WOMEN OF
THE CLASSICS
[Illustration:
PHÆDRA
_Gertrude Demain Hammond, R.I._
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WOMEN OF
THE CLASSICS
BY MARY C. STURGEON
WITH SIXTEEN PHOTOGRAVURES
PRESENTING STUDIES OF THE
HEROINES OF THE BOOK
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY
2 & 3 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C.
MCMXIV
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON ENGLAND
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Contents_
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
WOMEN OF HOMER
HELEN 15
ANDROMACHE 29
PENELOPE 39
CIRCE 60
CALYPSO 73
NAUSICAA 85
WOMEN OF ATTIC TRAGEDY
_I._ _ÆSCHYLUS_
CLYTEMNESTRA 99
ELECTRA 117
CASSANDRA 135
IO 148
_II._ _SOPHOCLES_
JOCASTA 163
ANTIGONE 185
_III._ _EURIPIDES_
ALCESTIS 209
MEDEA 227
PHÆDRA 243
IPHIGENIA 256
A WOMAN OF VIRGIL
DIDO 273
_Illustrations_
PHÆDRA GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
HELEN LORD LEIGHTON 20
ANDROMACHE LORD LEIGHTON 34
PENELOPE PATTEN WILSON 50
CIRCE PATTEN WILSON 66
CALYPSO PATTEN WILSON 82
NAUSICAA PATTEN WILSON 94
CLYTÆMNESTRA HON. JOHN COLLIER 114
ELECTRA GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. 128
CASSANDRA SOLOMON J. SOLOMON, R.A. 140
JOCASTA GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. 172
ANTIGONE FROM THE STATUE BY HUGUES 192
ALCESTIS LORD LEIGHTON 224
MEDEA HERBERT DRAPER 238
IPHIGENIA M. NONNENBRUCH 260
DIDO GIANBATTISTA TIEPOLO 284
_Introduction_
The women in this book are the heroines of Homer, of Attic Tragedy, and
of the _Æneid_ of Virgil. Their stories are taken out of the best modern
translations of the old poems; and they are retold from the human
standpoint, with the minimum of critical comment.
It is curious, when we reflect a moment, how little we really know about
the women of the classics. Their names have been familiar to us as long
as we can remember. We have always been vaguely conscious of a glory
clothing them—sometimes sombre and troubled, often gracious and serene,
occasionally enchanting. About the greatest of them some floating hints
of identity ripple on the surface of the mind. But we can by no means
fit these little fragments into any clear outline of the sublime beauty
of their originals. And when we light upon a reference to them in our
reading, or stand before one of the innumerable works of art which they
have inspired, memory is baffled. We have no clue to the spell that they
have cast upon the centuries: the spell itself has no power over us; and
we grope in vain for the key which would admit us to a world of delight.
There were reasons for this state of affairs when translations were few
and costly: when scholars were merely pedants and when the classics were
sealed to women. But _nous avons changé tout cela_. Fine translations
can be bought for a few shillings. Women are themselves engaging in the
study of the old languages and of the sciences which are akin to them.
Scholarship is growing more human; and the awakened spirit of womanhood,
having become conscious of itself, cannot fail to be profoundly
interested in that earlier awakening which, twenty-five centuries ago,
evoked creatures so splendid. Of the women of Attic Tragedy Professor
Gilbert Murray has said, in his _Rise of the Greek Epic_: “Consider for
a moment the whole magnificent file of heroines in Greek Tragedy, both
for good and evil.... I doubt if there has ever in the history of the
world been a period, not even excepting the Elizabethan Age and the
Nineteenth Century, when such a gallery of heroic women has been
represented in Drama.”
By bringing these women together into a single volume, it is hoped to
make their stories easily accessible; and by quoting some of the most
beautiful passages from the poems in which they live, it is hoped to
send the reader back to the poets themselves. It has not been possible
to include all the heroines in the available space; and several of those
who are missing have only been omitted under the direst necessity. But
all the greatest are here; and an effort has been made to choose each
group so that it shall represent as far as may be the characteristics of
its own poet. The source of the story is indicated in each case, and has
been closely followed.
A word may be necessary on one or two points, to those who are coming to
these stories from the classics with an unfamiliar eye. It will be found
that there is a singular reticence here on that aspect of love which
engrosses modern literature. It is occasionally treated by Euripides;
but even he handles the theme delicately and with reserve. Nowhere in
these stories—with the exception of Dido, who of course belongs to a
later civilization than the Greek women—is the love which leads to
marriage dealt with explicitly. It is implicit sometimes, and we who
have been born into a heritage of romanticism, may delightedly trace it
out and make the most of it. But the old poet never does: indeed, he
hardly seems to realize that he has put it there. He belongs to a time
when women were not wooed and won, but literally bought ‘with great
store of presents,’ or acquired in other prosaic ways, which vary
according to the several epochs and their customs. The love of men and
women is treated from the point of view of husband and wife, of sister
and brother, of daughter and father, rather than from the standpoint of
the feverish hopes and fears of romantic passion. Marriage is not so
much the culmination as the starting-point of an eventful story; and the
heroic devotion of sister and daughter is crowned, no less than wifely
fidelity, with everlasting honour. We must therefore be prepared for a
change from the warmth and glow of romance to the tonic air of a more
austere idealism.
