εὐπατέρεια, the high-born; Il. vi. 292; Od. xxii. 227; most probably
agreeing in sense with the next phrase.
Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα, the child of Jupiter; Il. iii. 199; _et alibi_.
κούρη Διὸς, the daughter of Jupiter; Il. iii. 426.
δῖα γυναικῶν, the excellent, or flower of women; Il. iii. 171, 228;
and Od. iv. 305; xv. 106.
καλλιπάρῃος, of the beautiful cheeks; Od. xv. 123.
καλλίκομος; Od. xv. 58; ἠΰκομος; Il. iii. 329, _et alibi_, the
fair-haired.
λευκώλενος, the white-armed; Il. iii. 121; Od. xxii. 227.
τανύπεπλος, the well-rounded; Il. iii. 228; _et alibi_.
And lastly, Ἀργείη, the Argive; Il. ii. 161; and in no less than
twelve other places.
No one of these appellations carries the smallest taint or censure.
The epithet δῖα in all probability applies to her personal beauty and
majesty, as we find it used of Paris and of Clytemnestra. It would
appear, however, that the use of the term Argive or Argeian, in many
passages where it is not required for mere description, has a special
force. For Homer never exhibits that which is simply Greek in any other
than an honourable light; and in calling Helen Argeian, he certainly
expresses something of general sympathy towards her. No other person,
except only Juno, is called Argeian. Plainly the effect of his epithets
for her as a whole is quite out of harmony with the ideas, which the
later tradition has attached to her name. A yet more marked indication
in her favour, than any of them taken singly will supply, may be
derived from his likening her, in the palace of Menelaus, to Diana:
ἤλυθεν, Ἀρτέμιδι χρυσηλακάτῳ εἰκυῖα[1013].
[1013] Od. iv. 122.
He certainly would not have associated by this comparison one, of whom
he meant us to think ill, with the chaste and even severe majesty of
his ever-pure Diana (Ἄρτεμις ἁγνή).
So much with regard to the designations applied to Helen in the Iliad
and Odyssey. Next, with regard to her demeanour. It is admitted to be,
so far as the matter of chastity is concerned, without any fault other
than the inevitable one of her position. Besides other qualities that
will be noticed presently, she appears in the light of a refined and
feeling, a blameless and even matronly person; a character, which, as
we shall see, her abduction by Paris from Menelaus did not disentitle
her to bear.
We must beware of applying unconditionally, to women placed under
conditions widely different, ideas so specifically Christian as those
that belong to the absolute sanctity of the marriage tie. We must
rather look for the moral aspect of the case in the opinions of the
period, and in the particular circumstances which attended the rupture
of the bond in the given instance, than assume it from the naked fact
that there was a rupture.
~_The case of Bathsheba._~
It may seem not unfair to compare the case of Helen with the somewhat
similar case of Bathsheba among the Jews. If on the one hand we are
bound to bear in mind the inferior station of the latter personage, on
the other it is to be remembered that the Greeks were further removed
from the light of Divine Revelation. Now we are not accustomed to look
upon the character of Bathsheba as infamous, though she lived with King
David as one among his wives, while Uriah, her former husband, who
had been robbed of her, was sent to certain death on her account; and
this, so far as we are informed, without awakening in her any peculiar
emotions of sympathy, sorrow, reluctance, or remorse. And this, as I
take it, mainly for two reasons--first, that we have no signs of any
passion, and in particular of any antecedent passion, for the offending
king on her part; secondly, that she does not appear to have been
otherwise than passively a party to the abduction.
It is in the capacity of wife, and only wife, to Paris that Helen
appears to us in the Iliad: where she herself speaks of Menelaus as her
πρότερος πόσις[1014].
[1014] Il. iii. 429 cf. 163. See Ilios, pp. 200, 203.
Now the presumed reasons for not regarding the character of Bathsheba
as infamous apply with nearly equal force to Helen. Indeed the
character of Helen in one point stands higher in Homer than that of
Bathsheba in the Old Testament, because she lived with Paris as a
recognised and only wife, and because of her gentleness, and especially
of her repentance. Of these as to Bathsheba, we know nothing; but such
pleas as tell for her tell in the main also for Helen. We have no
indication, either in the Iliad or in the Odyssey, of her having at
any time felt either passion or affection towards the worthless Paris.
