NOTES. 5 volvunt mare.-The cyclone above had communicated its eddying motions to the waters below. 6 gurgite. The aërial and marine alike. 9 erramus.-A vessel tossed about in the eddies caused by a cyclone has travelled 1,500 miles in 5 days, and yet at the end of that time was but 410 miles from the point of departure." clausa domus.-When earth was covered by a crust of some kind. 23-27.—The poet proceeds to enumerate the principal characteristics of revolving storms, namely, velocity, a central axis, spiral currents, and suction. 25 26 volucrum.-Cyclones move at a rate of from 50 to 100 miles an hour. ventris. In severe storms there is always present a system of surface winds revolving about and blowing in towards a storm centre." uncæ manus.-"At a short distance above the earth's surface is a system of outward moving spiral currents immediately above the lower inward moving winds." 27 pallida s. o. fame.-There is hardly any limit to their powers of suction. The waters of the sea have been frequently observed to be drawn in, in greater or less quantity, by the vacuum which is formed in the midst of the whirlwind. In Barbadoes Reed saw showers of salt water fall at a great distance from the shore, and in such abundance as to destroy all the fish of the lakes and streams. CHAPTER VIII. THE KEEPER AND THE KEEP. Phoreys and Ceto.-Hesiod, it will be remembered, when enumerating the offspring of Pontus and Gæa, began with Nereus, the eldest; that is, with water or the constituents of water placed originally, as we have seen, in the furthest confines of earth's atmospheric envelope. Continuing his narrative, the Greek poet says: αὖτις δ ̓ αὖ Θαύμαντα μέγαν καὶ ἀγήνορα Φόρκυν Γαίῃ μισγόμενος καὶ Κητὼ καλλιπάρηον, Εὐρυβίην τ' ἀδάμαντος ἐνὶ φρεσὶ θυμὸν ἔχουσαν.—Theog. 237. Backward and backward still with Ge conjoined, The blushing Ceto, and Eurybia too With adamantine spirit in her breast. NOTES. 1 αγήνορα.—αγήνωρ, Dor. ἀγάνωρ, signifios literally (ἄγαν ὁράω) “ much seen, very much seen, too much seen," owing to the varied constructions of ayav. It is in this way that the term has been applied in the sense of "manifest, conspicuous, very conspicuous," to an Achilles; and of "too manifest, too conspicuous, barefaced," to Thersites and the wooers of Penelope. There is nothing pleonastic or superfluous in the words "avτis d' av." They bring the reader from the confines of the incandescent orb where our oceans were conceived down to the aërial regions where such phenomena as electricity, the rainbow, and mighty storm winds hold sway; and still further down to where those new characters, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia are situated. If we look back at the tabulated summary of existing conditions at the conclusion of Pontus and Gæa, we see plainly how Nereus and Thaumas are respectively applicable to those marked (1) and (2). Eurybia will be treated of when we come to her consort, the Titan Crius; but even as it is, the name is sufficiently suggestive of "diffused force" to connect her with that marked (4). If then the offspring, as a whole, be consonant with the specified conditions as a whole, it naturally follows that the mythological remainder must be the equivalent of the scientific one, that is to say, Phorcys and Ceto must represent the conditions marked (3). Everything with regard to them is confirmative of this conclusion. They end the "auris d'av" of Hesiod's material beings, just as earth proper ends the material zones into which the incandescent globe arranged itself: they are the children of Pontus and Gæa, as the diminished igneous globe is of the larger incandescent: they are brother and sister and united in wedlock, as the exterior and interior of our orb are close kin to one another and inseparably united. Nor is this all; the very names breathe conviction. Phorcys (Þópkvs) is (þáw ěpkos) "the visible boundary"; while Ceto (Knr) is but Doric for Kárw, "underneath"; so that the two deities are emblems respectively of the exterior and the interior of the orb. The epithets ἀγήνορα and κаλάрηоν applied to them respectively by Hesiod accentuate both the derivation and interpretation. Phorcys, the exterior surface, is "well seen, well defined"; Ceto, that which is beneath the surface, is "blushing," to denote the glowing heat of our orb in those