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 as unreal as
Agamemnon.
History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl,
German in race, name, and language, who was one of the two or
three greatest men of action that the world has ever seen, and
who in the ninth century ruled over all Western Europe. To the
historic Karl corresponds in many particulars the mythical
Charlemagne. The legend has preserved the fact, which without
the information supplied by history we might perhaps set down
as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy,
and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr. Freeman
has well observed, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are
good evidence that there were crusades, although the real Karl
had nothing whatever to do with one.
Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of
Charlemagne, except that we no longer have history to help us
in rectifying the legend. The Iliad preserves the tradition of
a time when a large portion of the islands and mainland of
Greece were at least partially subject to a common suzerain;
and, as Mr.
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