are the Leukippides, daughters of Apollo or of Leukippos ‘Whitehorse’.
They were called Phoibe ‘Shining’ and Hilaeira ‘Genial’ (a word applied by
Empedocles to fire and the Moon). All these names look distinctly solar. If
‘Whitehorse’ stands for the Sun-god, the girls are daughters of the Sun; two
rather than one, because it was felt (as in the Baltic tradition) that two males
could not jointly possess one female. They were betrothed to Idas and
Lynkeus, but the Dioskouroi carried them off from the wedding feast in their
chariot. They were venerated at Sparta in conjunction with the Dioskouroi,
and the egg from which Helen was born was to be seen (miraculously
repaired) hanging from the roof of their shrine.^121
Abduction of the Sun-maiden figure is a recurrent motif in this complex
of legend. Helen as a young girl was abducted by Theseus and Peirithoos;
the Dioskouroi pursued them to Aphidna in Attica and recovered her. Her
more famous abduction, however, came about when she was already married.
Her marriage, we have noted, was arranged by the Dioskouroi, her brothers.
Since they cannot be suitors, they are replaced in that role by another pair
of brothers, the two Atreidai, Agamemnon and Menelaus. The monogamy
principle means that the Atreidai cannot both have her, but ‘Hesiod’ (fr. 197.
1–5) related that they made their suit jointly: Agamemnon was able to offer a
bigger bride-price than anyone else in Greece, and the Dioskouroi would have
awarded Helen to him, but he (being already married to her sister Clytae-
mestra) was bidding on behalf of his brother. She therefore became the wife
of Menelaus. But when she was abducted by Paris, it was the Atreidai as a pair
who led the expedition to retrieve her.^122
This is the story of the Trojan War. Here we are in the realm of semi- or
quasi-historical saga. Helen has become a mortal woman, if an exceptional
one, and her celestial connections are forgotten. But the pattern of the old
Indo-European myth has left its imprint.^123
Daughters of the Sun in other traditionsSporadic and somewhat heterogeneous references to a daughter of the Sun
occur in several other branches of the Indo-European tradition. Some of
(^121) Cypria fr. 15 W., Theoc. 22. 137–211, Ov. Fast. 5. 699–720, Hyg. Fab. 80, etc.; Carl Robert,
Die griechische Heldensage (Berlin 1920–3), 314–19. The Dioskouroi’s temple was in the
temenos of Phoibe at Therapne: Paus. 3. 14. 9, 20. 2, cf. Hdt. 6. 61. 3.
(^122) Late sources say that the Dioskouroi pursued Paris as far as Lesbos but there vanished
from the earth (Dares 11), or that they seized Helen from him in Africa (St. Byz. p. 233. 20 s. v.
∆ιοσκο3ρων κ.μη).
(^123) For a new attempt to disentangle myth from history in the story of Troy see my lecture
‘Geschichte und Vorgeschichte: die Sage von Troia’, printed in Studia Troica 14 (2004), xiii–xx.
232 5. Sun and Daughter