BOOK

II.

Thetis to preserve that of Patroklos. But the terrible fight over the dead Patroklos is fought over again when Achilleus is smitten, as it is fought out by the clouds which do battle together over the dying Herakles. From this point all is transparent. The grief of Achilleus when he learns that his friend is dead is the darkening of the sky when the sun which had been shining through the cloud-rifts withdraws his light; and in the tearing of his hair, in the defilement of his beautiful robe and the tossing of the sand over his head and face, we see the torn vapours hurrying hither and thither in a thousand shapeless forms. Henceforth the one thought which fills his heart is that of vengeance, nor is his burning desire weakened when Thetis tells him that the death of Hektor must soon be followed by his own, as the sunset is not far off when the sun wins his final victory over the clouds which have assailed him throughout his journey. Herakles himself met boldly the doom brought upon him by the wrath of Hêrê; and Achilleus is content to die, if only he may first give his enemies sufficient cause for weeping. Then follows the incident in which Thetis and Hephaistos play precisely the part of Hjordis and Regin in the Volsung tale. The arms of Achilleus are in the hands of Hektor; but when the morning comes, Thetis will return from the east bringing a goodly panoply from the lord of fire. At what other time could the sun receive the new armour which is to replace that of which he had been robbed by the powers of darkness? We can scarcely lay too much stress on these points of detail in which the poet manifestly follows a tradition too strong to be resisted. This story of the evening which precedes the return of Achilleus to the battle-field is a vivid picture of the sun going down angrily and betokening his appearance in fiercer strength on the morrow. When to the bidding of Iris, that he should go forth to avenge his friend, he replies that he has no arms, the goddess bids him show himself in the trenches without them. Like the sudden flash of the sun, when as he approaches the horizon his light breaks from behind the dense veil of vapours, is the shout of Achilleus ringing through the air. It is absurd to think of any human warrior, or to suppose that any hyperbole could suggest or justify the poet's words, as

THE ARMING OF ACHILLEUS.

he tells us how the dazzling light thrown from his face
reached up to the high ether of Zeus, and how the horses
of the Trojans felt the woes that were coming, and their
drivers were astonished, as they beheld the awful fire kindled
on the head of the great-hearted son of Peleus by the dawn-
goddess Pallas Athênê. But for the present there is the
blaze of light, and nothing more. At the bidding of Hêrê
the sun goes down, and the strife is stayed. But as the
hours of the night wear on, the fire-god toils on the task
which Thetis prays him to undertake; and when the mighty
disk of the shield and the breast-plate more dazzling than
the fiercest fire are ready, Thetis flies with them to her son
like a hawk winging its way from the snow-clad Olympos.
The hour of vengeance is now indeed come. As his mother
lays before him the gifts of Hephaistos, his eyes flash like
the lightning, and his only fear is that while he is fighting,
the body of Patroklos may decay. But Thetis bids him be
of good cheer. No unseemly thing shall come near to mar
that beautiful form, though it should lie unheeded the whole
year round.
There can be now no delay, and no pause

in the conflict. The black clouds have hidden the face of
Achilleus long enough; but now he will not eat before his
deadly task is done. He is braced for the final struggle by
a sight which he had scarcely hoped to see again. The
Achaian chiefs appear to make the submission of Agamem-
non, and like Iolê coming to Herakles, or Antigonê to the
dying Oidipous, Brisêis is restored to him unscathed as
when she was torn away from his tent. In her grief for
Patroklos, whom she had left full of life, we have the grief
of the dawn for the death of the sun in his gentler aspect.
In him there had been no fierceness, and if his gentler
temper went along with a lack of strength, like that of
Phaethon in the chariot of Helios, he was none the less
deserving of her love. In the arming which follows we have,
as plainly as words can paint it, the conflagration of the
heavens and the phrases used by the poet, if regarded as a
description of any earthly hero and any earthly army, might
be pronounced a series of monstrous hyperboles with far
greater justice than the hundred-headed narcissus to which
Colonel Mure applies the term when speaking of the myth

169

CHAP.

III.

