_ACHILLES._
Unity of _Iliad_.--Character of Achilles.--Structure of the
whole Poem.--Comparison with other Epics.--Energy Dividing
into Anger and Love.--Personality of Achilles.--The Quarrel
with Agamemnon.--Pallas Athene.--The Embassy.--Achilles'
Foreknowledge of his Death.--The Message of
Antilochus.--Interview with Thetis.--The Shouting in
the Trench.--The Speech of Xanthus.--The Pæan over
Hector's Corpse.--The Ghost of Patroclus.---The Funeral
Obsequies of Patroclus.--Achilles and Priam.--Achilles in
Hades.--Achilles Considered as a Greek Ideal.--Friendship
among the Greeks.--Heroism and Knighthood: Ancient and
Modern Chivalry.--The _Myrmidones_ of Æschylus.--Achilles
and Hector.--Alexander the Great.--The Dæmonic Nature of
Achilles.
It is the sign of a return to healthy criticism that scholars are
beginning to acknowledge that the _Iliad_ may be one poem--that is
to say, no mere patchwork of ballads and minor epics put together by
some diaskeuast in the age of Pisistratus, but the work of a single
poet, who surveyed his creation as an artist, and was satisfied with
its unity. We are not bound to pronounce an opinion as to whether
this poet was named Homer, whether Homer ever existed, and, if so,
at what period of the world's history he lived. We are not bound to
put forward a complete view concerning the college of Homeridæ, from
which the poet must have arisen, if he did not found it. Nor, again,
need we deny that the _Iliad_ itself presents unmistakable signs of
having been constructed in a great measure out of material already
existing in songs and romances dear to the Greek nation in their youth,
and familiar to the poet. The æsthetic critic finds no difficulty
in conceding, nay, is eager to claim, a long genealogy through
antecedent, now forgotten, poems for the _Iliad_. But about this, of
one thing, at any rate, he will be sure, after due experience of the
tests applied by Wolf and his followers, that a great artist gave
its present form to the _Iliad_, that he chose from the whole Trojan
tale a central subject for development, and that all the episodes and
collateral matter with which he enriched his epic were arranged by him
with a view to the effect that he had calculated.
What, then, was this central subject, which gives the unity of a true
work of art to the _Iliad_? We answer, the person and the character
of Achilles. It is not fanciful to say, with the old grammarians of
Alexandria, that the first line of the poem sets forth the whole of its
action--
Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus.
The wrath of Achilles, and the consequences of that wrath in the misery
of the Greeks, left alone to fight without their fated hero; the death
of Patroclus, caused by his sullen anger; the energy of Achilles,
reawakened by his remorse for his friend's death; and the consequent
slaughter of Hector, form the whole of the simple structure of the
_Iliad_. This seems clear enough when we analyze the conduct of the
poem.
The first book describes the quarrel of Achilles with Agamemnon and
his secession from the war. The next seven books and a half, from the
second to the middle of the ninth, are occupied with the fortunes
of the Greeks and Trojans in the field, the exploits of Diomede and
Ajax, and Hector's attack upon the camp. In the middle of the ninth
book Achilles reappears upon the scene. Agamemnon sends Ulysses and
Phoenix to entreat him to relax his wrath and save the Greeks; but the
hero remains obdurate. He has resolved that his countrymen shall pay
the uttermost penalty for the offense of their king. The poet having
foredetermined that Achilles shall only consent to fight in order to
revenge Patroclus, is obliged to show the inefficacy of the strongest
motives from without; and this he has effected by the episode of the
embassy. The tenth book relates the night attack upon the camp of the
Trojan allies and the theft of the horses of Rhesus. The next five
books contain a further account of the warfare carried on among the
ships between the Achaians and their foes. It is in the course of these
events that Patroclus comes into prominence. We find him attending on
the wounded Eurypylus and warning Achilles of the imminent peril of the
fleet. At last, in the sixteenth book, when Hector has carried fire
to the ship of Protesilaus, Achilles commands Patroclus to assume the
armor of Peleus and lead his Myrmidons to war. The same book describes
the repulse of Hector and the death of Patroclus, while the seventeenth
is taken up with the fight for the body of Achilles' friend. But from
the eighteenth onward the true hero assumes his rank as protagonist,
making us feel that what has gone before has only been a preface to his
action. His seclusion from the war has not only enabled the poet to
vary the interest by displaying other characters, but has also proved
the final intervention of Achilles to be absolutely necessary for the
success of the Greek army. All the threads of interest are gathered
together and converge on him. Whatever we have learned concerning the
situation of the war, the characters of the chiefs, and the jealousies
of the gods, now serves to dignify his single person and to augment
the terror he inspires. With his mere shout he dislodges the Trojans
from the camp. The divine arms of Hephæstus are fashioned for him, and
forth he goes to drive the foe like mice before him. Then he contends
with Simoeis and Scamander, the river-gods. Lastly, he slays Hector.
What follows in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books seems to be
intended as a repose from the vehement action and high-wrought passion
of the preceding five. Patroclus is buried, and his funeral games are
celebrated. Then, at the very end, Achilles appears before us in the
interview with Priam, no longer as a petulant spoiled child or fiery
barbarian chief, but as a hero, capable of sacrificing his still fierce
passion for revenge to the nobler emotion of reverence for the age and
sorrow of the sonless king.
The centralization of interest in the character of Achilles constitutes
the grandeur of the _Iliad_. It is also by this that the _Iliad_ is
distinguished from all the narrative epics of the world. In the case
of all the rest there is one main event, one deed which has to be
accomplished, one series of actions with a definite beginning and
ending. In none else are the passions of the hero made the main points
of the movement. This may be observed at once by comparing the _Iliad_
with the chief epical poems of European literature. To begin with the
_Odyssey_. The restoration, after many wanderings, of Odysseus to his
wife and kingdom forms the subject of this romance. When that has been
accomplished, the _Odyssey_ is completed. In the same way the subject
of the _Æneid_ is the foundation of the Trojan kingdom in Italy. Æneas
is conducted from Troy to Carthage, from Carthage to Latium. He flies
from Dido, because fate has decreed that his empire should not take
root in Africa. He conquers Turnus because it is destined that he, and
not the Latin prince, should be the ancestor of Roman kings. As soon as
Turnus has been killed and Lavinia has been wedded to Æneas, the action
of the poem is accomplished and the _Æneid_ is completed. When we pass
to modern epics, the first that meets us is the _Niebelungen Lied_.
Here the action turns upon the murder of Sigfrit by Hagen, and the
vengeance of his bride, Chriemhilt. As soon as Chriemhilt has assembled
her husband's murderers in the halls of King Etzel, and there has
compassed their destruction, the subject is complete, the _Niebelungen_
is at an end. The British epic of the Round Table, if we may regard
Sir Thomas Mallory's _Mort d'Arthur_ as a poem, centres in the life and
predestined death of King Arthur. Upon the fate of Arthur hangs the
whole complex series of events which compose the romance. His death
is its natural climax, for with him expires the Round Table he had
framed to keep the pagans in awe. After that event nothing remains for
the epic poet to relate. Next in date and importance is the _Orlando
Furioso_ of Ariosto. The action of this poem is bound up with the
destinies of Ruggiero and Bradamante. Their separations and wanderings
supply the main fabric of the plot. When these are finally ended, and
their marriage has been consummated, nothing remains to be related. The
theme of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, again, is the conquest of the Holy
City from the Saracens. When this has been described, there is nothing
left for Tasso to tell. The _Paradise Lost_, in spite of its more
stationary character, does not differ from this type. It sets forth
the single event of the fall. After Adam and Eve have disobeyed the
commands of their Maker and have been expelled from Eden, the subject
is exhausted, the epic is at an end.
