_Some principal Homeric characters in Troy._
_Hector: Helen: Paris._
To one only among the countless millions of human beings has it been
given to draw characters, by the strength of his own individual hand,
in lines of such force and vigour, that they have become, from his
day to our own, the common inheritance of civilized man. That one is
Homer. Ever since his time, besides finding his way into the usually
impenetrable East, he has provided literary capital and available stock
in trade for reciters and hearers, for authors and readers of all times
and of all places within the limits of the Western world;
Adjice Mæoniden, a quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
Like the sun, which furnishes with its light the close courts and
alleys of London, while himself unseen by their inhabitants, Homer has
supplied with the illumination of his ideas millions of minds that were
never brought into direct contact with his works, and even millions
more, that have hardly been aware of his existence. As the full flow of
his genius has opened itself out into ten thousand irrigating channels
by successive subdivision, there can be no cause for wonder, if some
of them have not preserved the pellucid clearness of the stream. Like
blood from the great artery of the heart of man, as it returns through
innumerable veins, it is gradually darkened in its flow. The very
universality of the tradition has multiplied the causes of corruption.
That which, as to documents, is a guarantee, because their errors
correct one another, as to ideas is a new source of danger, because
every thing depends upon constant reference to the finer touches of
an original, which has escaped from view. And this universality is his
alone. An Englishman may pardonably think that his great rival in the
portraiture of character is Shakespeare--a Briton may even go further,
and challenge, on behalf of Sir Walter Scott, a place in this princely
choir, second to no other person but these. Yet the fame of Hamlet,
Othello, Lady Macbeth, or Falstaff, and much more that of Varney, or
Ravenswood, or Caleb Balderston, or Meg Merrilies, has not yet come,
and may never come, to be a world-wide fame. On the other hand, that
distinction has long been inalienably secured to every character of the
first class, who appears in the Homeric poems. He has conferred upon
them a deathless inheritance.
But, through waywardness and infirmity, mankind corrupts that with
which it sympathizes, and undermines what it obeys. The same law of
waste and decomposition, which from day to day corrodes the works of
nature, operates also in divers manners and degrees upon the creations
of mind. As the portraitures of individual character, to be found in
the works of the great masters of the imaginative faculty, are among
the very highest of these creations, so, because they are the greatest,
they are the most difficult to render into other forms, and to
transfuse through new media. Among the ancient sculptures it is easier
to find a good Faun than a good Venus, while again those works, which
embody the very highest ideals, are not only rare, but are in most
instances unique. In like manner the Punch and the Harlequin, the broad
characters of primitive spectacle and farce, readily become national,
and are transmitted, spontaneously as it were, through ages without
substantial change; but the finer and nobler representations of man,
requiring greater effort, and a different order of mind to comprehend,
as well as to project them, rapidly degenerate in the very points on
which their peculiar excellence depends.
Other causes, besides mental impotence in the recipient, contribute
towards this result. One main agent is, the inability or the
disinclination of mankind to go back to originals. For the mass, a
modernizing process is commonly in demand, is readily furnished,
and is itself again and again varied from age to age. It is always
easier to derive from what is itself derivative, than to go up to
the fountain-head. Into the business of every profession, including
(now more than ever) that of letters, necessity drives her adamantine
clamps: and the βάναυσον and the φορτικὸν, or slang and the clap-trap,
maintain a too successful struggle to depress its higher and more
genial aims.
~_Causes of injury to Homeric characters._~
It is not difficult to point out reasons why the characters of Homer
should have been peculiarly exposed to injury from the lapse of time.
Most of all from two causes; because they were of such extraordinary
and refined merit, and because of the form in which they were conveyed.
Not only did they bear the stamp that the highest genius alone could
affix, but nothing less than care, sympathy, and manly effort, could
enable men to comprehend them. For they were not exhibited in the set
forms of descriptive passages, which might be learnt by rote, but they
were wrought out in the fine, as well as deep and strong lines of life
and action; and none of them could be defined in terms, until they had
first been profoundly felt within. We were to become acquainted with
them as friends, by living with them through their varied fortunes; not
as strangers, by some letter of introduction, that sets forth their
birth, parentage, calling, and qualifications. For earnest and hearty
attention they provided the richest possible reward; by the careless
they were to be enjoyed indeed, but scarcely to be apprehended. To
the eyes of such men there is little or nothing to discriminate, as
between Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomed, Menelaus, and Patroclus; and if Nestor
is a good deal older, Ulysses a good deal more cunning, and Achilles
even more valiant than the rest, a single touch disposes of these
differences, and enables us to reduce all the eight nearly to a common
type. A prior examination of particular instances will best prepare
us for weighing the force of those other causes, besides the weakness
of human nature, and the excellence of the works in the general sense
of the words, that contributed to depress and deface the Homeric
characters.
In the present Section, then, I propose to invite attention to a few
Homeric characters, as they stand in the poems, which, as far as I am
able to judge, stand in need as yet of further elucidation.
