Chapter 10

Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.

For they had a yoke-fellow of a different strain from their own, captured by Achilles at the sack of theCilician Thebes, and killed by Sarpedon in the course of his duel with Patroclus. And they had to endure worse than the loss of Pedasus. Patroclus, whose gentle touch and voice they had long ago learned to love, fell in the same fight, and they stood paralysed with grief, and unheeding alike the blows and the blandishments of their authorised driver, Automedon.

They neither to the Hellespont would bear him, nor the fight,But still as any tombstone lays his never-stirréd weightOn some good man or woman’s grave, for rites of funeral,So unremovéd stood these steeds, their heads to earth let fall,And warm tears gushing from their eyes with passionate desireOf their kind manager; their manes, that flourished with the fireOf endless youth allotted them, fell through the yoky sphere,Ruthfully ruffled and defiled.[118]

They neither to the Hellespont would bear him, nor the fight,

But still as any tombstone lays his never-stirréd weight

On some good man or woman’s grave, for rites of funeral,

So unremovéd stood these steeds, their heads to earth let fall,

And warm tears gushing from their eyes with passionate desire

Of their kind manager; their manes, that flourished with the fire

Of endless youth allotted them, fell through the yoky sphere,

Ruthfully ruffled and defiled.[118]

118.Iliad, xvii. 432-40 (Chapman’s trans.).

A northern companion-picture is furnished by Grani mourning the death of Sigurd, whom he had borne to the lair of Fafnir, and through the flames to woo Brynhild, and now survived only to be immolated on his pyre. The tears, however, of the weeping horses in the Ramayana and Mahabharata flow rather through fear than through sorrow.

The final appearance of the Pelidean steeds upon the scene of the Iliad reaches a tragic height, probably unequalled in the whole cycle of poetical delineations from the lower animal-world. Achilles, roused at last to battle, and gleaming in his new-wroughtarmour, cried with a terrible voice as he leaped into his car—

Xanthus and Balius, far-famed brood of Podargê’s strain,Take heed that in other sort to the Danæan host again,Ye bring your chariot-lord, when ourselves from the battle refrain,And not, as ye left Patroclus, leave us yonder slain.[119]

Xanthus and Balius, far-famed brood of Podargê’s strain,

Take heed that in other sort to the Danæan host again,

Ye bring your chariot-lord, when ourselves from the battle refrain,

And not, as ye left Patroclus, leave us yonder slain.[119]

The sting of the reproach, and the favour of Heré, together effected a prodigy, and Xanthus spoke thus to his angry lord:

Yea, mighty Achilles, safe this day will we bear back thee;Yet nigh is the day of thy doom. Not guilty thereof be we,But a mighty God, and the overmastering Doom shall be cause.For not by our slowness of foot, neither slackness of will it wasThat the Trojans availed from Patroclus’ shoulders thine armour to tear;Nay, but a God most mighty, whom fair-tressed Lêto bare,Slew him in forefront of fight, giving Hector the glory meed.But for us, we twain as the blast of the West-wind fleetly could speed,Which they name for the lightest-winged of the winds; but for thee indeed,Even thee, is it doomed that by might of a God and a man shalt thou fall.[120]

Yea, mighty Achilles, safe this day will we bear back thee;

Yet nigh is the day of thy doom. Not guilty thereof be we,

But a mighty God, and the overmastering Doom shall be cause.

For not by our slowness of foot, neither slackness of will it was

That the Trojans availed from Patroclus’ shoulders thine armour to tear;

Nay, but a God most mighty, whom fair-tressed Lêto bare,

Slew him in forefront of fight, giving Hector the glory meed.

But for us, we twain as the blast of the West-wind fleetly could speed,

Which they name for the lightest-winged of the winds; but for thee indeed,

Even thee, is it doomed that by might of a God and a man shalt thou fall.[120]

119.Iliad, xix. 400-403 (Way’s trans.).

120.Ib.xix. 408-17 (Way’s trans.).

