of legitimate and successful war. Sometimes, as in the case of the
Cicones, piracy is scarcely distinguishable from war; but Ulysses
fairly relates of himself a piratical attack upon Egypt, which can
leave us no room for scruple in supposing, that he might without
hesitation think of doing again what he thought it worth while to
pretend that he had done before. Both these last-named instances may
serve, however, to show that, in times when preparedness for war was
habitual, the pirate took no great advantage in such attacks as these.
For with the Cicones Ulysses had the worst of it at last[846]; and in
the case of Egypt, according to his fable, the whole party were taken
prisoners or slain. Kidnapping, however, such as that of Eumæus stolen
in his childhood, is not, I presume, to be regarded as equal in honour
to freebooting with the strong hand, thus apparently stamped with the
sanction of Ulysses.
[846] Od. ix. 59.
And yet this model-man had been stung to the very quick by Euryalus
in Phæacia, who said to him, ‘You do not look like a man to compete
in athletic games; but rather like one of the captains of merchant
vessels, who looks after the cargo and makes rapacious profits[847]!’
[847] Od. viii. 159-64.
Nor, after all, is this so strange as at first sight it might appear;
for the Phœnicians, the merchants of those days, were also kidnappers
and slave-dealers: and if their transactions were not, like those of
the pirates, uniformly bad, they were, when exceptionable, double-dyed
in guilt, because they involved fraud as well as robbery.
~_Mixed view of it in the poems._~
Again, as to piracy, it by no means appears that it was attended with
respect, nor is the language of the poems quite uniform regarding it.
In the νεκυία of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, and also in that of the
Eleventh, the shade of Agamemnon calls freebooters of this description
ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες[848]. The Cretan piracy of the pseudo-Ulysses in Egypt
is mentioned as an act of ὕβρις, an outrage deservedly punished by
Jupiter[849]. On the other hand, Greek trade, like Phœnician, embraced
kidnapping. At least the Taphians carried away from her country the
Phœnician nurse, who in her turn carried off the young Eumæus.
[848] Od. xxiv. 111.
[849] Od. xiv. 262.
Upon the whole, after allowing liberally for the masculine character
and redundant energies of the Hellenic people, we shall best explain
their favourable view of piracy by remembering the near relation it
then bore both to war, which we know may be just and honourable, as
well as to trade, which we regard as in itself both innocent and
beneficial. Since Homer’s time the character of war has been softened,
and that of trade has been elevated, almost immeasurably; while that of
piracy has been lowered; hence there is now a wide gulf, where there
was then scarcely even a seam discernible; and Homer might have sung
the expressive words of Goëthe in Faust,
Krieg, Handel, und Piraterie
Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.
We may also, I think, find among the Greeks a tendency to family
feuds, beyond certain limits, of which the poems do not afford any
instance on the Trojan side.
Of these, two have already been noticed among the homicides. Medon
kills his father’s wife’s kinsman. Tlepolemus kills his grand-uncle.
But also Phœnix for a quarrel flies from his father’s home and settles
in Dolopia. Phyleus, the father of Meges, for a similar reason migrates
to Dulichium[850]. Eurystheus, as the great grandson of Jupiter, is of
reputed kin to Hercules his son; but persecutes him through life with
the imposition of cruel and endless toils. Meleager has a fierce feud
with his family, which is recited by Phœnix as a warning to Achilles.
Bellerophon is expelled from Greece by a family quarrel. Ægisthus
himself is the cousin of Agamemnon.
[850] Il. ii. 629.
As with families, so with communities. The pre-Troic legends are almost
invariably legends of the internal raids and wars of Greece. They were
a people of the strong and the red hand, marvellously combined with
high refinement, true love of art and song, and an unexampled political
genius.
But although the Homeric age had not ceased to be as yet an age of
violence, it was as far as possible from being one marked by a general
sway either of unbridled appetite, or of ungovernable passion; and if
it is sometimes mistakenly supposed to have borne this character, the
appearances which produce the illusion are due only to the fact, that
vice of all kinds then went straight forward to its work, and had not
yet learned, in the school of the wisdom of this world, how much it
might gain from method, order, and reserve.
