After this we can understand what Plutarch tells us in the Life of Lucullus concerning the Cyziceni, of whom he writes, that, pressed by siege, they offered up to Proserpine (the moon in hell) a cow of black paste, not being able to offer up one of flesh; and he adds, that the sacrifice was agreeable to the goddess. Thus, in the thirty-sixth fable of Æsop, we read of an invalid who promises to the gods that he will sacrifice a hundred oxen to them in the event of a cure; when cured, as he does not possess a hundred oxen of flesh, he makes a hundred of paste, and burns them upon the hearth. But, according to Æsop, the gods were not satisfied, and endeavoured to play off a joke upon him; an attempt, which, however, did not succeed, inasmuch as the cunning man used it to his own profit; for the solar hero in the night, not being really a fool, merely feigns to be one.
But, to return to the cow-moon: we must complete the explanation of another myth, that of the excrement of the cow considered as purifying. The moon, as the aurora, yields ambrosia; it is considered to be a cow; the urine of this cow is ambrosia or holy water; he who drinks this water purifies himself, as the ambrosia which rains from the lunar ray and the aurora cleans the paths of the sky, purifies and makes clear (dîrghaya ćakshase) the paths of the sky which the shadows of night darken and contaminate. The same virtue is attributed, moreover, to cow's dung, a conception also derived from the cow, and given to the moon as well as to the morning aurora. These two cows are conceived as making the earth fruitful by means of their ambrosial excrements; these excrements, being also luminous, both those of the moon and those of the aurora are considered as purifiers. The ashes of these cows (which their friend the heroine preserves) are not only ashes, but golden powder or golden flour (the golden cake occurs again in that flour or powder of gold which the witch demands from the hero in Russian stories), which, mixed with excrement, brings good fortune to the cunning and robber hero. The ashes of the sacrificed pregnant cow (i.e., the cow which dies after having given birth to a calf) were religiously preserved by the Romans in the temple of Vesta, with bean-stalks (which are used to fatten the earth sown with corn), as a means of expiation. Ovid[510] mentions this rite:—
"Nox abiit, oriturque Aurora. Palilia poscor,
Non poscor frustra, si favet alma Pales.
Alma Pales, faveas pastoria sacra canenti;
Prosequor officio si tua festa pio.
Certe ego de vitulo cinerem, stipulasque fabales,
Sæpe tuli plena februa casta, manu."
The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and as a means of purification. As to the excrements of the cow, they are still used to form the so-called eau de millefleurs, recommended by several pharmacopœias as a remedy for cachexy.[511]
I have noticed above the myth of Hêraklês, in which, having passed the sea upon the golden cup, he finds the oxen upon the shore. These oxen are thus described by Theokritos, in the myth of King Augeias, as the child of the sun. The sun, says Theokritos, granted to his son the honour of being richer than all other men in herds. All these herds are healthy, and multiply without limit, always becoming better. Among the bulls, three hundred have white legs (like the alba of morning), two hundred are red (like the sun's rays), with curved horns. These bulls are to be used for purposes of reproduction; besides them there are twelve sacred to the sun, which shine like swans. One of them is superior to all the rest in size, and is called a star, or Phaethôn (the luminous, an epithet given to Hêlios, the sun, in the Odyssey, the guider of the chariot of the sun, who, after finishing his diurnal course, is unable to rein in the horses, and is precipitated with the chariot into the water, in order that the burning horses may not set fire to the world. Instead of solar oxen, which draw the chariot, and fall, at evening, into the nocturnal marsh, we find in this myth the chariot drawn by horses overturned into the waves; but the Phaethôn, the very luminous and excellent ox, as represented by Theokritos, justifies our identification of the two mythical episodes of the ox and of the horse which falls into the water). The bull Phaethôn of Theokritos sees Hêraklês, and, taking him for a lion, rushes upon him and endeavours to wound him with his horns. The sun, as a golden-haired hero, is a very strong lion (Hêraklês, Samson); as a golden-horned hero, he is a very strong bull; enclosed in the cloud, they roar and bellow. The two images of the sun-lion and of the sun-bull are now in harmony and now in discordance, and fight with one another. In the Râmâyaṇam we found the two brother-heroes Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, an epic form of the two Açvinâu, represented respectively as a bull and a lion. In the Hellenic fables we frequently find the lion and the bull together, and afterwards in discordance, as happens in the legend of the two brother-heroes. In Æsop and in Avianus, the bull (perhaps the moon) fleeing from the lion (i.e., from the sun in its monstrous evening or autumnal form of a lion), enters the hiding-place of the goat (the moon in the grotto of night), and is insulted and provoked by it. In another Æsopian fable, on the contrary, it is the lion who fears the horns of the bull, and induces him to part with them, in order that the bull may become his prey.[512] In yet another Æsopian fable taken from Syntipa, the bull kills the lion, while asleep, with his horns. In Phædrus, the wild boar with his tusks, the bull with his horns, and the ass with kicks, put an end to the old and infirm lion. In Phædrus's fable of the ox and the ass drawing together, the ox falls inert upon the ground when he loses his horns. Aristoteles, in the third book on the Parts of Animals, censures the Momos of Æsop, who laughs at the bull because he has his horns on his forehead instead of on his arms, showing that if the bull had his horns on any other part of his body, they would be a useless weight, and would impede his other functions without aiding him in anything. The ox and the lion were also painted together in Christian churches.[513]
