Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

PATROKLOS AND SARPEDON.
longer perplexed to know why Patroklos, who can move in
the armour of Achilleus, yet cannot wield his spear, why the
CHAP,
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horses which Zeus gave to Peleus are the offspring of the
west-wind and the harpy Podarge, and why their mother
feeds in a meadow by the side of the ocean stream. 1 All is
now plain. The Myrmidons must be compared with the
wolves which appear almost everywhere in the myths of
Phoibos Apollon ; their tongues and their cheeks must be
red as with blood. We see at once why Patroklos can re-
turn safe from the fight only if he does strictly the bidding
of Achilleus, for Patroklos is but the son of Klymene, who
must not dare to whip the horses of Helios. When at
length Patroklos goes forth and encounters Sarpedon, it is
curious to trace the inconsistencies which are forced upon
the poet as he interweaves several solar myths together. On
the one side is the Zeus who has sworn to Thetis that he
will avenge the wrongs done to Achilleus,—a promise which
cannot be fulfilled by allowing his friend to be slaughtered,
on the other the Zeus whose heart is grieved for the death
of his own child Sarpedon. His vow to Thetis binds him to
shield Patroklos from harm; his relation to the brave
Lykian chieftain makes him look upon the son of Menoitios
as he looked on Phaethon while doing deadly mischief in
the chariot of Helios. So here Zeus takes counsel whether
he shall smite him at once or suffer him to go on a little
longer in his headlong course. But each story remains
perfectly clear. Sarpedon falls by the same doom which
presses not only on the man who slays him, but on Achilleus,
on Bellerophon, on Kephalos and a hundred others. The
Lykian chief dies, like his enemy, in the prime of golden
youth and in the far west, for his Lykia lay far away to the
east of Ilion, where the sun comes up, and the Dawn is
greeting the earth when the powers of sleep and death bear
their beautiful burden to the doors of his golden home. By
the same inconsistency the eastern tradition made Apollon
the enemy of Patroklos, as it afterwards associates him with
Paris in the death of Achilleus ; yet the power by which he
preserves the body of Hektor from decay is employed by
1 77. xvi. 150.
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