B00ARI2G5C EBOK (53 page)

Empusa
(
100
,
246
): a shape-shifting, lascivious, blood-sucking monster with donkey’s feet.

Enceladus
(
247
): one of the giants who unsuccessfully rebelled against Zeus and the other Olympian gods; they were thought to be buried under volcanoes. In Goethe’s final version of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ his role is taken over by the earthquake-god
Seismos
(q.v.).

Endymion
(
61
): see
Luna
.

Enyo
(
248
): one of the
Phorcyads
(q.v.) (Pemphredo, Enyo, and Deino); cf. Introd., pp. xxxviii f. and text 7967-8033.

Erebus
(
133
): see
Chaos
.

Erichtho
(
78
f,
246
): a Thessalian sorceress, reputed to be a malignant blood-sucking monster, but able to prophesy and to conjure up the dead. According to Lucan’s epic the
Pharsalia
, which Goethe read in 1826, Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, sought out this witch in her sepulchral retreats, and consulted her about the outcome of the impending decisive battle of Pharsalus between his father and Caesar.

Erichthonius
(
246
): son of the fire-god Hephaestus (Vulcan) and the earth-goddess Gaia, who became king of Athens and was reputed to have dragon’s feet. Goethe’s etymological association of him with Erichtho is a facetious invention.

Eros
(
123
,
162
): the personification of the sexual drive (Gk.
ρως, love). In earlier accounts he was a primal deity born out of the original Chaos, as the all-begetting and all-uniting life force; in 8479 Goethe expresses a similar conception. Later, in poetry and as his Roman equivalent Amor or Cupido (Cupid), he is seen as the youngest of the gods, the companion or son of Aphrodite, a cruel or mischievous boy who wounds gods and men with his arrows.

Euphorion
(Sc. 13): son of Achilles and Helen, begotten when they met after death as ghostly lovers on the island of Leuce (or in the Isles of the Blest according to another version). His name (from ε
φορος, ‘bearing good things’) appears to refer to the fertility of his native soil. He was born with wings, and later attracted the amorous attention of Zeus, but fled from his advances; the god pursued him to the island of Melos, and there struck him dead with a thunderbolt. Some nymphs who took pity on him and buried him were turned into frogs. For Goethe’s use of the name ‘Euphorion’ for Helen’s son by Faust, see Introd., p. xli and notes.

Eurotas
(
125
,
140
,
143
,
156
): the river (see map) takes on a quasi-mythical character by its associations with Helen. She is born, or rather hatched (9517-21), beside it (presumably near the city of Sparta), and its ‘grassy bank’ in Yeats’s poem ‘Lullaby’ is also where Leda conceived her. On returning from Troy, she lands (8538 f.) with Menelaus and his army at its mouth in the Gulf of Laconia (a place still called Skala, ‘harbour’).

Eurydice
(
249
): see
Orpheus
.

Fates
(Gk. Mόîραι, Lat. Parcae) (
24
f.,
108
,
139
): the implacable goddesses of destiny, equivalent to the Norms of Nordic mythology; they were thought of as three old women spinning the thread of human life.

Fauns
(
39
,
173
): see
Satyrs
.

Furies
(called in Gk. ‘Eριvυες) (
25
f.): spirits of vengeance who executed curses, pursued and tormented the guilty, and brought about famines and pestilences. In later sources there are three of them, with the names that Goethe uses, though he deliberately trivializes their roles.

Galatea
(
112
,
120
f.): a sea-nymph, the favourite daughter of the old sea-god
Nereus
(q.v.), who thinks of her (8144-9) as inheriting the functions of
Aphrodite
(q.v.) and sharing her divinity. Galatea riding on a chariot of shells was a motif in paintings by Raphael which Goethe had seen in Rome. He introduces her at the climax of the sea-pageant as if to emphasize her special importance.

Gorgon
(
249
): a female monster with terrifying attributes, such as snakes growing out of her head instead of hair and eyes that turned anyone who looked at her to stone. Homer mentions only one gorgon, other sources three (Sthenno, Euryale, and Medusa; see also
Phorcyads
). The hero
Perseus
(q.v.), with divine assistance, killed and decapitated Medusa.

Graces
(
23
f.,
112
): the goddesses personifying social charm and attractiveness, usually three in number (Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne), but in Athenian tradition the name Hegemone is also found, which Goethe adopts possibly to avoid confusion with the Muse Thalia.

Graiae
(
131
): see
Phorcyads
.

Griffin
or
Gryphon
(Gk. γρυψ) (
81
,
96
,
192
f.,
246
): a gold-guarding monster with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The Griffins lived in the remote north-east of the known world, like their enemies the Arimaspians; the historian Herodotus compared them to pedantic, grumpy old men, a motif which Goethe adopts in 7093 ff. In medieval times the griffin was adopted as a heraldic animal (cf. 10625 ff., where its hybrid shape also befits the false emperor).