BOOK
II.

of Persephonê. The shield flashing like a beacon-fire far away on the deep sea, the helmet crest gleaming like a star, the armour which bears up the hero as on the pinions of a bird, the spear which Cheiron cut on the heights of Pelion, the undying horses gifted with the mind and the speech of man, all belong to no earthly warfare. Of the mighty conflict which follows we have already spoken; but it is scarcely possible to lay too much stress on the singular parallelism between the several stages in this fatal contest, as compared with the battle between Odysseus and the suitors. The hero with the irresistible weapons which no other arm can wield, filled with the strength of Athênê herself, fighting with enemies who almost overpower him just when he seems to be on the point of winning the victory,—the struggle in which the powers of heaven and hell take part, -the utter discomfiture of a host by the might of one invincible warrior,-the time of placid repose which follows. the awful turmoil,-the doom which in spite of the present glory still awaits the conqueror, all form a picture, the lines of which are in each case the same, and in which we see reflected the fortunes of Perseus, Oidipous, Bellerophôn, and all the crowd of heroes who have each their Hektor to vanquish and their Ilion to overthrow, whether in the den of Chimaira, the labyrinth of the Minotaur, the cave of Cacus, the frowning rock of the Sphinx, or the stronghold of the Panis. Nor is the meaning of the tale materially altered whether we take the myth that he fell in the western gates by the sword of Paris aided by the might of Phoibos, or the version of Diktys of Crete, that in his love for Polyxena the daughter of Priam he promised to join the Trojans, and going unarmed into the temple of Apollon at Thymbra, was there slain by the seducer of Helen. As the sun is the child of the night, so, as the evening draws on, he may be said to ally himself with the kindred of the night again; and his doom is equally certain whether the being whom he is said to love represent the dawn or the sister of the night that is coming. With all the ferocity which he shows on the loss of Brisêis, Achilleus none the less resembles Herakles; but the pity which he feels for the amazon Penthesileia, when

THE RETURN OF THE ACHAIANS.

he discovers her beauty, explains the myths which make him the lover of Diomêdê and Polyxena, and the husband of Medeia, or Iphigeneia, or of Helen herself on the dazzling isle of Leukê. We are dealing with the loves of the sun for the dawn, the twilight, and the violet-tinted clouds.

171

CHAP.

III.

Nostoi.

But if the myth of Achilleus is, as Phoinix himself is made The 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 splendour 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 gleaming west, and with her wealth she is again the prize of the Achaians when Paris falls by the poisoned arrows of Philoktêtês. This rescue of the Spartan queen from the seducer whom she utterly despises is the deliverance of Saramâ 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 repeated 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 represent 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 operations 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- Odysseus ers is centered in the fortunes of Odysseus, the brave and and Autowise chieftain whose one yearning it is to see his wife and his child once more before he dies. He has fought the battle

lykos.

BOOK II.

of the children of the sun against the dark thieves of night,
and now his history must be that of the lord of day as he
goes on his journey through the sky in storm and calm, in
peace or in strife. This transparence of meaning marks
not only the myth of Odysseus; it is seen in all that is
related of his kinsfolk. The character of his parents merely
reflects his own. His grandfather is Autolykos, the true or
the absolute light which kindles the heavens at dawn. But
Autolykos, who is endowed with a wisdom which coming
from Helios passes into a craft like that of Medeia, is a child
of Hermes, the morning breeze, and Telaugê the far-shining.
His bride is Neaira, the early dawn, whose daughters feed
the cattle of Helios in Thrinakia. His child is Antikleia, a
name which suggests a comparison with Antigonê and
Antiopê; and Antikleia is the wife of Laertes, a being akin
to the Laios of Theban tradition, or of Sisyphos, whose story
is that of the sun toiling to the uppermost heights of the
heaven with his huge orb, only to see it roll down again to
the sea.
From these springs Odysseus, whose name, in the
belief of the poet,2 indicated the wrath or hatred of his
grandsire Autolykos, but which through the form Olyseus, the
Latin Ulyxes or Ulysses, may perhaps rather represent the
Sanskrit ulukshaya, the Eurykreion or widely ruling king
of the Greeks. With the abode of Autolykos on Parnassos is
connected the story of the boar's bite, by whose mark Eury-
kleia the old nurse recognises Odysseus on his return from
Ilion; nor can we doubt that this boar is the beast whose
tusk wrought the death of Adonis. It is true indeed that
in Autolykos the idea suggested by the penetrating powers
of sunlight has produced a character far lower than that of
Odysseus but it must not be forgotten that the latter can
lie, or steal, or stab secretly when it suits his purpose to do
So. If the splendour of the sun is in one sense an image of
absolute openness and sincerity, the rays which peer into
dark crannies or into the depths of the sea may as naturally
indicate a craft or cunning which must suggest the forms
assumed by the myth in the stories of Medeia, Autolykos,

:

He is also called the husband of Amphithea, the light which gleams all round the heaven. Od. xix. 410.