BOOK The birth and infancy of Paris. The judg ment of Paris. The eastern myth then begins with incidents precisely parallel to those which mark the birth and childhood of Dionysos, Têlephos, Oidipous, Romulus, Perseus, and many others. Before he is born, there are portents of the ruin which, like Oidipous, he is to bring upon his house and people. His mother Hekabê dreams that her child will be a torch to set Ilion in flames; and Priam, like Laios, decrees that the child shall be left to die on the hill side. But the babe lies on the slopes of Ida (the Vedic name for the earth as the bride of Dyaus the sky), and is nourished by a shebear. The child grows up, like Cyrus, among the shepherds and their flocks, and for his boldness and skill in defending them against the attacks of thieves and enemies he is said to have been called Alexandros, the helper of men. In this his early life he has the love of Oinônê, the child of the river-god Kebrên, and thus a being akin to the bright maidens who, like Athênê and Aphroditê, are born from the waters. Meanwhile, he had not been forgotten in Ilion. His mother's heart was still full of grief, and Priam at length ordered that a solemn sacrifice should be offered to enable his dead son to cross the dark stream of Hades. The victim chosen is a favourite bull of Paris, who follows it in indignation, as the men lead it away. In the games now held he puts forth his strength, and is the victor in every contest, even over Hektor. His brothers seek to slay the intruder, but the voice of Kasandra his sister is heard, telling them that this is the very Paris for whose repose they were now about to slay the victim,—and the long-lost son is welcomed to his home. 2 At this point the legend carries us to the Thessalian myth. When Thetis rose from the sea to become the bride. of Peleus, Eris, who alone was not invited with the other deities to the marriage-feast, threw on the banquet-table a golden apple,3 with the simple inscription that it was a gift for the fairest. Her task of sowing the seeds of strife was The equivocal meaning of the name Arktos, the bear, has already come before us in the myths of the seven arkshas and the seven rishis; and probably all the animals selected to perform this office of nourishing exposed children will be found to have names which, like the Greek Aúkos, a wolf, denote the glossiness of their coats. 2 That this name Kebrên is probably the same as Severn, the intermediate forms leave little room for doubting. See Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands, i. lxxxii. &c. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS. II. 79 done. The golden apple is the golden ball which the Frog- CHAP. prince brings up from the water, the golden egg which the red hen lays in the Teutonic story, the gleaming sun which is born of the morning; and the prize is claimed, as it must be claimed, by Hêrê, Athênê, and Aphroditê, the queens of heaven and the goddesses of the dawn. For the time the dispute is settled by the words of Zeus, who bids them carry their quarrel before the Idaian Paris, who shall decide between them. As the three bright beings draw near, the shepherd youth, whose beauty is far beyond that of all the children of men, is abashed and scared, and it is only after long encouragement that he summons spirit to listen to the rival claims. Hêrê, as reigning over the blue ether, promises him the lordship of Asia, if he will adjudge the prize to her; Athênê, the morning in its character as the awakener of men's minds and souls, assures him of renown in war and fame in peace; but Paris is unable to resist the laughterloving goddess, who tells him that if his verdict is for her he shall have the fairest bride that ever the world has seen. Henceforth Paris becomes the darling of Aphroditê, but the wrath of Hêrê and Athênê lies heavy on the doomed city of Ilion. Fresh fuel was soon to be supplied for the fire. A famine was slaying the people of Sparta, and Menelaos the king learnt at Delphoi that the plague could not cease until an offering should be made to appease the sons of Prometheus, who were buried in Trojan soil. Thus Menelaos came to Ilion, whence Paris went with him first to Delphoi, then to Sparta. The second stage in the work of Eris was reached. The shepherd of Ida was brought face to face with the fairest of all the daughters of men. He came armed with the magic powers of Aphroditê, whose anger had been kindled against Tyndareôs, because he had forgotten to make her an offering; and so, when Menelaos had departed to Crete and the Dioskouroi were busied in their struggle with the sons of Aphareus, Paris poured his honied words into the ears of Helen, who yielded herself to him with all her treasures, and sailed with him to Ilion in a bark which Aphroditê wafted over a peaceful sea. There is scarcely a point in this legend which fails of Paris and Helen. BOOK II. finding a parallel in other Aryan myths. The beautiful stranger, who beguiles the young wife when her husband is gone away, is seen again in the Arkadian Ischys who takes the place of Phoibos in the story of Koronis, in the disguised Kephalos who returns to win the love of Prokris. The departure of Menelaos for Crete is the voyage of the sun in his golden cup from west to east when he has reached the waters of Okeanos; and the treasures which Paris takes away are the treasures of the Volsung tale and the Nibelung song in all their many versions, the treasures of light and life which are bound up with the glory of morning and evening, the fatal temptation to the marauding chiefs, who in the end are always overcome by the men whom they have wronged. There is absolutely no difference between the quarrel of Paris and Menelaos, and those of Sigurd and Hogni, of Hagene and Walthar of Aquitaine. In each case the representative of the dark power comes