is several times alluded to, and here too it is represented as
the work of the most valiant gods. In I. 67, 3 it is Agni, fire, who
holds the earth and supports the heaven; in X. 89, 4 it is Indra who
keeps them apart; in IX. 101, 15 Soma is celebrated for the same deed,
and in III. 31, 12 other gods too share the same honor.[169]

In the Aitareya Brahma_n_a we read:[170] "These two worlds (Heaven and
Earth) were once joined together. They went asunder. Then it did not
rain, nor did the sun shine. And the five tribes did not agree with
one another. The gods then brought the two (Heaven and Earth)
together, and when they came together they formed a wedding of the
gods."

Here we have in a shorter form the same fundamental ideas: first, that
formerly Heaven and Earth were together; that afterward they were
separated; that when they were thus separated there was war throughout
nature, and neither rain nor sunshine; that, lastly, Heaven and Earth
were conciliated, and that then a great wedding took place.

Now I need hardly remind those who are acquainted with Greek and Roman
literature, how familiar these and similar conceptions about a
marriage between Heaven and earth were in Greece and Italy. They seem
to possess there a more special reference to the annual reconciliation
between Heaven and Earth, which takes place in spring, and to their
former estrangement during winter. But the first cosmological
separation of the two always points to the want of light and the
impossibility of distinction during the night, and the gradual lifting
up of the blue sky through the rising of the sun.[171]

In the Homeric hymns[172] the Earth is addressed as

"Mother of gods, the wife of the starry Heaven;"[173]

and the Heaven or AEther is often called the father. Their marriage too
is described, as, for instance, by Euripides, when he says:

"There is the mighty Earth, Jove's AEther:
He (the AEther) is the creator of men and gods;
The earth receiving the moist drops of rain,
Bears mortals,
Bears food, and the tribes of animals.
Hence she is not unjustly regarded
As the mother of all."[174]

And what is more curious still is that we have evidence that
Euripides received this doctrine from his teacher, the philosopher
Anaxagoras. For Dionysius of Halicarnassus[175] tells us that
Euripides frequented the lectures of Anaxagoras. Now, it was the
theory of that philosopher that origin