I think Mr Max Müller will at least recognise them as spots on the disk of his solar theory, and which must ever remain obscure to those who refuse the light of Scripture and tradition.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.

“ŒDIPUS, PERSEUS.”

Here again, the explanation of Mr Max Müller, “si non vrai est vraisemblable,” and yet I cannot help seeing that the legends of Perseus and Œdipus may just as well be supposed to embody primitive tradition. Let us read the histories of Œdipus and Perseus in the light of the tradition concerning Lamech (Gen. iv. 23, 24). “And Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah ... I have slain a man to the wounding of myself, and a stripling to my own bruising. Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for Cain, but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold.” The note to the Douay edition says—“It is the tradition of the Hebrews that Lamech, in hunting, slew Cain, mistaking him for a wild beast, and that having discovered what he had done, he beat so unmercifully the youth by whom he was led into that mistake that he died of the blows.” Œdipus was the son of Laius, who had supplanted his brother. Œdipus was exposed to destruction as soon as born, because his father had been warned that he must perish by the hand of his son,—but was rescued and brought up by shepherds. Hearing from the oracle of Delphi (the tradition is of course localised), that if he returned home he must necessarily be the murderer of his father, he avoided the house of Polybus, the only home he knew of, and travelled towards Phocis (from west to east by the by). (Comp. with infra, [p. 194.]) He met Laius, his father, in a narrow road. Laius haughtily ordered Œdipus to make way for him, which provoked an encounter, in which Laius and his armour-bearer were slain. Other circumstances, either separate traditions of the same event, or distinct legends, are no doubt mixed up in the narration, but still four facts remain as a residuum available for the comparison.

Œdipus was the son, as Lamech was the grandson, of one who supplanted his brother, both kill their respective progenitors, and in the casual encounter in which in both instances the tragedy occurred, two persons were slain. In this there is a fair outline of resemblance.

In the legend of Perseus, certainly the legend is more indistinct, et, in one point, that he inadvertently killed his grandfather, the coincidence is perfect. And it must be borne in mind that it is not a question of absolute but of comparative resemblance—in fact, a choice between a mythical or an historical, an astral or a scriptural solution, and when you come to degrees of relationship, the astral or solar explanation becomes more attenuated at each remove,—“the father of the sun;” may be metaphorically intelligible, but the grandfather of the sun!

I see further trace of the tradition of Lamech in the Phrygian legend of Adrastus, somewhat confused in the tradition of Cain, and in some points reversed. Adrastus, the son of the Phrygian king, had inadvertently killed his brother, and was in consequence expelled by his father and deprived of everything. Whilst an exile at the court of Crœsus, he was sent out with Prince Atys as guardian to deliver the country from a wild boar. Adrastus had the misfortune to kill Prince Atys while aiming at the wild beast. Crœsus pardoned the unfortunate man, as he saw in this accident the will of the gods, and the fulfilment of a prophecy, but Adrastus killed himself on the tomb of Atys (Herod. i. 35; Smith, “Myth. Dict.”)

Now let us take up the proof at another point. Will any one refuse to see in the following tale from the “Gesta Romanorum,”[143] at least a mediæval corruption of the legend of Œdipus:—“A certain soldier, called Julian, unwittingly killed his parents. For being of noble blood, and addicted as a youth frequently is to the sports of the field, a stag which he hotly pursued suddenly turned round and addressed him—‘Thou who pursuest me thus fiercely shall be the destruction of thy parents.’ These words greatly alarmed Julian.... Leaving, therefore, his amusement, he went privately into a distant country ... where he marries. It chances that his parents come into that country, and in his absence were received kindly by his wife, who, ‘in consideration of the love she bore her husband, put them into her own bed, and commanded another to be prepared elsewhere for herself.’ In the meantime, Julian returning abruptly home and discovering strangers in his bed, in a fit of passion slays them. When he discovers the parricidal crime he exclaims—‘This accursed hand has murdered my parents and fulfilled the horrible prediction which I have struggled to avoid.’”

Now, I submit that this is not a greater distortion of the classical stories of Œdipus, Adrastus, &c, than are the classical legends of the biblical traditions of Cain and Lamech.

For further trace read Bunsen, iv. 235, also, 253, 254. Mr Cox (“Mythology of Aryan Nations;”) says:—“The names Theseus, Perseus, Oidipous, had all been mere epithets of one and the same being; but when they ceased to be mere appellatives, these creations of mythical speech were regarded not only as different persons, but as beings in no way connected with each other.... Nay, the legends inter-change the method by which the parents seek the death of their children; for there were tales which narrated that Oidipous was shut up in an ark which was washed ashore at Sikyon,” p. 80. Sicyon was the oldest Greek city. Compare [p. 157] of this ch., and ch. on [Deluge]. This was merely the traditional record that the tradition was preserved in the Ark, and subsequently emanated from Sicyon.