impresses it upon the reader merely by showing the bewitching effect of
her presence upon others. Even these sage old men fall under the spell
of her divine beauty, and, when they see her coming upon the towers,
softly speak winged words, one to the other:
"Small blame is it that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans should for such
a woman long time suffer hardships; marvellously like is she to the
immortal goddesses to look upon. Yet even so, though she be so goodly,
let her go upon their ships and not stay to vex us and our children
after us."
Priam, however, addresses his beautiful daughter-in-law with gentle
words, laying the blame, not on her, but on the gods, for the dolorous
war of the Achaeans. Helen utters expressions of self-reproach, and then,
at Priam's request, points out the famous warriors of the invading host.
Paris is vanquished in the single combat, and Menelaus would have slain
his foe, and in that moment have regained Helen, had not the goddess
Aphrodite snatched up Paris in a cloud and transported him to his
chamber. Aphrodite then appears to Helen, in the form of an aged dame,
and bids her return to her lord. Helen recognizes the goddess, and her
scornful, bitter reply shows how the high-spirited lady rebelled at the
chains with which Aphrodite bound her. The wrath and menace of
Aphrodite, however, overcome her noble resolution, and she reluctantly
returns. When she sees her husband, she chides him scornfully for his
cowardice, and regrets that he had not perished at the hands of
Menelaus. But Paris is unaffected by her reproaches. His thoughts, as
ever, are not of war, but of love, and Helen, owing to the subtle power
of Aphrodite, cannot long resist his caresses. Meanwhile, the injured
husband rages through the host like a wild beast, if anywhere he might
set his eyes on and slay the wanton Paris.
We are now approaching a series of domestic scenes, in which figure the
three principal female characters of the Iliad. Owing to the abortive
issue of the single combat, the truce between Greeks and Trojans is
declared at an end, and the forces once more array themselves in
conflict. The Trojans are being hard pressed. Hector returns to the city
to command Hecuba, his mother, to assemble the aged dames of Troy, who
should go to Athena's temple and supplicate the goddess to have
compassion on them. At the gates the Trojans' wives and daughters gather
about him, inquiring of their loved ones. As he enters the royal palace,
his beautiful mother meets him and clasps him by the hand, and bids him,
weary of battle, pause to take refreshments. But Hector resists her
solicitous entreaties, urges her to gather the aged wives together, and,
with the most beautiful robe in the palace as an offering, to go to the
temple and supplicate Athena to have mercy. Hecuba does as he commands,
and the solemn procession mounts the citadel and implores the goddess to
have mercy on them and turn the tide of combat. The goddess, however, is
inflexible: she denies their prayer.
Hector, meanwhile, stops at the palace of Paris. He finds Helen seated
among her handmaidens, distributing to them their tasks, and Paris
polishing his beautiful armor. Hector severely rebukes his brother; but
words of scorn make but little impression on the smooth and courteous
Paris. Helen now addresses Hector, for whom she has a sisterly love and
admiration that contrasts painfully with her contempt for her cowardly
lord; and her words reveal the bitterness of her heart, because of her
evil destiny and because "even in days to come we may be a song in the
ears of men that shall be hereafter." Hector responds with sympathetic
regard to the sisterly confidence of Helen, and bids her rouse her
husband once more to enter the combat, while in the meantime he will go
to his own house to behold his dear wife and infant boy; for he knows
not if he shall return home to them again, or if the gods will now
overthrow him at the hands of the Achaeans.
When Hector comes to his palace, he finds not his beautiful wife,
white-armed Andromache, within; upon inquiry he learns that, through
anxiety because of the battle, like one frenzied, she had gone in haste
to the wall, and the nurse bearing the child was with her. Hector
hastens to the Scaean gates, and as he approaches them there came his
dear-won wife, running to meet him, and with her the handmaid bearing in
her bosom the tender boy, Hector's loved son Astyanax. Hector smiles and
gazes at the boy; while Andromache stands by his side weeping and clasps
his hand in hers, and urges him to take thought for himself and to have
pity on her, forlorn, and on their infant boy. Hector tells her that he
takes thought of all this, that his greatest grief is the thought of her
anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaean shall lead her away and
rob her of the light of freedom, but it is his part to fight in the
forefront of the Trojans. He lays his son in his dear wife's bosom, and,
as she smiles tearfully upon the lad, her husband has pity to see her,
and gently caresses her with his hand and seeks to console her. He bids
her return to her own tasks, the loom and distaff, while he provides for
war. So part these heroic souls. Hector sets out for the battlefield;
and his dear wife departs to her home, oft looking back and letting fall
big tears. When she reaches her house, she gathers her handmaidens about
her, and stirs lamentations in them all. "So bewailed they Hector, while
yet he lived, within his house; for they deemed that he would no more
come home to them from battle nor escape the fury of the hands of the
Achaeans."
