[Picture: Medusa]

CHAP. II.--LIGHT AND DARK.

[Picture: Decorative chapter header]

The god and goddess of light were the glorious twin brother and sister,
Phoebus Apollo and Diana or Artemis. They were born in the isle of
Delos, which was caused to rise out of the sea to save their mother,
Latona, from the horrid serpent, Python, who wanted to devour her. Gods
were born strong and mighty; and the first thing Apollo did was to slay
the serpent at Delphi with his arrows. Here was a dim remembrance of the
promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and
also a thought of the way Light slays the dragon of darkness with his
beams. Apollo was lord of the day, and Diana queen of the night. They
were as bright and pure as the thought of man could make them, and always
young. The beams or rays were their arrows, and so Diana was a huntress,
always in the woods with her nymphs; and she was so modest, that once,
when an unfortunate wanderer, named Actaeon, came on her with her nymphs
by chance when they were bathing in a stream, she splashed some water in
his face and turned him into a stag, so that his own dogs gave chase to
him and killed him. I am afraid Apollo and Diana were rather cruel; but
the darting rays of the sun and moon kill sometimes as well as bless; and
so they were the senders of all sharp, sudden strokes. There was a queen
called Niobe, who had six sons and daughters so bright and fair that she
boasted that they were equal to Apollo and Diana, which made Latona so
angry, that she sent her son and daughter to slay them all with their
darts. The unhappy Niobe, thus punished for her impiety, wept a river of
tears till she was turned into stone.

[Picture: Supposed Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius in AEgina]

The moon belonged to Diana, and was her car; the sun, in like manner, to
Apollo, though he did not drive the car himself, but Helios, the sun-god,
did. The world was thought to be a flat plate, with Delphi in the
middle, and the ocean all round. In the far east the lady dawn, Aurora,
or Eos, opened the gates with her rosy fingers, and out came the golden
car of the sun, with glorious white horses driven by Helios, attended by
the Hours strewing dew and flowers. It passed over the arch of the
heavens to the ocean again on the west, and there Aurora met it again in
fair colours, took out the horses, and let them feed. Aurora