Fenris, the wolf, is another important animal who typifies evil.
Turning now to Greek mythology, we find that animals, on the whole, play a subordinate part. Animals are sacrificed to the gods of Greece, but they are not often worshipped. Many of the gods have more than one animal sacred to them or sacrificed to them in their worship, and very likely some of these animals, as in Indian mythology, were originally worshipped. When the ideas of early mankind once began to develop it would soon occur to them that human beings would be better impersonations for their gods than animals, yet the animals, once having been sacred, it would be very difficult to banish them altogether, hence they remained in the more developed myths as animals sacred to gods in human form. Greek myths, too, abound in transformations into animal form, Zeus (Roman name Jupiter or Jove), the ruling god of heaven and earth, being especially given to appearing on earth in the form of some animal. Gods of the earth and sea were also often represented as half man, half animal, the most famous of these being Pan, the god of the woods, who was half man, half goat, and the mermaids, who had the bodies of women with fishes’ tails. Though not so prominent as in India, the sky is the pasture land for flocks and herds in Greece, as you will see illustrated in the story of Odysseus’s meeting with them. There are animals, also, which talk, like the celebrated steeds of Achilles, described in the “Iliad.” In one place they are pictured as weeping when they saw the Greek hero Patroclus slain. As Pope translates this affecting scene:
“Along their face
The big round drops cours’d down with silent pace
Conglobing on the dust. Their manes that late
Circled their arched necks and waved in state
Trailed on the dust beneath the yoke, were spread,
And prone to earth was hung their languid head.”
But even more marvellous was the time when Xanthus broke into speech and warned his master of his approaching doom. It is quite in the manner of an animal in a savage myth, but in the days of Homer’s “Iliad” thought had advanced so far among the Greeks that the speech of this horse was not regarded as a perfectly natural event as it would be in a savage myth. It was Juno, the goddess, who willed that Xanthus should break eternal silence and portentous speak. Achilles addresses his horses, and Xanthus answers:
“Xanthus and Balius! of Podarges’ strain;