FOOTNOTES:

"Woe is me, son of brave Peleus! Verily thou shalt hear right sorrowful tidings—Patroclus lies slain; round his corpse they are fighting; stripped it lies, but plumèd Hector hath his armor."So he spake. But a black cloud of woe covered the hero. With both hands he took the dust of ashes and flung them down upon his head, and disfigured his fair face, and on his fragrant tunic lay the black cinders. But he, huge in his hugeness, stretched upon the dust lay, and with his hands he tore and ravaged his hair."

"Woe is me, son of brave Peleus! Verily thou shalt hear right sorrowful tidings—Patroclus lies slain; round his corpse they are fighting; stripped it lies, but plumèd Hector hath his armor.

"So he spake. But a black cloud of woe covered the hero. With both hands he took the dust of ashes and flung them down upon his head, and disfigured his fair face, and on his fragrant tunic lay the black cinders. But he, huge in his hugeness, stretched upon the dust lay, and with his hands he tore and ravaged his hair."

Thus Achilles receives the first shock of grief. When his mother rises from the sea to comfort him, he refuses consolation, and cries:

"My mother, the Olympian hath done all these things; but of what pleasure is this to me, now that my dear friend is dead, Patroclus, whom above all my comrades I honored, even as myself? Him have I slain!"

This is the pith and marrow of his anguish. I slew Patroclus: it was I who sent him forth to fight. "Now," he resumes a fewlines lower down—"now my soul bids me no longer live or be with men, save only I strike Hector first and slay him with my spear, and make him pay the fine of Patroclus."

Thetis reminds him that if he slay Hector, his own life will be short. This only serves to turn his anguish into desperate resolve:

"Straight let me die, seeing I might not come to the aid of my comrade when he was dying. Far from his fatherland he perished. He looked for me that I should have been his helper. But now, since never to my home shall I return, nor was I a light in trouble to Patroclus, nor to my other comrades who are slain by hundreds by the godlike Hector—while I here sit beside the ships, a useless load upon the earth—I who am such as there is none else like me among brazen-coated Achaians in the war—others may be better perchance in council—now let strife perish from among gods and men, with anger which stirs up the prudent even to fury."

Thus he foregoes his wrath, and flings resentment from him like a mantle. Then he rises ready for the fight. "If death come, let death be welcome. Death came to Herakles. In his due time he comes to me. Meanwhile I thirst to make Dardan ladies widows in the land."

When he next appears, his very form and outward semblance are transfigured. He stands alone and unarmed in the trench. A fire surrounds his head and flames upon his curls. His voice thrills the armies like the blare of a victorious trumpet. This is how Homer has described him shouting in the trench (xviii. 203):

"But Achilles, dear to Zeus, arose, and around his mighty shoulders Athene cast her tasselled ægis; and about his head the queenly goddess set a crown of golden mist, and from it she made blaze a dazzling flame. As when smoke rises to the clear sky from a town, afar from an island which foemen beleaguer, who all day long contend in grisly war, issuing from their own town; but at sundown beacons blaze in rows, and on high the glare goes up, and soars for neighboring men to see, if haply warders-off of woe may come tothem with ships—so from the head of Achilles the flame went up to heaven. He stood at the trench, away from the wall, nor joined the Achaians; for he honored his mother's wise command. There he stood and shouted; and beside him Pallas Athene cried; but among the Trojans he raised infinite tumult. As when a mighty voice, when the trumpet shrills for the murderous foemen that surround a town, so was the mighty voice of the son of Æacus. They then, when they heard the brazen cry of Æacides, in the breasts of all of them the heart was troubled; but the fair-maned horses turned the cars backward; for in their heart they knew the sorrows that were to be. And the charioteers were stricken when they saw the tireless flame terrible above the head of big-hearted Peleus's son blazing. The gray-eyed goddess Athene kindled it. Thrice above the trench shouted the godlike Achilles in his might; thrice were the Trojans and their noble allies troubled."

