universally admitted to have been a Semitic importation, he being the Phoenician Melqarth, the Melek-kartha or Astyanax, king of the enclosed space or city, the rex urbis,' the divinity frequently alluded to as the Tyrian Herakles. But Melek is merely Molekh or Molokh the King, so here we at once meet with this sanguinary Phoenician divinity on Boiotik ground, in the same way that we find Poseidon, Tammuz, and Onka, denizens of the Kadmeis. This point is fully admitted by Aryan advocates such as Mr. Cox, and as confessions from him in the matter are peculiarly valuable, I would call particular attention both to the admission itself and also to what it fairly involves. Thus, after alluding to the word Kadmos and its connection with the Semitic Kedem the East, he observes: This word, together with the occurrence of Banna as the Boiotian word for daughter, seem to satisfy Niebuhr as to the fact of this Phoenician settlement. We must add to the list of such words the epithet of Palaimon, Melikertes, the Syrian Melkarth or Moloch.'s Again, he notices that the few stories related of Palaimon or the Wrestler, which was the name given to Melikertes when Ino received that of Leukotheë, have no importance, but his name is more significant. It is clearly that of the Semitic Melkarth, and thus the sacrifices of children in his honour, and the horrid nature of his cultus generally, are at once explained. It becomes, therefore, the more probable that Kadmos is but a Greek form of the Semitic Kedem, the East; and thus the Boiotian mythology presents us with at least two undoubted Phoenician

1 Gesenius, Script. Ling. Phoen. 410; cf. Kartha-hadtha or KarchedonCarthago, the 'New Town;' the numerous Kirjaths of Syria; Karthaia, a town of Keos; Karthada, the ancient name of a suburb of Palermo; Karteia (Tartessos), and numbers of other similar names on

the shores of the Mediterranean.

2 Cf. Melchisedek, Melchior, Adrammelekh, Anammelekh, Abdalmalek, Malchos, &c.

3 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii. 86, note; cf. ibid. i. 401. ◄ Vide inf. X. ii.

1

or Semitic names, whatever be the conclusion to which they point. The judicious reader will not, I think, doubt much what is the conclusion to which they point. The particular question with which we commenced was the consideration of the Boiotik and Dionysiak Festival of the Agrionia, and at every step of the way we find the country teeming with the Semitic associations and recollections of that wonderful people, so ill-succeeded by the dull Boiotian of historic times. Every spade of earth we turn over in the Kadmeis seems partly formed from the dust of some Phoeniko-Hellenik hero who had played his part on that great battle-stage which extends from Thermopylai to Kithairon, and which the ancients called the Orchestra of Ares, when Plateia and Chaironeia were yet ages in the future. In the island of Tenedos it is said that children were sacrificed to Palaemon,2 and the whole worship seems to have had something gloomy about it.' It had indeed. Tenedos, as noticed, was one of the localities where human sacrifices were offered to Dionysos Omadios: for as Dionysos is Athamas, so is he Melikertes, the King of Phoenician cities. At Korinthos was a remarkable temple of Palaimon-Melikertes, which was near a sacred place with a subterranean entrance where he was said to be concealed,5 like the Monster in the Kretan Labyrinth; and his statue represented him sitting on a dolphin, a circumstance which illustrates his solar aspect and foreign origin, and connects him with Apollon-Delphinios, the Fish-Sun.8 According to one legend, Palaimon was carried on a dolphin from the 'rock Molyris, from which his mother

6

5 Paus. ii. 2; Leake, Travels in the Morea, iii. 291.

• Vide inf. IX. iii.

7 Paus. ii. 3.

8 Cf. Mythol. of the Aryan Nations,

ii. 25; Queen of the Air, i. 39.

