Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

HELENE DENDRITIS. 157
her brothers are the Dioskonroi, or Asvins. When the time CHAP.
for her marriage draws nigh, suitors come thronging from all .... -
parts of Hellas, their numbers being one for each day of the
lunar month— a myth which simply tells us that every day
the sun woos the dawn. In the Iliad she is never spoken of
and Isokrates notices the
except as the daughter of Zeus ;
sacrifices offered in Therapnai to her and to Menelaos, not
as heroes but as gods. 1 She is worshipped by the women of
Sparta as the source of all fruitfulness, and in Argos as the
mother of Iphigeneia, the child of Theseus, and as having
dedicated a temple to Eileithyia. 2 In Rhodes she is Helene
Dendritis, and a wild legend was invented to account for
the name. 3 Lastly, the myth of her journey to Ilion and her
return is in its framework simply the myth of Auge, the
mother of Telephos, like her, taken away to the same land,
and, like her, brought back again when all enemies have
been overcome. 4
This is, practically, the Gaelic story of Conall Gulban, The story
11
which may be fairly regarded as embodying a whole cycle of (f^
mythical tradition. The materials of which it is made up
carry us to a vast number of legends in Aryan mythology,
but the main story is that of Herakles, Achilleus, and Helen.
Conall himself is the solar hero, despised at first for his
homely appearance and seeming weakness, but triumphant
in the end over all his enemies. Nay, as he becomes an
idiot in the Lay of the Great Fool, so here he is emphatically
Analkis, the coward. But he is resolved nevertheless to
1 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 109-110; II. the Erinyes as dawn-goddes^s, while it
iii. 426; Od. iv. 184, &c. : Isokr. Hdm. mingles with it the hitcr notion which
Knkom. 63. represented them as Furies. The tree
- Pans. ii. 22, 7. points probably to her connexion with
8 Id. ii. 19, 10. This story relates the sun, and thus carries us back to the
that Helen, being persecuted by Mega- special form of worship paid to her
penthes and Nikostratos after the death at Sparta, as well as to the myth of
of -Menelaos, took refuge at Rhodes in Wuotan. See vol. i. p. 371, 430.
the house of Polyxo, who, being angry 4 This myth is to Preller ' < in«with
Helen as the cause of the Trojan Vorstellung welche urspriinglich hochst
war and thus of the death of her wahrscheinliehauch mit ihrer Bedeutung
husband Tlepolemos whom Sarpedon im Naturleben zusammenhing.' Gr.
slew, sent some maidens, disguised as Myth. ii. 110: and he draws betweei
Erinyes,
bathing,
who surprised Helen while
and hung her up to a tree,
the stories of Helen and Auge a parallel
which may be exhibited in the following
This myth is simply a picture of the equation:
dawn rising like Aphrodite from the Auge : Teuthras : : Helene : Paris,
sea ; and it preserves the recollection of Tegea : Mysia : : Sparta : Ilion.