Favorite Greek Myths (Yesterday's Classics) (11 page)

The heroes reached Iolcus in safety, and there Jason reigned long and happily in the place of King Pelias, the usurper.

W
HEN
Jason sailed away on the famous quest of the Golden Fleece, Hercules was one of the heroes who accompanied him. At that time, Hercules took with him, on the Argo, a beautiful boy named Hylas, who served him as page. Hercules was very fond of this boy. He dressed him in green with gold lace, and kept him at his side all day long, teaching him to use the bow and arrow, to throw the discus, and to do many other things that he himself had learned from his father or from the herdsmen of Mount Cithæron.

After the Argonauts had sailed for three days, with a fresh south wind filling their sails, they came to a small sea called the Propontis, and there, the wind failing, they drew the Argo up on the beach, and went ashore. At the spot where they landed, they found salt meadows, all abloom with beautiful flowers of every color. They gathered the tall reeds and the flowering flags, flowers and all, with other marsh plants, and made comfortable beds for themselves under the cool shade of the trees, in order to get a few hours' sleep; for they knew that during the heat of the day they could not make much headway in rowing.

Toward night they all set about getting supper, and Hylas, for his part, took a pitcher and went to draw water for Hercules. He found, in a low, marshy place, a spring of fresh water, so large that it was like a pond. Rushes and delicate wild grasses grew all around it; ferns leaned over the edge of the water; and a kind of climbing milkweed, like a wax-plant, made the air sweet with its white blossoms. It was a beautiful spring, and the water-nymphs had taken it for their own. They lived down at the bottom of this spring, and used to come up and dance around among the flowers, by moonlight.

Hylas knew nothing of the nymphs, but when he stood over the water, and began to fill the pitcher, he heard a chorus of silvery voices saying, "Come down! Come down!" The nymphs had seen him, and they admired his beautiful face and the gold lace he wore.

While he was looking into the spring, and wondering what the voices were, and what they could mean, two slender white hands suddenly reached up from the black water and pulled him down.

When it began to grow dark, and Hylas did not come back, Hercules, fearing that some mishap had befallen the boy, took his club in one hand and his bow in the other, and went to look for him. As he walked inland, in the direction that Hylas had taken, he called as loud as he could,—and that was very loud indeed,—"Hylas! Hylas!" The call came echoing back from the hills, "Hylas! Hylas!" and that was all the answer that Hercules got, till he passed close to the nymphs' spring. Then he thought he heard Hylas's own voice answering faintly; but as it seemed to come from so very, very far away, he never dreamed that his little page could be down under the black water, and went on, tearing his way through the briers to no purpose.

At midnight a breeze sprang up. Then the Argonauts left their beds of rushes, hoisted the sails of the ship, and made ready to go—but where was Hercules? The heroes waited for him a long time; then, saying that he was a runaway and did not mean to go with them to Colchis, they took up the anchor and went on without him.

Poor Hercules roamed the hills and searched through all the marshes for three days. More than once he heard that faint voice answering his call; but he never could tell where it came from, and so made up his mind that it was his own imagination. At last he gave up the search, and went on to Colchis on foot.

Hylas, not knowing that Hercules had gone, kept on calling to his friend, "Hercules, Hercules, here I am!" Several peasants who passed that way heard his voice, but could not tell where it came from, any more than Hercules could. Still the voice called, all night long, for many nights, "Hercules, Hercules!"

Some time after, one of these peasants saw a little creature, not more than an inch or two long, sitting on a reed. It was clothed in green with gold lace, just as the lost page had been. Tiny as it was, it had a voice out of all proportion to its size. While the peasant stood looking at it, it puffed out its throat and called loudly, but all it said was, "Hr-r-reep! Hreep! Hreep!"

K
ING
P
ANDION
had two beautiful daughters, called Procne and Philomela. It came about that the eldest, Procne, was married to King Tereus, who was the son of Mars, the cruel god of war. The wedding festivities lasted for two weeks, or more, with singing and dancing, and much other merry-making; but Hymen, the little marriage-god, was not present among the guests with his torch, neither were the Graces. This was a bad omen, as it meant ill-fortune for the bride; but it was a much worse one when a little owl came in, flew to the rafters overhead, and began to hoot dismally.

After Procne had been married a few years, she felt so lonely in the great palace in Thrace, that she begged King Tereus either to let her go home or to send for her sister, Philomela.

King Tereus said that her sister should come to her. He ordered a ship launched, and went himself to bring Philomela.

King Pandion did not like to part from his younger daughter, who was the only child he had left; but Philomela wished so much to see her sister that she put her arms around her father's neck, and coaxed him to let her go, until at last he gave a reluctant consent.

Now, alas for Philomela, King Tereus was a very cruel, wicked man. When he saw how beautiful this younger sister was, he wished that he had married her instead of Procne. As soon as the ship reached Thrace, he sent Procne away into a great forest, where he had her shut up in a lonely tower. Then, sighing and groaning, he told Philomela that her sister was dead. Philomela was heart-broken, and mourned a long time; but nevertheless she was finally persuaded to become the queen of King Tereus, in Procne's place.

The king's wicked plan had succeeded thus far, but he feared that Procne might tell how cruelly she had been treated. This fear made him more cruel still, for he had her tongue cut out, thus making the poor queen dumb.

Now he thought all was safe, but he did not know how skilful Procne was at her weaving and her embroidery. She had never learned to write—even queens could not write in those days; but she could weave most wonderful pictures, and could embroider letters, and put them together to form a few simple words. She needed nothing more to make her story known. For almost a year she worked busily at her loom and with her needle. Then one day she sent one of her maids to Philomela at the palace, with the gift of a piece of tapestry.

When Philomela unrolled the tapestry and spread it out before her, she was horrified at what she saw, for she easily understood all that Procne had meant to tell her by the woven pictures.

She immediately sent for her sister, by night. The two then planned to fly from the country of King Tereus, taking Procne's little son, Itys, with them. As they stole out of the palace, the great doors creaked on their rusty hinges, and awoke the king. He came rushing out, with a drawn sword, and started in pursuit of the fugitives.

Philomela and Procne ran as fast as they could, dragging Itys between them; but the wicked King Tereus was getting nearer and nearer.

All at once the sisters felt themselves borne up on the air, and carried along as if they had wings. The gods, in pity, had changed them into birds. Procne became a swallow; Philomela, a nightingale. The child, Itys, being in no danger from his father's anger, was not changed into a bird, and was therefore left behind.

Procne, now a swift-winged swallow, went back to the palace many a day, lingered under the eaves, and even flew in at the open doors, trying to coax her child to come away with her. But Itys saw only a pretty, bright-eyed bird, and could not understand its excited chatter.

Philomela, even as a bird, remained broken-hearted. She hid away from other birds, and remained silent while they were singing. At night, however, when all was dark and still, she used to sing under the windows of the peasants, telling the story of her dumb sister's wrongs, and her own sorrow.

W
HEN
the summer suns had scorched the plains and dried the rivers of Greece till hardly any green thing was left, there were meadows, high on the snowy sides of Mount Helicon, that were bright with soft young grasses, and dotted with flowers of every color.

In these meadows were the most glorious fountains. At certain times they sent their waters spouting far up into the blue sky, whence they came tumbling down again, to rise once more in a fine spray, in which could be seen a thousand rainbows.

The most beautiful fountain of all, and the one where the water was the sweetest and the coolest, was called the Fountain of Hippocrene. The waters of this fountain had a wonderful magic. There had been a time when no such fountain was to be seen on Mount Helicon. One bright moonlight night Pegasus, the winged horse, alighted in these meadows. He uttered a silvery neigh, and then struck the ground a sharp blow with his hoof. Immediately this Fountain of Hippocrene gushed forth. Pegasus drank of its sweet waters, and then flew away, far above the clouds. But he sometimes came back to drink of those waters again. There was no place on earth where a plain mortal would be more likely to see him.

The Muses, too, haunted these beautiful meadows of Helicon. They were nine sisters, with hair so black that it seemed violet in the moonlight. On nights when a full moon was in the sky, they used to come and dance around the Fountain of Hippocrene. Some people believed that Pegasus belonged to them.

Shepherds who fed their sheep at the foot of Mount Helicon, and watched all night long, lest some prowling wolf should attack the flock, sometimes caught a glimpse of Pegasus or the Muses; but very few people in the towns below even believed that either the winged horse or the nine sisters really existed at all.

Now it happened one day that a certain young hero, named Bellerophon, came to Mount Helicon to look for Pegasus. He had been sent by a king to slay the Chimæra, a kind of monstrous dragon with three heads, that was laying waste the country in a certain part of Asia. He thought that, with the help of the winged horse, he might win an easy victory over any earth-born monster.

So, night after night, Bellerophon came to the Fountain of Hippocrene and watched for Pegasus. For a long time he could not see so much as a feather of the horse's glorious wings; although, once or twice, when the moon was shining more brightly than usual, he did think that a shadow passed lightly over the grass, but when he looked up, there was nothing to be seen. Another time he heard a sudden rush of wings, and caught a glimpse of something white among the trees.

At last, it chanced one night that he found a lost child on the lower slopes of Mount Helicon, and knowing that it was in great danger of being devoured by wild beasts, he took it to one of the shepherds who were watching their sheep near by. Then he went on to the spring, where he arrived much later than usual.

That night he saw Pegasus careering gayly about the meadows. The horse's silvery wings were held high over his back, and his dainty pink hoofs scarcely touched the ground. His whinnying was like the tremulous music of a flute; but when he saw Bellerophon, he spread his great white wings, and soared away up into the depths of the sky.