duties. Their whole life was mapped out into four clearly defined stages
of discipline. For their existence, in its full religious significance,
commenced not at birth, but on being invested at the close of childhood
with the sacred thread of the Twice-born. Their youth and early manhood
were to be entirely spent in learning the Veda by heart from an older
Brahman, tending the sacred fire, and serving their preceptor. Having
completed his long studies, the young Brahman entered on the second
stage of his life, as a householder. He married, and commenced a course
of family duties. When he had reared a family, and gained a practical
knowledge of the world, he retired into the forest as a recluse, for the
third period of his life; feeding on roots or fruits, practising his
religious duties with increased devotion. The fourth stage was that of
the ascetic or religious mendicant, wholly withdrawn from earthly
affairs, and striving to attain a condition of mind which, heedless of
the joys, or pains, or wants of the body, is intent only on its final
absorption into the deity. The Brahman, in this fourth stage of his
life, ate nothing but what was given to him unasked, and abode not more
than one day in any village, lest the vanities of the world should find
entrance into his heart. This was the ideal life prescribed for a
Brahman, and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large
extent practically carried out. Throughout his whole existence the true
Brahman practised a strict temperance; drinking no wine, using a simple
diet, curbing the desires; shut off from the tumults of war, as his
business was to pray, not to fight, and having his thoughts ever fixed
on study and contemplation. "What is this world?" says a Brahman sage.
"It is even as the bough of a tree, on which a bird rests for a night,
and in the morning flies away."
The Brahmans, therefore, were a body of men who, in an early stage of
this world's history, bound themselves by a rule of life the essential
precepts of which were self-culture and self-restraint. The Brahmans of
the present India are the result of 3000 years of hereditary education
and temperance; and they have evolved a type of mankind quite distinct
from the surrounding population. Even the passing traveller in India
marks them out, alike from the bronze-cheeked, large-limbed,
leisure-loving Rajput or Kchatryas, the warrior caste of Aryan descent;
and from the dark-skinned, flat-nosed, thick-lipped low castes of
non-Aryan origin, with their short bodies and bullet heads. The Brahman
stands apart from both, tall and slim, with finely-modelled lips and
nose, fair complexion, high forehead, and slightly cocoanut shaped
skull--the man of self-centred refinement. He is an example of a class
becoming the ruling power in a country, not by force of arms, but by
the vigor of hereditary culture and temperance. One race has swept
across India after another, dynasties have risen and fallen, religions
have spread themselves over the land and disappeared. But since the dawn
of history the Brahman has calmly ruled; swaying the minds and receiving
the homage of the people, and accepted by foreign nations as the highest
type of Indian mankind. The position which the Brahmans won resulted in
no small measure from the benefits which they bestowed. For their own
Aryan countrymen they developed a noble language and literature. The
Brahmans were not only the priests and philosophers, but also the
lawgivers, the men of science and the poets of their race. Their
influence on the aboriginal peoples, the hill and forest races of India,
was even more important. To these rude remnants of the flint and stone
ages they brought in ancient times a knowledge of the metals and the
gods.
As a social league, Hinduism arranged the people into the old division
of the "Twice-born" Aryan castes, namely, the Brahmans, Kchatryas,
Vaisyas; and the "Once-born" castes, consisting of the non-Aryan Sudras
and the classes of mixed descent. This arrangement of the Indian races
remains to the present day. The "Twice-born" castes still wear the
sacred thread, and claim a joint, although an unequal, inheritance in
the holy books of the Veda. The "Once-born" castes are still denied the
sacred thread; and they were not allowed to study the holy books, until
the English set up schools in India for all classes of the people. But
while caste is thus founded on the distinctions of race, it has been
influenced by two other systems of division, namely, the employments of
the people, and the localities in which they live. Even in the oldest
times, the castes had separate occupations assigned to them. They could
be divided either into Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas, and Sudras; or into
priests, warriors, husbandmen, and serfs. They are also divided
according to the parts of India in which they live. Even the Brahmans
have among themselves ten distinct classes, or rather nations. Five of
these classes or Brahman nations live to the north of the Vindhya
mountains; five of them live to the south. Each of the ten feels itself
to be quite apart from the rest; and they have among themselves no
fewer than 1886 subdivisions or separate Brahmanical tribes. In like
manner, the Kchatryas or Rajputs number 590 separate tribes in different
parts of India.
