A high wheeled waggon yoked, to take away
The goodly clothes and wash them in the stream?
For in the house all lying soiled are they._
_“Now for yourself it is no more than fit
That, when the councillors at council sit,
In clean array among your lords you go:
Also your house has five sons born in it,_
_“Two of them wedded now, but three are yet
Young bachelors, who evermore must get
New-washed attire when to the dance they go;
And now on all this charge my mind is set.”_
_So spake she, for her mouth for maiden shame
To her own father marriage might not name.
Howbeit he understood and answered her:
“Go, child: I grudge not any wish you frame,_
_“Mules or aught else: this thing my thralls shall do,
And yoke the high wheeled tilted wain for you.”_[12]
As we see, Alcinous can deny nothing to his fair young daughter. The
lightly running mule-cart is ordered out, and Nausicaa and the maids set
busily to work. It is refreshing to see this only daughter of a ‘king’
carrying out the linen and fleecy blankets that have been daintily
wrought with needlecraft by her own hands. Alcinous, of course, is not
to be regarded as possessing the power and state of a modern monarch;
perhaps he was not a king at all, in our sense of the word. But there
can be no doubt that his state was that of a rich and mighty lord, for
he lives in a magnificence which makes the simple practical usefulness
of his daughter all the more remarkable. She helps the servants to load
the wagon, while the Queen herself places upon the box a skin of wine
and many dainty things to eat at their midday meal, together with a
golden flask of oil for their use when they wish to bathe.
When all is ready, Nausicaa drives off merrily, her women running at the
side of the cart. Far out of the city they go, past the embattled walls
and the market-place and the harbour: then on through farms and sloping,
shimmering olive-gardens, until they reach the sea and the
washing-pools—the very spot, in fact, where ‘toil-worn, bright Odysseus’
is sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, after his heart-breaking struggle
with the waves. The mules are unyoked and the clothes are brought out of
the cart and flung into the dark water. Then the girls bare their white
feet, catch up their fluttering garments, and tread the clothes in the
gushing water, gaily chattering the while. When all are cleansed, they
are spread out in the sun on the pebbly beach, while the girls bathe and
take their dainty meal upon the shore.
All this while there lay in a thicket quite close to them, the prostrate
figure of Odysseus, like one dead. But when the afternoon was wearing
on, the girls joined in a merry game of ball, before starting on their
homeward journey. The lovely group lives before us as we read, fresh
from their sea-bath, with crisping ringlets floating, cheeks touched to
a rosier hue by exercise and fun, and all the charms of youth and beauty
revealed as white arms throw the ball and twinkling feet run hither and
thither after it, upon the yellow sand. Homer, in one of his rare
exceptions, lingers a moment to tell us how Nausicaa looked on this
occasion. But, characteristically, he does this by imagery, and imagery
in motion.
_But when their hearts with food were comforted
Their kerchiefs they undid to play at ball;
And in the game white-armed Nausicaa led._
_Artemis the Arrow-showerer even so
Rejoices on the mountain side to go
All down the long slope of Taÿgetus
Or Erymanthus, while before her bow_
_Wild boar and fleet-foot deer flee fast away,
And round her move the wild-wood nymphs at play,
Daughters of Zeus the Lord of Thunder-clouds;
And Leto joys at heart; for fair are they,_
_Yet fairest of them all the child she bred;
And over all the rest her brows and head
Rise, easily known among them. Even so
Among her women shone the maid unwed._[12]
This is the moment for which Athena has been waiting, to bring help to
Odysseus.
_Thereat the princess to a handmaiden
Threw the ball wide, and missed her, and it fell_
_In a deep eddy. From them all outbroke
A long shrill cry: and bright Odysseus woke;
And sitting up he pondered inwardly:
“O me, what land is this of mortal folk?”_[12]
He is dazed by his long, long sleep. Where is he? What land is this?
Whose are those young figures that he can just see by peeping through
the leafy thicket in which he lies? Are they the nymphs of the river
along which he was drifted out of the sea? Or are they human maidens who
may be besought to help? He does not hesitate long. At all hazards he
must speak to them, for he is in desperate need. So, hastily breaking
off a leafy bough to hide his nakedness, he strode out of his lair. His
uncouth figure struck amazement and terror into the hearts of the girls.
