Prometheus, then, calls for sympathy there alone where motion (or, in the case of Earth, motherhood) gives promise of life and sympathy.
It is interesting, in view of the fact that brightness was also an element in the Greek conception of beauty, to notice that no phase of the sea so combines these two qualities of brightness and motion as its ‘multitudinous laughter.’ The path of gold of the rising sun may be brighter, a storm more swift in motion, but the perfect combination of the two ideals is here described.
It is natural that brightness or light should be held in such honour, but it is more surprising that beauty should be associated with motion in many cases in which the connection seems to us extremely remote.
The winds are the most conspicuous case of this: the Greeks personified more winds than they could name points of the compass, and Greek poetry is almost as full of the winds as of the sea.
This is especially marked in the Iliad, where anything which shows the movement of the wind, whether snow, the sea, a cornfield, mist, or clouds, is described again and again, while still air is only mentioned in a few scattered passages.
In one of these snow is described falling through a calm[46] to represent the same showers of stones which had just been compared to snow driven by a tempest; so it is evident that no importance attaches to the calmness, but both passages convey the sense of motion, though in a slightly different degree.
In another very remarkable passage Homer makes use of stationary clouds round a mountain-top as a type of steadfastness:—
ἀλλ’ ἔμενον νεφέλῃσιν ἐοικότες, ἅς τε Κρονίων
νηνεμίης ἔστησεν ἐπ’ ἀκροπόλοισιν ὄρεσσιν
ἀτρέμας, ὄφρ’ εὕδῃσι μένος Βορέαο καὶ ἄλλων
ζαχρηῶν ἀνέμων, οἵ τε νέφεα σκιόεντα
πνοιῇσιν λιγυρῇσι διασκιδνᾶσιν ἀέντες·
ὣς Δαναοὶ Τρῶας μένον ἔμπεδον οὐδὲ φέβοντο.[47]
Il. v. 522.
But for the most part the mists and the clouds, and even the sea, must be stirred to motion by the wind before they are considered worthy of a Greek poet’s attention.
The allusions to the wind-stirred sea are innumerable; the eddies of war are often compared to a whirlwind; the misty clouds are broken apart by the wind to reveal, now the dark waves of the sea, now the black peaks of a mountain:—