Dioskouroi’.^80 There are also the famous Siamese twins Kteatos and Eurytos,
the Molione: they too are λε3κιπποι κο ́ ροι, ‘white-horse youths’, and
they were born from an egg, like Helen.^81 Their divine father, however, was
Poseidon, not Zeus. The same is true of the Apharetidai, Idas and Lynkeus,
who appear in legend as rivals of the Tyndaridai and have been dubbed ‘the
Messenian Dioskouroi’.
Timaeus wrote that the Celts who lived by the Ocean venerated the Dios-
kouroi above all other gods, having an ancient tradition of their having visited
them from the Ocean.^82 This was taken as evidence that the Argonauts (with
whom the Dioskouroi sailed) had passed that way. But to us it recalls the
Vedic conception of the As ́vins’ coming from the samudrá-. Tacitus (Germ.
- reports that the Nahanarvali in Silesia had a grove sacred to two gods
called the Alcis: they were brothers, and iuuenes, and identified with the
Roman Castor and Pollux.^83
Jan de Vries drew attention in this context to a number of Germanic
legends of migrations and conquests led by pairs of princely brothers (and
also to the danger of seeing Dioskouroi in every pair of brothers occurring in
saga). One pair stands out among these: Hengist and Horsa, the fabled leaders
of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, who came over the sea in response
to a plea from the beleaguered British king Vortigern.^84 They were descend-
ants of Woden. Their names mean Stallion and Horse, and it seems significant
that the same names, Hengist and Hors, were given to pairs of horses’ heads
that used to adorn farmhouse gables in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-
Holstein, perhaps a relic of pagan cult.
Further echoes of ‘Dioskouric’ myth have been sought in Irish and Welsh
saga. Some of the material is certainly suggestive, but as it can hardly be said
to add weight to the argument for the Indo-European myth, I will pass over
the details, which the curious may explore elsewhere.^85
- reports that the Nahanarvali in Silesia had a grove sacred to two gods
(^80) Eur. HF 29 f., Antiope fr. 223. 127 f., Phoen. 606; sch. Od. 19. 518 (Pherec. fr. 124 Fowler); cf.
Hesych. δ 1929.
(^81) Ibycus PMGF 285. 1. In late sources the Dioskouroi themselves are born from the egg with
Helen: see Gantz (1993), 321.
(^82) FGrHist 566 F 85 §4; de Vries (1956), ii. 247, thinks that the notice relates to Germans on
the North Sea.
(^83) Tac. Germ. 43. 3. Cf. Grimm (1883–8), 66 f., 366, 1390; Schrader (1909), 39; Güntert
(1923), 262 f.; R. Much, ‘Wandalische Götter’,Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für
Volkskunde 27 (1926), 20–9; id., Die Germania des Tacitus (Heidelberg 1937), 380 f.; de Vries
(1956), ii. 247–55; Ward (1968), 42–5; bibliography, ibid. 122 f.
(^84) Principal sources in Clemen (1928), 40 f. (Bede), 55 (Nennius), 73 f. (William of Malmes-
bury); cf. de Vries (1956), ii. 252 f.; Ward (1968), 54–6. For fuller discussion of other Germanic
legends see Ward, 50–84; id. in Cardona (1970), 405–20.
(^85) See especially S. O’Brien, JIES 10 (1982), 117–36; id. in EIEC 161 f.
190 4. Sky and Earth