The good Eumæus prays to the Nymphs to speed the return of his master, reminding them of the numerous sacrifices Ulysses had offered to them. In another part of the poem, their sacred cave is thus described:—
But at the harbour's head a long-leafed olive
Grows, and near to it lies a lovely cave,
Dusky and sacred to the Nymphs, whom men
Call Naïdes. In it large craters lie,
And two-eared pitchers, all of stone, and there
Bees build their combs. In it, too, are long looms
Of stone, and there the Nymphs do weave their robes,
Sea-purple, wondrous to behold. Aye-flowing
Waters are there; two entrances it hath;
That to the north is pervious unto men;
That to the south more sacred is, and there
Men enter not, but 'tis the Immortals' path.
Yet though thus exalted in rank, the Homeric Nymphs frequently 'blessed the bed' of heroes; and many a warrior who fought before Troy could boast descent from a Naïs or a Nereis.
The sweet, gentle, pious, Ocean-nymphs, who in the Prometheus of Æschylus appear as the consolers and advisers of its dignified hero, seem to hold a nearly similar relation with man to the supernal gods. Beholding the misery inflicted on Prometheus by the power of Zeus, they cry,—
May never the all-ruling
Zeus set his rival power
Against my thoughts;
Nor may I ever fail
The gods, with holy feasts
Of sacrifices, drawing near,
Beside the ceaseless stream
Of father Ocëan:
Nor may I err in words;
But this abide with me
And never fade away.
One of the most interesting species of Nymphs is the Dryads, or Hamadryads, those personifications of the vegetable life of plants. In the Homeric hymn to Aphroditè, we find the following full and accurate description of them. Aphroditè, when she informs Anchises of her pregnancy, and her shame to have it known among the gods, says of the child:—
But him, when first he sees the sun's clear light,
The Nymphs shall rear, the mountain-haunting Nymphs,
Deep-bosomed, who on this mountain great
And holy dwell, who neither goddesses
Nor women are. Their life is long; they eat
Ambrosial food, and with the deathless frame
The beauteous dance. With them, in the recess
Of lovely caves, well-spying Argos-slayer
And the Sileni mix in love. Straight pines
Or oaks high-headed spring with them upon
The earth man-feeding, soon as they are born;
Trees fair and flourishing; on the high hills
Lofty they stand; the Deathless' sacred grove
Men call them, and with iron never cut.
But when the fate of death is drawing near,
First wither on the earth the beauteous trees,
The bark around them wastes, the branches fall,
And the Nymph's soul at the same moment leaves
The sun's fair light.
They possessed power to reward and punish these who prolonged or abridged the existence of their associate-tree. In the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, Phineus thus explains to the heroes the cause of the poverty of Peræbius:—
But he was paying the penalty laid on
His father's crime; for one time, cutting trees
Alone among the hills, he spurned the prayer
Of the Hamadryas Nymph, who, weeping sore,
With earnest words besought him not to cut
The trunk of an oak tree, which, with herself
Coeval, had endured for many a year.
But, in the pride of youth, he foolishly
Cut it; and to him and to his race the Nymph
Gave ever after a lot profitless.
The Scholiast gives on this passage the following tale from Charon of Lampsacus: