her mythology.
The apprehension which Zeus (like Herod and King Arthur) always felt
lest an unborn child should overthrow him, was also familiar to Indra;
but, instead of swallowing the mother and concealing her in his own
body, like Zeus, Indra entered the mother's body, and himself was born
instead of the dreaded child.(3) A cow on this occasion was born along
with Indra. This adventure of the (Greek text omitted) or swallowing
of Metis was explained by the late Platonists as a Platonic allegory.
Probably the people who originated the tale were not Platonists, any
more than Pandarus was all Aristotelian.

(1) Hesiod, Theogonia, 886. See Scholiast and note in Aglaophamus, i.
613. Compare Puss in Boots and the Ogre.

(2) Mabinogion, p. 473.

(3) Black Yajur Veda, quoted by Sayana.

After Homer and Hesiod, the oldest literary authorities for Greek
cosmogonic myths are the poems attributed to Orpheus. About their
probable date, as has been said, little is known. They have reached us
only in fragments, but seem to contain the first guesses of a philosophy
not yet disengaged from mythical conditions. The poet preserves, indeed,
some extremely rude touches of early imagination, while at the same time
one of the noblest and boldest expressions of pantheistic thought is
attributed to him. From the same source are drawn ideas as pure as those
of the philosophical Vedic hymn,(1) and as wild as those of the Vedic
Purusha Sukta, or legend of the fashioning of the world out of the
mangled limbs of Purusha. The authors of the Orphic cosmogony appear to
have begun with some remarks on Time ((Greek text omitted)). "Time
was when as yet this world was not."(2) Time, regarded in the mythical
fashion as a person, generated Chaos and Aether. The Orphic poet styles
Chaos (Greek text omitted), "the monstrous gulph," or "gap". This term
curiously reminds one of Ginnunga-gap in the Scandinavian cosmogonic
legends. "Ginnunga-gap was light as windless air," and therein the blast
of heat met the cold rime, whence Ymir was generated, the Purusha
of Northern fable.(3) These ideas correspond well with the Orphic
conception of primitive space.(4)

(1) Rig-Veda, x. 90.

(2) Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 470. See also the quotations from Proclus.

(3) Gylfi's Mocking.

(4) Aglaophamus, p. 473.

In process of time Chaos produced an egg, shining and silver white. It
is absurd to inquire, according to Lobeck, whether the poet borrowed
this