Above all, as it will be attempted to prove, the language of the poems
not only does not sustain the idea that she willingly left the house of
her husband Menelaus, but it shows something which closely approaches
to the direct contrary.
But there is no method of measuring so accurately the view and
intention of Homer as to the impression we were meant to receive of
Helen, as by comparing the language he applies to her with the widely
different terms in which he describes the conduct of Clytemnestra, in
conjunction with Ægisthus, during the absence of Agamemnon:
τὴν δ’ ἐθέλων ἐθέλουσαν ἀνήγαγεν ὅνδε δόμονδε[1015].
[1015] Od. iii. 272.
In speaking of her own abduction, Helen indeed uses the word
ἤγαγε[1016]. And again in her sharp expostulation with Aphrodite,
she says, ‘What, will you take me (ἄξεις) to some other Phrygian or
Mæonian city, where you may have a favourite[1017]?’ Now this by no
means implies her having acted freely; the word ἄγειν is that commonly
applied to the carrying off captives from a conquered city, as φέρειν
is to the removal of inanimate objects. Undoubtedly in one of her
passages of self-reproach she says[1018]:
[1016] Od. iv. 262; Il. xxiv. 764.
[1017] Il. iii. 400-2.
[1018] Ibid. 174.
υἱέϊ σῷ ἑπόμην, θάλαμον γνωτούς τε λιποῦσα.
But, in the first place, it is neither here nor anywhere else said that
her flight was voluntary; and on the other hand, without doubt, it is
not to be pretended that she had resisted with the spirit of a martyr.
The real question is as to the first and fatal act of quitting her
husband, whether it was premeditated, and whether it was of her free
choice. Now both branches of this question appear to be conclusively
decided by the word ἁρπάξας in the following passage[1019], spoken by
Paris:
[1019] Ibid. 442-4.
οὐ γὰρ πώποτέ μ’ ὧδέ γ’ Ἔρως φρένας ἀμφεκάλυψεν,
οὐδ’ ὅτε σε πρῶτον Λακεδαίμονος ἐξ ἐρατεινῆς
ἔπλεον ἁρπάξας ἐν ποντοπόροισι νέεσσιν.
And the rest of the passage corroborates the evidence, by showing that
she was free from any act of guilt at the time when the voyage was
commenced. The representation of Menelaus himself, in the Thirteenth
Iliad, accords with the speech of Paris. He charges that Prince and his
abettors not with having corrupted his wife, but with having carried
her off,
οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτήματα πολλὰ
μὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ[1020].
[1020] Il. xiii. 626.
Again, in the only place where Helen refers jointly to her own share
and to that of Paris in the matter[1021], she distinguishes their
respective parts, saying to Hector, ‘You have had to toil on account of
me, shameless that I am, and Ἀλεξάνδρου ἑνεκ’ ἄτης, on account of the
sin of Paris.’
[1021] Il. vi. 355.
~_Picture of Helen in Il._ iii.~
Let us now follow the character of Helen, as it is exhibited in life
and motion before us by the Poet. In the Third Book, when Paris is
about to encounter Menelaus, Iris, in the form of her sister-in-law
Laodice, announces the fact to Helen, and lets her know that her own
fate is suspended on the issue, which will decide whether she is to
be the wife of Paris or of Menelaus. Laodice finds her busied in
embroidery, which is to represent the War of Greeks and Trojans. The
expression, νύμφα φίλη, with which the disguised goddess addresses her,
is a sign that she was held in respect, and that when she speaks[1022]
in the last Book of the taunts and skits of which she was the object,
we must understand her to use the natural exaggeration of impassioned
grief. At the call of the seeming Laodice, moved apparently by
tenderness towards her former husband[1023], Helen goes forth, clad in
a robe of simple white[1024]. On her reaching the walls Priam calls
her to his side, that she may tell him the name of a kingly warrior,
who proves to be Agamemnon. In doing this, he gently acquits her of
all responsibility for the war. She answers in a speech of uncommon
grace, ‘that she dreads while she reveres and loves him: would that
she had miserably died rather than leave her family, her nuptial bed,
her infant, and her friends. But this could not be; so that she ever
pined away in tears.’ She designates herself here and elsewhere[1025]
as κύων, and also as κύνωπις, brazen-faced or shameless; but yet she
appears at all times to have retained the fond recollection of her home
and friends[1026], and to have lived in grave and sorrowful retirement.