Perhaps there is no one particular in which Colonel Mure has rendered
such important service to the modern Homeridæ, as in his account of
the Homeric characters. In general, I shall best discharge my duty by
simply referring the reader to his pages. I venture, however, to think,
that while the paramount subject of the great Grecian characters is
incomparably handled by him throughout, some exception may be taken to
his representation of a part of the Trojan personages; of Hector, for
example, and more particularly (if she may be placed in this class) of
Helen. At least, I presume to regard some of them as fairly capable of
being presented in another light, and I shall proceed at once to make
the attempt with Hector.
~_Relation of Orlando to Hector._~
I. ‘In the character of this hero,’ says Mure, ‘good and evil
are so curiously blended that it is hard to say which element
predominates[974].’ Is there not a different view of the composition of
qualities, which Mure has thus placed in equipoise?
[974] Character of Hector, Lit. Greece, vol. i. p. 347.
It is indeed eminently true, as in the same place he proceeds to
observe, that in order to maintain what may be called the conventional
balance, or stage-equality, which was necessary in order to give
interest to his poem, Homer has magnified the prowess of Hector, in
general terms, as of the highest transcendental order: but that in
actual achievement he is greatly surpassed by the leading Greek heroes.
Indeed, in many places of the Iliad it even seems questionable, whether
Hector is a hero at all.
How successful Homer’s art has been in thus paying off the Trojan
champion with generalities, while he nevertheless reserved the true
palm of military virtue to his own countrymen, we may, perhaps, best
judge from considering the effect which the picture has had upon the
poets of Italy, and upon European opinion at large, in more recent
times. With the former, the name of Hector seems to be the prime type
of the heroic character. Thus Tasso celebrates--
‘Il buon Foresto, dell’ Italia Ettorre[975].’
[975] Ger. xvii. 69.
And further. Beyond the Alps, Orlando was the prime warrior or
protagonist, as well as the finest character, of the mediæval romance,
until it was modified by Ariosto, whose courtly object it was to
elevate Ruggiero above him. But with the poets who followed Ariosto,
Ruggiero seems to have been put by as an interpolation, and Orlando
to have resumed his paramount place. Now the character of Orlando
is plainly modelled upon the traditional idea of Hector, with the
Christian element attached to and pervading it. That Hector was thus
chosen, in preference to Achilles or any Greek hero, may be owing,
among other causes, to these. First, that the Roman poets, Virgil
especially, had taught Italians to look to Troy as the cradle of their
grandeur. Secondly, that the character of Hector, from the large
infusion into it of moral and of passive ingredients, was better fitted
for coalescing with the Christian ideas. And thirdly, that, as the
part assigned to Italian patriotism in the middle ages was commonly
defensive, in this point also Hector offered a more appropriate model.
There is more, however, to observe; for it may be thought that, among
the Trojans, Æneas would have offered a better groundwork for Italian
poets. But here we may remark how the genuine and masculine birth
outlives the spurious. The natural Hector of Homer thrust aside the
pale and sickly automaton of the Æneid, even in Italy, its adopted
country. The latter was so artificial and effete, that it would not
even bear copying: the former had a foundation in truth, upon which the
structure of exaggeration could be reared. Thus Hector became, after
two thousand years, the central power of a new and splendid literature.
But when we turn back to the verse of Homer, and put together the
evidence in the case piece by piece, surprise is excited by the
contrast between the pretensions of Hector, having its basis in general
descriptions and in the later tradition, on the one side, and on the
other the actual performances, in the Iliad itself, of the Trojan
champion. First, there is Achilles, his known superior; of whom, as
a warrior, he comes within no measurable distance. But besides this,
he suffers virtual defeat at the hands, once of Diomed, and twice
of Ajax; glaringly as to the former, and not doubtfully as to the
latter: for though the first battle is interrupted, and is taken for
a drawn one, yet Ajax has had the best of it at every point, and,
while the Trojans are too happy upon the mere escape of his opponent
without bodily harm, Homer carries him to the tent of Agamemnon
rejoicing in his victory (κεχαρηότα νίκῃ[976]). It is yet more worthy
of note, that Hector is never permitted in actual fight to overcome
any one considerable Greek. In the case of Patroclus, the Poet has
even laid this fact much too barely open; for he makes Hector little,
if anything, more than the mere executioner of death upon an unarmed
man. Menelaus, who stood in what we may call the third rank of Grecian
heroes, is indeed, on one occasion, withdrawn from conflict with him,
as being too greatly inferior to risk the fight; but the conflict for
the body of Patroclus[977] is so contrived as to show even this prince
holding the field with success in despite of the Trojan chief; and,
during the absence of Achilles and Patroclus from the contest, no less
than nine other Greek warriors offer themselves to meet him in single
combat[978].
[976] Il. vii. 312.
[977] Ibid. 109.