From this moment the action of theIliadadvances rapidly. Achilles takes his proper place, and occupies the whole stage. The body of Patroclus is brought home to him; he mourns over it, and promises to bury it when he shall have slain Hector, and slaughtered twelve sons of the Trojans on the pyre. Then he reconciles himself with Agamemnon, and formally renounces anger. Lastly, when he has put on the divine armor made for him by Hephæstus, he ascends his car, and hastens into the fight. But again at this point, when Achilles is at the very pitch and summit of his glory, the voice of fate is heard. It is with the promise of the tomb that he enters the battle. Turn to book xix. 399. Achilles has just mounted his chariot:

"Fiercely did he cheer the horses of his sire. Xanthus and Balius, far-famed children of Podargé, take other heed, I warn ye, how to save your master, and to bring him to the Danaan host, returning of war satisfied; nor leave him, like Patroclus, dead there on the field."To him, then, from beneath the yoke spake the fleet-footed horse Xanthus, and straightway drooped his head; and all his mane, escaping from the collar by the yoke, fell earthward. Goddess Here, of the white arms, gave him speech:"Verily shall we save thee yet this time, fierce Achilles; but close at handis thy doomsday. Nor of this are we the cause, but great God in heaven and resistless fate. For neither was it by our sloth or sluggishness that Trojans stripped the arms from Patroclus his shoulders; but of gods the best, whom fair-haired Leto bare, slew him among the foremost, and gave to Hector glory of the deed. We, though we should run apace with Zephyr's breath, the fleetest, as 'tis said, yet for thee it is decreed to perish by the might of God and man."When he had thus spoken the Erinnyes stayed his voice; and, high in wrath, fleet-foot Achilles answered him:"Xanthus! why prophesy my death? Thou hast no call. Right well know I, too, that it is my fate to perish here, far from dear sire and mother; yet for all this will I not surcease before I satiate the Trojans with war."He spoke, and vanward held his steeds with mighty yell."

"To him, then, from beneath the yoke spake the fleet-footed horse Xanthus, and straightway drooped his head; and all his mane, escaping from the collar by the yoke, fell earthward. Goddess Here, of the white arms, gave him speech:

"Verily shall we save thee yet this time, fierce Achilles; but close at handis thy doomsday. Nor of this are we the cause, but great God in heaven and resistless fate. For neither was it by our sloth or sluggishness that Trojans stripped the arms from Patroclus his shoulders; but of gods the best, whom fair-haired Leto bare, slew him among the foremost, and gave to Hector glory of the deed. We, though we should run apace with Zephyr's breath, the fleetest, as 'tis said, yet for thee it is decreed to perish by the might of God and man.

"When he had thus spoken the Erinnyes stayed his voice; and, high in wrath, fleet-foot Achilles answered him:

"Xanthus! why prophesy my death? Thou hast no call. Right well know I, too, that it is my fate to perish here, far from dear sire and mother; yet for all this will I not surcease before I satiate the Trojans with war.

"He spoke, and vanward held his steeds with mighty yell."

This dialogue between Achilles and Xanthus is not without great importance. Homer is about to show the hero raging in carnage, exulting over suppliants and slain foes, terrible in his ferocity. It is consistent with the whole character of Achilles, who is fiery, of indomitable fury, that he should act thus. Stung as he is by remorse and by the sorrow for Patroclus, which does not unnerve him, but rather kindles his whole spirit to a flame, we are prepared to see him fierce even to cruelty. But when we know that in the midst of the carnage he is himself moving a dying man, when we remember that he is sending his slain foes like messengers before his face to Hades, when we keep the warning words of Thetis and of Xanthus in our minds, then the grim frenzy of Achilles becomes dignified. The world is in a manner over for him, and he appears the incarnation of disdainful anger and revengeful love, the conscious scourge of God and instrument of destiny. We need not go through the details of the battle, in which Achilles drives the Trojans before him, and is only withheld by the direct interposition of the gods from carrying Ilium by assault. To borrow a simile from Dante, his foes are like frogs scurrying away from the approach of their great foe, thewater-snake. Then follow the episode of Lycaon's slaughter, the fight with the river-gods, and the death of Hector. To the assembled Greeks Achilles cries (xxii. 386):

"By the ships, a corpse, unburied, unbewailed, lies Patroclus; but of him I will not be unmindful so long as I abide among the living and my knees have movement. Nay, should there be oblivion of the dead in Hades, yet I even there will remember my loved comrade. But rise, ye youths of Achaia, and singing Pæan, let us hasten to the ships, and take this slain man with us. Great glory have we got. Divine Hector have we slain, to whom the Trojans in their city prayed as to a god."