Thus each of these great epic poems has one principal event, on which
the whole action hinges and which leaves nothing more to be narrated.
But with the _Iliad_ it is different. At the end of the _Iliad_ we
leave Achilles with his fate still unaccomplished, the Trojan war still
undecided. The _Iliad_ has no one great external event or series of
events to narrate. It is an episode in the war of Troy, a chapter in
the life of Peleus's son. But it does set forth, with the vivid and
absorbing interest that attaches to true æsthetic unity, the character
of its hero, selecting for that purpose the group of incidents which
best display it.
The _Iliad_, therefore, has for its whole subject the passion of
Achilles--that ardent energy or #MÊNIS# of the hero, which displayed
itself first as anger against Agamemnon, and afterwards as love for
the lost Patroclus. The truth of this was perceived by one of the
greatest poets and profoundest critics of the modern world, Dante. When
Dante, in the _Inferno_, wished to describe Achilles, he wrote, with
characteristic brevity:
Achille,
Che per amore al fine combatteo.
Achilles,
Who at the last was brought to fight by love.
In this pregnant sentence Dante sounded the whole depth of the
_Iliad_. The wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon, which prevented him
at first from fighting; the love of Achilles, passing the love of
women, for Patroclus, which induced him to forego his anger and to
fight at last--these are the two poles on which the _Iliad_ turns.
Two passions--heroic anger and measureless love--in the breast of the
chief actor, are the motive forces of the poem. It is this simplicity
in the structure of the _Iliad_ which constitutes its nobleness.
There is no double plot, no attempt to keep our interest alive by
misunderstandings, or treacheries, or thwartings of the hero in his
aims. These subtleties and resources of art the poet, whom we will call
Homer, for the sake of brevity, discards. He trusts to the magnitude
of his chief actor, to the sublime central figure of Achilles, for the
whole effect of his epic. It is hardly necessary to insist upon the
highly tragic value of this subject. The destinies of two great nations
hang trembling in the balance. Kings on the earth below, gods in the
heavens above, are moved to turn this way or that the scale of war.
Meanwhile the whole must wait upon the passions of one man. Nowhere
else, in any work of art, has the relation of a single heroic character
to the history of the world been set forth with more of tragic pomp
and splendid incident. Across the scene on which gods and men are
contending in fierce rivalry moves the lustrous figure of Achilles,
ever potent, ever young, but with the ash-white aureole of coming death
around his forehead. He too is in the clutch of destiny. As the price
of his decisive action, he must lay his life down and retire with
sorrow to the shades. It is thus that in the very dawn of civilization
the Greek poet divined the pathos and expounded the philosophy of human
life, showing how the fate of nations may depend upon the passions of
a man, who in his turn is but the creature of a day, a ripple on the
stream of time. Nothing need be said by the æsthetic critic about the
solar theory, which pretends to explain the tale of Troy. The mythus of
Achilles may possibly in very distant ages have expressed some simple
astronomical idea. But for a man to think of this with the actual
_Iliad_ before his eyes would be about as bad as botanizing on his
mother's grave. Homer was not thinking of the sun when he composed the
_Iliad_. He wove, as in a web, all elements of tragic pity and fear,
pathos and passion, and fateful energy which constitute the dramas of
nations and of men.
In the two passions, anger and love, which form the prominent features
of the character of Achilles, there is nothing small or mean. Anger
has scarcely less right than ambition to be styled the last infirmity
of noble minds. And love, when it gives the motive force to great
action, is sublime. The love of Achilles had no softness or effeminacy.
The wrath of Achilles never degenerated into savagery. Both of these
passions, instead of weakening the hero, add force to his activity.
Homer has traced the outlines of the portrait of Achilles so largely
that criticism can scarcely avoid dwarfing them. In looking closely
at the picture, there is a danger lest, while we examine the parts,
we should fail to seize the greatness of the whole. It is better to
bring together in rapid succession those passages of the _Iliad_ which
display the character of Achilles under the double aspect of anger and
love. The first scene (i. 148-246) shows us Agamemnon surrounded by
the captains of the Greek host, holding the same position among them
as Charlemagne among his peers, or King John among the English barons.
They recognize his heaven-descended right of monarchy; but their
allegiance holds by a slight thread. They are not afraid of bearding
him, browbeating him with threats, and roundly accusing him of his
faults. This turbulent feudal society has been admirably sketched by
Marlowe in _Edward II._, and by Shakespeare in _Richard II._ And it
must be remembered that between Agamemnon and the Hellenic #basileis#
there was not even so much as a feudal bond of fealty. Calchas has just
told Agamemnon that, in order to avert the plague, Chryseis must be
restored to her father. The king has answered that if he is forced to
relinquish her, the Greeks must indemnify him richly. Then the anger of
Achilles boils over:
"Ah, clothed upon with impudence and greedy-souled! How,
thinkest thou, can man of the Achaians with glad heart follow
at thy word to take the field or fight the foe? Not for the
quarrel of the warlike Trojans did I come unto these shores,
for they had wronged me not. They never drove my cattle nor
my steeds, nor ever, in rich, populous Phthia, did they waste
the corn; since far between us lie both shadowy mountains and
a sounding sea: but following thee, thou shameless king, we
came to gladden thee, for Menelaus and for thee, thou hound, to
win you fame from Troy. Of this thou reckest not and hast no
care. Yea, and behold thou threatenest even from me to wrest
my guerdon with thy hands, for which I sorely strove, and
which the sons of the Achaians gave to me. Never, in sooth,
do I take equally with thee, when Achaians sack a well-walled
Trojan town. My hands do all the work of furious war; but when
division comes, thy guerdon is far greater, and I go back with
small but well-loved treasure to the ships, tired out with
fighting. Now, lo! I am again for Phthia; for better far, I
ween, it is homeward to sail with beaked ships: nor do I think
that if I stay unhonored wilt thou get much wealth and gain.
"Him, then, in answer, Agamemnon, king of men, bespake:
"Away! fly, if thy soul is set on flying. I beg thee not to
stay for me. With me are many who will honor me, and most of
all, the Counsellor Zeus. Most hateful to me of the Zeus-born
kings art thou. Forever dost thou love strife, warfare,
wrangling. If very stout of limb thou art, that did God give
thee. Go home, then, with thy ships and friends. Go, rule the
Myrmidones. I care not for thee, nor regard thy wrath, but
this will I threaten--since Phoebus robs me of Chryseis, her
with my ship and with my followers will I send; but I will
take fair-cheeked Briseis, thy own prize, and fetch her from
thy tent, that thou mayest know how far thy better I am, and
that others too may dread to call themselves my equal, and to
paragon themselves with me.
"So spake he. And Peleides was filled with grief; and his heart
within his shaggy bosom was cut in twain with thought, whether
to draw his sharp sword from his thigh, and, breaking through
the heroes, kill the king, or to stay his anger and refrain his
soul. While thus he raged within his heart and mind, and from
its scabbard was in act to draw the mighty sword, came Athene
from heaven; for Here, white-armed goddess, sent her forth,
loving both heroes in her soul, and caring for them. She stood
behind, and took Peleides by the yellow hair, seen by him only,
but of the rest none saw her. Achilles marvelled, and turned
back; and suddenly he knew Pallas Athene, and awful seemed her
eyes to him; and, speaking winged words, he thus addressed her:
"Why, daughter of ægis-bearing Zeus, art thou come hither? Say,
is it to behold the violence of Agamemnon, Atreus's son? But I
will tell to thee, what verily I think shall be accomplished,
that by his own pride he soon shall slay his soul.
"Him then the gray-eyed goddess Athene bespake:
"I came to stay thy might, if thou wilt hear me, from heaven;
for Here, white-armed goddess, sent me forth, loving you both
alike, and caring for you. But come, give up strife, nor draw
thy sword! But, lo, I bid thee taunt him with sharp words,
as verily shall be. For this I say to thee, and it shall
be accomplished: the time shall come when thou shalt have
thrice-fold as many splendid gifts because of his violence.
Only restrain thyself; obey me.
"To her, in turn, spake swift-footed Achilles:
"Needs must I, goddess, keep thy word and hers, though sorely
grieved in soul; for thus is it best. He who obeys the gods,
him have they listened to in time of need.
"He spake, and on the silver handle pressed a heavy hand, and
back into the scabbard thrust the mighty sword, nor swerved
from Athene's counsel. But she back to Olympus fared, to the
house of ægis-bearing Zeus unto the other gods.
"Then Peleides again with bitter words bespake Atrides, and not
yet awhile surceased from wrath:
"Wine-weighted, with a dog's eyes and a heart of deer! Never
hadst thou spirit to harness thee for the battle with the folk,
nor yet to join the ambush with the best of the Achaians.
_This_ to thee seems certain death. Far better is it, verily,
throughout the broad camp of Achaians to filch gifts when a
man stands up to speak against thee--thou folk-consuming king,
that swayest men of nought. Lo, of a sooth, Atrides, now for
the last time wilt thou have dealt knavishly. But I declare
unto thee, and will swear thereon a mighty oath; yea, by this
sceptre, which shall never put forth leaf nor twig since that
day that it left the stock upon the mountains, nor again shall
bud or bloom, for of its leafage and its bark the iron stripped
it bare; and sons of the Achaians hold it in their palms for
judgment, they who guard the laws by ordinance of Zeus; and
this shall be to thee a mighty oath. Verily, and of a truth,
the day shall be when sore desire for Achilles shall come upon
Achaians one and all. Then shalt thou, though grieved in soul,
have no power to help, while in multitudes they fall and die at
Hector's murderous hands; but thou shalt tear thy heart within
thy breast for rage, seeing thou honoredst not the best of the
Achaians aught.
"So spake Peleides; and on the earth cast down the sceptre
studded with nails of gold; and he sat down upon his seat."
What is chiefly noticeable in this passage is the grand scale upon
which the anger of Achilles is displayed. He is not content with
taunting Agamemnon, but he includes all the princes in his scorn--
#dêmoboros basileus, epei outidanoisin anasseis.#
We may also notice the interference of Athene. The Athene of the
_Iliad_ is a different goddess from the Athene of the Parthenon.
In strength she is more than a match for Ares. Her cunning she
subordinates to great and masculine ends, not to the arts of beauty
or to study. She is the saint of the valiant and wary soldier. While
checking Achilles, she does not advise him to avoid strife in any
meek and gentle spirit. She simply reminds him that if he gets to
blows with Agamemnon, he will put himself in the wrong; whereas, by
contenting himself with sharp words and with secession from the war,
he will reduce the haughty king to sue him with gifts and submission.
Athene in this place acts like all the other deities in Homer when they
come into direct contact with the heroes. She is exterior to Achilles,
and at the same time a part of his soul. She is the expression of both
thought and passion deeply seated in his nature, the force of his
own character developed by circumstance, the god within his breast
externalized and rendered visible to him alone. What Athene is to the
son of Peleus, Até is to Agamemnon.
The next passage in which Achilles appears in the forefront of the
scene is in the ninth book (307-429). Worn out with the losses of the
war, Agamemnon has at last humbled his pride, and sent the wisest of
the chiefs, silver-tongued Odysseus, and Phoenix, the old guardian
of the son of Peleus, to beg Achilles to receive back Briseis and to
take great gifts if only he will relax his wrath. But Achilles remains
inflexible. In order to maintain the firmness of his character, to
justify the righteousness of his indignation, Homer cannot suffer him
to abandon his resentment at the first entreaty. Some more potent
influence must break his resolution than the mere offer to restore
Briseis. Homer has the death of Patroclus in the background. He means
to show the iron heart of Peleides at last softened by his sorrow and
his love. Therefore, for the time, he must protract the situation in
which Achilles is still haughty, still implacable towards his repentant
injurer. In this interview with the ambassadors we have to observe how
confident Achilles abides in the justice of his cause and in his own
prowess. It is he with his valiant bands who has sacked the Trojan
cities; it is he who kept Hector from the ships; and now in his absence
the Achaians have had to build a wall in self-defence. And for whom has
he done this? For the sons of Atreus and for Helen. And what has he
received as guerdon? Nothing but dishonor. These arguments might seem
to savor too much of egotism and want of feeling for the dangers of the
host. But at the end come those great lines upon the vanity of gifts
and possessions in comparison with life, and upon the doom which hangs
above the hero:
"You may make oxen and sheep your prey; you may gather together
tripods and the tawny mane of horses; but none can make the
soul of man return by theft or craft when once it has escaped.
As for me," he resumes, "my goddess mother, silver-footed
Thetis, warns me that fate lays two paths to bear me deathward.
If I abide and fight before the walls of Troy, my return to
Hellas is undone, but fame imperishable remains for me. If I
return to my dear country then my good glory dies, but long
life awaits me, nor will the term of death be hastened."
This foreknowledge of Achilles that he has to choose between a long,
inglorious life and a swift-coming but splendid death illuminates his
ultimate action with a fateful radiance. In the passage before us it
lends dignity to his obstinate and obdurate endurance. He says: I am
sick at heart for the insults thrust on me. I am wounded in my pride.
Toiling for others, I get no reward. And behold, if I begin to act
again, swift death is before me. Shall I, to please Agamemnon, hasten
on my own end?
When the moment arrives for Achilles to be aroused from inactivity by
his own noblest passion, then, and not till then, does he fling aside
the thought of death, and trample on a long reposeful life. He is
conscious that his glory can only be achieved by the sacrifice of ease
and happiness and life itself; but he holds honor dearer than these
good things. Yet, at the same time, he is not eager to throw away his
life for a worthless object, or to buy mere fame by an untimely end. It
requires another motive--the strong pressure of sorrow and remorse--to
quicken his resolution; but when once quickened, nothing can retard
it. Achilles at this point might be compared to a mass of ice and snow
hanging at the jagged edge of a glacier, suspended on a mountain brow.
We have seen such avalanches brooding upon Monte Rosa, or the Jungfrau,
beaten by storms, loosened, perchance, by summer sun, but motionless.
In a moment a lightning-flash strikes the mass, and it roars crumbling
to the deep.
