The Attic dramatists describe this expedition as having been conducted

by seven chiefs, one to each of the seven celebrated gates of Thêbes.

But the Cyclic Thêbaïs gave to it a much more comprehensive character,

mentioning auxiliaries from Arcadia, Messênê, and various parts of

Peloponnêsus;[648] and the application of Tydeus and Polynikês at

Mykênæ in the course of their circuit made to collect allies, is

mentioned in the Iliad. They were well received at Mykênæ; but the

warning signals given by the gods were so terrible that no Mykenæan

could venture to accompany them.[649] The seven principal chiefs

however were Adrastus, Amphiaräus, Kapaneus, Hippomedôn, Parthenopæus,

Tydeus and Polynikês.[650] When the army had advanced as far as the

river Asôpus, a halt was made for sacrifice and banquet; while Tydeus

was sent to Thêbes as envoy to demand the restoration of Polynikês to

his rights. His demand was refused; but finding the chief Kadmeians

assembled at the banquet in the house of Eteoklês, he challenged them

all to contend with him in boxing or wrestling. So efficacious was the

aid of the goddess Athênê that he overcame them all; and the Kadmeians

were so indignant at their defeat, that they placed an ambuscade of

fifty men to intercept him in his way back to the army. All of them

perished by the hand of this warrior, small in stature and of few

words, but desperate and irresistible in the fight. One alone was

spared, Mæon, in consequence of special signals from the gods.[651]

[648] Pausan. ii. 20, 4; ix. 9, 1. His testimony to this, as he

had read and admired the Cyclic Thêbaïs, seems quite sufficient,

in spite of the opinion of Welcker to the contrary (Æschylische

Trilogie. p. 375).

[649] Iliad, iv. 376.

[650] There are differences in respect to the names of the

seven: Æschylus (Sept. ad Theb. 461) leaves out Adrastus as one

of the seven, and includes Eteoklus instead of him; others left

out Tydeus and Polynikês, and inserted Eteoklus and Mekisteus

(Apollodôr. iii. 6, 3). Antimachus, in his poetical _Thêbaïs_,

called Parthenopæus an Argeian, not an Arcadian (Schol. ad

Æschyl. Sept. ad. Theb. 532).

[651] Iliad, iv. 381-400, with the Schol. The first celebration

of the Nemean games is connected with this march of the army

of Adrastus against Thêbes; they were celebrated in honor of

Archemorus, the infant son of Lykurgus, who had been killed by a

serpent while his nurse Hypsipylê went to show the fountain to

the thirsty Argeian chiefs (Apollod. iii. 6, 4; Schol. ad Pindar

Nem. 1).

The Kadmeians, assisted by their allies the Phôkians and the Phlegyæ,

marched out to resist the invaders, and fought a battle near the

Ismênian hill, in which they were defeated and forced to retire within

the walls. The prophet Teiresias acquainted them that if Menœkeus,

son of Kreôn, would offer himself as a victim to Arês, victory would

be assured to Thêbes. The generous youth, as soon as he learnt that

his life was to be the price of safely to his country, went and slew

himself before the gates. The heroes along with Adrastus now commenced

a vigorous attack upon the town, each of the seven selecting one of the

gates to assault. The contest was long and strenuously maintained but

the devotion of Menœkeus had procured for the Thêbans the protection

of the gods. Parthenopæus was killed with a stone by Periklymenus;

and when the furious Kapaneus, having planted a scaling-ladder, had

mounted the walls, he was smitten by a thunderbolt from Zeus and

cast down dead upon the earth. This event struck terror into the

Argeians, and Adrastus called back his troops from the attack. The

Thêbans now sallied forth to pursue them, when Eteoklês, arresting

the battle, proposed to decide the controversy by single combat with

his brother. The challenge, eagerly accepted by Polynikês, was agreed

to by Adrastus: a single combat ensued between the two brothers, in

which both were exasperated to fury and both ultimately slain by each

other’s hand. This equal termination left the result of the general

contest still undetermined, and the bulk of the two armies renewed the

fight. In the sanguinary struggle which ensued the sons of Astakus on

the Thêban side displayed the most conspicuous and successful valor.

One of them,[652] Melanippus, mortally wounded Tydeus—while two others,

Leades and Amphidikus, killed Eteoklus and Hippomedôn. Amphiaräus

avenged Tydeus by killing Melanippus; but unable to arrest the rout of

the army, he fled with the rest, closely pursued by Periklymenus. The

latter was about to pierce him with his spear, when the beneficence

of Zeus rescued him from this disgrace—miraculously opening the earth

under him, so that Amphiaräus with his chariot and horses was received

unscathed into her bosom.[653] The exact spot where this memorable

incident happened was indicated by a sepulchral building, and shown by

the Thêbans down to the days of Pausanias—its sanctity being attested

by the fact, that no animal would consent to touch the herbage which

grew within the sacred inclosure. Amphiaräus, rendered immortal by

Zeus, was worshipped as a god at Argos, at Thêbes and at Orôpus—and for

many centuries gave answers at his oracle to the questions of the pious

applicant.[654]

[652] The story recounted that the head of Melanippus was brought

to Tydeus as he was about to expire of his wound, and that he

gnawed it with his teeth, a story touched upon by Sophoklês (apud

Herodian. in Rhetor. Græc. t. viii. p. 601, Walz.).

The lyric poet Bacchylidês (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 1535)

seems to have handled the story even earlier than Sophoklês.

We find the same allegation embodied in charges against real

historical men: the invective of Montanus against Aquilius

Regulus, at the beginning of the reign of Vespasian, affirmed,

“datam interfectori Pisonis pecuniam a Regulo, appetitumque morsu

Pisonis caput” (Tacit. Hist. iv. 42).

[653] Apollodôr. iii. 6, 8. Pindar, Olymp. vi. 11; Nem. ix.

13-27. Pausan. ix. 8, 2; 18, 2-4.

Euripidês, in the Phœnissæ (1122 _seqq._), describes the battle

generally; see also Æsch. S. Th. 392. It appears by Pausanias

that the Thêbans had poems or legends of their own, relative

to this war: they dissented in various points from the Cyclic

Thêbaïs (ix. 18, 4). The Thêbaïs said that Periklymenus had

killed Parthenopæus; the Thêbans assigned this exploit to

Asphodikus, a warrior not commemorated by any of the poets known

to us.

The village of Harma, between Tanagra and Mykalêssus, was

affirmed by some to have been the spot where Amphiaräus closed

his life (Strabo, ix. p. 404): Sophoklês placed the scene at the

Amphiaræium near Orôpus (ap Strabon. ix. p. 399).

[654] Pindar, Olymp. vi. 16. Ἕπτα δ᾽ ἔπειτα πυρᾶν νέκρων

τελεσθέντων Ταλαϊονίδας Εἶπεν ἐν Θήβαισι τοιοῦτόν τι ἔπος· Ποθέω

στρατιᾶς ὀφθαλμὸν ἐμᾶς Ἀμφότερον, μάντιν τ᾽ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ

μάχεσθαι.

The scholiast affirms that these last expressions are borrowed by

Pindar from the Cyclic Thêbaïs.

The temple of Amphiaräus (Pausan. ii. 23, 2), his oracle,

seems to have been inferior in estimation only to that of

Delphi (Herodot. i. 52; Pausan. i. 34; Cicero, Divin. i. 40).

Crœsus sent a rich present to Amphiaräus, πυθόμενος αὐτοῦ

τήν τε ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν πάθην (Herod. l. c); a striking proof

how these interesting legends were recounted and believed as

genuine historical facts. Other adventures of Amphiaräus in the

expedition against Thêbes were commemorated in the carvings on

the Thronus at Amyklæ (Pausan. iii. 18, 4).

Æschylus (Sept. Theb. 611) seems to enter into the Thêban view,

doubtless highly respectful towards Amphiaräus, when he places in

the mouth of the Kadmeian king Eteoklês such high encomiums on

Amphiaräus, and so marked a contrast with the other chiefs from

Argos.

Adrastus, thus deprived of the prophet and warrior whom he regarded as

“the eye of his army,” and having seen the other chiefs killed in the

disastrous fight, was forced to take flight singly, and was preserved

by the matchless swiftness of his horse Areiôn, the offspring of

Poseidôn. He reached Argos on his return, bringing with him nothing

except “his garments of woe and his black-maned steed.”[655]

[655] Pausan. viii. 25, 5, from the Cyclic Thêbaïs, Εἵματα λυγρὰ

φέρων σὺν Ἀρείονι κυανοχαίτῃ; also Apollodôr. iii. 6, 8.

The celebrity of the horse Areiôn was extolled in the Iliad

(xxiii. 346), in the Cyclic Thêbaïs, and also in the Thêbaïs of

Antimachus (Pausan. l. c.): by the Arcadians of Thelpusia he

was said to be the offspring of Dêmêtêr by Poseidôn,—he, and

a daughter whose name Pausanias will not communicate to the

uninitiated (ἧς τὸ ὄνομα ἐς ἀτελέστους λέγειν οὐ νομίζουσι, _l.

c._). A different story is in the Schol. Iliad, xxiii. 346; and

in Antimachus, who affirmed that “Gæa herself had produced him,

as a wonder to mortal men” (see Antimach. Frag. 16. p. 102; Epic.

Græc. Frag. ed. Düntzer).

Kreôn, father of the heroic youth Menœkeus, succeeding to the

administration of Thêbes after the death of the two hostile brothers

and the repulse of Adrastus, caused Eteoklês to be buried with

distinguished honor, but cast out ignominiously the body of Polynikês

as a traitor to his country, forbidding every one on pain of death to

consign it to the tomb. He likewise refused permission to Adrastus to

inter the bodies of his fallen comrades. This proceeding, so offensive

to Grecian feeling, gave rise to two further tales; one of them at

least of the highest pathos and interest. Antigonê, the sister of

Polynikês, heard with indignation the revolting edict consigning her

brother’s body to the dogs and vultures, and depriving it of those

rites which were considered essential to the repose of the dead.

Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister,

and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard

and to bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in the act;

and Kreôn, though forewarned by Teiresias of the consequences, gave

orders that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set

at naught the solemn edict of the city. His son Hæmôn, to whom she

was engaged to be married, in vain interceded for her life. In an

agony of despair he slew himself in the sepulchre to which the living

Antigonê had been consigned; and his mother Eurydikê, the wife of

Kreôn, inconsolable for his death, perished by her own hand. And thus

the new light which seemed to be springing up over the last remaining

scion of the devoted family of Œdipus, is extinguished amidst gloom and

horrors—which overshadowed also the house and dynasty of Kreôn.[656]

[656] Sophokl. Antigon. 581. Νῦν γὰρ ἐσχάτας ὑπὲρ Ῥίζας ἐτέτατο

φάος ἐν Οἰδίπου δόμοις, etc.

The pathetic tale here briefly recounted forms the subject of

this beautiful tragedy of Sophoklês, the argument of which is

supposed by Boeckh to have been borrowed in its primary rudiments

from the Cyclic Thêbaïs or the Œdipodia (Boeckh, Dissertation

appended to his translation of the Antigonê, c. x. p. 146); see

Apollodôr. iii. 7, 1.

Æschylus also touches upon the heroism of Antigonê (Sep. Theb.

984).

The other tale stands more apart from the original legend, and seems to

have had its origin in the patriotic pride of the Athenians. Adrastus,

unable to obtain permission from the Thêbans to inter the fallen

chieftains, presented himself in suppliant guise, accompanied by their

disconsolate mothers, to Thêseus at Eleusis. He implored the Athenian

warrior to extort from the perverse Thêbans that last melancholy

privilege which no decent or pious Greeks ever thought of withholding,

and thus to stand forth as the champion of Grecian public morality in

one of its most essential points, not less than of the rights of the

subterranean gods. The Thêbans obstinately persisting in their refusal,

Thêseus undertook an expedition against their city, vanquished them in

the field, and compelled them by force of arms to permit the sepulture

of their fallen enemies. This chivalrous interposition, celebrated in

one of the preserved dramas of Euripidês, formed a subject of glorious

recollection to the Athenians throughout the historical age: their

orators dwelt upon it in terms of animated panegyric; and it seems

to have been accepted as a real fact of the past time, with not less

implicit conviction than the battle of Marathôn.[657] But the Thêbans,

though equally persuaded of the truth of the main story, dissented

from the Athenian version of it, maintaining that they had given up

the bodies for sepulture voluntarily and of their own accord. The

tomb of the chieftains was shown near Eleusis even in the days of

Pausanias.[658]

[657] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 1; Eurip. Supp. _passim_; Herodot. ix.

27; Plato, Menexen. c. 9; Lysias, Epitaph. c. 4; Isokrat. Orat.

Panegyr. p. 196, Auger.

[658] Pausan. i. 39, 2.

