The animated story of the Doloneia, however, originated most likely in a primitive nature-parable, symbolising, in one of its innumerable forms, the ever-renewed struggle of darkness with light. The prize carried off by Diomed and Odysseus was, this being so, nothing less than the equipage of the sun; yet the solar horses are, mythologically, scarcely separable from the vehicle attached to them. Our bard, it is true, being wholly intent upon the concrete aspect of the tale he had to tell, felt no incongruity in the disjunction; and he certainly took no pains to perpetuate the traditional shape of his materials. Unconsciously, however, he has allowed some vestiges of solar relationships to survive among the less fortunate actors in his little drama. They can be traced in the wrath of Apollo at the exploit achieved, while he was off his guard, through the assistance of the predatory Athene;[105] and perhaps in the costume of Dolon, who clothed himself, we are told, for his disastrous expedition in ‘the skin of a grey wolf.’ Now the wolf became early entangled, in Aryan folk-lore, with luminous associations. At first, possibly through contrast and antagonism, exemplified in the hostile pursuit, by the Scandinavian animal, of the sun and moon; later, through capricious identification. The lupine connexions of the Hellenic Apollo may be thus explained. They were, at any rate, strongly accentuated; and Dolon wore, in some sense, albeit ignobly, ‘the livery of the burnished sun.’ Footnote 105: It is worth notice that in the Euripidean tragedy _Rhesos_, ‘Phœbos’ is the watchword for that night. Manifestly solar, on the other hand, are the snowy horses from across the Hellespont. Nestor, who, characteristically enough, first caught the sound of their galloping approach to the Greek outposts, demanded of their captors in amazement: How have you made this horse your prize? Pierced you the dangerous host, Where such gems stand? Or did some god your high attempts accost, And honoured you with this reward? Why, they be like the rays The sun effuseth.[106] Footnote 106: _Iliad_, x. 545-47 (Chapman’s trans.).