古罗马神之黎明女神Aurora

李欣蔚

     Aurora is the Latin word for dawn, the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry. Aurora is comparable to the Greek goddess Eos, though Aurora did not bring with her any resonance of a greater archaic goddess.

Myth
     In ancient Roman mythology, Aurora, goddess of the dawn, renews herself every morning and flies across the sky, announcing the arrival of the sun. Her parentage was flexible: for Ovid① she could equally be Pallantis, signifying the daughter of Pallas, or the daughter of Hyperion. She has two siblings, a brother (Sol, the sun) and a sister (Luna, the moon), and four children, the Winds (north, south, east, and west). According to one myth, her tears cause the dew as she flies across the sky weeping for one of her sons, who was killed.
Aurora appears most often in Latin poetry with one of her mortal lovers. A myth taken from the Greek Eos by Roman poets tells that one of her lovers was the prince of Troy, Tithonus. Tithonus was a mortal, and would age and die. Wanting to be with her lover for all eternity, Aurora asked Zeus to grant immortality to Tithonus. Zeus granted her wish, however Aurora had failed to ask him for eternal youth. As a result, Tithonus ended up aging eternally. Aurora ended up turning her beloved Tithonus into a grasshopper.

Usage in literature and music
      From Homer's Iliad :
Now when Dawn in robe of saffron was hastening from the streams of Okeanos, to bring light to mortals and immortals, Thetis reached the ships with the armor that the god had given her.
But soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector.      
      From Virgil's② Aeneid :
Aurora now had left her saffron bed,
And beams of early light the heav'ns o'erspread,
When, from a tow'r, the queen, with wakeful eyes,
Saw day point upward from the rosy skies.
      In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Montague says of his lovesick son Romeo：
But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
Away from the light steals home my heavy son...
      In the poem "Tithonus" by Lord Alfred Tennyson③, Aurora is described thus:
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of a fire
      In singer-songwriter Björk's Vespertine track, Aurora is described as:
Aurora
Goddess sparkle
A mountain shade suggests your shape
I tumble down on my knees
Fill my mouth with snow
The way it melts
I wish to melt into you
      In Chapter 2 of Walden, Where I Lived and What I Lived for, Henry David Thoreau④ states:
Every morning was a cheerful invitation
to make my life of equal simplicity,
and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
I got up early and bathed in the pond;
that was a religious exercise,
and one of the best things which I did.



Notes：
①Ovid：a Roman poet
②Virgil: a classical Roman poet
③Lord Alfred Tennyson: A Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
④Henry David Thoreau: an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, sage writer and philosopher

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Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of a fire

试比比：
   《陌上桑》中写秦罗敷的漂亮非同一般：
　　行者见罗敷，下担捋髭须，少年见罗敷，脱帽著帩头。耕者忘其犁，锄者忘其锄。
　　来归相怨怒，但坐观罗敷。使君从南来，五马立踟蹰，……使君谢罗敷：“宁可共载否？”……
　　对罗敷的美丽，作者没有直接加以表现，而是通过描写人们见了罗敷以后的种种失
　　态来间接表现的，这和古希腊史诗《伊利亚特》通过描写那些特洛伊长老们见了海伦以
　　后的惊奇与低语来表现海伦的绝世之美的手法有异曲同工之妙。

此处亦未直接描写Aurora的美丽，却令人感到Aurora倾城之美。

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