This lightning-flash in the case of Achilles was the death of Patroclus
(xviii. 15). Patroclus has gone forth to aid the Achaians and has
fallen beneath Hector's sword. Antilochus, sent to bear the news to
Achilles, finds him standing before the ships, already anxious about
the long delay of his comrade. Antilochus does not break the news
gently. His tears betray the import of his message, and he begins:
"Woe is me, son of brave Peleus! Verily thou shalt hear right
sorrowful tidings--Patroclus lies slain; round his corpse they
are fighting; stripped it lies, but plumèd Hector hath his
armor.
"So he spake. But a black cloud of woe covered the hero. With
both hands he took the dust of ashes and flung them down upon
his head, and disfigured his fair face, and on his fragrant
tunic lay the black cinders. But he, huge in his hugeness,
stretched upon the dust lay, and with his hands he tore and
ravaged his hair."
Thus Achilles receives the first shock of grief. When his mother rises
from the sea to comfort him, he refuses consolation, and cries:
"My mother, the Olympian hath done all these things; but of
what pleasure is this to me, now that my dear friend is dead,
Patroclus, whom above all my comrades I honored, even as
myself? Him have I slain!"
This is the pith and marrow of his anguish. I slew Patroclus: it was
I who sent him forth to fight. "Now," he resumes a few lines lower
down--"now my soul bids me no longer live or be with men, save only I
strike Hector first and slay him with my spear, and make him pay the
fine of Patroclus."
Thetis reminds him that if he slay Hector, his own life will be short.
This only serves to turn his anguish into desperate resolve:
"Straight let me die, seeing I might not come to the aid of my
comrade when he was dying. Far from his fatherland he perished.
He looked for me that I should have been his helper. But now,
since never to my home shall I return, nor was I a light in
trouble to Patroclus, nor to my other comrades who are slain
by hundreds by the godlike Hector--while I here sit beside
the ships, a useless load upon the earth--I who am such as
there is none else like me among brazen-coated Achaians in the
war--others may be better perchance in council--now let strife
perish from among gods and men, with anger which stirs up the
prudent even to fury."
Thus he foregoes his wrath, and flings resentment from him like a
mantle. Then he rises ready for the fight. "If death come, let death
be welcome. Death came to Herakles. In his due time he comes to me.
Meanwhile I thirst to make Dardan ladies widows in the land."
When he next appears, his very form and outward semblance are
transfigured. He stands alone and unarmed in the trench. A fire
surrounds his head and flames upon his curls. His voice thrills the
armies like the blare of a victorious trumpet. This is how Homer has
described him shouting in the trench (xviii. 203):
"But Achilles, dear to Zeus, arose, and around his mighty
shoulders Athene cast her tasselled ægis; and about his head
the queenly goddess set a crown of golden mist, and from it she
made blaze a dazzling flame. As when smoke rises to the clear
sky from a town, afar from an island which foemen beleaguer,
who all day long contend in grisly war, issuing from their own
town; but at sundown beacons blaze in rows, and on high the
glare goes up, and soars for neighboring men to see, if haply
warders-off of woe may come to them with ships--so from the
head of Achilles the flame went up to heaven. He stood at the
trench, away from the wall, nor joined the Achaians; for he
honored his mother's wise command. There he stood and shouted;
and beside him Pallas Athene cried; but among the Trojans
he raised infinite tumult. As when a mighty voice, when the
trumpet shrills for the murderous foemen that surround a town,
so was the mighty voice of the son of Æacus. They then, when
they heard the brazen cry of Æacides, in the breasts of all of
them the heart was troubled; but the fair-maned horses turned
the cars backward; for in their heart they knew the sorrows
that were to be. And the charioteers were stricken when they
saw the tireless flame terrible above the head of big-hearted
Peleus's son blazing. The gray-eyed goddess Athene kindled it.
Thrice above the trench shouted the godlike Achilles in his
might; thrice were the Trojans and their noble allies troubled."
From this moment the action of the _Iliad_ advances rapidly. Achilles
takes his proper place, and occupies the whole stage. The body of
Patroclus is brought home to him; he mourns over it, and promises to
bury it when he shall have slain Hector, and slaughtered twelve sons of
the Trojans on the pyre. Then he reconciles himself with Agamemnon, and
formally renounces anger. Lastly, when he has put on the divine armor
made for him by Hephæstus, he ascends his car, and hastens into the
fight. But again at this point, when Achilles is at the very pitch and
summit of his glory, the voice of fate is heard. It is with the promise
of the tomb that he enters the battle. Turn to book xix. 399. Achilles
has just mounted his chariot:
"Fiercely did he cheer the horses of his sire. Xanthus and
Balius, far-famed children of Podargé, take other heed, I
warn ye, how to save your master, and to bring him to the
Danaan host, returning of war satisfied; nor leave him, like
Patroclus, dead there on the field.
"To him, then, from beneath the yoke spake the fleet-footed
horse Xanthus, and straightway drooped his head; and all his
mane, escaping from the collar by the yoke, fell earthward.
Goddess Here, of the white arms, gave him speech:
"Verily shall we save thee yet this time, fierce Achilles; but
close at hand is thy doomsday. Nor of this are we the cause,
but great God in heaven and resistless fate. For neither was
it by our sloth or sluggishness that Trojans stripped the
arms from Patroclus his shoulders; but of gods the best, whom
fair-haired Leto bare, slew him among the foremost, and gave to
Hector glory of the deed. We, though we should run apace with
Zephyr's breath, the fleetest, as 'tis said, yet for thee it is
decreed to perish by the might of God and man.
"When he had thus spoken the Erinnyes stayed his voice; and,
high in wrath, fleet-foot Achilles answered him:
"Xanthus! why prophesy my death? Thou hast no call. Right well
know I, too, that it is my fate to perish here, far from dear
sire and mother; yet for all this will I not surcease before I
satiate the Trojans with war.
"He spoke, and vanward held his steeds with mighty yell."
This dialogue between Achilles and Xanthus is not without great
importance. Homer is about to show the hero raging in carnage,
exulting over suppliants and slain foes, terrible in his ferocity. It
is consistent with the whole character of Achilles, who is fiery, of
indomitable fury, that he should act thus. Stung as he is by remorse
and by the sorrow for Patroclus, which does not unnerve him, but rather
kindles his whole spirit to a flame, we are prepared to see him fierce
even to cruelty. But when we know that in the midst of the carnage he
is himself moving a dying man, when we remember that he is sending his
slain foes like messengers before his face to Hades, when we keep the
warning words of Thetis and of Xanthus in our minds, then the grim
frenzy of Achilles becomes dignified. The world is in a manner over for
him, and he appears the incarnation of disdainful anger and revengeful
love, the conscious scourge of God and instrument of destiny. We need
not go through the details of the battle, in which Achilles drives the
Trojans before him, and is only withheld by the direct interposition
of the gods from carrying Ilium by assault. To borrow a simile from
Dante, his foes are like frogs scurrying away from the approach of
their great foe, the water-snake. Then follow the episode of Lycaon's
slaughter, the fight with the river-gods, and the death of Hector. To
the assembled Greeks Achilles cries (xxii. 386):
"By the ships, a corpse, unburied, unbewailed, lies Patroclus;
but of him I will not be unmindful so long as I abide among
the living and my knees have movement. Nay, should there be
oblivion of the dead in Hades, yet I even there will remember
my loved comrade. But rise, ye youths of Achaia, and singing
Pæan, let us hasten to the ships, and take this slain man with
us. Great glory have we got. Divine Hector have we slain, to
whom the Trojans in their city prayed as to a god."