[978] Ibid. 161.
The greatest exploit of Hector, in the whole Iliad, is the bursting
open of the gates of the Greek rampart[979]. But if we compare this
with the feat of Sarpedon, who had just before opened a breach by
tearing down the battlement[980], we must give a decided preference to
the Lycian hero; for he performs his achievement in the teeth of Ajax
and Teucer, who are on the spot; while there is not a single Greek
commander present when Hector breaks through the gates. The comparative
feebleness of Hector’s military character is, however, most pointedly
shown in the Eleventh Book, when Jupiter determines to give effect
to the decision that honour shall be done to him[981]. In the first
place, he receives a friendly warning to keep out of the way as long
as Agamemnon remains on the field. He accordingly enters the battle
only when Agamemnon has retired; but he is forthwith driven out of it
by Diomed[982]. When he again returns to it, the Greeks under Machaon
baffle all his efforts, until that very secondary chieftain has been
disabled by an arrow from the bow of Paris[983]. And according to all
human appearances, the Trojans must have been defeated and shut up in
the city by the Greeks even without Achilles, such was the superiority
of Achæan arms, had not Homer called in the inferior agency of
stones and arrows to wound three of the four chief remaining Grecian
warriors, namely Diomed, Agamemnon, and Ulysses; besides Eurypylus and
Machaon[984].
[979] Il. xii. 445-71.
[980] Ib. 392-407.
[981] Il. xi. 186-90.
[982] Il. xi. 349-67.
[983] Ib. 502-7.
[984] Ib. 660.
The only occasion when Hector comes out as a really great and gallant
warrior is that one when he is certain to be, and is accordingly,
worsted by the overpowering might and divine arms of Achilles. For
here Homer could safely give him ample scope without endangering or
obscuring the fame of that hero, to whom, with art never surpassed,
he has given an immeasurable, but yet not a forced or unnatural,
preeminence.
~_Hector second-rate as a hero._~
The place of Hector, then, as a fighting hero, is certainly no more
than second-rate; but so far, I venture to think, is Homer from having
almost equally weighted in his character the scales of good and evil
respectively, that, with the exception of his boastfulness, it is hard
to fasten on him so much as a single fault. This boastfulness, and the
disproportion between pretension and performance, is not altogether
confined to him, but extends in some measure to the other Trojan
warriors, except Sarpedon; for example, to Polydamas, Æneas, and Paris.
Some of the best Greeks too, particularly Diomed, are touched with
it[985]. And perhaps, in our more elaborated and artificial condition
of society, we are not quite fair judges how far this practice, which
may seem to stand in sharp contrast with the prevailing modesty of
the Homeric heroes, may have been with them not a substitute for,
but a kind of embellishment and auxiliary to, their strength of soul
and hand. With us it is justly suspected of implying a tendency to
fall short in performance: with them it may have appertained to that
straightforwardness in the expression of inward emotions, which made
them (for example) weep so freely whenever the chord of sorrow was
touched within them.
[985] Il. vi. 127.
So conspicuous is this quality, says Mure, that the name of the Trojan
chief is to this day synonymous in our own tongue with ‘bluster’ or
‘swagger[986].’ But it is remarkable that the very same thing has
happened in the case of the word ‘rodomontade,’ which is derived from
Rodomonte, the most powerful, next to Ruggiero, of all the heroes of
the Furioso. This circumstance seems to make probable, what, without
it, would be only possible, namely, that we misconstrue the phrases;
and that, according to the true meaning, a rodomontader is a man
passing himself off for a Rodomonte: and one who hectors is a man
falsely pretending to be a Hector.
[986] Mure, i. 352.
Another very high authority, Lord Grenville, intimately acquainted with
the poems of Homer, supplies a marked example of the blinding force
of literary traditions. For in his ‘Nugæ Metricæ[987],’ he says: ‘A
hectoring fellow is ... strangely distorted in its use to express a
meaning almost the opposite of its original.’ And he adds in a note:
‘The Hector of Homer unites, we know,
[987] p. 85.
The mildest manners with the bravest mind.’
The disposition of the Trojan chief to brag is, however, the more
offensive, because it vents itself so much in the first person
singular; because in the case of Patroclus it seems to be associated
with an act at least unmanly; and because upon many occasions Hector
shows even more than a prudential regard to his personal safety.
What is more strange is, that his ordinary strain of boasting is
chequered with passages of more genuine modesty and humility than are
to be found in the speech of any other chieftain on either side. As for
example, when he acknowledges his marked inferiority to Achilles;
οἶδα δ’ ὅτι σὺ μὲν ἐσθλὸς, ἐγὼ δὲ σέθεν πολὺ χείρων[988].
[988] Il. xx. 434.
But above all, in the incomparable verse of his prayer over his infant
son;
καὶ ποτέ τις εἴπῃ, πατρός γ’ ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων[989].
[989] Il. vi. 479.
