of a wolf, the wolf-mother of the sun-god. But the most significant appearance of the goddess Scylla and her companion whale Pistrix in the Eneid is that given in the accounts of the race between the Trojan ships. The story of the Æneid is, like those of the Odyssey and Iliad, founded on old historical legends, and among these latter, as I have shown in Chapter VIII. Section C., the chariot-race won by Diomedes at the burial of Patroclus tells a most remarkable history of changes in the year's reckoning. The year horses which won this race were, as we have there seen, two of those horses of the sun taken by Anchises, the father of Æneas, when he substituted six mares for the six horses he stole 2, and thus made a year which replaced that of the twelve horses of the sun of Orion's year by one measured by six paired months, six male and six female, with the thirteenth month described in Rg. i. 164, 15, in the centre. The year games described in the Æneid, which correspond to those at the burial of the year-god Patroclus, whom we have seen in Chapter VII. Section H. p. 490, to be a counterpart of the sun-physician, are those which took place on the ninth and last day of the festival held to inaugurate the year of Anchises, the founder of this year reckoning. It was held at the port in Sicily of Acestes, son of the river Crimisus, who was clothed in the skin of a she-bear 3. This was the first port touched at by the Trojan fleet after it had sailed northward from Africa, leaving the sun-maiden Dido burning on her funeral pyre as the dead-year-goddess, and it was here that the New Year was ushered in, measured by the sun-god of the sons of the rivers and the Great Bear mother constellation, a year beginning with a nine-days festival, reproducing the nine-days week of the cycle-year. The race which, like the chariot-race of Diomedes, began the year games held on this ninth day was that of the four picked ships of the Trojan fleet. These, which were all emblems of successive year

1 Virgil, Æneid, iii. 424–428.
3 Virgil, Eneid, v. 1—65.

2 Homer, Iliad, v. 268-270

reckonings, were (1) The Chimæra, the ship of the cycleyear, the monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon, slain by Bellerophon or Baal Raphon, the sun-physician of the eleven-months year; (2) The Centaur, the Vedic Dadhiank, with the head of a horse and the body of a man, who was in Greece Chiron the Centaur, with the horse's body and man's head, and thus both these were personations of the mythology of the elevenmonths year; (3) Pistrix the whale; and (4) Scylla its headpiece, to which the honours of the race were to fall, and they represented the thirteen-months year of Ino and Gotami Pajāpati.

The race, like the Trojan chariot contest, was run on a course representing that of the sun round the zodiac. The solstitial turning-point, which was in the race at Troy the pine or fig-tree of Ilos, was a rock rising from the sea at some distance from the shore. In rounding this rock the Centaur struck on it, broke its oars and was disabled, while the Pistrix passed her and almost caught the Scylla, which won the race, being brought to the winning goal by the hand of Portunus, the god who, as we shall now see, was the son of Ino, who secured the victory of the year-reckoning of his mother, the goddess riding on the back of the whale constellation of the South, the ruler of the mid-month of the thirteen which measured the year 1.

The god Portunus who gained the race for his mother as Athene by confounding the machinations of Apollo Smintheus, the mouse-god, gained the Trojan chariot-race for Diomedes, was originally the god Melicertes or Melquarth, the sun-master (malik) of the city (karth), who was awoke from his twelve days' sleep at the close of his year by the quails who arrived at the winter solstice. He was changed into the god Palaimon or Baal Yam, meaning the god of the seas 2, by the descent of his mother into the Southern Ocean, whence the sun rose from the constellation

Pisces to tread the circle of the zodiacal stars. It was as the god of the seas born of the dolphin or womb (deλþús) mother, the dolphin Apollo, that he became the Etruscan god Portunus, god of the ports depicted as holding the keys of the gates of time. His festival was held at Rome on the 17th of August, almost simultaneously with that of his counterpart the god Vertumnus, ruling the turning (verto) of the year held on the Aventine or the 13th of August 1. He was the tutelary god of the Etruscan seaport Populonia or Papluna, the city of Papluna or Fufluns, the Etruscan Dionysos, who was identical with the Greek Dionysos, the Roman and Etruscan god Vertumnus, and the god Janus or Dianus with the double-axe of the Carian Zeus, and all were later male forms of the Etruscan mother Voltumna, at whose shrine the annual national councils of Etruria were held 2.

This male god was the sun-god originally born from the mother-tree growing in the Southern mud, and now reborn from the whale or dolphin-mother, the goddess of the Southern Ocean, whose son started on his annual journey from the constellation Pisces. His year coincided with that of Portunus, and their mid-year festival was in August, answering to that of Lug and Tailltiu, the flower-goddess, to whom the month July-August was dedicated. Hence it began, like that of Lug in February-March, with the entry of the sun into Gemini in that month between 8000 and 9000 B.C., and it is apparently this year which is symbolised in the installation of Odusseus as the year-god rising from the sea by the help of the Kredemnon.

As the outcome of this analysis of these connected myths we see that the drownings of Bhujyu and Odusseus, the god of the year of the sun-horse with the impenetrable armour, before they rose from the sea as sun-gods pursuing their

Fowler, The Roman Festivals, pp. 201, 202, 203.

2 Milani, Museo Topografico dell' Etruria, pp. 31, 43-46, 143–145, notes 39, 41, 47; Deecke, Etruria, Encyc. Brit., Ninth Edition, vol. viii. 634-636; Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains, p. 70.

Tt

paths through the stars, the myth stories of Ino, Melicertes, Palaimon and Portunus, and the victory of the year-ships of Ino as Scylla, the year-mother riding on the whale, which are told in the dramatic narratives I have quoted, were intended by their original authors to tell of the contest lasting for thousands of years between the year-gods of the Pole Star and lunar solar-age and the sun-god of the solar epoch. This contest ended in the final victory of the sun-god of the seventeen and thirteen-months year.

INDEX.