brutalities of war in the hour of Troy’s destruction. She was made
captive at her own altar; and was carried away by Agamemnon to be his
slave-wife and the rival of his queen. The mind revolts at the thought:
it is too awful to contemplate, and will not shape itself in cold
reflection. The poets seem to have felt this; and we find that Æschylus
and Euripides, who have both dwelt upon the story of Cassandra’s
downfall, rise to stormy heights of emotion when they tell about it.
Euripides has placed Cassandra in the group of royal women in his
_Troades_. The time of the drama is the morning which follows the
overthrow of Troy; and the action represents the carrying-off of the
princesses by their captors. It is, one would think, a time and a scene
quite unfitted for dramatic presentation. The immense excitement—of
victory on the one hand and defeat upon the other—has ebbed away; and
all that remains to the Trojan women is misery so profound and hopeless
as almost to be beyond the power of expression. The measure of their
pain seems to claim a reverent silence; and we feel that the _Troades_
does need the sanction of the ethical purpose which Professor Murray has
found in it. But once we realize the deep and humane thought behind it:
that the poet has chosen this part of the story expressly to reveal the
hideous suffering which war entails upon women, the tragedy is fraught
with significance.
The final act of Cassandra’s life is given by Æschylus in the
_Agamemnon_. He, no less than Euripides, feels the appalling tragedy of
her story; and both poets have put into her lips lyrics of wild and
haunting beauty. But Æschylus, by removing the action to Mycenæ and by
bringing Cassandra into conflict with Clytemnestra, has wrought a climax
of extraordinary power.
* * * * *
If there be any truth in the legend, it was Cassandra who first
recognized the shepherd Paris for the son of Priam. The stripling who
descended from the glens of Mt. Ida to compete in the games outside the
city was unknown and unloved by the Trojans whom he defeated. They were
jealous of the handsome stranger who carried off the prizes from them;
and he soon found himself embroiled with Priam’s athletic sons. He was
hard beset. The odds were heavy against him; and like a hunted animal he
flung himself before the altar of Apollo for protection.
_And lo! Apollo’s priestess with a train
Of holy maidens came into that place,
And jar did she outshine the rest in grace,
But in her eyes such dread was frozen then
As glares eternal from the gorgon’s face
Wherewith Athene quells the ranks of men._[17]
It was of course Cassandra. She had never before seen this young
suppliant who was clinging to the altar; but as she looked on him now
there came upon her a revelation of his identity. She knew of the old
ring which had been placed about her baby brother’s neck when he was
exposed to death upon the mountain; and taking Paris by the hand, she
touched the chain he wore and slowly drew to light the talisman.
_This sign Cassandra showed to Priam straight.
The king waxed pale and asked what this might be?
And she made answer, “Sir, and King, thy fate
That comes on all men horn hath come on thee;
This shepherd is thine own child verily.”_[17]
Here, then, is the real beginning of the story of Cassandra. For the old
king would not be warned against his fate. He welcomed his boy as one
returned from death. A great festival was made in his honour; and of all
the many sons of Priam there was not one so dearly loved. Joy and
merriment filled the city. All the warning oracles which had spoken at
the birth of Paris were forgotten. Nothing but thanksgiving was heard
for the restoration of the fair young prince; and amid it all, Cassandra
knew that when she placed his hand in the hand of Priam, Destiny had
wrought for the fall of Troy.
The years passed speedily at first, untouched by care; and then more
slowly, big with events. First the sailing of Paris. Then, after Helen
came back with him to Troy, an interval when the Trojans waited,
wondering how the Greeks would repay the insult. Finally, the arrival of
the Greek fleet and the beginning of the Siege.
Priam was not unsupported in his long ordeal. Neighbouring princes
joined him against the hostile Greeks, some in the hope of reward and
some for the sake of friendship. There was one warrior, Othryoneus, who
came because he loved Cassandra. He brought no ‘gifts of wooing,’ but
made a promise to the king “of a mighty deed, namely, that he would
drive perforce out of Troy-land the sons of the Achaians.” Priam
consented to his suit; but we are not told what Cassandra thought of it.
Probably she was not consulted. It is conceivable, so tender was her
love of home and country, that to reward the hero who would save them,
she would even consent to lay aside her holy office; to recall her
soaring spirit to dwell beside the hearth. But the eye which saw so far
knew that it need not consider the present problem. Before the end,
Cassandra saw the valiant man who loved her lying pierced by the spear
of Idomeneus.
