The diversity of the natural phenomena which give them rise will not in any way hinder the myths from reproducing the _human_ elements which have, since the world began held their pre-eminence in romance and history. There will be love-stories, stories of battle and victory, of magic and strange disguises, of suddenly acquired treasure, and, most attractive of all to the popular mind, stories of princes and princesses whose princedom is hidden under a servile station or beggar’s gaberdine, and of heroes who allow their heroism to rust for a while in strange inaction, that ‘Imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at.’ Not necessarily because such heroes _were_ the sun, but rather that the tales, appealing so intimately to the common sympathies of human nature, attach themselves pre-eminently to the great natural hero, the sun-god. [Sidenote: Sun-myths.] To begin, then, with the sun-god. His love-stories relate most commonly the pursuit of the dawn, a woman, by the god of day. She flies at the approach of the sun; or, if the two are married in early morning, when the day advances, the dawn dies or the sun leaves her to pursue his allotted journey. We read how Apollo pursued Daphnê, while she still fled from him, and at last, praying to the gods, was changed into a laurel, which ever afterwards remained sacred to the son of Lêtô. There is nothing new in the story; it might be related of any hero. Yet, as we find Greek art so often busy with it, we might guess that it had obtained for some reason a hold more than commonly firm upon the popular imagination. And when we turn from the Greek to the Sanskrit we are able to unravel the myth and show it, so far as the names are concerned, peculiar to the sun-god. Daphnê (it is believed) is the Sanskrit Ahanâ, that is to say, the Dawn.