_The sense of Beauty in Homer; human, animal, and inanimate._
The idea of Beauty, especially as it is connected with its most
signal known manifestation in the human form, and again the φθορὰ, or
corruption of that idea, have each their separate course and history
in the religion and manners, as well as in the arts, of Greece. By the
idea of Beauty, I mean here the conception of it in the human mind as
a pure and wonderful essence, nearly akin to the Divine; derived from
heaven, and both continually and spontaneously tending to revert to its
source. By the corruption of that idea, I mean the conception of it
either mainly or wholly with reference to animal enjoyment; sometimes
within, and sometimes beyond, the laws of Nature.
In the works of Homer, we find the first of these conceptions
exceedingly prominent and powerful. It approaches almost to a worship:
and yet is scarcely at all tainted with the second, scarcely presents
the smallest deflection from the very loftiest type. In Homer, that
is to say, in the Homeric descriptions of human characters and life,
we never find Beauty and Vice pleasurably associated: he seems to
have felt in the sanctuary of his mind as much at least as this, if
not more; that a derogation from purity involved of itself a descent
from the highest to a lower form of beauty: and therefore he never
associates his highest descriptions of beauty with vice: differing
in this not only from so many heathen, but even from many Christian
authors.
~_The Dardanid traditions._~
But yet it is most remarkable that, even in Homer’s time, the level
of popular tradition on the subject of beauty had begun to descend,
and though he had escaped the taint, yet it had touched his age.
Let us, for example, take that most striking series of traditions
in the Dardanian royal family, which are recorded in the poems of
Homer. That family appears to have had personal beauty for an almost
entailed inheritance. Not only Hector, Deiphobus, Æneas, as well as
Paris, possessed it, but Priam, even in his old age and affliction,
was divinely beautiful as he entered the apartment of Achilles; and,
as they sat at meat, and he admired Achilles, Achilles returned his
admiration[738].
[738] Il. xxiv. 483, 631. Sup. Ilios, p. 216.
The line of traditions in this family, to which I now refer, affords
the best illustration of the idea of beauty as ever striving, by
an inner law, to rise to a heavenly life. There are four of these
traditions: and as we pass from the older to the more recent, at
each step that we make, we lose some grain of the first ethereal
purity. The earliest of them all is the translation, since coarsely
and without ground called the rape, of Ganymede: consistently indeed
so called, according to the idea of the fable which has prevailed in
later ages, but most absurdly, if it be applied to the tradition in
the shape in which it stands with Homer. With him the tale of Ganymede
is the most simple and perfect assertion of the principle that beauty,
heavenly in its origin, is heavenly also in its destiny; and that
the heaven-born and heaven-bound should contract no taint upon its
intermediate passage. There were three sons, says Homer, born to Tros;
Ilus was one, Assaracus another: and the third was Ganymede, a match
for gods. Ganymede, the most beauteous of men, whom, for his beauty,
and seemingly before he had come to maturity for succession, the gods
snatched up and made the cupbearer of Jupiter, that he might dwell for
ever among the Immortals[739]:
[739] Il. xx. 233-5.
ὃς δὴ κάλλιστος γένετο θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων·
τὸν καὶ ἀνηρείψαντο θεοὶ Διὶ οἰνοχοεύειν
κάλλεος εἵνεκα οἷο, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη.
The idea of sanctity, indeed, is not to be discovered here; its traces
can only be found among the inspired records; the resemblance to the
deity does not reach beyond the flesh and mind; yet the sum of the tale
is full of interest. The other sons grew up, and became kings; he,
that he might not linger, might not suffer, might not contract taint
or undergo decay on earth, was taken up to that sphere, which is the
proper home of all things beautiful and good.
The thought is somewhat related to that of the following remarkable
lines by Emerson:
Perchance not he, but nature ailed;
The world, and not the infant, failed.
It was not ripe yet to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own:
And pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.
_His beauty once their beauty tried;
They could not feed him, and he died,_
And wandered backward, as in scorn,
To wait an Æon to be born.
