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| Chapter III.—Follies of the Greek mythology.
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Chapter III.—Follies of the Greek
mythology.
For Hercules, celebrated by his three
nights,2500
| 2500 Τριέσπερον, so
called, as some think, [from his origin: “ex concubitu trium
noctium.”] | sung by the poets for his successful
labours, the son of Jupiter, who slew the lion and destroyed the
many-headed hydra; who put to death the fierce and mighty boar, and was
able to kill the fleet man-eating birds, and brought up from Hades the
three-headed dog; who effectually cleansed the huge Augean building from
its dung, and killed the bulls and the stag whose nostrils breathed fire,
and plucked the golden fruit from the tree, and slew the poisonous
serpent (and for some reason, which it is not lawful to utter, killed
Achelous, and the guest-slaying Busiris), and crossed the mountains that
he might get water which gave forth an articulate speech, as the story
goes: he who was able to do so many and such like and so great deeds as
these, how childishly he was delighted to be stunned by the cymbals of
the satyrs, and to be conquered by the love of woman, and to be struck on
the hips by the laughing Lyda! And at last, not being able to put off the
tunic of Nessus, himself kindling his own funeral pile, so he died. Let
Vulcan lay aside his envy, and not be jealous if he is hated because he
is old and club-footed, and Mars loved, because young and beautiful.
Since, therefore, ye Greeks, your gods are convicted of intemperance, and
your heroes are effeminate, as the histories on which your dramas are
founded have declared, such as the curse of Atreus, the bed of
Thyestes2501
and the taint in the house of Pelops, and Danaus
murdering through hatred and making Ægyptus childless in the
intoxication of his rage, and the Thyestean banquet spread by the
Furies.2502
| 2502 There is no
apodosis in the Greek. | And Procne is to this day flitting
about, lamenting; and her sister of Athens shrills with her tongue cut
out. For what need is there of speaking of the goad2503
| 2503 Not, as the editors dispute, either the
tongue of the buckle with which he put out his eyes, nor the awl with
which his heels were bored through, but the goad with which he killed his
father. | of Œdipus, and the murder of Laius, and the marrying
his mother, and the mutual slaughter of those who were at once his
brothers and his sons?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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