The Queen of the Air | Page 3

or false, is not a myth. But if by telling you this, I mean
that Hercules purified the stagnation of many streams from deadly
miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true myth; only, as, if I leftit
in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing beyond, it will
be wise in me to surprise your attention by adding some singular
circumstance; for instance, that the water-snake had several heads,
which revived as fast as they were killed, and which poisoned even the
foot that trod upon them as they slept. And in proportion to the fulness
of intended meaning I shall probably multiply and refine upon these
improbabilities; as, suppose, if, instead of desiring only to tell you that
Hercules purified a marsh, I wished you to understand that he
contended with the venom and vapor of envy and evil ambition,
whether in other men's souls or in his own, and choked that malaria
only by supreme toil,--I might tell you that this serpent was formed by
the goddess whose pride was in the trial of Hercules; and that its place
of abode as by a palm-tree; and that for every head of it that was cut off,
two rose up with renewed life; and that the hero found at last that he
could not kill the creature at all by cutting its heads off or crushing
them, but only by burning them down; and that the midmost of them

could not be killed even that way, but had to be buried alive. Only in
proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly appear more absurd in my
statement; and at last when I get unendurably significant, all practical
persons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense from the beginning,
and never meant anything at all.
3. It is just possible, however, also, that the story-teller may all along
have meant nothing but what he said; and that, incredible as the events
may appear, he himself literally believed--and expected you also to
believe--all this about Hercules, without any latent moral or history
whatever. And it is very necessary, in reading traditions of this kind, to
determine, first of all, whether you are listening to a simple person,
who is relating what, at all events, he believes to be true, (and may,
therefore, possibly have been so to some extent), or to a reserved
philosopher, who is veiling a theory of the universe under the grotesque
of a fairy tale. It is, in general, more likely that the first supposition
should be the right one: simple and credulous persons are, perhaps
fortunately, more common than philosophers; and it is of the highest
importance that you should take their innocent testimony as it was
meant, and not efface, under the graceful explanation which your
cultivated ingenuity may suggest, either the evidence their story may
contain (such as it is worth) of an extraordinary event having really
taken place, or the unquestionable light which it will cast upon the
character of the person by whom it was frankly believed. And to deal
with Greek religion honestly, you must at once understand that this
literal belief was, in the mind of the general people, as deeply rooted as
ours in the legends of our own sacred book; and that a basis of
unmiraculous event was as little suspected, and an explanatory
symbolism as rarely traced, by them, as by us.
You must, therefore, observe that I deeply degrade the position which
such a myth as that just referred to occupied in the Greek mind, by
comparing it (for fear of offending you) to our story of St. George and
the Dragon. Still, the analogy is perfect in minor respects; and though it
fails to give you any notion of the Greek faith, it will exactly illustrate
the manner in which faith laid hold of its objects.
4. This story of Hercules and the Hydra, then, was to the general Greek
mind, in its best days, a tale about a real hero and a real monster. Not
one in a thousand knew anything of the way in which the story had

arisen, any more than the English peasant generally is aware of the
plebeian original of St. George; or supposes that there were once alive
in the world, with sharp teeth and claws, real, and very ugly, flying
dragons. On the other hand, few persons traced any moral or
symbolical meaning in the story, and the average Greek was as far from
imagining any interpretation like that I have just given you, as an
average Englishman is from seeing is St. George the Red Cross Knight
of Spenser, or in the Dragon the Spirit of Infidelity. But, for all that,
there was a certain undercurrent of consciousness in all minds that the
figures meant