Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/443

Rh CHAP, repeated any number of times, if the myths had not at length become mixed up with traditions of the local settlement of the country — in other words, if certain names found in the myths had not become associated with particular spots or districts in the Peloponnesos. To follow all the versions and variations of these legends is a task perhaps not much more profitable than threading the mazes of a labyrinth ; but we may trace in some, probably in most of them, the working of the same ideas. Thus the version which after the death of Eurystheus takes Hyllos to Thebes makes him dwell by the Elektrian or amber-gates. The next stage in the history is another return of the children of Herakles, which ends in the slaughter of Hyllos in single combat with Echemos — a name connected perhaps with that of Echidna, Ahi, the throttling snake. The night is once more victorious, and the Herakleidai are bound by a compact to forego all attempts at return for fifty or a hundred years, periods which are mere multiples of the ten years of the Trojan war, and of the Nostoi or homeward wanderings of the Achaian chiefs. Once more the children of the dawn goddess give them shelter in Tri- korythos, a region answering to the Hypereia or upper land, in which the Phaiakians dwelt before they were driven from it by the Ky- klopes. The subsequent fortunes of Kleodaios and Aristomachos the son and grandson of Herakles simply repeat those of Hyllos ; but at length in the next generation the myth pauses, as in the case of Odysseus and Achilleus in the Iliad and the Odyssey, at the moment of victory, and the repetition of the old drama is prevented by the gradual awakening of the historical sense in the Hellenic tribes. For this last return the preparations are on a scale which may remind us in some degree of the brilliant gathering of the Achaian chieftains with their hosts in Aulis. A fleet is built at the entrance of the Corinthian gulf, at a spot which hence bore the name of Naupaktos, and the three sons of Aristomachos, Aristodemos, Temenos, and Kresphontes, make ready for the last great enterprise. But Aristo- demos is smitten by lightning before he can pass over into the heritage of his fathers, and his place is taken by his twin sons Eurysthenes and Prokles, in whose fortunes we see that rivalry and animosity which, appearing in its germ in the myth of the Dios- kouroi, is brought to a head in the story of Eteokles and Polyneikes, the sons of Oidipous. The sequel exhibits yet other points of re- semblance to the story of the Trojan war. The soothsayer Chryses reappears as the prophet Karnos, whose death by the hand of Hippotes answers to the insults offered to Chryses by Agamemnon. In either case the wrath of ApoUon is roused, and a plague is the