conflict as he raises the bow which none but himself can bend.
Nor is there less virtue in the spear of Achilleus, in the
swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland's stout blade
Durandal, or in the brand Excalibur, with which Sir Bedivere
was so loath to part. All these are solar weapons, and so,
too, are the arrows of Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr,
and William of Cloudeslee, whose surname proclaims him an
inhabitant of the Phaiakian land. William Tell, whether of
Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the last reflection of the
beneficent divinity of daytime and summer, constrained for a
while to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness,
as Apollo served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bidding of
Eurystheus. His solar character is well preserved, even in the
sequel of the Swiss legend, in which he appears no less
skilful as a steersman than as an archer, and in which, after
traversing, like Dagon, the tempestuous sea of night, he leaps
at daybreak in regained freedom upon the land, and strikes
down the oppressor who has held him in bondage.

But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his
enemies, is nevertheless not invulnerable. At times he
succumbs to treachery, is bound by the frost-giants, or slain
by the demons of darkness. The poisoned shirt of the
cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even to the mighty Herakles, and
the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to save him from the
craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy
solar hero doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to be
cut off by an untimely death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who
lives to a ripe old age, and triumphs again and again over all
the powers of darkness, must nevertheless yield to the craving