BOOK II.
Herakles
and Eury-
tos.
conquers although he cannot slay him. Ares is indeed not the passing storm, but the power from whom these storms come : he is that head of the Lernaian hydra which cannot die, and thus he escapes with a thigh wound, while the body of Kyknos, stripped of its glittering armour, is buried by Keyx. In Antaios ^ Herakles encounters the giant who, under the name of Polyphemos, seeks to crush Odysseus. Like the latter, the Libyan monster is a son of the sea-god — the black storm-vapour which draws to itself new strength from the earth on which it reposes. Hence Herakles cannot over- come him until he lifts him off the earth and strangles him in the expanse of heaven, as the sun cannot burn up and disperse the vapours until his heat has lifted them up above the surface of the land.
The fiercer heats of summer may, as we have seen, suggest the idea not only that another hand less firm than that of Helios is suffering his fiery horses to draw too near the earth, but that Helios himself has been smitten with madness, and cares not whether in his fury he slays those whom he has most loved and cherished. The latter idea runs through the myths of the raging Herakles, and thus, when he has won lole the daughter of Eurytos as the prize for success in archery, her father refuses to fulfil the compact because a being who has killed one bride and her offspring may repeat the crime: and thus he is parted from lole at the very moment of winning her. It is the old story of Daphne, Prokris, or Arethousa, with this difterence only that the legend of lole belongs to the middle heats of summer. But Herakles may not be injured with impunity. The beautiful cattle of Eurytos are feeding like those of Helios in the pastures where the children of Neaira tend them, and Herakles is suspected of driving them away. His friend Iphitos i)Ieads his cause, but
' Antaios, the uncouth awkward giant, may be fairly taken as a type of the Teutonic Troll, in whom is com- bined the unsitrhtliness of Polyphemos with the stujiidity which, tolerably cha- racteristic of the Kykli'ips, is brought out still more clearly in the Teutonic devil. Whether in Greek, Hindu, or other mythology, these monsters are generally outwitted, and hence nothing is gained by hypotheses which see in these 'J'roUs the aboriginal inhabitants who had not wit enough to hold their ground against the new invaders of the land, and who therefore betook them- selves to the mountains. It is of the very essence of the myths of Indra, Herakles, Bellerophontes, Perseus, or any ether light-born heroes, that they should be victorious over the enemies opposed to them, and that these enemies should appear in horrible shapes which yet arc not so formidable as they seem ; in other ords, they cannot stand against the hero whose insignificant slature and mean appearance They had despised. All that we need say is that they become more stupid as we go further north. The Kyklops of the Odvssty is not quite such a fool as the Troll who slits his stomach that he may eat the more, because " Boots who ate a match with the 'I'roll " and has made a slit in the scrip which he carries under his chin, assures him that the pain is nothing to speak of. The giant in the story of the Valiant Tailor ((Jrimm) is cheated much in the same fashion.