Everywhere she seems not only not to avoid, but to search for, the
opportunity of bitter self-accusation. Thus, when she has pointed out
the Greek chieftains whom she knew personally, she proceeds, ‘but I do
not see my brothers, Castor and Polydeuces: perhaps they came not from
Greece; perhaps, though here, yet on account of my infamy and reproach,
they will not appear in fight[1027].’
[1022] Il. xxiv. 768.
[1023] Il. iii. 139.
[1024] See Damm on ἀργεννός.
[1025] Il. vi. 344, 356; Od. iv. 145.
[1026] Od. iv. 184, 254.
[1027] Il. iii. 236-42. Cf. Il. iii. 404. and xxiv.
Paris, after his defeat, is removed by Aphrodite from the field:
Menelaus remains as victor. But Helen still tarries upon the wall,
evidently hoping that the hour of her restoration had now at last
arrived. The goddess Venus then appears to her, disguised in the
form of an aged servant; and endeavours to attract her by a glowing
description of Paris, in his beauty and his splendid garments. By
this address Helen was alarmed[1028]: and her alarm almost became
stupefaction, when she perceived the features of the deity. But a
strong reaction followed: so that she made a bitter and stinging
reply. Gentle on all other occasions, she is here sharp and sarcastic.
She[1029] reproaches Venus with having come to prevent Menelaus from
taking her home in right of his victory; then bids her assume to
herself the odious character she sought to force on one who had too
long borne it, and utterly refuses to go. Venus hereupon intimidates
her, by a threat of making her hateful alike to Greek and Trojan, and
so bringing her to miserable destruction. She then obeys, covering
her face in shame and indignation; and when placed by the goddess in
front of Paris in their chamber, she sharply reproaches him; but the
real delicacy of her character is maintained in this, that she does it
ὄσσε πάλιν κλίνασα, with averted and downcast eyes. In what follows,
she is but the reluctant instrument of a passion, which Homer seems to
have described in this place, contrary to his wont, with the distinct
purpose of raising indignation to the highest pitch, and covering Paris
with a contempt and shame proportioned to the crime he had committed,
and to the miseries of which by crime he had been the cause.
[1028] The expression is θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ὄρινεν. The verb is used
by Homer most commonly to denote apprehension (as in Il. iv. 208. xv.
7. xvi. 280, 509. xviii. 223); though it also sometimes signifies other
kinds of excitement, such as anger or surprise.
[1029] 383-98.
Upon the whole, this delineation of Helen in the Third Book may well
be taken as one of the most masterly parts of the Iliad. The extreme
fineness and delicacy of its shading mark it as an immortal work of
genius, and the gentleness of Helen towards Priam, with her severity to
herself, and her sternness both to the corrupter, and to the goddess
that aided and inspired him, form a moral picture of the most striking
truth and beauty. Indeed, if the question be asked, where does Paganism
come nearest to the penitential tone and the profound self-abasement
that belong to Christianity, we might find it difficult to point out an
instance of approximation so striking as is, here and elsewhere, the
Helen of Homer.
~_In Il._ vi. _Il._ xxiv. _Od._ iv.~
In three other places of the poems, Helen is put prominently forward.
In the Sixth Book, before Hector repairs to the field, he goes to
the palace of Paris to summon him forth. He finds the effeminate
prince handling uselessly his arms, while Helen is superintending the
beautiful works of her women[1030]. By and by it appears that, sensible
of the shame of her husband’s cowardice, though without interest in his
fame, she has been persuading him to go forth and fight; and she takes
the opportunity of Hector’s presence to offer him a chair that he may
rest from his fatigues; to revile herself as, next to her husband, the
cause of them; and, while grieving that she had outlived her infancy,
to lament also that, if she was to live at all, she had not been united
to one less impervious to the sentiment of honour.
