province severally the past, the present, and the future ; while the lot CHAP.
which is each man's portion, and the doom which he cannot avoid ' '-— '
would be apportioned to him by beings whose names would denote
their functions or the gentler qualities which men ascribed to them in
order to deprecate their wrath.
Of these beings the Erinyes are in the Hellenic mythology among Erinyes the most fearful— so fearful, indeed, that their worshippers, or those menides. who had need to speak of them, called them rather the Eumenides, or merciful beings, to win from them the pity which they were but little supposed to feel. Yet these awful goddesses ^ are but repre- sentatives of the Vedic Saranyu, the beautiful morning whose soft light steals across the heaven, and of whom it was said that she would find out the evil deeds committed during the night, and punish the wrongdoer. Still, unconscious though the Athenian may have been of the nature of the beings whom he thus dreaded or venerated, they retained some of their ancient characteristics. Terrible as they might be to others, they had only a genial welcome for the toilworn and suffering Oidipous, the being who all his life long had struggled against the doom which had pressed heavily on the Argive Herakles. Close to Athens, the city of the dawn goddess, is their sacred grove ; and under the shadow of its clustering trees the blinded Oidipous will tranquilly wait until it is his time to die. Where else can the wear}' journey come to an end than amidst the sacred groves in which the Erinyes are seen in the evening, weaving, like Penelope, the magic web which is to be undone again during the night? The threads of this web become in their hands, and in those of the kindred Moirai, the lines of human destiny. Having said thus much of these dreaded beings we have practically said all. Mythographers could not fail to speak of them as children of Gaia, sprung from the blood of the mutilated Ouranos, or as the daughters of the night, or of the earth and darkness— a parentage which will apply with equal truth to Phoibos or the Dioskouroi. When we are told that in cases where their own power seems inadequate they call in the aid of Dike or Justice, we are manifestly on the confines of allegory, which we are not bound to cross. In the conceptions of later poets, they appear, like the Gorgons, with writhing snakes in place of hair, and with blood dripping from their eyes ; and as naturally, when their number was limited to three, they received names which, like AUekto, Megaira, and Tisiphone, imply relentless hatred, jealousy, and revenge. Their domain is thus far wider and more terrible than that of the Moirai, who weave, deal out, and cut short the thread of human life.
' ffez-Luai Beat.
