Stories from Greek Mythology (Illustrated)

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An excerpt from the beginning of the story:

CUPID AND THE GRACES

CUPID, called also Amor by the Latins, and, still better, Eros by the Greeks, was the first begotten, and yet the youngest, of all the gods,—the first, and, in a sense, the last . He was the first hatched from the world-egg, which is sometimes, therefore, called the egg of Eros, when as yet the only separate existences that had sprung from Chaos were, Gaia, or the passive material, and Tartaros, or the active immaterial, or spiritual, elements of being. No further progress could the work of creation make till Eros arose out of it to brood over it. There was nothing in it, above it, or under it, till then; only the possibilities of things were, not the things themselves; the very gods and demons only possibilities—that is, creatures that might exist, but as yet did not. The friendly and the hostile elements of nature, the war of which since constitutes the history of the universe, lay all in silent and most peaceful neighbourhood within the womb of Chaos then, "not a mouse stirring," not a mouse to stir. All, indeed, waited to be born, each in its order and time, but would have waited fo ever, if the egg of Eros had proved addle, and no Eros appeared. The individual loves and hatreds, which sum up existence and life, are the brood of Eros; for hatred is only love in some form, crossed and thwarted, and always in nature so much hostility, so much affection of some kind is there. Nothing of it all could come into being till Eros managed to do so; and the spirit of Eros emerged triumphant, the spirit of the upper gods.

It was, in the Greek cosmogonies, the first day's work of creation, this hatching of the Eros-egg, as the creation of light was in the Mosaic. "Let love be," was the first articulately spoken command of the hitherto dumb and helpless, but heaving, Chaos; "Let light be," was the first creative word of the already, and from everlasting, living and loving God. And both were obeyed; Chaos, as the Greeks thought, calling for "Love" to lead, and God for "Light." And both are of the beginnings, and a pair decreed from the first in holy wedlock to rule the world. Nay, finds Max Müller, Eros is just Eōs in the masculine gender,—a dawning sun flooding and pervading the world with an ethereal, true heaven's light. But he makes "light" only the image of which "love" is the original. The ancient nations, he thinks, called Love Eros, because the rise of love in the soul seemed to them to resemble nothing so much as a dawning light, revealing to it for the first time the true splendours and terrors of the world. There is ever a tendency in man to think that to have been first in existence, which he finds to have been first in his experience. He himself loves before he sees; his heart is open, before his eyes; love must irradiate his world for him before he well knows he is in it, what it is made of, and what to make of it. And so, he thinks, love must have preceded light in nature as it ever does in him, and that as the world first properly comes into existence for him under the power of love, love itself must have been the beginning of all things, and the first-begotten of the immortals.

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Contents

Preface

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
THE SLEEP OF ENDYMION
THE TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL PSYCHE
CUPID AND THE GRACES
MIDAS
THE ARGONAUTS
PHILEMON AND BAUCIS
ARETHUSA