Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/433

Rh CHAP. sephone. The shield flashing hke a beacon-fire far away on the deep sea, the helmet crest gleaming like a star, the armour which bears up the hero as on the pinions of a bird, the spear which Cheiron cut on the heights of Pelion, the undying horses gifted with the mind and the speech of man, all belong to no earthly warfare. We need not follow the mighty conflict in its details ; but it is scarcely pos- sible to lay too much stress on the singular parallelism between the several stages in this fatal contest, as compared with the battle between Odysseus and the suitors. The hero with the irresistible weapons which no other arm can wield, filled with the strength of Athene herself, fighting with enemies who almost overpower him just when he seems to be on the point of winning the victory, — the struggle in which the powers of heaven and hell take part, — the utter discomfiture of a host by the might of one invincible warrior, — the time of placid repose which follows the awful turmoil, — the doom which in spite of the present glory still awaits the conqueror, all form a picture, the lines of which are in each case the same, and in which he see reflected the fortunes of Perseus, Oidipous, Bellerophon, and all the crowd of heroes who have each their Hektor to vanquish and their Ilion to overthrow, whether in the den of Chimaira, the labyrinth of the Minotaur, the cave of Cacus, the frowning rock of the Sphinx, or the stronghold of the Panis. Nor is the meaning of the tale materially altered whether we take the myth that he fell in the western gates by the sword of Paris aided by the might of Phoibos, or the version of Diktys of Crete, that in his love for Polyxena the daughter of Priam he promised to join the Trojans, and going unarmed into the temple of Apollon at Thymbra, was there slain by the seducer of Helen. As the sun is the child of the night, so, as the evening draws on, he may be said to ally himself with the kindred of the night again ; and his doom is equally certain whether the being whom he is said to love represent the dawn or the sister of the night that is coming. With all the ferocity which he shows on the loss of Briseis, Achilleus none the less resembles Herakles ; but the pity which he feels for the amazon Penthesileia, when he discovers her beauty, explains the myths which make him the lover of Diomede and Polyxena, and the husband of Medeia, or Iphigeneia, or of Helen herself on the dazzling isle of Leuke. We are dealing with the loves of the sun for the dawn, the twilight, and the violet-tinted clouds.

But if the myth of Achilleus is, as Phoinix himself is made to say, The only another form of the tale of Meleagros, the story of the sun Nostoi. doomed to go down in the full brightness of his splendour after a career as brief as it is brilliant— if for him the slaughter of Hektor