PRINCE— TROYAN AND BOYAN IN OLD RUSSIAN. 157 



Slovo, 546-548 : " the birds, O Prince, have been covering th)^ 

 host with their wings and the wild beasts have been Hcking at their 

 blood ; " cf . II., I., 4-5 : " they made them a spoil for the dogs, a 

 feast for the birds of prey." 



In the Greek legend, Achilles was early associated with the 

 Euxine and especially with the island of Leuke at the mouth of the 

 Danube. Here he lived after death with Helen as his consort, 

 along with other heroes. Leonymos of Croton was the first to sail 

 thither to be cured of his wound by Ajax, and Helen told him to 

 go to Stesichoros and say that she was angry at him for making 

 her, in his poetry, elope with Paris (Pausanias, III., 19, 11-13) ; cf. 

 Eurip. Andr., 1260 fit'. Further east at the mouth of the Borysthenes 

 (Dniepr), there was another island sacred to Achilles (AxiXXtjIos 

 Spofjios) mentioned by Herod, iv, 53; Strabo, vii, 307. Achilles 

 also had a temple at Olbia (Dio. Chrys., xxxvi, 439 ff.). Further- 

 more, in the Crimea, there was a temple in which Iphigenia, daugh- 

 ter of Agamemnon, was placed by Artemis as priestess with the 

 duty of sacrificing strangers (Her., iv, 103; Pausanias, I., 43, i). 

 This may have been connected with the account of the Scythian 

 snake goddess (Her., iv, 9). We should note also that the maiden 

 was one of the most important deities in the Chersonese (]\Iinus, 

 Greeks and Scythians, p. 543). She is probably identical with the 

 Devica, Slovo, 571. Helen is the symbol of discord also in the 

 systems of St. Irenasus and the Gnostics (Rambaud, op. cit., p. 413). 



There is every probability that Obida " discord " and Devica 

 " the maiden " of the Slovo represent the legend of Helen, child 

 of the swan. Such legends could easily have been carried in a 

 Byzantine form to the Russians by the ecclesiastics, in spite of their 

 " landlocked " state in this early period, for the church was already 

 there, as amply demonstrated in the Slovo. The objection that 

 some aspects of this legend may have been inherent among the 

 Slavonic tribes on the north shore of the Black Sea, and that the 

 Greeks themselves may have borrowed some of their material, does 

 not carry much weight, as the Slovo indications are too markedly 

 Hellenic to admit of such a view. 



The question remains to be solved, as to why the early Russians 



