The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

404 PH@NICIAN ORIGIN. OF BRITONS & SCOTS

BRUTUS-THE-TROJAN AS THE HoMERIC HERO “ PEIRITHOOS ”’ AND HIS PHG@NICIAN ASSOCIATE CORINEUS AS ‘‘ CORONOS CAINEUS,”’ THE ASSOCIATE OF “‘ PEIRITHOOS ”’

Homer, I find, appears to mention repeatedly King Brutus-the-Trojan as the famous hero “ Peirithoos,’’ both in his Iliad and Odyssey, as one of the most famous of ancient classic heroes, as the conqueror of aboriginal tribes, the slayer of the Calydon boar, and as the associate of the Phoenician Hercules in the cruise of the Argo for the Golden Fleece; and Hercules, according to all tradition, visited Gades, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which Phoenician port was, as we have seen, the half-way house of Brutus on his voyage to Britain. Though, as Peirithoos lived several centuries before the epoch of Homer, that immortal bard, with his usual poetic licence and anachronism, in gathering together into one romance all the galaxy of heroic names floating in Trojan tradition in his day, makes Peirithoos an Achaian hero, a generation before the Trojan war; for he could not, from Brutus’ Trojan ancestry, as a descendant of 4ineas, bring him in at all otherwise.

The resemblance between Homer’s “ Peirithoos ’”’ and Brutus-the-Trojan is so striking, not merely in the form of the name, but also in the numerous details of their respective traditional history and adventures, that it establishes the great probability that they were one and the same personage.

First as to their ancestry. We have seen that Brutus, the “ Byiutus” of the Irish Scot texts, was, according to the Ancient British Chronicles, the grandson of Aineas’ son Ascanios and resided for a time in Epirus of Greece, where he married the king’s daughter. Now Homer describes his hero Peivithoos (who also was for a time in Epirus and where he also went “ marriage "’ hunting)! as “‘ the son of the wife of Jxid7."* Here “ [sion ” seems presumably a dialectic or purposely obscured form of “‘ Ascanios,”’ the “‘ Isicon”’ of the Scottish and Irish Scot versions of the “ Briutus ” tradition; and ‘‘son”’ is frequently used in the general sense of “ descendant.”

So great was the fame of the warrior Peirithoos, the “ Pirithous ”’ of the Roman writers, that he is figured alongside his companion Coronus, Caineus (the “‘ Corineus’’ of the British Chronicles) on the Shield of Hercules,® and Homer makes Nestor say in chiding Achilles :—

“Yea, I never beheld such warriors, nor shall behold As were Peirithoos , . . and[Coronus]Caineus . . . like to the Immortals. Mightiest of growth were they of all men upon the earth ; Mightiest they were and with the mightiest fought they Even the wild tribes of the mountain caves, And destroyed them utterly.’

The picture of the hero Peirithoos was frequently painted in the interior of temples in Ancient Greece.’ He is described as a slayer of the “’ Calydon boar,’’® which may preserve a memory of his conquest of Caledonia, especially as Brutus is reported in the Chronicles to have conquered

1 Pausanias, I, 17. 2 Iliad, 14, 317; and Strabo, 439: 9, 5, 19.

3 Hesiod, Shield of Hercules, 178.

4 Iliad , 1, 262-268, From Lang and Leat’s translation; and see Odyssey, 11, 631. *P.D.G., 1, 17 and 30; 5, 10; 8,45; 10, 29. *1b., 8, 45.