Part 3

ANDROMACHE. _O my Hector! best beloved, That, being mine, wast all in all to me, My prince, my wise one, O my majesty Of valiance!..._

_Thou art dead, And I war-flung to slavery and the bread Of shame in Hellas, over bitter seas._[5]

But the crowning horror remains. As Andromache and the queen are taking mournful leave of each other, a hurried messenger arrives from the Greek leaders. His message is almost too dreadful to utter; but he stammers it at last—the victors have resolved that Andromache’s son must die. They will spare no slip of Priam’s stock to be a future menace; and Astyanax is to be cast down therefore from the city towers.

To Andromache it is an appalling blow, worse than all that she has yet suffered. She cannot realize it at first, and answers the herald in broken, incredulous phrases. But when the man, ruefully trying to soothe her meanwhile, at last makes it clear to her that her child must die, all her gentleness is suddenly swept away in fierce wrath against her enemies.

“_O, ye have found an anguish that outstrips All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks! Why will ye slay this innocent, that seeks No wrong?_“[5]

Her own wrongs, though deep and shameful, she could bear; but the cruelty to her child is insupportable. All the graciousness and dignity of her nature break down under it; and carried beyond herself, she calls down wild curses upon her conquerors, and upon Helen, the origin of all her woes. Then, suddenly realizing the futility of her rage and her powerlessness to save Astyanax, she yields him to the Herald in a poignant outburst of grief:

“_Quick! take him: drag him: cast him from the wall, If cast ye will! Tear him, ye beasts, be swift! God hath undone me, and I cannot lift One hand, one hand, to save my child from death!_“[5]

So Andromache was taken alone into captivity. Of all that befell her there we do not know; but there are hints and fragments which suggest that the gods must have relented a little, at sight of her misery. For long afterward, when the Trojan prince Æneas set out to found another Troy in Latium, he anchored his fleet one day in the bay of Chaonia. And there, as he wandered upon the shore, he found Andromache. Her cruel captor was dead; and she was married to Helenus, the brother of Hector. But she had not forgotten her hero-husband, and when Æneas and his companions came upon her first, she was paying devotions at his tomb:

_Within a grove Andromache that day, Where Simois in fancy flowed again, Her offerings chanced at Hector’s grave to pay, A turf-built cenotaph, with altars twain, Source of her tears and sacred to the slain— And called his shade._[6]

Footnote 4:

From Messrs Lang, Leaf, and Myers’s translation of the _Iliad_ (Macmillan and Co. Ltd.). 1909 Edition.

Footnote 5:

From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of the _Troades_ (George Allen and Co. Ltd.).

Footnote 6:

From E. Fairfax Taylor’s translation of the _Æneid_ (Everyman’s Library).

_Homer: Penelope_

We come now to the _Odyssey_, the second Homeric epic; and to its heroine, wise Penelope.

Nominally, we have left the _Iliad_ behind by a space of several years. Troy had fallen, and the Greeks were homeward bound, fewer in number and sadder at heart than when the fleet had sailed ten years before. Some few of them reached home in safety. But for the most part, the return voyages were only accomplished with tremendous hardship and peril; and many who had escaped death at Troy found it at the hands of Poseidon, earth-shaking sea-god. Of proud Agamemnon, and the fate that awaited him in his palace at Mycenæ, we shall hear presently. We are concerned now with the wanderings of Odysseus, and how he won home at last to the faithful love of Penelope.

