It seems like a touch of sarcasm that Homer incarnates his isolated
and un-Greek ideal of devotion to a wife in a _Trojan_, as if to
indicate that it must not be accepted as a touch of _Greek_ life. From
our point of view it is a stroke of genius. On the other hand it is
obvious that attributing such a sentiment to a Trojan likewise cannot
be anything but a poetic license; for these Trojans were quite as
piratical, coarse, licentious, and polygamous as the Greeks, Hector's
own father having had fifty children, nineteen of whom were borne by
his wife, thirty-one by various concubines. Many pages of the _Iliad_
bear witness to the savage ferocity of Greeks and Trojans alike--a
ferocity utterly incompatible with such tender emotions as Homer
himself was able to conceive in his imagination. The ferocity of
Achilles is typical of the feelings of these heroes. Not content with
slaughtering an enemy who meets him in honorable battle, defending his
wife and home, he thrust thongs of ox-hide through the prostrate
Hector's feet, bound him to his chariot, lashed his horses to speed,
and dragged him about in sight of the wailing wife and parents of his
victim. This he repeated several times, aggravating the atrocity a
hundredfold by his intention--in spite of the piteous entreaties of
the dying Hector--to throw his corpse to be eaten by the dogs, thus
depriving even his spirit of rest, and his family of religious
consolation. Nay, Achilles expresses the savage wish that his rage
might lead him so far as to carve and eat raw Hector's flesh. The
Homeric "hero," in short, is almost on a level in cruelty with the red
Indian.
But it is in their treatment of women--which Gladstone commends so
highly--that the barbarous nature of the Greek "heroes" is revealed in
all its hideous nakedness. The king of their gods set them the example
when he punished his wife and queen by hanging her up amid the clouds
with two anvils suspended from her feet; clutching and throwing to the
earth any gods that came to her rescue. (_Iliad,_ XV., 15-24.) Rank
does not exempt the women of the heroic age from slavish toil.
Nausicäa, though a princess, does the work of a washerwoman and drives
her own chariot to the laundry on the banks of the river, her only
advantage over her maids being that they have to walk.[296] Her
mother, too, queen of the Phoeaceans, spends her time sitting among
the waiting maids spinning yarn, while her husband sits idle and "sips
his wine like an immortal." The women have to do all the work to make
the men comfortable, even washing their feet, giving them their bath,
anointing them, and putting their clothes on them again (_Odyssey,_
XIX., 317; VIII., 454; XVII., 88, etc.),[297] even a princess like
Polycaste, daughter of the divine Nestor, being called upon to perform
such menial service (III., 464-67). As for the serving-maids, they
grind corn, fetch water, and do other work, just like red squaws; and
in the house of Odysseus we read of a poor girl, who, while the others
were sleeping, was still toiling at her corn because her weakness had
prevented her from finishing her task (XX., 110).
Penelope was a queen, but was very far from being treated like one.
Gladstone found "the strongest evidence of the respect in which women
were held" in the fact that the suitors stopped short of violence to
her person! They did everything but that, making themselves at home in
her house, unbidden and hated guests, debauching her maidservants, and
consuming her provisions by wholesale. But her own son's attitude is
hardly less disrespectful and insulting than that of the ungallant,
impertinent suitors. He repeatedly tells his mother to mind her own
business--the loom and the distaff--leaving words for men; and each
time the poet recommends this rude, unfilial speech as a "wise saying"
which the queen humbly "lays to heart." His love of property far
exceeds his love of his mother, for as soon as he is grown up he begs
her to go home and get married again, "so troubled is he for the
substance which the suitors waste." He urges her at last to "marry
whom she will," offering as an extra inducement "countless gifts" if
she will only go.
To us it seems topsy-turvy that a mother should have to ask her son's
consent to marry again, but to the Greeks that was a matter of course.
There are many references to this custom in the Homeric poems. Girls,
too, though they be princesses, are disposed of without the least
regard to their wishes, as when Agamemnon offers Achilles the choice
of one of his three daughters (IX., 145). Big sums are sometimes paid
for a girl--by Iphidamas, for instance, who fell in battle, "far from
his bride, of whom he had known no joy, and much had he given for her;
first a hundred kine he gave, and thereafter promised a thousand,
goats and sheep together." The idea, too, occurs over and over again
that among the suitors the one who has the richest gifts to offer
should take the bride. How much this mercenary, unceremonious, and
often cruel treatment of women was a matter of course among these
Greeks is indicated by Homer's naïve epithet for brides, [Greek:
parthenoi alphesiboiai], "virgins who bring in oxen." And this is the
state of affairs which Gladstone sums up by saying "there is a certain
authority of the man over the woman; but it does not destroy freedom"!
The early Greeks were always fighting, and the object of their wars,
as among the Australian savages, was usually woman, as Achilles
frankly informs us when he speaks of having laid waste twelve cities
and passed through many bloody days of battle, "_warring with folk for
their women's sake_." (_Iliad,_ IX., 327.) Nestor admonishes the
Greeks to "let no man hasten to depart home till each have lain by
some Trojan's wife" (354-55). The leader of the Greek forces issues
this command regarding the Trojans:
"Of them let not one escape sheer estruction at our hands,
not even the man-child that the mother beareth in her womb;
let not even him escape, but all perish together out of
Ilios, uncared for and unknown" (VI., 57);
while Homer, with consummate art, paints for us the terrors of a
captured city, showing how the women--of all classes--were maltreated:
"As a woman wails and clings to her dear husband, who
falls for town and people, seeking to shield his home
and children from the ruthless day; seeing him dying,
gasping, she flings herself on him with a piercing cry;
while men behind, smiting her with the spears on back
and shoulder, force her along to bondage to suffer toil
and trouble; with pain most pitiful her cheeks are
thin...." (_Odyssey,_ VIII., 523-30.)[298]