in seeming alliance with the husband or the lover of the woman who is to be stolen away; in other words, the first shades of night thrown across the heaven add only to its beauty and its charm, like Satan clothed as an angel of light. In each case the wealth to be obtained is scarcely less the incitement than the loveliness of Helen, Brynhild, or Kriemhild. Nor must we forget the stress laid in the Iliad on these stolen treasures. All are taken: Paris leaves none behind him; and the proposals of Antenor and Hektor embrace the surrender of these riches not less than that of Helen. The narrative of the war which avenges this crime belongs rather to the legend of Achilleus; and the eastern story of Paris is resumed only when, at the sack of Troy, he is wounded by Philoktêtês in the Skaian or western gates, and with his blood on fire from the poisoned wound, hastens to Ida and his early love. Long ago, before Aphroditê helped him to build the fatal ship which was to take him to Sparta, Oinonê had warned him not to approach the house of Menelaos, and when he refused to listen to her counsels she had told him to come to her if hereafter he should be wounded. But now when he appears before her, resentment for the great wrong done to her by Paris for the moment over2 N. iii. 70, 91. 1 Helios leaves Eôs behind him. IAMOS. masters her love, and she refuses to heal him. Her anger lives but for a moment; still when she comes with the healing medicine it is too late, and with him she lies down. to die.' Eôs cannot save Memnôn from death, though she is happier than Oinônê, in that she prevails on Zeus to bring her son back from the land of the dead. 81 CHAP. II. So ends the legend of the Trojan Alexandros, with an The death incident which precisely recalls the stories of Meleagros and of Qinônê. Sigurd, and the doom of Kleopatra and Brynhild; and such are the materials from which Thucydides has extracted a military history quite as plausible as that of the siege of Sebastopol. violet child. A happier fate than that of Têlephos or Paris attends the Iamos the Arkadian Iamos, the child of Evadnê and Phoibos. Like his father and like Hermês, he is weak and puny at his birth, and Evadnê in her misery and shame leaves the child to die. But he is destined for great things, and the office of the dog and wolf in the legends of Cyrus and Romulus is here performed by two dragons, not the horrid snakes which seek to strangle the infant Herakles, but the glistening creatures who bear a name of like meaning with that of Athênê, and who feed the child with honey. But Aipytos, the chieftain of Phaisana, and the father of Evadnê, had learnt at Delphoi that a child of Phoibos had been born who should become the greatest of all the seers and prophets of the earth, and he asked all his people where the babe was: but none had heard or seen him, for he lay far away amid the thick bushes, with his soft body bathed in the golden and purple rays of the violets. So when he was found, they called him Iamos, the violet child; and as he grew in years and strength, he went down into the Alpheian stream, and prayed to his father that he would glorify his son. Then the voice of Zeus 1 Apollod. iii. 12, 6. In this myth Pindar uses the word ios, twice, as denoting in the one case honey, in the other the violet flower. But the phrase which he uses, Beẞpeyμένος ἀκτῖσιν ἴων (Ol. vi. 92), leads us to another meaning of ios, which, as a spear, represents the far-darting rays of the sun; and a further equivocation was the result of the other meaning of poison VOL. II. G attached to the same word. Hence the BOOK Pelias and Romulus and Remus. Poseidon was heard, bidding him come to the heights of Olympos, where he should receive the gift of prophecy and the power to understand the voices of the birds. The local legend made him, of course, the soothsayer of the Eleian Olympia, where Herakles had founded the great games. The myth of Pelias and Neleus has the same beginning with the stories of Oidipous, Têlephos, and Paris. Their mother Tyro loves the Enipean stream, and thus she becomes the wife of Poseidôn; in other words, her twin sons Pelias and Neleus are, like Aphroditê and Athênê, the children of the waters. These Dioskouroi, or sons of Zeus Poseidon, are left to die, but a mare suckles the one, a dog the other; and in due course they avenge the wrongs of Tyro by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidêrô, whom her father Salmôneus had married. The sequel of the tale, which makes Pelias drive his brother from the throne of Iolkos, belongs rather to the history of Iasôn. This myth which has now come before us so often is the groundwork of the great Roman traditions. Here also we have the Dioskouroi, Romulus and Remus, the children of Mars and the priestess Rhea Ilia or Silvia. Like Perseus and Dionysos, the babes are exposed on the waters; but a wolf is drawn to them by their cries, and suckles them until they are found by Acca Larentia, and taken to the house of her husband the shepherd of king Faustulus. There they grow up renowned for their prowess in all manly exercises, and, like Cyrus, the acknowledged leaders of all their youthful neighbours; and when at length Remus falls into the hands of king Amulius, Romulus hastens to his rescue, and the tyrant undergoes the doom of Laios and Akrisios. These two brothers bear the same name, for Remus and Romus are only another and an older form of Romulus;' and thus a foundation might be furnished for the story of their rivalry, even if this feature were not prominent in the myths of Pelias and Neleus and the Dioskouroi who are the sons of Zeus and Leda, as well as in the rivalry of Eôs and Prokris, of Niobê and Lêtô, of Athênê and Medousa. Nor does Romulus resemble Oidipous less in the close of his life than 1 Hence they are mere eponymoi, like Boiôtos, Orchomenos, &c. |