The Queen of the Air

The Queen of the Air - Being a
Study of the Greek Myths of
Cloud and Storm

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Queen of the Air, by John Ruskin
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Queen of the Air
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: June 17, 2004 [eBook #12641]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEEN
OF THE AIR***
E-text prepared by Julie C. Sparks

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR
Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm
BY
JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE
I. ATHENA CHALINITIS. (Athena in the Heavens.) Lecture on the

Greek myths of Storm, given (partly) in University College, London,
March 9, 1869.
II. ATHENA KERAMITIS. (Athena in the Earth.) Study,
supplementary to the preceding lecture, of the supposed and actual
relations of Athena to the vital force in material organism.
III. ATHENA ERGANE. (Athena in the Heart.) Various notes relating
to the Conception of Athena as the Directress of the Imagination and
Will.

PREFACE
My days and strength have lately been much broken; and I never more
felt the insufficiency of both than in preparing for the press the
following desultory memoranda on a most noble subject. But I leave
them now as they stand, for no time nor labor would be enough to
complete them to my contentment; and I believe that they contain
suggestions which may be followed with safety, by persons who are
beginning to take interest in the aspects of mythology, which only
recent investigation has removed from the region of conjecture into that
of rational inquiry. I have some advantage, also, from my field work, in
the interpretation of myths relating to natural phenomena; and I have
had always near me, since we were at college together, a sure, and
unweariedly kind, guide, in my friend Charles Newton, to whom we
owe the finding of more treasure in mines of marble than, were it
rightly estimated, all California could buy. I must not, however, permit
the chance of his name being in any wise associated with my errors.
Much of my work as been done obstinately in my own way; and he is
never responsible for me, though he has often kept me right, or at least
enabled me to advance in a new direction. Absolutely right no one can
be in such matters; nor does a day pass without convincing every
honest student of antiquity of some partial error, and showing him
better how to think, and where to look. But I knew that there was no
hope of my being able to enter with advantage on the fields of history
opened by the splendid investigation of recent philologists, though I
could qualify myself, by attention and sympathy, to understand, here
and there, a verse of Homer's or Hesiod's, as the simple people did for
whom they sang.
Even while I correct these sheets for press, a lecture by Professor

Tyndall has been put into my hands, which I ought to have heard last
16th January, but was hindered by mischance; and which, I now find,
completes, in two important particulars, the evidence of an instinctive
truth in ancient symbolism; showing, first, that the Greek conception of
an ætherial element pervading space is justified by the closest
reasoning of modern physicists; and, secondly, that the blue of the sky,
hitherto thought to be caused by watery vapour, is, indeed, reflected
from the divided air itself; so that the bright blue of the eyes of Athena,
and the deep blue of her ægis, prove to be accurate mythic expressions
of natural phenomena which it is an uttermost triumph of recent science
to have revealed.
Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine triumph more complete. To
form, "within an experimental tube, a bit of more perfect sky than the
sky itself!" here is magic of the finest sort! singularly reversed from
that of old time, which only asserted its competency to enclose in
bottles elemental forces that were--not of the sky.
Let me, in thanking Professor Tyndall for the true wonder of this piece
of work, ask his pardon, and that of all masters in physical science, for
any words of mine, either in the following pages or elsewhere, that may
ever seem to fail in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or
in the admiration due to the far scope of their discovery. But I will be
judged by themselves, if I have not bitter reason to ask them to teach