While, therefore, Indian caste seems at first a very simple arrangement
of the people into four classes, it is in reality a very complex one.
For it rests upon three distinct systems of division: namely, upon race,
occupation, and geographical position. It is very difficult even to
guess at the number of the Indian castes. But there are not fewer than
3,000 of them which have separate names, and which regard themselves as
separate classes. The different castes cannot intermarry with each
other, and most of them cannot eat together. The ordinary rule is that
no Hindu of good caste can touch food cooked by a man of inferior caste.
By rights, too, each caste should keep to its own occupation. Indeed,
there has been a tendency to erect every separate kind of employment or
handicraft in each separate province into a distinct caste. But, as a
matter of practice, the castes often change their occupation, and the
lower ones sometimes raise themselves in the social scale. Thus the
Vaisya caste were in ancient times the tillers of the soil. They have in
most provinces given up this toilsome occupation, and the Vaisyas are
now the great merchants and bankers of India. Their fair skins,
intelligent faces, and polite bearing must have altered since the days
when their forefathers ploughed, sowed, and reaped under the hot sun.
Such changes of employment still occur on a smaller scale throughout
India.
The system of caste exercises a great influence upon the industries of
the people. Each caste is, in the first place, a trade-guild. It insures
the proper training of the youth of its own special craft; it makes
rules for the conduct of the caste-trade; it promotes good feeling by
feasts or social gatherings. The famous manufactures of mediæval India,
its muslins, silks, cloth of gold, inlaid weapons, and exquisite work in
precious stones--were brought to perfection under the care of the castes
or trade-guilds. Such guilds may still be found in full work in many
parts of India, Thus, in the northwestern districts of Bombay all heads
of artisan families are ranged under their proper trade-guild. The
trade-guild or caste prevents undue competition among the members, and
upholds the interest of its own body in any dispute arising with other
craftsmen.
In 1873, for example, a number of the bricklayers in Ahmadabad could not
find work. Men of this class sometimes added to their daily wages by
rising very early in the morning, and working overtime. But when several
families complained that they could not get employment, the bricklayers'
guild met, and decided that as there was not enough work for all, no
member should be allowed to work in extra hours. In the same city, the
cloth dealers in 1872 tried to cut down the wages of the sizers or men
who dress the cotton cloth. The sizers' guild refused to work at lower
rates, and remained six weeks on strike. At length they arranged their
dispute, and both the trade-guilds signed a stamped agreement fixing the
rates for the future. Each of the higher castes or trade-guilds in
Ahmadabad receives a fee from young men on entering their business. The
revenue derived from these fees, and from fines upon members who break
caste rules, is spent in feasts to the brethren of the guild, and in
helping the poorer craftsmen or their orphans. A favorite plan of
raising money in Surat is for the members of the trade to keep a certain
day as a holiday, and to shut up all their shops except one. The right
to keep open this one shop is put up to auction, and the amount bid is
expended on a feast. The trade-guild or caste allows none of its members
to starve. It thus acts as a mutual assurance society and takes the
place of a poor-law in India. The severest social penalty which can be
inflicted upon a Hindu is to be put out of his caste.
Hinduism is, however, not only a social league resting upon caste--it is
also a religious alliance based upon worship. As the various race
elements of the Indian people have been welded into caste, so the simple
old beliefs of the Veda, the mild doctrines of Buddha, and the fierce
rites of the non-Aryan tribes, have been thrown into the melting-pot,
and poured out thence as a mixture of precious metal and dross, to be
worked up into the complex worship of the Hindu gods.