So the Pæan rings. But Achilles by the ships, after the hateful
banquet, as he calls it in the sorrowful loathing of all comfort, has
been finished, lays himself to sleep (xxiii. 59):
"The son of Peleus by the shore of the roaring sea lay, heavily
groaning, surrounded by his Myrmidons; on a fair space of sand
he lay, where the waves lapped the beach. Then slumber took
him, loosing the cares of his heart, and mantling softly around
him; for sorely wearied were his radiant limbs with driving
Hector on by windy Troy. There to him came the soul of poor
Patroclus, in all things like himself--in stature, and in the
beauty of his eyes and voice; and on his form was raiment like
his own. He stood above the hero's head, and spake to him:
"Sleepest thou, and me hast thou forgotten, Achilles? Not in
my life wert thou neglectful of me, but in death. Bury me
soon, that I may pass the gates of Hades. Far off the souls,
the shadows of the dead, repel me, nor suffer me to join them
on the river-bank; but, as it is, thus I roam around the
wide-doored house of Hades. But stretch to me thy hand, I
entreat; for never again shall I return from Hades when once
ye shall have given me the meed of funeral fire. Nay, never
shall we sit in life apart from our dear comrades, and take
counsel together. But me hath hateful fate enveloped--fate that
was mine at the moment of my birth. And for thyself, divine
Achilles, it is doomed to die before the noble Trojans' wall.
Another thing I will say to thee, and bid thee do it if thou
wilt obey me: Lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles, but
lay them together; for we were brought up together in your
house, when Menoetius brought me, a child, from Opus to your
house, because of woful bloodshed on the day in which I slew
the son of Amphidamas, myself a child, not willing it, but in
anger at our games. Then did the horseman, Peleus, take me, and
rear me in his house, and cause me to be called thy squire.
So, then, let one grave also hide the bones of both of us, the
golden urn thy goddess-mother gave to thee.
"Him answered swift-footed Achilles:
"Why, dearest and most honored, hast thou hither come, to
lay on me this thy behest? All things most certainly will I
perform, and bow to what thou biddest. But stand thou near:
even for one moment let us throw our arms upon each other's
neck, and take our fill of sorrowful wailing.
"So spake he, and with his outstretched hands he clasped, but
could not seize. The spirit, earthward, like smoke, vanished
with a shriek. Then all astonished arose Achilles, and beat his
palms together, and spoke a piteous word:
"Heavens! is there, then, among the dead soul and the shade of
life, but thought is theirs no more at all? For through the
night the soul of poor Patroclus stood above my head, wailing
and sorrowing loud, and bade me do his will. It was the very
semblance of himself.
"So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire
of lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them
appeared rose-fingered dawn about the piteous corpse."
There is surely nothing more thrilling in its pathos throughout the
whole range of poetry than this scene, in which the iron-hearted
conqueror of Hector holds ineffectual communing in dreams with his
dear, lost, never-to-be-forgotten friend. But now the pyre is ready
to be heaped, and the obsequies of Patroclus are on the point of
being celebrated. Thereupon Achilles cuts his tawny curls, which he
wore clustering for Spercheius, and places them in the hand of dead
Patroclus. At the sight of this token that Achilles will return no more
to Hellas, but that he must die and lie beside his friend, all the
people fall to lamentation. Agamemnon has to arouse them to prepare
the pyre. A hundred feet each way is it built up; oxen and sheep are
slaughtered and placed upon the wood, with jars of honey and olive-oil.
Horses, too, and dogs are slain to serve the dead man on his journey;
and twelve sons of the great-souled Trojans are sacrificed to the
disconsolate ghost. Then Achilles cast fire upon the wood, and wailed,
and called on his loved friend by name:
"Hail, Patroclus! I greet thee even in the tomb: for now I am
performing all that erst I promised. Twelve valiant sons of the
great-souled Trojans with thee the fire devours; but Hector,
son of Priam, I will give to no fire to feed on, but to dogs."
Meanwhile the pyre of Patroclus refused to burn, and Achilles summoned
the two winds, Boreas and Zephyrus, to help him. They at this time were
feasting in the house of Zephyrus, and Iris had to fetch them from
their cups. They rose and drove the clouds before them, and furrowed up
the sea, and passed to fertile Troy, and fell upon the pyre, and the
great flame crackled, hugely blazing:
"All night they around the pyre together cast a flame, blowing
with shrill breath, and all night swift Achilles, from a golden
bowl, holding a double goblet, drew wine, and poured it on the
ground, and soaked the earth, calling upon the soul of poor
Patroclus. As when a father wails who burns the bones of his
son unwed, so wailed Achilles, burning his friend's bones,
pacing slowly round the fire, and uttering groan on groan.
"But when the star of dawn came to herald light upon the earth,
whom following morn, with saffron robe, spread across the sea,
then the pyre languished and the flame was stayed.
"The winds again went homeward, back across the Thracian deep.
It groaned beneath them, raging with the billow's swell. But
the son of Peleus turned from the pyre, and lay down weary, and
sweet sleep came upon him."
After this manner was the burning of Patroclus. And here the action of
the _Iliad_ may be said to end. What follows in the last two books is,
however, of the greatest importance in adding dignity to the character
of Achilles, and in producing that sense of repose, that pacification
of the more violent emotions, which we require in the highest works
of tragic art. First come the games around the barrow of Patroclus.
Presiding over them is Achilles, who opens his treasure-house to the
combatants with royal generosity, forever mindful that in honoring
them he is paying honor to the great sad ghost of his dead friend. The
bitterness of his sorrow is past; his thirst for vengeance is assuaged.
Radiant and tranquil he appears among the chiefs of the Achaians; and
to Agamemnon he displays marked courtesy.
But it is not enough to show us Achilles serene in the accomplishment
of his last service to Patroclus. As the crowning scene in the whole
_Iliad_, Homer has contrived to make us feel that, after all, Achilles
is a man. The wrathful and revengeful hero, who bearded Agamemnon on
his throne, and who slew the unarmed suppliant Lycaon, relents in
pity at a father's prayer. Priam, in the tent of Achilles, presents
one of the most touching pictures to be found in poetry. We know the
leonine fierceness of Achilles; we know how he has cherished the
thought of insult to dead Hector as a final tribute to his friend:
even now he is brooding in his lair over the Trojan corpse. Into this
lion's den the old king ventures. Instead of springing on him, as we
might have feared, Achilles is found sublime in generosity of soul.
Begging Patroclus to forgive him for robbing his ghost of this last
satisfaction, he relinquishes to Priam the body of his son. Yet herein
there is nothing sentimental. Achilles is still the same--swift to
anger and haughty, but human withal, and tender-hearted to the tears of
an enemy at his mercy.
This is the last mention made of Achilles in the _Iliad_. The hero,
whom we have seen so noble in his interview with Priam, was destined
within a few days to die before the walls of Troy, slain by the arrow
of Paris.[12] His ashes were mingled with those of Patroclus. In their
death they were not divided.