threw herself into the sea, to the harbour of Korinthos.1

6

Of this group of mysterious personages there remains Ino, the daughter of Kadmos, the beloved of Athamas, the mother of Melikertes, and whose name was changed to that of Leukothee, the White-goddess. Of her and her son it may said nothing of them doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange; for their natures seem, in the legends, to be improved by the transformation. The appearance of the same personages in different aspects and relationships to each other, is almost a necessity of thought; sun, moon, stars, day, night, life, death, good, evil, light, darkness, dawn, stand, when anthropomorphically considered, in almost every possible relationship and connection with each other. So Donaldson observes, As Semele represents the earth, Dionysos appears not only as her son, but also as her husband; and he well adds, these oscillations in the persons of the sacred allegory need not create any difficulty, for the free play of fancy has combined and re-combined the elements of the picture, like the changing figures of a kaleidoscope.' 2 Thus, as Dionysos is the husband and son of Semele, so, here, as Athamas and Melikertes, he is the husband and son of another of the Kadmeian sisters. Who or what then is Ino? The NeoPlatonists had some glimpses of the kosmogonical character of the family of Kadmos, and their utterances on the point, if incorrect, are at least intelligible. Thus, according to Olympiodoros, the four daughters of Kadmos represented the four (so-called) elements. They consider the four elements of a Dionysiacal nature: Semele is fire; Agaue the earth, which tears to pieces her own offspring; Ino is water, being marine; and Autonoe is the

1 Paus. i. 44.

2 Theatre of the Greeks, 20.

6

air.' These statements, like nineteen-twentieths of NeoPlatonik theories, are perfectly arbitrary and groundless, but yet in this particular case show some faint appreciation of the depth of the myth. It will be at once admitted that Ino in the story represents some natural phenomenon or influence; and bearing this in mind, we find from Pausanias that on the western coast of Lakonike, at no great distance from the Phoenician settlement in Kythera,2 was a temple and oracle of Ino.. They prophesy when asleep, since the goddess answers those who consult her by dreams. Bronze statues stand in the uncovered part of the temple, one of Paphie and the other of Helios. Water, too, pleasant to drink, flows from a sacred fount, and they call it the Fount of the Moon. Paphie is not a divinity of the country.' Here we have a Semitic temple dedicated to the Sun, Moon, and Paphie, who, as Pausanias truly observes, is not a native divinity, but Kyprogenes, the Kypros-born; and as Aphrodite Anadyomene, Venus Rising-from-the-sea,5 has landed, like Dionysos, a stranger in Aryan regions.6 Ino, the dreamgiving goddess, stands in this temple, as in the myth we have been considering, by the side of Helios-Athamas. The Moon as the queen of night, and especially in her phase as Hekate-Selene, presides over dreams; and the ill effects of evil dreams were not unnaturally supposed to be dispelled by the sun. Thus Klytemnestra is sented as relating her terrible dream to H-" character of Apotropaios, the Averter

noticeable that the Homerik 'peon'

4

the flowings of Ocean and the Leukadian, or White Rock,1 which may have some connection with Leukotheë, the White-goddess. The sacred fount still connects Ino, who as the moon rules the sea, with water and she takes refuge with her horrid child in the deep, in the same way as Dionysos when flying from the wrath of Lykourgos; for all these Semitic divinities, Dionysos, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hephaistos, and the rest, are connected with water, as having come across it to Hellas from the East. So, similarly, Europe, the broad-faced moon,'" and sister of Kadmos, and who is another phase of Ino, is borne over the sea on the back of the mystic bull. Again, Ino, as the moon and moon influence, is naturally hostile to Helle the bright nymph whose life is only sustained by the light of Helios. Thus the Natural Phenomena Theory, though to a far less extent, enters into and illustrates Semitic Mythology as well as Aryan; but here it is generally mixed with a subtle and delicate underlying Euemerism, which speaks of the clash of creeds and the contests of the human race, as well as of the movements and characteristics of the ever-varying phenomena of nature. Again, Ino with the infant Melikertes is a representative of the Mother and Child; but this is too wide a field of mythology to enter on here, suffice it to remark, that the Moonqueen of night is the mother of the young sun of the coming day, and was represented in this character as a crescent forming part of a circle. Creuzer, who has noticed the phase of Ino as a fostering mother, for in illustration of this and of the identity of Melikertes and Dionysos, it was Ino who in the mythic legend nurtured the latter when an infant after his mother's death,3 compares her with Juno, Juno Matuta, the matronly dawngoddess, and remarks that she is the mother of the

1 Od. xxiv. 11.

2 Theatre of the Greeks, 16.

3 Apollod. iii. 4; sup. III. i. 1.