may represent
dimly remembered sovereigns or heroes, with their characters and actions
distorted to suit the exigencies of a narrative founded upon a solar
myth. The character of the Nibelungenlied here well illustrates that of
the Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen and Gunther, seem to be mere
personifications of physical phenomena; but Etzel and Dietrich are none
other than Attila and Theodoric surrounded with mythical attributes; and
even the conception of Brunhild has been supposed to contain elements
derived from the traditional recollection of the historical Brunehault.
When, therefore, Achilleus is said, like a true sun-god, to have died by
a wound from a sharp instrument in the only vulnerable part of his body,
we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne conducts himself in many
respects like a solar deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso represents
the sun ensnared and held captive by the pale goddess of night, the
legend of Frederic Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodies
a portion of a kindred conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic
have been substituted for Odin; we may suspect that with the mythical
impersonations of Achilleus and Odysseus some traditional figures may
be blended. We should remember that in early times the solar-myth was a
sort of type after which all wonderful stories would be patterned, and
that to such a type tradition also would be made to conform.

In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism.
If there is any one conclusion concerning the Homeric poems which
the labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to have
satisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history can
be obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting out
the mythical element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscence
of an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in mythical
phraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can it be construed
into history. In view of this it is quite useless for Mr. Gladstone
to attempt to base historical conclusions upon the fact that Helena is
always called "Argive Helen," or to draw ethnological inferences from
the circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest of the Greek
heroes, have yellow hair, while the Trojans are never so described. The
Argos of the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos, though doubtless
so construed even in Homer's time. It is "the bright land" whe