~_Hector’s moral character._~
Homer is of all poets the most free from any thing that can be called
trick; but perhaps it may be that the same necessity of his position,
which obliged him to magnify Trojan prowess in words, while it falls so
short in deeds, has found its way from the narrative into the dramatic
part of the poem. If so, then in Hector’s boasts we may recognise Homer
working out his own general purpose rather than conforming with perfect
fidelity to tradition, or finishing an ideally perfect portrait with
the power and exactitude, which he has applied to his greater Grecian
heroes. Yet, be the cause what it may that has led Homer to exhibit in
Hector the disagreeable gift of a bragging disposition, Mure appears to
show less than his usual precision when he ascribes to Hector in one
place a partial[990], and in another a total, indifference to the moral
guilt of his brother Paris.
[990] Vol. i. pp. 349, 60.
Whatever may be the reason, the fact undoubtedly is, that neither on
the Trojan, nor even on the Greek side, do we find displayed such a
sense of the shameful crime of Paris as we might have anticipated
from a first view of the manners and feelings of the age. As far as
regards the Poet himself, we may read his indignant sense of it in
the portraiture he has been careful to give of Paris himself, and of
his ill fame among his countrymen; but, undoubtedly, although his act
is everywhere described as the cause of war, it is nowhere spoken of,
among those who had suffered by it, with the passion and indignation
which we might suppose it would have aroused. Of all the Greeks,
only Menelaus alludes to it as an act of guilt. Various causes may
be assigned for this with more or less confidence. A probable one
is, as we have seen[991], that the act partook of the character of
an abduction or rape, in which enterprise and force gild or hide the
ugly features of crime. An unpopular form of criminality might then,
as now, come off the more easily from being covered by another which
is popular. It also without doubt appears, that another reason may be
the length of time which, in any view of the case, must have elapsed
since the act had taken place. But perhaps the solution of the question
is to be mainly found in this consideration, common to modern with
ancient times, that the causes of war are apt to be swallowed up in
its circumstances. In entering upon the arbitrement of the sword, men
do not choose a fixed position, but they embark upon a stream, always
powerful and often ungovernable. When once the armament was on the
shores of the Hellespont, there would be on both sides the motive of
military honour, and, besides this, with the Trojans, the defence of
their families and homes, with the Greeks the hope of plunder and of
license. Hence, even after the Greeks are weakened and discouraged by
the secession of Achilles, it is not from them, but from the Trojans,
that a proposal proceeds for deciding the case of Helen by single
combat. Hence, upon the shameful escape of Paris from fulfilling this
engagement, after his defeat by Menelaus, we find little expression of
indignation on one side, and no confession of wrong on the other. But
the criticism of Mure seems to amount to this; that it was a capital
fault on the part of Hector, not to have his mind constantly full of a
question, which was rarely thought of at all by any one on either side,
except Paris and Menelaus, the persons most directly interested.
[991] See sup. Ilios, pp. 196-205.
It is plain, however, that Homer has represented Hector as keenly
feeling and resenting, not only his brother’s cowardice, but his
sensuality. Twice does he address him as mad with lust, and as a
deceiver of women[992]: out of his five speeches addressed to Paris,
only one is not reproachful; and in the only one which extends beyond
a few lines he barbs his reproaches on the score of cowardice by fully
setting forth his guilt, both morally and as towards his country, in
that, being a coward, he was also a ravisher[993]. The charge, however,
also takes a more specific form. We see that Hector was greatly
delighted, ἐχάρη μέγα when his rebuke[994] had stirred up Paris to
offer to stake the whole issue on a single combat with Menelaus. But
it is said, why, when the battle had been lost, did not Hector enforce
the terms of the bargain? The answer seems to be this. We stand here
at a juncture in the poem, where its theurgy supersedes its human
mechanism. It is presumable that this very thing was about to be done,
when the order of events was interrupted by the counsel of the gods.
Agamemnon had at the close of the Third Book in due course demanded
Helen. Jupiter immediately apprehended the consequences; he saw that if
faith were kept, Achilles would neither be avenged nor glorified; and
he accordingly invited the assembly on Olympus to determine, whether
Helen should be rendered back or not. When this had been settled in
the negative, the question was how to prevent it; and it was done, on
the suggestion of Juno, by causing Pandarus to renew the war without
the privity of Hector. This shows pretty clearly that the restoration
of Helen was about to take place, had not the gods interfered; and
therefore amply suffices to relieve Hector from reproach, who, it may
be observed, takes no part until, when the armies have been long in
conflict, he has been stung by the reproaches of Sarpedon (v. 493).
If censure be due to the arrangement, it must be lodged against the
Poet, and not against one of his personages, who simply does not appear
because there is no part for him to play.
[992] Il. iii. 39 and xiii. 769.
[993] Il. iii. 46-51.
[994] Ib. 76.
~_His responsibilities beyond his strength._~
Let us now proceed to a somewhat more general view of the character of
Hector.