[1030] Il. vi. 321-5.
Again, Homer has thought her not unworthy of the third place, with
Andromache and Hecuba, as mourners over the mighty Hector, in the
deeply touching description of the return of his remains to Troy[1031].
The tenour of this speech is kept in the exactest harmony with what has
gone before.
[1031] Il. xxiv. 760-75.
We now bid adieu to the Helen of Homer in her sorrow and shame among
the Trojans. But the Poet presents her to us again in prosperity and
domestic peace, as the Queen of Menelaus; who, though not the heir
of the high throne of Agamemnon, yet held a station in Greece, after
the Return, of highly elevated influence. This is a picture, which
it would not have been in accordance with the usual course of Homer
to set before us, had his mind attached to Helen the character given
to her by the later tradition; for where does he represent to us the
wicked in prosperity, without bringing down on them subsequently the
vengeance of heaven? But on the Helen of the Odyssey he has left no
note of sorrow, except the most moving and appropriate of all, namely
this, that the gods gave her no child after Hermione, the daughter of
her early youth[1032].
[1032] Od. iv. 13.
From her stately chamber she comes forth into the hall, after the
feast. She is attended by three maidens, who bear respectively the
first her seat, the second its covering, the third her work-basket and
distaff. She remarks on the likeness of Telemachus to Ulysses, and
humbly recollects to confess, that she herself has been the cause of
the sufferings of the Greeks. The allusions then made to Ulysses cause
her, with the rest, to weep tenderly; and when her husband with his
friends resumes the banquet, she infuses into their wine the soothing
drug, supposed to have been opium, which she had obtained from Egypt,
to make them forgetful of their sorrows. Then she begins to tell tales
in honour of Ulysses: and how, when in his beggar’s dress he escaped
scatheless from Troy, and left many of the Trojans slaughtered behind
him, she alone, amidst the wailings of the women, was full of joy, for
her heart had been yearning towards her home.
There is indeed a trait that deserves notice in the speech of Menelaus,
which has been lately mentioned. Helen came down to detect, if
possible, the Greeks concealed within the Horse: therefore, to act
in the interest of the Trojans. Now if, on the one hand, she looked
back on her country and her first husband with many yearnings, yet
it was not to be wondered at that as a woman, nowhere pretending
to the character of a heroine, she should be so far pliable to the
wishes or subject to the compulsion of the Trojans--especially when we
remember her love and reverence for their head, and for Hector, who
had but lately died in their defence--as to make this effort to defeat
the stratagem of the besiegers. But Menelaus, in referring to the
incident, carefully spares Helen’s feelings by another of those strokes
of exceeding tact and refinement for which Homer’s writings are so
remarkable, both generally, and as to the chivalrous character of this
hero in particular. ‘Thither,’ he says, that is to the Horse, ‘thou
camest; and no doubt,’ he adds, ‘it was the influence of some celestial
being, favourable to Troy, that prompted thee;’ thus preventing by
anticipation the sting that his words might carry:
ἦλθες ἔπειτα σὺ κεῖσε· κελευσέμεναι δέ σ’ ἔμελλεν
δαίμων, ὃς Τρώεσσιν ἐβούλετο κῦδος ὀρέξαι[1033].
[1033] Od. iv. 274.
~_Her marriage to Deiphobus._~
Tradition has assigned Deiphobus to Helen, as a husband after the
death of Paris. This tradition is supported, though not expressly,
yet sufficiently, by the Odyssey; for, says Menelaus, when the Greeks
had constructed the Horse, and when Helen was brought down to detect
those who were within it, by imitating the voices of their wives
respectively, it is added,
καί τοι Δηΐφοβος θεοείκελος ἕσπετ’ ἰούσῃ[1034].
[1034] Od. iv. 276.
And by the further passage in Od. vii. 517, which represents Ulysses as
repairing straight from the Horse to the house of Deiphobus, in company
with Menelaus.
Presuming therefore that this tale was well founded, it may be
remarked, that the selection of Deiphobus, as the person who should
take Helen to wife, was probably founded on his superior merit[1035].