Once again in the Homeric poems does Achilles appear. But this time he
is a ghost among the pale shadows of Elysium (_Od._ xi. 466):
"Thereupon came the soul of Achilles, son of Peleus, and of
Patroclus, and of brave Antilochus, and of Ajax, who was first
in form and stature among the Achaians after great Peleides.
The soul of fleet Æacides knew me, and, wailing, he thus spake:
"Zeus-born son of Laertes, wily Ulysses, why in thy heart,
unhappy man, dost thou design a deed too great for mortals? How
darest thou descend to Hades, where dwell the thoughtless dead,
the phantoms of men whose life is done?
"So he spake; but I in turn addressed him:
"Achilles, son of Peleus, greatest by far of Achaians, I am
come to learn of Teiresias concerning my return to Ithaca. But
none of men in elder days, or of those to be, is more blessed
than thou art, Achilles; for in life the Argives honored thee
like a god, and now again in thy greatness thou rulest the
dead here where thou art. Therefore be not grieved at death,
Achilles.
"So spake I, and he straightway made answer:
"Console not me in death, noble Odysseus! Would rather that I
were a bondsman of the glebe, the servant of a master, of some
poor man, whose living were but scanty, than thus to be the
king of all the nations of the dead."
Some apology may be needed for these numerous quotations from a poem
which is hardly less widely known and read than Shakespeare or the
Bible. By no other method, however, would it have been possible to
bring out into prominence the chief features of the hero whom Homer
thought sufficient for the subject of the greatest epic of the world.
For us Achilles has yet another interest. He, more than any character
of fiction, reflects the qualities of the Greek race in its heroic age.
His vices of passion and ungovernable pride, his virtue of splendid
human heroism, his free individuality asserted in the scorn of fate,
are representative of that Hellas which afterwards, at Marathon and
Salamis, was destined to inaugurate a new era of spiritual freedom for
mankind. It is impossible for us to sympathize with him wholly, or
to admire him otherwise than as we admire a supreme work of art; so
far is he removed from our so-called proprieties of moral taste and
feeling. But we can study in him the type of a by-gone, infinitely
valuable period of the world's life, of that age in which the human
spirit was emerging from the confused passions and sordid needs of
barbarism into the higher emotions and more refined aspirations of
civilization. Of this dawn, this boyhood of humanity, Achilles is
the fierce and fiery hero. He is the ideal of a race not essentially
moral or political, of a nation which subordinated morals to art,
and politics to personality; and even of that race he idealizes the
youth rather than the manhood. In some respects Odysseus is a truer
representative of the delicate and subtle spirit which survived all
changes in the Greeks. But Achilles, far more than Odysseus, is an
impersonation of the Hellenic genius, superb in its youthfulness,
doomed to immature decay, yet brilliant at every stage of its brief
career.
To exaggerate the importance of Achilles in the education of the
Greeks, who used the _Iliad_ as their Bible, and were keenly sensitive
to all artistic influences, would be difficult. He was the incarnation
of their chivalry, the fountain of their sense of honor. The full
development of this subject would require more space than I can here
give to it. It will be enough to touch upon the friendship of Achilles
for Patroclus as the central point of Hellenic chivalry; and to advert
to the reappearance of his type of character in Alexander at the very
moment when the force of Hellas seemed to be exhausted.
Nearly all the historians of Greece have failed to insist upon the
fact that fraternity in arms played for the Greek race the same part
as the idealization of women for the knighthood of feudal Europe.
Greek mythology and history are full of tales of friendship, which
can only be paralleled by the story of David and Jonathan in our
Bible. The legends of Herakles and Hylas, of Theseus and Peirithous,
of Apollo and Hyacinth, of Orestes and Pylades, occur immediately to
the mind. Among the noblest patriots, tyrannicides, law-givers, and
self-devoted heroes in the early times of Greece, we always find the
names of friends and comrades recorded with peculiar honor. Harmodius
and Aristogeiton, who slew the despot Hipparchus at Athens; Diocles
and Philolaus, who gave laws to Thebes; Chariton and Melanippus, who
resisted the sway of Phalaris in Sicily; Cratinus and Aristodemus, who
devoted their lives to propitiate offended deities when a plague had
fallen upon Athens--these comrades, stanch to each other in their love,
and elevated by friendship to the pitch of noblest enthusiasm, were
among the favorite saints of Greek legendary history. In a word, the
chivalry of Hellas found its motive force in friendship rather than in
the love of women; and the motive force of all chivalry is a generous,
soul-exalting, unselfish passion. The fruit which friendship bore among
the Greeks was courage in the face of danger, indifference to life
when honor was at stake, patriotic ardor, the love of liberty, and
lion-hearted rivalry in battle. "Tyrants," said Plato, "stand in awe of
friends."
It may seem at first sight paradoxical to speak at all of Greek
chivalry, since this word, by its very etymology, is appropriated to
a mediæval institution. Yet when we inquire what chivalry means, we
find that it implies a permanent state of personal emotion, which
raises human life above the realities of every-day experience, and
inspires men with unselfish impulses. Furthermore, this passionate
condition of the soul in chivalry is connected with a powerful military
enthusiasm, severing the knight from all vile things, impelling
him to the achievement of great deeds, and breeding in his soul a
self-regardless temper. Both the ancient and the mediæval forms of
chivalry included love and arms. The heroes and the knights alike were
lovers and warriors. The passion which Plato called madness in the
_Phædrus_, and which the Provençal troubadours knew by the name of
_Joie_, was excited in the heroes by their friends, and in the knights
by their ladies. But the emotion was substantially the same; nor, with
the tale of Patroclus and with the whole of Greek history before us,
can we allow our modern inaptitude for devoted friendship to blind us
to the seriousness of this passion among the Greeks. Besides war and
love, chivalry implies a third enthusiasm. In the case of the Greek
heroes this was patriotic; in the case of the mediæval knights it was
religious. Thus, antique chivalry may be described as a compound of
military, amatory, and patriotic passions meeting in one enthusiastic
habit of the soul; mediæval chivalry as a compound of military,
amatory, and religious passions meeting in a similar enthusiastic habit
of soul. It is hardly necessary to point out the differences between
Hellenic heroism and Teutonic knighthood, or to show how far the former
failed to influence society as favorably as the latter. The Christian
chivalry of mercy, forgiveness, gentleness, and long-suffering, which
claims the title of charity in armor, was a post-Hellenic ideal. Greeks
could not have comprehended the oath which Arthur imposed upon his
knights, and which ran in the following words: "He charged them never
to do outrage nor murder, and alway to flee treason; also by no means
to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, and alway to
do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succor upon pain of death." The
murder of Lycaon by Achilles, the butchery of Dolon by Diomedes, and
the treachery practised upon Philoctetes by Odysseus are sufficiently
at variance with the spirit of this oath; nor do any of the heroic
legends tell a tale of courtesy towards women. Thus much about the
unchivalrous aspects of Greek heroism I have thought it right to say,
before returning to the view which I first stated, that military
friendship among the Greeks played for Hellenic civilization a part
not wholly dissimilar to that of chivalrous love among the nations
of mediæval Europe. Regarded as an institution, with ethics of its
own, and with peculiar social and political regulations, this Greek
chivalry was specially Dorian.[13] Yet it spread through all the states
of Hellas. In Athens it allied itself with philosophy, as afterwards
at Florence did the chivalry of knighthood; and in Thebes, during the
last struggle for Hellenic freedom, it blazed forth in the heroism of
the three hundred, who fell together face-forward to the Macedonian
lances at Chæronea.[14] Meanwhile, Achilles remained for all Greece
the eponym of passionate friendship; and even in the later periods of
Greek poetry the most appropriate title for a pair of noble comrades
was "Achilleian." Concerning the abuse and debasement of such passion
among the historic Greeks, this is not the place to speak. Achilles
and Patroclus cannot be charged with having sanctioned by example any
vice, however much posterity may have read its own moods of thought and
feeling into Homer.
