244 THE BUTTERFLY VIVARIUM. 



one feels compelled to admit that they are simply- 

 different versions of the same idea. In the first 

 place Hero is made a priestess of Aphrodite — that 

 is, of Love — and it is therefore as an emhlem of that 

 passion that she is represented as awaiting Leander, 

 and guiding his course hy her nocturnal beacon. 

 Musseus, in his comparatively recent work, in order 

 to suit the greater amount of realistic taste that 

 always develops itself in the maturer stages of 

 civilization, loses sight of the origin of the story, 

 and the lamp is introduced in the trite form of that 

 of the Light-house of Sestos ; but in the original it 

 was doubtless a light that gleamed from the temple 

 of Aphrodite, that is to say, the altar of Love. 

 Then, the lover does not approach the light in any 

 ordinary manner, neither on foot nor on the swifter- 

 footed steed, as in common romance ; but, in order 

 to preserve the analogy complete in all its bearings, 

 he is made to clear his way through the medium 

 of another element; and as the insect approaches 

 its mate through the air, in which her more humble 

 nature denied her the power to soar, so Leander 

 reaches the lamp of Hero in a poetically analogous 

 manner, through the waters of the Hellespont. 



To make a flying youth would have been incon- 

 sistent with the artistic principles of the Greeks, it 



