CHAPTER VI.
THE ÆOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ÆOLUS.
If two of the sons of Hellên, Dôrus and Xuthus, present to us families comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third son, Æolus, richly makes up for the deficiency. From him we pass to his seven sons and five daughters, amidst a great abundance of heroic and poetical incident.
In dealing however with these extensive mythical families, it is necessary to observe, that the legendary world of Greece, in the manner in which it is presented to us, appears invested with a degree of symmetry and coherence which did not originally belong to it. For the old ballads and stories which were sung or recounted at the multiplied festivals of Greece, each on its own special theme, have been lost: the religious narratives, which the Exegêtês of every temple had present to his memory, explanatory of the peculiar religious ceremonies and local customs in his own town or Dême, have passed away: all these primitive elements, originally distinct and unconnected, are removed out of our sight, and we possess only an aggregate result, formed by many confluent streams of fable, and connected together by the agency of subsequent poets and logographers. Even the earliest agents in this work of connecting and systematizing—the Hesiodic poets—have been hardly at all preserved. Our information respecting Grecian mythology is derived chiefly from the prose logographers who followed them, and in whose works, since a continuous narrative was above all things essential to them, the fabulous personages are woven into still more comprehensive pedigrees, and the original isolation of the legends still better disguised. Hekatæus, Pherekydês, Hellanikus, and Akusilaus lived at a time when the idea of Hellas as one great whole, composed of fraternal sections, was deeply rooted in the mind of every Greek; and when the fancy of one or a few great families, branching out widely from one common stem, was more popular and acceptable than that of a distinct indigenous origin in each of the separate districts. These logographers, indeed, have themselves been lost; but Apollodôrus and the various scholiasts, our great immediate sources of information respecting Grecian mythology, chiefly borrowed from them: so that the legendary world of Greece is in fact known to us through them, combined with the dramatic and Alexandrine poets, their Latin imitators, and the still later class of scholiasts—except indeed such occasional glimpses as we obtain from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the remaining Hesiodic fragments, which exhibit but too frequently a hopeless diversity when confronted with the narratives of the logographers.
Though Æolus (as has been already stated) is himself called the son of Hellên along with Dôrus and Xuthus, yet the legends concerning the Æolids, far from being dependent upon this genealogy, are not all even coherent with it: moreover the name of Æolus in the legend is older than that of Hellên, inasmuch as it occurs both in the Iliad and Odyssey.[235] Odysseus sees in the under-world the beautiful Tyrô, daughter of Salmôneus, and wife of Krêtheus, son of Æolus.
Æolus is represented as having reigned in Thessaly: his seven sons were Krêtheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmôneus, Deiôn, Magnês and Periêrês: his five daughters, Canacê, Alcyonê, Peisidikê, Calycê and Perimêdê. The fables of this race seem to be distinguished by a constant introduction of the god Poseidôn, as well as by an unusual prevalence of haughty and presumptuous attributes among the Æolid heroes, leading them to affront the gods by pretences of equality, and sometimes even by defiance. The worship of Poseidôn must probably have been diffused and preëminent among a people with whom these legends originated.
SECTION I.—SONS OF ÆOLUS.
Salmôneus is not described in the Odyssey as son of Æolus, but he is so denominated both in the Hesiodic Catalogue, and by the subsequent logographers. His daughter Tyrô became enamoured of the river Enipeus, the most beautiful of all streams that traverse the earth: she frequented the banks assiduously, and there the god Poseidôn found means to indulge his passion for her, assuming the character of the river god himself. The fruit of this alliance were the twin brothers, Pelias and Nêleus: Tyrô afterwards was given in marriage to her uncle Krêtheus, another son of Æolus, by whom she had Æsôn, Pherês and Amythaôn—all names of celebrity in the heroic legends.[236] The adventures of Tyrô formed the subject of an affecting drama of Sophoklês, now lost. Her father had married a second wife, named Sidêrô, whose cruel counsels induced him to punish and torture his daughter on account of her intercourse with Poseidôn. She was shorn of her magnificent hair, beaten and ill-used in various ways, and confined in a loathsome dungeon. Unable to take care of her two children, she had been compelled to expose them immediately on their birth in a little boat on the river Enipeus; they were preserved by the kindness of a herdsman, and when grown up to manhood, rescued their mother, and revenged her wrongs by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidêrô.[237] This pathetic tale respecting the long imprisonment of Tyrô is substituted by Sophoklês in place of the Homeric legend, which represented her to have become the wife of Krêtheus and mother of a numerous offspring.[238]
Her father, the unjust Salmôneus, exhibited in his conduct the most insolent impiety towards the gods. He assumed the name and title even of Zeus, and caused to be offered to himself the sacrifices destined for that god: he also imitated the thunder and lightning, by driving about with brazen caldrons attached to his chariot and casting lighted torches towards heaven. Such wickedness finally drew upon him the wrath of Zeus, who smote him with a thunderbolt, and effaced from the earth the city which he had founded, with all its inhabitants.[239]
Pelias and Nêleus, “both stout vassals of the great Zeus,” became engaged in dissension respecting the kingdom of Iôlkos in Thessaly. Pelias got possession of it, and dwelt there in plenty and prosperity; but he had offended the goddess Hêrê by killing Sidêrô upon her altar, and the effects of her wrath were manifested in his relations with his nephew Jasôn.[240]