Far as the tradition of Ganymede, according to Homer, is below that
of Enoch, it is set by a yet wider distance above the later version
of the same tale. Thus, in Euripides, we find him the Διὸς λέκτρων
τρύφημα φίλον (Iph. Aul. 1037): and what is more sad is to find, that
this utterly debased and depressed idea prevailed over the original and
pure one, even to its extinction, and was adopted and propagated by the
highest and the lowest poets of the Italian romance[740].
[740] For example, we might quote the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto; and
the very vulgar poet, Forteguerra, in the Ricciardetto, vi. 23:
Il nettar beve, e Ganimede il mesce,
Che tanto a Giuno sua spiace e rincresce.
Next in order to the tradition of Ganymede comes that of Tithonus,
who, on account of his beauty, was carried up, not by the gods at
large, to be as one of them, but by Aurora to become her husband, in
which capacity he remained in the upper regions[741]. This is a step
downwards; but the next is a stride. In the third tradition, so far as
is known from the authentic works of Homer, Æneas is the son of Venus
and Anchises, but without their standing in the relation of husband and
wife. The particulars of the narrative are supplied in the early Hymn,
which perhaps was the more readily ascribed to Homer, because it was
believed to embody a primitive form of the tradition. Jupiter inspired
Venus with a passion for Anchises, and, after having arrayed herself in
fine vestments and golden ornaments, she presented herself to him as he
was playing the lyre in solitude on Ida; when the connection was formed
that gave birth to Æneas[742].
[741] Il. xi. 1. Od. v. 1.
[742] Hymn. ad Ven. 45-80.
The next fall is the greatest of all: according to the later tradition,
Venus, to obtain a favourable judgment from Paris (of the next
generation to Anchises), promised him a wife of splendid beauty and
divine extraction, whom he was to obtain by treachery and robbery, as
well as adultery; and filled him with what Homer pronounces an evil
passion[743].
[743] Il. xxiv. 30.
The Poet, indeed, tells us nothing of this promise, which appears to
imply powers far greater than any that the Homeric Aphrodite possessed.
But he mentions the contest, informs us that Venus was the winner,
makes Paris boast of her partiality, and introduces her as mentioning
her own favours to Helen[744].
[744] Il. iii. 64, 440, 415.
Such was the downward course of all in the nature of man that belonged
to the moral sphere, apart from the cherishing power of Divine
Revelation; for the chronological order of these legends is also that
of their descent, step by step, from innocence to vice.
Homer, as we have already seen, represents a very early and chaste
condition of human thought. We have now to observe how strong and
genuine, as well as pure, was his appetite for beauty.
Since here, as elsewhere, it is not the Poet’s usage to declare himself
by express statements and elaborate descriptions, we must resort in the
usual manner to secondary evidence; which, however, converging from
many different and opposite quarters upon a single point, is perhaps
more conclusive than mere statement, because it shows that we are not
dealing with a simple opinion, but with a sentiment, a passion, and a
habit, which penetrated through the Poet’s whole nature.
I shall notice Homer’s sense of beauty with reference, first and
chiefly, to the human countenance and form; next, with respect to
animals; and thirdly, with respect to inanimate objects and to
combinations of them.
As regards the first and chief branch of this inquiry, we must notice
to what persons, and in what degrees, Homer assigns beauty, from whom
he withholds it; and how far he considers it to give a title to special
notice, in cases where no other claim to such a distinction can be made
good.
We may then observe that Homer does not commonly assign personal
beauty to any human person, who is morally odious. In any questionable
instance where he does so assign it, he seems to follow an historical
tradition, or to be constrained by his subject. He has covered
Thersites with every sort of deformity; and in the description of the
persons and of the twelve dissolute women among the fifty domestic
servants of Ulysses, there is barely a word that implies beauty[745].
[745] Od. xxii. 424-73.
Melantho indeed, the most conspicuous offender, is called in the
Eighteenth Odyssey[746] καλλιπάρῃος. But it seems probable, that he
followed a local tradition concerning her; for, if she had been simply
a creation of his own, he certainly would not have represented her as
the daughter of the old and faithful Dolius[747], who, with his six
sons, bore arms for Ulysses.
[746] Od. xviii. 321-5.
[747] Od. xxiv. 496.
