Chapter 305

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This strange idea and interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his Mythologie de la Grèce Antique (p. 655). “Castor and Pollux,” he says, “are nothing but the Sun and Moon, conceived as twins.... The Sun, the immortal and powerful being that disappears every evening from the horizon and descends under the Earth, as though he would make room for the fraternal orb which comes to life with night, is Pollux, who sacrifices himself for Castor; Castor, who, inferior to his brother, owes to him his immortality; for the Moon, says Theophrastus, is only another, but feebler Sun (De Ventis, 17).”