1859.] On the Swayamvara of the Ancient Hindus. 33 



amvara ; Herodotus' account reads like au episode of some ancient 

 poem, when he represents the various princes and nobles nocking as 

 suitors to the court from the chief cities of the Grecian world. The 

 historian tells the account in his very best manner, how the favour- 

 ed suitor Hippocleides at last grew presumptuous with success aud 

 " danced away" his fortune by his thoughtless frolic, aud gave birth 

 to the current proverb, ou cfrpovrls c l7r-n-oKXeiSr), while the young 

 Athenian carried off the bride, aud their descendant in the third 

 generation was Pericles. 



Another instance occurs in Justin's narrative of the founding of 

 the city of Marseilles. A colony of Phocaeans, under the leader- 

 ship of Simos and Protis, lauded in Gaul near the mouth of the 

 Rhone. On their repairing to the court of Nanuus, the king of the 

 tribe, in whose territory they wished to settle, they found him, as it 

 chanced, engaged in the ceremony of his daughter's marriage, whom 

 he was preparing to deliver, more gentis, to the bridegroom whom 

 she might select at a banquet. All the invited guests came as suit- 

 ors, aud among the rest the Greek strangers were invited to attend. 

 At a given moment the maiden is introduced into the assembly, and 

 her father bids her hand water to the man of her choice ; when 

 forthwith, unheeding the others, she turns to the Greeks, and holds 

 out the cup to Protis. The fortunate adventurer thus became the 

 king's son-in-law, and founded Marseilles, where his memory was 

 probably honoured as a patron hero. Athenaeus tells the same story, 

 on the authority of a lost work of Aristotle ; and adds that there 

 was still a family in Marseilles called Protiadse from their founder.* 



But the most interesting of all these parallels is one which Athe- 

 naeus has given us in the same place as a quotation from the tenth 

 book of the history of Alexander (ran/ lorooitov tw 7rept 'AA.e£ai/8poy) 

 by Chares of Mytilene. In itself, the narrative wears a peculiarly 

 striking character, all the more so from its entire disconnection with 

 any context, as almost every other line of Chares has perished; and 

 the actors of the scene appear and vanish abruptly, without our 



* Cf. Justin, xliii. 4 ; Atheneeus xiii. § 36. Aristotle represents the founder s 

 name as Euxenus, and Protis as his son by the marriage ; but this is only one of 

 those ever-recurring uncertainties in the " dissolving views" of legendary, as 

 distinguished from authentic, history. 



F 