But after all, the connexion between the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ is only nominal. The links between them, although they seem strong and real at first, do not in any sense unite the two poems. It is true that there is the imaginary relation of time; that the _Odyssey_ relates the subsequent adventures of one of the heroes who actually fought at the siege of Troy; and, more important still, that it shows him to possess upon the whole the same qualities which he possessed in the _Iliad_. But when that is said, there remains the fact of a contrast between the poems which almost persuades us that in the _Odyssey_ we are in a different world. This contrast is best seen in the antithesis between the two heroes of the poems; and indeed between the two great heroines too. In the _Iliad_, Achilles stands for physical beauty and strength, young enthusiasm and ardent courage. When Odysseus appears there, as he sometimes does, he is overshone by the splendour of Achilles. Although he is the brain of the enterprise, he is in quite a secondary place to the physical magnificence of the younger hero. When we come to the later poem, however, we find that intelligence has risen to the higher plane. Odysseus is now the hero—not, like Achilles, an ideal of bodily strength and beauty: not a man of wrath, flaming over the battlefield in vengeance for his friend: not merely a warrior, product of a warlike age. Odysseus is by no means lacking in courage; and he has not outgrown the need for war. But he has many other qualities besides, and his fighting is usually prompted by necessity.

It is significant that the character of Achilles is developed in conflict with the war-god, Ares; while Odysseus is whelmed in a ‘sea of troubles,’ literally heaped upon him by Poseidon. Struggling constantly against the rage of the elements, Odysseus becomes alert and cautious, patient and painstaking and resourceful: a great constructive energy, as contrasted with the destroying fury of Achilles. The poet’s epithet for Odysseus is ‘subtle’ as that for Achilles had been ‘swift’; and the emphasis is always laid upon his qualities of brain and nerve. He is not a very imposing figure, and has little physical beauty. When his friends would praise him, it is gifts of mind rather than of body to which they refer. He is ‘the just one’ who does no injury ‘as is the way of princes’; the kindly ruler, who is ‘like a father’ to help his people; the faithful husband who can flatter and cajole his goddess-gaoler, in desperate anxiety to be home with his dear wife; the loyal comrade who will risk the enchantments of Circe rather than forsake his men without an effort; the gracious master whose servants ‘mourn and pine’ because of his long absence. And all the way through the poem, in passages which are too numerous to quote, there is a running tribute to his wisdom. Zeus himself, with other gods and goddesses; kings and queens; nymphs, naiads and enchantresses; swineherds and domestic servants; soldiers and sailors; strangers and homefolk; friends and enemies, all add their word to the eulogium of his wit.

Now Penelope, who is the perfect mate for such a man as this, is for that very reason contrasted with Helen as strongly as her husband is contrasted with the hero of the _Iliad_. It is not merely that her personality is totally unlike Helen’s, although that is true. The contrast is rooted in something deeper—in the whole conception of the poet, the manner of life out of which the poem came, the theme of which it treats. In the _Iliad_ we are quite literally moving amongst demi-gods. Helen, reputed daughter of Tyndareus, is really the child of Zeus; and Achilles has the nereid Thetis for his mother. Something of their divine origin clings to them, making them awful and magnificent. In all that they do and are they are greater than mere human folk. They move majestically, and they are not to be approached too nearly, or judged by the common standard, or compared with the ordinary race of men. Troy itself, to which their names cling, was a city built by gods.

But Odysseus and Penelope are frankly mortal; and in that one fact they approach nearer to us by many degrees. They are no longer colossal figures hovering, as it were, about the base of Mt. Olympus, and driven this way and that in the surge of Olympian quarrels. They are a man and woman, with their feet firmly planted upon the earth, and their affections rooted there too. They claim no kinship with the gods: they take no part in Olympian warfare: they have no care for the issues which are called great. Their story, reduced to its elements, is of the simplest kind: the call of dear home ties upon the man, the fidelity and prudence of the woman. And in this ‘touch of common things,’ Penelope becomes a much more real figure than Helen.

