_Vide_ Gladstone, "Homer," ii. 155; Cox, "Mythology of Aryan Nations," i. 15, on the relation of Phoibos to Leto. "This is precisely the relation in which the _mythical night_ stood to the day which was to be born of _her_." _Vide_ on this point Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians" (I. chap. xiii.) "The Mygale," says Champollion, "received divine honours by the Egyptians, because it is blind, and _darkness is more ancient than light_." The Arabs have the expression "_night and day_" (_vide_ Wilkinson). Aristotle says "The theologians consider all things to have been born of night." The Orphean fragments call "night the Genesis of all things.... The Anglo-Saxons also, like the Eastern nations, began their computations of time from night, and the years from that day corresponding with our Christmas, which they called "Mother Night," and the Otaheitans refer the existence of their principal deities to a state of darkness, which they consider the origin of all things." (_Vide_ Gen. i. 2, 3; _id._ p. 273-4.) I think Mr Max Müller will at least recognise them as spots on the disk of his solar theory, and which must ever remain obscure to those who refuse the light of Scripture and tradition. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. "OEDIPUS, PERSEUS." Here again, the explanation of Mr Max Müller, "si non vrai est vraisemblable," and yet I cannot help seeing that the legends of Perseus and [OE]dipus may just as well be supposed to embody primitive tradition. Let us read the histories of OEdipus and Perseus in the light of the tradition concerning Lamech (Gen. iv. 23, 24). "And Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah ... I have slain a man to the wounding of myself, and a stripling to my own bruising. Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for Cain, but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold." The note to the Douay edition says--"It is the tradition of the Hebrews that Lamech, in hunting, slew Cain, mistaking him for a wild beast, and that having discovered what he had done, he beat so unmercifully the youth by whom he was led into that mistake that he died of the blows." OEdipus was the son of Laius, who had supplanted his brother. OEdipus was exposed to destruction as soon as born, because his father had been warned that he must perish by the hand of his son,--but was rescued and brought up by shepherds. Hearing from the oracle of Delphi (the tradition is of course localised), that if he returned home he must necessarily be the murderer of his father, he avoided the house of Polybus, the only home he knew of, and travelled towards Phocis (from west to east by the by). (Comp. with _infra_, p. 194.) He met Laius, his father, in a narrow road. Laius haughtily ordered OEdipus to make way for him, which provoked an encounter, in which Laius and his armour-bearer were slain. Other circumstances,