Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

TELEPHOS AND PARIS. 75
enemy Idas. This service lie performs, and Auge differs CHAP,
from Iokaste only in the steadiness with which she refuses ,' -
to wed Telephos, although she knows not who he is. Tele-
phos now determines to slay her, bnt Heraides reveals the
mother to the child, and like Perseus, Telephos leads his
mother back to her own land. In another version he be-
comes the husband not of Auge, but of a daughter of Teu-
thras, whose name Argiope shows that she is but Auge under
another form. In this tradition he is king of Mysia when
the Achaians come to Ilion to avenge the wx • rongs of Helen,
and he resists them with all his power. In the ensuing
strife he is smitten by Achilleus, and all efforts to heal the
wound are vain. In his misery he betakes himself again to
the oracle, and learns that only the man who has inflicted
the wouud can heal it. In the end, Agamemnon prevails on
Achilleus to undo his own work, and to falsify in the case
of Telephos the proverb which made use of his name to
describe an incurable wound. The means employed is the
rust of the spear which had pierced him,—an explanation
which turns on the equivocal meaning of the words ios, ion,
as denoting rust, poison, an arrow, and the violet colour.
As we read the story of Telephos we can scarcely fail to Twofold
think of the story of the Trojan Paris, for like Telephos Paris ^Trojan
is exposed as a babe on the mountain side, and like him he Paris.
receives at the hands of Achilleus a wound which is either
incurable or which Oinone either will not or cannot heal. It
is true that the only portion of the myth of Paris introduced
into our Iliad is that which relates to the stealing away of
Helen, and to the time which she spent with him in Ilion
but it is really unnecessary to adduce again the evidence
which proves that the poets of the Iliad used only those
myths or portions of myths which served their immediate
purpose. Even in what they do tell us about him we discern
that twofold aspect which the process of mythical disintegra-
tion would lead us to look for. There is on the one side not the
slightest doubt that he is the great malefactor who by taking
Helen from Sparta brings the Achaian chiefs to the assault
of Troy ; and as Helen is manifestly the Vedic Sarama, the
beautiful light of the morning or the evening, Paris as con-
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