A large proportion both of the interesting persons and of the exalted

acts of legendary Greece belongs to the female sex. Nor can we on this

occasion pass over the name of Evadnê, the devoted widow of Kapaneus,

who cast herself on the funeral pile of her husband and perished.[659]

[659] Eurip. Supplic. 1004-1110.

The defeat of the seven chiefs before Thêbes was amply avenged by

their sons, again under the guidance of Adrastus:—Ægialeus son of

Adrastus, Thersander son of Polynikês, Alkmæôn and Amphilochus, sons

of Amphiaräus, Diomêdês son of Tydeus, Sthenelus son of Kapaneus,

Promachus son of Parthenopæus, and Euryalus son of Mekistheus, joined

in this expedition. Though all these youthful warriors, called the

Epigoni, took part in the expedition, the grand and prominent place

appears to have been occupied by Alkmæôn, son of Amphiaräus. Assistance

was given to them from Corinth and Megara, as well as from Messênê and

Arcadia; while Zeus manifested his favorable dispositions by signals

not to be mistaken.[660] At the river Glisas the Epigoni were met by

the Thêbans in arms, and a battle took place in which the latter were

completely defeated. Laodamas, son of Eteoklês, killed Ægialeus, son of

Adrastus; but he and his army were routed and driven within the walls

by the valor and energy of Alkmæôn. The defeated Kadmeians consulted

the prophet Teiresias, who informed them that the gods had declared

for their enemies, and that there was no longer any hope of successful

resistance. By his advice they sent a herald to the assailants offering

to surrender the town, while they themselves conveyed away their

wives and children, and fled under the command of Laodamas to the

Illyrians,[661] upon which the Epigoni entered Thêbes, and established

Thersander, son of Polynikês, on the throne.

[660] Homer, Iliad, iv. 406. Sthenelus, the companion of Diomêdês

and one of the Epigoni, says to Agamemnôn,—

Ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ᾽ ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ᾽ εἶναι·

Ἡμεῖς καὶ Θήβης ἕδος εἵλομεν ἑπταπύλοιο,

Παυρότερον λαὸν ἀγαγόνθ᾽ ὑπὸ τεῖχος Ἄρειον,

Πειθόμενοι τεράεσσι θεῶν καὶ Ζηνὸς ἀρωγῇ·

Αὐτοὶ δὲ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο.

[661] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 4. Herodot. v. 57-61. Pausan. ix. 5, 7;

9, 2. Diodôr. iv. 65-66.

Pindar represents Adrastus as concerned in the second expedition

against Thêbes (Pyth. viii. 40-58).

Adrastus, who in the former expedition had been the single survivor

amongst so many fallen companions, now found himself the only exception

to the general triumph and joy of the conquerors: he had lost his son

Ægialeus, and the violent sorrow arising from the event prematurely cut

short his life. His soft voice and persuasive eloquence were proverbial

in the ancient epic.[662] He was worshipped as a hero both at Argos and

at Sikyôn, but with especial solemnity in the last-mentioned place,

where his Herôum stood in the public agora, and where his exploits as

well as his sufferings were celebrated periodically in lyric tragedies.

Melanippus, son of Astakus, the brave defender of Thêbes, who had slain

both Tydeus and Mekistheus, was worshipped with no less solemnity

by the Thêbans.[663] The enmity of these two heroes rendered it

impossible for both of them to be worshipped close upon the same spot.

Accordingly it came to pass during the historical period, about the

time of the Solonian legislation at Athens, that Kleisthenês, despot of

Sikyôn, wishing to banish the hero Adrastus and abolish the religious

solemnities celebrated in honor of the latter by the Sikyonians, first

applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this banishment

into effect directly and forcibly. That permission being refused, he

next sent to Thêbes an intimation that he was anxious to introduce

their hero Melanippus into Sikyôn. The Thêbans willingly consented, and

he assigned to the new hero a consecrated spot in the strongest and

most commanding portion of the Sikyonian prytaneium. He did this (says

the historian) “knowing that Adrastus would forthwith go away of his

own accord; since Melanippus was of all persons the most odious to

him, as having slain both his son-in-law and his brother.” Kleisthenês

moreover diverted the festivals and sacrifices which had been offered

to Adrastus, to the newly established hero Melanippus; and the lyric

tragedies from the worship of Adrastus to that of Dionysus. But his

dynasty did not long continue after his decease, and the Sikyonians

then reëstablished their ancient solemnities.[664]

[662] Γλῶσσαν τ᾽ Ἀδρήστου μειλιχόγηρυν ἔχοι (Tyrtæus, Eleg. 9, 7,

Schneidewin); compare Plato, Phædr. c. 118. “Adrasti pallentis

imago” meets the eye of Æneas in the under-world (Æneid, vi. 480).

[663] About Melanippus, see Pindar, Nem. x. 36. His sepulchre was

shown near the Prœtid gates of Thêbes (Pausan. ix. 18, 1).

[664] This very carious and illustrative story is contained

in Herodot. v. 67. Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ θεὸς τοῦτο οὐ παρεδίδου, ἀπελθὼν

ὀπίσω (Kleisthenês, returning from Delphi) ἐφρόντιζε μηχανὴν

τῇ ~αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀδρήστος ἀπαλλάξεται~. Ὡς δὲ οἱ ἐξευρῆσθαι ἐδόκεε,

πέμψας ἐς Θήβας τὰς Βοιωτίας, ἔφη θέλειν ἐπαγαγέσθαι Μελάνιππον

τὸν Ἀστακοῦ· οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι ἔδοσαν. Ἐπηγάγετο δὲ τὸν Μελάνιππον

ὁ Κλεισθένης, καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο δεῖ ἀπηγήσασθαι, ὡς ἔχθιστον ἐόντα

Ἀδρήστῳ· ὃς τόν τε ἀδέλφεον Μηκιστέα ἀπεκτόνεε, καὶ τὸν γαμβρὸν

Τυδέα.

The Sikyonians (Herodotus says) τά τε δὴ ἄλλα ἐτίμων τὸν

Ἄδρηστον, καὶ πρὸς τὰ πάθεα αὐτοῦ τραγικοῖσι χόροισι ἐγέραιρον·

τὸν μὲν Διόνυσον οὐ τιμέωντες, τὸν δὲ Ἄδρηστον.

Adrastus was worshipped as a hero at Megara as well as at Sikyôn:

the Megarians affirmed that he had died there on his way back

from Thêbes (Pausan. i. 43, 1; Dieuchidas, ap. Schol. ad Pindar.

Nem. ix. 31). His house at Argos was still shown when Pausanias

visited the town (ii. 23, 2).

Near the Prœtid gate of Thêbes were seen the tombs of two combatants

who had hated each other during life even more than Adrastus and

Melanippus—the two brothers Eteoklês and Polynikês. Even as heroes

and objects of worship, they still continued to manifest their

inextinguishable hostility: those who offered sacrifices to them

observed that the flame and the smoke from the two adjoining altars

abhorred all communion, and flew off in directions exactly opposite.

The Thêban exegetes assured Pausanias of this fact. And though he did

not himself witness it, yet having seen with his own eyes a miracle not

very dissimilar at Pioniæ in Mysia, he had no difficulty in crediting

their assertion.[665]

[665] Pausan. ix. 18, 3. Τὰ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς δρώμενα οὐ θεασάμενος

πιστὰ ὅμως ὑπείληφα εἶναι. Compare Hygin. f. 68.

“Et nova fraterno veniet concordia fumo,

Quem vetus accensâ separat ira pyrâ.” (Ovid, Ibis, 35.)

The tale was copied by Ovid from Kallimachus (Trist. v. 5, 38.)

Amphiaräus when forced into the first attack of Thêbes—against his own

foreknowledge and against the warnings of the gods—had enjoined his

sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus not only to avenge his death upon the

Thêbans, but also to punish the treachery of their mother, “Eriphylê,

the destroyer of her husband.”[666] In obedience to this command, and

having obtained the sanction of the Delphian oracle, Alkmæôn slew his

mother;[667] but the awful Erinnys, the avenger of matricide, inflicted

on him a long and terrible punishment, depriving him of his reason,

and chasing him about from place to place without the possibility of

repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and cure from the god at

Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the temple, as an offering,

the precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible bribe which had

originally corrupted Eriphylê.[668] He further intimated to the unhappy

sufferer, that though the whole earth was tainted with his crime,

and had become uninhabitable for him, yet there was a spot of ground

which was not under the eye of the sun at the time when the matricide

was committed, and where therefore Alkmæôn yet might find a tranquil

shelter. The promise was realized at the mouth of the river Achelôus,

whose turbid stream was perpetually depositing new earth and forming

additional islands. Upon one of these, near Œniadæ, Alkmæôn settled,

permanently and in peace: he became the primitive hero of Akarnania,

to which his son Akarnan gave name.[669] The necklace was found among

the treasures of Delphi, together with that which had been given by

Aphroditê to Helen, by the Phôkian plunderers who stripped the temple

in the time of Philip of Macedôn. The Phôkian women quarrelled about

these valuable ornaments: and we are told that the necklace of Eriphylê

was allotted to a woman of gloomy and malignant disposition, who ended

by putting her husband to death; that of Helen to a beautiful but

volatile wife, who abandoned her husband from a preference for a young

Epirot.[670]

[666] Ἀνδροδάμαντ᾽ Ἐριφύλην (Pindar, Nem. ix. 16). A poem

_Eryphilê_ was included among the mythical compositions of

Stesichorus: he mentioned in it that Asklêpius had restored

Kapaneus to life, and that he was for that reason struck dead

by thunder from Zeus (Stesichor. Fragm. Kleine, 18, p. 74). Two

tragedies of Sophoklês once existed, _Epigoni_ and _Alkmæôn_

(Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. i. p. 269): a few fragments also

remain of the Latin _Epigoni_ and _Alphesibæa_ of Attius: Ennius

and Attius both composed or translated from the Greek a Latin

_Alkmæôn_ (Poet. Scenic. Latin. ed. Both. pp. 33, 164, 198).

[667] Hyginus gives the fable briefly (f. 73; see also

Asclepiadês, ap. Schol. Odyss. xi. 326). In like manner, in the

case of the matricide of Orestês, Apollo not only sanctions,

but enjoins the deed; but his protection against the avenging

Erinnyês is very tardy, not taking effect until after Orestês has

been long persecuted and tormented by them (see Æschyl. Eumen.

76, 197 462).

In the _Alkmæôn_ of the later tragic writer Thodektês, a

distinction was drawn: the gods had decreed that Eriphylê should

die, but not that Alkmæôn should kill her (Aristot. Rhetoric.

ii. 24). Astydamas altered the story still more in his tragedy,

and introduced Alkmæôn as killing his mother ignorantly and

without being aware who she was (Aristot. Poetic. c. 27). The

murder of Eriphylê by her son was one of the παρειλήμμενοι

μῦθοι which could not be departed from; but interpretations

and qualifications were resorted to, in order to prevent it

from shocking the softened feelings of the spectators: see the

criticism of Aristotle on the _Alkmæôn_ of Euripidês (Ethic.

Nicom. iii. 1, 8).

[668] Ephorus ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 232.

[669] Thucyd. ii. 68-102.

[670] Athenæ. _l. c._

There were several other legends respecting the distracted Alkmæôn,

either appropriated or invented by the Attic tragedians. He went to

Phêgeus, king of Psôphis in Arcadia, whose daughter Arsinoê he married,

giving as a nuptial present the necklace of Eriphylê. Being however

unable to remain there, in consequence of the unremitting persecutions

of the maternal Erinnys, he sought shelter at the residence of king

Achelôus, whose daughter Kallirhoê he made his wife, and on whose soil

he obtained repose.[671] But Kallirhoê would not be satisfied without

the possession of the necklace of Eriphylê, and Alkmæôn went back to

Psôphis to fetch it, where Phêgeus and his sons slew him. He had left

twin sons, infants, with Kallirhoê, who prayed fervently to Zeus that

they might be preternaturally invested with immediate manhood, in order

to revenge the murder of their father. Her prayer was granted, and

her sons Amphoterus and Akarnan, having instantaneously sprung up to

manhood, proceeded into Arcadia, slew the murderers of their father,

and brought away the necklace of Eriphylê, which they carried to

Delphi.[672]

[671] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 5-6; Pausan. viii. 24, 4. These two

authors have preserved the story of the Akarnanians and the old

form of the legend, representing Alkmæôn as having found shelter

at the abode of the person or king Achelôus, and married his

daughter: Thucydidês omits the _personality_ of Achelôus, and

merely announces the wanderer as having settled on certain new

islands deposited by the river.

I may remark that this is a singularly happy adaptation of a

legend to an existing topographical fact. Generally speaking,

before any such adaptation can be rendered plausible, the legend

is of necessity much transformed; here it is taken exactly as it

stands, and still fits on with great precision.

