Nereus, the God of the Sea, who dwells in it always (Neptune being the God who rules it from Olympus), has children by the Earth; namely, Thaumas, the father of Iris; that is, the “wonderful” or miracle-working angel of the sea; Phorcys, the malignant angel of it (you will find him degraded through many forms, at last, in the story of Sindbad, into the Old Man of the Sea); Ceto, the deep places of the sea, meaning its bays among rocks, therefore called by Hesiod “Fair-cheeked” Ceto; and Eurybia, the tidal force or sway of the sea, of whom more hereafter.
§ 10. Phorcys and Ceto, the malignant angel of the sea, and the spirit of its deep rocky places, have children, namely, first, Graiæ, the soft rain-clouds. The Greeks had a greater dislike of storm than we have, and therefore whatever violence is in the action of rain, they represented by harsher types than we should—types given in one group by Aristophanes (speaking in mockery of the poets): “This was the reason, then, that they made so much talk about the fierce rushing of the moist clouds, coiled in glittering; and the locks of the hundred-headed Typhon; and the blowing storms; and the bent-clawed birds drifted on the breeze, fresh, and aërial.” Note the expression “bent-clawed birds.” It illustrates two characters of these clouds; partly their coiling form; but more directly the way they tear down the earth from the hill-sides; especially those twisted storm-clouds which in violent action become the waterspout. These always strike at a narrow point, often opening the earth on a hill-side into a trench as a great pickaxe would (whence the Graiæ are said to have only one beak between them). Nevertheless, the rain-cloud was, on the whole, looked upon by the Greeks as beneficent, so that it is boasted of in the Œdipus Coloneus for its perpetual feeding of the springs of Cephisus,[4] and elsewhere often; and the opening song of the rain-clouds in Aristophanes is entirely beautiful:—
“O eternal Clouds! let us raise into open sight our dewy existence, from the deep-sounding Sea, our Father, up to the crests of the wooded hills, whence we look down over the sacred land, nourishing its fruits, and over the rippling of the divine rivers, and over the low murmuring bays of the deep.” I cannot satisfy myself about the meaning of the names of the Graiæ—Pephredo and Enuo—but the epithets which Hesiod gives them are interesting: “Pephredo, the well-robed; Enuo, the crocus-robed;” probably, it seems to me, from their beautiful colors in morning.
§ 11. Next to the Graiæ, Phorcys and Ceto begat the Gorgons, which are the true storm-clouds. The Graiæ have only one beak or tooth, but all the Gorgons have tusks like boars; brazen hands (brass being the word used for the metal of which the Greeks made their spears), and golden wings.
Their names are “Steino” (straitened), of storms compressed into narrow compass; “Euryale” (having wide threshing-floor), of storms spread over great space; “Medusa” (the dominant), the most terrible. She is essentially the highest storm-cloud; therefore the hail-cloud or cloud of cold, her countenance turning all who behold it to stone. (“He casteth forth his ice like morsels. Who can stand before his cold?”) The serpents about her head are the fringes of the hail, the idea of coldness being connected by the Greeks with the bite of the serpent, as with the hemlock.
§ 12. On Minerva’s shield, her head signifies, I believe, the cloudy coldness of knowledge, and its venomous character (“Knowledge puffeth up.” Compare Bacon in Advancement of Learning). But the idea of serpents rose essentially from the change of form in the cloud as it broke; the cumulus cloud not breaking into full storm till it is cloven by the cirrus; which is twice hinted at in the story of Perseus; only we must go back a little to gather it together.
Perseus was the son of Jupiter by Danaë, who being shut in a brazen tower, Jupiter came to her in a shower of gold: the brazen tower being, I think, only another expression for the cumulus or Medusa cloud; and the golden rain for the rays of the sun striking it; but we have not only this rain of Danaë’s to remember in connection with the Gorgon, but that also of the sieves of the Danaïdes, said to represent the provision of Argos with water by their father Danaüs, who dug wells about the Acropolis; nor only wells, but opened, I doubt not, channels of irrigation for the fields, because the Danaïdes are said to have brought the mysteries of Ceres from Egypt. And though I cannot trace the root of the names Danaüs and Danaë, there is assuredly some farther link of connection in the deaths of the lovers of the Danaïdes, whom they slew, as Perseus Medusa. And again note, that when the father of Danaë, Acrisius, is detained in Seriphos by storms, a disk thrown by Perseus is carried by the wind against his head, and kills him; and lastly, when Perseus cuts off the head of Medusa, from her blood springs Chrysaor, “wielder of the golden sword,” the Angel of the Lightning, and Pegasus, the Angel of the “Wild Fountains,” that is to say, the fastest flying or lower rain-cloud; winged, but racing as upon the earth.
§ 13. I say, “wild” fountains; because the kind of fountain from which Pegasus is named is especially the “fountain of the great deep” of Genesis; sudden and furious, (cataracts of heaven, not windows, in the Septuagint);—the mountain torrent caused by thunderous storm, or as our “fountain”—a Geyser-like leaping forth of water. Therefore, it is the deep and full source of streams, and so used typically of the source of evils, or of passions; whereas the word “spring” with the Greeks is like our “well-head”—a gentle issuing forth of water continually. But, because both the lightning-fire and the gushing forth, as of a fountain, are the signs of the poet’s true power, together with perpetuity, it is Pegasus who strikes the earth with his foot, on Helicon,[5] and causes Hippocrene to spring forth—“the horse’s well-head.” It is perpetual; but has, nevertheless, the Pegasean storm-power.
§ 14. Wherein we may find, I think, sufficient cause for putting honor upon the rain-cloud. Few of us, perhaps, have thought, in watching its career across our own mossy hills, or listening to the murmur of the springs amidst the mountain quietness, that the chief masters of the human imagination owed, and confessed that they owed, the force of their noblest thoughts, not to the flowers of the valley, nor the majesty of the hill, but to the flying cloud.
Yet they never saw it fly, as we may in our own England. So far, at least, as I know the clouds of the south, they are often more terrible than ours, but the English Pegasus is swifter. On the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills, when the rain-cloud is low and much broken, and the steady west-wind fills all space with its strength,[6] the sun-gleams fly like golden vultures: they are flashes rather than shinings; the dark spaces and the dazzling race and skim along the acclivities, and dart and dip from crag to dell, swallow-like;—no Graiæ these,—gray and withered: Grey Hounds rather, following the Cerinthian stag with the golden antlers.