~_Temperance in the heroic age._~
We have ample signs of that regard for temperance, bodily as well as
mental, which Homer united with his thoroughly convivial spirit. By
the mouth of Ulysses, he reprehends even that mild form of excess in
wine which does no more than promote garrulity (Od. xiv. 463-6). When
the Greeks were about to suffer great calamities on their return, he
makes them proceed in a state of drunkenness to the Assembly[851].
When Elpenor dies by an accidental fall, he assigns drunkenness as
the cause, and takes care to inform us that he was young, and neither
valiant nor sensible[852]. Ulysses encourages the brutal Polyphemus
to drink, with a view to his own liberation. And the proceedings of
the monster, when intoxicated, are certainly more revolting than
those of Stephano, if not than those of Caliban, in the Tempest.
Again, though it is certainly true, that the most vivid denunciation
of excess in liquor to be found throughout the poems is put into the
mouth of the Suitor Antinous[853], yet I think it was plainly meant
to be accepted as spoken in earnest, and as expressing the sense of
Homer. Wine, we thus learn, caused the Centaur Eurytion to lose his
ears and nose. In no single case does the Poet permit liquor to act
in the slightest degree upon the self-possession of his heroes, or
of any character whom he esteems; or represent them as either doing,
or leaving undone, any act through excess in drink[854]. The only
allusion to its influence, in connection with a practical result, is
one very faint, and perfectly innocent. It is when, dissatisfaction
having prevailed among the Grecian kings and army, as we see from the
speech of Diomed, Nestor recommends Agamemnon to treat his Council to a
supper, before proceeding to obtain their advice; and observes to him,
that he can readily do it, for he has wine and all other provision in
abundance. The intention apparently is to lay the ground for concord,
not in excess, nor even here in hilarity, but at least in amicable
humour[855]. To the Immortals, indeed, it is conceded to abide at the
banquet for the livelong day, but not to men; for the pseudo-Mentor
observes to Nestor in the Third Odyssey, that it is not seemly to sit
long at the sacred (that is, regular and public) feast[856].
[851] Od. iii. 139.
[852] Od. x. 552-60. xi. 61.
[853] Od. xxi. 293-304.
[854] Even Scott, one of the most refined, as well as greatest, among
imaginative writers, once allows his hero to commit himself grossly in
point of manners, under the influence of intoxication. It is in Rob Roy
(chap. xii.), at Osbaldiston House.
[855] Il. ix. 69.
[856] Od. iii. 335.
It is much to be regretted that Horace, who in many cases has shown
himself an accurate reader of Homer, has in this point grossly mistaken
him:
Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus[857].
[857] Hor. Ep. i. 19, 6.
And this summary character, unfortunately false, has saved men the
trouble of collecting the true one from the works of the Poet himself.
~_Self-control in the heroic age._~
When we turn to another form of temperance or self-government, namely,
that which we call self-control, we find it eminently exemplified
among Greeks. It appears as a pervading and national quality in that
silence on the field of battle, which they combined with such an inward
energy of determination. In Ulysses it is carried up to its perfection.
Perhaps the only occasions on which he even seems to relax it are those
of the answer to Euryalus in the Eighth Odyssey, and the reply to
Agamemnon in the Fourth Iliad.
So much, however, of emotion as he suffers to escape him in those
passages, only serves to heighten the effect of his words, not to make
him deflect by one jot or tittle, though in undoubted warmth, from
the true rule of reason. But we find this quality not only developed
powerfully in a pattern-man like Ulysses; it is also strongly infused
into such a warrior as Diomed. This is proved by the manner in which
he bears[858] the chiding of Agamemnon on his rounds, and rebukes
Sthenelus for having been provoked into a petulant answer. At the
same time it is highly illustrative of the national character, that
this young and ardent warrior, who could thus bear a reprimand on
the field, stored up the recollection of it within his breast: and
when, at the beginning of the Ninth Book, Agamemnon showed his own
faint-heartedness by advising the abandonment of the enterprise, then
Diomed, having watched his opportunity, recalled the circumstances, and
quietly but effectively replied upon Agamemnon[859]. Nay more, perhaps
the most striking proof of the abundance of this high quality among
the Greeks is in the very case where it is on the whole outmatched by
the passion that it ought to master, namely, in the case of Achilles.
