The next siege we meet with is the most celebrated in history or
fiction, not so much on its own account, as from its good fortune in
having the greatest poet the world has produced as its chronicler.
If Homer had not placed this great siege in the regions of fable by
his introduction of immortals into the action, it would still be a
myth, as is all we know of Greece at the period at which it took
place. Hypercritics have, indeed, endeavoured to make over the whole
of it to the muses who preside over fiction; but we cannot accede to
their decision. There is a vital reality in the characters of Homer,
which proves that they did exist and act; a blind old bard might sing
the deeds of heroes, and perhaps clothe those deeds with some of the
splendour of his genius; but we have no faith in his having created the
men, any more than he did the immortals, who belonged to the mythology
of his country long before he was born. There is nothing in the “song
of Troy divine” that is dissonant with the character of the age; so far
to the contrary, we believe the poet has given a more faithful picture
of the heroes, and the events connected with them, than any historian
has done. Achilles is as perfect from the hands of Homer, as Alexander
from the pen of Quintus Curtius or Arian. If we disperse the mist of
diablerie which surrounds Macbeth, we shall find him a human character,
acted upon by human passions, independently of the witches; and so with
Homer’s heroes: they are all most essentially real men, notwithstanding
the gorgeous mythology that attends them, and act as they would have
done without immortal intervention. We have as perfect faith in the
history of the siege of Troy, as in most of the pages of what has been
termed the “great lie.” Independently of the work of genius for ever
associated with it, the siege of Troy is a memorable epoch in human
annals.
Tyndarus, the ninth king of Lacedæmon, had, by Leda, Castor and Pollux,
who were twins, besides Helena, and Clytemnestra the wife of Agamemnon,
king of Mycenæ. Having survived his two sons, the twins, he became
anxious for a successor, and sought for a suitable husband for his
daughter Helena. All the suitors bound themselves by oath to abide by
the decision of the lady, who chose Menelaus, king of Sparta. She had
not, however, lived above three years with her husband before she was
carried off by Alexander or Paris, son of Priam, king of the Trojans.
In consequence of this elopement, Menelaus called upon the rulers of
the European states of Greece, and more particularly upon those who
had been candidates for her hand, to avenge this Asiatic outrage. All
answered to the summons, though some, like Ulysses, unwillingly. As
every one knows, the siege lasted ten years; which only goes to prove
the discordant parts of which the besieging army was composed: had
there been union beneath a completely acknowledged head, the city could
not have held out so long by many years. But Agamemnon was like Godfrey
of Bouillon in the Crusades--he was only a nominal chief, without a
particle of real power over the fiery and rude leaders of the troops
of adventurers composing the army. This necessity for union is the
principal lesson derived by posterity from the siege of Troy; but to
the Asiatics of the period it must have been a premonitory warning of
what they had to dread from the growing power of the Greeks. Divested
of fable, and as many of the contradictions removed as possible, we
believe the above to be the most trustworthy account of this celebrated
affair--no one would think of going into the details after Homer.
According to Bishop Ussher, the most safe chronological guide, the
siege of Troy took place 1184 years before the birth of Christ, about
the time that Jephtha ruled over the Jews. This last circumstance
cannot fail to bring to the minds of our readers the extraordinary fact
that the involuntary parental sacrifices of Iphigenia and the “daughter
of Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” were contemporary. The period of the war
of Troy, standing on the verge between fable and history, is a very
useful one to be retained in the memory.