~_Treatment of the beauty of Paris._~
So also the beauty of Paris was an inseparable incident of the Trojan
tale. Yet it is remarkable how little it is brought into relief. Where
he is called beautiful, it is by way of sarcasm and reproach[748],
[748] Il. iii. 39.
Δύσπαρι, εἶδος ἄριστε.
The only passage, in which his beautiful appearance is described at
all, is from the mouth of Venus[749], to whom Homer never intrusts
anything, to be either said or done, that he wishes us to regard with
favour.
[749] Ibid. 391.
Compelled, however, to set off the imposing exterior of this prince,
if only for the purpose of heightening the contrast with his cowardice
in action, he introduces him flourishing his pair of spears at the
commencement of the Third Iliad; and what is more, when he again goes
forth in his newly burnished arms at the close of the Sixth, bestows
upon him one of the very noblest of his similes, that of the stall-kept
horse, high fed and sleek in coat, who having broken away from his
manger rushes neighing over the plain[750].
[750] Il. iii. 18. and vi. 506.
It was necessary, in order to make up the true portrait of Paris, that
his exterior should be thus splendid, and his movements imposing; and
it was also a part of the subtle plan, by which Homer made use of words
and appearances to bring up the Trojan chieftains and people to some
kind of level with the Greek. Yet there is something singular in the
fact that Homer, who does not, I think, repeat his similes in any other
remarkable case, reproduces the whole of this splendid passage in the
Fifteenth Iliad for Hector[751]. There is here, we may rely upon it,
some peculiar meaning. Possibly he grudged the exclusive appropriation
of so splendid a passage to so despicable a person. There is also
another singularity in his mode of proceeding. The simile is given to
Hector without addition, and the poem proceeds
[751] Il. xv. 263.
ὣς Ἕκτωρ λαιψηρὰ πόδας καὶ γούνατ’ ἐνώμα.
But where he applies it to Paris, immediately after the conclusion of
the noble passage he subjoins (Il. vi. 512.),
ὣς υἱὸς Πριάμοιο Πάρις κατὰ Περγάμου ἄκρης
τεύχεσι παμφαίνων, ὥστ’ ἠλέκτωρ, ἐβεβήκει.
What is the meaning of ἠλέκτωρ? It is commonly taken as equivalent to
ἠλέκτωρ Ὑπερίων, which means the Sun. I cannot but believe that Homer
means by it to signify the cock, called in Greek ἀλέκτωρ. The ἠλέκτωρ
Ὑπερίων, is used as a simile for Achilles; and it would be much against
the manner of Homer to use the same simile for a Trojan, and that
Trojan Paris. Whereas by the strut of the cock he may mean to reduce
and modify the effect of the noble figure of the stall-horse.
~_Beauty of the Greek chiefs and nation._~
Achilles, who is not only the bravest but by far the most powerful man
of the host, is also by far the most beautiful; and the very strongest
terms are used to describe the impression which his appearance produced
on Priam amidst the profoundest sorrow[752];
[752] Il. xxiv. 629.
θαύμαζ’ Ἀχιλῆα,
ὅσσος ἔην, οἷός τε· θεοῖσι γὰρ ἄντα ἐῴκει.
It may be doubted, whether any other Poet would have ventured to
combine the highest and most delicate beauty, with a strength and size
approaching the superhuman. It was requisite for Achilles, as the
ideal man, not only to want no great human gift, but also to have in
unmatched degrees whatever gifts he possessed. The beauty of Achilles
is the true counterpart to the ugliness and deformity of Thersites.
It appertains to the character of Ulysses, who comes next to Achilles,
that he too should not be wanting in any thing that pertains to the
excellence of human nature; while completeness and manifoldness is
the specific character of his endowments, as unparalleled splendour
is of those possessed by Achilles. Ulysses[753], therefore, is also
beautiful. Again, the office and function of Agamemnon require him
to be an object capable of attracting admiration and reverence. He,
accordingly, is of remarkable beauty, but of the kind of beauty that
has in it most of dignity[754];
[753] Od. xiii. 430-3.
[754] Il. iii. 169.
καλὸν δ’ οὕτω ἐγὼν οὔπω ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν,
οὐδ’ οὕτω γεραρόν.