_Dreadful to them the sea-stained man drew nigh:
And up and down they ran dispersedly
Along the jutting beaches; only then
The daughter of Alcinous did not fly:_
_Such courage put Athena in her breast:
Unfaltering she stood up and undistressed,
And faced him._[12]
For once Odysseus is at a loss. How shall he address her? He is almost
naked, haggard, and sea-worn, a terrible object to girlish eyes. Shall
he go up close, and in the attitude of the suppliant, clasp her knees?
Or will not his touch and his close approach startle and shock her? But
his wits are not long to seek. He decides that it will be better not to
come too near, but to address her gently, from a little distance. “I
kneel to you, Protectress. God are you, or mortal?” Thus he speaks
first, gracefully complimenting her beauty and courage.
“_If a god indeed you be
Of those who in wide heaven abide in bliss,
Unto none else than very Artemis,
Daughter of Zeus Most High, I liken one
So tall and fair and beautiful as this;_
“_But if a mortal, such as dwell on earth,
Thrice fortunate are they who gave you birth,
Father and mother, and thrice fortunate
Your brethren; surely evermore great mirth_
“_And joyance fills them, while with hearts elate
They see a thing so lovely delicate
Upon the dancing-floor. But far beyond
All others is that man most fortunate,_
“_Who loading you with many a precious thing
May woo you and to share his home may bring._“[12]
Cunning Odysseus’s words are winged with a deeper significance than he
knows, for all his subtlety and tact. Does Nausicaa recall her dream,
just at this point? We cannot tell. But when he goes on to relate at
length about the dreadful voyage on the raft through the vengeful storms
of Poseidon, she pities and longs to help him. She has gauged him
shrewdly, too. This eloquent stranger, with his air of frank deference,
is no rogue nor fool; but whoever and whatever he may be, he is a
suppliant whom it is the will of Zeus to succour. So she speaks cheerily
to him, to allay his anxiety, telling him that he is in the land of a
friendly people, whose king, Alcinous, is her father. She will herself
guide him to the palace and see that he is cared for. Then she turns to
reproach the silly fear of her maids:
“_Stand still, my women! Why so timorous
At a man’s face? You do not surely think
This man is here with ill intent to us?_
“_That living mortal is not, nor shall be,
Who to Phaeacia bearing enmity
May come: for very dear to heaven we are,
And dwell apart amid the surging sea._
“_... But to our abode
We must make welcome this poor wanderer.
Strangers and beggars all are dear to God._
“_... With this stranger be it so.
Give him to eat and drink, and make him bathe
In shelter, down the windswept bank below._“[12]
So Odysseus is bathed and clothed and fed; and Nausicaa, looking shyly
at him as he reappears, is astonished at the wonderful change that has
come over him. She speaks apart to the women, a little wistfully.
“_Listen, O white-armed girls, to what I say.
Not without warrant of the Gods’ array
Who hold Olympus, does this man arrive
In the divine Phaeacian land to-day._
[Illustration:
NAUSICAA & ODYSSEUS
_Batten Wilson_
]
“_Uncomely at the first he seemed to be
But now the Gods are not more fair than he,
Who hold wide heaven: I would that such an one
Dwelt here and bore a husband’s name to me._“[12]
A little timid hope is dawning in her heart. Is it possible that this
may be the lover of whom she dreamed? But she will not let him know her
thoughts; and as she offers to guide him to the city, she tells him with
modest dignity that he must not ride with her in the wagon. He must
follow behind with the maids; and when the city walls are in sight, and
they are near the houses of men, he must draw away from them and
continue his journey alone. She is not discourteous, she explains; but
it is not seemly for her to be seen by the people driving a strange man
into the city.
“_And taunting speech from them I fain would shun,
Hereafter flung at this that I have done.
Proud-hearted are our people; and of them
Meeting us, thus might say some baser one:_
“_’And who is this, the stranger tall and gay
That here beside Nausicaa takes his way?