It was under his image, that Minerva came upon the field to inveigle
Hector into facing Achilles: and Hector then described him as the one
whom he loved by far the best amidst his full brothers, the children of
Priam and of Hecuba. This therefore thoroughly accords with the idea,
that Helen was held in respect. Nor let it be thought strange, that
she was not permitted to remain single. The idea of single life for
women, outside their fathers’ home, seems to have been wholly unknown
among the Greeks of Homer. When marriageable, they married; when their
country was overcome, they became, as of course, the appendages of the
couch of the captor. Penelope herself never dreamt of urging that, when
once the return of Ulysses was out of the question, she could have
any other option than to make choice among the Suitors whose wife she
would become. Telemachus contemplates her immediate restoration to her
father’s home when he, her son, should assume the full prerogatives of
manhood.
[1035] Lycophron, 168; Schol. on Il. xxiv. 251. In the Troades of
Euripides she is introduced, saying that Deiphobus took her by force,
against the will of the Phrygians (Trojans), 954-5.
The whole Homeric evidence, then, appears to show that, from the
moment of her removal, neither the usages of society, nor the ideas of
religion or the moral code, could allow Helen to remain in the single
state. But it may be said this seems to prove too much on her behalf;
namely, that both the abduction and the subsequent life were against
her will. It is, however, entirely in keeping with the testimony of the
poems, to suppose that her whole offence lay in having permitted at
the first, perhaps half unconsciously, the attentions of a flatterer,
who became at once a paramour and a tyrant to his victim. In order to
comprehend the heroic age, it is indispensable that we should recollect
that the responsibilities of women were contracted in proportion to her
strength; and that the heroism of endurance, in which she has since
excelled, is a Christian product.
That element of weakness and lightness in a character otherwise
beautiful, which the incident of the Horse betrays, was probably at
once the source and the measure of her offending in reference to the
cause of war. It was a mind of relaxed fibre, and vacillated under
pressure. Less than this we cannot suppose, and there is no occasion
to suppose more. The respect felt, within certain limits, for women in
the heroic age, and so powerfully proved by the Odyssey, may perhaps
be adverse to the supposition that Paris carried her away without
some degree of previous encouragement. I confine myself to ‘perhaps,’
because it is nowhere indicated in the poems, and we can at most have
only a presumption to this effect. On the other hand, it seems certain
that what she expiated in life-long sadness was, at any rate, no more
than the first step in the ways of folly, the thoughtless error of
short-sighted vanity, which the state of manners did not permit her
subsequently to redeem. Repent she might: but to return was beyond her
power.
On the whole, it may be said with confidence that the Helen of the
Homeric poems has been conceived, by an author himself of peculiar
delicacy, with great truth of nature, and with no intention to deprive
her of a share in the sympathies of his hearers; that he has made her
a woman, not cast in the mould of martyrs, nor elevated in moral ideas
to a capacity of comprehension and of endurance above her age, but yet
endowed with much tenderness of feeling, with the highest grace and
refinement, and with a deep and peculiar sense of shame for having
done wrong. Probably her appreciation of virtue and of honour, though
beneath that of the highest matronly characters, may have been in no
way inferior to that of society at large in her own time, and superior
to the standard of many following epochs; nay superior also to that
which has prevailed, at least locally, even at some periods of the
Christian era: as, for example, when Ariosto wrote the remarkable
passage--
Perche si de’ punir donna o biasmare
Che con uno, o più d’ uno, abbia commesso
Quel, che l’ uom fa con quante n’ ha appetito
E lodato ne va, non che impunito[1036]?
[1036] Orl. Fur. iv. 66.