He occupies in the Homeric tradition a place altogether peculiar,
as, at the time of the poem, the sole eminently warlike member of an
unwarlike family; as the general of a divided and incongruous army; and
as singly responsible in chief for the safety of his country, while he
has not been invested with the dignity and power of king. As to the
first of these points, we have the direct testimony of Homer:
οἶος γὰρ ἐρύετο Ἴλιον Ἕκτωρ[995].
[995] Il. vi. 403.
Of his brothers, Deiphobus alone is represented as in any degree
deserving or sharing his confidence. Of his relatives, Polydamas
appears to have been a rival in the council, Æneas in the succession to
political supremacy: and these were the two most considerable persons
of the class. It has, I conceive, been shown to be probable, that
Paris was his senior[996]; and that he held his place in Troy by merit
against age. His uneasy relations with his allies might be inferred
from their constituting the great bulk of his force, even were they
not more distinctly betokened by the reproach of Sarpedon, and by the
speech in which he himself enters on the subject. Together with his
power over the army, he had the virtual charge of the safety of the
state, and we see signs of his influence there; but yet he did not
direct the policy of Troy: for the only important measure, which is
recorded as having been taken by the Trojans, namely the rejection of
the proposals of Antenor to give back Helen to the Greeks, was taken in
his absence and without his knowledge. Thus we see in Hector’s case,
abundantly accumulated, the elements of a false position. And, in a
word, in order to estimate his character aright, we must keep in full
view that inferiority of the Trojans, subjects not less than princes,
as respects political genius and organization, to which the Iliad, when
carefully examined, bears ample testimony.
[996] Ilios, pp. 219-23.
Under the weight of public charge, as Agamemnon in the Greek camp, so,
and yet more, Hector on the Trojan side, appears to reel; so, and yet
more; for, in Hector’s case, political power is crippled by his not
being in actual possession of the supreme station, while responsibility
is edged and enhanced by his being not only the head to devise, but
also the right hand to execute. In neither of the two, however, do we
find strong will, definiteness, and constancy of purpose, or unfailing
courage. But Agamemnon has the advantage of both wiser counsels around
him, and stronger arms than his own near his side. Hector has little
aid. Sarpedon alone of the Trojan commanders (for Æneas really does
nothing) can be called a warrior of note; and his inferiority to
Patroclus, notwithstanding his thorough gallantry, is decorated rather
than hidden by the stage machinery of divine consultations on the
subject of his death. But as Sarpedon in the field plays a part much
inferior to the corresponding one of Diomed or Ajax, so Polydamas,
the Nestor of the Trojans, is not equal to his kindly and genial
counterpart. Four times he gives his counsel in the field. Twice he
prefaces it with personal imputations (xii. 211, and xiii. 726); and
when, in the Twelfth Book (211), he recommends the abandonment of the
assault on the ships in deference to an omen, feeling and judgment are
alike on the side of Hector’s reply, who overturns his augury by the
known (though, as they proved, deceitful) counsels of Jupiter, and
emphatically pleads against doubtful signs the indubitable dictates of
patriotism.
~_His bright side in the affections._~
The prophetic gift, for whatever reason, is assigned pretty largely
by Homer to the Trojans. Without entering into the case of Cassandra,
it attaches to Helenus, and also (xii. 238) apparently to Polydamas,
who undertakes to interpret a sign. Hector himself had the weight of
prescience on his breast, for he tells Andromache[997] that he well
knows the day of ruin is at hand; and, when he is at the point of
death, he prognosticates the coming fate of Achilles. The concentrated
strain of his duties and his previsions is too much for the strength
of a character which, from the intellectual or dramatic point of view,
is impulsive, fluctuating, and unequal, and which must therefore
undoubtedly be set down as so far secondary. But when we pass from
intellect to moral tone, from διάνοια to ἦθος, we certainly find
in Hector one among the most touching, the most human, of all the
delineations of masculine character in the Iliad. In him alone has
Homer presented to us that most commanding and most moving combination,
of a woman’s gentleness and deep affection with warlike and heroic
strength. If the hand of Hector was far weaker than that of the son
of Peleus, the tempestuous griefs of Achilles do not open to us a
character nearly so attractive as the depth of the gentle affections
of Hector, and the mildness warmed into such brilliancy by his martial
fame. ‘Thy love to me was wonderful; passing the love of women[998].’
The constancy and tenacity of the attachments of Ulysses come out in
his relations to Penelope and Telemachus: but, dwelling harmoniously
in a character of far broader scope and more varied sensibilities, the
peculiar element of a tenderness matching that of woman is the only one
they do not contain. Hector is neither a warrior nor a statesman after
the primary, that is the Achæan, type: but for a model of intensity and
softness in the love of a father and a husband, it is to him that we
must repair, in the incomparable scene by the Scæan gate; incomparable,
unless we may compare it with that other scene, so near at hand, where
the sight of young Polydorus slain, piercing him to the heart, raised
him in his last hour to the heights of heroism; and where the interest
and sympathy, that he has attracted all along, are absorbed into
admiration of the real sublimity of that closing hour, when he resolved
to be for ever famous at least in his too certain death.