Of course that is not to say that Penelope is ‘real’ in the technical sense of the word. She is in fact almost as much a creature of romance as Helen is. But she appears before us as a living woman with human hopes and joys and sorrows; with human virtues too, and certain very human weaknesses. We can never regard the heroine of the _Iliad_ just in this way. If we could, and if we dared to lift the veil which the poet always interposes between us and the character of Helen, it would stand revealed slight and trembling in its amiability: fatally soft, with no vein of essential strength. Now it is that essential strength which characterizes Penelope. The wooers realized it; and Antinous made it the chief point of his defence:

_Athena has bestowed on her Wisdom of mind and excellence of skill_

_In beautiful devices manifold Beyond all others, such as is not told Even of those famous in the former time, Achaean women lovely-tressed of old,_

_Tyro, Alcmena, and Mycene crowned— Even among these the equal was not found In wise devices of Penelope._[7]

There is a significant silence about Penelope’s beauty; and she has not eternal youth as Helen has. But when we have seen her eyes light upon her boy Telemachus, and the radiance of her face as the strange old beggarman told her about her husband, we shall waive the question of æsthetics. We shall be prepared to maintain Penelope’s beauty against all-comers; and we shall not be much concerned that the poet rather avoids the subject. For he would not dream of a soul which did not know that sweetness and dignity and a gentle heart, grief endured patiently and love unswerving, would make for themselves a worthy habitation. Beside Helen’s exquisite fairness, Penelope would seem a little faded; and her sweet gravity would be almost a reproach. She cannot compare for one moment with Calypso, as Odysseus had to confess when the goddess blamed him for his homesickness:

“_Goddess and mistress, be not wroth with me Herein: for very well myself I know That, set beside you, wise Penelope_

“_Were far less stately and less fair to view, Being but mortal woman, nor like you Ageless and deathless: but even so, I long and yearn to see my home anew._“[7]

The keynote of the _Odyssey_ is struck here; and here too we may find a hint of all that Penelope means. The thought of home is to dominate the poem, as something so dear and sacred that innumerable toils are suffered and infinite perils undergone to win back to it. And this shining ideal of home is to be incarnate in Penelope. She is to represent in her own person all that sweetens and comforts life: all the domestic virtues which establish and perpetuate it. Thus, beside Helen as the ideal of beauty—of physical perfection—Penelope stands as the ideal of mental and moral worth.

* * * * *

Telemachus, whom Odysseus had left at home as a baby twenty years before, had been sent by Athena to seek his father. The goddess had appeared to him as he sat in his father’s hall in Ithaca, lowering upon those unbidden guests who were his mother’s suitors. She had asked what the unseemly revel might mean; and he had told of the long absence of his father.

“_Ah but the spirits of storm to a death inglorious swept him, Vanished, unseen and unheard of; and nothing but mourning and anguish Me he bequeathed! Nor now do I sorrow and make lamentation Only for him; for the gods send other and grievous afflictions. All of the chief of the men who as princes rule in the islands.... All come wooing my mother and wasting the wealth of the homestead. She dares neither reject their hateful proposals of marriage, Nor can she end it; and thus do the men, consuming, devouring, Ruin my home...._”[8]

The goddess counselled immediate action—to go and seek Odysseus; and while the minstrel sang to the carousing suitors, Telemachus inwardly resolved that he would set sail as soon as might be for Pylos and Sparta, whither Athena directed him for tidings of his father. But he knew that he must act quietly; and above all, that his purpose must be kept a secret from his mother. She would certainly prevent his going, did she know, fearing to lose son as well as husband.

Meantime, as he pondered the matter, Penelope was listening from her lofty bower to the minstrel’s song in the hall below. He sang of the return of the heroes from Troy; and the words reawakened in her the old pain of longing for her husband. At last she could not bear to hear it any longer:

_Straightway leaving her room by the high-built stair she descended; Neither alone did she go; two maidens followed behind her. So when at last she had come to the suitors, that fairest of women Stood by the post of the door of the massively builded apartment, Holding in front of her cheeks soft folds of her glistering head-dress. There as she stood, with a trusty attendant on this and on that side, Suddenly bursting in tears to the godlike bard she addressed her: “Phemius, ... ... desist, I beseech, from the strain thou art singing, Pitiful story, that ever the heart in the depths of my bosom Woundeth....”_[8]

She is a touching figure, as she ventures out among the revellers and begs the old man to change the theme of his lay. But Telemachus was not in the mood to see the pathos of the scene. The charge that Athena had laid on him had suddenly given him his manhood; and in the new sense of responsibility, he spoke a little harshly to his mother, bidding her go back to her loom and housewifery.