Again, these women are not the complex creatures of modern civilization.
The earliest of them, Homer’s women, are drawn in outline only. They are
great and splendid; and because they were created for an aristocratic
audience, they are noble, dignified, and placed high above the small
things of common life. There is hardly any comedy in Homer, and reality
is far away. When we come to the dramatists we find, as we should
expect, a great advance in characterization. The women are stronger,
more real, more complete. But they are still very far from the
psychological subtlety of modern drama.
There is, too, a singular reticence about the personal appearance of the
heroines. We are rarely told what manner of women they were to look at.
Virgil comes one step nearer to our modern love of description when he
portrays Dido as she rides out on the fatal morning of the hunt; and
when he paints the glowing figure of Camilla as she rushes into battle.
But it would be very hard to discover what was the colour of Helen’s
eyes, although the old German _Faustbuch_ of the Middle Age has dared to
assert that they were ‘black as coals.’ Homer has a more excellent way.
Instead of enumerating the charms of his heroine, as it were in a
catalogue of perfections, he brings her into the presence of hostile
folk, who on all counts have reason to hate her, and in a few vivid
phrases shows the potent effect of her beauty upon them.
We shall find that the heroines have a system of ethics which is
different from that of our own day; and strange moral contradictions may
present themselves to our astonished eyes. Electra, with the tenderest
love for her dead father, will not rest until the death of her guilty
mother has been compassed. Antigone, infinitely gentle to the blind
Œdipus, is capable of resolute opposition to the law as it is embodied
in Creon. But though the lines of moral demarcation are differently
placed, they are not blurred. Revenge is a duty in this primitive saga
upon which the poets drew for their material; and in which there is much
that is savage and terrible.
Greek drama was a religious ritual closely bound to ancient myth and
heroic legend, from which the poets could not escape. Hence, if these
stories are approached in an analytical mood, they will be found
barbarous and wildly improbable. If we give the rein to humour, we shall
be overcome by frequent absurdities. The best way is to come to them
quite simply, leaving the comic and the critical spirits a little way
behind.
* * * * *
Grateful thanks are due to the translators and publishers who have
kindly given permission to quote the passages used herein; and the
author wishes humbly to acknowledge the debt she owes to critical work
in this field. She is especially conscious of help from Professor
Gilbert Murray in interpreting some of the Women of Tragedy. A note of
the sources of the quotations will be found at the end of each chapter.
_Homer: Helen_
In the twilight of early Greek history, one event and one name blaze
like beacons. They are the siege of Troy and the name of Helen. They
have not come down to us as cold fact, but burning through a mist of
legend and poetry. The historian cannot name the date of the Trojan war;
and the archæologist, whose labours have been so fruitful at Mycenæ and
in Crete, can only point doubtfully to the ancient site of Troy.
Yet that event, and its cause, fair Helen of Sparta, may be said to mark
the beginning of national life for the Greeks. Perhaps it was more than
two thousand years before Christ when all the little peoples of Greece
first joined themselves against barbarian Asia. Troy fell; and although
the victory brought little material reward to the Greeks; though they
sailed back to their island homes poorer and sadder than when they left,
they had in fact achieved momentous gains. For the struggle had first
taught them the strength of unity: it had launched them on their long
and triumphant feud against barbarism; and it had laid the base from
which they might go on to build, through the long, slow centuries, the
civilization that we inherit.
There was no historian to record the event. But it lived on, in memory
and in legend; and as the people became more settled, wandering bards
made songs about it. The rich Mycenæn Age flourished and died; and the
Homeric civilization took its place. Probably it was then that the
floating fragments of the Tale of Troy first were woven together,
providing material for the Homeric epics that we know as the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_. Probably they were not written down at first. They were
composed, and recited, in separate parts, in the halls of the great
lords, who loved to look back on this glorious event of their national
life, and to hear the names of their remote and half-mythical ancestors
brought into the story. Thus Homer, no matter who he or his school may
have been, comes to represent a high stage of civilization. His poems
have a lofty tone, a chivalrous spirit, a sweet cleanliness of thought
and of word, which do not belong to a primitive, uncivilized people.
They do not, as a fact, belong naturally to the early period of which he
sings. In the time of that grim struggle before the dawn of history,
there must have been much that was ugly, dark and barbarous. This is
proved to us by the survival of some of the older legends upon which
Homer worked. They tell of unnatural crime and of deeds of horror such
as he never mentions; and they give us, too, a very different
interpretation of the story of Helen. Homer puts aside all these
vestiges of a primitive past. He is composing lays for a people who have
a keen sense of honour, a supreme ideal of beauty and a love of home;
who have a religious feeling strong enough to reverence the gods,
despite their many hieratic quarrels, and who hold womanhood in high
esteem. So when we come to him to hear about Helen, we find a very sweet
and gracious figure, quite unlike the Helen of the later poets. With
them she was degraded from her rank of demi-god. She was regarded as a
real figure, brought down to the level of ordinary existence, and judged
by the common standard. The romantic charm of the Homeric conception
faded; and her name had for centuries an evil sound. It has passed
through many vicissitudes since. In late Greek literature, one or two
poets tried to return to the reverent attitude of Homer: but in the
Middle Ages she became again a byword and a reproach. At the
Renaissance, something of her early worship as an ideal of beauty was
revived, and our own Marlowe has passionately expressed the thought of
that age about her:
_Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss....