The closing scenes of the dramatic recital time and again present these
three women--Hecuba, Helen, and Andromache. Achilles continues to sulk
away from battle, in spite of Agamemnon's attempt at reconciliation. The
Trojans are winning victory after victory. Achilles's comrade Patroclus
finally gets permission to don the great warrior's armor, and he enters
the conflict. Hector, supposing him to be Achilles, engages with him in
combat and finally slays him. Achilles is overwhelmed with grief at the
death of Patroclus. His lady mother, Thetis, rises from the depths of
the sea to console him, and provides him a suit of armor fashioned by
Hephaestus. Agamemnon and Achilles are reconciled before the assembly of
the Achaeans, and fair-faced Briseis is restored to her lover. She utters
shrill laments over the body of Patroclus, who had been ever kind to
her. Achilles enters the combat, clad in the armor of Hephaestus. Hector
alone dares to face him, and he is slain, and his lifeless body is
dragged behind Achilles's chariot as he drives exultantly toward the
ships. Piteous wailings are heard from the walls, wailings of the aged
Priam, and of the sorrowful Hecuba, whose cry is the full bitterness of
maternal grief.
Within the city, in the inner chamber of her palace, a young wife is
engaged in weaving a double purple web and directing the work of her
handmaidens. Her thoughts are all of her warrior husband, and she has
had a servant set a great tripod upon the fire that Hector might have
warm washing when he comes home out of the battle--fond heart all
unaware how, far from all washings, bright-eyed Athena has slain him by
the hand of Achilles! But suddenly she hears shrieks and groans from the
battlements, and her limbs tremble and the shuttle falls from her hands
to earth. She dreads terribly lest Hector has met his fate at the hand
of Achilles. Accompanied by her handmaidens, she rushes to the
battlements, and beholds his lifeless body dragged by swift horses
toward the hollow ships. Then dark night comes on her eyes and shrouds
her, and she falls backward and gasps forth her spirit; and when at last
her soul returns into her breast, she bewails her own sad lot and that
of her child, deprived of such a husband and father.
The succeeding days are spent in gloom and sorrow, each side bewailing
the loss of a favorite warrior. King Priam finally recovers the body of
Hector from Achilles, and brings it back to Hector's palace, where the
women gather about the corpse--and among them white-armed Andromache
leads the lamentation, while in her hands she holds the head of Hector,
slayer of men. Hecuba, too, grieves for Hector, of all her children the
dearest to her heart; and, lastly, Helen joins in the sore lament,
sorrowing for the loss of the dearest of her brethren in Troy, who had
never spoken despiteful word to her, but had always been kind and
considerate. Here the long story reaches its natural conclusion. The
Iliad opens with a scene of wrath occasioned by man's passion for woman,
and closes with a scene of mourning--women grieving for the loss of a
slain husband and son and friend--knightly Hector.
Before we bid farewell to the martial tableaux presented to us in the
Iliad, and direct our attention to the domestic scenes of the Odyssey,
let us take a final glance at the heroines who have appeared in the
first Homeric epos.
Worthy of note is the atmosphere of beauty and delicacy and charm with
which the poet has enveloped Helen of Troy. She has committed a grievous
fault, but there is in the recital nothing which offends the moral
sense. This is because the poet has portrayed her with none of the
seductions of vice, but with all the allurements of penitence. She has
sinned, but it has been because of the mysterious and irresistible bond
which united her to the goddess of love; her moral nature has not been
perverted, and she is filled with shame and remorse because of the
reproach that has been cast upon her name. By a long and bitter
expiation, she has atoned for her fault; and memories of the days long
past abide with her in all their sweetness and purity. One can but
contrast the difference of attitude with which she addresses Priam and
Hector on the one hand, and Aphrodite and Paris on the other. For the
former she has the utmost consideration and respect, and in their
presence she feels most keenly how compromised is her position; for the
latter, the causes of her fall, she has nothing but the scorn and
contempt of a cultivated and high-spirited queen. In portraying the
regret of Helen for her first husband, and her contempt toward her
second; in representing Menelaus and the Greeks as fighting to avenge
"the longings and the groans of Helen"; and in subtly suggesting how
inevitable are the chains with which Aphrodite has bound her, the poet
wins for her our sympathy and admiration. Homer nowhere tells us of the
reconciliation of Menelaus and Helen, after the fall of Troy; but in the
Odyssey he presents a beautiful picture of Helen in Sparta, a queen once
more, beloved of husband and attendants, and presiding over her palace
with courtly grace and dignity; and in the prophecy of Proteus, the Old
Man of the Sea, the destiny of the fair queen is suggested in that of
her faithful spouse: "But thou, Menelaus, son of Zeus, art not ordained
to die and meet thy fate in Argos, the pasture land of horses; for the
deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plains and to the world's
end, where is Rhadamanthus of the fair hair, where life is easiest for
men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain, but always
ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill blast to blow cool on men;
yea, for thou hast Helen to wife, and thereby they deem thee son to
Zeus."
Thus, because wedded to Zeus-begotten Helen, Menelaus himself is
deathless and immortal, and Homer meant, no doubt, to picture the royal
couple passing together in the Isles of the Blest the aeons of eternity.
Homer provided the literary types for all succeeding Greek poets, and it
is but natural that so bewitching a conception as Helen should be
frequently portrayed and adopted. But with the change in form of
government from monarchy to oligarchy, and from oligarchy to democracy,
the old epic conception of heroes and heroines frequently suffers
disparagement. In later periods, men began to meditate on moral
questions, and poets who sought to weigh the problems of human life and
destiny saw in Helen's career the old, old story of sin and sufering,
and they could not with Homeric chivalry gloze over that fatal step
which caused the wreck of empires and brought infinite woes to men.
Stesichorus was the first poet to charge Helen with all the guilt and
suffering of Hellas and of Troy; but for this offence against the
daughter of Zeus, says tradition, he was smitten with blindness, and did
not recover his sight until he had written the recantation beginning:
"Not true is that tale; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, nor
come to town of Troy,"--in which he adopted the theory that the real
Helen remained in Egypt, while a phantom accompanied Paris to Troy.
AEschylus searches into the dire consequences of Helen's sin, and on her
shoulders lays all the sufferings of Agamemnon and his descendants.
"Rightly is she called Helen," says he; "a hell of ships, hell of men,
hell of cities." He regards her as the very incarnation of evil, the
curse of two great nations. Yet even stern AEschylus yields due reverence
to her all-conquering beauty:
"Ah! silent, see she stands;
Each glowing tint, each radiant grace,
That charm th' enraptur'd eye, we trace;
And still the blooming form commands,
Still honor'd, still ador'd,
Though careless of her former loves,
Far o'er the rolling sea the wanton roves."
He also represents her forsaken husband ever dreaming of her, enraptured
of her beauty:
"Oft as short slumbers close his eyes,
His sad soul sooth'd to rest,
The dream-created visions rise
With all her charms imprest:
But vain th' ideal scene that smiles
With rapt'rous love and warm delight;
Vain his fond hopes; his eager arms
The fleeting form beguiles,
On sleep's quick pinions passing light."
AEschylus is not the only one of the early dramatists to whom Helen
furnished a worthy theme; the titles of four lost plays show that
Sophocles wrote of the Argive queen. There is no means of knowing,
however, how this master dealt with the romance. Judging from his
treatment of the Antigone legend, it is probable that Sophocles treated
Helen as a woman of rare beauty and power, more sinned against than
sinning, and subjected her character to the most profound analysis.
While AEschylus deprived Helen of something of the delicacy and charm
with which Homer had invested her, Euripides, in a number of his plays,
goes even further, and brings her down to the level of common life. Upon
her beautiful head were heaped the reproaches of the unfortunate maidens
and matrons of Greece and Troy for the woes they had to suffer, and we
must not always take the sentiments of a Hecuba or a Clytemnestra as
expressing the poet's own convictions. In the _Daughters of Troy_, he
represents her in violent debate with her mother-in-law, Hecuba, before
Menelaus, leaving with the reader the impression that she is a guilty,
wilful woman of ignoble traits, and in other plays he lays on her the
load of guilt for all the dire consequences of her act; yet in his
treatment of Helen there is always an ethereal element, hard to define,
but recognizable. She causes ruin and destruction, she is roundly abused
and reproached, yet she herself does not deal in invective and is proof
against all physical ill, being finally deified as the daughter of Zeus,
while suffering is invariably the fate of those who abuse and censure
her. And, like Stesichorus, Euripides in his old age makes a
recantation. In the _Helen_, he follows the Stesichorean version, and
dramatizes the legend that, after she was promised to Paris by
Aphrodite, Hera in revenge fashioned like to Queen Helen a breathing
phantom out of cloud land wrought for Priam's princely son; while Hermes
caught her away and transferred her to the halls of Proteus, King of
Egypt, to keep her pure for Menelaus. Thus it was for a phantom Helen
that Greek and Trojan fought at Troy; while the real Helen passed her
days amid the palm gardens of Egypt, eagerly awaiting the return of
Menelaus, and bewailing her ill name, though she was clean of sin. After
the war, she is happily reunited with her lord.
It is hard, however, to besmirch a conception of ideal beauty, and later
writers, casting aside the imputations of the dramatists, returned to
the Homeric type. The Greek rhetoricians found in Helen a fruitful
subject for panegyric, and made her synonymous with the Greek ideal of
beauty and feminine perfection. Isocrates praises her as the incarnation
of ideal loveliness and grace; beauty is all powerful, he says, and the
Helen legend shows how beauty is the most desirable of all human gifts.
Theocritus, in his exquisite _Epithalamium_, pays an unalloyed tribute
to her beauty and goodness. She is "peerless among all Achaean women that
walk the earth;--rose-red Helen, the glory of Lacedaemon;--no one is so
gifted as she in goodly handiwork;--yea, and of a truth, none other
smites the lyre, hymning Artemis and broad-breasted Athena, with such
skill as Helen, within whose eyes dwell all the Loves."
Quintus Smyrnaeus, of the fourth century of our era, who wrote a
_Post-Homerica_, emphasizes the demonic influence that controlled the
fate of Helen, and lays her frailty to the charge of Aphrodite. He gives
a beautiful picture of the queen as she is being led to the ships of the
Achaeans: "Now, Helen lamented not, but shame dwelt in her dark eyes and
reddened her lovely cheeks ... while round her the people marvelled as
they beheld the flawless grace and winsome beauty of the woman, and none
dared upbraid her with secret taunt or open rebuke. Nay, as she had been
a goddess, they beheld her gladly, for dear and desired was she in their
sight."
Thus the Helen legend became the allegory of Greek beauty, and so
exquisite an ideal, uplifting the spirit and satisfying one's longing
for higher things, strikes a responsive chord in the hearts of lovers of
beauty in every clime. The romance of Helen, after lying dormant for
centuries, came to life again in the legend of Faust. Marlowe treated
merely the external phases of the Faust legend; Goethe allegorized the
whole, and in the loves of Faust and Helen symbolized the passion of the
Renaissance for the Greek ideal of beauty; the fruit of the union of the
two is Euphorion, the genius of romantic art. Nor has Helen exerted less
influence on modern English poets. Landor, in numerous poems, portrays
the sweetness of her character and the omnipotence of her beauty and
charm; Swinburne dwells on the innocence and joyfulness of her
childhood; Tennyson speaks of her as
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair;"
and Andrew Lang has written a lengthy poem on the Helen legend, in which
he ascribes her frailty to the irresistible power of Aphrodite. Thus
Homer and the Homeric Age are inextricably entwined about the name of
Helen. It is significant in the study of Greek women that at the very
dawn of Greek civilization we should find such an ideal conception of
womanhood--one that universally captivates the fancy and has exerted an
influence through all succeeding ages.
Let us now pause a moment to contemplate the most lovable of all the
women of Homer, Hector's spouse, white-armed Andromache. Homer does not
devote much space to her--only the famous parting scene and the two
lamentations which she utters over her fallen husband. Yet, as the ideal
type of the soldier's wife, the loving mother, she has taken a hold on
the modern imagination and is the best known of all the female
characters of Greek epos. We know that she must have been beautiful,
though Homer uses only one epithet to describe her; we know that she
must have been brave and devoted and domestic, for Homer has painted for
us an ideal picture which portrays her with all these and many other
lovable attributes. Andromache is neither Trojan nor Greek; she is
universal; and wherever there are scenes of husband parted from wife, of
uncertainty as to the issue of the combat and the destiny of the
children, Andromache will be the great prototype. Andromache feels in
her heart that sacred Ilium is doomed, and, in those cruel times when
might was right, she knew but too well what was to be the fate of
herself and the lad Astyanax. Euripides tells us how the forebodings of
Andromache came true, and dwells on those sad days for the daughters of
Troy when the mailed hand of the Achaeans carried them off captive after
the fall of the city and determined their destiny by lot.
Andromache was apportioned to Neoptolemus, Achilles's valiant son, and
in Euripides's _Daughters of Troy_ she reappears, with her child in her
arms, haled forth to her new bondage. Sadly she bewails her lost Hector,
who could have warded off from her the curse of thraldom. The Greek
herald, Talthybius, demands from her the lad Astyanax, whom the Greeks
have decided to hurl from the battlements of Troy. The child is
ruthlessly torn from his mother's embrace, and she is led off to the
hollow ships. Neoptolemus takes her over sea to his home in Thessaly,
and loves her and treats her with a kindness and consideration that are
sweetly perfect. To him she bears a son in her captivity; but not of her
own will does she share his couch, for her heart is true to the memory
of Hector. After many years, Neoptolemus weds Hermione, daughter of
Menelaus and Helen, a princess of Sparta. To them no child is born, and
Hermione's heart is filled with anger and jealousy toward the thrall,
whom her husband still treats tenderly. With her father, Menelaus,
Hermione, during Neoptolemus's absence, plots the destruction of
Andromache and her boy, but the aged Peleus protects the defenceless
ones. Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi, and Thetis, who appears at the
close of the _Andromache_, thus solves the problem of fate:
"And that war-captive dame, Andromache,
In the Molossian land must find a home
In lawful wedlock joined to Helenus,
With that child who alone is left alive
Of AEacus' line. And kings Molossian
From him one after other long shall reign
In bliss."
Readers of Virgil will recall how AEneas found Andromache in the
Molossian land, and how her heart yearned for the lad Ascanius, who
reminded her of the lost Astyanax. Euripides has been true, in the main,
to the Homeric conception of Andromache, and endows her in her captivity
with the same womanliness and domestic traits that won our hearts in the
Iliad; nevertheless, there is about her the infinite sadness that is
natural to one who has lost all that life holds dear. Yet Euripides
falls so infinitely below the master that the picture which will abide
longest in the memory is the parting scene in the Iliad.
Homer endows his minor characters with an interest that is no less real
to us than that given to Helen and Andromache. Of these lesser
characters, a few stand out insistent of our notice. At the threshold of
the story, Chryseis and Briseis appear as the innocent causes of the
quarrel of the chieftains. Chryseis is still a maiden, as far as can be
inferred, and had not lost kindred and friends when taken captive; for
her father, the priest of sacred Chryse, comes to beg her release, with
boundless ransoms. Hence her day of captivity is brief, and the aged
father joyously welcomes his beloved daughter. She must have been
beautiful and clever, for Agamemnon prized her far above Clytemnestra.
The story of Briseis is a much sadder one, and graphically illustrates
the fate of a gentlewoman who fell into the hands of the foe. She was a
captive widow, husband and kindred having been slain by Achilles. But
her captor loved her devotedly, and to him she was a wife in all but in
name; and Patroclus had promised her that she should in time become the
wedded wife of Achilles. The young warrior weeps bitterly when she is
taken from him, but at the close of the Iliad we see them happily
reunited. She is remembered because of the great passions that gathered
about her.