of the old Aryan mythology, we find,
as might be expected, that the Homeric poems are not always consistent
in their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon,
is--to Max Muller's perplexity--invested with many of the attributes of
the bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he
is doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he is exposed in
his infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar
heroes begin life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark
night (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they are
alike destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the night and
the dawn are both destroyed by the sun. The exposure of the child in
infancy represents the long rays of the morning-sun resting on the
hillside. Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the wine-coloured one"), but
meets her again at the gloaming when she lays herself by his side amid
the crimson flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is
made to fight on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended by his
friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command the Lykians, or
"children of light"; and with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn,
from the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of Zeus and
the gods of Olympos.

The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages before
the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any Ilion to be
conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that the
legend, as we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization of
mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine tradition. In this view
I am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman,
who finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of the
problem before us.

The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed to
have been a Frenchman, at a time when neither the French nation nor
the French language can properly be said to have existed; and he is
represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought of
until long after the Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagne
are not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology.
He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth,--an avatar, or at
least a representative, of Odin in his solar capacity. If in his case
legend were not controlled and rectified by history, he would be for us
a