Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/427

Rh chariot of the sun through the sky, or the car of Achilleus on the chap. plains of Ilion. For her child Thetis desires, as she herself possesses, the gift of immortality, and the legend, as given by Apollodoros, here introduces almost unchanged the story of Demeter and Triptolemos. Like the Eleusinian goddess, Thetis bathes her babe by night in fire, to destroy the mortality inherited from his father. Peleus, chancing one day to see the act, cries out in terror, and Thetis leaves his house for ever.^ Of the many stories told of his later years, the myth of the siege of lolkos and the death of Astydameia repeats that of Absyrtos and has probably the same meaning. The involuntary slaughter of Eurytion finds a parallel in the death of Eunomos, who is unwittingly killed by Herakles ; and the flocks which he offers in atonement to Iros the father, are the flocks which appear in all the legends of Phoibos and Helios. Iros refuses to receive them, and Peleus suffers them to wander untended until they are devoured by a wolf, — a phrase which betrays the nature both of the herds and their destroyer, and carries us to the death of the gentle Prokris.

When Thetis had vanished away, Peleus carried the child to the The wo- wise Kentaur Cheiron, who taught him how to ride and shoot, — a Achilleus. myth which at once explains itself when we remember that the Ken- taurs are the offspring of Ixion and Nephele. In his earlier years Achilleus resembles the youthful Dionysos, Theseus, and Phoibos, in the womanly appearance of his form,^the gentler aspect of the new risen sun when the nymphs wash him in pure water and wrap him in robes of spotless white. But while his limbs yet showed cnly the rounded outlines of youth, Kalchas the prophet could still foresee that only with his help could the stronghold of the seducer of Helen be taken, and that none but Achilleus could conquer Hektor. Only the death of his enemy must soon be followed by his own. The night must follow the blazing sunset in which the clouds pour out their streams of blood-red colour, like the Trojan youths slain on the great altar of sacrifice. To avert this doom, if it be possible to do so, Thetis clothed the child, now nine years old, in girlish raiment and placed him in Skyros among the daughters of Lykomedes, where from his golden locks he received the name of Pyrrha. But he could not long be hid : and the young boy who had in his infancy been called Ligyron, the whining, was recognised by Odysseus the chieftain of Ithaka as the great champion of the Achaian armies.

Thus was Achilleus engaged in a quarrel which was not his own ; The career and on this fact we can scarcely lay a greater stress than he does him- leus, self. The task is laid upon him, as it was on Herakles or on Perseus ;

' Apollod. iii. 13, 6.