Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/421

Rh poisoned wound ; in another she is reconciled to lason ; in another ^^f ^' she becomes the wife of Aigeus, king of Athens, and the enemy of " '~-~-' his son Theseus. Others again carry lason back with Medeia to Kolchis, or make him die, crushed beneath the timber-head of the Argo. There was, however, no need to carry lason and Medeia with her The golden robe back again to the eastern land. The treasure brought Hden.° back from that distant shore could not remain long in the west ; and in the stealing away of Helen and her wealth we have an incident which, from the magnificent series of myths to which it has given birth or with which it is interwoven, seems to dwarf almost every other feature in the mythical history of the Aryan nations. The story has been complicated with countless local traditions ; it has received a plausible colouring from the introduction of accurate geographical details, of portraits which may be true to national character, of accounts of laws, customs, and usages, which doubtless prevailed at the time when the poet wrote. Yet in spite of epithets which may still be applied to the ruins of Tiryns and Mykenai, in spite of the cairns which still bear the names of Achilleus or of Aias on the shores of the strong-flowing Hellespontos, Helen is simply the radiant light, whether of the morning or the evening.^ As Sarama, the dawn which peers about in search of the bright cows which the Panis have stolen from Indra, we have seen her already listening, though but for a moment, to the evil words of the robbers. These evil words are reproduced in the sophistry of the Trojan Paris, who is only a little more successful than the thief of the Vedic hymns, and the momentary unfaithfulness of the one becomes the long-continued faithlessness of the other. But it is a faithlessness more in seeming than in fact. Helen is soon awakened from her evil dream, and her heart remains always in beautiful Argos, in the house of her husband who never showed her anything but kindness and love. Though Paris is beautiful, she yet feels that she has nothing in common with him, and thus she returns with a chastened joy to the home from which she had been taken away.

But to be stolen or persecuted for her beauty was the lot of Helen T^ie steal- almost from her cradle. In the myth of Theseus she is brought into Helen and Attica, and guarded in early youth by Aithra in the stronghold of Aphidnai until she is delivered by her brothers, the Dioskouroi ; and

' This is fully recognised by Preller, Mater Matuta of the Latins. — Gr. MytK who compares her, as such, with the ii. 108,