CHAP.
celebrated with a magnificence which the Lydiaii and Persian con-
quests grievously impaired. To the hymn-writer Delos is the abode '
dear above all others to the lord of light ; and thither come wor-
shippers whose beauty and vigour would seem beyond the touch of
sickness, pain, or death. The rest of the hymn is manifestly a
different poem, composed by a Delphian when the oracle of that
place had reached its highest reputation ; but the blind old bard of
the rocky islet of Chios is well aware that, apart from any rivalry of
other temples and other festivals, it is impossible for Phoibos always
to abide in Delos. For him there is no tranquil sojourn anywhere ;
and all that the poet can say on behalf of his beloved Delos is, that
the God never fails to return to it with ever-increasing delight, as in
the old Vedic hymns the Dawn is said to come back with heightened
beauty every morning. In truth, almost every phrase of the hymn is
transparent in its meaning. The name Leto is close akin to that of
Leda, the dusky mother of the glorious Dioskouroi, and is in fact
another form of the Lethe, in which men forget alike their joys and
sorrows, the Latmos in which Endymion sinks into his dreamless
sleep, and the Ladon, or lurking-dragon, who guards the golden
apples of the Hesperides. But for many a weary hour the night
travails with the birth of the coming day, and her child cannot be
born save in the bright land (Delos) of the Dawn. A toilsome
journey lies before her; and the meaning of the old myth is
singularly seen in the unconscious impulse which led the hymn-
I writer to speak of her as going only to lofty crags and high mountain
summits.^ Plains and valleys it would obviously be useless to seek ;
the light of the sun must rest on the hill-tops long before it reaches
the dells beneath. In another version, she is said to have been
brought in twelve days from the land of the Hyperboreans to Delos
in the form of a she-wolf," Lukos, a phrase which carries us to the
story of Lykaon, and to the interpretation given to the name of the
Lykeian ApoUon.* So again in the Phoinix or palm, round which
Leto casts her arms, we have that purple hue of dawn which marks
the early home of the children of Agenor and Telephassa.* But
• Hymn. Apoll. 30-45. • The myth was regarded as account- ing for a supposed fact connected with the breeding of wolves. — Grote, History of Greece, i. 02. • The Kyneian Apollon must be compared with Helene Kynopis, Kyno- soura, Kynosarges, &c. — Burnouf, La Legetide, Athenicnne. • liusdpe, the broad spreading dawn, is necessarily the child of the being who sends her light from afar ; and the con- nexion of the purple hue with the birth and early life of the sun is seen not only in the myth of the bird known as the Phenix, but in Phoinix, the teacher and guide of Achilleus in liis childhood. Of the Egyptian Phenix Herodotos speaks as a bird in which the Kgj-ptians saw the emblem of immortality ; but he