[997] Il. vi. 447.
[998] 2 Samuel i. 26.
Probably a main reason why Hector has become the groundwork of the
modern Orlando is, that no one of the Homeric heroes exhibits a
combination of qualities supplying so appropriate a basis for the
character of a Christian hero; a tone so sensibly approximating to
that of the gospel. Partly because of those acts of piety towards the
Immortals, which can hardly receive in the case of Hector any but a
favourable construction, and which drew down the all but unanimous
compassion of the Olympian assembly on his remains; but partly also,
and yet more, in that mild, just, and tender estimate of character,
which not only secured his constant gentleness of demeanour towards
Helen, but made him her protector against the acrimony of others, and
rendered him considerate and kind even to Paris[999], so soon as he saw
him disposed at length to be personally active in the mortal struggle
he had brought upon his country. There is, perhaps, no virtue more
especially Christian, than the temper which thus equitably and gently
makes allowances for human weakness, particularly if it be weakness by
the effects of which we ourselves have suffered.
[999] Il. vi. 521.
The employment, however, of Hector for the purposes of Christian poetry
has certainly had the effect of perverting for us the true Homeric
tradition. But, in order to understand this, we must throw aside the
Hector of our proverbs or our plays, travel back to the Iliad, and set
out anew from the starting-point of its great author. We must there
be content to take him not as a pure effort of imagination aimed at
the production of an ideal man, but as a part of the poem of Homer,
subordinated like every other part of it to its main purpose, as well
as to the general laws of historical consistency. In modelling the
several heroes, he made the exigencies of his Hector yield to the
exigencies of his Achilles, who could have no real competitor. Nor,
with the fine characteristic sense he has everywhere shown of the
national differences between Greek and Trojan, could he build up his
Hector on the same foundations with his Greek heroes, or give him that
strength and tenacity of tissue which belongs to the European and
Achæan character. He could not equip him with either the dauntless
chivalry in battle, or the profound unswerving sagacity in council,
which were reserved for the kings of his own race, and for those most
nearly allied to them. He has imparted to the character of the chief
Trojan hero, no less than to that of the Trojan people at large, a
decided Asiatic tinge, which modifies their community of colour with
the properly European races. In such characters, instinct and sentiment
take oftentimes the place of inquiry and reflection, and impulse
does the work of conviction: the ideas of right, order, consistency,
moral dignity and self-respect, are less clearly, less symmetrically,
conceived. Though in particular cases, such as that of Hector, the
deficiency may be made up by a liberal and full development of the most
affectionate emotions, we feel, in comparing it with the Greeks, that
we are dealing with a more contracted type of manhood: as if morally,
no less than locally, we had gone back with Homer one full stage
nearer to the cradle of our race, and had arrested and fixed the human
character at the very point where it is neither child nor man.
~_Inequality of his character._~
The character of Hector, as it has been here interpreted, does not give
that satisfaction to the mind, which thorough clearness and oneness
would impart. His intellectual qualities and his affections are not
on the same scale; his martial character jars even with itself. Yet
perhaps in these very circumstances we may upon consideration find
but fresh reason to admire the skill of Homer, and that rarely erring
instinct which forbade him to forget his whole in running after his
details.
His first object seems to have been to give the fullest and boldest
prominence to the colossal shape, moral as well as physical, of
Achilles, and therefore to tone down whatever could diminish its
effect. And here the point of danger evidently lay in Agamemnon;
the chief of the army was too likely to be the chief of the poem.
Accordingly he has broken the unity of that character, and has
chequered it with weakness in various forms. But this was not all: he
had to keep the Greeks before the Trojans, as well as Achilles before
the Greeks; not only that he might consult his popularity, but that he
might indulge the genial vein of his poesy, and follow the impulses
of his patriotism, in maintaining high above all question their
intellectual and martial superiority. Had this, however, been all,
his task would have been easy; he would then have had only to depress
their opponents in all the properties that attract admiration. But if
he had simply done this, if he had cut off the interest and sympathies
of his readers from the Trojans by general disparagement, he would have
deprived Greek valour of its choicest crown. It is a noble necessity of
war that, even in the interest of countrymen, we cannot do injustice to
adversaries, without feeling the offence recoil on our own heads.
