332 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 89. 



reproduces the Chimsera, M. Streber derives 

 the name from the PhcBnician word Cham.i- 

 rah, which means the burning mountain. 

 But the Greek word y^aiiaipa means a goat, 

 and has almost the same sound, and we can 

 see clearly how, as the Greek settlements 

 spread over Lycia, from the north, the 

 meaningless Phoenician names were retained 

 like the Indian names in America, and how 

 the story slowly went back to the father- 

 land— et crescit eundo — of a strange moun- 

 tain called Chamira, from which portentous 

 flames escaped, and then of a monster 

 Chimsera, of goat-like form, vomiting flames 

 and ravaging in the mountains of woody 

 Lycia. And so the story was finally fitted 

 for the manipulation of the poets, who little 

 thought they were making the stout Bel- 

 lerophon run a quixotic tilt against a burn- 

 ing gas well. 



THE NIOBE. 



Like the Chimsera, the Mobe is an epi- 

 sode in Greek mythology, easily separated 

 from the rest without disturbing the Greek 

 Pantheon. I do not need to describe the 

 great group of the Niobe, the mother weep- 

 ing over her children, who fall before the 

 shafts of Apollo, which adorns the gallery 

 of the Uffizi at Florence, and forms one of 

 the masterpieces of Greek sculpture, the 

 glory of Scopas or Praxiteles. I do not 

 need to recall the story as told by Homer, 

 how Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, proud 

 of her twelve children, despised Latona, 

 who had but two; how, therefore, Phoebus 

 and Artemis slew all the twelve with their 

 arrows : 



" They lay unburied on the plain for nine 

 days, when Zeus changed them to stone, 

 and on the tenth day the heavenly gods 

 buried them. And now, upon arid Sipylus, 

 upon the rocks of the desert mountain, 

 where, they say, are the couches of the 

 divine nymphs, who dance upon the banks 

 of Achelous, Mobe, though turned to stone. 



still broods over the sorrow the gods have 

 sent upon her." 

 And Ovid says: 



"She weeps still, and borne by the hurricane of a 



mighty wind, 

 She is swept to her home, there fastened to the cliff 



of the mount. 

 She weeps, and the marble sheds tears yet even 



now." 



As one climbs from the Gulf of Smyrna, 

 between Mount Tmolus and Sipylus, up the 

 rich valley of the Nif, or Nymphio, there 

 appears, high up in the vertical wall of 

 limestone, the colossal bust of a woman 

 standing on a high pedestal and in a deep al- 

 cove. It is cut out of the living rock, like 

 the Swiss lion at Lucerne. 



A recess twenty-five feet high and six- 

 teen feet wide has been cut in the rock for 

 the lower part, and a smaller alcove of 

 much greater depth suiTOunds the bust 

 itself. All the face of the rock around is 

 smoothed, and a broad ledge is cut around 

 the pedestal to receive the ofierings of the 

 ancient Phoenician worshippers of this al- 

 most prehistoric statue of the great Mother 

 Cybele, or of Meter Sipylene; gods of the 

 Phoenicians. 



From the valley below it makes the im- 

 pression of a full-length statue with flow- 

 ing robes, but near at hand the robes are 

 seen to be the very tears of Niobe, formed 

 where the drip of the waters from the lime- 

 stone roof of the alcove has first struck her 

 cheeks, and running down across her breast 

 has made rippling surfaces of bluish tufa, 

 which has all the efiect of tears. 



The statue had been greatly corroded, and 

 the stalagmite tears had formed already in 

 the days of Pausanias, who says : '' When 

 standing close to it the rocks and precipice 

 do not show to the beholder the form of a 

 woman, weeping or otherwise, but if you 

 stand farther back, you think you see a wo- 

 man weeping and sad." 



And even in the times of Homer the mem- 



