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" where Zeus resides, and the
epithet is applied to his wife Here and his daughter Helena,
as well as to the dog of Odysseus, who reappears with
Sarameyas in the Veda.
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