In Pegasus, the winged steed of the Nine Muses, we have what might be called the prize horse of all mythology. The old Greek writer Hesiod says he was born near the springs of Ocean. And he, indeed, winging his flight away, left Earth, the mother of flocks, and came to the immortals; in Jove’s house he dwells, bearing to counsellor Jove thunder and lightning. This looks very much as if he began life as a personification of a natural phenomenon, like the Hindoo Asvins and the Norse Sleipner. But he was destined to a more glorious career than any of them. The goddess of wisdom, Athēne, caught him and tamed him, and he became the symbol of the imagination in its highest flights into the region of poetic aspiration and inspiration, a fitting climax to an idea, going back to the very fountains of the imagination which bubbled up in that early stage of life when animals as well as men were thought to be endowed with spirit. In the two hymns following, one from the most ancient of Hindoo books, the “Rig Veda,” and one from a still more ancient Egyptian book called “The Book of the Dead,” there is quite a contrast, though they both represent myths in the highly developed religious form of hymns or songs to the gods. The Hindoo song sings the praises of Indra, while the Egyptian song is a prayer. Rā, who is mentioned, was the God of the Sun in Egypt. Instead of driving steeds as many other sun-gods did, he was said to ride in a boat. But according to this hymn, there were four sacred apes in the boat, to whom the ancient Egyptians offered prayers as they did to the sacred bulls Apis and Mnevis. HYMNS TO INDRA (_From the “Rig Veda”_)