great glory by slaying Hyppolite; but the legends of her later reappearances-as Libussa at Prague, &c.,-follow the less mythological story of the Amazons given by Herodotus (IV. 112), who represents the Scythians as gradually disarming them by sending out their youths to meet them with dalliance instead of with weapons. The youths went off with their captured captors, and from their union sprang the Sauromatæ, among whom the men and women dressed alike, and fought and hunted together. But of the real outcome of that truce and union Tennyson can tell us more than Herodotus: in his Princess we see the woman whom maternity and war have combined to produce, her independence betrayed by the tenderness of her nature. The surrender, once secured, was made permanent for ages by the sentiments and sympathies born of the child's appeal for compassion.

In primitive ages the child must in many cases have been a burthen even to man in the struggle for existence; the population question could hardly have failed to press its importance upon men, as it does even upon certain animals; and it would be an especial interest to a man not to have his hut overrun with offspring not his own,turning his fair labour into drudgery for their support, and so cursing the earth for him. Thus, while Polyandry was giving rise to the obvious complications under which it must ultimately disappear, it would be natural that devils of lust should be invented to restrain the maternal instinct. But as time went on the daughters of Eve would have taken the story of her fall and hardships too much to heart. The pangs and perils of childbirth were everpresent monitors whose warnings might be followed too closely. The early Jewish laws bear distinct traces of the necessity which had arrived for insisting on the command to increase and multiply. Under these changed circum

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stances it would be natural that the story of a recusant and passionless Eve should arise and suffer the penalties undergone by Lilith,-the necessity of bearing, as captive, a vast progeny against her will only to lose them again, and to long for human children she did not bring forth and could not cherish. The too passionate and the passionless woman are successively warned in the origin and outcome of the myth.1

It is a suggestive fact that the descendants of Adam should trace their fall not to the independent Lilith, who asserted her equality at cost of becoming the Devil's bride, but to the apparently submissive Eve who stayed inside the garden. The serpent found out the guarded and restrained woman as well as the free and defiant, and with much more formidable results. For craft is the only weapon of the weak against the strong. The submissiveness of the captive woman must have been for a long time outward only. When Adam found himself among thorns and briars he might have questioned whether much had been gained by calling Eve his rib, when after all she really was a woman, and prepared to take her intellectual rights from the Serpent if denied her in legitimate ways. The question is, indeed, hardly out of date yet when the genius of woman is compelled to act with subtlety and reduced to exert its influence too often by intrigue.

It is remarkable that we find something like a similar development to the two wives of Adam in Hindu mythology also. Káli and Dúrga have the same origin: the former is represented dancing on the prostrate form of her lord and master,' and she becomes the demoness of violence, the mother of the diabolical 'Calas' of Singhalese

1 Mr. W. B. Scott has painted a beautiful picture of Eve gazing up with longing at a sweet babe in the tree, whose serpent coils beneath she does not

see.

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CAPTIVITY OF WOMAN.

demonolatry. Dúrga sacrificed herself for her husband's honour, and is now adored. The counterpart of Durgaworship is the Zenana system. In countries where the Zenana system has not survived, but some freedom has been gained for woman, it is probable that Káli will presently not be thought of as necessarily trampling on man, and Lilith not be regarded as the Devil's wife because she will not submit to be the slave of man. When man can make him a home and garden which shall not be a prison, and in which knowledge is unforbidden fruit, Lilith will not have to seek her liberty by revolution against his society, nor Eve hers by intrigue; unfitness for co-operation with the ferocities of nature will leave her a help meet for the rearing of children, and for the recovery and culture of every garden, whether within or without the man who now asserts over woman a lordship unnatural and unjust.

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CHAPTER X.

WAR IN HEAVEN.

The 'Other'-Tiamat, Bohu, 'the Deep'-Ra and Apophis-Hathors -Bel's combat-Revolt in Heaven-Lilith-Myth of the Devil at the creation of Light.

IN none of the ancient scriptures do we get back to any theory or explanation of the origin of evil or of the enemies of the gods. In a Persian text at Persepolis, of Darius I., Ahriman is called with simplicity 'the Other' (Aniya), and the Hater' (Duvaisant, Zend thaïsat), and that is about as much as we are really told about the devils of any race. Their existence is taken for granted. The legends of rebellion in heaven and of angels cast down and transformed to devils may supply an easy explanation to our modern theologians, but when we trace them to their origin we discover that to the ancients they had no such significance. The angels were cast down to Pits prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and before it, and when they fell it was into the hands of already existing enemies eager to torment them. Nevertheless these accounts of rebellious spirits in heaven are of great importance and merit our careful consideration.

It is remarkable that the Bible opens with an intimation of the existence of this 'Other.' Its second verse speaks of a certain darkness upon the face of the deep.' The word used here is Bohu, which is identified as the Assyrian Balu, the Queen of Hades. In the inscription of Shal

maneser the word is used for 'abyss of chaos.'1 Bahu is otherwise Gula, a form of Ishtar or Allat, 'Lady of the House of Death,' and an epithet of the same female demon is Nin-cigal, 'Lady of the Mighty Earth.' The story of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades, the realm of Nin-cigal, has already been told (p. 77); in that version Ishtar is the same as Astarte, the Assyrian Venus. But like the moon with which she was associated she waned and declined, and the beautiful legend of her descent (like Persephone) into Hades seems to have found a variant in the myth of Bel and the Dragon. There she is a seamonster and is called Tiamat (Thalatth of Berosus),—that is, 'the Deep,' over which rests the darkness described in Genesis i. 2. The process by which the moon would share the evil repute of Tiamat is obvious. In the Babylonian belief the dry land rested upon the abyss of watery chaos from which it was drawn. This underworld ocean was shut in by gates. They were opened when the moon was created to rule the night-therefore Prince of Darkness. The formation by Anu of this Moon-god (Uru) from Tiamat, might even have been suggested by the rising of the tides under his sway. The Babylonians represent the Moon as having been created before the Sun, and he emerged from 'a boiling' in the abyss. At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, his horns are breaking through to shine on heaven.' 2 In the one Babylonian design, a seal in the British Museum, which seems referable to the legend of the Fall of Man, the male figure has horns. It may have been that this male Moon (Uru) was supposed to have been corrupted by some

1 Records of the Past,' iii. p. 83. See also i. p. 135.

2 'Chaldean Genesis,' by George Smith, p. 70.

3 Copied in 'Chald. Gen.,' p. 91. As to the connection of this design with the legend of Eden, see chap. vii. of this volume.