Part 1

WOMEN OF THE CLASSICS

WOMEN OF THE CLASSICS

BY MARY C. STURGEON

WITH SIXTEEN PHOTOGRAVURES PRESENTING STUDIES OF THE HEROINES OF THE BOOK

LONDON GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY 2 & 3 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C. MCMXIV

PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON ENGLAND

_Contents_

PAGE INTRODUCTION 9

WOMEN OF HOMER HELEN 15 ANDROMACHE 29 PENELOPE 39 CIRCE 60 CALYPSO 73 NAUSICAA 85

WOMEN OF ATTIC TRAGEDY

_I._ _ÆSCHYLUS_ CLYTEMNESTRA 99 ELECTRA 117 CASSANDRA 135 IO 148

_II._ _SOPHOCLES_ JOCASTA 163 ANTIGONE 185

_III._ _EURIPIDES_ ALCESTIS 209 MEDEA 227 PHÆDRA 243 IPHIGENIA 256

A WOMAN OF VIRGIL DIDO 273

_Illustrations_

PHÆDRA GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. _Frontispiece_ _Facing page_ HELEN LORD LEIGHTON 20 ANDROMACHE LORD LEIGHTON 34 PENELOPE PATTEN WILSON 50 CIRCE PATTEN WILSON 66 CALYPSO PATTEN WILSON 82 NAUSICAA PATTEN WILSON 94 CLYTÆMNESTRA HON. JOHN COLLIER 114 ELECTRA GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. 128 CASSANDRA SOLOMON J. SOLOMON, R.A. 140 JOCASTA GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I. 172 ANTIGONE FROM THE STATUE BY HUGUES 192 ALCESTIS LORD LEIGHTON 224 MEDEA HERBERT DRAPER 238 IPHIGENIA M. NONNENBRUCH 260 DIDO GIANBATTISTA TIEPOLO 284

_Introduction_

The women in this book are the heroines of Homer, of Attic Tragedy, and of the _Æneid_ of Virgil. Their stories are taken out of the best modern translations of the old poems; and they are retold from the human standpoint, with the minimum of critical comment.

It is curious, when we reflect a moment, how little we really know about the women of the classics. Their names have been familiar to us as long as we can remember. We have always been vaguely conscious of a glory clothing them—sometimes sombre and troubled, often gracious and serene, occasionally enchanting. About the greatest of them some floating hints of identity ripple on the surface of the mind. But we can by no means fit these little fragments into any clear outline of the sublime beauty of their originals. And when we light upon a reference to them in our reading, or stand before one of the innumerable works of art which they have inspired, memory is baffled. We have no clue to the spell that they have cast upon the centuries: the spell itself has no power over us; and we grope in vain for the key which would admit us to a world of delight.

There were reasons for this state of affairs when translations were few and costly: when scholars were merely pedants and when the classics were sealed to women. But _nous avons changé tout cela_. Fine translations can be bought for a few shillings. Women are themselves engaging in the study of the old languages and of the sciences which are akin to them. Scholarship is growing more human; and the awakened spirit of womanhood, having become conscious of itself, cannot fail to be profoundly interested in that earlier awakening which, twenty-five centuries ago, evoked creatures so splendid. Of the women of Attic Tragedy Professor Gilbert Murray has said, in his _Rise of the Greek Epic_: “Consider for a moment the whole magnificent file of heroines in Greek Tragedy, both for good and evil.... I doubt if there has ever in the history of the world been a period, not even excepting the Elizabethan Age and the Nineteenth Century, when such a gallery of heroic women has been represented in Drama.”

By bringing these women together into a single volume, it is hoped to make their stories easily accessible; and by quoting some of the most beautiful passages from the poems in which they live, it is hoped to send the reader back to the poets themselves. It has not been possible to include all the heroines in the available space; and several of those who are missing have only been omitted under the direst necessity. But all the greatest are here; and an effort has been made to choose each group so that it shall represent as far as may be the characteristics of its own poet. The source of the story is indicated in each case, and has been closely followed.