And where may she have found him? Aye, no doubt
She brings a husband back with her to-day!...’_
“_So will they say; and to my shame would be
That word, as I myself would think it shame,_
“_If any other girl in suchlike way
While her own parents lived, should go astray
In a man’s company._“[12]
But she gives him minute directions, so that he may find her father’s
palace after she has left him. He will pass Athena’s grove, and the
well, and the king’s park, before he comes to the town and the gate of
the palace. He is to go right into the palace, and not to hesitate.
“_But when the forecourt and the palace-wall
Have hidden you, pass quickly up the hall
Straight to my mother. In the firelight she
Sits by the hearth, while off her distaff fall_
“_The threads of dim sea-purple, strand by strand,
Marvellous; and her maids behind her stand,
By the hall pillar, and my father’s chair
Next hers, where he, the wine-cup in his hand,_
“_Sits like a God. Yet pass him by, nor stay
Till round our mother’s knees your hands you lay.
For thus, although from very far you come,
Quickly shall dawn your glad returning day._”[12]
It all falls out as she has said. They start off as the sun is setting,
and Odysseus follows behind the mule-cart at a little distance until
they reach the sacred grove of poplars that Nausicaa has indicated.
There he waits behind for a space, while she drives on to the palace.
Her handsome young brothers come out to meet her, with hearty greetings
and questions as to how the day has fared. But she does not make much
response to them, leaving them to unharness the mules and carry out the
clothing while she slips away to her room and the society of her old
nurse.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Odysseus makes his way to the palace alone and is amazed at
its size and magnificence.
_The brazen walls
Athwart and endlong from the threshold went_
_Even to the inmost chamber up the hall;
And a great frieze of blue ran round the wall;
And golden doors the stately house within
Shut off, and silver doorway pillars tall_
_Out of the brazen threshold sprang to hold
The silver lintel; and the latch was gold;
And gold and silver hounds on either hand
Stood._[12]
To this gorgeous palace, Alcinous and Arete give Odysseus a royal
welcome. They are charmed with their guest: and when the queen,
recognizing her handiwork on the robe that he is wearing, elicits an
account of his meeting with Nausicaa, the king flames into anger.
_Answered and said Alcinous: “Sooth to tell,
Guest, in this thing my daughter did not well,
That hither with her maids she brought you not
Herself, since first before her feet you fell.”_
_And subtle-souled Odysseus answer made:
“Prince, on that faultless maiden be there laid
No blame herein: for with her hand-maidens
She bade me follow; but behind I stayed_
_“For fear of shame, lest haply should you see,
Your mind might deem some hateful thought of me.”_[12]
This is not exactly what had happened, as we know; but we do not love
Odysseus any the less for the chivalrous lie. The most loving father can
be unreasonable sometimes, and Alcinous would not have the sacred laws
of hospitality broken, even for the maidenly prudence of his own sweet
daughter. Impetuously he tries to make amends:
“_Nay, O guest,
Not so is framed my heart within my breast,
To be stirred up to anger without cause.
In all things to observe the law is best._
“_Fain were I—Zeus our Father hear me vow,
And thou, Athena, and Apollo, thou!—
Such as you are and minded as I am,
You took to wife my daughter even now,_
“_And were called son-in-law of me the king,
Abiding with us._“[12]
But Nausicaa’s dream was a lying vision; and the fine tact of Odysseus
is sorely put to it to find words for the inevitable refusal. He is
silent for a time; and then, beginning the recital of all his eventful
story, he gradually reveals to them who he is, and tells about his home
and the gentle wife to whom he is longing to return. To the king and
queen his answer causes little regret. It means that they may keep their
fair daughter a little longer; and are there not many Phaeacian princes
from whom they may choose a mate for her when she is ready? But
Nausicaa, to whom the nurse brings word of what is passing as she sits
in her beautiful chamber, hears the reply of Odysseus with a little pang
that she has never felt before. It does not linger very long, however,
and when the day comes for Odysseus’ departure, and the guests are
trooping into the hall for the last banquet in his honour, she steals
out among them to bid him farewell. It is the last time we see her.
_But by the doorway of the stately hall
In godlike beauty stood Nausicaa;
And eyed him marvelling, and bespake him so:
“Fare well, O guest, that when you homeward go,
Me too you may remember, and that first
To me the ransom of your life you owe.”_[12]
Odysseus’ reply is gallant; but it is not mere gallantry. He vows that
he will never forget her. Only let great Zeus and Hera bring him safely
home:
“_Then would I alway
To you, O maid, who rendered me my life,
As to a God, in that far country pray._”[12]
-----
Footnote 12:
From Professor J. W. Mackail’s translation of the _Odyssey_ (John
Murray).