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars._
It is this vision of Helen, as the supreme ideal of beauty, that modern
poets and scholars have tried to recapture. They have put aside the
varied allegorical and ethical and realistic conceptions of her, as the
efforts of a more sophisticated age; and they have tried to return
directly to the fine simplicity of Homer himself. Only thus, they
believe, can we stand at the right point of view with regard to Helen;
and only thus can we see her as she was to the Greeks, a symbol of
beauty incorruptible. We, who have to make our own choice in the matter,
cannot do better than try to stand at the point where the moderns have
placed us.
We come then at once to the Iliad, where, in the Third Book, Helen makes
her first appearance in the world’s literature. War has been raging
round the walls of Troy for nearly ten years. Now a truce is called; and
in the palace of the old king Priam, word goes round that Paris, the
author of the long feud, is to fight in single combat with Menelaus,
whom he has wronged. For Paris had brought the bane of war upon Ilios.
At his birth, the oracles of the gods had demanded that he should die;
and Priam, his father, sorrowfully handed over the wailing baby to the
priest, to be exposed upon Mount Ida. But first he tied an old ring
about his neck; and when Paris was strangely saved from death, and grew
up to be the fairest and strongest of all the shepherd youths on Ida, he
came one day by accident to Ilios. There, by means of the jewel hanging
from his neck, he was made known as the son of the king. Thenceforward
the poor shepherd was the best beloved of all the princes. Life went
gaily; and for a while he was utterly content. But he had left behind,
amidst the groves of Mount Ida, a sweet wood-nymph who loved him well,
Enone. And when after a time he began to tire of life in the palace, he
remembered her and thought longingly of the freshness and beauty of the
mountain. So one day in summer he went to seek Enone. All day long he
searched the forest, but could not find her; and coming tired at evening
to a fragrant glade, he fell asleep. When he awoke, night was hushed all
around, and stars peeped through the slender branches overhead. It was
midnight and there was no moon; but it was not dark. The glade was
filled with a soft radiance such as he had never seen before, and when
he raised his wondering eyes, he saw the majestical figures of goddesses
shining upon him: Hera, queen of Olympus, Athena, the wise maid of Zeus,
and Aphrodite, the laughing goddess of love. Sweetly they smiled on him;
and as he stood in wondering awe, the deep, rich tones of Hera sank upon
his spirit, promising him greatness and power, and the lordship over
many lands. Then Athena, resting her starlike gaze upon him, promised
him wisdom and courage; and Aphrodite, with a little mocking laugh at
power and at wisdom, promised him the fairest woman in the world. Only,
and this was to be the price of the gift, he was to be the arbiter
between them: he was to declare which was most beautiful.
There was only one answer possible to Paris. Ambition had no lure for
him. Why fight and strive and spend the happy days in effort merely to
be called great? And wisdom had no appeal for him either; she seemed
austere and cold. What had she to do with the joy and grace and
sweetness that his soul loved? To the sublimity of Hera he bent in awe.
The shining purity of Athena smote his glance to the earth. But the
voice of Aphrodite wooed him, and her winsome smile set him trembling
with delight. He reached out to her the golden prize of beauty.
So Paris was to gain the fairest woman in the world. It seemed an honest
promise, full of the happiest portent; and the young prince soon set out
upon his search for a bride over the western seas. But Aphrodite was no
better than a cheat, and had invoked on Paris, though he did not know it
then, the curse of guilty love. For the exquisite child who was to be
the world’s queen of beauty had grown up in the home of Tyndareus, king
of Sparta; and even while the goddess gave her word to Paris, was
happily married to Menelaus there. To her and to her husband Paris came
in his wanderings, led unwittingly by the laughter-loving goddess, and
clothed by her in beauty like a god. They feasted him and did him
honour; and sitting at the banquet which they made to him, he told the
strange tale of his life and his quest.
Helen listened to his story with a sudden prescience of what was to
come; and rising softly, left the banqueting hall and went away to
implore the goddess to avert the doom. But she was no match for
Aphrodite. Anger and entreaty could not move the wanton Olympian, but
she would grant one boon—Helen should be oblivious of all her past.
Under the spell, the love of husband and child faded out; and even the
memory of them vanished when on that spring morning in the garden of the
palace, Paris met her beside the stream, ‘’twixt the lily and the rose.’
_Then either looked on other with amaze
As each had seen a god; for no long while
They marvell’d, but as in the first of days,
The first of men and maids did meet and smile,
And Aphrodite did their hearts beguile,
So hands met hands, lips lips, with no word said
Were they enchanted ‘neath the leafy aisle,
And silently were wooed, betroth’d and wed._[1]
Together they fled in the dewy morning, Paris urging his horses with
guilty haste to the ships. And there, with Menelaus thundering along the
road after them, they set sail for Troy, fulfilling the old prophecy,
and lighting a brand by their deed which should burn the sacred city to
the ground. For Tyndareus, when he chose a husband for Helen amongst her
many suitors, had won a promise that they would all defend the one who
gained her. Agamemnon, brother to Menelaus, and the great overlord of
the Hellenic princes, now summoned the allies to avenge his brother, and
for ten years they toiled at fitting out a fleet. Then they ‘launched a
thousand ships,’ and sailed to punish Ilios for the sin of Paris.