To continue the legend of the solar hero and the oxen, we find again in Hêraklês, as employed among the herds in the service of King Augeias, the sun, the usual hostler-hero; he is not only to guard the herds well, but in one day to cleanse them thoroughly, and make them shine. Defrauded of the price by Augeias, he kills him, and ravages all his country. In the same way, in Homer, Apollo guards, for a stipulated price, the herds of King Laomedon upon Mount Ida, and is cheated of his reward. In the same way, Hermes takes the herds of King Admetos to pasture; he leads them to browse near the herds of Apollo, from whom he steals a hundred bulls and twelve cows, preventing the dogs from barking (as Hêraklês does when he leads away Geryon's oxen). This Hermes, this god Mercury, god of merchants, this merchant and robber, is the same as the skilful and cunning thief of the stories who carries off horses, draught oxen, caskets, and ear-rings from the king; he is the hero-thief; but a shade distinguishes him from the monster brigand or Vedic demoniacal Paṇis; the hero who hides himself and the monster that hides things both do a furtive action. When Hermes leads away the herds stolen from the solar god, the sun, he also takes care to fasten branches of trees to their tails, which, by sweeping the road, shall destroy the track of the bulls and cows that have been led away. The shepherd Battos plays the spy, although, as the price of his silence, Hermes has promised him a white cow (the moon, and perhaps Battos himself, the spy, is the moon). Hermes tests him, by disguising himself and promising him a bull and a cow if he speaks. Battos speaks, and Hermes punishes him by transforming him into a stone:—
"Vertit
In durum silicem, qui nunc quoque dicitur index."[514]
This god Mercury, who steals the bulls from Apollo (as Hêraklês leads away the oxen of Geryon), is the divine form of the thief. His demoniacal form, is—Cacus, the son of Vulcan (as the Vedic Vṛitras is the son of Tvashṭar), who vomits fire; a giant who envelops himself in darkness, in Virgil; three-headed (like the Vedic monster), in Propertius;[515] who inhabits in the Aventine forest a cavern full of human bones (like the monster of fairy tales); who thunders (flammas ore sonante vomit), who fights with rocks and trunks of trees, in Ovid[516] (like the heroes in the Hindoo, Slavonic, German, and Homeric tradition); who steals the cows from Hêraklês, and hides their footprints by dragging them backwards into the cavern, in Livy; who also tells us that the cows in the cavern low, wishing for the bulls from whom they are separated (as in the Vedic hymns). The hero, hearing them, finds the cavern, overturns with a great noise the rock which five pair of oxen yoked together could scarcely have moved (like the Marutas who break the rock, like Indras who splits the crag open), and with the three-knotted club (trinodis) kills the monster and frees the cows. The solar hero who at evening leads away oxen or cows, or who at morning steals them from the stable, is a skilful robber who has acted meritoriously, and marries, in reward, the princess aurora; the cloudy or gloomy monster who steals the solar cows to shut them up in the cavern, whence he then throws out smoke and flames, is an infamous criminal. The divine thief steals almost out of playfulness, either to show his craftiness or to prove his valour; the demoniacal thief steals because of his malevolent character, and instinct to devour what he steals, as does the fabled worm of the river Indus (the Vedic Sindhus, or heavenly ocean), who draws into the abyss and devours the thirsty oxen who go to drink.[517]
The monster of the clouds who whistles and thunders only terrifies; the god who whistles and thunders in the cloud, on the other hand, is par excellence a celestial musician; his musical instrument, the thunder, astonishes us by its marvels,[518] and makes stones and plants tremble, that is, makes stones and plants move, especially celestial ones (i.e., cloud-mountains and cloud-trees); it draws after it the wild animals (of the heavenly forest), tames and subdues them. The bellowing bull terrifies the lion himself. We, therefore, also read in Nonnos,[519] that Dionysos gives a bull in reward to Æagros, who has won in the competition of song and of the lyre, whilst he reserves a hirsute he-goat for him who loses; on this account we find on the capitals of columns in old Milanese churches, calves and bulls represented as playing on the lyre.[520] It is a variation of the myth of the ass and the lyre, which has the same meaning. The bull and the ass, for the same reason, are found represented together, because they bellow and bray (like Christian Corybantes) near the cradle of the new-born god, in order to hide, by their noise, his birth from the old king or deity who is to be dethroned.[521] The conch of Bhîmas, the elephant-horn of Orlando, the Greek war-bugle tauraia, by means of which armies were moved, derived their character and their name from the mythical bull, the thundering god. The voice of the bull is compared in Euripides to the voice of Zeus;[522] the music which pleases the heroes is certainly not the air of the Casta diva; it is the braying of the ass,[523] the roar of the lion, the bellowing of the bull, who occupies the first place in the heavens, and has occupied us so long, because the supreme god took his form, after having carried off Eurôpê. Zeus left on the earth his divine form, and the more generally preferred heroic form of a bull took him up to heaven:—
"Litoribus tactis stabat sine cornibus ullis
Juppiter, inque deum de bove versus erat.
Taurus init cœlum."[524]