All we obey thee,
and are ruled by thee. Her only thou wilt not resist in anything she
says or does, because thou didst bear her--consuming child as she is."
41. Lastly, Athena is the air conveying vibration of sound.
In all the loveliest representations in central Greek art of the birth
of Athena, Apollo stands close to the sitting Jupiter, singing, with a
deep, quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. The sun is always thought of as the
master of time and rhythm, and as the origin of the composing and
inventive discovery of melody; but the air, as the actual element and
substance of the voice, the prolonging and sustaining power of it, and
the symbol of its moral passion. Whatever in music is measured and
designed belongs therefore to Apollo and the Muses; whatever is impulsive
and passionate, to Athena; hence her constant strength a voice or cry (as
when she aids the shout of Achilles) curiously opposed to the dumbness of
Demeter. The Apolline lyre, therefore, is not so much the instrument
producing sound, as its measurer and divider by length or tension of
string into given notes; and I believe it is, in a double connection with
its office as a measurer of time or motion and its relation to the
transit of the sun in the sky, that Hermes forms it from the
tortoise-shell, which is the image of the dappled concave of the cloudy
sky.
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