The story, taken in conjunction with the vase-painting it explains, shows clearly another thing. The Sphinx was mainly a local Theban bogey, but she became the symbol of oracular divinity. At Delphi there was an earth-oracle guarded by a snake, and in honour of that earth-oracle the Naxians upreared their colossal Sphinx[538] and set it in the precinct of Gaia. As time went on, the savage ‘man-snatching’ aspect of the Sphinx faded, remembered only in the local legend, while her oracular aspect grew; but the local legend is here as always the more instructive. [Illustration: FIG. 44.] The next representation of the Sphinx (fig. 44), from the fragment of an oinochoë in the Berlin Museum[539], is specially suggestive. The monster is inscribed, not with the name we know her by, ‘Sphinx,’ but as ‘Kassmia,’ the Kadmean One, the bogey of Kadmos. The bearded monster with wings and claws and dog-like head has lost her orthodox lion-body, and lent it perhaps to Oedipus who stands in front of her. The scene is of course pure comedy, and shows how near to the Greek mind were the horrible and the grotesque, the thing feared and the thing scoffed at. The Kassmia, the bogey of Kadmos, may have brought her lion-body with Kadmos from the East, but the supposition, though very possible, is not necessary. Cithaeron was traditionally lion-haunted[540]. The Sphinx may have borrowed some of her traits and part of her body from a real lion haunting a real local tomb. It is worth noting in this connection that Hesiod[541] calls the monster not Sphinx but Phix: ‘By stress of Orthios, she, Echidna, bare Disastrous Phix, a bane to Kadmos’ folk.’ The scholiast remarks that ‘Mount Phikion where she dwelt was called after her,’ but the reverse is probably true. Phix was the local bogey of Phikion. The rocky mountain which rises to the S.-E. corner of Lake Copais is still locally known as Phaga[542]. By a slight and easy modification Phix became Sphix or Sphinx, the ‘throttler,’ an excellent name for a destructive bogey. [Illustration: FIG. 45.] The last representation of the Sphinx, in fig. 45, brings us to her characteristic as tomb-haunter. The design is from a krater[543] in the Vagnonville Collection of the Museo Greco Etrusco at Florence. The Sphinx is seated on a tomb-mound (χῶμα γῆς) of the regular sepulchral type. That the mound is sepulchral is certain from the artificial stone basis pierced with holes[544] on which it stands. Two lawless Satyrs attack the mound with picks. The Sphinx is a tomb-haunting bogey, a Ker, but ultimately she fades into a decorative tomb monument, with always perhaps some prophylactic intent. In this, as in her mantic aspect, she is own cousin to the Ker-Siren, but with the Sphinx the mantic side predominates. The Sphinx, unlike the Siren, never developed into a trinity, though when she became decorative she is doubled for heraldic purposes. * * * * *