Therefore, Athena, and the fountain-cloud Pegasus, are more closely
connected with Corinth than even with Athens in their material, though
not in their moral, power; and Sisyphus founds the Isthmian games in
connection with a melancholy story about the sea gods; but he himself is
'kerdotos andron', the most "gaining" and subtle of men; who having the
key of the Isthmus, becomes the type of transit, transfer, or trade, as
such; and of the apparent gain from it, which is not gain; and this is
the real meaning of his punishment in hell--eternal toil and recoil (the
modern idol of capital being, indeed, the stone of Sisyphus with a
vengeance, crushing in its recoil). But, throughout, the old ideas of
the cloud power and cloud feebleness,--the deceit of its hiding,--and the
emptiness of its banishing,--the Autolycus enchantment of making black
seem white,--and the disappointed fury of Ixion (taking shadow for
power), mingle in the moral meaning of this and its collateral legends;
and give an aspect, at last, not only of foolish cunning, but of impiety
or literal "idolatry," "imagination worship," to the dreams of avarice
and injustice, until this notion of atheism and insolent blindness
becomes principal; and the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, with the personified
"just" and "unjust" sayings in the latter part of the play, foreshadow,
almost feature by feature, in all that they were written to mock and to
chastise, the worst elements of the impious "'dinos'" and tumult in men's
thoughts, which have followed on their avarice in the present day, making
them alike forsake the laws of their ancient gods, and misapprehended or
reject the true words of their existing teachers.
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