Eurus and Zephyr with their lateral noise,
Sirocco and Libecchio.
The horse-headed Demeter, too, was one of the Erinyes, under-world dæmonic beings of windy origin, merging indeed into the Harpies. The Homeric Harpy Podarge, mother of the immortal steeds of Achilles, was, moreover, of scarcely disguised equine nature; while the colts of Ericthonius had Boreas for their sire.
These, o’er the teeming cornfields as they flew,
Skimm’d o’er the standing ears, nor broke the haulm,
And, o’er wide Ocean’s bosom as they flew,
Skimm’d o’er the topmost spray of th’ hoary sea.[[94]]
[94]. Iliad, xx. 226-29 (Lord Derby’s translation).
So Æneas related to Achilles; not perhaps without some touch of metaphor.
The figure of speech by which the swiftest of known animals was likened to a rushing tempest, lay ready at hand; and a figure of speech is apt to be treated as a statement of fact by men who have not yet learned to make fine distinctions. Upon this particular one as a basis, a good deal of fable was built. The northern legends, for instance, of the Wild Huntsman, and of the rides of the blusterous Odin upon an eight-legged charger equally at home on land and on sea; besides the story of the strong horse Svadilfaxi, personifying the North Wind, who helped his master, the icy Scandinavian winter, to build the castle of the Asar. The same obvious similitude was carried out, by southern imaginations, in the subjection of the horse to the established ruler of winds and waves, who is even qualified by the characteristically equine epithet ‘dark-maned’ (κυανοχαίτης.)[[95]] The attribution, however, to Poseidon of a more or less equine nature may have been immediately suggested by the resemblance, palpable to unsophisticated folk, of his crested billows to the impetuous advance of galloping steeds, whose flowing manes and curving lineaments of changeful movement seemed to reproduce the tossing spray and thunderous charge of the ‘earth-shaking’ element.