Ephorus recounted the whole sequence of events as so much

political history, divesting it altogether of the legendary

character. Alkmæôn and Diomêdês, after having taken Thêbes with

the other Epigoni, jointly undertook an expedition into Ætôlia

and Akarnania: they first punished the enemies of the old Œneus,

grandfather of Diomêdês, and established the latter as king in

Kalydôn: next they conquered Akarnania for Alkmæôn. Alkmæôn,

though invited by Agamemnôn to join in the Trojan war, would not

consent to do so (Ephor. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 326; x. p. 462).

[672] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 7; Pausan. viii. 24, 3-4. His remarks

upon the mischievous longing of Kallirhoê for the necklace are

curious: he ushers them in by saying, that “many men, and still

more women, are given to fall into absurd desires,” etc. He

recounts it with all the _bonne foi_ which belongs to the most

assured matter of fact.

A short allusion is in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (ix. 412).

Euripidês deviated still more widely from the ancient epic, by making

Alkmæôn the husband of Mantô, daughter of Teiresias, and the father of

Amphilochus. According to the Cyclic Thêbaïs, Mantô was consigned by

the victorious Epigoni as a special offering to the Delphian god; and

Amphilochus was son of Amphiaräus, not son of Alkmæôn.[673] He was the

eponymous hero of the town called the Amphilochian Argos, in Akarnania,

on the shore of the Gulf of Ambrakia. Thucydidês tells us that he went

thither on his return from the Trojan war, being dissatisfied with

the state of affairs which he found at the Peloponnêsian Argos.[674]

The Akarnanians were remarkable for the numerous prophets which they

supplied to the rest of Greece: their heroes were naturally drawn from

the great prophetic race of the Melampodids.

[673] Thêbaïd, Cy. Reliqu. p. 70, Leutsch; Schol. Apollôn. Rhod.

i. 408. The following lines cited in Athenæus (vii. p. 317) are

supposed by Boeckh, with probable reason, to be taken from the

Cyclic Thêbaïs; a portion of the advice of Amphiaräus to his sons

at the time of setting out on his last expedition,—

Πουλύποδός μοι, τέκνον, ἔχων νόον, Ἀμφίλοχ᾽ ἥρως,

Τοῖσιν ἐφαρμόζου, τῶν ἂν κατὰ δῆμον ἵκηαι.

There were two tragedies composed by Euripidês, under the

title of Ἀλκμαίων, ὁ διὰ Ψωφῖδος, and Ἀλκμαίων, ὁ διὰ Κορίνθου

(Dindorf, Fragm. Eurip. p. 77).

[674] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 7; Thucyd. ii. 68.

Thus ends the legend of the two sieges of Thêbes; the greatest event,

except the siege of Troy, in the ancient epic; the greatest enterprise

of war, between Greeks and Greeks, during the time of those who are

called the Heroes.

CHAPTER XV.

LEGEND OF TROY.

We now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian

epic,—the two sieges and capture of Troy, with the destinies of the

dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as Grecian, after the second and most

celebrated capture and destruction of the city.

It would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea of

the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable, first

handled by so many poets, epic, lyric and tragic, with their endless

additions, transformations and contradictions,—then purged and

recast by historical inquirers, who under color of setting aside

the exaggerations of the poets, introduced a new vein of prosaic

invention,—lastly, moralized and allegorized by philosophers. In the

present brief outline of the general field of Grecian legend, or of

that which the Greeks believed to be their antiquities, the Trojan

war can be regarded as only one among a large number of incidents

upon which Hekatæus and Herodotus looked back as constituting their

fore-time. Taken as a special legendary event, it is indeed of wider

and larger interest than any other, but it is a mistake to single it

out from the rest as if it rested upon a different and more trustworthy

basis. I must therefore confine myself to an abridged narrative of

the current and leading facts; and amidst the numerous contradictory

statements which are to be found respecting every one of them, I

know no better ground of preference than comparative antiquity,

though even the oldest tales which we possess—those contained in the

Iliad—evidently presuppose others of prior date.

The primitive ancestor of the Trojan line of kings is Dardanus, son of

Zeus, founder and eponymus of Dardania:[675] in the account of later

authors, Dardanus was called the son of Zeus by Elektra, daughter of

Atlas, and was further said to have come from Samothrace, or from

Arcadia, or from Italy;[676] but of this Homer mentions nothing. The

first Dardanian town founded by him was in a lofty position on the

descent of Mount Ida; for he was not yet strong enough to establish

himself on the plain. But his son Erichthonius, by the favor of

Zeus, became the wealthiest of mankind. His flocks and herds having

multiplied, he had in his pastures three thousand mares, the offspring

of some of whom, by Boreas, produced horses of preternatural swiftness.

Trôs, the son of Erichthonius, and the eponym of the Trojans, had three

sons—Ilus, Assaracus, and the beautiful Ganymêdês, whom Zeus stole away

to become his cup-bearer in Olympus, giving to his father Trôs, as the

price of the youth, a team of immortal horses.[677]

[675] Iliad, xx. 215.

[676] Hellanik. Fragm. 129, Didot; Dionys. Hal. i. 50-61;

Apollodôr. iii. 12, 1; Schol. Iliad. xviii. 486; Varro, ap.

Servium ad Virgil. Æneid. iii. 167. Kephalôn. Gergithius ap.

Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρίσβη.

[677] Iliad, v. 265; Hellanik. Fr. 146; Apollod. ii. 5, 9.

From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines diverge; the

former passing from Ilus to Laomedôn, Priam and Hectôr; the latter from

Assaracus to Capys, Anchisês and Æneas. Ilus founded in the plain of

Troy the holy city of Ilium; Assaracus and his descendants remained

sovereigns of Dardania.[678]

[678] Iliad, xx. 236.

It was under the proud Laomedôn, son of Ilus, that Poseidôn and Apollo

underwent, by command of Zeus, a temporary servitude; the former

building the walls of the town, the latter tending the flocks and

herds. When their task was completed and the penal period had expired,

they claimed the stipulated reward; but Laomedôn angrily repudiated

their demand, and even threatened to cut off their ears, to tie them

hand and foot, and to sell them in some distant island as slaves.[679]

He was punished for this treachery by a sea-monster, whom Poseidôn

sent to ravage his fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomedôn

publicly offered the immortal horses given by Zeus to his father Trôs,

as a reward to any one who would destroy the monster. But an oracle

declared that a virgin of noble blood must be surrendered to him, and

the lot fell upon Hesionê, daughter of Laomedôn himself. Hêraklês

arriving at this critical moment, killed the monster by the aid of a

fort built for him by Athênê and the Trojans,[680] so as to rescue

both the exposed maiden and the people; but Laomedôn, by a second act

of perfidy, gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless animals

which had been promised. Thus defrauded of his due, Hêraklês equipped

six ships, attacked and captured Troy and killed Laomedôn,[681] giving

Hesionê to his friend and auxiliary Telamôn, to whom she bore the

celebrated archer Teukros.[682] A painful sense of this expedition was

preserved among the inhabitants of the historical town of Ilium, who

offered no worship to Hêraklês.[683]

[679] Iliad, vii. 451; xxi. 456. Hesiod. ap. Schol. Lycophr. 393.

[680] Iliad, xx. 145; Dionys. Hal. i. 52.

[681] Iliad, v. 640. Meneklês (ap. Schol. Venet. _ad loc._)

affirmed that this expedition of Hêraklês was a fiction; but

Dikæarchus gave, besides, other exploits of the hero in the same

neighborhood, at Thêbê Hypoplakiê (Schol. Iliad, vi. 396).

[682] Diodôr. iv. 32-49. Compare Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. viii.

284.

[683] Strabo, xiii. p. 596.

Among all the sons of Laomedôn, Priam[684] was the only one who

had remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned guerdon of

Hêraklês; for which the hero recompensed him by placing him on the

throne. Many and distinguished were his sons and daughters, as well by

his wife Hekabê, daughter of Kisseus, as by other women.[685] Among the

sons were Hectôr,[686] Paris, Dêiphobus, Helenus, Trôilus, Politês,

Polydôrus; among the daughters Laodikê, Kreüsa, Polyxena, and Kassandra.

[684] As Dardanus, Trôs and Ilus are respectively eponyms of

Dardania, Troy and Ilium, so Priam is eponym of the acropolis

_Pergamum_. Πρίαμος is in the Æolic dialect Πέῤῥαμος (Hesychius):

upon which Ahrens remarks, “Cæterum ex hac Æolicâ nominis formâ

apparet, Priamum non minus arcis Περγάμων eponymum esse, quam

Ilum urbis, Troem populi: Πέργαμα enim a Περίαμα natum est, ι

in γ mutato.” (Ahrens, De Dialecto Æolicâ, 8, 7. p. 56: compare

_ibid._ 28, 8. p. 150, πεῤῥ᾽ ἁπάλω).

[685] Iliad, vi. 245; xxiv. 495.

[686] Hectôr was affirmed, both by Stesichorus and Ibykus, to be

the son of Apollo (Stesichorus, ap. Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. xxiv.

259; Ibyki Fragm. xiv. ed. Schneidewin): both Euphoriôn (Fr. 125,

Meineke) and Alexander Ætôlus follow the same idea. Stesichorus

further stated, that after the siege Apollo had carried Hekabê

away into Lykia to rescue her from captivity (Pausanias, x. 27,

1): according to Euripidês, Apollo had promised that she should

die in Troy (Troad. 427).

By Sapphô, Hectôr was given as a surname of Zeus, Ζεὺς Ἕκτωρ

(Hesychius, v. Ἕκτορες); a prince belonging to the regal family

of Chios, anterior to the Ionic settlement, as mentioned by the

Chian poet Iôn (Pausan. vii. 3, 3), was so called.

The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presages; for Hekabê

dreamt that she was delivered of a firebrand, and Priam, on consulting

the soothsayers, was informed that the son about to be born would prove

fatal to him. Accordingly he directed the child to be exposed on Mount

Ida; but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him, and he

grew up amidst the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair

and symmetrical in person, and the special favorite of Aphroditê.[687]

[687] Iliad, iii. 45-55; Schol. Iliad. iii. 325; Hygin. fab. 91;

Apollodôr. iii. 12, 5.

It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd’s walk on Mount Ida,

that the three goddesses Hêrê, Athênê, and Aphroditê were conducted,

in order that he might determine the dispute respecting their

comparative beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of Pêleus and

Thetis,—a dispute brought about in pursuance of the arrangement, and in

accomplishment of the deep-laid designs, of Zeus. For Zeus, remarking

with pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race,

pitied the earth for the overwhelming burden which she was compelled

to bear, and determined to lighten it by exciting a destructive

and long-continued war.[688] Paris awarded the palm of beauty to

Aphroditê, who promised him in recompense the possession of Helena,

wife of the Spartan Menelaus,—the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of

living women. At the instance of Aphroditê, ships were built for him,

and he embarked on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to

his native city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother

Helenus, and the always neglected warnings of Kassandra.[689]

[688] This was the motive assigned to Zeus by the old epic poem,

the Cyprian Verses (Frag. 1. Düntz. p. 12; ap. Schol. ad Iliad.

i. 4):—

Ἡ δὲ ἱστορία παρὰ Στασίνῳ τῷ τὰ Κύπρια πεποιηκότι εἰπόντι οὕτως·

Ἦν ὅτε μύρια φῦλα κατὰ χθόνα πλαζόμενα ...

... βαρυστέρνου πλάτος αἴης.

Ζεὺς δὲ ἰδὼν ἐλέησε, καὶ ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσι

Σύνθετο κουφίσαι ἀνθρώπων παμβώτορα γαῖαν,

Ῥιπίσας πολέμου μεγάλην ἔριν Ἰλιακοῖο,

Ὄφρα κενώσειεν θάνατῳ βάρος· οἱ δ᾽ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ

Ἥρωες κτείνοντο, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή.

The same motive is touched upon by Eurip. Orest, 1635; Helen.

38; and seriously maintained, as it seems, by Chrysippus, ap.

Plutarch. Stoic. Rep. p. 1049: but the poets do not commonly go

back farther than the passion of Paris for Helen (Theognis, 1232;

Simonid. Amorg. Fragm. 6, 118).

The judgment of Paris was one of the scenes represented on the

ancient chest of Kypselus at Olympia (Pausan. v. 19, 1).

[689] Argument of the Ἔπη Κύπρια (ap. Düntzer, p. 10). These

warnings of Kassandra form the subject of the obscure and

affected poem of Lycophrôn.

Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Menelaus

as well as by Kastôr and Pollux, and was enabled to present the rich

gifts which he had brought to Helen.[690] Menelaus then departed to

Krête, leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan guest—a favorable moment

which was employed by Aphroditê to bring about the intrigue and the

elopement. Paris carried away with him both Helen and a large sum

of money belonging to Menelaus—made a prosperous voyage to Troy—and

arrived there safely with his prize on the third day.[691]

[690] According to the Cyprian Verses, Helena was daughter of

Zeus by Nemesis, who had in vain tried to evade the connection

(Athenæ. viii. 334). Hesiod (Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150)

represented her as daughter of Oceanus and Têthys, an oceanic

nymph: Sapphô (Fragm. 17, Schneidewin), Pausanias (i. 33, 7),

Apollodôrus (iii. 10, 7), and Isokratês (Encom. Helen. v. ii. p.

366, Auger) reconcile the pretensions of Lêda and Nemesis to a

sort of joint maternity (see Heinrichsen, De Carminibus Cypriis,

p. 45-46).

[691] Herodot. ii. 117. He gives distinctly the assertion of

the Cyprian Verses, which contradicts the argument of the poem

as it appears in Proclus (Fragm. 1, 1), according to which

latter, Paris is driven out of his course by a storm and captures

the city of Sidôn. Homer (Iliad, vi. 293) seems however to

countenance the statement in the argument.

That Paris was guilty of robbery, as well as of the abduction of

Helen, is several times mentioned in the Iliad (iii. 144; vii.

350-363), also in the argument of the Cyprian Verses (see Æschyl.

Agam. 534).

Menelaus, informed by Iris in Krête of the perfidious return made by

Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and indignation

to consult with his brother Agamemnôn, as well as with the venerable

Nestôr, on the means of avenging the outrage. They made known the

event to the Greek chiefs around them, among whom they found universal

sympathy: Nestôr, Palamêdês and others went round to solicit aid in

a contemplated attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnôn, to

whom each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until

Helen should be recovered.[692] Ten years were spent in equipping the

expedition. The goddesses Hêrê and Athênê, incensed at the preference

given by Paris to Aphroditê, and animated by steady attachment to

Argos, Sparta and Mykênæ, took an active part in the cause; and the

horses of Hêrê were fatigued with her repeated visits to the different

parts of Greece.[693]

[692] The ancient epic (Schol. ad Il. ii. 286-339) does not

recognize the story of the numerous suitors of Helen, and

the oath by which Tyndareus bound them all before he made

the selection among them, that each should swear not only to

acquiesce, but even to aid in maintaining undisturbed possession

to the husband whom she should choose. This story seems to have

been first told by Stesichorus (see Fragm. 20. ed. Kleine;

Apollod. iii. 10, 8). Yet it was evidently one of the prominent

features of the current legend in the time of Thucydidês (i. 9;

Euripid. Iphig. Aul. 51-80; Soph. Ajax, 1100).

The exact spot in which Tyndareus exacted this oath from the

suitors, near Sparta, was pointed out even in the time of

Pausanias (iii. 20, 9).

[693] Iliad, iv. 27-55; xxiv. 765. Argument. Carm. Cypri. The

point is emphatically touched upon by Dio Chrysostom (Orat.

xi. p. 335-336) in his assault upon the old legend. Two years’

preparation—in Dictys Cret. i. 16.

By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis[694] in

Bœôtia, consisting of 1186 ships and more than 100,000 men,—a force

outnumbering by more than ten to one anything that the Trojans

themselves could oppose, and superior to the defenders of Troy even

with all her allies included.[695] It comprised heroes with their

followers from the extreme points of Greece—from the north-western

portions of Thessaly under Mount Olympus, as well as the western

islands of Dulichium and Ithaca, and the eastern islands of Krête

and Rhodes. Agamemnôn himself contributed 100 ships manned with the

subjects of his kingdom of Mykênæ, besides furnishing 60 ships to the

Arcadians, who possessed none of their own. Menelaus brought with him

60 ships, Nestôr from Pylus 90, Idomeneus from Krête and Diomêdês from

Argos 80 each. Forty ships were manned by the Eleians, under four

different chiefs; the like number under Megês from Dulichium and the

Echinades, and under Thoas from Kalydôn and the other Ætôlian towns.

Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis, brought 12 ships each. The

Abantes from Eubœa, under Elephênôr, filled 40 vessels; the Bœôtians,

under Peneleôs and Lêitus, 50; the inhabitants of Orchomenos and

Aspledôn, 30; the light-armed Locrians, under Ajax son of Oileus,[696]

40; the Phôkians as many. The Athenians, under Menestheus, a chief

distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army, mustered 50 ships;

the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas, under Achilles, assembled in

50 ships; Protesilaus from Phylakê and Pyrasus, and Eurypylus from

Ormenium, each came with 40 ships; Machaôn and Podaleirius, from

Trikka, with 30; Admêtus, from Pheræ and the lake Bœbêis, with 11;

and Philoktêtês from Melibœa with 7: the Lapithæ, under Polypœtês,

son of Peirithous, filled 40 vessels; the Ænianes and Perrhæbians,

under Guneus,[697] 22; and the Magnêtês under Prothous, 40; these last

two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly, near the mountains

Pêlion and Olympus. From Rhodes, under Tlêpolemus, son of Hêraklês,

appeared 9 ships; from Symê under the comely but effeminate Nireus,

3; from Kôs, Krapathus and the neighboring islands, 30, under the

orders of Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons of

Hêraklês.[698]

[694] The Spartan king Agesilaus, when about to start from Greece

on his expedition into Asia Minor (396 B. C.) went to Aulis

personally, in order that he too might sacrifice on the spot

where Agamemnôn had sacrificed when he sailed for Troy (Xenoph.

Hellen. iii. 4, 4).

Skylax (c. 60) notices the ἱερὸν at Aulis, and nothing else: it

seems to have been like the adjoining Delium, a temple with a

small village grown up around it.

Aulis is recognized as the port from which the expedition

started, in the Hesiodic Works and Days (v. 650).

[695] Iliad, ii. 128. Uschold (Geschichte des Trojanischen

Kriegs, p. 9, Stutgart 1836) makes the total 135,000 men.

[696] The Hesiodic Catalogue notices Oileus, or Ileus, with a

singular etymology of his name (Fragm. 136, ed. Marktscheffel).

[697] Γουνεὺς is the Heros Eponymus of the town of Gonnus in

Thessaly; the duplication of the consonant and shortening of the

vowel belong to the Æolic dialect (Ahrens, De Dialect. Æolic. 50,

4. p. 220).

[698] See the Catalogue in the second book of the Iliad. There

must probably have been a Catalogue of the Greeks also in

the Cyprian Verses; for a Catalogue of the allies of Troy is

specially noticed in the Argument of Proclus (p. 12. Düntzer).

Euripidês (Iphig. Aul. 165-300) devotes one of the songs of the

Chorus to a partial Catalogue of the chief heroes.

According to Dictys Cretensis, all the principal heroes engaged

in the expedition were kinsmen, all Pelopids (i. 14): they take

an oath not to lay down their arms until Helen shall have been

recovered, and they receive from Agamemnôn a large sum of gold.

Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished warriors

Ajax and Diomêdês, and the sagacious Nestôr; while Agamemnôn himself,

scarcely inferior to either of them in prowess, brought with him a high

reputation for prudence in command. But the most marked and conspicuous

of all were Achilles and Odysseus; the former a beautiful youth born of

a divine mother, swift in the race, of fierce temper and irresistible

might; the latter not less efficient as an ally from his eloquence,

his untiring endurance, his inexhaustible resources under difficulty,

and the mixture of daring courage with deep-laid cunning which never

deserted him:[699] the blood of the arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through

an illicit connection with his mother Antikleia, was said to flow in

his veins,[700] and he was especially patronized and protected by

the goddess Athênê. Odysseus, unwilling at first to take part in the

expedition, had even simulated insanity; but Palamêdês, sent to Ithaca

to invite him, tested the reality of his madness by placing in the

furrow where Odysseus was ploughing, his infant son Telemachus. Thus

detected, Odysseus could not refuse to join the Achæan host, but the

prophet Halithersês predicted to him that twenty years would elapse

before he revisited his native land.[701] To Achilles the gods had

promised the full effulgence of heroic glory before the walls of Troy;

nor could the place be taken without both his coöperation and that of

his son after him. But they had forewarned him that this brilliant

career would be rapidly brought to a close; and that if he desired a

long life, he must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land.

In spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis, he preferred few years

with bright renown, and joined the Achæan host.[702] When Nestôr and

Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he and his intimate friend

Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call.[703]

[699] For the character of Odysseus, Iliad, iii. 202-220; x. 247.

Odyss. xiii. 295.

The Philoktêtês of Sophoklês carries out very justly the

character of the Homeric Odysseus (see v. 1035)—more exactly than

the Ajax of the same poet depicts it.

[700] Sophokl. Philoktêt. 417, and Schol.—also Schol. ad Soph.

Ajac. 190.

[701] Homer, Odyss. xxiv. 115; Æschyl. Agam. 841; Sophokl.

Philoktêt. 1011, with the Schol. Argument of the Cypria in

Heinrichsen, De Carmin. Cypr. p. 23 (the sentence is left out in

Düntzer, p. 11).

A lost tragedy of Sophoklês, Ὀδυσσεὺς Μαινόμενος, handled this

subject.

Other Greek chiefs were not less reluctant than Odysseus to take

part in the expedition: see the tale of Pœmandrus, forming a

part of the temple-legend of the Achilleium at Tanagra in Bϙtia

(Plutarch, Quæstion. Græc. p. 299).

[702] Iliad, i. 352; ix. 411.

[703] Iliad, xi. 782.

Agamemnôn and his powerful host set sail from Aulis; but being

ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by mistake in

Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Kaïkus, and began to ravage

the country under the persuasion that it was the neighborhood of Troy.

Telephus, the king of the country,[704] opposed and repelled them, but

was ultimately defeated and severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks

now, discovering their mistake, retired; but their fleet was dispersed

by a storm and driven back to Greece. Achilles attacked and took

Skyrus, and there married Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomêdês.[705]

Telephus, suffering from his wounds, was directed by the oracle to come

to Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed, by applying

the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had been given: thus

restored, he became the guide of the Greeks when they were prepared to

renew their expedition.[706]

[704] Telephus was the son of Augê, daughter of king Aleus

of Tegea in Arcadia, by Hêraklês: respecting her romantic

adventures, see the previous chapter on Arcadian legends—Strabo’s

faith in the story (xii. p. 572).

The spot called the Harbor of the Achæans, near Gryneium, was

stated to be the place where Agamemnôn and the chiefs took

counsel whether they should attack Telephus or not (Skylax, c.

97; compare Strabo, xiv. p. 622).

[705] Iliad, xi. 664; Argum. Cypr. p. 11, Düntzer; Diktys Cret.

ii. 3-4.

[706] Euripid. Telephus, Frag. 26, Dindorf; Hygin. f. 101;

Diktys, ii. 10. Euripidês had treated the adventure of Telephus

in this lost tragedy: he gave the miraculous cure with the dust

of the spear, πριστοῖσι λογχῆς θέλγεται ῥινήμασι. Diktys softens

down the prodigy: “Achilles cum Machaone et Podalirio adhibeutes

curam vulneri,” etc. Pliny (xxxiv. 15) gives to the rust of brass

or iron a place in the list of genuine remedies.

“Longe omnino a Tiberi ad Caicum: quo in loco etiam Agamemnôn

errasset, nisi ducem Telephum invenisset” (Cicero, Pro L. Flacco,

c. 29). The portions of the Trojan legend treated in the lost

epics and the tragedians, seem to have been just as familiar to

Cicero as those noticed in the Iliad.

Strabo pays comparatively little attention to any portion of the

Trojan war except what appears in Homer. He even goes so far as

to give a reason why the Amazons _did not_ come to the aid of

Priam: they were at enmity with him, because Priam had aided

the Phrygians against them (Iliad, iii. 188: in Strabo, τοῖς

Ἰῶσιν must be a mistake for τοῖς Φρυξίν). Strabo can hardly have

read, and never alludes to, Arktinus; in whose poem the brave

and beautiful Penthesileia, at the head of her Amazons, forms a

marked epoch and incident of the war (Strabo, xii. 552).

The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the goddess Artemis,

displeased with the boastful language of Agamemnôn, prolonged the

duration of adverse winds, and the offending chief was compelled

to appease her by the well-known sacrifice of his daughter

Iphigeneia.[707] They then proceeded to Tenedos, from whence Odysseus

and Menelaus were despatched as envoys to Troy, to redemand Helen and

the stolen property. In spite of the prudent counsels of Antenôr,

who received the two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality, the

Trojans rejected the demand, and the attack was resolved upon. It was

foredoomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should perish:

Protesilaus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope,

and accordingly fell by the hand of Hectôr.

[707] Nothing occurs in Homer respecting the sacrifice of

Iphigeneia (see Schol. Ven. ad Il. ix. 145).