FALL OF TROY
B.C. 1184
GEORGE GROTE
The siege of Troy is an event not to be reckoned as history,
although Herodotus, the "Father of History," speaks of it as such,
and it would be quite impossible to understand the history and
character of the Greek people without a study of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ poems attributed to "a blind bard of Scio's
isle"--immortal Homer. The campaign of the Greek heroes in Asia is
to be referred to a hazy point in the past when Europe was just
beginning to have an Eastern Question. A vast circle of tales and
poems has gathered round this mythical event, and the _Iliad_--Song
of Ilium, or Troy--is still a poem of unfailing interest and
fascination.
Ilium, or Troy, was a city of Asia Minor, a little south of the
Hellespont. It was the centre of a powerful state, Grecian in race
and language; and when Paris, son of King Priam, visited Sparta and
carried off the beautiful wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, all the
heroes of Greece banded together and invaded Priam's dominions.
The twelve hundred ships that sailed for Troy transported one
hundred thousand warriors to the valley of Simois and Scamander.
Among them was Agamemnon, "king of men," brother of Menelaus. He
was the leader, and in his train were Achilles, "swift of foot";
"god-like, wise" Ulysses, King of Ithaca, the two Ajaxes, and the
aged Nestor. The narrative of their adventures is told in the
Homeric poems with a power of musical expression, a charm of
language, and a vividness of imagery unsurpassed in poetry.
For ten years the besiegers encircled the city of Priam. After many
engagements and single combats on "the windy plain of Troy" the
great hero of the Greeks, Achilles of Thessaly, is wronged by
Agamemnon, who carries away Briseis, a fair captive girl allotted
as the spoils of war to the "Swift-footed." The hero of Thessaly
thenceforth refuses to join in the war, and sullenly shuts himself
up in his tent. It is only when his dear friend Patroclus has been
slain by the valiant Hector, eldest son of Priam, that he sallies
forth, meets Hector in single combat, and finally slays him.
Achilles then attaches the body of Hector to his chariot and
insultingly trails it in the dust as he drives three times around
the walls of Troy. The _Iliad_ closes with the funeral rites
celebrated over the corpse of Hector.
We now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian
epic--the two sieges and captures 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
Hecatæus 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 amid 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: in the account of later authors,
Dardanus was called the son of Zeus by Electra, daughter of Atlas, and
was further said to have come from Samothrace, or from Arcadia, or from
Italy; 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. Tros, the son of Erichthonius, and
the eponym of the Trojans, had three sons--Ilus, Assaracus, and the
beautiful Ganymedes, whom Zeus stole away to become his cup-bearer in
Olympus, giving to his father Tros, as the price of the youth, a team of
immortal horses.
From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines diverge; the
former passing from Ilus to Laomedon, Priam, and Hector; the latter from
Assaracus to Capys, Anchises, and Æneas. Ilus founded in the plain of
Troy the holy city of Ilium; Assaracus and his descendants remained
sovereigns of Dardania.
It was under the proud Laomedon, son of Ilus, that Poseidon 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 Laomedon 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. He was punished
for this treachery by a sea-monster, whom Poseidon sent to ravage his
fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomedon publicly offered the
immortal horses given by Zeus to his father Tros, 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 Hesione,
daughter of Laomedon himself. Heracles, arriving at this critical
moment, killed the monster by the aid of a fort built for him by Athene
and the Trojans, so as to rescue both the exposed maiden and the people;
but Laomedon, 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, Heracles equipped six ships, attacked and captured Troy, and
killed Laomedon, giving Hesione to his friend and auxiliary Telamon, to
whom she bore the celebrated archer Teucros. A painful sense of this
expedition was preserved among the inhabitants of the historical town of
Ilium, who offered no worship to Heracles.