Thus it was impossible for Homer to make his Trojan hero at once great
and consistent; and if he has made Hector unequal, it was to avoid
making him mean. By chequering his martial daring with boastfulness,
and with occasional weakness of purpose, he has effectually provided
against any interference, from this quarter, to the prejudice of those
chieftains whose praises he was to sing in the courts and throngs of
Greece. Thus he has left the field quite clear for expatiating on their
military virtues; and if, for sufficient reasons, he has departed from
his rule in the case of Agamemnon, who receives his compensation in
superiority of rank and power, all his other Greek characters, bearing
forward parts in the poem, are constructed in faultless conformity to
the idea, or modification of an idea, which he had selected for the
basis of each. There is not a flaw in the picture of Achilles, Diomed,
Ajax, Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Not that all these are of a type
equally elevated, or alike wonderful; but that there is no one thing
in any of them which does not manifestly conform to its type, and no
one thing consequently which jars with any other. Having thus given to
his countrymen a clear and marked ascendancy in what then at least were
the only great and governing elements of human society, the strong
mind, and the strong hand, he does his best for the Trojans with what
remained, that is to say, with the softer affections of domestic life,
adding only so much of the martial element as was needful to make them
no discreditable adversaries for his countrymen. Thus, consistently
with all his poetic objects, he has been enabled to present us, to say
nothing of the highly respectable character of Hecuba, with the three
unsurpassed pictures of Priam, of Andromache, and perhaps even most, of
Hector.
~_The character of Helen._~
II. Let us now pass on to a production never surpassed by the mind or
hand of man.
The character of Argeian Helen occupies a large place in Grecian
history, and is of extreme importance to the entire structure of
the Iliad. On behalf of the first of these propositions, we call as
witnesses her temple at Sparta, and the Encomium of Isocrates. As to
the second, the reason is expressed in some of Homer’s noblest oratory:
τί δὲ δεῖ πολεμιζέμεναι Τρώεσσιν
Ἀργείους; τί δὲ λαὸν ἀνήγαγεν ἐνθάδ’ ἀγείρας
Ἀτρείδης; ἢ οὐχ Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’ ἠϋκόμοιο[1000];
[1000] Il. ix. 337.
Was she a vicious woman and a seductress, or was she more nearly a
victim and a penitent? Do the laws of poetical verisimilitude and
beauty, as they were understood by Homer, allow us to suppose that he
intended to represent his countrymen, of whom he has presented to us
so lofty a conception, as agitating the world, forsaking home, pouring
forth their blood, and throwing their country into certain confusion,
for the sake of a vile and worthless character? Certainly there were
periods, when in the Greek mind the worship of beauty was so thoroughly
dissociated from all which beauty ought to typify, that an Iliad so
constructed might have been approved. But these were periods long after
Homer’s flesh had mouldered in the grave.
The present inquiry has nothing to do with the opinion that Helen
was, or that she was not, an historical personage. For my own part, I
know of no reason except discrepancies of mere traditional chronology
for disbelieving her existence. These seem to arise entirely from
the practice of putting on a par with Homer tales of very inferior
authority to his. But even apart from this, considering what, under
ordinary circumstances, the chronology of pre-historic times is likely
to be, and how many more chances there are for the preservation of
great events in outline, than for a careful adjustment of their
relative times, I cannot but think that difficulties arising from
other legends as to Helen, and bearing simply upon time, form a very
insufficient reason for the wholesale rejection of belief in her
existence. Even if, however, she never existed at all, it still is not
one whit the less reasonably to be presumed, that Homer in fictions
concerning her would be governed here and elsewhere by all the laws,
including the moral laws, of his art.
Neither is it now the question, whether Helen was the model of an
heroic character. That is probably inconsistent, for the earliest
times of Greece, with her adulterous relation to Paris and afterwards
to Deiphobus. But there is a vast space between a faultless and a
worthless woman. The idea of Helen represented by the later tradition,
from the Greek tragedians downwards, is strictly the latter idea: and
this representation has naturally occupied the popular mind, which is
deprived of the power of access to the remote Homeric picture. Now
it seems to be plain that, if this representation be substantially
true, it is a great reproach to the bard of the Iliad as a bard, and
stamps him as one, who has done his best to poison morality at its
fountain-head. For there can be no question, that he has made his Helen
highly attractive, and that he intends her to possess our sympathies.
Is it then true, or is it false? Let us proceed to examine the evidence.
In the Iliad we meet more than once with the line,
τίσασθαι δ’ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε[1001]·
[1001] Il. ii. 356, 590.
and expositors, in order to avoid ascribing to Helen any personal
wrongs, or the representation of her as rather a sufferer than an
offender, have resorted to a forced construction of the passage, and
have interpreted the words as referring to the expedition undertaken,
and the griefs suffered, _on account of_ Helen[1002].
[1002] See Heyne on Il. ii. 356. G. C. Crusius (Hanover. 1845, on do.)
Chapman translates in the same sense; but Voss refers the outsetting
and the groans to Helen herself; so too the Scholiasts.
~_Homer’s intention with respect to it._~
Unless this forced construction be the one intended by Homer, the
popular conception of her must at once explode. According to the direct
and natural construction, the Greeks made war to avenge the wrong she
had suffered, and the groans which that wrong had drawn from her.