Meanwhile the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies from various

parts of Asia Minor and Thrace: Dardanians under Æneas, Lykians under

Sarpedôn, Mysians, Karians, Mæonians, Alizonians,[708] Phrygians,

Thracians, and Pæonians.[709] But vain was the attempt to oppose

the landing of the Greeks: the Trojans were routed, and even the

invulnerable Cycnus,[710] son of Poseidôn, one of the great bulwarks of

the defence, was slain by Achilles. Having driven the Trojans within

their walls, Achilles attacked and stormed Lyrnêssus, Pêdasus, Lesbos

and other places in the neighborhood, twelve towns on the sea-coast

and eleven in the interior; he drove off the oxen of Æneas and pursued

the hero himself, who narrowly escaped with his life: he surprised

and killed the youthful Trôilus, son of Priam, and captured several

of the other sons, whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the

Ægean.[711] He acquired as his captive the fair Brisêis, while Chrysêis

was awarded to Agamemnôn: he was moreover eager to see the divine

Helen, the prize and stimulus of this memorable struggle; and Aphroditê

and Thetis contrived to bring about an interview between them.[712]

[708] No portion of the Homeric Catalogue gave more trouble

to Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis and the other expositors than these

Alizonians (Strabo, xii. p. 549; xiii. p. 603): a fictitious

place called Alizonium, in the region of Ida, was got up to meet

the difficulty (εἶτ᾽ Ἀλιζώνιον, τοῦτ᾽ ἤδη ~πεπλασμένον~ πρὸς τὴν

τῶν Ἀλιζώνων ὑπόθεσιν, etc., Strabo, _l. c._).

[709] See the Catalogue of the Trojans (Iliad, ii. 815-877).

[710] Cycnus was said by later writers to be king of Kolônæ

in the Troad (Strabo, xiii. p. 589-603; Aristotel. Rhetoric.

ii. 23). Æschylus introduced upon the Attic stage both Cycnus

and Memnôn in terrific equipments (Aristophan. Ran. 957. Οὐδ᾽

ἐξέπληττον αὐτοὺς Κύκνους ἄγων καὶ Μέμνονας κωδωνοφαλαροπώλους).

Compare Welcker, Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 433.

[711] Iliad, xxiv. 752; Argument of the Cypria, pp. 11, 12,

Düntzer. These desultory exploits of Achilles furnished much

interesting romance to the later Greek poets (see Parthênius,

Narrat. 21). See the neat summary of the principal events of the

war in Quintus Smyrn. xiv. 125-140; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p.

338-342.

Trôilus is only once named in the Iliad (xxiv. 253); he was

mentioned also in the Cypria; but his youth, beauty, and untimely

end made him an object of great interest with the subsequent

poets. Sophoklês had a tragedy called _Trôilus_ (Welcker,

Griechisch. Tragöd. i. p. 124); Τὸν ἀνδρόπαιδα δεσπότην ἀπώλεσα,

one of the Fragm. Even earlier than Sophoklês, his beauty was

celebrated by the tragedian Phrynichus (Athenæ, xiii. p. 564;

Virgil, Æneid, i. 474; Lycophrôn, 307).

[712] Argument. Cypr. p. 11, Düntz. Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα Ἀχιλλεὺς

Ἑλένην ἐπιθυμεῖ θεάσασθαι, καὶ συνήγαγον αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ

Ἀφροδίτη καὶ Θέτις. A scene which would have been highly

interesting in the hands of Homer.

At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of Palamêdês,

one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven the artifice

by which Palamêdês had detected his simulated insanity, nor was he

without jealousy of a rival clever and cunning in a degree equal, if

not superior, to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with the

invention of letters, of dice for amusement, of night-watches, as

well as with other useful suggestions. According to the old Cyprian

epic, Palamêdês was drowned while fishing, by the hands of Odysseus

and Diomêdês.[713] Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name

of Palamêdês occur: the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both

those poems—noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pindar,

who described Palamêdês as the wiser man of the two—is sufficient to

explain the omission.[714] But in the more advanced period of the

Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire a higher

place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the

character of Palamêdês, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him

one of the most interesting personages in the Trojan legend. Æschylus,

Sophoklês and Euripidês each consecrated to him a special tragedy; but

the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable

to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been

falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried

in his tent, and persuaded Agamemnôn and the Grecian chiefs that

Palamêdês had received it from the Trojans.[715] He thus forfeited his

life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion of the

leading Greeks. In the last speech made by the philosopher Socratês to

his Athenian judges, he alludes with solemnity and fellow-feeling to

the unjust condemnation of Palamêdês, as analogous to that which he

himself was about to suffer, and his companions seem to have dwelt with

satisfaction on the comparison. Palamêdês passed for an instance of

the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often wait upon superior

genius.[716]

[713] Argum. Cypr. 1. 1.; Pausan. x. 31. The concluding portion

of the Cypria seems to have passed under the title of Παλαμηδεία

(see Fragm. 16 and 18. p. 15, Düntz.; Welcker, Der Episch. Cycl.

p. 459; Eustath. ad Hom. Odyss. i. 107).

The allusion of Quintus Smyrnæus (v. 197) seems rather to point

to the story in the Cypria, which Strabo (viii. p. 368) appears

not to have read.

[714] Pindar, Nem. vii. 21; Aristidês, Orat. 46. p. 260.

[715] See the Fragments of the three tragedians,

Παλαμήδης—Aristeidês, Or. xlvi. p. 260; Philostrat. Heroic. x.;

Hygin. fab. 95-105. Discourses for and against Palamêdês, one

by Alkidamas, and one under the name of Gorgias, are printed in

Reiske’s Orr. Græc. t. viii. pp. 64, 102; Virgil, Æneid, ii. 82,

with the ample commentary of Servius—Polyæn. Proœ. p. 6.

Welcker (Griechisch. Tragöd. v. i. p. 130, vol. ii. p. 500)

has evolved with ingenuity the remaining fragments of the lost

tragedies.

According to Diktys, Odysseus and Diomêdês prevail upon Palamêdês

to be let down into a deep well, and then cast stones upon him

(ii. 15).

Xenophôn (De Venatione, c. 1) evidently recognizes the story

in the Cypria, that Odysseus and Diomêdês caused the death of

Palamêdês; but he _cannot_ believe that two such exemplary men

were really guilty of so iniquitous an act—κακοὶ δὲ ἔπραξαν τὸ

ἔργον.

One of the eminences near Napoli still bears the name of

_Palamidhi_.

[716] Plato, Apolog. Socr. c. 32; Xenoph. Apol. Socr. 26; Memor.

iv. 2, 33; Liban. pro Socr. p. 242, ed. Morell.; Lucian, Dial.

Mort 20.

In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, during which

the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear

of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the siege of

Troy, just as five years was the duration of the siege of Kamikus by

the Krêtan armament which came to avenge the death of Minôs:[717] ten

years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering

for Odysseus, were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of

the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the

original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be

contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satisfied

without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of coherence

between the separate events. Thucydidês tells us that the Greeks

were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being

moreover very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant

provisions: hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and to

employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese,—a part in marauding

expeditions over the neighborhood. Could the whole army have been

employed against Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much

more speedily and easily concluded.[718] If the great historian could

permit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might

have imagined that the simpler course would have been to include the

duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggerations, and to

affirm that the real siege had lasted only one year instead of ten.

But it seems that the ten years’ duration was so capital a feature in

the ancient tale, that no critic ventured to meddle with it.

[717] Herodot. vii. 170. Ten years is a proper mythical period

for a great war to last: the war between the Olympic gods and the

Titan gods lasts ten years (Hesiod, Theogon. 636). Compare δεκάτῳ

ἐνιαυτῷ (Hom. Odyss. xvi. 17).

[718] Thucyd. i. 11.

A period of comparative intermission however was now at hand for the

Trojans. The gods brought about the memorable fit of anger of Achilles,

under the influence of which he refused to put on his armor, and kept

his Myrmidons in camp. According to the Cypria, this was the behest of

Zeus, who had compassion on the Trojans: according to the Iliad, Apollo

was the originating cause,[719] from anxiety to avenge the injury which

his priest Chrysês had endured from Agamemnôn. For a considerable

time, the combats of the Greeks against Troy were conducted without

their best warrior, and severe indeed was the humiliation which they

underwent in consequence. How the remaining Grecian chiefs vainly

strove to make amends for his absence—how Hectôr and the Trojans

defeated and drove them to their ships—how the actual blaze of the

destroying flame, applied by Hectôr to the ship of Protesilaus, roused

up the anxious and sympathizing Patroclus, and extorted a reluctant

consent from Achilles, to allow his friend and his followers to go

forth and avert the last extremity of ruin—how Achilles, when Patroclus

had been killed by Hectôr, forgetting his anger in grief for the death

of his friend, reëntered the fight, drove the Trojans within their

walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both upon the

living and the dead Hectôr—all these events have been chronicled,

together with those divine dispensations on which most of them are made

to depend, in the immortal verse of the Iliad.

[719] Homer, Iliad, i. 21.

Homer breaks off with the burial of Hectôr, whose body has just been

ransomed by the disconsolate Priam; while the lost poem of Arktinus,

entitled the Æthiopis, so far as we can judge from the argument still

remaining of it, handled only the subsequent events of the siege. The

poem of Quintus Smyrnæus, composed about the fourth century of the

Christian æra, seems in its first books to coincide with the Æthiopis,

in the subsequent books partly with the Ilias Minor of Leschês.[720]

[720] Tychsen, Commentat. de Quinto Smyrnæo, § iii. c. 5-7. The

Ἰλίου Πέρσις was treated both by Arktinus and by Leschês: with

the latter it formed a part of the Ilias Minor.

The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hectôr, were again animated

with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beautiful queen of the

Amazons, Penthesileia, daughter of Arês, hitherto invincible in the

field, who came to their assistance from Thrace at the head of a band

of her countrywomen. She again led the besieged without the walls

to encounter the Greeks in the open field; and under her auspices

the latter were at first driven back, until she too was slain by the

invincible arm of Achilles. The victor, on taking off the helmet of

his fair enemy as she lay on the ground, was profoundly affected and

captivated by her charms, for which he was scornfully taunted by

Thersitês: exasperated by this rash insult, he killed Thersitês on

the spot with a blow of his fist. A violent dispute among the Grecian

chiefs was the result, for Diomêdês, the kinsman of Thersitês, warmly

resented the proceeding; and Achilles was obliged to go to Lesbus,

where he was purified from the act of homicide by Odysseus.[721]

[721] Argument of the Æthiopis, p. 16, Düntzer; Quint. Smyrn.

lib. i.; Diktys Cret. iv. 2-3.

In the Philoktêtês, of Sophoklês, Thersitês survives Achilles

(Soph. Phil. 358-445).

Next arrived Memnôn, son of Tithônus and Eôs, the most stately of

living men, with a powerful band of black Æthiopians, to the assistance

of Troy. Sallying forth against the Greeks, he made great havoc among

them: the brave and popular Antilochus perished by his hand, a victim

to filial devotion in defence of Nestôr.[722] Achilles at length

attacked him, and for a long time the combat was doubtful between

them: the prowess of Achilles and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus

finally prevailed; whilst Eôs obtained for her vanquished son the

consoling gift of immortality. His tomb, however,[723] was shown near

the Propontis, within a few miles of the mouth of the river Æsêpus,

and was visited annually by the birds called Memnonides, who swept it

and bedewed it with water from the stream. So the traveller Pausanias

was told, even in the second century after the Christian æra, by the

Hellespontine Greeks.

[722] Odyss. xi. 522. Κεῖνον δὴ κάλλιστον ἴδον, μετὰ Μέμνονα

δῖον: see also Odyss. iv. 187; Pindar, Pyth. vi. 31. Æschylus

(ap. Strabo. xv. p. 728) conceives Memnôn as a Persian starting

from Susa.

Ktêsias gave in his history full details respecting the

expedition of Memnôn, sent by the king of Assyria to the relief

of his dependent, Priam of Troy; all this was said to be recorded

in the royal archives. The Egyptians affirmed that Memnôn had

come from Egypt (Diodôr. ii. 22; compare iv. 77): the two stories

are blended together in Pausanias, x. 31, 2. The Phrygians

pointed out the road along which he had marched.

[723] Argum. Æth. _ut sup._; Quint. Smyrn. ii. 396-550; Pausan.

x. 31, 1. Pindar, in praising Achilles, dwells much on his

triumphs over Hectôr, Têlephus, Memnôn, and Cycnus, but never

notices Penthesileia (Olymp. ii. 90; Nem. iii. 60; vi. 52. Isthm.

v. 43).

Æschylus, in the Ψυχοστασία, introduced Thetis and Eôs, each in

an attitude of supplication for her son, and Zeus weighing in his

golden scales the souls of Achilles and Memnôn (Schol. Ven. ad

Iliad, viii. 70: Pollux, iv. 130; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p.