Homer never absolutely withholds beauty from any of his Greek heroes,
yet he does not always expressly state that they possessed it. This
endowment is, for instance, never given to Diomed, but it is ascribed
to Ajax in the Eleventh Odyssey[755];
[755] Od. xi. 469.
ὃς ἄριστος ἔην εἶδός τε, δέμας τε,
τῶν ἄλλων Δαναῶν, μετ’ ἀμύμονα Πηλείωνα.
It is probably because Diomed equals Ajax in chivalry, and very far
excels him in mental gifts, that Homer has thrown weight into the scale
of Ajax by assigning to him expressly, while he is silent about Diomed,
the gift of a beautiful person.
As with individuals, so does Homer deal with masses. It may be observed
that he has a lower class of epithets for the Trojans than the Greeks,
and never allows them the benefit of the same national designations.
Individual beauty in men is confined on both sides to the higher ranks;
but no Trojan, however beautiful, is ever honoured with the title
of ξανθός. Again, while he never gives to the Trojans as a body any
epithet which describes them as possessed of beauty, he has assigned
several expressions of this order to the Greek race. Such are the
epithets καρηκομόωντες and ἑλίκωπες, and the phrase εἶδος ἀγητοὶ, (Il.
v. 787. viii. 228.)
~_Beauty of Nireus and others._~
We have yet to examine how far Homer makes beauty a title to
distinguished notice on behalf of those who have no other claim. The
passage in the Catalogue, where Nireus is named[756], is highly curious
with reference to this part of the subject. It is as follows:
[756] Il. ii. 671-5.
Νιρεὺς αὖ Σύμηθεν ἄγε τρεῖς νῆας ἐΐσας,
Νιρεὺς, Ἀγλαΐης υἱὸς Χαρόποιό τ’ ἄνακτος,
Νιρεὺς, ὃς κάλλιστος ἀνὴρ ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθεν
τῶν ἄλλων Δαναῶν, μετ’ ἀμύμονα Πηλείωνα·
ἀλλ’ ἀλαπαδνὸς ἔην, παῦρος δέ οἱ εἵπετο λαός.
These five lines form the largest of the merely personal descriptions
contained in the Catalogue. Yet they are given to a man, of whom we are
frankly told that he was a poor creature, and that he had but a small
following. Even this does not show the whole strength of the case.
1. His ships were only three: no other commander, having so few, is
named at all. The next smallest number is seven: these were the vessels
of Philoctetes, and they seem to be named on account of his peculiar
history and great merit.
2. This is the only instance, in which the contingent supplied by a
single and wholly insignificant place is named by itself.
3. This is also one among very few cases of an ordinary birth, where
the mother (Aglaïe) is named as well as the father (Charopos): the
others are usually cases of reputed descent from deities or heroes.
4. The names given to both parents are taken from their personal
beauty. They thus enhance the title of the son; and, as we cannot well
suppose them connected with history, they were probably invented by the
Poet for that purpose.
5. The repetition of the name of Nireus thrice, and in each case at
the beginning of the verse, the most prominent and emphatic part of it
according to the genius of the Greek hexameter, is plainly intentional.
6. All this care is taken in the most ingenious manner to mark a man,
who did nothing to enable Homer to name him in any other part of the
Iliad.
One and one only key is to be found, which will lay open the cause of
these singular provisions: it is Homer’s intense love of beauty, which
made it in his eyes of itself a title to celebrity. So he determined,
apparently, that the paragon of form should be immortal; and he has
given effect to his determination, for no reader of the Iliad can pass
by the place without remembering Nireus.
In a less marked manner, he has given a kindred emphasis to the case
of Nastes, who wore golden ornaments, and therefore was presumably of
strikingly handsome person. With his brother Amphimachus he commanded
the Carians, and his name is mentioned thrice (but that of his brother
twice only), together with the fact that he wore gold like a girl[757].
[757] Il. ii. 867.
There is something, as it appears to me, most tender and refined, in
this mode used by Homer of fastening attention through repetition of
the word, which he wishes gently but firmly to stamp upon the memory.