[Illustration:
HELEN OF TROY
_Lord Leighton_
_By permission of Henry Graves & Co Ltd_
]
Meantime, Helen had wakened sadly from the spell of Aphrodite. Little by
little memory of her home came back, and with it came remorse. She was
lonely too, and disillusion crept upon her. The Trojans, who at first
had welcomed her as a goddess, soon began to look askance at her when
rumours came of the great siege that was preparing. Mothers and wives of
the Trojan princes held aloof; and soon the only friends left to her
were the kind old king and Hector, the noble defender of the city. But
there was worse behind. Little by little the truth dawned that Paris,
for whom she had lost so much, and who had seemed so godlike in his
strength and beauty, was very poor humanity indeed. The story of Enone
was told to her; and that showed him unfaithful. And when the Leaguer
actually lay beneath the walls, she soon found that Paris was a coward
too.
Now, in this Third Iliad, we find that the cruel siege had wasted Troy
for nearly ten years. The armies, reduced by death and pestilence and
famine, were beginning to murmur against the worthless cause of all
their misery; and Paris, for very shame, could no longer shelter himself
within the city. At this eleventh hour he issued out to meet Menelaus in
single combat. Helen was sitting in her inner hall, weaving a purple web
and embroidering upon it the battle scenes which ebbed and flowed around
the walls. Time and sorrow had only given her beauty an added charm. She
was still young, fresh, and exquisitely fair, as on that spring morning
in Lacedaemon when Aphrodite graced her for the meeting with Paris. To
her, as her sweet face bent over the web, the goddess Iris brought the
news of the impending combat: “They that erst waged tearful war upon
each other in the plain, eager for deadly battle, even they sit now in
silence, and the battle is stayed, and they lean upon their shields, and
the tall spears are planted by their sides. But Paris and Menelaus dear
to Ares will fight with their tall spears for thee; and thou wilt be
declared the dear wife of him that conquereth.”
At the name of Menelaus a wave of homesickness filled Helen’s heart.
Great tears flooded her eyes, and drawing on a shining veil, she left
her embroideries and hastened out to the Skaian gates to watch the duel.
But there, sitting upon the tower, were Priam and his counsellors; and
Helen and her maids hesitated at sight of them. They were feeble old
men. The fire and strength of youth had gone, leaving in their place the
cold wisdom of age. They and their people had suffered deeply because of
Helen; and they had every cause to hate her. Yet as she approached,
veiled and slackening her pace from fear when she saw them, all their
wrongs were forgotten in wonderment at her beauty. They who had potent
reasons to revile her were saying softly among themselves, almost in
awe, as those who had seen a vision: “’Small blame is it that Trojans
and well-greaved Achaians should for such a woman long time suffer
hardships; marvellously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look
upon.’ ... So said they; and Priam lifted up his voice and called to
Helen: ‘Come hither, dear child, and sit before me, that thou mayst see
thy former husband and thy kinsfolk and thy friends. I hold thee not to
blame; nay, I hold the gods to blame who brought on me the dolorous war
of the Achaians’.” “And Helen, fair among women, spake, and answered
him: ‘Reverend art thou to me and dread, dear father of my lord. Would
that sore death had been my pleasure when I followed thy son hither, and
left my home and my kinsfolk and my daughter in her girlhood and the
lovely company of mine age-fellows. But that was not so, wherefore I
pine with weeping’.”[2]
Then Helen pointed out to the king and the elders the great heroes of
the Greek line: “This is wide-ruling Agamemnon, one that is both a
goodly king and mighty spearman. And he was husband’s brother to me, ah
shameless me; if ever such an one there was.” Odysseus, too, and Ajax
and Idomeneus, she can see; but two whom her eyes seek longingly are not
there, her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux. “Either they came not in
the company from lovely Lacedaemon; or they came hither indeed in their
seafaring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors,
for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine.”[2]
Presently, Paris and Menelaus are engaged in fight below the walls, with
Helen looking on from above in fearful expectancy. It was an unequal
fight. Aphrodite had joined the side of Paris; and when, despite her
tricks, Menelaus was gaining on his opponent, the goddess enveloped
Paris in a cloud and carried him off. In plain words, he ran away; and
Helen, shamed and indignant, received a summons from Aphrodite to go to
her cowardly lover. She turned in wrath upon the goddess: “Strange
queen, why art thou desirous now to beguile me? Go and sit thou by his
side, and depart from the way of the gods; neither let thy feet ever
bear thee back to Olympus, but still be vexed for his sake and guard him
till he make thee his wife or perchance his slave. But thither will I
not go—that were a sinful thing—to array the bed of him; all the women
of Troy will blame me hereafter; and I have griefs untold within my
soul.”[2]
Aphrodite triumphs, however, menacing Helen with terrible threats; and
leads her back to the house of Paris. Meanwhile, the gods ‘on golden
pavement round the board of Zeus’ had decreed that Troy should fall:
Hera and Athena were to wreak their vengeance upon it, for the insult of
Paris. The truce broken, the armies rushed into conflict again, and two
of the gods who were warring for Troy, were driven back to Olympus. Then
Hector came into the palace to rouse his brother, and found him sitting
in Helen’s room, polishing his armour. To the scornful reproaches of