But here the Erinyes, guardians of the natural order, interposed, and Xanthus’s brief burst of eloquence was brought to a close. The arrested prophecy, however, was only too intelligible; it couldnot deter, but it exasperated; and provoked the ensuing fiery rejoinder—a ‘passionate outcry of a soul in pain,’ if ever there was one—

Xanthus, why bodest thou death unto me? Thou needest not so.Myself well know my weird, in death to be here laid low,Far-off from my dear loved sire, from the mother that bare me afar;Yet cease will I not till I give to the Trojans surfeit of war.He spake, and with shouts sped onward the thunder-foot steeds of his car.[121]

Xanthus, why bodest thou death unto me? Thou needest not so.

Myself well know my weird, in death to be here laid low,

Far-off from my dear loved sire, from the mother that bare me afar;

Yet cease will I not till I give to the Trojans surfeit of war.

He spake, and with shouts sped onward the thunder-foot steeds of his car.[121]

121.Iliad, xix. 420-24 (Way’s trans.).

The aged Peleus was, indeed, destined to leave unredeemed his vow of flinging to the stream of the Spercheus the yellow locks of his safely-returned son; they were laid instead on the pyre of Patroclus. Nor was their wearer ever to revisit the forest fastnesses of Pelion, where he had learned from Chiron to draw the bow and cull healing herbs; yet of the short time allotted to him for vengeance not a moment should be lost.

Although Homer tells us nothing as to the eventual fate of Xanthus and Balius, supplementary legends fill up the blank left by his silence. It appears hence that they were divinely restrained from carrying out their purpose of retiring, after the death of Achilles, to their birthplace by the Ocean-stream, and awaited instead the arrival of Neoptolemus at Troy.[122]For he was their appointed charioteer on the Elysianplains, which they may scour to this day, for anything that is known to the contrary, in friendly emulation with Pegasus, the hippogriff, and

rutilæ manifestus ArionIgne jubæ:

rutilæ manifestus Arion

Igne jubæ:

with the last above all, whose ‘insatiate ardour’ of speed saved Adrastus from Theban pursuit, and brought him in the original mythical winner in the Nemæan games; whose sympathy, moreover, with human miseries broke down, as in their own case, the barriers of nature, and accomplished the portent of speech and tears. Their quasi-immortality is shared by Bayard, heard to neigh, it is said, every Mid-summer-night, along the leafy aisles of the Forest of Ardennes;[123]and by Sharats, who still crops the moss of the cavern where sleeps his long-accustomed rider, Marko, waiting, like other hibernating heroes, for the dawn of better days.

122.Quintus Smyrnæus, iii. 743.

123.Grimm and Stallybrass,Teutonic Mythology, p. 666.

Prophetic horses of the Xanthus type have been heard of in many lands. They are a commonplace of Esthonian folk-lore; Dulcefal, the charger of Hreggvid, king of Gardariki in Old Russia, could infallibly forecast the issue of a campaign; the coursers of the Indian Râvana had a just presentiment of his fate;[124]and Cæsar’s indomitable horse was reported—credibly or otherwise—to have wept during three days before the stroke of Brutus fell.Even the remains of the dead animals were of high importance in Teutonic divination. Their flesh was pre-eminently witches’ food; horses’ hoofs made witches’ drinking-cups; the pipers at witches’ revels played on horses’ heads, which were besides an indispensable adjunct to many diabolical ceremonies.[125]

124.Gubernatis,Zoological Mythology, vol. i. p. 349.

Homer describes the Trojans as flinging live horses into the Scamander;[126]and the Persians in the time of Herodotus occasionally resorted to the same barbarous means of propitiating rivers. In honour of the sun—perhaps the legitimate claimant to such honours—horses were immolated on the summit of Taygetus, and a team of four, with chariot attached, was yearly sunk by the Rhodians into the sea. The Argives worshipped Poseidon with similar rites,[127]certainly not learned from the Phœnicians, to whom they were unknown. They were unknown as well to the Homeric Greeks; for the slaughter on the funeral-pyre of Patroclus belonged to a different order of ideas. Here the prompting motive was that ingrained desire to supply the needs, moral and physical, of the dead, which led to so many blood-stained obsequies. Horses and dogs fell, in an especial manner, victims to its prevalence; and have consequently a prominent place on early Greek tomb-reliefs representing the future state.[128]

125.Grimm and Stallybrass,op. cit.pp. 47, 659, 1050.

126.Iliad, xxi. 132.