Æschylus wrote a tragedy entitled the _Myrmidones_, in commemoration of
the love of Achilles; and, perhaps, few things among the lost treasures
of Greek literature are so much to be regretted as this play, which
would have cast clear light upon the most romantic of Greek legends. It
may also be mentioned in passing that we possess fragments of a play
of Sophocles which bears the name #Achilleôs erastai#, or _Lovers of
Achilles_; but what its subject was, and whether the drama was satyric,
as seems probable, or not, we do not know. The beautiful passage in
which love is compared to a piece of glittering ice held in the hand of
children, has been preserved from it by Stobæus.
Enough, fortunately, has survived the ruin of time to enable us to
conjecture how Æschylus, in the _Myrmidones_, handled the materials
afforded him by Homer. The play, as was frequent, took its name from
the chorus who represented the contingent of Thessalian warriors led
by Peleus's son against Troy. It opened, if we may trust the scholiast
to the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, with a reproach uttered by the chorus
against Achilles for his inactivity:
#tade men leusseis, phaidim' Achilleu,
dorilymantous Danaôn mochthous
hous ... eisô klisias.#
"Seest thou these things, glorious Achilles--the sufferings of the
Danaans beneath victorious spears? Whom thou within thy tent--" Here
the fragment breaks off; but enough has been said to strike the keynote
of the tragedy. The next fragment, according to Dindorf's arrangement,
formed, probably, part of Achilles' defence.[15] It is written in
iambics, and contains the famous simile of the eagle stricken to death
by an arrow fledged with his own feather. Like that eagle, argues the
hero, have we Greeks been smitten by our own ill-counsel. After the
drama has thus been opened, the first great incident seems to have been
the arrival of the embassy of Phoenix at Achilles' tent. One corrupt,
but precious fragment, put by Aristophanes as a quotation into the
mouth of Euripides in the _Frogs_, indicates the line of argument taken
by the ambassadors:
#Phthiôt' Achileu, ti pot' androdaïkton akouôn
iêkopon ou pelazeis ep' arôgan?#
Though the Greek as it stands is untranslatable, the meaning is pretty
clearly this: Achilles of Phthia, how can you bear to hear of these
woes nor lend a helping hand? The next fragment must be received with
caution. It occurs in the _Frogs_ as a quotation:
#Beblêk' Achilleus dyo kybô kai tettara.#
Achilles has cast two dice, and four.
On which the scholiast makes the following remark: "This is from the
_Myrmidones_; for the poet feigned them playing dice; and it is the
custom of gamesters to cry thus: two, four, three, five. Dionysus says
this to show that Æschylus has won." Another scholiast puts it in
doubt whether the verse be taken from the _Telephus_ of Euripides or
some other source. The foundation is, therefore, too slender to build
upon securely; else we might imagine that, after the departure of the
ambassadors, and perhaps after the equipment of Patroclus for the war,
Achilles was represented by Æschylus as whiling away the time with his
companions at a game of hazard. Then enters Antilochus, the messenger
of bad news. He recites the death of Patroclus, and lifts up his voice
in lamentation. Our next fragment brings the whole scene vividly before
us:
#Antiloch', apoimôxon me tou tethnêkotos
ton zônta mallon.#
The words are spoken undoubtedly by Achilles: "Antilochus, wail thou
for me rather than for the dead--for me who live." It is again from
a comedy of Aristophanes, the _Ecclesiazusæ_, that this exclamation
comes; and in passing we may remark that such frequent citations from
this single play of Æschylus by a comic poet prove its popularity at
Athens. Between the narration of Antilochus and the bringing-in of
the dead body of Patroclus there must have been a solemn pause in
the dramatic action, which Æschylus, no doubt, filled up with one
of his great choric passages. Then followed the crowning scene in
the tragedy. Achilles, front to front with the corpse of his friend,
uttered a lamentation, which the ancients seem to have regarded as the
very ecstasy of grief and love and passionate remembrance. Lucian,
quoting one of the lines of this lament, introduces it with words that
prove the strong impression it produced: "Achilles, when he bemoaned
Patroclus's death, in his unhusbanded passion burst forth into the
very truth." To quote and comment upon the three lines which have
been preserved from this unique Threnos would be here impossible.
To understand them at all is difficult, and to recompose from them
the hero's speech is beyond our power. The value of the meagre and
conflicting citations given by Plutarch, Athenæus, and Lucian lies
in the impression they convey of the deep effect wrought upon Greek
sympathy by the passion of the soliloquy. When we call to mind the
lamentation uttered by Teucer over the corpse of Ajax in the tragedy of
Sophocles, we may imagine how the genius of Æschylus rose to the height
of this occasion in his _Myrmidones_. In what way the drama ended is
not known. We may, however, hazard a conjecture that the poet did not
leave the hero without some outlook into the future, and that the
solemn note of reconciliation upon which the tragedy closed responded
to the first querulous interrogation of the chorus at its commencement.
The situation was a grand one for working out that purification of the
passions which Greek tragedy required. The sullen and selfish wrath of
Achilles had brought its bitter consequence of suffering and sorrow
for the hero, as well as of disaster for the host. Out of that deadly
suffering of Achilles--out of the paroxysm of grief beside the body
of his friend--has grown a nobler form of anger, which will bring
salvation to his country at the certain loss of his own life. Can we
doubt that Æschylus availed himself of this so solemn and sublime a
cadence? The dead march and the funeral lamentations for Patroclus
mingle with the neighing of war-horses and the braying of the trumpets
that shall lead the Myrmidons to war. And over and above all sounds of
the grief that is passed and of the triumph that is to follow is heard
the voice of fate pronouncing the death-doom of the hero, on whose
#hamartia# the tragic movement has depended.
Thus, in the prime of Athens, the poet-warrior of Marathon, the prophet
of the highest Hellenic inspiration, handled a legend which was dear
to his people, and which to them spoke more, perhaps, than it can do
to us. Plato, discussing the _Myrmidones_ of Æschylus, remarks in the
_Symposium_ that the tragic poet was wrong to make Achilles the lover
of Patroclus, seeing that Patroclus was the elder of the two, and
that Achilles was the youngest and most beautiful of all the Greeks.
The fact, however, is that Homer himself raises no question in our
minds about the relations of lover and beloved. Achilles and Patroclus
are comrades. Their friendship is equal. It was only the reflective
activity of the Greek mind, working upon the Homeric legend by the
light of subsequent custom, which introduced these distinctions. The
humanity of Homer was purer, larger, and more sane than that of his
posterity among the Hellenes. Still, it may be worth while suggesting
that Homer, perhaps, intended in Hector and Achilles to contrast
domestic love with the love of comrades. The tenderness of Hector for
Andromache, side by side with the fierce passion of Achilles, seems to
account, at least in some measure, for the preference felt for Hector
in the Middle Ages. Achilles controlled the Greek imagination. Hector
attracted the sympathies of mediæval chivalry, and took his place
upon the list of knightly worthies.[16] Masculine love was Hellenic.
