The relation of the Tyrian goddess Astarte to the moon has already been touched upon. As goddess of the moon, she was a changing, wandering deity. With the waning light of the moon she retired into the gloom of the west, the region of the setting sun; and on the disappearance of the goddess on the "bad evening," the Tyrians performed rites of mourning. As a "wandering goddess,"[547] Astarte was called among the Phenicians Dido, _i.e._ the rover, and among the Westerns Europa, _i.e._ the dark one.[548] With the retirement of the goddess was connected the legend how her destructive power was overcome; it showed how Astarte could be worshipped in Tyre as the wife of Melkarth, as Milkath (Melecheth, _i.e._ queen).[549] The wandering sun-god went in search of the lost goddess. At length he found her in the remote distance, and loosed her girdle; the goddess surrendered herself to him, and sacred marriage changed the warlike goddess into the friendly deity favourable to procreation, Astarte into Ashera, Dido into Anna, Artemis or Athena into Atargatis. The "maiden of the sky" is now the wife of the god of Tyre, the Hera of the sky, the Ada (Athe) of the Syrians. From the embraces of Melkarth and Astarte, the sun-god and the moon-goddess, and the conquest of the cruel goddess of war, spring life, order, and law. The sacred marriage is said to have taken place in the West, at Samothrace, and further still, on the Cadmeia, the citadel of Cadmus,[550] _i.e._ of the searching Melkarth, and finally beyond the pillars of the god, on the happy islands of the Western Sea, where all fruits of every kind grew spontaneously, especially the apples of life, the pomegranates of Ashera, the apples of the Hesperides,--the pledge of love, the symbol of life and light returning out of darkness. Here also Melkarth sank down to rest in the streams of the Western Sea, which his beams had warmed.[551]