Hades
(
144
,
171
): the god of the underworld, whose name was later extended to refer to the underworld itself. Originally his domain fell to him by lot, as the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, who became gods of the sky and the sea respectively. Hades, who carried off and married Persephone, was also euphemistically called Pluto (Gk. Πλουτων, ‘the giver of riches’, because metals were found under the earth).

Harpies
(
134
,
246
): wind-demons who carried off persons or things (Gk. αρπαζω, ‘snatch’) and defiled food as it was being eaten. They were portrayed as winged women or birds with women’s faces.

Hebe
(
90
): a daughter of Zeus, who poured out nectar for the gods and personified eternal youth, like the Nordic goddess Freya. She conducted favoured mortals to Olympus and became the wife of Hercules when he joined the immortals there.

Hecate
(
105
): see
Diana
.

Helen
(
Helena
) (
50
,
60
-3,
84
,
90
-3, Act III
passim):
a mortal daughter of Zeus, said to have been born of an egg (9521) laid by Leda, queen of Sparta, after Zeus had visited her in the form of a swan. She was reputedly the most beautiful of all women, and renowned for her fatal attractiveness to men. After marrying
Menelaus
(q.v.), who then became king of Sparta, she was abducted by the Trojan prince
Paris
(q.v.), thus occasioning the war of the Greeks against Troy; according to another story, however, Zeus allowed only a phantom of her to go to Troy, and removed the real Helen to Egypt for safe keeping during the war (8872 f.). Among many other legends about her and her lovers is that in which she and the hero
Achilles
(q.v.) are for a time miraculously united after death (8876 ff., 7435) and she bears him a son called
Euphorion
(q.v.)). For Goethe’s use of this story and of the figure of Helen generally, see Introd.,
passim
.

Helios
(
117
,
173
): the sun-god (Gk. ηλιος, sun); see
Apollo
.

Hercules
(Gk.
Heracles
) (
84
,
90
,
135
): the son of Zeus and Alcmena, a mortal woman whom the god seduced by impersonating her husband Amphitryon. Their son became the most famous of the Greek heroes, having
legendary strength and endurance. He performed twelve seemingly impossible tasks (the ‘labours of Hercules’), killed various monsters, and was eventually raised to Olympus and worshipped as a god.

Hermaphrodite
(
109
): originally from the name (‘Eρμαϕρóδιτος) of a son of Hermes and Aphrodite whose body became joined to that of a nymph; hence, a being having the physical characteristics of both sexes (‘hermaphroditical’, 8256).

Hermes
(
90
,
144
,
161
f.): son of Zeus and the goddess Maia, identified by the Romans with their god Mercurius (Mercury). He acted as messenger to the other gods and as guide of departed souls to the underworld (9116 ff.). He was thought to have been born in
Arcadia
(q.v.), and was especially associated with merchants, thieves, bodily agility, clever speech, and mischievous exploits (9644-78).

Hippocampus
(
117
): a sea-horse with front hooves and a dolphin’s tail.

Hours
(
4
(Gk. ‘Ωραι, Lat. Horae)): strictly, these were goddesses personifying the seasons or other fixed periods of the natural cycle. They were thought of as daughters of Zeus and attendants on the gods. Homer (
Iliad
, book v) describes them as the keepers of the gates of the sky; later they were especially associated with the sun-god.

Ibycus
(
98
(‘Cranes of Ibycus’)): the poet Ibycus was killed by bandits as a flock of cranes passed overhead; later, the murderers saw the birds again, and were stricken by this avenging omen into confessing their guilt. The story is told in one of Schiller’s ballads.

Icarus
(
169
): son of the legendary master craftsman Daedalus. He succeeded in flying with the pair of wings his father had made for him out of feathers and wax, but flew so near the sun that the wax melted and he fell into the sea.

Ilium
(
Ilion
) (
112
): see
Troy
.

Jason
(
90
): leader of the
Argonauts
(q.v.). His uncle Pelias had usurped his kingdom in Thessaly, but promised to restore it if Jason brought him the Golden Fleece from Colchis. The sorceress Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis, helped Jason to carry it off and eloped with him to Greece, where she took revenge on his enemies and later on Jason himself by killing their two children after he had deserted her.

Juno
(
108
,
175
): wife of Jupiter (see
Zeus
); she was identified by the Romans with Zeus’s wife Hera.

Jupiter
: see
Zeus
.

Lamiae
(
85
,
99
ff.,
248
): vampire-like monsters who fed on human flesh and blood and took on attractive female shapes to entice their victims.

Leda
(
175
): wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta; loved by Zeus, who took the shape of a swan to visit her, and by whom she became the mother of Helen and the Dioscuri (see
Twins
).

Lemurs
(Lat.
lemures
) (221-4): restless ghosts of the dead. Goethe had seen an ancient tomb near Naples on which they were portrayed as skeletons with still enough muscles and sinews to enable them to move.

Lernaean snake
(Lernaean Hydra) (
85
): a monstrous water-serpent in the marshes of Lerna near Argos, with many heads, which multiplied as they were hacked off; it was killed by Hercules with the help of a companion who sealed the stumps with firebrands.