Hector, Paris gave only puerile answers, and Helen turned from him to
Hector in passionate scorn. “Dear brother mine, would that on the day
that my mother bare me, a billow of the loud-sounding sea might have
swept me away before all these things came to pass. Howbeit, seeing that
the gods devised all these ills in this wise, would that then I had been
mated with a better man, that felt dishonour and the multitude of men’s
reproachings. But as for him, neither has he now sound heart, nor ever
will have; therefore deem I moreover that he will reap the fruit.”[2]
Hector answered her with a gentle word, and went out, bearing on his
shoulders the doom of Troy. In his chivalrous kindness to Helen, he is a
worthy son of Priam; and when he was slain at last, fighting for his
beloved city alone with the terrible Achilles, Helen joined her lament
to those of his mother and his wife, in perhaps the most noble tribute
to his memory: “Hector, of all my brethren of Troy, far dearest to my
heart. Truly my lord is godlike Paris who brought me to Troy-land; would
that I had died ere then. For this is now the twentieth year since I
went thence and am gone from my own native land, but never yet heard I
evil or despiteful word from thee; nay, if any other haply upbraided me
in the palace halls, whether brother or sister of thine or brother’s
fair-robed wife, or thy mother, then wouldst thou soothe such with words
and refrain them, by the gentleness of thy spirit and by thy gentle
words. Therefore bewail I thee with pain at heart, and my hapless self
with thee, for no more is any left in wide Troy-land to be my friend and
kind to me, but all men shudder at me.”[2]
Almost with these words the poem closes, telling us nothing of the
dreadful sack of Troy by the Achaians, after they had entered the city
through the device of the wooden horse. Our last glimpse of Helen in the
Iliad is as she wails her mournful threnos over the body of Hector.
_And Helen’s sorrow brake into lament
As bursts a lake the barriers of a hill,
For lost, lost, lost was that one friend who still
Stood by her with kind speech and gentle heart._[1]
We hear no word of the Greek calamity in the fall of Achilles, or how
Paris was slain by the arrow of the outcast Philoctetes, with perfect
poetical justice. Nothing is told of the massacre of Priam and his sons;
of the burning of the city; of the carrying off of its wealth and of its
fair women when the Greeks, sated with revenge at last, set sail for
Argos. And we hear no word of the most amazing fact of all—the
reconciliation of Helen and Menelaus. We know from the _Odyssey_ that
they were reconciled, but how, Homer does not say. Legend and song have
been busy with the theme, however, and the most beautiful story has been
woven by Andrew Lang into his _Helen of Troy_. There we see how
Aphrodite in the midst of the slaughter and outrage, led Helen in safety
to the ships, while Menelaus raged through the city seeking her, grimly
determined to give her over to the vengeance of the army.
_But Helen found he never where the flame
Sprang to the roofs, and Helen ne’er he found
Where flocked the wretched women in their shame
The helpless altars of the gods around...._
_So wounded to his hut and wearily
Came Menelaus; and he bowed his head
Beneath the lintel neither fair nor high;
And lo, queen Helen lay upon his bed,
Flush’d like a child asleep, and rosy-red,
And at his footstep did she wake and smile,
And spake: “My lord, how hath thy hunting sped?
Methinks that I have slept a weary while.”_[1]
Lulled again by the arts of Aphrodite, Helen has completely forgotten
all that has happened in the dreadful interval of the years since she
last fell asleep at Lacedaemon. But Menelaus feels the fierce anger rise
in his heart against her. He seizes and binds her, and carries her off
to deliver her to the vengeance of the people. He reminds them of all
they have endured and suffered, and calls upon them to mete to her the
just death for such an one as she. But when the soldiers in their rage
would have stoned her; when Menelaus rushed upon her with uplifted
spear, Aphrodite drew the veil from before her matchless face.
_And as in far-off days that were to be,
The sense of their own sin did men constrain,
That they must leave the sinful woman free
Who, by their law, had verily been slain,
So Helen’s beauty made their anger vain,
And one by one their gathered flints let fall;
And like men shamed they stole across the plain,
Back to the swift ships and their festival._[1]
So Helen went home to Lacedaemon again, the dear wife of Menelaus. And
when we take up the second great Homeric epic, the _Odyssey_, we find
her the serene and gracious hostess of young Telemachus. All the hateful
past is purged away, and chaste as the moon-goddess,
_Forth of her high-roofed, odorous chamber came
Helen, like golden-shafted Artemis._[3]
She still remembers the horror of those days; and when Menelaus is
wondering who the stranger prince is who has sought their hospitality,
Helen’s quick wit perceives how like he is to Odysseus. Is not this, she
asks, the son whom Odysseus left in his house as a new-born child when
the war began?
“_And for the sake of me who knew not shame
Under Troy town your host Achaean came._”[3]
It is indeed the son of Odysseus; and by the irony of fate he has come
to inquire from the very author of his sorrows, news of the father who,
for aught Helen knows, has long ago been driven by Poseidon to the House
of Hades.
_Wept Argive Helen, child of Zeus, and wept
Telemachus, and with him at the word
Wept Menelaus._[3]
But the ready tears of heroes are soon dried. They cheer Telemachus so
far as they may by tales of his father’s craft and courage before Troy;
and Helen mixes for him the cup of Nepenthe, which steeps memory in a
mist and banishes care and calls a smile to the lips. She does not
herself taste of the magic drink, however; she has no wish to forget.