So the Pæan rings. But Achilles by the ships, after the hateful banquet, as he calls it in the sorrowful loathing of all comfort, has been finished, lays himself to sleep (xxiii. 59):

"The son of Peleus by the shore of the roaring sea lay, heavily groaning, surrounded by his Myrmidons; on a fair space of sand he lay, where the waves lapped the beach. Then slumber took him, loosing the cares of his heart, and mantling softly around him; for sorely wearied were his radiant limbs with driving Hector on by windy Troy. There to him came the soul of poor Patroclus, in all things like himself—in stature, and in the beauty of his eyes and voice; and on his form was raiment like his own. He stood above the hero's head, and spake to him:"Sleepest thou, and me hast thou forgotten, Achilles? Not in my life wert thou neglectful of me, but in death. Bury me soon, that I may pass the gates of Hades. Far off the souls, the shadows of the dead, repel me, nor suffer me to join them on the river-bank; but, as it is, thus I roam around the wide-doored house of Hades. But stretch to me thy hand, I entreat; for never again shall I return from Hades when once ye shall have given me the meed of funeral fire. Nay, never shall we sit in life apart from our dear comrades, and take counsel together. But me hath hateful fate enveloped—fate that was mine at the moment of my birth. And for thyself, divine Achilles, it is doomed to die before the noble Trojans' wall. Another thing I will say to thee, and bid thee do it if thou wilt obey me: Lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles, but lay them together; for we were brought up together in your house, when Menœtius brought me, a child, from Opus to your house, because of woful bloodshed on the day in which I slew the sonof Amphidamas, myself a child, not willing it, but in anger at our games. Then did the horseman, Peleus, take me, and rear me in his house, and cause me to be called thy squire. So, then, let one grave also hide the bones of both of us, the golden urn thy goddess-mother gave to thee."Him answered swift-footed Achilles:"Why, dearest and most honored, hast thou hither come, to lay on me this thy behest? All things most certainly will I perform, and bow to what thou biddest. But stand thou near: even for one moment let us throw our arms upon each other's neck, and take our fill of sorrowful wailing."So spake he, and with his outstretched hands he clasped, but could not seize. The spirit, earthward, like smoke, vanished with a shriek. Then all astonished arose Achilles, and beat his palms together, and spoke a piteous word:"Heavens! is there, then, among the dead soul and the shade of life, but thought is theirs no more at all? For through the night the soul of poor Patroclus stood above my head, wailing and sorrowing loud, and bade me do his will. It was the very semblance of himself."So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire of lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them appeared rose-fingered dawn about the piteous corpse."

"Sleepest thou, and me hast thou forgotten, Achilles? Not in my life wert thou neglectful of me, but in death. Bury me soon, that I may pass the gates of Hades. Far off the souls, the shadows of the dead, repel me, nor suffer me to join them on the river-bank; but, as it is, thus I roam around the wide-doored house of Hades. But stretch to me thy hand, I entreat; for never again shall I return from Hades when once ye shall have given me the meed of funeral fire. Nay, never shall we sit in life apart from our dear comrades, and take counsel together. But me hath hateful fate enveloped—fate that was mine at the moment of my birth. And for thyself, divine Achilles, it is doomed to die before the noble Trojans' wall. Another thing I will say to thee, and bid thee do it if thou wilt obey me: Lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles, but lay them together; for we were brought up together in your house, when Menœtius brought me, a child, from Opus to your house, because of woful bloodshed on the day in which I slew the sonof Amphidamas, myself a child, not willing it, but in anger at our games. Then did the horseman, Peleus, take me, and rear me in his house, and cause me to be called thy squire. So, then, let one grave also hide the bones of both of us, the golden urn thy goddess-mother gave to thee.

"Him answered swift-footed Achilles:

"Why, dearest and most honored, hast thou hither come, to lay on me this thy behest? All things most certainly will I perform, and bow to what thou biddest. But stand thou near: even for one moment let us throw our arms upon each other's neck, and take our fill of sorrowful wailing.

"So spake he, and with his outstretched hands he clasped, but could not seize. The spirit, earthward, like smoke, vanished with a shriek. Then all astonished arose Achilles, and beat his palms together, and spoke a piteous word:

"Heavens! is there, then, among the dead soul and the shade of life, but thought is theirs no more at all? For through the night the soul of poor Patroclus stood above my head, wailing and sorrowing loud, and bade me do his will. It was the very semblance of himself.

