In the same way as the mythical horse has, from evening to morning, three conspicuous moments of action—black, grey, and white or red—and as the mythical ass throws gold from behind and has golden ears, so the mythical goat and sheep, which are dark-coloured in the night or in the cloud, throw gold from behind and have golden horns which pour out ambrosia, or else have even the cornucopia itself. It is always the same myth of the cloudy and aqueous, of the nocturnal and tenebrous sky, with its two glowing twilights or auroras, or else of the luminous heavenly hero who traverses the night or the cloud (or the wintry season), disguised in the shapes of various animals, now by his own will, now by a divine malediction or by diabolical witchcraft.
In the third book of Aristotle's History of Animals, we read of the river Psikros in Thrace, that white sheep, when they drink of its waters, bring forth black lambs; that in Antandria there are two rivers, of which one makes the sheep black, and the other white, and that the river Xanthos or Skamandros makes the sheep fair (or golden). This belief involves in itself the three transformations of the celestial hero into the three he-goats or rams of different natures, of which we have spoken. The last transformation calls our attention to the sheep with golden wool, the golden lamb, and the Agnus Dei, the symbol of happiness, power and riches. Wealth in sheep, even more than wealth in cows, became the symbol of universal riches. The horn poured out every kind of treasure upon the earth, and upon the earth itself the pecus became pecunia.
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
Footnotes
[1] Mâ gâm anâgâm aditiṁ vadhishṭa; Ṛigv. viii. 90, 15.
[2] Gomâtaraḥ; Ṛigv. i. 8, 1, 3.—Aditis, called "mâtâ rudrâṇâm;" Ṛigv. viii. 90, 15.
[3] Tubhyaṁ (to Vâyus, to the wind), dhenuḥ sabardughâ viçvâ vasûni dohate aǵanayo maruto vakshaṇâbhyaḥ; Ṛigv. i. 134, 4.