There is something indeed sublime in the manner in which, many times
over, when he feels the tide of wrath rising within him, he eyes his
own passion, even as a tiger is eyed by its keeper, and puts a spell
upon it, so that it dare not spring. Thus it is, when he parleys with
himself on the question, whether he shall end the strife with Agamemnon
by slaying him, in the Assembly of the First Book. And thus again,
when he feels that the words which Priam has incautiously let drop
are kindling a flame which, if further fed, would consume the aged
and sorrowing suppliant, he is conscious of the rising tempest, and
before it has swollen to such force as to disturb his self-command, he
sternly, but yet not unkindly, bids him to desist. It is by trying them
in mental conflicts like these, that Homer shows us of what mettle his
Greek kings were made. It would be curious to draw out a list of the
multitude of words in which he describes, under every possible aspect,
the power and habit of self-control. But perhaps one of his slightest
is also one of his most effective touches. The applause of the Greeks
in their Assembly is always described by a word different from that
employed to describe the very same indication of feeling by the
Trojans. He usually says ἐπὶ δ’ ἴαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν for the Greeks: for
the Trojans it is ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν. The Greeks shout forth their
energetic approval: the Trojans clatter, as if their tongues could not
bear restraint.
[858] Il. iv. 411-18.
[859] Il. ix. 32-49.
Yet we must not suppose, either on account of the self-command of
the Greeks that they were apathetic, or on account of their frequent
homicides that they were inhuman, and savagely indifferent to the
infliction of pain on their fellow-creatures.
Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans appear to have been ferocious in
the treatment of enemies. The extreme point to which they go is that
of giving no quarter: but they never, even in the exasperation of
battle, inflict torture with their weapons. The immolation of twelve
Trojan youths over the dead Patroclus is doubtless cruel: but it falls
far short of what the passions of war have produced in other times and
countries. With the manner of inflicting death, passion never has to do.
~_Savage ideas occasionally expressed._~
An inquiry, however, which seems to be most curious, is suggested by
the passages in which Hecuba wishes that she could eat Achilles[860],
Achilles that he could find it in his heart to devour Hector[861];
and again in which Jupiter[862] suggests to Juno, that nothing could
satiate her spite against Troy so well as if she were to eat up Priam
and his whole family. For the question arises, how is it that we find
these remains of the wildest savagery in company with a refinement of
manners and feeling, which the poems very frequently exhibit, and which
even reaches in some important points to a degree never exceeded in any
country or any period of the world?
[860] Il. xxiv. 212.
[861] Il. xxii. 345-8.
[862] Il. iv. 35.
The answer I presume to be this: that the civilization of the Greeks
in the heroic age, though as to the mind it was really a very high,
was yet also a very young civilisation. Its path was marked and
decided, but it had not had time to travel far from barbarism. It was
not safe by distance, nor defended by the ramparts of long tradition,
nor strengthened by the force of continuing bent, and consolidated
immemorial habit. The Homeric gentleman, with his civilization, stood,
in respect to barbarism, like him who voyages by sea,
digitis a morte remotus
Quatuor aut septem;
only the thickness of the plank is between him and the wilderness which
he has left: and if passion makes a breach, the mood of the wild beast
reappears. We may account for the cannibalish observation of Jupiter by
the fact that he has no self-control in Homer: but that of Hecuba is to
be accounted for on the principle I have endeavoured to describe. So
it is with Achilles: and so, too, when the wise Ulysses, slaughtering
the wretched women of his household who had erred, seems tinged for
once with a flush of barbarism. When _we_ let loose the tiger within
us, his range is limited not by any force springing from our own will
or choice, but by the strong dikes and barriers of social wont, and by
habits of thought as well as action, which have been accumulated by the
long labours of many successive generations of mankind.
We have already[863] noticed something that will well bear comparison
with this state of things in the reports which are made to us
respecting modern Persia, the cradle in all likelihood of the family of
Achilles.
[863] Achæis or Ethnology, sect. x. p. 570.
