Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE ACHAIAN AND TROJAN CHIEFS. 77
and took her away to Ilion, that the kinsfolk of Helen roused CHAP.
the Achaian chiefs to seek out the robber and do battle with
him and his people, and that after a hard fight Helen
was rescued from their grasp and brought back to the house
of Menelaos. But there was a constant and an irresistible
tendency to invest every local hero with the attributes which
are reflected upon Herakles, Theseus, and Perseus from
Phoibos and Helios the lords of light ; and the several
chiefs whose homes were localised in Western Asia would as
naturally be gathered to the help of Hektor as the Achaian
princes to the rescue and avenging of Helen. Over every
one of these the poet might throw the rich colours of the
heroic ideal, while a free play might also be given to
purely human instincts and sympathies in the portraits of
the actors on either side. If Paris was guilty of great
crimes, his guilt was not shared by those who would have
made him yield up his prey if they could. He might be a
thief, but they were fighting for their homes, their wives,
and their children : and thus in Hektor we have the embodiment
of the highest patriotism and the most disinterested
self-devotion,—a character, in fact, infinitely higher than
that of the sensitive, sullen, selfish and savage Achilleus,
because it is drawn from human life, and not, like the other,
from traditions which rendered such a portrait in his case
impossible. Hence between Paris the Ilian hero and the
subject of local eastern myths, and Paris in his relations
with the Western Achaians, there is a sharp and clear dis-
tinction ; and if in the latter aspect he is simply the Yritra
of Hindu mythology, in the former he exhibits all the
features prominent in the legends of Herakles, Dionysos,
Theseus and Achilleus. 1
1 ' Wie Aphrodite unci Helena, so er- unci gross im Harem, die geracle Gegenschien
auoh Paris in den Kyprien, ver- satz zu den Griechischen Helden, namuthlich
nach Anleituug ortlicher Traditionen,
in einem andern Lichte unci
mentlich zu Menelaos und zum Achill.'
—Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 413. It must
als Mittelspunkt eines grosseren Sagen- not, however, he forgotten that one of
complexes, weleher gleiehfalls hei den the characteristics (ywai/j.aurjs) by which
spateren Dichtern und Kunstlern einen Paris js specially distinguished, is also
lebhaften Anklang gefonden hat. Er seen in Indra and Krishna. See section
ist ganz der Orientalische Held, zu- xiii. of this chapter. Nor are Herakles
gleich mannhaft und weichlich wie or Sigurd less treacherous or inconstant
Dionysos. wie Sardanapal, wie der Ly- than Paris,
dische Herakles, gross in der Schlacht
11.