Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

162 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK In this story Phoinix tells Acliilleus that he may see a
v— -,' - reflection
of himself; and the parallel is closer than perhaps
Thetis and the poet imagined. Like Meleagros, he is a being in whose
leus.
" veins flows the blood of the gods. His mother is the seanymph
Thetis, for, like Kephalos and Aphrodite, like Athene
and Iamos, the sun-god must rise from the waters ; and in
the life of his father Peleus the threads of a large number
of myths are strangely ravelled together. The tale of his
sojourn in Iolkos repeats the story of Bellerophon and
Anteia; and as Proitos sends Bellerophon that he may be
put to death by other hands than his own, so Akastos, the
husband who thinks himself injured, leaves Peleus without
arms on the heights of Pelion, that the wild beasts may
devour him. He is here attacked by Kentaurs, but saved by
Cheiron, who gives him back his sword. Here also he becomes
the husband of Thetis, at whose wedding-feast the seeds of
the strife are sown which produce their baleful fruits in the
stealing away of Helen and all its wretched consequences.
But the feast itself is made the occasion for the investiture
of Peleus with all the insignia of Helios or Phoibos. His
lance is the gift of Cheiron : from Poseidon, the god of the
air and the waters, come the immortal horses Xanthos and
Balios, the golden and speckled steeds which draw the chariot
of the sun through the sky, or the car of Acliilleus on the
plains of Ilion. For her child Thetis desires, as she her-
self possesses, the gift of immortality, and the legend, as
given by Apollodoros, here introduces almost unchanged
the story of Demeter and Triptolemos. Like the Eleu-
sinian goddess, Thetis bathes her babe by night in fire,
to destroy the mortality inherited from his father. Peleus,
chancing one day to see the act, cries out in terror, and
Thetis leaves his house for ever. 1 Of the many stories told
of his later years, the myth of the siege of Iolkos and the
death of Astydameia repeats that of Absyrtos and has
probably the same meaning. The involuntary slaughter of
Eurytion finds a parallel in the death of Eunomos, who is
unwittingly killed by Herakles; and the flocks which he
offers in atonement to Iros the father, are the flocks which
1 Apollod. iii. 13, 6.