We have another instance of it in Il. xxii. 127,
ἅτε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τε,
παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ’ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιϊν.
There is yet another passage which affords a striking proof of what
may be called the worship of beauty in Homer. In the Seventeenth
Iliad, Euphorbus, the son of Panthoos, falls by the hand of Menelaus.
Homer gives him great credit for charioteering, the use of the spear,
and other accomplishments; but he performs no other feat in the poem
than that of wounding in the back the disarmed, and astounded, and
heaven-deserted Patroclus. At best, we must call him a very secondary
personage. Though his personal comeliness was not defaced like that
of Paris by cowardice or vice, still he was of the same race that in
Italy has taken its name from Zerbino. Yet Homer adorns his death with
a notice, perhaps more conspicuous than any which he has attached to
the death of any warriors of the Iliad, with the exceptions of Hector,
Sarpedon, and Patroclus. Ten of the most beautiful lines of the poem
are bestowed in lamenting him, chiefly by an unsurpassed simile, which
compares the youth to a tender olive shoot, the victim, when its
blossoms are overcharged with moisture, of a sudden hurricane. The Poet
was moved to this tenderness by the remembrance of his beauty, of his
hair, like the hair of the Graces, in its tresses bound with golden and
silver clasps[758].
[758] Il. xvii. 50-60. Compare the sympathizing account of the death of
the _young_ bridegroom Iphidamas (Il. xi. 241-3).
~_Beauty placed among the prime gifts._~
Although it is true that Homer eschews with respect to beauty, as well
as in other matters, the didactic mode of conveying his impressions,
yet he has placed them distinctly on record in the answer of Ulysses to
Euryalus. Speaking not at all of women, but of men, he places the gift
of personal beauty among the prime endowments that can be received from
the providence of the gods, in a rank to which only two other gifts are
admitted, namely, the power of thought (νόος or φρένες), and the power
of speech (ἀγορητύς). In the idea of personal beauty, conveyed under
the names εἶδος, μορφὴ, and χάρις, evidently included vigour and power,
for it is to his supposed incapacity for athletic exercises[759], that
the discourse has reference. Nor can it be said, that this full and
large appreciation by Homer of the value of bodily excellence, was
simply a worldly or a pagan, as opposed to a Christian, view.
[759] Od. viii. 167-77.
It is not true, on the one hand, that when we cease to entertain
sufficiently elevated views of the destiny and prerogatives of the
soul, our standard for the body rises either in proportion or at all.
Nor is it true, on the other, that when we think highly of the soul,
we ought in consequence to think meanly of the body, which is both its
tabernacle and its helpmate. In truth, a somewhat sickly cast seems
to have come over our tone of thought now for some generations back,
the product, perhaps, in part of careless or emasculated teaching
in the highest matters, and due also in part to the overcrowding of
the several functions of our life. But Homer distinctly realized to
himself what we know faintly or scarce at all, though nothing is more
emphatically or conspicuously taught by our religion, namely, that the
body is part and parcel of the integer denominated man.
But the quality of measure ran in rare proportion through all the
conceptions of the Poet. Stature was a great element of beauty in the
view of the ancients for women as well as for men: and their admiration
of tallness, even in women, is hardly restrained by a limit. But
Homer, who frequently touches the point, has provided a limit. Among
the Læstrygonians, the women are of enormous size. Two of the crew of
Ulysses, sent forward to make inquiries, are introduced to the queen.
They find her ‘as big as a mountain,’ and are disgusted at her[760]:
[760] Od. x. 112.
τὴν δὲ γυναῖκα
εὗρον ὅσην τ’ ὄρεος κορυφὴν, κατὰ δ’ ἔστυγον αὐτήν.
The large humanity of Homer is also manifested, among other signs, by
his sympathy with high qualities in the animal creation. There is no
passage of deeper pathos in all his works, not Andromache with her
child, not Priam before Achilles, than that which recounts the death
of the dog Argus[761]. The words too are so calm and still, they seem
to grow faint and fainter, each foot of the verse falls as if it were
counting out the last respirations, and, in effect, we witness that
last slight and scarcely fluttering breath, with which life is yielded
up:
[761] Od. xvii. 327.