Secure now in the peace of home and enfolded by generous forgiveness,
she will always remember, until she comes to pass through Lethe on her
way to the Elysian fields. And there, when the time came, she was
translated ‘where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow.’ A shrine was
built to her, and Greek men and maidens worshipped her as one of the
immortal gods themselves.
_O’er Helen’s shrine the grass is growing green,
In desolate Therapnae; none the less
Her sweet face now unworshipped and unseen
Abides the symbol of all loveliness,
Of Beauty ever stainless in the stress
Of warring lusts and fears; and still divine,
Still ready with immortal peace to bless
Them that with pure hearts worship at her shrine._[1]
-----
Footnote 1:
From Mr Andrew Lang’s _Helen of Troy_ (G. Bell and Sons Ltd.).
Footnote 2:
From Messrs Lang, Leaf, and Myers’s translation of the _Iliad_
(Macmillan and Co. Ltd.).
Footnote 3:
From Professor J. W. Mackail’s translation of the _Odyssey_ (John
Murray).
_Homer: Andromache_
Andromache was the young wife of Hector, Priam’s warrior son and
defender of Troy. Over against the figure of Helen in the _Iliad_ her
gentle integrity stands in mute reproach. It is as though Homer, whose
chivalry to Helen will not permit him to censure her, yet feels the
claim of a larger chivalry—to womanhood itself. So he seems impelled to
create this type of gracious purity, vindicating wifely honour and
motherly tenderness; and proving at the same time that if his race had a
high ideal of beauty, it had also a profound regard for domestic ties.
Helen and Andromache, therefore, stand side by side in the action of the
poem. Their destinies are linked: their lives are passed within the same
walls: they own the same relationship to king Priam and to Hecuba the
queen; and they are united in suffering. But always they are as far
apart in spirit as conscious guilt on the one hand and indignant
rectitude on the other ever held two daughters of Eve. Andromache, like
all the men and women of heroic poetry, was very human. And we have the
feeling that she could not rise to Hector’s generosity toward the
Spartan woman for whose sake Paris had brought the war on Ilios. Perhaps
the reason was that she had suffered more deeply on Helen’s account. And
if she had joined in those reproaches which Helen wailed about in her
threnos over Hector’s body, it was from bitter cause.
Andromache had been happy, and a princess, in her girlhood days, before
Paris brought a Greek bride from Sparta. Her father was Eëtion, king of
Thebes, in ‘wooded Plakos’; and in those times she had a gentle mother
and seven strong brothers. But the Greeks came, and in the long years
when the Leaguer lay beneath Troy, their terrible hero Achilles had
ravaged the countries around, and had taken the city of Thebes. He had
slain Eëtion her father and the seven fine youths who were her brothers.
Her mother, too, though ransomed from the Greeks for a great price, had
died of grief; and Andromache, utterly forlorn, had found refuge in the
halls of Priam. She found a mate there too; and in the love of Hector,
her father and mother and brothers were all given back to her.
Homer makes the tender devotion of this noble pair stand out in gracious
contrast to the stormy passion of Paris and Helen. Yet he does not tell
us much about Andromache. He does not describe her—indeed, he very
rarely draws a picture of his women—but we know that she is beautiful.
In some subtle way there is left on our mind an impression of blended
grace and dignity, of sweetness and tenderness and fidelity; but we are
not directly told that she possesses these qualities. We do not even see
her till, in the Sixth Book of the _Iliad_, the time has come for her to
part from her husband.
The Greeks were at the very gates of Troy, and the last phase had come
for the sacred city. Diomedes had driven their god Ares from the field,
bellowing with the pain of a wound; and Hector, who saw the end was
coming, hurried into the palace to rouse his followers and beg the queen
to pray for the cause of Troy in the Temple of Athena. Then, before
returning to the fight, he snatched the opportunity to see his wife and
child once more. At first he could not find them. Andromache was not in
the palace, nor in the Temple of Athena where the matrons of the city
were propitiating the goddess. She had heard that the Trojans were hard
pressed, and in fear for her husband she had gone down to the tower to
watch the battle from the walls.
“Hector hastened from his house back by the same way down the
well-builded streets. When he had passed through the great city and was
come to the Skaian gates, whereby he was minded to issue upon the plain,
there came his dear-won wife running to meet him.... So she met him now,
and with her went the handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, the
little child, Hector’s loved son, like unto a beautiful star.... So now
he smiled and gazed at his boy silently, and Andromache stood by his
side weeping, and clasped her hand in his, and spake and called upon his
name. ‘Dear my lord, this thy hardihood will undo thee, neither hast
thou any pity for thine infant boy, nor for me forlorn that soon shall
be thy widow; for soon will the Achaeans all set upon thee and slay
thee. But it were better for me to go down to the grave if I lose thee;
for never more will any comfort be mine, when once thou, even thou, hast
met thy fate, but only sorrow’.”[4]
So she weeps to him, forgetting the heroic, as heroes often do in
overwhelming human sorrow. Hector is human too; and as she pours out all
the pleas that touch him most nearly—her love for him, his love for her,
and their mutual love for their child—he cannot utter the reply of the
soldier and defender of his people. Andromache thinks she sees an
instant of wavering in his eyes; she catches at it wildly, and rushes on
to tell of a place where he and his men may screen themselves from the
enemy. But that word has lost her cause. Hector’s great refusal is brave
and gentle: “Surely ... I have very sore shame ... if like a coward I
shrink away from battle. Moreover mine own soul forbiddeth me.... Yea of
a surety I know ... the day shall come for holy Ilios to be laid low....