17). In the combat between Achilles and Memnôn, represented on

the chest of Kypselus at Olympia, Thetis and Eôs were given each

as aiding her son (Pausan. v. 19, 1).

But the fate of Achilles himself was now at hand. After routing the

Trojans and chasing them into the town, he was slain near the Skæan

gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the unerring

auspices of Apollo.[724] The greatest efforts were made by the Trojans

to possess themselves of the body, which was however rescued and borne

off to the Grecian camp by the valor of Ajax and Odysseus. Bitter

was the grief of Thetis for the loss of her son: she came into the

camp with the Muses and the Nêreids to mourn over him; and when a

magnificent funeral-pile had been prepared by the Greeks to burn him

with every mark of honor, she stole away the body and conveyed it to

a renewed and immortal life in the island of Leukê in the Euxine Sea.

According to some accounts he was there blest with the nuptials and

company of Helen.[725]

[724] Iliad, xxii. 360; Sophokl. Philokt. 334; Virgil, Æneid, vi.

56.

[725] Argum. Æthiop. _ut sup._; Quint. Smyrn. 151-583; Homer,

Odyss. v. 310; Ovid, Metam. xiii. 284; Eurip. Androm. 1262;

Pausan. iii. 19, 13. According to Diktys (iv. 11), Paris and

Deiphobus entrap Achilles by the promise of an interview with

Polyxena and kill him.

A minute and curious description of the island Leukê, or Ἀχιλλέως

νῆσος, is given in Arrian (Periplus, Pont. Euxin. p. 21; ap.

Geogr. Min. t. 1).

The heroic or divine empire of Achilles in Scythia was recognized

by Alkæus the poet (Alkæi Fragm. Schneidew. Fr. 46), Ἀχιλλεῦ, ὃς

γᾶς Σκυθικᾶς μέδεις. Eustathius (ad Dionys. Periêgêt. 307) gives

the story of his having followed Iphigeneia thither: compare

Antonin. Liberal. 27.

Ibykus represented Achilles as having espoused Mêdea in the

Elysian Field (Idyk. Fragm. 18. Schneidewin). Simonidês followed

this story (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 815).

Thetis celebrated splendid funeral games in honor of her son, and

offered the unrivalled panoply, which Hêphæstos had forged and wrought

for him, as a prize to the most distinguished warrior in the Grecian

army. Odysseus and Ajax became rivals for the distinction, when

Athênê, together with some Trojan prisoners, who were asked from which

of the two their country had sustained greatest injury, decided in

favor of the former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with grief and

humiliation: in a fit of phrenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them for

the men who had wronged him, and then fell upon his own sword.[726]

[726] Argument of Æthiopis and Ilias Minor, and Fragm. 2 of the

latter, pp. 17, 18, Düntz.; Quint. Smyrn. v. 120-482; Hom. Odyss.

xi. 550; Pindar, Nem. vii. 26. The Ajax of Sophoklês, and the

contending speeches between Ajax and Ulysses in the beginning of

the thirteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, are too well known

to need special reference.

The suicide of Ajax seems to have been described in detail in

the Æthiopis: compare Pindar. Isthm. iii. 51, and the Scholia

_ad loc._, which show the attention paid by Pindar to the minute

circumstances of the old epic. See Fragm. 2 of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις

of Arktinus, in Düntz. p. 22, which would seem more properly to

belong to the Æthiopis. Diktys relates the suicide of Ajax, as a

consequence of his unsuccessful competition with Odysseus, not

about the arms of Achilles, but about the Palladium, after the

taking of the city (v. 14).

There were, however, many different accounts of the manner in

which Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument

to the drama of Sophoklês. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad:

Æschylus made him invulnerable except under the armpits (see

Schol. ad Sophok. Ajac. 833); the Trojans pelted him with mud—εἴ

πως βαρηθείῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ πήλου (Schol. Iliad. xiv. 404).

Odysseus now learnt from Helenus son of Priam, whom he had captured

in an ambuscade,[727] that Troy could not be taken unless both

Philoktêtês, and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be prevailed

upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the

foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the

stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnus in the commencement

of the expedition, and had spent ten years[728] in misery on that

desolate island; but he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows

of Hêraklês, which were said to be essential to the capture of Troy.

Diomêdês fetched Philoktêtês from Lemnus to the Grecian camp, where

he was healed by the skill of Machaôn,[729] and took an active part

against the Trojans—engaging in single combat with Paris, and killing

him with one of the Hêrakleian arrows. The Trojans were allowed to

carry away for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of

all their sufferings; but not until it had been mangled by the hand

of Menelaus.[730] Odysseus went to the island of Skyrus to invite

Neoptolemus to the army. The untried but impetuous youth gladly obeyed

the call, and received from Odysseus his father’s armor, while on the

other hand, Eurypylus, son of Têlephus, came from Mysia as auxiliary

to the Trojans and rendered to them valuable service—turning the tide

of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and killing some of their

bravest chiefs, amongst whom was numbered Peneleôs, and the unrivalled

leech Machaôn.[731] The exploits of Neoptolemus were numerous, worthy

of the glory of his race and the renown of his father. He encountered

and slew Eurypylus, together with numbers of the Mysian warriors: he

routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they

never again emerged to give battle: nor was he less distinguished for

his good sense and persuasive diction, than for forward energy in the

field.[732]

[727] Soph. Philokt. 604.

[728] Soph. Philokt. 703. Ὦ μελέα ψυχὰ, Ὃς μηδ᾽ οἰνοχύτου πόματος

Ἥσθη δεκετῆ χρόνον, etc.

In the narrative of Diktys (ii. 47), Philoktêtês returns from

Lemnus to Troy much earlier in the war before the death of

Achilles, and without any assigned cause.

[729] According to Sophoklês, Hêraklês sends Asklêpius to Troy to

heal Philoktêtês (Soph. Philokt. 1415).

The subject of Philoktêtês formed the subject of a tragedy both

by Æschylus and by Euripidês (both lost) as well as by Sophoklês.

[730] Argument. Iliad. Minor. Düntz. _l. c._ Καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν

ὑπὸ Μενελάου καταικισθέντα ἀνελόμενοι θάπτουσιν οἱ Τρῶες. See

Quint. Smyrn. x. 240: he differs here in many respects from the

arguments of the old poems as given by Proclus, both as to the

incidents and as to their order in time (Diktys, iv. 20). The

wounded Paris flees to Œnônê, whom he had deserted in order

to follow Helen, and entreats her to cure him by her skill in

simples: she refuses, and permits him to die; she is afterwards

stung with remorse, and hangs herself (Quint. Smyrn. x. 285-331;

Apollodôr. iii. 12, 6; Conôn. Narrat. 23; see Bachet de Meziriac,

Comment. sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, t. i. p. 456). The story of

Œnônê is as old as Hellanikus and Kephalôn of Gergis (see Hellan.

Fragm. 126, Didot).

[731] To mark the way in which these legendary events pervaded

and became embodied in the local worship, I may mention the

received practice in the great temple of Asklêpius (father of

Machaôn) at Pergamus, even in the time of Pausanias. Têlephus,

father of Eurypylus, was the local hero and mythical king of

Teuthrania, in which Pergamus was situated. In the hymns there

sung, the poem and the invocation were addressed to Têlephus; but

nothing was said in them about Eurypylus, nor was it permitted

even to mention his name in the temple,—“they knew him to be

the slayer of Machaôn:” ἄρχονται μὲν ἀπὸ Τηλέφου τῶν ὕμνων,

προσᾴδουσι δὲ οὐδὲν ἐς τὸν Εὐρύπυλον, οὐδὲ ἀρχὴν ἐν τῷ ναῷ

θέλουσιν ὀνομάζειν αὐτὸν, οἷα ἐπιστάμενοι φονέα ὄντα Μαχάονος

(Pausan. iii. 26, 7).

The combination of these qualities in other Homeric chiefs is

noted in a subsequent chapter of his work, ch. xx. vol. ii.

[732] Argument. Iliad. Minor. p. 17, Düntzer. Homer, Odyss. xi.

510-520. Pausan. iii. 26, 7. Quint. Smyrn. vii. 553; viii. 201.

Troy however was still impregnable so long as the Palladium, a statue

given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in the citadel; and great

care had been taken by the Trojans not only to conceal this valuable

present, but to construct other statues so like it as to mislead any

intruding robber. Nevertheless the enterprising Odysseus, having

disguised his person with miserable clothing and self-inflicted

injuries, found means to penetrate into the city and to convey the

Palladium by stealth away: Helen alone recognized him; but she was now

anxious to return to Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting

means for the capture of the town.[733]

[733] Argument. Iliad. Minor, p. 18, Düntz.; _Arktinus_ ap.

Dionys. Hal. i. 69; Homer, Odyss. iv. 246; Quint. Smyrn. x. 354:

Virgil, Æneid, ii. 164, and the 9th Excursus of Heyne on that

book.

Compare with this legend about the Palladium, the Roman legend

respecting the Ancylia (Ovid, Fasti, III. 381).

To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. By

the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of Athênê, a

capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable of containing

one hundred men: the _élite_ of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus,

Odysseus, Menelaus and others, concealed themselves in the inside

of it, and the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning

their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans,

overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and

contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left

behind: they long doubted what should be done with it; and the anxious

heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as

the voice of Helen when she pronounced their names and counterfeited

the accents of their wives.[734] Many of the Trojans were anxious to

dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their

deliverance; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an

enemy’s legacy; and Laocoôn, the priest of Poseidôn, manifested his

aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. The sound

revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this

warning of possible fraud; and the unfortunate Laocoôn, a victim to

his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of

his countrymen, together with one of his sons,—two serpents being sent

expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific

spectacle, together with the perfidious counsels of Sinon, a traitor

whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false

information, the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own

walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into

their city.[735]

[734] Odyss. iv. 275; Virgil, Æneid, ii. 14; Heyne, Excurs. 3. ad

Æneid. ii. Stesichorus, in his Ἰλίου Πέρσις, gave the number of

heroes in the wooden horse as one hundred (Stesichor. Fragm. 26,

ed. Kleine; compare Athenæ. xiii. p. 610).

[735] Odyss. viii. 492; xi. 522. Argument of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις

of Arktinus, p. 21. Düntz. Hydin. f. 108-135. Bacchylidês and

Euphorion ap. Servium ad Virgil. Æneid. ii. 201.

Both Sinon and Laocoôn came originally from the old epic poem of

Arktinus, though Virgil may perhaps have immediately borrowed

both them, and other matters in his second book, from a poem

passing under the name of Pisander (see Macrob. Satur. v. 2;

Heyne, Excurs. 1. ad Æn. ii.; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklus, v.

97). We cannot give credit either to Arktinus or Pisander for the

masterly specimen of oratory which is put into the mouth of Sinon

in the Æneid.

In Quintus Smyrnæus (xii. 366), the Trojans torture and mutilate

Sinon to extort from him the truth: his endurance, sustained

by the inspiration of Hêrê, is proof against the extremity of

suffering, and he adheres to his false tale. This is probably an

incident of the old epic, though the delicate taste of Virgil,

and his sympathy with the Trojans, has induced him to omit it.

Euphorion ascribed the proceedings of Sinon to Odysseus: he also

gave a different cause for the death of Laocoôn (Fr. 33-36. p.

55, ed. Düntz., in the Fragments of Epic Poets after Alexander

the Great). Sinon is ἐταῖρος Ὀδυσσέως in Pausan. x. 27, 1.

The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now

irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous

festivity, Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos,

loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed

heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without,

was thoroughly sacked and destroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of

the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable

Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought

shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herkeios; but his son Deiphobus,

who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, defended

his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life

dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the

latter.[736]

[736] Odyss. viii. 515; Argument of Arktinas, _ut sup._; Euripid.

Hecub. 903; Virg. Æn. vi. 497; Quint. Smyrn. xiii. 35-229;

Leschês ap. Pausan. x. 27, 2; Diktys, v. 12. Ibykus and Simonidês

also represented Deiphobus as the ἀντεράστης Ἑλένης (Schol. Hom.

Iliad. xiii. 517).

The night-battle in the interior of Troy was described with all

its fearful details both by Leschês and Arktinus: the Ἰλίου

Πέρσις of the latter seems to have been a separate poem, that of

the former constituted a portion of the Ilias Minor (see Welcker,

Der Epische Kyklus, p. 215): the Ἰλίου Πέρσις by the lyric poets

Sakadas and Stesichorus probably added many new incidents.

Polygnôtus had painted a succession of the various calamitous

scenes, drawn from the poem of Leschês, on the walls of the

leschê at Delphi, with the name written over each figure (Pausan.

x. 25-26).

