PRINCE— TROYAN AND BOYAN IN OLD RUSSIAN. 155 



no historical evidence that Rurik was the third brother of the triad. 

 In fact, in the legend, he always occupies the first place.® 



It is much more probable that we have in the " Troyan " of the 

 Slovo no distinctive Slavonic legend at all, but rather, as already in- 

 dicated, the mixed tradition of the Roman "Trajan" and the Hel- 

 lenic Homer. To this Magnus objects that the "landlocked state 

 of mediaeval Russia" could hardly have imported very much of this 

 (Greek) tradition, as the road to Constantinople was blocked by 

 Polovtsi and Bulgars, and the Catholic powers of the northwest 

 were all hostile. Magnus forgets, however, that the inherent tradi- 

 tion of the early Russian church was essentially Greek. Early 

 metropolitans of Kiev, down to the period of the Mongol invasion, 

 were usually Greeks who had been consecrated at Constantinople. 

 The first important Russian metropolitan, who established the es- 

 sentially Russian character of the church and nations, was St. Peter 

 (1308-1328) of Vladimir. It is highly interesting in this connec- 

 tion to note that, in the first half of the twelfth century, a Russian 

 writer excused himself before his sovereign for not having studied 

 Homer, when he was young! The Chronicler of Volhynia (1232) 

 cites a verse attributed to Homer, which has not been retained in 

 our current version. Literate Russians of this period were evi- 

 dently familiar with the tale of the Trojan war through the works of 

 Tryphiodore, Kolouthos, etc. (Rambaud, "La Russie fipique," p. 

 408). 



It is well known from Russian records that the father of Mono- 

 makh, Vsevolod, who had never been in foreign lands, knew no less 

 than five languages. In the Slovo itself (lines 353-4) we read: tu 

 greci i mordva poyut slavn Svyatoslazvlyu "here the Greeks and 

 Moravians sing the glory of Svyatoslav," showing that the author 

 knew something about the Greeks. 



In connection with the work of the Columbia University Slavonic 

 Department, Dr. Clarence A. Manning has collected a number of 

 possible Homeric and other Greek parallels with the Slovo, which 

 show a very decided Hellenic influence on the formation of this poem ; 



6 Note that in the year 862, Rurik as leader of the Variags (Varangians) 

 was invited to defend the northern Russian princes. 