_Full of amazement she turned her to go to the women’s apartment, Hiding the masterful words of her son deep down in her bosom. So to her upper apartment ascending with maiden attendants Here she lamented Odysseus her well-loved husband, till gently Slumber was poured on her lids by the grey-eyed goddess Athene._[8]

While his mother slept, Telemachus lay awake in his own inner room revolving plans whereby to carry out the command of Athena. He determined first to confront the suitors publicly, before a formal assembly of the Ithacans, and charge them with their insolence and riotous greed. So, with the first light of morning, he summoned the people to a meeting in the market-place, and called upon the wooers to cease their persecution of his mother and quit his house. Antinous, answering haughtily for them all, invented a coward’s excuses for their conduct. Penelope was to blame, he said, for she would not decide between them; but constantly put them off with various cunning devices. With one pretext alone—that of weaving a shroud for Icarius—she had kept them in suspense for many months.

_Thus then all of the day at the spacious loom she was weaving; During the night she unravelled the web with the torches beside her. Three long years with her secret device she befooled the Achaeans; Till, when the fourth year came, and as season was followed by season, Then at the last (since one of her women, who knew it, had told us), While at the loom her magnificent web she unravelled, we caught her. Thus was she forced, though sorely unwilling, to finish her labour._[8]

Therefore, declared Antinous, because Penelope had deceived them in this manner, they would not depart until she had chosen a husband from among them. Telemachus might spare his protests; indeed, he would be better advised to coerce his mother, since they were determined to remain in his house and devour his substance, until Penelope should yield. But Telemachus was a child no longer, and could not be threatened with impunity. And to their base suggestion that he should favour them against his mother, he gave a spirited reply. Nothing should induce him to give Penelope in marriage against her will:

“_Such word I will not utter. But for you, If you take shame at all this wrong you do, Quit these my halls...._

“_But if you deem it worthier still to sit, As now, devouring one man’s livelihood And rendering no recompense for it,_

“_Waste on: but to the deathless gods will I Make my appeal, if haply Zeus on high Repayment of your deeds exact from you. So in this house you unavenged shall die._“[7]

The assembly broke up; and Telemachus hastily fitted out a ship and sailed to seek Odysseus, all unknown to Penelope. The suitors continued their carousals day after day, rioting and making merry, in feigned contempt of Telemachus and his quest. But when after a time he did not return, they grew uneasy. They had jeered at his threats of vengeance, deeming him an untried boy; but who knew what might happen now, since he had sailed with a crew of the stoutest fellows in the island? Might he not return with help and drive them out? Antinous took counsel with his friends, and determined on a murderous plan. They would man a ship, sail after Telemachus, and lie in wait for his return, between the islands of Ithaca and Samé; and that should be the last cruise that Telemachus should make.

Meanwhile Penelope, busy with her household duties, believed her son to be away with the flocks. She stayed within the women’s rooms; and except for the clamour of the wooers, or the occasional song of the minstrel, nothing came to her ears. But now Medon the herald heard of the plot which was afoot against his young master, and came to warn her of it. She greeted him with a bitter question. Had he come to order her maids to spread the banquet for the suitors? Would that they might never feast again! Had they not shame to deal so unjustly with her absent husband—he who had always dealt justly with them, who had never in word or deed done injury to any? But Medon had a harder thing yet to say; and as gently as might be, he told her of the going of Telemachus and of the suitors’ plot to slay him.

