, can be done by referring the name
Danaos to the root da, to burn, which we find in Ahana, Dahana,
and Daphne,^ as denoting the dry and waterless nature of the Argive
soil. This dryness, he remarks, is only superficial, the whole terri-
tory being rich in wells or fountains which, it must be specially noted,
are in the myth assigned as the works of Danaos, who causes them
to be dug. These springs were the object of a special veneration,
and the fifty daughters of Danaos are thus the representatives of the
many Argive wells or springs, and belong strictly to the ranks of water-
nymphs.^ In the summer these springs may fail. Still later even
the beds of the larger streams, as of the Inachos or the Kephisos,
may be left dry, while in the rainy portion of the year these Cha-
radrai or Cheimarrhoi, winter flowing streams, come down with great
force and overflow their banks. Thus the myth resolves itself into
phrases which described originally these alternations of flood and
drought. The downward rush of the winter torrents is the wild
pursuit of the sons of Aigyptos, who threaten to overwhelm the
Danaides, or nymphs of the fountains ; but as their strength begins
to fail, they offer themselves as their husbands, and are taken at their
word. But the time for vengeance has come ; the waters of the
torrents fail more and more, until their stream is even more scanty
than that of the springs. In other words, they are slain by their
wives, who draw or cut off the waters from their sources. These
sources are the heads of the rivers, and thus it is said that the
Danaides cut off their husbands' heads. A precise parallel to this
myth is furnished by the Arkadian tale, which speaks of Skephros
(the droughty) as slandering or reviling Leimon (the moist or watery
being), and as presently slain by Leimon, who in his turn is killed
by Artemis. If in place of the latter we substitute the Danaides, and
for the former the sons of Aigyptos, we have at once the Argive
tradition. The meaning becomes still more obvious when we mark
the fact that the Danaides threw the heads into the marsh-grounds
of Lernai (in other words, that there the sources of the waters were
preserved according to the promise of Poseidon that that fountain
should never fail), while the bodies of the sons of Aigyptos, the dry
beds of the rivers, were exposed in the sight of all the people. It
' The objection on the score of the quantity of the first syllable, which in Danaos is short, while in Dapline and Zavh. |i'/Aa, wood easily inilainmalile, it is long, is perhaps one on which too much stress should not be laid.
' If the name Danaos itself denotes water, it must be identillcd withTanais, Don, Donau, Tyne, Teign, Tone, and other forms of the Celtic and Slavonic words fur a running stream,
