Tithonus

But this idea of the death and resurrection of the Lord of Light was no new importation brought in by the theology of Egypt or Persia.

The story of the Egyptian Osiris was repeated in the Greek stories of Sarpedon and Memnon, of Tithonos and Asclepias, of the Teutonic Balder and Woden Odin.

The birthplace of these deities, the scenes associated with their traditional exploits, became holy spots, each with its own consecrating legends, and not a few attracting to themselves vast gatherings of pilgrims.

It was not wonderful, therefore, that the worshippers of these and other like gods should, on professing the faith of Christ, carry with them all that they could retain of their old belief without utterly contradicting the new, that his nativity should be celebrated at the time when the sun begins to rise in the heavens, and his resurrection when the victory of light over darkness is achieved in the spring.

Have you ever heard of Methuselah? In the Bible, it said that Methuselah has lived 969 years specifically.

Then in Greek mythology, there's a story of a goddess named Eos who falls in love with a mortal man, Tithonus, and this mortal man she's in love with, and she asks Zeus to make Tithonus immortal.

and Zeus grants her wish, and she's

stoked.

She just says, let him live forever.

Make him immortal.

So Tithonus keeps living, and he keeps aging, and then he starts deteriorating and getting old.

His body gets old, but he can't die.

I am sure I am the only person that both can and have made it good.

Tis I alone that have that wonderful juice with which Memnon's daughter prolonged the youth of her grandfather Tithon.

I am that Venus by whose favour Phaon became so young again that Sappho fell in love with him.

Mine are those herbs, if yet there be any such, mine those charms, and mine that fountain that not only restores departed youth, but, which is more desirable, preserves it perpetual.

Among all those offerings which are so frequently hung up in churches nay up to the very roof of some of them did you ever see the least acknowledgement from any one that had left his folly or grown a hair's breadth the wiser.

One escapes his shipwreck and he gets safe to shore another run through in a duel recovers another while the rest were fighting ran out of the field no less luckily than valiantly another condemned to be hanged by the favour of some saint or other a friend to thieves got off himself by impeaching his fellows another escaped by breaking prison another recovered from his fever in spite of his physician another's poison turning to a looseness proved his remedy rather than death and that to his wife's no small sorrow in that she lost both her labour and her charge another's cart broke and he saved his horses another preserved from the fall of a house all these hang up their tablets but no one gives thanks for his recovery from folly so sweet a thing it is not to be wise that on the contrary men rather pray against anything than folly but why do i launch out into this ocean of superstitions had i a hundred tongues as many mouths and a voice never so strong yet were i not able to run over the several sorts of fools or all the names of folly so thick do they swarm everywhere and yet your priests make no scruple to receive and cherish them as proper instruments of profit whereas if some scurvy wise fellow should step up and speak things as they are as to live well is the way to die well the best way to get quit of sin is to add to the money you give the hatred of sin tears watchings prayers fastings and amendment of life such or such a saint will favour you if you imitate his life these i say and the like should this wise man chat to the people from what happiness into how great troubles would he draw them of this college also are they who in their lifetime appoint with what solemnity they'll be buried and particularly set down how many torches how many mourners how many singers how many almsmen they will have at it as if any sense of it could come to them or that it were a shame to them that their corpse were not honourably interred so curious are they herein as if like the ediles of old these were to present some shows or banquet to the people and though i am in haste yet i cannot yet pass by them who though they differ nothing from the meanest cobbler yet tis scarcely credible how they flatter themselves with the empty title of nobility One derives his pedigree from Aeneas, another from Brutus, a third from the star by the tail of Ursa Major.

They show you on every side the statues and pictures of their ancestors, run over their great-grandfathers and the great-great-grandfathers of both lines, and the ancient matches of their families, when themselves yet are but once removed from a statue, if not worse than those trifles they boast of.

And yet by means of this pleasant self-love they live a happy life.

I think probably the ones that Sappho refers to, which are not in general the standard ones, but Niobe, for example, who was turned into a rock because she wept so much.

And most poignantly, I remember from that book, the myth of Tithonus.

Tithonus was the young man who fell in love with the dawn, the goddess of the dawn.

And they had a pleasant affair, and then one day he asked her, to make him immortal.

He wanted to be a god and live with her forever, so she went to Zeus and said, can you make Tithonus immortal? And Zeus said, sure, so he made him immortal, but he didn't make him ageless.

So he withered forever into a little cricket of himself, and that wasn't much fun for the goddess of the dawn anymore.

That's one of those really tragic what-you-wish-for stories.

Ganymede is snatched in the Aquarian way and taken to the upper world.

And sh- she goes on, "So too golden-throned Dawn snatched away Tithonus." This is a story I've spoken of before, but I'll repeat it here because it's in this story.

"Another of your race who was like the gods.

She went to ask Zeus to make him immortal and let him live forever.

But when hateful old age weighed him down completely so that he could neither move nor lift his limbs, then this was the plan that seemed best in her heart.

She laid him in a chamber and shut its shining doors.

His voice flows on endlessly, but the strength has gone which once was his when his limbs were supple." Terrifying story, the story of Tithonus in his, uh, immortal life but not immortal youth.

But a nice warning for us moderners who might want something similar some days.