Yet doth the anguish of the Trojans hereafter not so much trouble me,
neither Hekabe’s own, neither king Priam’s, neither my brethren’s ... as
doth thine anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaian shall ... rob
thee of the light of freedom.... But me in death may the heaped-up earth
be covering, ere I hear thy crying and thy carrying into captivity.”[4]
Andromache can find no answer, and there is silence between them as
Hector turns to caress his boy. But the child shrinks to his nurse in
fear of the shining helmet and nodding crest; and the parents laugh
through their tears.
“Then his dear father laughed aloud, and his lady mother; forthwith
glorious Hector took the helmet from his head, and laid it, all
gleaming, upon the earth; then kissed he his dear son and dandled him in
his arms, and spake in prayer to Zeus and all the gods, ... ‘Vouchsafe
ye that this my son may likewise prove even as I, pre-eminent amid the
Trojans, and as valiant in might, and be a great king of Ilios. May men
say of him, “Far greater is he than his father,” as he returneth from
battle; ... and may his mother’s heart be glad’.”[4]
In his warrior-prayer Andromache cannot join; and to us who know the
fate of Hector’s son, there is appalling irony in this appeal to the
gods. She takes her boy into her arms, smiling tearfully.
“And her husband had pity to see her, and caressed her with his hand and
spake and called upon her name: ‘Dear one, I pray thee be not of
over-sorrowful heart; no man against my fate shall hurl me to Hades....
But go thou to thine house and see to thine own tasks ... but for war
shall men provide, and I in chief of all men that dwell in Ilios.’
“So spake glorious Hector, and took up his horsehair-crested helmet; and
his dear wife departed to her home, oft looking back, and letting fall
big tears.”[4]
But the end had not quite come for Hector and his beloved Troy. For a
time the tide of battle rolled back against the Greeks, and while
Achilles fumed idly in his tent, Hector pressed upon them until he had
forced them back to their ships. The immortals came into the field
again; and success swayed to one or the other side, as Zeus to the
Trojans or Hera to the Greeks lent aid. Then Hector slew Patroclus, the
dear friend of Achilles; and that event drew the Greek hero forth at
last, raging in grief and anger. Furnished with new armour by his
goddess-mother Thetis, Achilles went out against the Trojans like a
destroying flame. He drove them into the city with terrible slaughter;
and then faced Hector alone outside the Skaian gates, and slew him
there.
Meanwhile Andromache had won a little hope again, from the past few days
of success to the Trojan arms. She knew nothing of the duel, and her
husband’s fate at the hands of Achilles; but was sitting quietly within
her hall, while the maids prepared warm baths for his return.
“Then she called to her goodly-haired maids through the house to set a
great tripod on the fire, that Hector might have warm washing when he
came home out of the battle—fond heart, and was unaware how, far from
all washings, bright-eyed Athene had slain him by the hand of Achilles.
But she heard shrieks and groans from the battlements, and her limbs
reeled, and the shuttle fell from her hands to the earth. Then again
among her goodly haired maids she spake: ‘Come two of ye this way with
me that I may see what deeds are done ... terribly I dread lest noble
Achilles have cut off bold Hector from the city by himself and chased
him to the plain and ere this ended his perilous pride that possessed
him, for never would he tarry among the throng of men but ran out before
them far, yielding place to no man in his hardihood.’
“Thus saying she sped through the chamber like one mad, with beating
heart, and with her went her handmaidens. But when she came to the
battlements and the throng of men, she stood still upon the wall and
gazed, and beheld him dragged before the city:—swift horses dragged him
recklessly toward the hollow ships of the Achaians. Then dark night came
on her eyes and shrouded her, and she fell backward and gasped forth her
spirit.”[4]
We must not dwell upon the grim vengeance which Achilles took upon the
dead body of Hector, for the life of his friend; nor the wonderful
funeral rites for Patroclus; nor the pitiful story of old Priam’s visit
to Achilles at dead of night, to beg for the body of his great son:
_Before the throne of great Achilles see
The broken king kissing the deadly hands
Whereby his house is left him desolate._[4]
[Illustration:
CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE
_Lord Leighton_
_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co. 133 New Bond St. W._
]
But when the poor insulted body was at last recovered, all the city went
out to meet it and bring it in with lamentation. Andromache led the
women, wailing in her grief: “Husband, thou art gone young from life,
and leavest me a widow in thy halls. And the child is yet but a little
one, child of ill-fated parents, thee and me; nor methinks shall he grow
up to manhood, for ere then shall this city be utterly destroyed. For
thou art verily perished who didst watch over it, who guardest it and
keptest safe its noble wives and infant little ones. These soon shall be
voyaging in the hollow ships, yea and I too with them, and thou, my
child, shalt either go with me unto a place where thou shalt toil at
unseemly tasks, labouring before the face of some harsh lord, or else
some Achaian will take thee by the arm and hurl thee from the
battlement, a grievous death.... And woe unspeakable and mourning hast
thou left to thy parents, Hector, but with me chiefliest shall grievous
pain abide. For neither didst thou stretch thy hands to me from a bed in
thy death, neither didst speak to me some memorable word that I might
have thought on evermore as my tears fall night and day.”[4]
Andromache’s foreboding was only too completely fulfilled, for although
Homer does not tell us of it, we know that when the truce for Hector’s
funeral was over, Troy fell into the hands of the Greeks. The horrors of
that day are related over and over again by the poets—the ruthless
massacre of Priam and his sons, the capture of the women and children
and the burning of the city. Euripides tells us in his _Troades_ what
befell Andromache. This drama, written centuries after the _Iliad_, has
been called by Professor Gilbert Murray, “the first great expression of
pity for mankind in European literature.” The subject was, indeed, one
to evoke profoundest pity, and the poet, reflective and humane, seems to
select it purposely to reveal the dreadful underside of war. He brings
the figure of Hecuba upon the stage, weighed down under innumerable
woes: Cassandra, too, in a dark prophetic frenzy, foretelling her own
doom and that of Agamemnon: Helen, confronted at last by Menelaus; and
Andromache, borne in the chariot of her captor, with the baby Astyanax
in her arms.