At the same time it is to be borne in mind that this cannibalism,
of which we have glimpses in Homer, in the first place was limited,
even in speculation, to enemies; and in the second place, existed in
speculation only. Of this we have pretty strong proof from the case
of the crew of Ulysses in the Twelfth Odyssey. They did not touch the
oxen of the Sun, until death from hunger stared them in the face. Then
Eurylochus made a manful speech on the subject of the option before
them, between dying on the one side, and the slaughter of some of the
animals on the other. But those circumstances of the last extremity,
to which they were reduced, were the very circumstances in which the
fortitude even of Christians[864] has given way, and with respect to
which no prudent man dares to pronounce a judgment upon persons that so
succumb. Yet there is not in the case before us the slightest hint at
a resort to this most horrible remedy.
[864] The awful ‘Ugolino’ of Dante ends with the line
Poscia più che ’l dolor potè ’l digiuno.
I am free to own that I cannot dismiss from my mind the suspicion that
what the poet means to convey to us in these darkly veiled expressions
is the devouring of the wretched children by their parent. (Inferno,
xxxiii. 75.)
~_Not unfamiliar to later Greece._~
Besides the circumstance, that in Homer the cannibal _dicta_,
abstractedly so shocking, are the mere words of phrensied passion, and
that there are no corresponding acts, we have to observe that the Poet
is never found exhibiting the sentiment of joy in connection with the
positive infliction of suffering upon an enemy. It was by no means so
among the later Greeks. Too many instances might, indeed, be supplied
of the increase of cruelty with the lapse of time.
Homer, again, has nowhere made woman to be even the sorrowing minister
of justice: as if he felt that there was a radical incompatibility
between the proper gentleness of her nature, and the use of the sword
of punishment. But in the Hecuba of Euripides, after the aged matron,
exasperated by the treacherous murder of her son Polydorus, has put to
death the two children of the assassin Polymestor, and has likewise put
out his eyes, he addresses to her these words (v. 1233),
χαίρεις ὑβρίζουσ’ εἰς ἔμ’, ὦ πανοῦργε σύ·
and she, no way shrinking from the imputation, replies
οὐ γάρ με χαίρειν χρὴ, σὲ τιμωρουμένην;
In one place Homer has taken an opportunity of showing us, what he
thinks of the principle of exultation over fallen enemies. When
Euryclea is about to shout over the fallen Suitors, Ulysses, though he
has not yet ended the bloody work of retribution, gravely checks her.
‘It is wrong,’ he says, ‘to exult over the slain. These men have been
overtaken by divine providence, and by their own perverse deeds: for
they regarded no human being, noble or vile, with whom they had to do:
wherefore they have miserably perished in their wickedness.’ The whole
tone and language of this rebuke, so grave and earnest as it is, and
more sad even than it is stern, is worthy of any moral code that the
world has known.
~_Wrath in Ulysses and in Achilles._~
There is indeed a terrible severity in the proceedings of Ulysses
against the Suitors, the women, and his rebellious subjects. But
it is plain that the case, which Homer had to represent, was one
that required the hero to effect something like a reconquest of the
country. It is also plain that Homer felt that these stern measures
would require a very strong warrant. Hence without doubt it is, that
the preparations for the crisis are so elaborate; the insults offered
to the disguised master of the palace so aggravated; and the direct
agency of Minerva introduced to deepen his sufferings. Hence, again,
when the incensed warrior is about to pursue with martial ardour the
flying insurgents, his eagerness is mildly marked as excessive, and
is effectually checked by the friendly but decisive intervention of
Jupiter. Some critics have objected to this passage, and have argued
that it could not be genuine. They surely must forget, that Homer does
not seek to present us in his protagonists with a faultlessness which
would have carried them out of the sphere, such as it was conceived
by him and by his age, of life either divine or human. Both Ulysses
and Achilles may err. But where they err, it is in measure and degree.
Ulysses is the minister of public justice, and of divine retribution.
But he is composed, like ourselves, of flesh and blood, and he carries
his righteous office, in a natural heat, to the verge of cruelty. Then
the warning voice is vouchsafed to him, and he at once dutifully obeys.
And is, then, a thing like this so new and strange to us? And has
neither our philosophy nor our experience of life taught us that there
are no circumstances, in which a good and just man runs so serious a
risk of becoming harsh and cruel unawares, as when he is hurried along
by the torrent of an originally righteous indignation?