~_General estimate of the Homeric Helen._~
The degradation of Helen by the later tradition will be treated of
hereafter. Meantime it will be seen how much on this subject I have
the misfortune to differ from Mure, who has been usually so great a
benefactor to the students of Homer. With him ‘Helen is the female
counterpart of Paris[1037].’ Paris and Helen are respectively ‘the
man of fashion and the woman of pleasure of the heroic age.’ ‘Both
are unprincipled votaries of sensual enjoyment; both self-willed and
petulant, but not devoid of amiable and generous feeling.’ He finds
indeed in her a ‘tenderness of heart and kindly disposition;’ and
says that ‘traces of better principle seem also to lurk under the
general levity of her habits.’ This petulance, this general levity,
I do not find; but rather the notes of a fatal fall, continually and
deeply felt under the general grace and beauty of her character. What
Mure calls her ‘petulant argument with her patron goddess,’ we take
to be the noble and indignant reaction of a soul under the yoke of
conscious slavery, and still quick to the throb of virtue. Indeed I
derive some comfort from the closing words of his criticism, in which,
after expressing his pity and condemnation, he says that still ‘we are
constrained to love and admire.’ In the whole circle of the classical
literature, as far as it is known to us, there is, I repeat, nothing
that approaches so nearly to what Christian theology would term a sense
of sin, as the humble demeanour, and the self-denouncing, self-stabbing
language of the Argeian Helen.
[1037] Book ii. ch. viii. sect. 20.
~_The character of Paris._~
III. The character of Paris is as worthy, as any other in the poems, of
the powerful hand and just judgment of Homer. It is neither on the one
hand slightly, nor on the other too elaborately, drawn; the touches are
just such and so many, as his poetic purpose seemed on the one hand to
demand, and on the other to admit. Paris is not indeed the gentleman,
but he is the fine gentleman, and the pattern voluptuary, of the heroic
ages; and all his successors in these capacities may well be wished joy
of their illustrious prototype. The redeeming, or at least relieving
point in his character, is one which would condemn any personage
of higher intellectual or moral pretensions; it is a total want of
earnestness, the unbroken sway of levity and of indifference to all
serious and manly considerations. He completely fulfils the idea of the
_poco-curante_, except as to the display of his personal beauty, the
enjoyment of luxury, and the resort to sensuality as the best refuge
from pain and care. He is not a monster, for he is neither savage nor
revengeful; but still further is he from being one of Homer’s heroes,
for he has neither honour, courage, eloquence, thought, nor prudence.
That he bears the reproaches of Hector without irritation, is due to
that same moral apathy, and that narrowness of intelligence, which
makes him insensible to those of his wife. No man can seriously resent
what he does not really feel. He is wholly destitute even of the
delicacy and refinement which soften many of the features of vice; and
the sensuality he shows in the Third Book[1038] partakes largely of the
brutal character which marks the lusts of Jupiter. No wise, no generous
word, ever passes from his lips. On one subject only he is determined
enough; it is, that he will not give up the woman whom he well knows to
be without attachment to him[1039], and whom he keeps not as the object
of his affections, but merely as the instrument of his pleasures. One
solicitude only he cherishes; it is to decorate his person, to exhibit
his beauty, to brighten with care the arms that he would fain parade,
but has not the courage to employ against the warriors of Greece.
[1038] Il. iii. 437-48.
[1039] Ibid. 428.
There are other greater achievements in the Iliad, but none finer,
or more deserving our commendation, than the manner in which Homer
has handled the difficult character of Paris. It was quite necessary
to raise him to a certain point of importance; had he been simply
contemptible, his place in the early stages of the Trojan tale, and
the prolongation of the War on his account, would have involved a
too violent departure from the laws of poetical credibility. This
importance Homer, whether from imagination or from history, has
supplied; in part by his very high position. Even if I were wrong in
the opinion that the Poet meant to represent him as the eldest son, or
the eldest living son, of Priam, it would still at least be plain that
he is more eminent and conspicuous than any other member of the royal
house after Hector; while he is so much less worthy than Deiphobus,
for example, that no one, I think, could doubt that his distinction is
due to his being senior to that respectable prince and warrior, and
to the rest of his brothers. Further, the Poet has raised him to the
very highest elevation in two particulars; one the gift of archery,
the other the endowment of corporeal grace and beauty. But neither of
these involves one particle of courage, or of any other virtue; for the
archer of Homer’s time was not like the British bowman, who stood with
his comrades in the line, and discharged the function in war which has
since fallen to musketry; he was a mere sharpshooter, always having the
most deliberate opportunity of aim at the enemy, and always himself out
of danger. No archer is ever hit in the Iliad; but Pandarus, so skilled
in the bow, is slain, and Paris is disgraced, when they respectively
venture to assume the spear. Again, the Poet has contrived that the
accomplishments of Paris, though in themselves unsurpassed, shall
attract towards him no share, great or small, of our regard. This
prince really does more, than even Hector does, to stay the torrent of
the Grecian war; for in the Eleventh Book, from behind a pillar, he
wounds Diomed, who had fought with the Immortals, Eurypylus, who had
also been one of the nine accepters of Hector’s challenge, and Machaon,
one of the two surgeons. Thus Homer[1040] has been able to make him
most useful in battle, most lovely to the eye, and yet alike detestable
and detested.