Hellanikus fixed the precise day of the month on which the

capture took place (Hellan. Fr. 143-144), the twelfth day of

Thargeliôn.

Thus was Troy utterly destroyed—the city, the altars and temples,[737]

and the population. Æneas and Antenôr were permitted to escape, with

their families, having been always more favorably regarded by the

Greeks than the remaining Trojans. According to one version of the

story, they had betrayed the city to the Greeks: a panther’s skin

had been hung over the door of Antenôr’s house as a signal for the

victorious besiegers to spare it in the general plunder.[738] In the

distribution of the principal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of

Hectôr, was cast from the top of the wall and killed, by Odysseus or

Neoptolemus: Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb

of Achilles, in compliance with a requisition made by the shade of

the deceased hero to his countrymen;[739] while her sister Kassandra

was presented as a prize to Agamemnôn. She had sought sanctuary at

the altar of Athênê, where Ajax, the son of Oileus, making a guilty

attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon himself and upon the army the

serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch that the Greeks could hardly be

restrained from stoning him to death.[740] Andromachê and Helenus were

both given to Neoptolemus, who, according to the Ilias Minor, carried

away also Æneas as his captive.[741]

[737] Æschyl. Agamemn. 527.—

Βωμοὶ δ᾽ ἄϊστοι καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματα,

Καὶ σπέρμα πάσης ἐξαπόλλυται χθονός.

[738] This symbol of treachery also figured in the picture of

Polygnôtus. A different story appears in Schol. Iliad. iii. 206.

[739] Euripid. Hecub. 38-114, and Troad. 716; Leschês ap. Pausan.

x. 25, 9; Virgil, Æneid, iii. 322, and Servius _ad loc._

A romantic tale is found in Diktys respecting the passion of

Achilles for Polyxena (iii. 2).

[740] Odyss. xi. 422. Arktinus, Argum. p. 21, Düntz. Theognis,

1232. Pausan. i. 15, 2; x. 26, 3; 31, 1. As an expiation of

this sin of their national hero, the Lokrians sent to Ilium

periodically some of their maidens, to do menial service in the

temple of Athênê (Plutarch. Ser. Numin. Vindict. p. 557, with the

citation from Euphorion or Kallimachus, Düntzer, Epicc. Vet. p.

118).

[741] Leschês, Fr. 7, Düntz.; ap. Schol. Lycophr. 1263. Compare

Schol. ad. 1232, for the respectful recollection of Andromachê,

among the traditions of the Molossian kings, as their heroic

mother, and Strabo, xiii. p. 594.

Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus: she accompanied him

back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and

dignity,[742] passing afterwards to a happy immortality in the Elysian

fields. She was worshipped as a goddess with her brothers the Dioskuri

and her husband, having her temple, statue and altar at Therapnæ and

elsewhere, and various examples of her miraculous interventions were

cited among the Greeks.[743] The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured

to denounce her, conjointly with her sister Klytæmnêstra, in a tone

of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripidês

and Lycophrôn afterwards, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy

and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never

admits reproaches against her except from her own lips.[744] He was

smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his impiety; but having

repented and composed a special poem formally retracting the calumny,

was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the

famous palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the

Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been to Troy at

all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image

or _eidôlon_.[745] It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings

of Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation

from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any

considerations of poetical interest.

[742] Such is the story of the old epic (see Odyss. iv. 260,

and the fourth book generally; Argument of Ilias Minor, p. 20.

Düntz.). Polygnôtus, in the paintings above alluded to, followed

the same tale (Pausan. x. 25, 3).

The anger of the Greeks against Helen, and the statement that

Menelaus after the capture of Troy approached her with revengeful

purposes, but was so mollified by her surpassing beauty as

to cast away his uplifted sword, belongs to the age of the

tragedians (Æschyl. Agamem. 685-1455: Eurip. Androm. 600-629;

Helen. 75-120; Troad. 890-1057; compare also the fine lines in

the Æneid, ii. 567-588).

[743] See the description in Herodot. vi. 61, of the prayers

offered to her, and of the miracle which she wrought, to remove

the repulsive ugliness of a little Spartan girl of high family.

Compare also Pindar, Olymp. iii. 2, and the Scholia at the

beginning of the ode; Eurip. Helen. 1662, and Orest. 1652-1706;

Isokrat. Encom. Helen. ii. p. 368, Auger; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi.

p. 311. θεὸς ἐνομίσθη παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησι; Theodectês ap. Aristot.

Pol. i. 2, 19. Θείων ἀπ᾽ ἀμφοῖν ἔκγονον ῥιζωμάτων.

[744] Euripid. Troad. 982 _seq._; Lycophrôn ap. Steph. Byz. v.

Αἰγύς; Stesichorus ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 239; Fragm. 9 and 10

of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις, Schneidewin:—

Οὕνεκα Τυνδάρεως ῥέζων ἁπᾶσι θεοῖς μιᾶς λαθετ᾽ ἠπιοδώρου

Κύπριδος· κείνα δὲ Τυνδάρεω κούραισι χολωσαμένα

Διγάμους τριγάμους τίθησι

Καὶ λιπεσάνορας ...

Further

... Ἑλένη ἑκοῦσ᾽ ἄπηρε, etc.

He had probably contrasted her with other females carried away by

force.

Stesichorus also affirmed that Iphigeneia was the daughter

of Helen, by Thêseus, born at Argos before her marriage with

Menelaus and made over to Klytæmnêstra: this tale was perpetuated

by the temple of Eileithyia at Argos, which the Argeians affirmed

to have been erected by Helen (Pausan. ii. 22, 7). The ages

ascribed by Hellanikus and other logographers (Hellan. Fr. 74)

to Thêseus and Helen—he fifty years of age and she a child of

seven—when he carried her off to Aphidnæ, can never have been the

original form of any poetical legend: these ages were probably

imagined in order to make the mythical chronology run smoothly;

for Thêseus belongs to the generation before the Trojan war. But

we ought always to recollect that Helen never grows old (τὴν γὰρ

φάτις ἔμμεν᾽ ἀγήρω—Quint. Smyrn. x. 312), and that her chronology

consists only with an immortal being. Servius observes (ad Æneid.

ii. 601)—“Helenam _immortalem_ fuisse indicat tempus. Nam constat

fratres ejus cum Argonautis fuisse. Argonautarum filii cum

Thebanis (Thebano Eteoclis et Polynicis bello) dimicaverunt. Item

illorum filii contra Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis

Helena non fuisset, tot sine dubio seculis durare non posset.” So

Xenophon, after enumerating many heroes of different ages, all

pupils of Cheirôn, says that the life of Cheirôn suffices for

all, he being brother of Zeus (De Venatione, c. 1).

The daughters of Tyndareus are Klytæmnêstra, Helen, and Timandra,

all open to the charge advanced by Stesichorus: see about

Timandra, wife of the Tegeate Echemus, the new fragment of the

Hesiodic Catalogue, recently restored by Geel (Göttling, Pref.

Hesiod. p. lxi.).

It is curious to read, in Bayle’s article _Hélène_, his critical

discussion of the adventures ascribed to her—as if they were

genuine matter of history, more or less correctly reported.

[745] Plato, Republic. ix. p. 587. c. 10. ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς Ἑλένης

εἴδωλον Στησίχορός φησι περιμάχητον γενέσθαι ἐν Τροίῃ, ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ

ἀληθοῦς.

Isokrat. Encom. Helen. t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Phædr. c. 44.

p. 243-244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Conôn, Narr. 18;

Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 323. Τὸν μὲν Στησίχορον ἐν τῇ ὕστερον

ὠδῇ λέγειν, ὡς ~τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲ πλεύσειεν ἡ Ἑλένη οὐδάμοσε~.

Horace, Od. i. 17, Epod. xvii. 42.—

“Infamis Helenæ Castor offensus vice,

Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece,

Adempta vati reddidere lumina.”

Pausan. iii. 19, 5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point

of view of the Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with

particular tenderness: Deiphobus imputes to her the basest

treachery (Æneid, vi. 511. “_scelus exitiale Lacænæ_;” compare

ii. 567).

Other versions were afterwards started, forming a sort of compromise

between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen had never really

been at Troy, without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the

story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the

siege. Paris, on his departure from Sparta, had been driven thither by

storms, and the Egyptian king Prôteus, hearing of the grievous wrong

which he had committed towards Menelaus, had sent him away from the

country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful husband

should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the

Trojans assured them solemnly, that she neither was, nor ever had been,

in the town; but the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent,

prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the

correctness of the statement, nor did Menelaus recover Helen until, on

his return from Troy, he visited Egypt.[746] Such was the story told by

the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his

historicizing mind. “For if Helen had really been at Troy (he argues)

she would certainly have been given up, even had she been mistress of

Priam himself instead of Paris: the Trojan king, with all his family

and all his subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and

irretrievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her: their

misfortune was, that while they did not possess, and therefore could

not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks

that such was the fact.” Assuming the historical character of the war

of Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply; nor can we greatly

wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen’s Egyptian detention, as

a substitute for the “incredible insanity” which the genuine legend

imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground

and by the same mode of reasoning, pronounces that the Trojan horse

must have been in point of fact a battering-engine, because to admit

the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the

defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as

the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext

of it; for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have

been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magnitude “for

one little woman.”[747] Mr. Knight suggests various political causes as

substitutes; these might deserve consideration, either if any evidence

could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they

are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history.

[746] Herodot. ii. 120. οὐ γὰρ δὴ οὕτω γε φρενοβλαβὴς ἦν ὁ

Πρίαμος, οὐδ᾽ οἱ ἄλλοι οἱ προσήκοντες αὐτῷ, etc. The passage is

too long to cite, but is highly curious: not the least remarkable

part is the religious coloring which he gives to the new version

of the story which he is adopting,—“the Trojans, though they

had not got Helen, yet could not persuade the Greeks that this

was the fact; for it was the divine will that they should be

destroyed root and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind

that upon great crimes the gods inflict great punishments.”

Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi. p. 333) reasons in the same way as

Herodotus against the credibility of the received narrative. On

the other hand, Isokratês, in extolling Helen, dwells on the

calamities of the Trojan war as a test of the peerless value

of the prize (Encom. Hel. p. 360, Aug.): in the view of Pindar

(Olymp. xiii. 56), as well as in that of Hesiod (Opp. Di. 165),

Helen is the one prize contended for.

Euripidês, in his tragedy of Helen, recognizes the detention of

Helen in Egypt and the presence of her εἴδωλον at Troy, but he

follows Stesichorus in denying her elopement altogether,—Hermês

had carried her to Egypt in a cloud (Helen. 35-45, 706): compare

Von Hoff, De Mytho Helenæ Euripideæ, cap. 2. p. 35 (Leyden, 1843).

[747] Pausan. i. 23, 8; Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer. c. 53.

Euphorion construed the wooden horse into a Grecian ship called

Ἵππος, “_The Horse_” (Euphorion, Fragm. 34. ap. Düntzer, Fragm.

Epicc. Græc. p. 55).

See Thucyd. i. 12; vi. 2.

The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter to the

ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and the more

susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as those who had before

acted in concert were now dispersed and isolated. Moreover the stormy

voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with

the common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the

most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with

this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi-divine world.

And an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many

domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfortunes and

misdeeds during the interval. One of these heroic “Returns,” that of

Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse of Homer. The hero, after

a series of long-protracted suffering and expatriation, inflicted on

him by the anger of Poseidôn, at last reaches his native island, but

finds his wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance

plundered, by a troop of insolent suitors; he is forced to appear as

a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful

treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athênê coming in aid of

his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies,

to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return

of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by

Hagias, which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument

still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems of similar

title and analogous matter.[748]

[748] Suidas, v. Νόστος. Wüllner, De Cyclo Epico, p. 93. Also a

poem Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος (Athenæ. vii. p. 281).

As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this

back-voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of

the Greeks; who, in the fierce exultation of a victory purchased by so

many hardships, had neither respected nor even[749] spared the altars

of the gods in Troy; and Athênê, who had been their most zealous ally

during the siege, was so incensed by their final recklessness, more

especially by the outrage of Ajax, son of Oïleus, that she actively

harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to

appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves; their

formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness; even Agamemnôn and

Menelaus lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own

separate resolution.[750] Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey,

Nestôr, Diomêdês, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Philoktêtês reached

home speedily and safely: Agamemnôn also arrived in Peloponnêsus, to

perish by the hand of a treacherous wife; but Menelaus was condemned

to long wanderings and to the severest privations in Egypt, Cyprus and

elsewhere, before he could set foot in his native land. The Lokrian

Ajax perished on the Gyræan rock.[751] Though exposed to a terrible

storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged

in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods: no sooner

did Poseidôn hear this language, than he struck with his trident the

rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both into the sea.[752]

Kalchas the soothsayer, together with Leonteus and Polypœtês, proceeded

by land from Troy to Kolophôn.[753]

[749] Upon this the turn of fortune in Grecian affairs depends

(Æschyl. Agamemn. 338; Odyss. iii. 130; Eurip. Troad. 69-95).

