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medical missionary, theologian, and musician, born in Alsace. In 1913 he qualified as a doctor and went as a missionary to Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon), where he established a hospital and spent most of his life. Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. His philosophy was founded on 'reverence for life'.

This is the guy who killed my mother, Reverend. And he's going to kill again, that's a fact. He's out there laughing at me, and laughing at the cops, and laughing at you for protecting him, and I would knock down Mother Theresa, run over Albert Schweitzer and shoot the Pope to get at this guy. Do you understand me now?

STEPHEN BOCART Play It Again, 1994

Mother Teresa Mother Teresa (1910-97) was a Roman Catholic missionary, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in what is now Macedonia. She became a nun in 1928 and went to India, where she devoted herself to helping the destitute. She founded the order of Missionaries of Charity, which became noted for its work among the poor and dying in Calcutta. Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She is often referred to as the model of saintly compassion.

Or maybe she could go in for superhuman goodness, instead. Hair shirts, stigmata, succouring the poor, a kind of outsized Mother Teresa.

MARCARET ATWOOD The Robber Bride, 1993

Then Hawkeye said, 'Shame about Jasper Moon. I rather liked him. He might have put his pecker in peculiar places, but his heart was in the right spot. Ever since I caught those young tearaways who'd been vandalizing his street door he always gave a good Christmas bung to the Widows and Orphans fund.' Rafferty frowned as yet another witness depicted Moon as aspiring to sainthood. What was it about the man? Their child-abuser seemed to be turning into a veritable Father Teresa.

GÉRALDINE EVANS Death Line, 1995

Archbishop Tutu Desmond Mpilo Tutu (b. 1931) is a South African clergyman. He served as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches 1979-84, and during this time he became a leading figure in the struggle against the country's apartheid policies, advocating non-violent opposition. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1984. Tutu became lohannesburg's first black Anglican bishop in 1985 and was made archbishop of Cape Town in 1986.

And I'm telling you, when Bacon gets hold of something, things happen. He's not Martin Luther King or Bishop Tutu. Okay? He's not gonna win any Nobel Prize. He's got his own way of doing things, and sometimes it might not stand close scrutiny.

TOM WOLFE The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1987

Grief and Sorrow

It is striking that there is such a similarity between some of the stories below. The figure of the mother mourning the death of her children is clearly a potent symbol of grief. • See also Despair, Suffering.

GRIEF AND SORROW 1 6 7

Constance In Shakespeare's King John (1623), Constance of Brittany is the mother of Arthur, the king's young nephew, and a claimant to the throne. Her son's death draws from her a passionate expression of grief:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words.

Few of us wish to disturb the mother of a litter of puppies when mouthing a bone in the midst of her young family. Medea and her children are familiar to us, and so is the grief of Constance.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE Barchester Towers, 1857

Deirdre In Irish legend, Deirdre was the beautiful daughter of the harper to King Conchobar of Ulster. According to a prophecy her beauty would bring death and ruin to the men of Ulster. Although she was the intended bride of Conchobar, she fell in love and eloped with Naoise. When Naoise was treacherously slain by Conchobar, Deirdre took her own life, ending her misery.

Hecuba Hecuba was the wife of King Priam of Troy and mother of numerous children, including Hector, Paris, Cassandra, and Troilus. Homer's Iliad tells of her suffering and grief during the Trojan War as she witnesses the deaths of many of her sons at the hands of the Greeks, in particular the slaying of her eldest son, Hector, by Achilles and the desecration of his body. • See special entry

D TROJAN WAR 0/7 p. 392.

Mary Magdalene In the New Testament, Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jesus, traditionally said to be a reformed prostitute. She is often portrayed in art weeping repentant tears, and the word 'maudlin' is derived from her name.

Niobe In Greek mythology, Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus and the mother of numerous offspring. She boasted that her large family made her superior to the goddess Leto, who only had two children, Apollo and Artemis. Angered by this, Apollo slew all Niobe's sons, and Artemis her daughters. Niobe herself was turned into a stone, and her tears into streams that eternally trickled from it. She has become a symbol of inconsolable grief. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet describes his mother at his father's funeral as 'Like Niobe, all tears'.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,

Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe.

LORD BYRON Ctiilde Harold, 1818

Rachel Rachel was the second wife of Jacob, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. In the Book of Jeremiah, she is described as weeping for her children who were taken away in captivity to Babylon: 'Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not' (Jer. 31: 15).

She was like Rachel, 'mourning over her children, and would not be comforted! WASHINGTON iRviNc The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayton, Cent, 1820

But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this

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ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.

HERMAN MELVILLE Moby Dick, 1851

rivers of Babylon Psalm 137, which commemorates the exile of the Jews in Babylon, opens with the words: 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,

yea,	we wept, when we remembered Zion.' The phrase 'the rivers of Babylon'
has	come to be associated with the idea of mourning for the dead.

Guarding

This theme deals not only with the idea of physically keeping guard over something but also with the more general idea of being vigilant or watchful.

Argus In Greek mythology, Argus was a giant with a hundred eyes, whom Hera made guardian of Io (transformed into a heifer by Zeus). Argus never slept with more than a pair of eyes at a time, so he was able to watch Io constantly. After Hermes had killed Argus on behalf of Zeus, Hera took the eyes to deck the peacock's tail. The term 'Argus-eyed' has come to mean vigilant or observant.

