| Rhadamanthus was the son of Zeus and Europa. Virgil in the Aeneid has him portrayed as a judge of the dead in the underworld, like Osiris: “Cretan Rhadamanthus holds here his iron sway; he chastises, and hears the tale of guilt, exacting confession of crimes, whenever in the world above any man, rejoicing in vain deceit, has put off atonement for sin until death’s late hour. Straightway avenging Tisiphone, girt with the lash, leaps on the guilty to scourge them, and with left hand brandishing her grim snakes, calls on her savage sister band. Then at last, grating on harsh, jarring hinge, the infernal gates open. Do you see what sentry [Tisiphone] sits in the doorway? what shape guards the threshold? The monstrous Hydra, still fiercer, with her fifty black gaping throats, dwells within. Then Tartarus itself yawns sheer down, stretching into the gloom twice as far as is the upward view of the sky toward heavenly Olympus. Here the ancient sons of Earth, the Titan’s brood, hurled down by the thunderbolt, writhe in lowest abyss.” (100) Homer, in the Odyssey, represents him as dwelling in the Elysian Fields: “But for thyself, Menelaus, fostered of Zeus, it is not ordained that thou shouldst die and meet thy fate in horse-pasturing Argos, but to the Elysian plain and the bounds of the earth will the immortals convey thee, where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthus, and where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor heavy storm, nor ever rain.” (101) A father, speaking to his dead son, in Philippi in Macedonia, reminds him: “Revived, thou livest in the flowery meadows of the Elysian Fields, where thou art welcomed into the troop of Satyrs by the mystae of Bacchus, marked with the sacred seal.” (102) Therefore we may conclude that the Elysian Fields was Tartarus, the underworld. From another direction its possible Rhadamanthus traces back to Egyptian origin in the name Ra Amenthes. Amenthes was the Egyptian underworld, and Ra’s position was later assumed by Osiris, the Judge of the Underworld. (103) The Greek underworld, Tartarus, was the scene of a great war between Zeus and the Titans. Again, reading from Hesiod’s Theogany: “But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. Strength was with his hands in all that he did, and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he |
would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it. But he thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose, and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about, at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Kronos, because of the unending clamour and the fearful strife. So, when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, he leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunder-stricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount (26), when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapour and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled (27) crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is softened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus (28). Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire. And in the bitterness of his anger Zeus cast him into wide Tartarus.” (104) Analogies and comparative terms like “sound of a lion” and “noise of a bull,” are always used in poetry and verse when relating to the mushroom. This is also similar to the war in heaven in which Marduk conquered Tiamat and sounds very much like the same war that took place in Revelation XII, 7: “(7) Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. (8) But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. (9) The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” (100) Virgil Aeneid, Book VI, 548 (101) Homer Odyssey Book IV, 554-570 (102) Ancient Symbol Worship, p. 315; From Philippi in Macedonia (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, III, 686) (103) History of the Devil, p. 198-99 (104) Hesiod Theogany 820-868 |