_Æschylus: Clytemnestra_
We come now to the heroines of Attic Tragedy. The women of Homer, with
all their romantic beauty and charm, gleam on us from a far distance. A
new type of heroine has arisen, reborn out of the legends of the remote
past into a new age; and evoked by a poetic genius which is greatly
different from that of the Homeric epics.
In the interval which had elapsed since the epics were composed,
civilization had advanced, life had grown more complex, and women had
attained to a fuller and freer existence. It was the Great Age of
Greece; and as in our own Elizabethan Age, the poetic genius of the time
was impelled to find expression in dramatic form.
From all these causes, we shall find that the women of Attic Tragedy are
possessed of a stronger and more vivid personality than their Homeric
forerunners. They are resolute, purposeful, passionate—women of action
as well as of feeling. Physical beauty they do possess, as well as grace
and charm. Neither do they lack the gentler qualities which are usually
supposed to be peculiarly feminine. Indeed, we could probably find an
eminent example of every so-called feminine virtue if we went through
the range of the heroines. But the stress is not now laid merely on
beauty and the gentler graces. It is laid rather on a combination of
these qualities with strength of intellect and will, generous emotions,
and a soaring spirit.
Such a change would appear to be right and natural—in fact, almost
inevitable. We should expect that the passage of the centuries in an
advancing civilization would give the woman time and space ‘to bourgeon
out of all within her’; and that with a more harmonious development she
would definitely gain in mental height. We should expect, too, that the
dramatic genius would create a more clear-cut individuality than that
given by the epic poet in a long narrative chiefly concerned with the
doings of menfolk. So that we are not surprised to find the women of
tragedy possessed of great vitality, and occupying a very large share of
the dramatists’ attention. What does surprise us, however, is to
discover that many of these newer heroines are the very women whom we
have already met in the Homeric poems: that they have been taken
straight over from the heroic age, out of the ancient heroic themes, and
made to live over again, a new and vastly different life.
This brings us to a point which it is well to keep in mind. Sometimes
the heroines of Greek Tragedy do very terrible things and are placed in
situations of appalling horror. Those acts, and the circumstances out of
which they spring, not only repel us but seem to be at variance even
with the spirit of the poet himself. Sometimes the heroine is the victim
of tyrannic physical force, and frequently again there is the clash of
motive, for which death seems to be the only solution. Strange crimes,
unheard of and almost unthinkable, sometimes darken the atmosphere
around them. Age-old curses and hereditary feuds pursue them: the
terrible gift of beauty weighs them down; and over all broods fate, a
lurking, indefinable power against which, in the last resort, they are
powerless to stand.
There is then, sometimes in the heroines themselves and almost always in
their environment, an element of barbarism which troubles us. The touch
of savagery repels us all the more from its contrast with the exquisite
poetry in which it is enshrined, and the noble spirit of that poetry. We
wonder why the dramatist should have placed creatures so sensitive and
highly wrought in situations which are so crudely appalling; and the
incongruity is not shaken off until we remember the nature of the
material upon which the poet is constrained to work. For the Attic
dramatists went for the subjects of their poetry directly to stories out
of the primitive past—old legends which, though sometimes very
beautiful, nearly always contain elements of cruelty and horror. The
reason why they did this is interesting, and explains some curious
points about Greek Drama.
To us it seems strange that these poets, whose ideas were probably as
‘advanced’ to their contemporaries as our modern Drama is to us, did not
take their themes out of the vastly interesting and even momentous life
of their own day. Very occasionally they did this, as we know from the
drama of Æschylus called _The Persians_, which deals directly with that
tremendous event of Greek history the Persian Invasion. But almost
always, as we have said, they turned away from their own time, and
looked back upon the ancient past for the subject-matter of Drama. It is
probable that poetical motives influenced them to some extent—the same
that made Milton turn back to the Hebrew story of the creation, and
Tennyson occupy himself for nearly fifty years with the Arthurian
legend. But there was another, and more compelling reason; and it lay in
the religious character of the Attic theatre.
