Interpretative. The name Ægina may imply either the shore on which the waves break (Preller), or the sacred goat (Ægeus) which was the totem of the Ægeus family of Attica. The worship of Athene was introduced into Athens by this family. In sacrifices the goddess was clad in the skin of the sacred goat, but no goat might be sacrificed to her. Probably another example of the survival of a savage ritual (Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 1, 280).
Illustrative. Myrmidons:
No, no, said Rhadamant, it were not well,
With loving souls to place a martialist;
He died in war, and must to martial fields,
Where wounded Hector lives in lasting pain,
And Achilles' Myrmidons do scour the plain.
Kyd, Spanish Tragedy
On Sisyphus, read Lewis Morris' poem in The Epic of Hades.
62. Textual. Mænad: the Mænades, from μαίνομαι (mainomai), 'to rage,' were women who danced themselves into a frenzy in the orgies or festivals of Bacchus. Cithæron: a mountain range south of Thebes and between Bœotia and Attica.
Interpretative. Antiope, philologically interpreted, may indicate the moon with face turned full upon us. That Antiope is a personification of some such natural phenomena would also appear from the significance of the names associated with hers in the myth: Nycteus, the night-man; Lycus, the man of light. Amphion and Zethus are thought, in like fashion, to represent manifestations of light; see also Castor and Pollux. Perhaps the method employed by Zethus and Amphion in building Thebes may merely symbolize the advantage of combining mechanical force with well-ordered or harmonious thought.
In Art: The Farnese Bull group (text, opp. p. [74]): marble, maybe by Tauriscus and Tralles, in Naples Museum. Fig. 51: a relief in the Palazzo Spada, Rome. Modern painting: Correggio's Antiope.
63. Textual. Phrygia: a province in Asia Minor. For Minerva's protection of the olive, see 65. Tyana is a town in Cappadocia, Asia Minor.
64. Textual. Argos: the capital of Argolis in the Peloponnesus. Of Cydippe, it is told, in Ovid's Heroides and elsewhere, that, when a girl sacrificing in the temple of Diana in Delos, she was seen and loved by a youth, Acontius. He threw before her an apple, on which these words were inscribed, "I swear by the sanctuary of Diana to marry Acontius." The maiden read aloud the words and threw the apple away. But the vow was registered by Diana, who, in spite of many delays, brought about the marriage of Cydippe and her unknown lover. Polyclitus the Elder, of Argos, lived about 431 B.C., and was a contemporary of two other great sculptors, Phidias and Myron. His greatest work was the chryselephantine statue of Hera for her temple between Argos and Mycenæ.