Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

ARTEMIS AND IPHIGENEIA. 145
surate with it. Still, although, there is not much in the CHAP.
.
phenomena of morning, or
.
in
.
the myth of the Delian Ar-
II
, _
temis, to suggest the practice of slaying youths and maidens,
or scourging them until the blood ran in streams to glut the
angry demon, there are not wanting mythical phrases which,
if translated into the conditions of human life, would point
to such revolting systems. Adonis cannot rise to the life of
the blessed gods until he has been slain. The morning
cannot come until the E6s who closed the previous day has
faded away and died in the black abyss of night. So it is
also with Memnon and Sarpedon, with Endymion and Nar-
kissos. But all these are the children of Zeus or Phoibos,
or some other deity of the heaven or the sun ;
and thus the
parents may be said to sacrifice their children, as Tantalos
placed the mangled Pelops on the banquet-table of Zeus.
It is thus seemingly that Iphigeneia must die before Helen
can be brought again from Ilion : but Helen is herself Iphi-
geneia, and thus the return of Helen is the resurrection of
the victim doomed by the words of Kalchas and the consent
of Agamemnon, and Iphigeneia becomes the priestess of
Artemis, whose wrath she had been slain to expiate. With
an unconscious fidelity to the old mythical phrases, which is
still more remarkable, Iphigeneia is herself Artemis, and thus
the story resolves itself into the saying that the evening and
the morning are the same, but that she must die at night
before she can spring into life again at dawn. Nor must it
be forgotten that Helen stolen away from the Argive or
gleaming land of the West is the golden light stolen away
in the evening. The weary voyage from the Achaian shores
is the long journey of the sun-children for the stolen trea-
sure, beginning just when the twilight is deepening into
night, and when the lagging hours seem likely never to pass
away. Iphigeneia is slain at the beginning of this dismal
journey—in other words, she dies in the evening that
Helen may come back in the morning, when, after ten Ion
hours of mortal strife, the walls of Ilion have fallen.
But when Artemis, Helen, and Iphigeneia, had received
each her own distinct personality, it was easy to say that
the anger of Artemis, offended for some supposed neglect
VOL. II. L