Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
in Aulis cannot end nntil Iphigeneia has been offered as a
victim to the offended Artemis, the goddess of the moon or
the night. It is vain to resist. The sin of Agamemnon is
brought bach to his mind, as he remembers how he promised
before the birth of his child that he would offer up the most
beautiful thing which that year might produce, and how he
had failed to fulfil his vow. But now the evening must die
and Iphigeneia is
if the light of morning is to be seen again :
slain that Helen may come back to Sparta. But although
her blood flows to the grief and agony of her father and her
kinsfolk, the war must still last for ten years, for so it had
been decreed by Zeus, who sent the snake to eat up the
l
sparrow and her young ; and thus room was given for the
introduction of any number of episodes, to account for, or to
explain the lengthening out of the struggle ;
and the machi-
nery of a thousand myths was obviously available for the
purpose. Like Hippodameia or Atalante, Helen was beau-
tiful, but many must fail while one alone could win her.
Sigurd only can waken Brynhild ; and the dead bodies of
the unsuccessful knights lie before the hedge or wall of
spears in the Hindu folk-lore. Thus with the introduction
of Achilleus, as the great hero without whom the war can
never be brought to an end, the whole framework of the epic
poem was complete. It only remained to show what the
others vainly attempted, and what Achilleus alone succeeded
in doing. That the life of Achilleus should run in the same
magic groove with the lives of other heroes, mattered nothing.
The story which most resembled that of Achilleus is indeed
chosen by the poet to point to him the moral which he
needed most of all to take to heart.
This story is the life of Meleagros, and it is recited to
Achilleus by Phoinix, the teacher of his childhood, the
dweller in that purple land of the east from which Europe
was taken to her western home. It is the picture of the
short-lived sun, whose existence is bound up with the light
or the torch of day, who is cursed by his mother for killing
1 This incident, 77. ii. 300, is related and not at all as the cause of the length
simply as a sign of the number of years of the struggle,
which must precede the fall of Ilion,