"So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire of lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them appeared rose-fingered dawn about the piteous corpse."

There is surely nothing more thrilling in its pathos throughout the whole range of poetry than this scene, in which the iron-hearted conqueror of Hector holds ineffectual communing in dreams with his dear, lost, never-to-be-forgotten friend. But now the pyre is ready to be heaped, and the obsequies of Patroclus are on the point of being celebrated. Thereupon Achilles cuts his tawny curls, which he wore clustering for Spercheius, and places them in the hand of dead Patroclus. At the sight of this token that Achilles will return no more to Hellas, but that he must die and lie beside his friend, all the people fall to lamentation. Agamemnon has to arouse them to prepare the pyre. A hundred feet each way is it built up; oxen and sheep are slaughtered and placed upon the wood, with jars of honey and olive-oil. Horses, too, and dogs are slain to serve the dead man on his journey; and twelve sons of the great-souled Trojans are sacrificed to the disconsolate ghost. Then Achilles cast fire upon the wood, and wailed, and called on his loved friend by name:

"Hail, Patroclus! I greet thee even in the tomb: for now I am performing all that erst I promised. Twelve valiant sons of the great-souled Trojans with thee the fire devours; but Hector, son of Priam, I will give to no fire to feed on, but to dogs."

Meanwhile the pyre of Patroclus refused to burn, and Achilles summoned the two winds, Boreas and Zephyrus, to help him. They at this time were feasting in the house of Zephyrus, and Iris had to fetch them from their cups. They rose and drove the clouds before them, and furrowed up the sea, and passed to fertile Troy, and fell upon the pyre, and the great flame crackled, hugely blazing:

"All night they around the pyre together cast a flame, blowing with shrill breath, and all night swift Achilles, from a golden bowl, holding a double goblet, drew wine, and poured it on the ground, and soaked the earth, calling upon the soul of poor Patroclus. As when a father wails who burns the bones of his son unwed, so wailed Achilles, burning his friend's bones, pacing slowly round the fire, and uttering groan on groan."But when the star of dawn came to herald light upon the earth, whom following morn, with saffron robe, spread across the sea, then the pyre languished and the flame was stayed."The winds again went homeward, back across the Thracian deep. It groaned beneath them, raging with the billow's swell. But the son of Peleus turned from the pyre, and lay down weary, and sweet sleep came upon him."

"But when the star of dawn came to herald light upon the earth, whom following morn, with saffron robe, spread across the sea, then the pyre languished and the flame was stayed.

"The winds again went homeward, back across the Thracian deep. It groaned beneath them, raging with the billow's swell. But the son of Peleus turned from the pyre, and lay down weary, and sweet sleep came upon him."

After this manner was the burning of Patroclus. And here the action of theIliadmay be said to end. What follows in the last two books is, however, of the greatest importance in adding dignity to the character of Achilles, and in producing that sense of repose, that pacification of the more violent emotions, which we require in the highest works of tragic art. First comethe games around the barrow of Patroclus. Presiding over them is Achilles, who opens his treasure-house to the combatants with royal generosity, forever mindful that in honoring them he is paying honor to the great sad ghost of his dead friend. The bitterness of his sorrow is past; his thirst for vengeance is assuaged. Radiant and tranquil he appears among the chiefs of the Achaians; and to Agamemnon he displays marked courtesy.

But it is not enough to show us Achilles serene in the accomplishment of his last service to Patroclus. As the crowning scene in the wholeIliad, Homer has contrived to make us feel that, after all, Achilles is a man. The wrathful and revengeful hero, who bearded Agamemnon on his throne, and who slew the unarmed suppliant Lycaon, relents in pity at a father's prayer. Priam, in the tent of Achilles, presents one of the most touching pictures to be found in poetry. We know the leonine fierceness of Achilles; we know how he has cherished the thought of insult to dead Hector as a final tribute to his friend: even now he is brooding in his lair over the Trojan corpse. Into this lion's den the old king ventures. Instead of springing on him, as we might have feared, Achilles is found sublime in generosity of soul. Begging Patroclus to forgive him for robbing his ghost of this last satisfaction, he relinquishes to Priam the body of his son. Yet herein there is nothing sentimental. Achilles is still the same—swift to anger and haughty, but human withal, and tender-hearted to the tears of an enemy at his mercy.

