BOOK
of a dolphin, and comes out of it again as a star. In tlie story
of Aristaios the fish-god is seen as the preacher of wisdom ; it
shows itself as a deliverer in the myth of Orion. As to snakes
and dragons, they are everywhere ; as noxious beasts in the myths
of Phoibos, Kadmos, or Herakles, and in beneficent aspects in
the stories of lamos and Melampous. Dionysos can change him-
self into a bear or a lion ; Lykaon is changed against his will into
a wolf, Arachne into a spider, Philomele and Prokne into the
nightingale and the swallow. The golden ram carries Phrixos and
Helle from the land of Athamas ; the three-headed dog guards the
gates of Hades. Nay, we have strange unions between Leda and
the swan, and heroes and heroines hatched from eggs, with horrible
associations between men and horses and other beasts ; and not only
have we the marvellous changes by which Apollon and Athene
appear as crows and Talaos as a partridge, but for many of these
transformations or for the manifestation of them the times are
definitely marked. It is only on comparing the Greek myths with
those of other peoples or races that our eyes are opened to the
enormous range of this mythological zoology. Birds, beasts, reptiles,
insects, fishes, here live in a world of their owti, reflecting in greater
or less degree the forms and habits of the animals of earth, yet never
wholly like them ; and this strange world exhibits everywhere a series
of incessantly and rapidly shifting scenes, in which the same objects
from different points of view appear brilliant or dark, lovely or
appalling. These continual changes originated the idea of celestial
companions or friends, " who are now in unison, now separate ; who
now appear to love each other, to move together, and affectionately
to greet each other, now rush upon each other to fight, despoil, betray,
and destroy each other turn by turn ; who now attract and are now
attracted, are now seduced and now seducers, now cheated and
now deceivers, now victims and now sacrificers."^ Their friends or
enemies may, again, assume and throw off these brute forms ; and
beasts are supposed to go through courses of action which are
possible oiily for men. The god Hanuman, the son of the bull
or of the wind, appearing himself both as a bull and as an ape,
receives as a reward from the king Bharatas a hundred thousand
cows, sixteen wives, and a hundred servant-maids. As bull or ape,
what could he have done with them ? But they who handed down
' I quote the words of Count de subject ; but I should not be justified Gubcrnatis, who has made this mythical were I to fail in calling the reader's world his own in his volumes on Zoo- attention to an inquiry of great ini- logical Mythology. I can but stand portance. for a moment at the threshold of the