A word may be necessary on one or two points, to those who are coming to these stories from the classics with an unfamiliar eye. It will be found that there is a singular reticence here on that aspect of love which engrosses modern literature. It is occasionally treated by Euripides; but even he handles the theme delicately and with reserve. Nowhere in these stories—with the exception of Dido, who of course belongs to a later civilization than the Greek women—is the love which leads to marriage dealt with explicitly. It is implicit sometimes, and we who have been born into a heritage of romanticism, may delightedly trace it out and make the most of it. But the old poet never does: indeed, he hardly seems to realize that he has put it there. He belongs to a time when women were not wooed and won, but literally bought ‘with great store of presents,’ or acquired in other prosaic ways, which vary according to the several epochs and their customs. The love of men and women is treated from the point of view of husband and wife, of sister and brother, of daughter and father, rather than from the standpoint of the feverish hopes and fears of romantic passion. Marriage is not so much the culmination as the starting-point of an eventful story; and the heroic devotion of sister and daughter is crowned, no less than wifely fidelity, with everlasting honour. We must therefore be prepared for a change from the warmth and glow of romance to the tonic air of a more austere idealism.

Again, these women are not the complex creatures of modern civilization. The earliest of them, Homer’s women, are drawn in outline only. They are great and splendid; and because they were created for an aristocratic audience, they are noble, dignified, and placed high above the small things of common life. There is hardly any comedy in Homer, and reality is far away. When we come to the dramatists we find, as we should expect, a great advance in characterization. The women are stronger, more real, more complete. But they are still very far from the psychological subtlety of modern drama.

There is, too, a singular reticence about the personal appearance of the heroines. We are rarely told what manner of women they were to look at. Virgil comes one step nearer to our modern love of description when he portrays Dido as she rides out on the fatal morning of the hunt; and when he paints the glowing figure of Camilla as she rushes into battle. But it would be very hard to discover what was the colour of Helen’s eyes, although the old German _Faustbuch_ of the Middle Age has dared to assert that they were ‘black as coals.’ Homer has a more excellent way. Instead of enumerating the charms of his heroine, as it were in a catalogue of perfections, he brings her into the presence of hostile folk, who on all counts have reason to hate her, and in a few vivid phrases shows the potent effect of her beauty upon them.

We shall find that the heroines have a system of ethics which is different from that of our own day; and strange moral contradictions may present themselves to our astonished eyes. Electra, with the tenderest love for her dead father, will not rest until the death of her guilty mother has been compassed. Antigone, infinitely gentle to the blind Œdipus, is capable of resolute opposition to the law as it is embodied in Creon. But though the lines of moral demarcation are differently placed, they are not blurred. Revenge is a duty in this primitive saga upon which the poets drew for their material; and in which there is much that is savage and terrible.

Greek drama was a religious ritual closely bound to ancient myth and heroic legend, from which the poets could not escape. Hence, if these stories are approached in an analytical mood, they will be found barbarous and wildly improbable. If we give the rein to humour, we shall be overcome by frequent absurdities. The best way is to come to them quite simply, leaving the comic and the critical spirits a little way behind.

* * * * *

Grateful thanks are due to the translators and publishers who have kindly given permission to quote the passages used herein; and the author wishes humbly to acknowledge the debt she owes to critical work in this field. She is especially conscious of help from Professor Gilbert Murray in interpreting some of the Women of Tragedy. A note of the sources of the quotations will be found at the end of each chapter.

_Homer: Helen_

In the twilight of early Greek history, one event and one name blaze like beacons. They are the siege of Troy and the name of Helen. They have not come down to us as cold fact, but burning through a mist of legend and poetry. The historian cannot name the date of the Trojan war; and the archæologist, whose labours have been so fruitful at Mycenæ and in Crete, can only point doubtfully to the ancient site of Troy.

Yet that event, and its cause, fair Helen of Sparta, may be said to mark the beginning of national life for the Greeks. Perhaps it was more than two thousand years before Christ when all the little peoples of Greece first joined themselves against barbarian Asia. Troy fell; and although the victory brought little material reward to the Greeks; though they sailed back to their island homes poorer and sadder than when they left, they had in fact achieved momentous gains. For the struggle had first taught them the strength of unity: it had launched them on their long and triumphant feud against barbarism; and it had laid the base from which they might go on to build, through the long, slow centuries, the civilization that we inherit.