LEADER OF CHORUS. _O most forlorn
Of women, whither go’st thou, borne
Mid Hector’s bronzen arms, and piled
Spoils of the dead, and pageantry
Of them that hunted Ilion down?_
ANDROMACHE. _Forth to the Greek I go,
Driven as a beast is driven._
HECUBA. _Woe! Woe!..._
ANDROMACHE. _Mother of him of old, whose mighty spear
Smote Greeks like chaff, see’st thou what things are here?_
HECUBA. _I see God’s hand, that buildeth a great crown
For littleness, and hath cast the mighty down...._
ANDROMACHE. _O my Hector! best beloved,
That, being mine, wast all in all to me,
My prince, my wise one, O my majesty
Of valiance!..._
_Thou art dead,
And I war-flung to slavery and the bread
Of shame in Hellas, over bitter seas._[5]
But the crowning horror remains. As Andromache and the queen are taking
mournful leave of each other, a hurried messenger arrives from the Greek
leaders. His message is almost too dreadful to utter; but he stammers it
at last—the victors have resolved that Andromache’s son must die. They
will spare no slip of Priam’s stock to be a future menace; and Astyanax
is to be cast down therefore from the city towers.
To Andromache it is an appalling blow, worse than all that she has yet
suffered. She cannot realize it at first, and answers the herald in
broken, incredulous phrases. But when the man, ruefully trying to soothe
her meanwhile, at last makes it clear to her that her child must die,
all her gentleness is suddenly swept away in fierce wrath against her
enemies.
“_O, ye have found an anguish that outstrips
All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks!
Why will ye slay this innocent, that seeks
No wrong?_“[5]
Her own wrongs, though deep and shameful, she could bear; but the
cruelty to her child is insupportable. All the graciousness and dignity
of her nature break down under it; and carried beyond herself, she calls
down wild curses upon her conquerors, and upon Helen, the origin of all
her woes. Then, suddenly realizing the futility of her rage and her
powerlessness to save Astyanax, she yields him to the Herald in a
poignant outburst of grief:
“_Quick! take him: drag him: cast him from the wall,
If cast ye will! Tear him, ye beasts, be swift!
God hath undone me, and I cannot lift
One hand, one hand, to save my child from death!_“[5]
So Andromache was taken alone into captivity. Of all that befell her
there we do not know; but there are hints and fragments which suggest
that the gods must have relented a little, at sight of her misery. For
long afterward, when the Trojan prince Æneas set out to found another
Troy in Latium, he anchored his fleet one day in the bay of Chaonia. And
there, as he wandered upon the shore, he found Andromache. Her cruel
captor was dead; and she was married to Helenus, the brother of Hector.
But she had not forgotten her hero-husband, and when Æneas and his
companions came upon her first, she was paying devotions at his tomb:
_Within a grove Andromache that day,
Where Simois in fancy flowed again,
Her offerings chanced at Hector’s grave to pay,
A turf-built cenotaph, with altars twain,
Source of her tears and sacred to the slain—
And called his shade._[6]
-----
Footnote 4:
From Messrs Lang, Leaf, and Myers’s translation of the _Iliad_
(Macmillan and Co. Ltd.). 1909 Edition.
Footnote 5:
From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of the _Troades_ (George
Allen and Co. Ltd.).
Footnote 6:
From E. Fairfax Taylor’s translation of the _Æneid_ (Everyman’s
Library).
_Homer: Penelope_
We come now to the _Odyssey_, the second Homeric epic; and to its
heroine, wise Penelope.
Nominally, we have left the _Iliad_ behind by a space of several years.
Troy had fallen, and the Greeks were homeward bound, fewer in number and
sadder at heart than when the fleet had sailed ten years before. Some
few of them reached home in safety. But for the most part, the return
voyages were only accomplished with tremendous hardship and peril; and
many who had escaped death at Troy found it at the hands of Poseidon,
earth-shaking sea-god. Of proud Agamemnon, and the fate that awaited him
in his palace at Mycenæ, we shall hear presently. We are concerned now
with the wanderings of Odysseus, and how he won home at last to the
faithful love of Penelope.