Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE RETURN OF THE ACHAIANS.
he discovers lier beauty, explains the myths which make
him the lover of Diomede and Polyxena, and the husband
of Medeia, or Iphigeneia, or of Helen herself on the
dazzling- isle of Leuke. We are dealing with the loves
of the sun for the dawn, the twilight, and the violet-tinted
clouds.
But if the myth of Achilleus is, as Phoinix himself is made The
Nostoi.
to say, only another form of the tale of Meleagros, the story of
the sun doomed to go down in the full brightness of his splen-
dour after a career as brief as it is brilliant—if for him the
slaughter of Hektor marks the approaching end of his own
life, the myth of Helen carries us back to another aspect of
the great drama. She is the treasure stolen from the gleam-
ing west, and with her wealth she is again the prize of the
Achaians when Paris falls by the poisoned arrows of Philo-
ktetes. This rescue of the Spartan queen from the se-
ducer whom she utterly despises is the deliverance of Sarama
from the loathsome Panis ; but the long hours of the
day must pass before her eyes can be gladdened by the sight
of her home. Thus the ten hours' cycle is once more re-
peated in the Nostoi, or return of the heroes, for in the
Mediterranean latitudes, where the night and day may be
roughly taken as dividing the twenty-four hours into two
equal portions, two periods of ten hours each would repre-
sent the time not taken up with the phenomena of daybreak
and sunrise, sunset and twilight. Thus although the whole
night is a hidden struggle with the powers of darkness, the
decisive exploits of Achilleus, and indeed the active opera-
tions of the war are reserved for the tenth year and furnish
the materials for the Iliad, while in the Odyssey the ten
years' wanderings are followed by the few hours in which
the beggar throws off his rags and takes dire vengeance on
his enemies. Hence it is that Odysseus returns, a man of
many griefs and much bowed with toil, in the twentieth year
from the time when the Achaian fleet set sail from Aulis.
The interest of the homeward voyage of the treasure-seek- odysseua
ers is centered in the fortunes of Odysseus, the an(* brave and Aut0 "
wise chieftain whose one yearning it is to see his wife and
his child once more before he dies. He has fought the battle