There was no historian to record the event. But it lived on, in memory and in legend; and as the people became more settled, wandering bards made songs about it. The rich Mycenæn Age flourished and died; and the Homeric civilization took its place. Probably it was then that the floating fragments of the Tale of Troy first were woven together, providing material for the Homeric epics that we know as the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Probably they were not written down at first. They were composed, and recited, in separate parts, in the halls of the great lords, who loved to look back on this glorious event of their national life, and to hear the names of their remote and half-mythical ancestors brought into the story. Thus Homer, no matter who he or his school may have been, comes to represent a high stage of civilization. His poems have a lofty tone, a chivalrous spirit, a sweet cleanliness of thought and of word, which do not belong to a primitive, uncivilized people. They do not, as a fact, belong naturally to the early period of which he sings. In the time of that grim struggle before the dawn of history, there must have been much that was ugly, dark and barbarous. This is proved to us by the survival of some of the older legends upon which Homer worked. They tell of unnatural crime and of deeds of horror such as he never mentions; and they give us, too, a very different interpretation of the story of Helen. Homer puts aside all these vestiges of a primitive past. He is composing lays for a people who have a keen sense of honour, a supreme ideal of beauty and a love of home; who have a religious feeling strong enough to reverence the gods, despite their many hieratic quarrels, and who hold womanhood in high esteem. So when we come to him to hear about Helen, we find a very sweet and gracious figure, quite unlike the Helen of the later poets. With them she was degraded from her rank of demi-god. She was regarded as a real figure, brought down to the level of ordinary existence, and judged by the common standard. The romantic charm of the Homeric conception faded; and her name had for centuries an evil sound. It has passed through many vicissitudes since. In late Greek literature, one or two poets tried to return to the reverent attitude of Homer: but in the Middle Ages she became again a byword and a reproach. At the Renaissance, something of her early worship as an ideal of beauty was revived, and our own Marlowe has passionately expressed the thought of that age about her:

_Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.... Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars._

It is this vision of Helen, as the supreme ideal of beauty, that modern poets and scholars have tried to recapture. They have put aside the varied allegorical and ethical and realistic conceptions of her, as the efforts of a more sophisticated age; and they have tried to return directly to the fine simplicity of Homer himself. Only thus, they believe, can we stand at the right point of view with regard to Helen; and only thus can we see her as she was to the Greeks, a symbol of beauty incorruptible. We, who have to make our own choice in the matter, cannot do better than try to stand at the point where the moderns have placed us.

We come then at once to the Iliad, where, in the Third Book, Helen makes her first appearance in the world’s literature. War has been raging round the walls of Troy for nearly ten years. Now a truce is called; and in the palace of the old king Priam, word goes round that Paris, the author of the long feud, is to fight in single combat with Menelaus, whom he has wronged. For Paris had brought the bane of war upon Ilios. At his birth, the oracles of the gods had demanded that he should die; and Priam, his father, sorrowfully handed over the wailing baby to the priest, to be exposed upon Mount Ida. But first he tied an old ring about his neck; and when Paris was strangely saved from death, and grew up to be the fairest and strongest of all the shepherd youths on Ida, he came one day by accident to Ilios. There, by means of the jewel hanging from his neck, he was made known as the son of the king. Thenceforward the poor shepherd was the best beloved of all the princes. Life went gaily; and for a while he was utterly content. But he had left behind, amidst the groves of Mount Ida, a sweet wood-nymph who loved him well, Enone. And when after a time he began to tire of life in the palace, he remembered her and thought longingly of the freshness and beauty of the mountain. So one day in summer he went to seek Enone. All day long he searched the forest, but could not find her; and coming tired at evening to a fragrant glade, he fell asleep. When he awoke, night was hushed all around, and stars peeped through the slender branches overhead. It was midnight and there was no moon; but it was not dark. The glade was filled with a soft radiance such as he had never seen before, and when he raised his wondering eyes, he saw the majestical figures of goddesses shining upon him: Hera, queen of Olympus, Athena, the wise maid of Zeus, and Aphrodite, the laughing goddess of love. Sweetly they smiled on him; and as he stood in wondering awe, the deep, rich tones of Hera sank upon his spirit, promising him greatness and power, and the lordship over many lands. Then Athena, resting her starlike gaze upon him, promised him wisdom and courage; and Aphrodite, with a little mocking laugh at power and at wisdom, promised him the fairest woman in the world. Only, and this was to be the price of the gift, he was to be the arbiter between them: he was to declare which was most beautiful.