_Thus did he speak, and with knees and with heart all quaking she stood there. Speechless long she remained, struck mute, while gathering teardrops Flooded her eyes, and the flow of her clear-voiced utterance failed, Till at the last she recovered her speech and addressed him in answer: “Wherefore, herald, I pray, is my son departed? He nowise Needed to mount on a ship—on a swift-paced vessel that sailors Ride as a horse and traverse the watery waste of the ocean. Wills he that even his name no longer remain in remembrance?”_[8]

Penelope is overwhelmed with grief, and Medon’s explanation of her son’s errand does not soothe her. She believes that he is lost to her for ever, like his father; and when the herald has left her, she throws herself down upon the floor of her room, wailing:

“_... sorrow hath Zeus the Olympian sent me Passing the sorrows of all the friends and the mates of my childhood. Erstwhile lost I a husband—my lord with the heart of a lion.... Now is my dearly belovèd, my son, swept hence by the storm-blasts, Vanished from hearing and home.... Had I but known he was making him ready to fare on a journey, Verily either at home he had stay’d, though bent on departure, Else he had left me behind him dead in the halls of his homestead._“[8]

She casts about in her mind as to how she may save her son; and it seems to her best to send a trusty messenger to the father of Odysseus, for help and counsel. But the old nurse Euryclea gives good advice. She confesses that she had known of the departure of Telemachus; but he had sworn her with a great oath not to reveal it. It is of no use to mourn about it; and since they can do nothing to bring him back, the better way is to go and supplicate their guardian goddess, Athena, the Maid of Zeus, for his safety. For her part, she believes that Telemachus will not be forsaken in his need. Penelope wisely takes the advice of the old nurse. She bathes, puts on clean raiment, and taking in her hand an offering of barley-flour, she ascends to her own chamber and makes supplication to Athena:

“_Hearken to my prayer this hour,_

“_Thou who hast thunder-bearing Zeus for Sire, Maiden whose might no labour can out-tire! If ever subtle-souled Odysseus here Within these halls consumed upon the fire_

“_Fat thigh-pieces of ox or sheep to thee, Remember it this day for good to me, And save my son, and from us thrust away The suitors in their evil surquedry._”

_Calling aloud so spake she, and her call The goddess heard._[7]

Even while Penelope prayed, Athena was busy on her behalf; and was bringing home to her both husband and son. Odysseus she had convoyed safely to Ithaca, and was now leading him in disguise to the swineherd’s cottage. And to Telemachus she had shown a way to escape the murderous suitors, and was bringing him swiftly to the father whom he had never seen. Of their meeting, and of their cunning plan for vengeance on the suitors, it would take too long to tell. But in the morning, Penelope was gladdened by the return of her son; and a little later, a poor old beggar (no other than Odysseus himself) came among the suitors as they sat in the hall. They glowered upon him angrily, and proud Antinous set the vagabond Irus to fight him, for their sport. But the old beggar had unexpected strength, and Irus was defeated. Whereon the suitors began to bait Odysseus with jeers and taunts; and one hurled a stool at him. At this impious deed, the guests were horrified; and Penelope, hearing of it where she sat among her women, longed to make amends to the old man for the cruel act. She descended into the great hall, and spoke reprovingly to Telemachus for allowing one who had sought the shelter of their home to be treated so basely.

“_What thing is this that hath befallen us Within our halls that once were prosperous, That you have suffered one who is your guest To be despitefully entreated thus?_“[7]

But Telemachus hugged his secret knowledge of the beggar’s identity, and kept silence, while Penelope returned to her bower. The hall was cleared at last, and then he and his father laid their plans for the slaying of the suitors on the following day. The noisy crew had all gone to rest; and when Odysseus and his son had agreed upon a plan of action, Telemachus followed them, leaving his father alone in the great hall. It was a moment for which Penelope had been waiting; and she came down from her room again, to question the beggar of his wanderings. There was no light in the hall but that of the fire; and she ordered a cushioned chair to be brought near, so that the old man might sit while she talked with him.

“_Firstly of all, O stranger, I wish thee to answer a question: Whence and what mortal thou beest? Tell too of thy city and parents._“[8]