Even so with Achilles. He is, no more than Ulysses, merely vengeful,
but he resents a wrong done to justice, to decency, and to love, in
his person. Upon the stream of this resentment he is carried, until
it threatens to become a torrent. Then, by an admirable design, he is
chastised in the yet deeper passion of his soul, his friendship for
Patroclus; and so is recalled within the bounds of his duty to his
suffering countrymen.
But in both cases the foundation of conduct is just and sound: by
neither is any sanction given to the principle which the Gospel
rebukes, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ For a wrong done
to principles of public morality and justice is in each case alike the
thing chiefly resented, although in each case the person who resents it
is also a person that had greatly suffered by it.
Again, we should misunderstand Homer’s picture of the Greek character,
if we conceived that he left no room in it for those accesses of
emotion, with respect to which it may be difficult to say whether they
contributed most to its strength or its weakness, while it seems clear
that they are in near association with both.
The Poet’s intention does not oblige him to place his protagonists
beyond the reach of human infirmity, as we see in the stubborn wrath
of Achilles, and in the awakened keenness of Ulysses for the blood of
his rebellious subjects[865]. And though he never exhibits them as
vicious, still, in the case of Ulysses, as well as in that of Achilles,
he has introduced into his picture great quickness of temper, which is
indeed nearly, though not necessarily, connected with sensitiveness
of honour. On two occasions in particular is this observable: in the
sharp answers namely of Ulysses, first to Agamemnon, who on his circuit
accuses him of remissness in military duty[866]; and secondly to the
θυμοδακὴς μῦθος of Euryalus[867], who has taken him for a πρήκτηρ or
merchant, and a rogue to boot.
[865] Od. xxiv. 526, 37.
[866] Il. iv. 350.
[867] Od. viii. 185, 162.
~_The Domestic affections._~
The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of
all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.
A marked indication of the power of this principle among mankind is
to be found in its prevalence even among the Olympian deities. For
its appearance there has no relation to divine attributes properly so
called; it is strictly a part of the mythology; a sentiment copied
from the human heart and life, and transferred to these inventive or
idealized formations. Indeed we always find it in connection with that
in which they are most human, namely, the indulgence of their sensual
passions, and the results of that indulgence in their human progeny. It
is not, therefore, among the higher or traditive deities that we find
the sentiment; it does not exist in Apollo or Minerva, whose love is
always of a different kind, and is grounded in the gifts or character
of the person who is the object of it, as for instance, the great
Ulysses[868], or, in a smaller sphere, the skilful Phereclus, who built
the ships of Paris[869]. It is in Jupiter over Sarpedon, in Neptune for
the blindness of his brutal son Polyphemus, in Mars over Ascalaphus,
in Venus about Æneas; and these two last are the two deities whose
ethical and intellectual standard is the lowest of all[870].
[868] Od. iii. 221.
[869] Il. v. 59.
[870] Il. xvi. 431, 59. Od. i. 68-71. Il. xv. 115; and Il. v. 311-17.
When we come down to earth, we find the sentiment strong everywhere.
Among the Trojan royal family, where there is but little sense of the
higher parts of morality, this feeling is intense alike with Priam
and with Hecuba. The latter is not passionate, she is ἠπιόδωρος[871].
Yet on the death of Hector we see her become a tigress, and wish she
could devour the conqueror[872]. Ulysses chooses for the title by which
he would be known that of the Father of Telemachus[873]. It is true
indeed that, then as now, the imperiousness of bodily wants made itself
felt; and it was then more ingenuously acknowledged. Hence Telemachus,
attached to his father, when he explained the double cause of his grief
and care to the Ithacan assembly, first named the death or absence of
his father, but then proclaimed as the chief matter, the continuing
waste and threatened destruction of his property[874]:
[871] Il. vi. 251.
[872] Il. xxiv. 212.
[873] Il. ii. 260.
[874] Od. ii. 48.
νῦν δ’ αὖ καὶ πολὺ μεῖζον ὃ δὴ τάχα οἶκον ἅπαντα
πάγχυ διαρραίσει, βίοτον δ’ ἀπὸ πάμπαν ὀλέσσει.