Well, thought I, I hope still, Argus, to be too hard for thee. Now Argus, the poets say, had an hundred eyes, and was set to watch with them all, as she does, with her goggling ones.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON Pamela, 1741

Cerberus Cerberus was the three-headed dog which guarded the entrance to Hades in Greek mythology. Cerberus could be appeased with a cake, as by Aeneas, or lulled to sleep, as by Orpheus, with lyre music. One of the twelve labours of Hercules was to bring him up from the underworld. Someone who guards the entrance to a place can be described as a Cerberus. • See special entries • HADES on p. 172 and D HERCULES on p. 182.

She longed to mention that Claridges were looking for a doorman. He'd be perfect in the role, now he was so well-groomed and barking like Cerberus.

ALICE THOMAS ELLIS The 27th Kingdom, 1982

A call to his office got me as far as his secretary, Veronica, who watched over his working day like Cerberus in human form. After diligent cross-examination she allowed me to talk to her master, who was as affable as his secretary was chilly.

MALCOLM HAMMER Shadows on the Green, 1994

As we got out of the car I warned Vico not to talk in the stairwell. 'We don't want the dogs to hear me and wake Mr. Contreras.' 'He is a malevolent neighbor? You need me perhaps to guard you?' 'He's the best-natured neighbor in the world. Unfortunately, he sees his role in my life as Cerberus, with a whiff of Othello thrown in.'

SARA PARETSKY V. I. for Short, 1995

Carm Garm is the dog that guards the gates of hell in Norse mythology, a Norse equivalent of Cerberus.

GUILT 1 6 9

Guilt

Two meanings of the word 'guilt' are dealt with here: the feeling of culpability and shame, and the fact of having committed a particular offence. The concept of guilt is central to the Judaeo-Christian tradition but appears to be rarely expressed in classical myth. • See also Curse,

Innocence.

Cain According to the Book of Genesis, Cain, the eldest son of Adam and Eve, murdered his own brother Abel (Gen. 4:1-16). For this crime he was cast out from his homeland and forced to live a life of vagrancy as an outcast. • See special entry n CAIN on p. 44.

Summarized briefly, mainstream pop ethology contends that two lineages of hominids inhabited Pleistocene Africa. One, a small, territorial carnivore, evolved into us; the other, a larger, presumably gentle herbivore, became extinct. Some carry the analogy of Cain and Abel to its full conclusion and accuse our ancestors of fratricide.

STEPHEN JAY COULD Ever Since Darwin, 1978

Judas According to the Bible, Judas Iscariot was the disciple who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. When he learned that Jesus had been condemned to death, he realized the enormity of his betrayal and repented, returned the money to the priests who had paid him, and then hanged himself (Matt. 27: 3-5). The pieces of silver were used to buy a potter's field, used as a burial place for foreigners. •See special entry • JESUS on p. 223.

Eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her husband in such a state as this, which had become as dreadful to her as the trial scene was to Judas Iscariot. It brought before her eyes the spectre of a worn-out woman knocking at a door which she would not open; and she shrank from contemplating it.

THOMAS HARDY The Return of the Native, 1880

Macbeth/Lady Macbeth In Shakespeare's play Macbeth (1623), Lady Macbeth plots with her husband to kill King Duncan so that her husband can assume the throne in his place. After this murder, and the subsequent murder of Banquo, which Macbeth and his wife also order, they are both troubled by guilt for what they have done. Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, washing her hands in her sleep in an attempt to remove the blood which she imagines to be there. She finally goes mad and kills herself. Macbeth also suffers nightmares and visions as a result of his feelings of guilt.

Mrs Todd rocked gently for a time, and seemed to be lost, though not poorly, like Macbeth, in her thoughts.

SARAH ORNE JEWETT A Dunnet Shepherdess, 1899

Mary Magdalene In the New Testament, Mary Magdalene was one of the followers of Jesus. Although she is not explicitly described as a prostitute, she is traditionally believed to have been one. Similarly, she is often identified with the woman, a sinner ashamed of her sins, who came to Jesus in the Pharisee's

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house, washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with oil (Luke 7: 38).

Pontius Pilate Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator of Judaea from c.26 to c.36, remembered for presiding at the trial of Jesus Christ. The chief priests and elders who had brought Jesus to him demanded that Jesus be put to death. Pilate, who alone could order the death penalty, was not persuaded that Jesus had committed any crime, but gave in to popular demand and ordered that Jesus be crucified. He washed his hands before the crowd, saying: 'I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it' (Matt. 27: 24). Pontius Pilate is alluded to as someone who colludes in a crime or dishonest act but tries to distance himself from it and assume no responsibility for it. • See special entry

• JESUS on p. 223.

'I	know Hosnani was a friend of yours, sir.' Mountolive felt himself colouring slightly.
'In	matters of business, a diplomat has no friends,' he said stiffly, feeling that he
spoke in the very accents of Pontius Pilate.
LAWRENCE DURRELL Mountolive, 1958

The day will come when we and the British Empire will stand together and say to the world, 'It was we who made you free,' and the Americans and the Russians and the other Pontius Pilâtes like them will hang their heads and feel ashamed that all the glory came to us.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994

'I think I know why she left the money to Dr Blakeney' 'Why?' 'I reckon it was a Pontius Pilate exercise. She'd done a lousy job herself bringing up her daughter and granddaughter, knew they'd destroy themselves with jealous infighting if she left the money to them, so passed the buck to the only person she'd ever got on with or respected. Namely Dr Blakeney!

MINETTE WALTERS The Scold's Bridle, 1994

scapegoat In the Bible, the scapegoat was a goat which was sent into the wilderness after a priest had symbolically laid all the sins of the Israelites upon it so that the sins would be taken away (Lev. 16: 8-22). The word 'scapegoat' has now come to refer to any person who takes the blame for the wrongdoings or failings of others.

Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat.

JOHN BUCHAN Prester John, 1910