It may, moreover, be urged, that the sun figures in all these legends. I say, on the other hand, so also does the _serpent_. This serpent may be the serpent "of _darkness_," and still be the serpent of _tradition_, but how darkness or night is aptly personified by a serpent I am at a loss to perceive. Then again the sun _may_ always be only the symbol of what is bright and heavenly. But when (Max Müller, ii. 171) we see this serpent Zohak, called by the Persians "by the name of Dehak, _i.e., ten evils_, because he introduced "_ten evils into the world_," we cannot help recalling the profane expressions attributed to the devil when he saw the ten commandments--proscribing the _ten_ evils in question. "And as it is with this sad and beautiful tale of Orpheus and Euridike (Euridice). [The story of Euridice was this--'Euridice was bitten by _a serpent_, she dies, and descends into the lower regions. Orpheus follows her, and obtains from the gods that his wife should follow him if he promised not to look back, &c.' It reads to me like a sad reminiscence of Adam and Eve.] Mr Max Müller proceeds--'so it is with all those which may seem to you coarse, or dull, or ugly. They are so only because the real meaning of the names has been half-forgotten or wholly lost. OEdipus and Perseus (_vide_ Appendix), we are told, killed their parents, but it was only because the sun was said to kill the darkness from which it seemed to spring.'"[139] [139] Mr Max Müller may perhaps lay stress upon the circumstance that Baldr dies at the winter solstice. But this equally bears out the tradition noticed by Lenormant, that immediately after the Fall, there came upon the world a great cold. (_Vide supra_, ch. vii.) But why is darkness called the parent of the sun, and not rather light the parent of darkness? and why not a contrary legend founded on this surmise? Is it merely accidental that the metaphor is not reversed? Compare the above speculation of Mr Max Müller's with the following passage from Gainet, "Hist. de l'Ancien. Nouv. Test.," i.; "Les Souvenirs du genre Humain," p. 79:-- "Chaos was placed at the commencement of all things in the Phoenician cosmogony (Euseb. Præp. Evan. l. i.), as in that of Hesiod (Theog., p. 5). The latter calls upon the Muses to tell him what were the beings that appeared first in existence, and he replies--'At the commencement of all things was Chaos, and from Chaos was born Erebus and dark night.' "Thus, in the order of existence, as in the order of time, there is a concurrence of profane tradition to place night before day. This is the reason why the Scandinavians, the Gauls, the Germans, the Kalmucks, the Numidians, the Egyptians, and Athenians, according to Varro and Macrobius, count their days, commencing with sunset and not with sunrise."