A much closer approximation to the modern ideal of conjugal love than
the attachment between Odysseus and Penelope with the "heart of iron,"
may be found in the scene describing Hector's leave-taking of
Andromache before he goes out to fight the Greeks, fearing he may
never return. The serving-women inform him that his wife, hearing that
the Trojans were hard pressed, had gone in haste to the wall, like
unto one frenzied. He goes to find her and when he arrives at the
Skaian gates, she comes running to meet him, together with the nurse,
who holds his infant boy on her bosom. Andromache weeps, recalls to
his mind that she had lost her father, mother, and seven brothers,
wherefore he is to her a father, mother, brothers, as well as a
husband. "Have pity and abide here upon the tower, lest thou make thy
child an orphan and thy wife a widow." Though Hector cannot think of
shrinking from battle like a coward, he declared that her fate, should
the city fall and he be slain, troubles him more than that of his
father, mother, and brothers--the fate of being led into captivity and
slavery by a Greek, doomed to carry water and to be pointed at as the
former wife of the brave Hector. He expresses the wish that his
boy--who at first is frightened by the horse-hair crest on his
helmet--may become greater than his father, bringing with him
blood-stained spoils from the enemy he has slain, and gladdening his
mother's heart; then caressing his wife with his hand, he begs her not
to sorrow overmuch, but to go to her house and see to her own tasks,
the loom and the distaff. Thus he spake, and she departed for her
home, oft looking back and letting fall big tears.
This scene, which takes up four pages of the _Iliad_ (VI., 370-502),
is the most touching, the most inspired, the most sentimental and
modern passage not only in the Homeric poems, but in all Greek
literature. Benecke has aptly remarked (10) that the relation between
Hector and Andromache is unparalleled in that literature; and he adds:
"At the same time, how little really sympathetic to the
Greek of the period was this wonderful and unique passage is
sufficiently shown by this very fact, that no attempt was
ever made to imitate or develop it. It may sound strange to
say so, but in all probability we to-day understand
Andromache better than did the Greeks, for whom she was
created; better, too, perhaps than did her creator himself."
Benecke should have written Hector in place of Andromache. There was
no difficulty, even for a Greek, in understanding Andromache. She had
every reason, even from a purely selfish point of view, to dread
Hector's battling with the savage Greeks; for while he lived she was a
princess, with all the comforts of life, whereas his fall and the fall
of Troy meant her enslavement and a life of misery. What makes the
scene in question so modern is the attitude of Hector--his dividing
his caresses equally between his wife and his son, and assuring her
that he is more troubled about her fate and anguish than about what
may befall his father, mother, and brothers. That is an utterly
un-Greek sentiment, and that is the reason why the passage was not
imitated. It was not a realistic scene from life, but a mere product
of Homer's imagination and glowing genius--like the pathetic scene in
which Odysseus wipes away a tear on noting that his faithful dog Argos
recognized him and wagged his tail. It is extremely improbable that a
man who could behave so cruelly toward women as Odysseus did could
have thus sympathized with a dog.
Certainly no one else did, not even his "faithful" Penelope. As long
as Argos was useful in the chase, the poet tells us, he was well taken
care of; but now that he was old, he "lay neglected upon a pile of
dung," doomed to starve, for he had not strength to move. Homer alone,
with the prophetic insight of a genius, could have conceived such a
touch of modern sentiment toward animals, so utterly foreign to
ancient ideas; and he alone could have put such a sentiment of
wife-love into the mouth of the Trojan Hector--a barbarian whose ideal
of manliness and greatness consisted in "bringing home blood-stained
spoils of the enemy."