A figure despicable, old and poor;
In squalid vests with many a gaping rent,
Propped on a staff and trembling as he went.”
Odyssey, Book xvii.
The character of Ishtar as presented in this tablet is apparently a prototype not only of Hecate, but also of Medea, whose chariot was drawn by winged serpents, and the cauldron or pot, which Ishtar filled with her magic herbs, suggests the statement of Ovid that Medea on one occasion spent no less than nine days and nights in collecting herbs for her cauldron.[[103]] The character of Ishtar may also have suggested that of Circe, who
“Mixed the potion, fraudulent of soul,
The poison mantled in a golden bowl,”
and she loved Ulysses as Ishtar loved Izdūbar, even though she had transformed all of his companions into swine.
In column II of the tablet under consideration, we find the story of the king whom Ishtar changed into a leopard, “and his own dogs bit him to pieces.” No one can doubt that we see here the original of the Greek fable of Actæon, the hero who offended the goddess Diana, when she revenged herself by changing him into a deer, and his dogs no longer knowing their master, fell upon him and tore him to pieces.[[104]] The classic authors of Greece and Rome, however, attribute the fate of Actæon to the vengeance of the strong and graceful Diana, whom he offended by allowing his eyes to rest upon her rich beauty, while the tablet ascribes the fate of the king to the wanton cruelty of Ishtar.
Diana is sometimes identified with Hecate, the daughter of Asteria or Ishtar, and she retains the characteristics of her mother by appearing as the goddess of the moon. Her temple at Ephesus, with its hundred and twenty-seven columns of Parian marble, was one of the “Seven Wonders of the World,” but the hideous idol within it was roughly carved of wood, not as a beautiful huntress, but as an Egyptian monster, whose deformity was hidden by a curtain.[[105]]