The love of idealized womanhood was romantic. Homer, the sovereign
poet, understood both passions of the human heart, delineating the one
in Achilles without effeminacy, the other in Hector without sickly
sentiment. At the same time, Hector's connection with the destinies of
Rome and his appearance in the _Æneid_, if only as a ghost, must not be
forgotten when we estimate the reasons why he eclipsed Achilles in the
Middle Ages.
It is not till we reach Alexander the Great that we find how truly
Achilles was the type of the Greek people, and to what extent he had
controlled their growth. Alexander expressed in real life that ideal
which in Homer's poetry had been displayed by Achilles. Alexander set
himself to imitate Achilles. His tutor, Lysimachus, found favor in the
eyes of the royal family of Macedon, by comparing Philip to Peleus,
his son to Achilles, and himself to Phoenix. On all his expeditions
Alexander carried with him a copy of the _Iliad_, calling it "a perfect
portable treasure of military virtue." It was in the spirit of the
Homeric age that he went forth to conquer Asia. And when he reached
the plain of Troy, it was to the tomb of Achilles that he paid special
homage. There he poured libations to the mighty ghost, anointed his
grave, and, as Plutarch says, "ran naked about his tomb, and crowned it
with garlands, declaring how happy he esteemed him in having, while he
lived, so faithful a friend, and, when he was dead, so famous a poet
to proclaim his actions." We have seen that the two chief passions
of Achilles were his anger and his love. In both of these Alexander
followed him. The passage just quoted from Plutarch hints at the envy
with which Alexander regarded the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus.
In his own life he entertained for Hephæstion a like passion. When
Hephæstion died of fever at Ecbatana, Alexander exaggerated the fury
and the anguish of the son of Peleus. He went forth and slew a whole
tribe--the Cosseans--as a sacrifice to the soul of his comrade. He
threw down the battlements of neighboring cities, and forbade all signs
of merry-making in his camp. Meanwhile he refused food and comfort,
till an oracle from Ammon ordained that divine honors should be paid
Hephæstion. Then Alexander raised a pyre, like that of Patroclus in the
_Iliad_, except that the pyre of Hephæstion cost 10,000 talents, and
was adorned with all the splendor of Greek art in its prime. Here the
Homeric ceremonies were performed. Games and races took place; then,
like Achilles, having paid this homage to his friend, of bloodshed,
costly gifts, and obsequies, Alexander at last rested from his grief.
In this extravagance of love for a friend we see the direct working
of the _Iliad_ on the mind of the Macedonian king. But the realities
of life fall far short of the poet's dream. Neither the love nor the
sorrow of Alexander for Hephæstion is so touching as the love and
sorrow of Achilles for Patroclus.
In his wrath, again, Alexander imitated and went beyond his model.
When he slew Clitus in a drunken brawl, there was no Athene at his
side to stay his arm and put the sword back in the scabbard. Yet his
remorse was some atonement for his violence. "All that night," says
Plutarch, "and the next day he wept bitterly, till, being quite spent
with lamenting and exclaiming, he lay, as it were, speechless, only
fetching deep sighs." It is noticeable that Alexander, here also like
Achilles, conqueror and hero though he was, scorned not to show his
tears, and to grovel on the ground in anguish. His fiery temper added
indomitable energy to all he did or felt. In a few years he swept Asia,
destroying kingdoms, and founding cities that still bear his name; and
though his rage betrayed him now and then into insane acts, he, like
Achilles, was not wholly without the guidance of Athene. In both we
have the spectacle of a gigantic nature moved by passions; yet both
are controlled by reason, not so much by the reflective understanding,
as by an innate sense of what is great and noble. Alexander was
Aristotle's pupil. In his best moments, in his fairest and most solid
actions, the spirit of Aristotle's teaching ruled him and attended him,
as Achilles was ruled and attended by Pallas. Again, in generosity,
Alexander recalls Achilles. His treatment of the wife and daughters
of Darius reminds us of the reception of Priam by the son of Peleus.
Grote, indeed, points out that good policy prompted him to spare the
life of the Persian queen. That may be true; but it would have been
quite consistent with the Greek standard of honor to treat her with
indignity while he preserved her life. This Alexander refrained from
doing. His entertainment of Stateira was not unworthy of a queen; and
if he did not exhibit the refined courtesy of the Black Prince, he
came as near to this ideal of modern chivalry as a Greek could do.
In the last place, Alexander, like Achilles, was always young. Like
Achilles, he died young, and exists for us as an immortal youth. This
youthfulness is one of the peculiar attributes of a Greek hero, one of
the distinguishing features of Greek sculpture--in a word, the special
mark of the Greek race. "O Solon! Solon!" said the priest of Egypt,
"you Greeks are always boys!" Achilles and Alexander, as Hegel has most
eloquently demonstrated, are forever adolescent. Yet, after all is
said, Alexander fell far below his prototype in beauty and sublimity.
He was nothing more than a heroic man. Achilles was the creature of a
poet's brain, of a nation's mythology. The one was the ideal in its
freshness and its freedom. The other was the real, dragged in the mire
of the world, and enthralled by the necessities of human life.
It is very difficult, by any process of criticism, to define the
impression of greatness and of glory which the character of Achilles
leaves upon the mind. There is in him a kind of magnetic fascination,
something incommensurable and indescribable, a quality like that
which Goethe defined as dæmonic. They are not always the most noble
or the most admirable natures which exert this influence over their
fellow-creatures. The Emperor Napoleon and our own Byron had each,
perhaps, a portion of this Achilleian personality. Men of their stamp
sway the soul by their prestige, by their personal beauty and grandeur,
by the concentrated intensity of their character, and by the fatality
which seems to follow them. To Achilles, to Alexander, to Napoleon, we
cannot apply the rules of our morality. It is, therefore, impossible
for us, who must aim first at being good citizens, careful in our
generation, and subordinate to the laws of society around us, to
admire them without a reservation. Yet, after all is said, a great and
terrible glory does rest upon their heads; and though our sentiments of
propriety may be offended by some of their actions, our sense of what
is awful and sublime is satisfied by the contemplation of them. No one
should delude us into thinking that true culture does not come from
the impassioned study of everything, however eccentric and at variance
with our own mode of life, that is truly great. Greatness, of whatever
species it may be, is always elevating and spirit-stirring. When we
listen to the Eroica Symphony, and remember that that master-work
of music was produced by the genius of Beethoven, brooding over
the thoughts of Achilles in the _Iliad_, and of Napoleon upon the
battle-fields of Lombardy, we may feel how abyss cries to abyss, and
how all forms of human majesty meet and sustain each other.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] That the poet of the _Iliad_ in its present form had this legend
before him is clear from books xxi. 297, xxii. 355-360.
[13] See Müller's _Dorians_, vol. ii. pp. 306-313.
[14] Sections 18 and 19 of Plutarch's _Life of Pelopidas_ contain
the best account of the sacred band, and place the Greek chivalrous
sentiment in the clearest light.
[15] It may be questioned whether this fragment ought not to be
referred to the scene with the embassy later on in the play.
[16] See Caxton's Preface to the _Mort d'Arthur_.