Among all the sons of Laomedon, Priam was the only one who had
remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned guerdon of
Heracles; 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 Hecuba, daughter of Cisseus, as by other women. Among the sons
were Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, Polites, Polydorus;
among the daughters, Laodice, Creusa, Polyxena, and Cassandra.
The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presage; for Hecuba
dreamed 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 amid the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair
and symmetrical in person, and the special favorite of Aphrodite.
It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd's walk on Mount Ida, that
the three goddesses, Here, Athene, and Aphrodite, were conducted, in
order that he might determine the dispute respecting their comparative
beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of Peleus 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. Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodite, who
promised him in recompense the possession of Helen, wife of the Spartan
Menelaus,--the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the
instance of Aphrodite, 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 Cassandra.
Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Menelaus as
well as by Castor and Pollux, and was enabled to present the rich gifts
which he had brought to Helen. Menelaus then departed to Crete, leaving
Helen to entertain his Trojan guest--a favorable moment, which was
employed by Aphrodite 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.
Menelaus, informed by Iris in Crete of the perfidious return made by
Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and indignation to
consult with his brother Agamemnon, as well as with the venerable
Nestor, on the means of avenging the outrage. They made known the event
to the Greek chiefs around them, among whom they found universal
sympathy; Nestor, Palamedes, and others went round to solicit aid in a
contemplated attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnon, to whom
each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until Helen
should be recovered. Ten years were spent in equipping the expedition.
The goddesses Here and Athene, incensed at the preference given by Paris
to Aphrodite, and animated by steady attachment to Argos, Sparta, and
Mycenæ, took an active part in the cause, and the horses of Here were
fatigued with her repeated visits to the different parts of Greece.
By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis in Boeotia,
consisting of 1,186 ships and more than one hundred thousand 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. It comprised heroes with their followers from
the extreme points of Greece--from the northwestern portions of Thessaly
under Mount Olympus, as well as the western islands of Dulichium and
Ithaca, and the eastern islands of Crete and Rhodes. Agamemnon himself
contributed 100 ships manned with the subjects of his kingdom Mycenæ,
besides furnishing 60 ships to the Arcadians, who possessed none of
their own. Menelaus brought with him 60 ships, Nestor from Pylus, 90,
Idomeneus from Crete and Diomedes from Argos, 80 each. Forty ships were
manned by the Elians, under four different chiefs; the like number under
Meges from Dulichium and the Echinades, and under Thoas from Calydon and
the other Ætolian towns. Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis,
brought 12 ships each. The Abantes from Euboea, under Elphenor, filled
40 vessels; the Boeotians, under Peneleos and Leitus, 50; the
inhabitants of Orchomenus and Aspledon, 30; the light-armed Locrians,
under Ajax son of Oileus, 40; the Phocians 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 Phylace and Pyrasus, and
Eurypylus from Ormenium, each came with 40 ships; Machaon and
Podaleirius, from Trikka, with 30; Eumelus, from Pheræ and the lake
Boebeis, with 11; and Philoctetes from Meliboea with 7; the Lapithæ,
under Polypoetes, son of Peirithous, filled 40 vessels, the Ænianes and
Perrhæbians, under Guneus, 22; and the Magnetes, under Prothous, 40;
these last two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly, near the
mountains Pelion and Olympus. From Rhodes, under Tlepolemus, son of
Heracles, appeared 9 ships; from Syme, under the comely but effeminate
Nireus, 3; from Cos, Crapathus, and the neighboring islands, 30, under
the orders of Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons
of Heracles.
Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished warriors Ajax
and Diomedes, and the sagacious Nestor; while Agamemnon 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: the blood of the arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through an
illicit connection with his mother Anticleia, was said to flow in his
veins, and he was especially patronized and protected by the goddess
Athene. Odysseus, unwilling at first to take part in the expedition, had
even simulated insanity; but Palamedes, 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
Halitherses predicted to him that twenty years would elapse before he
revisited his native land. 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. When Nestor and Odysseus came to
Phthia to invite him, both he and his intimate friend Patroclus eagerly
obeyed the call.