[1040] Il. xi. 368-79, 581-4, 505-7.
This aim he attains, not by that tame method of description which he so
much eschews, but by the turn he gives to narrative, and by the colour
he imparts to it in one or a few words.
Paris, though effeminate and apathetic, is not gentle, either to his
wife or his enemies; and, when he has wounded Diomed, he wishes the
shot had been a fatal one. The reply of Diomed cuts deeper than any
arrow when he addresses him as,
Bowman! ribald! well-frizzled girl-hunter[1041]!
[1041] Il. xi. 385.
Again, the Poet tells us, as if by accident, that when, after the
battle with Menelaus, he could not be found, it was not because the
Trojans were unwilling to give him up, for they hated him with the
hatred, which they felt to dark Death[1042]. And again we learn, how
he uses bribery to keep his ground in the Assembly; how he refuses to
recognise even his own military inferiority, but lamely accounts for
the success of Menelaus by saying that all men have their turn[1043];
and how he causes shame to his own countrymen and exultation to the
Greeks, when they contrast the pretensions of his splendid appearance
with his miserable performances in the field[1044].
[1042] Il. iii. 454.
[1043] Il. vi. 339.
[1044] Il. iii. 43, 51.
Homer, full as he is of the harmonies of nature, differs in this as in
so many points from most among later writers, that he does not set at
nought the due proportion between the moral and the intellectual man,
nor combine high gifts of mind with a mean and bad heart. He never
varies from this rule; and he has been careful to pay it a marked
observance in the case of Paris. No set of speeches in the Iliad are
marked by greater poverty of ideas. If he cleans his arms and builds
his house, which are honourable employments, they are employments
immediately connected with the ostentation to which he was so much
given. More than this, the Poet informs us, through the medium of
Helen, that he was but ill supplied with sense, and that he was too old
to mend:
τούτῳ δ’ οὔτ’ ἂρ νῦν φρένες ἔμπεδοι, οὔτ ἄρ’ ὀπίσσω
ἔσσονται[1045].
[1045] Il. vi. 372.
The immediate transition, in the Third Book, from the field of battle,
where he was disgraced, to the bed of luxury, is admirably suited to
impress upon the mind, by the strong contrast, the real character of
Paris. Nor let it be thought, that Homer has gratuitously forced upon
us the scene between him and his reluctant wife. It was just that he
should mark as a bad man him who had sinned grossly, selfishly, and
fatally, alike against Greece and his own family and country. This
impression would not have been consistent and thorough in all its
parts, if we had been even allowed to suppose that, as a refined,
affectionate, and tender husband, he made such amends to Helen as the
case permitted for the wrong done her in his hot and heady youth. Such
a supposition might excusably have been entertained, and it would have
been supported by the very feebleness of the character of Paris and
by his part in the war, had Homer been silent upon the subject. He,
therefore, though with cautious hand, lifts the veil so far as to show
us that in our variously compounded nature animal desire can use up
and absorb the strength which ought to nerve our higher faculties, and
that, as none are more cruel than the timid, so none are more brutal
than the effeminate.
One hold, and one only, Paris seems to retain on human affection in
any sort or form. The paternal instinct of Priam makes him shudder and
retire, when he is told that Paris is about to meet Menelaus in single
combat. This trait would have been of extraordinary and universal
beauty, had the object of the affection been even moderately worthy:
it is a remarkable proof of the debasement of Paris, and of the strong
sense which Homer gives us of that debasement, that the tender father
seems in a measure tainted by the very warmth and strength of his love.