Greek Drama was a ritual, performed in honour of the gods. It had its
origin in the worship of the Thracian god Dionysus or in a still older
cult of ancestor-worship; and it had an established convention that its
themes should be taken from legendary heroic subjects. So that the poet,
however he might modify character, was bound by tradition to the main
outline of the early stories. As we shall see, he imbued those themes
and characters with new significance. Just as Milton puts the
Reformation spirit into the story of Adam and Eve, and Tennyson makes
the Arthur of Celtic legend into an ideal of modern gentlehood, Æschylus
and Sophocles and Euripides vitalize the old legendary forms with the
spirit of their own age. The spirit of that age was profoundly
interested in religion—perhaps because it was beginning to lose its
religion. It was passing out of unquestioning belief in the old Olympian
hierarchy; but it had not yet attained to a new belief with any
clearness. And an extremely interesting fact is that here in the drama,
in the very cradle of religion, the new thought begins to manifest
itself quite clearly, despite the trammels of convention. Each of the
three tragedians represents some phase of it; each shows, in greater or
less degree, evidence of the transition period in which old superstition
was being broken down; but each steadily maintained, through the crash
of falling faith, the sanctity of the moral law. It is this clear view,
this austere purpose and steady aim at the highest, which gives Attic
Tragedy its grandeur, and the women of Attic Tragedy their surpassing
interest.
* * * * *
What has been said above about the barbarity of the legends on which
Greek Drama is based, applies particularly to the story from which the
figure of Clytemnestra was taken. It was a history of wrongdoing, of
foul guilt going back for generations: or rather, the history of a sin
which, to use the words of the poet himself, begot more sin in each
succeeding generation. Æschylus wrote his greatest work around this
theme, a trilogy of three dramas called the _Agamemnon_, the
_Choephorœ_, and the _Eumenides_. The first two of these dramas furnish
the material for the story of Clytemnestra. The last deals with the
remorse of Orestes, her son, and the atonement by which the long record
of crime is finally closed and a new era of hope begins. Clytemnestra
is, as it were, the last sacrifice demanded by the Furies which had
pursued the house of Tantalus so long, and she represents in herself the
two forces by which that vengeance had always been effected—a wrong done
and a wrong suffered. For Æschylus makes us see that it is not only by
the first sin of Tantalus that all his descendants have been
relentlessly pursued; but that each in his turn has added something of
his own—some crime of passion or of pride—to bring the penalty on
himself.
It is from this standpoint that we must look at Clytemnestra and judge
of her action. She was the instrument of a power beyond herself, the
dread fate which had marked Agamemnon the king, her husband, as another
victim of the hereditary curse. But she was not merely an instrument.
She had fallen prey to her own unlawful passion, and when she struck the
blow which fate ordained, it was not impelled by the single motive of
revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, but a confusion of passionate
anger and conscious guilt.
The _Agamemnon_ opens with the joyful announcement of the fall of Troy.
The scene is laid in the wealthy city of Mycenæ, in the palace of
Agamemnon the king, where a watch had been kept for many months for the
return of the Greek fleet. Ten years before, when the fleet had sailed
for Troy to avenge the carrying-off of Helen, there had been left behind
in the royal home a mother stricken by an awful grief. For the King
Agamemnon, delayed at Aulis by adverse winds, and in brutal haste to be
gone, had offered up to the gods a human sacrifice—the sacrifice of his
own young daughter Iphigenia. The prayers of Clytemnestra the queen, and
the tears of the beautiful girl herself, could not prevail upon him.
Iphigenia’s life was forfeited to a hideous superstition, and the host
sailed away, leaving Clytemnestra overwhelmed with sorrow and wrath.
Here then are the two contributing elements to the tragedy—the wrong
done and the wrong suffered. Agamemnon, driven on by the curse which lay
over his house, blinded by his own pride and headstrong impatience to
the true nature of the crime that he was committing, was forging the
weapon of his own destruction. And here too we have the deed which
accounts for and explains Clytemnestra—making of her not the mere savage
murderess of tradition, without a touch of humanity, but an outraged
mother, the avenger of her child.