ENDY'MION, in Greek mythology, was a son either of Zeus or of Aethlios, and fol lowed, according to some accounts, the occupation of a herdsman or hunter, but accord ing to others, was king of Elis. On account of his uprightness, he is said to have received, at his own request, from Zeus, the gift of immortality, unfading youth, and everlasting sleep; but another version is, that Zeus having taken him up to Olympus, E. fell iu love with Here (Juno), and was condemned by her enraged husband to eternal sleep on mount Latmos. Others, again, prettily fable that Selene (the moon), charmed by the beauty of the yonth, conveyed him to Carla, and sent him to sleep on mount Latmos, that she might nightly kiss him unobserved. The Eleans, on the contrary, declared that he died among them, and in proof of it were wont to show his monument. The myth of E. has been happily interpreted by Max Muller in his article on compara tive mythology, in the 0.iford Essays (1856). E., according to him, is one of the many names of the sun, but with special reference to the setting or dying sun, being formed from endno, probably a dialectic variety of duo, the technical verb in Greek to express sunset. E. sleeps in the cave of Latmos, i.e., of night (from the same root as Leto or
latona, the night). So far the myth poetically describes certain phenomena of nature, the sinking of the sun in the west, and the rising of the moon, that seems to follow his departing beams. But the original signification of the metaphors becoming lost, as might naturally happen when the words expressing them had only a local usage, it was, we may say, inevitable that people should transfer the metaphors to persons, and invent a history to supply the place of the vanished poetry. And this invention, or more prop erly, explanation (for it was doubtless made in all ,good faith), is what properly constitutes the myth of Endymion. The story has been made the subject of a poem by Keats.