That was toward the end of the war; and in the penultimate scene of it,
the bringing-in of Hector’s body, Cassandra appears again. She had
watched all that fearful night, when the old king went out to the Greek
camp to beg of Achilles for the body of his great son. And in the cold
light of dawn, straining her eyes from Pergamos and weary with her
vigil, she was the first to see the mournful procession. “Then beheld
she him that lay upon the bier behind the mules, and thereat she wailed
and cried aloud throughout all the town.” The people wakened at her
terrible cry, and coming out of their houses, they followed her down to
the gate to meet the unhappy king.
Hector’s death was the beginning of the end. Troy fell. Its brave men
were slaughtered, its palaces burnt, its altars dishonoured; and worst
of all, its women and children were carried off as slaves. Of this the
_Iliad_ does not speak; but it was an event which seized and held fast
the imagination of the Attic dramatists. The glory of war, which throws
a glamour over the fighting in the epic, gives place in the later poets
to the pain and horror of it. Not because they were less brave: Æschylus
fought at the great Greek victory of Marathon; but because an advancing
civilization had brought a more reflective mind, a more humane temper,
and the birth of sacred pity.
The _Troades_, to which we come next for the story of Cassandra,
breathes throughout the pitiful spirit of the poet Euripides. It relates
what befell the women of the royal household after the sack of the city.
As grey daylight comes we see the figure of the aged queen, prostrate
before the charred walls of the town. She rises feebly, moaning in a
bewilderment of grief and physical weakness. To her approach, one after
another, furtively, the frightened Trojan women who form the Chorus of
the play. Her crying has wakened them, and they steal out to try to
discover what fate is in store for them. Even while they ask, a
messenger Talthybius, arrives from the Greek ships. In curt phrases he
replies to the queen’s anguished inquiries about her daughters. They
have been assigned to certain of the Greek chiefs, he says: Andromache
to Neoptolemus, she herself to Odysseus, and Polyxena (he speaks
ambiguously, to hide a grimmer fact) to serve at the tomb of Achilles.
The stricken queen asks about each in turn.
HECUBA. _Say how Cassandra’s portion lies._
TALTHYBIUS. _Chosen from all for Agamemnon’s prize!_
HECUBA. _How, ...
The sainted of Apollo? And her own
Prize that God promisèd,
Out of the golden clouds, her virgin crown?_
TALTHYBIUS. _He loved her for that same strange holiness._[18]
[Illustration:
CASSANDRA
_Solomon J. Solomon R.A._
_By permission of the Artist_
]
Hecuba is appalled at this fate that is decreed for her child. She whose
pure spirit had always ranged beyond the things of time and sense, who
was the consecrated priestess of Apollo and set apart for holy service,
is condemned to be the slave-wife of the man who has destroyed their
city. The poor mother wails in horror at the thought: it is too awful,
too sacrilegious a deed even for these proud Greeks, and she cries out
in protest. The herald silences her with a brutal comment on the good
fortune which makes her daughter the bride of a king; and then orders an
attendant to fetch Cassandra from the tents. But there is no need for
the man to go. Even while they are speaking there comes a sudden flash
of strange fire, and the wild figure of Cassandra appears, robed in
white, garlanded with flowers and carrying a blazing torch. The fearful
events of the past night have driven her to a frenzy. Arrayed as for a
happy bridal, she comes singing a hymn to Hymen; but the terror in her
eyes, and the poignancy of the words she utters hold her hearers dumb:
“_Hail, O Hymen red,
O Torch that makest one!
Weepest thou, Mother mine own?
Surely thy cheek is pale
With tears, tears that wail
For a land and a father dead.
But I go garlanded:
I am the bride of Desire...._
“_O mother, fill mine hair with happy flowers,
And speed me forth.... So liveth Loxias,
A bloodier bride than ever Helen was
Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high
Of Hellas!... I shall kill him, mother! I
Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire
As he laid ours. My brothers and my sire
Shall win again!..._“[18]
Her frenzy gives place now to a more meditative strain. It is as though
the fiery cloud that hung about her brain was pierced for an instant by
the sight of her grieving mother. She tries to find words to comfort
Hecuba; and as the calmer mood deepens she rises to a perception of the
dignity of high failure contrasted with low success. The Trojans dying
for their homes she sees as a nobler thing than the triumph of the
Greeks.
“_Would, ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war!
Yet if war come, there is a crown in death
For her that striveth well and perisheth
Unstained: to die in evil were the stain!
Therefore, O Mother, pity not thy slain,
Nor Troy, nor me, the bride. Thy direst foe
And mine by this my wooing is brought low._”[18]
At this point the herald is suddenly roused to reply. He turns upon her
furiously for her ominous forebodings and bids her be silent. If he did
not know her for a mad woman, he says, she should suffer for boding thus
evil to the Greeks. He orders her roughly to follow him; but at his
speech the frenzy rushes over Cassandra again. She turns upon Talthybius
in magnificent anger and scorn. “How fierce a slave,” she cries; and
then the prophetic gift burns in her as she foretells in language of
awful beauty her own doom and that of Agamemnon.
“_Thou Greek King,
Who deem’st thy fortune now so high a thing,
Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see,
In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee;
And with thee, with thee ... there, where yawneth plain
A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain,
Dead ... and outcast ... and naked.... It is I
Beside my bridegroom; and the wild beasts cry,
And ravin on God’s chosen!..._
“_Mother, farewell, and weep not! O my sweet
City, my earth-clad brethren, and thou great
Sire that begat us; but a space, ye Dead,
And I am with you; yea, with crownèd head
I come, and shining from the fires that feed
On these that slay us now, and all their seed._“[18]
Cassandra is led away to the Greek ships, no blessing to the toiling
mariners. For even their own gods are wrath at the crime against her;
and many a heart-breaking struggle is in store for them: many a noble
ship will be lost, and many a hero’s life will pay the penalty, before
their homes are reached. Perhaps to Agamemnon more than most, the
Deities of the Elements were kind. But then they knew the fate awaiting
him, and in ironic pleasure sped him to it. There is no need to recall
the details of his arrival at Mycenæ, or of his welcome by Clytemnestra,
almost distraught by conflicting hope and fear. Agamemnon was weary of
his voyage; weary, too, of the long steep chariot-drive up from the sea.
Yielding to his wife’s entreaty to walk on costly crimson to the palace,
he turns for an instant to Cassandra’s chariot.
“_Receive, I pray thee
This stranger-woman kindly. Heaven still smiles,
When power is used with gentleness. No mortal
Is willingly a captive, but this maid,
Of countless spoils the flower and crown, was given
To me by the army, and attends me home._”[19]
The moment is crowded with emotion. For the briefest space—merely long
enough, in fact, to make the Trojan woman formally known to
Clytemnestra—these three strong spirits face each other. Cassandra,
wide-eyed and rigid, looks beyond the king and queen, beyond the
crowding people, at _something_ that her vision warns her is beyond the
palace doors. To Clytemnestra, her presence is an insult, and her purity
an intolerable reproach. There is one glance of bitterness and hatred
from the queen which Cassandra does not see; and then the insolent king
enters the palace, Clytemnestra following him. She returns immediately,
however, lashed to a fury in which her dignity goes to shreds.
CLY. _In with thee too, Cassandra! Get thee in!
Since Heaven in mercy hath consigned thee here
To share our household lustral waters, one
Of many slaves that stand around our hearth.
Come from that carriage. Be not proud. Descend!_
The speech is cruel; and it has, moreover, an inner meaning which the
poor captive perceives only too well. She does not answer. She listens
in silence, too, when the Chorus address her; and when Clytemnestra,
with that crucial moment imminent, grows wild with impatience. “Sure she
is mad,” ejaculates the angry queen; “I’ll not demean myself by throwing
more words away.” Only when she has gone does Cassandra break silence;
and then by a wail which the sympathetic Elders cannot understand.
“_Ai, Ai! O Apollo! Apollo!...
Builder! Destroyer!
Builder of Troy! Destroyer of me!_“[19]
The old men pity her, and try to calm her frenzy. She looks round on
them, as if awakening from a dream, and asks what house is this. They
reply that it is the Atridæ’s palace, and the word calls up to Cassandra
the long black record of the house of Atreus.
CASS. _Ah! a hideous den, abhorred of Heaven,
Guilt-stained with strangled lives.... Ah! faugh!_
CHO. _Her scent is keen, this stranger’s! Like a hound
She snuffs for blood. And she will find, I doubt me._[19]
In a long recital, Cassandra recounts the ancient crimes of the Atridæ;
and in dark oracular language moans that there is worse behind. The old
men are perplexed. They cannot follow her meaning, though over and over
again she struggles to make clear the doom that is even now about to
fall.
CASS. _Ah! what is this? Oh me!
What strange new grief is risen?
A deed of might ..._
_An act
Of hate for love; and succour bides aloof,
Far, far away._
CHO. _This prophecy is dark to me...._
CASS. ... _’Twill come,
‘Tis here! She lifts her hand; she launches at him
Blow following blow!_
CHO. _Thy speech appals me._
CASS. _Woe! For my hapless doom!
To fill the cup, I tell my own sad tale!
Why hast thou brought me to this place? Oh misery!
To die with thee? What else? To die!... To die!...
Paris, thy wedding hath destroyed thy house,
Yea, and thy sister!—O Scamander stream!
Our fathers drank of thee and by thy shore
I grew, I flourished. Oh unhappy I!
But now by dark Cocytus and the banks
Of Acheron, my prophecies shall sound._[19]
The Elders begin to understand; but still the drift of her message is
only partly clear to them. They realize that she is distraught, fearing
some dreadful fate for herself; they have, too, a glimmering fear of
danger to the king. But they cannot comprehend what it may be; and the
thought of succour never dawns upon their dull old wits. They speak
gently to Cassandra; but again her message seems to tear her with its
force and urgency.
“_No longer, like a newly married girl,
My word shall peep behind a veil, but, flashing
With panted vehemence to meet the day,
‘Twill dash, against the shores of Light, a sorrow
Of mightier volume._“[19]
Then, point by point, she goes with studied clarity over all the “trail
of long-past crime.” So long as this is her theme, the Elders understand
and confirm her words. But when, rising again on the wings of prophecy
and therefore to a rapt and obscure utterance, she foretells the fall of
Agamemnon and her own death, they are again at sea. She pauses for an
instant, baffled; she knows that her end is imminent, and in her despair
she casts stinging words at them for their stupidity and inaction. Never
has Apollo’s ban wrought so bitterly; and in the extremity of her
anguish she declares that she will call upon the god no longer. She
strips herself of the sacred emblems and flings them from her.
“_Why wear I still these mockeries of my soul,
This wand, these fillets round my neck? I tear ye
Thus! Go to your destruction ere I die!
To pieces with you! Lead the way! I follow!
Enrich some other life with misery....
I will go forward! I will dare to die!
Hail, then, thou gate of Hell!_“[19]
She takes a few steps toward the palace; but her courage fails for a
moment. The reek of blood in her nostrils stifles her, and she recoils.
In her last words passion and strength alike fade out, giving place to a
pathetic human appeal:
“_O strangers! friends!
I shrink not idly, like some timorous bird
Before a bush! Bear record in that day
When I am dead...._“[19]
And the old men, as she passes slowly out of sight, wail over her what
is perhaps her most fitting epitaph:
_Ah! what is mortal life? When prosperous,
A shadow can o’erturn it; and, when fallen,
A throw o’ the wet sponge blurs the picture out._
THIS IS MORE PITEOUS THAN THE RUIN OF PRIDE.[19]
-----
Footnote 17:
From Mr Andrew Lang’s _Helen of Troy_ (G. Bell & Sons).
Footnote 18:
From Professor G. Murray’s translation of the _Troades_ (George Allen
& Co. Ltd.).
Footnote 19:
From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Agamemnon_
(Clarendon Press).
_Æschylus: Io_
We turn now from the Trojan legend to that of Thebes. We are still in
the realm of Tragedy; and in some respects the Theban story is more
barbarous than that of Troy. But by some means the tension is slightly
relieved, and the atmosphere is lightened by one degree. Perhaps that is
because, in the dramas which treat of this subject, the poets seem to
have gone back further into the remote past and to have steeped
themselves in the spirit of those early times. Perhaps, too, it is on
account of something wilder and more primitive inherent in the Theban
story itself. Such elements, and such a treatment by the poets, would
tend to remove the persons of the drama a step further from probability,
and would make them to that extent greater or less than human. Thus
their appeal to the emotions would not be so direct, nor so intimate. On
the other hand, the figures so presented gain in sublimity. Their
mythical origin surrounds them with a halo, through which they loom
vast, mysterious, and inaccessible.
Such a being is Io. In the _Prometheus Bound_, the drama in which her
story is given, Æschylus has gone back for his subject literally to the
beginning of things; to the time when Zeus was young and the reign of
Chaos was not long overpast. We must be prepared then for a tale which
in its details is marvellous and incredible: for a naïve account of the
love of the supreme god for a mortal woman: of the anger of Hera, his
jealous queen: of the metamorphosis and long wanderings of the innocent
maid: and of her reward at last, when she becomes the ancestress of the
founder of Thebes, and ancestress too, in a remote generation, of
Heracles, the deliverer of Prometheus.
It is here that we touch Io’s connexion with the Theban legend, into
which as a fact she does not otherwise enter. For her son Epaphus,
wondrously born at the touch of the finger of Zeus, had two grandsons,
Cadmus and Cilix; and a granddaughter, Europa. The well-known legend
tells how Zeus, in the shape of a bull, carried off Europa. Whereupon
her two brothers went in search of their sister and wandered many a long
day. They did not recover her, however, and at length gave up the
search. Cilix settled down in a country which was called Cilicia after
him; and Cadmus, instructed by the oracle at Delphi, followed a straying
cow into Bœotia. On the spot where the animal should happen to lie down
he was commanded to found his city. But his task proved to be no light
one. For there was a dragon to be overcome; and a weird army, sprung
from the earth where the dragon’s teeth were sown, had to be vanquished
in battle before Cadmus could begin his work of founding the city of
Thebes.
This event, as we see, is only remotely connected with Io, although the
connexion is precise and clear. In point of time, if chronology is the
least use in such a case, it is several generations nearer to us than
she is. Yet we have only to cast one glance at the story of Cadmus to
see at once its youthful element of marvel. Its wonders are so crude as
almost to raise a smile—the half amused, half tender smile with which we
turn over in our hand some grotesque plaything of our childhood. It is
indeed only the humorous aspect of these old stories which seizes us
when we look back at them from a detached standpoint, and with minds
bent to the critical attitude. But that was not the poet’s attitude;
not, at least, when he was making poetry. Doubtless there must have been
moments when the Comic Spirit rebelled, since even poets do not live
alone by the emotions. But when tragedy first entered life’s deep waters
its captains bound the mischievous laughing spirit securely under
hatches. It could be of no service in such a stern battle with the
elements.
So we find that the tragic poets (except perhaps Euripides occasionally)
treat these strange old stories in what is called ‘the grand manner.’ Do
not be disturbed by something stiff and formal in the expression. Like
all definitions, it is smaller and harder than the thing it tries to
define. For the poet has not the least intention of being ‘grand,’ and
is as far as possible removed from any conscious ‘manner.’ On the
contrary, it is true as a rule that the greater he is, the simpler his
thought and expression are. He comes to these old themes with the eye
and the heart of a child as well as the brain of a great genius; and the
spirit of poetry, with all the knowledge of all the ages, utters its
message through his lips in limpid song. Matters of probability and
questions of logic, which seem so important to the mere intellect, bow
their chastened heads before him. The whole scheme of values is changed,
and that which appeared to the arrogant intellect as wild and ludicrous
is perceived by the poet full of strange beauty and significance.
In this way Sophocles approached the Theban legend, as we shall see when
we come to Jocasta and Antigone, presently. In this way, too, Æschylus
gave us the story of Io in his _Prometheus Bound_. Just when Io is
supposed to have lived we do not know. She is said to have been the
daughter of Inachus; and she was a priestess of Hera in Argos. But
Æchylus has made her coeval with the Titans. In this poem, therefore,
she is a denizen of that early world which saw the overthrow of Cronos
from the throne of heaven, and the rise of his son Zeus. All the Titans
save one had opposed the new god when he rose in rebellion against the
primeval powers. But Prometheus, far-seeing from the first, and knowing
that Zeus must conquer, lent him aid. It was a long and bitter struggle
in the youth of the world. But at last Cronos and the Titans who had
opposed him were hurled by Zeus into Tartarus—“under the misty
darkness ... in a dank place, at the verge of the earth.” Typhon was
buried under Etna; and Atlas, far in the West, was bowed beneath the
pillar of the heavens, “where night and day meet and greet one another,
as they pass the great threshold of bronze.”