And it is to be observed that this line[1003] is put into the mouth
of Menelaus, whom it is very natural to represent as most eager to
avenge the wrongs of his wife, but somewhat far-fetched to represent
as thinking of revenge for the trouble of the expedition he had so
keenly promoted. The line, in fact, unless justifiably strained by
these expositors, is conclusive in support of the belief that the only
evil which can justly be imputed to the Homeric Helen simply amounts
to this, that she was not a woman of perfect virtue backed by absolute
and indomitable heroism. Pope has rather rudely approximated towards
rectifying the prevalent impression in a note[1004], where he observes
that in all she says of herself ‘there is scarce a word that is not big
with repentance and good nature.’
[1003] Il. ii. 590.
[1004] On Pope’s Il. iii. 165.
Before examining the direct evidence with respect to the Homeric Helen,
let us advert to some which is indirect. And in the first place it may
be observed, that Menelaus never expresses the slightest resentment
against her, or appears to have considered her as having in any manner
injured him. Next, Priam, whose character is evidently intended to
attract a good deal of our sympathy and respect, treated her as a
daughter:
ἑκυρὸς δὲ, πατὴρ ὣς, ἤπιος αἰεί[1005].
[1005] Il. xxiv. 770.
Nor was this a mere figure; for in the Third Book he addresses her as
φίλον τέκος[1006], and makes her sit down by his side. In conformity
with this picture, her sister-in-law Laodice addresses her as νύμφα
φίλη[1007]. Priam goes on to acquit her of all responsibility in his
eyes with regard to the war:
[1006] Il. iii. 162.
[1007] Ibid. 130.
οὔτι μοι αἰτίη ἐσσὶ, θεοί νύ μοι αἴτιοί εἰσιν.
And that this was not meant to cover Paris, we may learn from the many
passages, which show us how the general sentiment of Troy detested him.
Had Helen been of the character which is commonly imputed to her, such
an absolution as this would probably not have been ascribed to Priam;
while most certainly it would not have been recorded to the honour of
Hector that he always restrained those, who were disposed to taunt her
on account of the woes she had brought upon Troy[1008].
[1008] Il. xxiv. 768-72.
She describes herself indeed as the object of general horror in Troy
(πάντες δέ με πεφρίκασιν[1009]). But these words do no more than
state the impression, at a moment of agony, on her own humbled and
self-mistrusting mind: while, even had they given a faithful picture of
the manner in which she was regarded by the Trojans, still they might
well be explained with reference to the woes of which she had been at
least the occasion, and the sentiment they describe might as naturally
have been felt, even had she been the lawfully obtained wife of Paris.
[1009] Ibid. 775.
There are two other passages, which may seem at first sight to betoken
a state of mind adverse to her among the Greeks. But the explanation
of them is simply this, that the cause of woe is naturally enough
denounced on account of the misfortunes it has entailed, irrespective
of the question whether or in what degree it may be a guilty
cause[1010]. Thus Achilles calls Helen ῥιγεδάνη, ‘that horrible Helen;’
but it is only when her abduction has produced to him the bitter and
harrowing affliction of the death of Patroclus. When he mentions her
in the magnificent speech of the Ninth Book to the envoys, she is
Ἑλένη ἠΰκομος, ‘the fair-haired Helen.’ Now, if she had been vile, the
course of his argument must have constrained him then to state it. For
he was reasoning thus: May I not resent the loss of Briseis, who was
dear to me (θυμαρής[1011]), when the sons of Atreus have made their
loss of Helen the cause of the war? Had Helen been worthless, it would
have added greatly to the stringency of his argument to have drawn the
contrast in that particular, between the woman whom Agamemnon had taken
away, and the woman that he was seeking, by means of the convulsive
struggle of a nation, to recover.
[1010] Il. xvi.
[1011] Il. ix. 336.
The other passage is in Od. xxiii., where Penelope, after the
recognition of her husband, speaks of Helen in these words:--
τὴν δ’ ἤτοι ῥέξαι θεὸς ὤρορεν ἔργον ἀεικές[1012].
[1012] Od. xxiii. 222.
But even in this only passage where the act of Helen is so described,
several points are to be observed. First, it is referred to a
preternatural influence, which is not the manner of this Poet in cases
at least of deep and deliberate crime; secondly, no epithet of infamy
is applied to her; thirdly, we must observe the drift of the speaker.
Penelope is excusing herself to Ulysses, for her own extreme caution
and reserve in admitting his identity. Therefore she is naturally led
to enhance the dreadful nature of the occurrence where a wife gives
herself over into the power of any man, other than one known to be
her husband; and this, whether the act be voluntary or involuntary.
Accordingly she refers to the act of Helen rather than to the agent,
and treats it as horrible; but avoids charging it as wilful.
~_Homer’s Epithets for Helen._~
On the other hand, we may observe that the general tenour of the
epithets bestowed upon Helen leans on the whole towards the laudatory
sense.