127.Pausanias, lib. iii. cap. 20, viii. 7.

128.Gardner,Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. v. p. 130.

Homer’s description of the Troad as ‘rich in horses’ has been very scantily justified by the results of underground exploration. Few of the animal’s bones were found at Hissarlik, none at the neighbouring Hanai-Tepe.[129]Yet every Trojan at the present day is a born rider.[130]Locomotion on horseback is universal, at all ages, and for both sexes. Priam himself could scarcely now be accommodated with a mule-cart. He should leave the Pergamus, if at all, mounted in some fashion on the back of a steed.

129.Calvert, in Schliemann’sIlios, p. 711.

130.Virchow,Abhandlungen Berlin. Acad.1879, p. 62.

The author of the Iliad, however, was no equestrian. His knowledge of horses was otherwise acquired. But how intimate and accurate that knowledge was, one example may suffice to show. A thunderstorm, sent by Zeus in tardy fulfilment of his promise to Thetis, caused a panic among the Greeks; the bravest yielded to the contagion of fear; there was asauve qui peutto the ships. In the wild rout,

Gerenian Nestor, aged prop of Greece,Alone remained, and he against his will,His horse sore wounded by an arrow shotBy godlike Paris, fair-hair’d Helen’s lord:Just on the crown, where close behind the headFirst springs the mane, the deadliest spot of all,The arrow struck him; madden’d with the painHe rear’d, then plunging forward, with the shaftFix’d in his brain, and rolling in the dust,The other steeds in dire confusion threw.[131]

Gerenian Nestor, aged prop of Greece,

Alone remained, and he against his will,

His horse sore wounded by an arrow shot

By godlike Paris, fair-hair’d Helen’s lord:

Just on the crown, where close behind the head

First springs the mane, the deadliest spot of all,

The arrow struck him; madden’d with the pain

He rear’d, then plunging forward, with the shaft

Fix’d in his brain, and rolling in the dust,

The other steeds in dire confusion threw.[131]

131.Iliad, viii. 80-86 (Lord Derby’s trans.).

The most vulnerable point is here pointed out with anatomical correctness.[132]Exactly where the mane begins, the bony shield of the skull comes to an end, and the route to the brain, especially to a dart coming, like that of Paris, from behind, lies comparatively open. The sudden upspringing of the death-smitten creature, followed by his struggle on the ground, is also perfectly true to nature, and suggests personal observation of the occurrence described.

132.Buchholz,Homer. Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 175.

Observation, both close and sympathetic, assuredly dictated the brilliant lines in which Paris, issuing from the Scæan gate, is compared to a courser breaking loose from confinement to disport himself in the open.

As some proud steed, at well-fill’d manger fed,His halter broken, neighing, scours the plain,And revels in the widely-flowing streamTo bathe his sides; then tossing high his head,While o’er his shoulders streams his ample mane,Light borne on active limbs, in conscious pride,To the wide pastures of the mares he flies.[133]

As some proud steed, at well-fill’d manger fed,

His halter broken, neighing, scours the plain,

And revels in the widely-flowing stream

To bathe his sides; then tossing high his head,

While o’er his shoulders streams his ample mane,

Light borne on active limbs, in conscious pride,

To the wide pastures of the mares he flies.[133]

The simile, less happily appropriated to Hector, is repeated in a subsequent part of the poem;[134]and it was by Virgil transferred bodily to the Eleventh Æneid, where it serves to adorn Turnus, the wearer of many borrowed Iliadic plumes. They, however, it must be admitted, make a splendid show in their new setting.

133.Iliad, vi. 506-11 (Lord Derby’s trans.).

134.Ib.xv. 263.

The makers of the Iliad, whether few or many, were at least unanimous in their fervid admiration for the horse. The verses glow with a kind of rapture of enjoyment that describe his strength, beauty, and swiftness, his eager spirit and fine nervous organisation, his docility to trusted guidance, his intelligent participation in human contentions and pursuits. No animal has elsewhere achieved true epic personality;[135]no animal has been raised to so high a dignity in art. The whole Iliad might be called an ‘Aristeia’ or eulogistic celebration of the species.

135.Cf. Milchhöfer,Die Anfänge der Kunst, p. 57.

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