Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/288

256 BOOK and dread) are among the offspring whom the bright Paphian goddess bore to Ares, while Priapos and Bacchos are her children by Dionysos. Nor is her love confined to undying gods. The so-called Homeric hymn tells the story how in the guise of a simple maiden she came to the folds where the Trojan Anchises was tending his flocks, and how Aineias was born, whom the nymphs loved by the Seilenoi and Hermes the Argos-Slayer tended and cherished.^

Share of In the Iliad, Aphrodite, as the mother of Aineias, fights on the Aphrodite gj^^g ^^ Ilion, not SO much because she has any keen wish for the in the Trojan victory of the one side rather than the other, as because she desires to preserve her child and make him a father of many nations. Nowhere in fact do we more clearly see the disintegration of the earliest myths than in the part which the several deities play in the long struggle before the walls of Ilion. That struggle is strictly the desperate strife which is to avenge the wrongs and woes of Helen and to end in her return to her ancient home in the west, — the return of the beautiful dawnlight, whom the powers of darkness had borne away from the western heavens in the evening. It is unnecessary to do more here than to refer to the evidence by which this conclusion may be regarded as proved ; but it follows hence that not only is the faithless Helen the Sarama whom the dark beings vainly try to seduce in the hymns of the Veda, but Paris is Pani, the cheat and the thief, who. steals away and shuts up the light in his secret lurking-place. Thus in the early and strict form of the myth, Helen is all light and Paris is all blackness ; and his kinsfolk are the robbers who are associated with the great seducer. Hence we should expect that on the side of the Trojans there would be only the dark and forbidding gods, on the side of the Achaians only those who dwell in the ineffable light of Olympos. The latter is indeed the case : but although Here, the queen of the pure ether, is the zealous guardian of the Argive hosts, and Athene gives strength to the weapons and wisdom to the hearts of Achilleus and Odysseus, yet Apollon and Aphrodite are not partakers in their counsels. Throughout, the latter is anxious only for the safety of her child, and Apollon encourages and comforts the noble and self devoted Hektor. There was in truth nothing in the old mythical phrases which could render this result either impossible or unlikely. The victory of the Achaians might be the victory of the children of the sun over the dark beings who have deprived them of their brilliant treasure ; but there was no reason why on each hero, on either side, there should not rest something of the lustre which surrounds the forms of Phoibos, Herakles, Perseus, and Bellerophon.

' //y//m to Aphrodite, 258.