days-days when Phorcys was a mighty potentate who held sway over earth's expanse. He, like others of the older deities, was shorn in time of much of his dominion, obliterated as he was by his Gorgon child, Medusa, as she was by her offspring Chrysaor, and he by his descendants. But he still retained a portion,-in the sea whose exterior surface, unlike that of land, has never changed. There, though under the control of Neptune, he is the marine Phorcys who generates the clouds, and controls the surface play of the waters, beneath which, as in a ring, the "Nereidum, Phorcique chorus" exercise their functions. As he holds the surface, so does his partner Ceto hold the depths of ocean, where the whales and monsters of the sea disport. G.O. K CHAPTER IX. THE GRAY FROM BIRTH. Graia.-How old are the clouds? They precede the formation of rain in these our days; but in view of their being but the elastic invisible vapour of water made visible by condensation and cold, we must suppose this invisible vapour as antecedent in point of time. Were there no vapour, there would certainly be no clouds. This is pointed out in Mythology by saying that Nereus was the eldest born of Pontus and Gæa, and in science by the assertion that "oxidation must have preceded condensation." Whether the elemental rain was so constituted as to be capable of falling without any previous condensation into cloud is even within the range of possibility, taking into account the abnormal condition of all existing things in the primal age of earth, and from the fact that rain falls, though rarely, from a clear and cloudless sky. If condensation did occur it might be caused either by cooling from space without, or by cooling from a diminution of the heat from the surface of the earth below. The latter is equally probable with the former, more likely indeed, as the orb was constantly losing heat; it is more consistent with our theory of the cloud-making of to-day, and is certainly the opinion entertained by Mythology, which says that the Graia were children of Phorcys and Ceto, that is, of the orb below. True aqueous vapour is invisible and always present in the atmosphere. Rain is aqueous vapour condensed sufficiently to make it fall in drops. Cloud is intermediate between these two, since it is visible like rain, but suspended in the air like vapour. If close to the surface this visible vapour is generally called mist or fog; if high up, clouds. Endless though the forms of clouds be, there are three principal ones, namely, Cirrus, Cumulus, and Stratus. Of these the Cirrus is curled in appearance and the most elevated, so much so that its particles are supposed to be made up of minute crystals of ice or snow. The Cumulus, "the cloud of day," is mountainous-like in appearance, having above a bossy top that often becomes Cirrus, and below a horizontal base that stretches sometimes into Stratus. This last," the cloud of evening," is lowest in situation, and comprehends the mists and fogs. That the Graiæ are but the Clouds personified admits of little doubt, even without going further into explanation. Like the clouds they are emanations from Phoreys and Ceto, from the upper and under parts of earth, and especially from the former, as they are always genealogically alluded to as " Phorcydes"; like the clouds they are close akin to our globe, with which the Gorgons will presently be identified; like the clouds they are three in number; but above all, like the clouds are they "gray-gray from birth,” ἐκ γενετῆς πολιάς. Το what other class of objects in all creation, except the clouds, can such a phrase be applicable? For no matter what its situation may be, its height, colour, form, or extent, no matter whether it be the silvery cirrus, a purple mountain, bank of fog, or a nimbus black as night, the cloud was gray at first, gray from its birth. The word itself signifies (ypaîos) "old, aged, gray,' and the epithet, èk yevetîjs modiás, but intensifies the idea. Hesiod writes of them thus: Φόρκυϊ δ' αὖ Κητὼ Γραίας τέκε καλλιπαρῄους ἐκ γενετῆς πολιάς, τὰς δὴ Γραίας καλέουσιν Πεφρηδώ τ' εὔπεπλον Ενυώ τε κροκόπεπλον.-Theog. 270. For Phorcys Ceto retrogressive bore The fair-cheeked Graiæ, hoary from their birth, Enyo too, in saffron mantle clad; And these both gods immortal and the men That come to earth's domain, the Graiæ call. |