"The fields unsown
Yield their growth;
All ills cease.
Balder comes.
Hoder and Balder,
Those heavenly gods,
Dwell together in Odin's halls."
The great catastrophe is past. Man is saved, The world is once more fair. The sun shines again in heaven. Night and day follow each other in endless revolution around the happy globe. Ragnarok is past.
{p. 154}
CHAPTER V.
THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAËTON
Now let us turn to the mythology of the Latins, as preserved in the pages of Ovid, one of the greatest of the poets of ancient Rome.[1]
Here we have the burning of the world involved in the myth of Phaëton, son of Phœbus--Apollo--the Sun--who drives the chariot of his father; he can not control the horses of the Sun, they run away with him; they come so near the earth as to set it on fire, and Phaëton is at last killed by Jove, as he killed Typhon in the Greek legends, to save heaven and earth from complete and common ruin.
This is the story of the conflagration as treated by a civilized mind, explained by a myth, and decorated with the flowers and foliage of poetry.
We shall see many things in the narrative of Ovid which strikingly confirm our theory.
Phaëton, to prove that he is really the son of Phœbus, the Sun, demands of his parent the right to drive his chariot for one day. The sun-god reluctantly consents, not without many pleadings that the infatuated and rash boy would give up his inconsiderate ambition. Phaëton persists. The old man says: