Chapter 5
But Atrides ceases not from the strife with which he has threatened Achilles. He summons straightway two heralds, and bids them go to the tent of Achilles and take Briseis of the fair cheeks by the hand and lead her to him. Unwillingly they go on their mission, and find the young warrior sitting sorrowfully beside his hut and black ship. He knows wherefore they come, and bids his friend Patroclus bring forth the damsel and give them her to lead away. And Patroclus hearkens to his dear companion, and leads forth from the hut Briseis of the fair cheeks, and gives her to the heralds. And the twain take their way back along the ships of the Achaeans and with them goes the maiden, all unwilling.
In this moment of grief at the loss of the woman he loves, Achilles bethinks him of his dear mother, the Nereid Thetis, and, stretching forth his hand toward the sea, he prays to her to hearken to him. His lady mother hears him as she sits in the sea depths beside her aged sire, and with speed she arises from the gray sea, and sits down beside him and strokes him with her hand and inquires the cause of his sorrow. Into her sympathetic ear he tells all the story of his wrongs, and the goddess shows herself the tenderest and most loving of mothers. He bids her seek justice for him at the throne of mighty Zeus, with whom she is potent on account of favors she has done him. She bewails with her son that she has borne him to brief life and evil destiny; but she bids him continue wroth with the Achaeans, and refrain utterly from battle, while she will early fare to Zeus's palace upon Mount Olympus, and she thinks to win him. True to her promise, she betakes herself to sunny Olympus and finds the father of gods and men sitting apart from all the rest upon the topmost peak. She clasps his knees with one hand as a suppliant and with the other strokes his chin, and prays him to do honor to her son and exalt him with recompense for the gross wrong he has suffered. And Zeus, though he knows that it will lead to strife with Lady Hera, his spouse, promises to heap just vengeance upon Agamemnon.
Thus, upon the very threshold of the Iliad, the chord of maternal affection is struck; and when the wild passions of early manhood have led to sorrow and humiliation, the mother appears, affording sympathy and comfort, and is ready to traverse sea and earth and heaven to intercede for her wronged and grief-stricken son.
Achilles remains away from battle, sulking beside the ships. The odds are now in favor of the Trojans in the conflict that is being waged. Both sides are weary of continual fighting, and a single combat is arranged between Menelaus and Paris, the wronged husband and the present lord of Helen. The meed of victory is to be Helen herself, with all her treasures, she now appearing for the first time in the Epos.
Helen is summoned from her palace to witness the combat. So she hastens from her chamber, attended by two handmaidens, and comes to the place of the Scaean gates, where are gathered King Priam and the elders of the city.
Homer nowhere attempts to describe Helen's beauty in detail, but 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.