Ἄργον δ’ αὖ κατὰ Μοῖρ’ ἔλαβεν μέλανος θανάτοιο,
αὐτίκ’ ἰδόντ’ Ὀδυσῆα, ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ.
We may also trace the same sympathy in minor forms. As, for
instance, where he says Telemachus went to the Ithacan assembly not
unattended[762]:
[762] Od. ii. 10.
βῆ ῥ’ ἴμεν εἰς ἀγορὴν, παλάμῃ δ’ ἔχε χάλκεον ἔγχος,
οὐκ οἶος.
We are certainly prepared to hear that some adviser, either divine or
at the least human, some friend or faithful servant, was by his side:
but no--it is simply that some dogs went with him:
ἅμα τῷγε κύνες πόδας ἀργοὶ ἕποντο.
There is no sign, however, that Homer attached the peculiar idea of
beauty to the race of dogs in any remarkable degree. Indeed, it is only
in certain breeds that the dog can be called by comparison a beautiful
animal. What he always commends is their swiftness; and Homer’s ideas
of beauty were nowhere more lively than in regard to motion. But we see
the Poet’s feeling for form much more characteristically displayed in
the case to which we shall now proceed.
~_Beauty in animals, especially horses._~
Among other inferences which the poems raise in respect to Homer
himself, it can hardly be doubted that he was a great lover of horses,
and felt their beauty, partially in colour, much more in form, and in
movement most of all.
This was quite in keeping with the habits of his country and his race.
Both the Trojans and the Greeks appear not only to have employed horses
in such uses as war, journeys, races, and agricultural labour, but to
have given attention to developing the breeds and points of the animal.
In his Catalogue, Homer, at the close, invokes the Muse to inform him
which were the best of the horses, as well as of the heroes, on the
Greek side. He constantly uses epithets both for Trojans and Greeks
connected with their successful care and training of the animal:
εὔιππος, εὔπωλος, ταχύπωλος, ἱππόδαμος.
He not only treasures the traditions connected with the animal, but
treats them as a part of history. Accordingly, when Diomed desires
Sthenelus to make sure of the horses of Æneas he carefully proceeds to
state, that it is because their sires were of the race that Jupiter
gave to Tros. To them Anchises, without the knowledge of their owner
Laomedon, brought his own mares, and so obtained a progeny of six:
of whom he kept four himself, and gave two to his son Æneas (Il. v.
265-73) that he might take them to Troy.
Nay he goes back further yet: where, except in Homer, should we find a
tradition like that of the mares of Erichthonius, fetched from a time
five generations before his subject? Their children had Boreas for
their sire. Three thousand mothers ranged over the plains of the Troad,
and made their lord the wealthiest of men. So light was their footstep,
that if they skimmed the sea it touched the tips only of the curling
foam; and if they raced over the cornfield, the ripe ears sustained
their tread without one being broken[763].
[763] Il. xx. 220-9.
~_As to movement, form, and colour._~
In other places Homer describes with no less of sympathetic emotion the
vivid and fiery movements of the animal. The most remarkable of all is
the noble simile of the stall-kept horse, whom every reader seems to
see as with proud head and flowing mane, when he feels his liberty, he
scours the boundless pastures.
That adaptation, or effort at adaptation, of sound to sense, which with
poets in general (always excepting especially Dante and Shakespeare,)
is a sign that they have applied their whole force to careful
elaboration, is with Homer only a proof of a fuller and deeper flow
of his sympathies: wherever we find it, we may be sure that his whole
heart is in the passage. In this very simile how admirable is the
transition from the fine stationary verse that describes the charger’s
customary bathe,
εἰωθὼς λούεσθαι ἐϋρρεῖος ποταμοῖο,
to his rapid and easy bounding over the plain, when every dactyl marks
a spring[764];
[764] Il. vi. 511.
ῥίμφα ἑ γοῦνα φέρει μετά τ’ ἤθεα καὶ νόμον ἵππων.
For this adaptation of metre to sense in connection with the movement
of horses, we may take another example. To describe Agamemnon dealing
destruction among the routed Trojans on foot, we have a line and a half
of somewhat accelerated but by no means very rapid movement[765];
[765] Il. xi. 158.
