Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

• MYTHOLOGY
OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK not so far turn the course of events as to secure the triumph
,1 - of Paris : but he might fairly be regarded as the supporter
and guide of the generous and self-sacrificing Hektor. Hence
when the death day of Hektor has come, Apollon leaves him,
reluctantly it may be, but still he abandons him while
Athene draws near to Achilleus to nerve him for the final
conflict. 1 So again, Aphrodite may wrap Aineias in mist
and thus withdraw him from the fight which was going
against him ; but she must not herself smite his enemy
Diomedes, and the Achaian must be victor even at the cost
of the blood which flows within her own veins. But when
the vengeance of Achilleus is accomplished, she may again
perform her own special work for the fallen Hektor. The
dawn is the great preserver, purifier, and restorer ; and hence
though the body of Hektor had been tied by the feet to
Achilleus' chariot wheels and trailed in the defiling dust, 2
still all that is unseemly is cleansed away and the beauty of
death brought back by Aphrodite, who keeps off" all dogs and
anoints him with the ambrosial oil which makes all decay
impossible, while Phoibos shrouds the body in a purple mist,
to temper the fierce heat of the midday sun. 3
It is true that
this kindly office, by which the bodies of Chundun Rajah and
Sodewa Bai are preserved in the Hindu fairy tales, is per-
formed for the body of Patroklos by Thetis : but Thetis, like
Athene and Aphrodite, is herself the child of the waters, and
the mother of a child whose bright career and early doom is,
1 The importance of the subject warrants
my repeating that too great a
left for any comparison which may turn
the balance in favour of either warrior.
stress cannot be laid on this passage of In neither case are the conditions with
the Iliad (xxii. 213). With an unfairness which we are dealing the conditions of
which would be astounding if we failed human life, nor can the heroes be
to remember that Colonel Mure had an judged by the scales in which mankind
hypothesis to maintain which must be must be weighed. Nay, not only does
maintained at all costs, the author of Phoibos leave Hektor to his own devices,
the Critical History of Greek Literature but Athene cheats him into resisting
thought fit to glorify Achilleus and Achilleus, when perhaps his own sober
vilify Hektor, on the ground that the sense would have led him to retreat
latter overcame Patroklos only because within the walls. 11. xxii. 231.
he was aided by Phoibos, while the 2
//. xxii. 396. Yet it has been
former smote clown Hektor only in fair gravely asserted that 'Homer knows
combat and by his own unaided force, nothing of any deliberate insults to the
But in point of fact Achilleus cannot body of Hektor, or of any barbarous inslay
his antagonist until Phoibos has dignities practised upon it.'
3
//. xxiii. 185-191.
deserted him, and no room whatever is