There was only one answer possible to Paris. Ambition had no lure for him. Why fight and strive and spend the happy days in effort merely to be called great? And wisdom had no appeal for him either; she seemed austere and cold. What had she to do with the joy and grace and sweetness that his soul loved? To the sublimity of Hera he bent in awe. The shining purity of Athena smote his glance to the earth. But the voice of Aphrodite wooed him, and her winsome smile set him trembling with delight. He reached out to her the golden prize of beauty.

So Paris was to gain the fairest woman in the world. It seemed an honest promise, full of the happiest portent; and the young prince soon set out upon his search for a bride over the western seas. But Aphrodite was no better than a cheat, and had invoked on Paris, though he did not know it then, the curse of guilty love. For the exquisite child who was to be the world’s queen of beauty had grown up in the home of Tyndareus, king of Sparta; and even while the goddess gave her word to Paris, was happily married to Menelaus there. To her and to her husband Paris came in his wanderings, led unwittingly by the laughter-loving goddess, and clothed by her in beauty like a god. They feasted him and did him honour; and sitting at the banquet which they made to him, he told the strange tale of his life and his quest.

Helen listened to his story with a sudden prescience of what was to come; and rising softly, left the banqueting hall and went away to implore the goddess to avert the doom. But she was no match for Aphrodite. Anger and entreaty could not move the wanton Olympian, but she would grant one boon—Helen should be oblivious of all her past. Under the spell, the love of husband and child faded out; and even the memory of them vanished when on that spring morning in the garden of the palace, Paris met her beside the stream, ‘’twixt the lily and the rose.’

_Then either looked on other with amaze As each had seen a god; for no long while They marvell’d, but as in the first of days, The first of men and maids did meet and smile, And Aphrodite did their hearts beguile, So hands met hands, lips lips, with no word said Were they enchanted ‘neath the leafy aisle, And silently were wooed, betroth’d and wed._[1]

Together they fled in the dewy morning, Paris urging his horses with guilty haste to the ships. And there, with Menelaus thundering along the road after them, they set sail for Troy, fulfilling the old prophecy, and lighting a brand by their deed which should burn the sacred city to the ground. For Tyndareus, when he chose a husband for Helen amongst her many suitors, had won a promise that they would all defend the one who gained her. Agamemnon, brother to Menelaus, and the great overlord of the Hellenic princes, now summoned the allies to avenge his brother, and for ten years they toiled at fitting out a fleet. Then they ‘launched a thousand ships,’ and sailed to punish Ilios for the sin of Paris.

Meantime, Helen had wakened sadly from the spell of Aphrodite. Little by little memory of her home came back, and with it came remorse. She was lonely too, and disillusion crept upon her. The Trojans, who at first had welcomed her as a goddess, soon began to look askance at her when rumours came of the great siege that was preparing. Mothers and wives of the Trojan princes held aloof; and soon the only friends left to her were the kind old king and Hector, the noble defender of the city. But there was worse behind. Little by little the truth dawned that Paris, for whom she had lost so much, and who had seemed so godlike in his strength and beauty, was very poor humanity indeed. The story of Enone was told to her; and that showed him unfaithful. And when the Leaguer actually lay beneath the walls, she soon found that Paris was a coward too.

Now, in this Third Iliad, we find that the cruel siege had wasted Troy for nearly ten years. The armies, reduced by death and pestilence and famine, were beginning to murmur against the worthless cause of all their misery; and Paris, for very shame, could no longer shelter himself within the city. At this eleventh hour he issued out to meet Menelaus in single combat. Helen was sitting in her inner hall, weaving a purple web and embroidering upon it the battle scenes which ebbed and flowed around the walls. Time and sorrow had only given her beauty an added charm. She was still young, fresh, and exquisitely fair, as on that spring morning in Lacedaemon when Aphrodite graced her for the meeting with Paris. To her, as her sweet face bent over the web, the goddess Iris brought the news of the impending combat: “They that erst waged tearful war upon each other in the plain, eager for deadly battle, even they sit now in silence, and the battle is stayed, and they lean upon their shields, and the tall spears are planted by their sides. But Paris and Menelaus dear to Ares will fight with their tall spears for thee; and thou wilt be declared the dear wife of him that conquereth.”