ὣς ἄρ’ ὑπ’ Ἀτρείδῃ Ἀγαμέμνονι πῖπτε κάρηνα
Τρώων φευγόντων.
But when he comes to the Trojan horses in their flight, we have two
lines, dactylic to the utmost extent that the metre will allow, except
in one half-foot;
πολλοὶ δ’ ἐριαύχενες ἵπποι
κείν’ ὄχεα κροτάλιζον ἀνὰ πτολέμοιο γεφύρας,
ἡνιόχους ποθέοντες ἀμύμονας.
Then, coming back to the dead charioteers, he visibly slackens again;
οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ γαίῃ
κείατο, γύπεσσιν πολὺ φίλτεροι ἢ ἀλόχοισιν.
To exhibit numerically the relative distribution of times in these
members of the sentence, we have these three very different proportions;
In the first, 13 long syllables to 8 short.
In the second, 16 long syllables to 22 short.
In the third, 11 long syllables to 10 short.
He has imparted much of the same glowing movement to the speech,
which in the Nineteenth Iliad is assigned to the Immortal horses of
Achilles; though the subject includes a reference to the death of their
master[766]. In nearly every line, throughout the passage, that relates
to their own motion, the number of dactyls is at the maximum, and in
the ten lines there are eighty-six short syllables to sixty long ones;
a proportion, which I doubt our finding elsewhere in Homer, except it
be among the similes, to which Homer seems in many cases to give a
peculiarly elastic prosodial movement.
[766] Il. xix. 408-17.
Rhesus, king of the Thracians, who arrives at Troy after the
commencement of the Wrath, becomes sufficiently distinguished for the
central point of interest in the Doloneia, by virtue chiefly of his
horses. They are the most beautiful, says Dolon, and the largest that
I have ever seen[767];
[767] Il. x. 437.
λευκότεροι χιόνος, θείειν δ’ ἀνέμοισιν ὁμοῖοι.
The justice of this panegyric is corroborated by the emphatic
expression of Nestor, who pronounces them,
αἰνῶς ἀκτίνεσσιν ἐοικότες ἠελίοιο·
and their unparalleled excellence forms the subject of the speech of
the old king, on the return of Ulysses and Diomed to the camp[768].
[768] Il. x. 544-53.
It is not only, however, in elaborate pictures that Homer shows his
feeling for horses, but also, and not less markedly, in minor touches.
Does he not speak with the manifest feeling of a skilled admirer of the
animal, when he describes the pair driven by Eumelus, rapid as birds,
the same in shade of colour, the same in years, the same to a hair’s
breadth in height across their backs[769]?
[769] Il. ii. 764.
ποδώκεας, ὄρνιθας ὣς,
ὄτριχας, οἰέτεας, σταφύλῃ ἐπὶ νῶτον ἐΐσας.
Again, we are met by the same feeling which, in a bolder flight, made
the horses of Rhesus weep, when Pandarus falls headlong from the
chariot of Æneas, and his arms rattle over him in death. The horses,
instead of plunging or starting off, with a finer feeling tremble by
the corpse[770];
[770] Il. v. 295.
παρέτρεσσαν δέ οἱ ἵπποι
ὠκύποδες.
We may trace the same disposition, under a lighter and more amusing
form, in what had already passed between Æneas and Pandarus. Pandarus
had excused himself for not having brought a chariot and horses to
Troy, on account of his fears about finding forage for them where
such crowds were to be gathered into a small space; at the same time
describing, rather boastfully, his father Lycaon’s eleven carriages
with a pair for each. (Il. v. 192-203.) Æneas replies by inviting him
into his chariot when he will see what Trojan horses are like. Then, he
continues, do you fight, and I will drive; or, as you may choose, do
you drive, and I will fight. Pandarus immediately replies, that Æneas
had better by all means be the driver of his own horses.
Then again, Homer will have the utmost care taken of them; and, so to
speak, he looks to it himself. When he describes them as unemployed, he
specifies their food; those of Achilles during the Wrath stand[771],
[771] Il. ii. 776.
λωτὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι ἐλεόθρεπτόν τε σέλινον.