[750] Odyss. iii. 130-161; Æschyl. Agamemn. 650-662.

[751] Odyss. iii. 188-196; iv. 5-87. The Egyptian city of

Kanopus, at the mouth of the Nile, was believed to have taken

its name from the pilot of Menelaus, who had died and was buried

there (Strabo, xvii. p. 801; Tacit. Ann. ii. 60). Μενελάϊος

νόμος, so called after Menelaus (Dio Chrysost. xi p. 361).

[752] Odyss. iv. 500. The epic Νόστοι of Hagias placed this

adventure of Ajax on the rocks of Kaphareus, a southern

promontory of Eubœa (Argum. Νόστοι, p. 23, Düntzer). Deceptive

lights were kindled on the dangerous rocks by Nauplius, the

father of Palamêdês, in revenge for the death of his son

(Sophoklês, Ναύπιος Πυρκαεὺς, a lost tragedy; Hygin. f. 116;

Senec. Agamemn. 567).

[753] Argument. Νόστοι _ut sup._ There were monuments of Kalchas

near Sipontum in Italy also (Strabo, vi. p. 284), as well as at

Selgê in Pisidia (Strabo, xii. p. 570).

In respect however to these and other Grecian heroes, tales were

told different from those in the Odyssey, assigning to them a long

expatriation and a distant home. Nestôr went to Italy, where he

founded Metapontum, Pisa and Hêrakleia:[754] Philoktêtês[755] also

went to Italy, founded Petilia and Krimisa, and sent settlers to

Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemus, under the advice of Thetis, marched

by land across Thrace, met with Odysseus, who had come by sea, at

Maroneia, and then pursued his journey to Epirus, where he became

king of the Molossians.[756] Idomeneus came to Italy, and founded

Uria in the Salentine peninsula. Diomêdês, after wandering far and

wide, went along the Italian coast into the innermost Adriatic gulf,

and finally settled in Daunia, founding the cities of Argyrippa,

Beneventum, Atria and Diomêdeia: by the favor of Athênê he became

immortal, and was worshipped as a god in many different places.[757]

The Lokrian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Lokri on

the southernmost corner of Italy,[758] besides another settlement

in Libya. I have spoken in another place of the compulsory exile of

Teukros, who, besides founding the city of Salamis in Cyprus, is said

to have established some settlements in the Iberian peninsula.[759]

Menestheus the Athenian did the like, and also founded both Elæa in

Mysia and Skylletium in Italy.[760] The Arcadian chief Agapenôr founded

Paphus in Cyprus.[761] Epeius, of Panopeus in Phôkis, the constructor

of the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athênê, settled at

Lagaria near Sybaris on the coast of Italy; and the very tools which

he had employed in that remarkable fabric were shown down to a late

date in the temple of Athênê at Metapontum.[762] Temples, altars and

towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos and in Krête, the

foundation of Agamemnôn or of his followers.[763] The inhabitants of

the Grecian town of Skionê, in the Thracian peninsula called Pallênê

or Pellênê, accounted themselves the offspring of the Pellênians from

Achæa in Peloponnêsus, who had served under Agamemnôn before Troy,

and who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot

by a storm and there settled.[764] The Pamphylians, on the southern

coast of Asia Minor, deduced their origin from the wanderings of

Amphilochus and Kalchas after the siege of Troy: the inhabitants of the

Amphilochian Argos on the Gulf of Ambrakia revered the same Amphilochus

as their founder.[765] The Orchomenians under Ialmenus, on quitting

the conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity

of the Euxine Sea; and the barbarous Achæans under Mount Caucasus

were supposed to have derived their first establishment from this

source.[766] Merionês with his Krêtan followers settled at Engyion in

Sicily, along with the preceding Krêtans who had remained there after

the invasion of Minôs. The Elyminians in Sicily also were composed

of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to the spot, who, forgetting

their previous differences, united in the joint settlements of Eryx

and Egesta.[767] We hear of Podaleirius both in Italy and on the coast

of Karia;[768] of Akamas son of Thêseus, at Amphipolis in Thrace, at

Soli in Cyprus, and at Synnada in Phrygia;[769] of Guneus, Prothous

and Eurypylus, in Krête as well as in Libya.[770] The obscure poem of

Lycophrôn enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes,

whose conquest of Troy was indeed a Kadmeian victory (according to

the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the

victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished.[771] It was

particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were worshipped with

very special solemnity, that their presence as wanderers from Troy was

reported and believed.[772]

[754] Strabo, v. p. 222; vi. p. 264. Vellei. Paterc. i. 1;

Servius ad Æn. x. 179. He had built a temple to Athênê in the

island of Keôs (Strabo, x. p. 487).

[755] Strabo, vi. pp. 254, 272; Virgil, Æn. iii. 401, and Servius

_ad loc._; Lycophrôn, 912.

Both the tomb of Philoktêtês and the arrows of Hêraklês which

he had used against Troy, were for a long time shown at Thurium

(Justin, xx. 1).

[756] Argument. Νόστοι, p. 23, Düntz.; Pindar, Nem. iv. 51.

According to Pindar, however, Neoptolemus comes from Troy by sea,

misses the island of Skyrus, and sails round to the Epeirotic

Ephyra (Nem. vii. 37).

[757] Pindar, Nem. x. 7, with the Scholia. Strabo, iii. p. 150;

v. p. 214-215; vi, p. 284. Stephan. Byz. Ἀργύριππα, Διομηδεία.

Aristotle recognizes him as buried in the Diomedean islands in

the Adriatic (Anthol. Gr. Brunck. i. p. 178).

The identical tripod which had been gained by Diomêdês, as victor

in the chariot-race at the funeral games of Patroclus, was shown

at Delphi in the time of Phanias, attested by an inscription,

as well as the dagger which had been worn by Helikaôn, son of

Antenôr (Athenæ. vi. p. 232).

[758] Virgil, Æneid, iii. 399.; xi. 265; and Servius, _ibid._

Ajax, the son of Oïleus, was worshipped there as a hero (Conôn,

Narr. 18).

[759] Strabo, iii. p. 257; Isokratês, Evagor. Encom. p. 192;

Justin, xliv. 3. Ajax, the son of Teukros, established a temple

of Zeus, and an hereditary priesthood always held by his

descendants (who mostly bore the name of Ajax or Teukros), at

Olbê in Kilikia (Strabo, xiv. p. 672). Teukros carried with him

his Trojan captives to Cyprus (Athenæ. vi. p. 256).

[760] Strabo, iii. p. 140-150; vi. p. 261; xiii. p. 622. See the

epitaphs on Teukros and Agapenôr by Aristotle (Antholog. Gr. ed.

Brunck. i. p. 179-180).

[761] Strabo, xiv. p. 683; Pausan. viii. 5, 2.

[762] Strabo, vi. p. 263; Justin, xx. 2; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc.

c. 108. Also the epigram of the Rhodian Simmias called Πελεκύς

(Antholog. Gr. Brunck. i. p. 210).

[763] Vellei. Patercul. i. 1. Stephan. Byz. v. Λάμπη. Strabo,

xiii. p. 605; xiv p. 639. Theopompus (Fragm. III, Didot)

recounted that Agamemnôn and his followers had possessed

themselves of the larger portion of Cyprus.

[764] Thucydid. iv. 120.

[765] Herodot. vii. 91; Thucyd. ii. 68. According to the old

elegiac poet Kallinos, Kalchas himself had died at Klarus near

Kolophôn after his march from Troy, but Mopsus, his rival in the

prophetic function, had conducted his followers into Pamphylia

and Kilikia (Strabo, xii. p. 570; xiv.p. 668). The oracle of

Amphilochus at Mallus in Kilikia bore the highest character for

exactness and truth-telling in the time of Pausanias, μαντεῖον

ἀψευδέστατον τῶν ἐπ᾽ ἐμοῦ. (Paus. i. 34, 2). Another story

recognized Leonteus and Polypætês as the founders of Aspendus in

Kilikia (Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 138).

[766] Strabo, ix. p. 416.

[767] Diodôr. iv. 79; Thucyd. vi. 2.

[768] Stephan, Byz. v. Σύρνα; Lycophrôn, 1047.

[769] Æschines, De Falsâ Legat. c. 14; Strabo, xiv. p. 683;

Stephan. Byz. v. Σύνναδα.

[770] Lycophrôn, 877-902, with Scholia; Apollodôr. Fragm. p.

386, Heyne. There is also a long enumeration of these returning

wanderers and founders of new settlements in Solinus (Polyhist.

c. 2).

[771] Strabo, iii. p. 150.

[772] Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult. 79, 106, 107, 109, 111.

I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the

ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as

well as that of the Argonauts,—one of the most striking features in the

Hellenic legendary world.[773] Amongst them all, the most interesting,

individually, is Odysseus, whose romantic adventures in fabulous

places and among fabulous persons have been made familiarly known by

Homer. The goddesses Kalypso and Circê; the semi-divine mariners of

Phæacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without

a steersman; the one-eyed Cyclôpes, the gigantic Læstrygones, and

the wind-ruler Æolus; the Sirens who ensnare by their song, as the

Lotophagi fascinate by their food—all these pictures formed integral

and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus

reëstablished in his house and family; but so marked a personage could

never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life: the

epic poem called the Telegonia ascribed to him a subsequent series of

adventures. After the suitors had been buried by their relatives, he

offered sacrifice to the Nymphs, and then went to Elis to inspect his

herds of cattle there pasturing: the Eleian Polyxenus welcomed him

hospitably, and made him a present of a bowl: Odysseus then returned

to Ithaka, and fulfilled the rites and sacrifices prescribed to him by

Teiresias in his visit to the under-world. This obligation discharged,

he went to the country of the Thesprotians, and there married the

queen Kallidikê: he headed the Thesprotians in a war against the

Brygians, the latter being conducted by Arês himself, who fiercely

assailed Odysseus; but the goddess Athênê stood by him, and he was

enabled to make head against Arês until Apollo came and parted them.

Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, leaving the Thesprotian kingdom to

Polypœtês, his son by Kallidikê. Telegonus, his son by Circê, coming to

Ithaka in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus

without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the son for

his undesigned parricide: at his prayer and by the intervention of

his mother Circê, both Penelopê and Têlemachus were made immortal:

Telegonus married Penelopê, and Têlemachus married Circê.[774]

[773] Strabo, i. p. 48. After dwelling emphatically on the long

voyages of Dionysus, Hêraklês, Jasôn, Odysseus, and Menelaus,

he says, Αἰνείαν δὲ καὶ Ἀντήνορα καὶ Ἐνετοὺς, καὶ ἁπλῶς τοὺς

ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ πολέμου πλανηθέντας εἰς ~πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην~,

ἄξιον μὴ τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνθρώπων νομίσαι; Συνέβη γὰρ δὴ τοῖς τότε

Ἕλλησιν, ὁμοίως καὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις, διὰ τὸν τῆς στρατείας

χρόνον, ἀποβαλεῖν τά τε ἐν οἴκῳ καὶ τῇ στρατείᾳ πορισθέντα· ὥστε

μετὰ τὴν τοῦ Ἰλίου καταστροφὴν τούς τε νικήσαντας ἐπὶ λῄστειαν

τραπέσθαι διὰ τὰς ἀπορίας, καὶ πολλῷ μᾶλλον τοὺς ἡττηθέντας καὶ

περιγενομένους ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου. Καὶ δὴ καὶ πόλεις ὑπὸ ~τούτων

κτισθῆναι~ λέγονται ~κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ἔξω τῆς Ἑλλάδος παραλίαν~,

ἔστι δ᾽ ὅπου καὶ τὴν μεσόγαιαν.

[774] The Telegonia, composed by Eugammôn of Kyrênê, is lost, but

the Argument of it has been preserved by Proclus (p. 25, Düntzer;

Dictys, vi. 15).

Pausanias quotes a statement from the poem called _Thesprôtis_,

respecting a son of Odysseus and Penelopê, called Ptoliporthus,

born after his return from Troy (viii. 12, 3). Nitzsch (Hist.

Homer. p. 97) as well as Lobeck seem to imagine that this is the

same poem as the Telegonia, under another title.

Aristotle notices an oracle of Odysseus among the Eurytanes, a

branch of the Ætôlian nation: there were also places in Epirus

which boasted of Odysseus as their founder (Schol. ad Lycophrôn.

800; Stephan. Byz. v. Βούνειμα; Etymolog. Mag. Ἀρκείσιος;

Plutarch, Quæst. Gr. c. 14).

We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the mythical

ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus was of the

Molossian.