Europa, whom Jupiter carried away in the form of a bull, is called "The yellow-haired Europa." (OVID, Fasti) Minerva is called by Homer "the blue-eyed Minerva," and by Ovid "the yellow-haired"; the huntress Diana, who is commonly identified with the moon, is addressed by Anacreon as "the yellow-haired daughter of Jupiter," a title which the pale face of the silver moon could surely never have suggested. Dione, the mother of Venus, is described by Theocritus as "yellow-haired." Venus herself is frequently called "Aurea Venus," the "golden Venus." (HOMER'S Iliad) The Indian goddess Lakshmi, the "Mother of the Universe," is described as of "a golden complexion." (Asiatic Researches) Ariadne, the wife of Bacchus, was called "the yellow-haired Ariadne." (HESIOD, Theogonia) Thus does Dryden refer to her golden or yellow hair:
"Where the rude waves in Dian's harbour play,
The fair forsaken Ariadne lay;
There, sick with grief and frantic with despair,
Her dress she rent, and tore her golden hair."
The Gorgon Medusa before her transformation, while celebrated for her beauty, was equally celebrated for her golden hair:
"Medusa once had charms: to gain her love
A rival crowd of anxious lovers strove. They who have seen her, own they ne'er did trace
More moving features in a sweeter face;
But above all, her length of hair they own
In golden ringlets waves, and graceful shone."
The mermaid that figured so much in the romantic tales of the north, which was evidently borrowed from the story of Atergatis, the fish goddess of Syria, who was called the mother of Semiramis, and was sometimes identified with Semiramis herself, was described with hair of the same kind. "The Ellewoman," such is the Scandinavian name for the mermaid, "is fair," says the introduction to the "Danish Tales" of Hans Andersen, "and gold-haired, and plays most sweetly on a stringed instrument." "She is frequently seen sitting on the surface of the waters, and combing her long golden hair with a golden comb." Even when Athor, the Venus of Egypt, was represented as a cow, doubtless to indicate the complexion of the goddess that cow represented, the cow's head and neck were gilded. (HERODOTUS and WILKINSON) When, therefore, it is known that the most famed pictures of the Virgin Mother in Italy represented her as of a fair complexion and with golden hair, and when over all Ireland the Virgin is almost invariably represented at this day in the very same manner, who can resist the conclusion that she must have been thus represented, only because she had been copied form the same prototype as the Pagan divinities?
Nor is this agreement in complexion only, but also in features. Jewish features are everywhere marked, and have a character peculiarly their own.