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Updated: April 30, 2025
Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," and "Tales of Ancient Greece," the reader will find the entire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated by comparison with the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs. Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern in comparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here unfolded.
Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in the heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle.
And again the Sun, who engages in quarrels not his own, is sometimes represented as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like Achilleus and Meleagros: he is short-lived and ill-fated, born to do much good and to be repaid with ingratitude; his life depends on the duration of a burning brand, and when that is extinguished he must die.
The unaccustomed aspect of things even afforded me genuine pleasure, combined with a feeling that the whole thing was not quite serious, and that a friendly proclamation from the government would put an end to it. So I strolled comfortably home through the numerous barricades at a late hour, thinking as I went of the material for a drama, Achilleus, with which I had been occupied for some time.
Busied herein was the leaguer yet not in the King Agamemnon Enmity ceas'd, nor the pride to fulfil what his anger had menaced. He to Talthybius now and Eurybates spake his commission, Heralds of royal command, ever near him in ministry watchful: "Pass, ye twain, to the right to the tent of Peleian Achilleus, Enter and take with your hands, and conduct to me hither Brisëis.
But throughout it is this refinement of feeling, this tenderness and sensitiveness to affection, that Vergil has loved to paint in the character of Æneas. To him Dido's charm lies in her being the one pitying face that has as yet met his own. Divine as he is, the child, like Achilleus, of a goddess, he broods with a tender melancholy over the sorrows of his fellow-men.
Achilleus and Helena, Oidipous and Iokasta, Oinone and Paris, have been discovered in India and again in Scandinavia, and so on, until their nonentity has become the legitimate inference from their very ubiquity. Legislators like Romulus and Numa, inventors like Kadmos, have evaporated into etymologies.
The details are throughout of the same nature. Achilleus sees and converses with Athene; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and Death bear away the lifeless Sarpedon on their noiseless wings to the far-off land of light."
Among these delightful stories I may refer especially to the legend of Thekla, which has been placed, incorrectly it may be, as early as the first century, "The Bride and Bridegroom of India" in Judas Thomas's Acts, "The Virgin of Antioch" as narrated by St. Ambrose, the history of "Achilleus and Nereus," "Mygdonia and Karish," and "Two Lovers of Auvergne" as told by Gregory of Tours.
The reign of Diocletian, beginning in A.D. 285, was one of suffering to the Egyptians; and in the fourth year the people rose against the Roman government, and gave the title of emperor to Achilleus, their leader in the rebellion.
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