The snatching away by
the Harpies is with brute force; but the snatching away by the clouds
is connected with the thought of hiding, and of making things seem to
be what they are not; so that Hermes is the god of lying, as he is of
mist; and yet with this ignoble function of making things vanish and
disappear is connected the remnant of his grand Egyptian authority of
leading away souls in the cloud of death (the actual dimness of sight
caused by mortal wounds physically suggesting the darkness and descent
of clouds, and continually being so described in the Iliad); while the
sense of the need of guidance on the untrodden road follows necessarily.
You cannot but remember how this thought of cloud guidance, and cloud
receiving souls at death, has been elsewhere ratified.
* I believe that the conclusions of recent scholarship are generally
opposed to the Herodotean ideas of any direct acceptance by the Greeks
of Egyptian myths: and very certainly, Greek art is developed by giving
the veracity and simplicity of real life to Eastern savage grotesque; and
not by softening the severity of pure Egyptian design.
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