This is the last mention made of Achilles in theIliad. The hero, whom we have seen so noble in his interview with Priam, was destined within a few days to die before the walls of Troy, slain by the arrow of Paris.[12]His ashes were mingled with those of Patroclus. In their death they were not divided.

Once again in the Homeric poems does Achilles appear. But this time he is a ghost among the pale shadows of Elysium (Od.xi. 466):

"Thereupon came the soul of Achilles, son of Peleus, and of Patroclus, and of brave Antilochus, and of Ajax, who was first in form and stature among the Achaians after great Peleides. The soul of fleet Æacides knew me, and, wailing, he thus spake:"Zeus-born son of Laertes, wily Ulysses, why in thy heart, unhappy man, dost thou design a deed too great for mortals? How darest thou descend to Hades, where dwell the thoughtless dead, the phantoms of men whose life is done?"So he spake; but I in turn addressed him:"Achilles, son of Peleus, greatest by far of Achaians, I am come to learn of Teiresias concerning my return to Ithaca. But none of men in elder days, or of those to be, is more blessed than thou art, Achilles; for in life the Argives honored thee like a god, and now again in thy greatness thou rulest the dead here where thou art. Therefore be not grieved at death, Achilles."So spake I, and he straightway made answer:"Console not me in death, noble Odysseus! Would rather that I were a bondsman of the glebe, the servant of a master, of some poor man, whose living were but scanty, than thus to be the king of all the nations of the dead."

"Zeus-born son of Laertes, wily Ulysses, why in thy heart, unhappy man, dost thou design a deed too great for mortals? How darest thou descend to Hades, where dwell the thoughtless dead, the phantoms of men whose life is done?

"So he spake; but I in turn addressed him:

"Achilles, son of Peleus, greatest by far of Achaians, I am come to learn of Teiresias concerning my return to Ithaca. But none of men in elder days, or of those to be, is more blessed than thou art, Achilles; for in life the Argives honored thee like a god, and now again in thy greatness thou rulest the dead here where thou art. Therefore be not grieved at death, Achilles.

"So spake I, and he straightway made answer:

"Console not me in death, noble Odysseus! Would rather that I were a bondsman of the glebe, the servant of a master, of some poor man, whose living were but scanty, than thus to be the king of all the nations of the dead."

Some apology may be needed for these numerous quotations from a poem which is hardly less widely known and read than Shakespeare or the Bible. By no other method, however, would it have been possible to bring out into prominence the chief features of the hero whom Homer thought sufficient for the subject of the greatest epic of the world. For us Achilles has yet another interest. He, more than any character of fiction, reflects the qualities of the Greek race in its heroic age. His vices of passion and ungovernable pride, his virtue of splendid human heroism, his free individuality asserted in the scorn of fate, are representative of that Hellas which afterwards, at Marathon and Salamis, was destined to inaugurate a new era of spiritual freedom formankind. It is impossible for us to sympathize with him wholly, or to admire him otherwise than as we admire a supreme work of art; so far is he removed from our so-called proprieties of moral taste and feeling. But we can study in him the type of a by-gone, infinitely valuable period of the world's life, of that age in which the human spirit was emerging from the confused passions and sordid needs of barbarism into the higher emotions and more refined aspirations of civilization. Of this dawn, this boyhood of humanity, Achilles is the fierce and fiery hero. He is the ideal of a race not essentially moral or political, of a nation which subordinated morals to art, and politics to personality; and even of that race he idealizes the youth rather than the manhood. In some respects Odysseus is a truer representative of the delicate and subtle spirit which survived all changes in the Greeks. But Achilles, far more than Odysseus, is an impersonation of the Hellenic genius, superb in its youthfulness, doomed to immature decay, yet brilliant at every stage of its brief career.

To exaggerate the importance of Achilles in the education of the Greeks, who used theIliadas their Bible, and were keenly sensitive to all artistic influences, would be difficult. He was the incarnation of their chivalry, the fountain of their sense of honor. The full development of this subject would require more space than I can here give to it. It will be enough to touch upon the friendship of Achilles for Patroclus as the central point of Hellenic chivalry; and to advert to the reappearance of his type of character in Alexander at the very moment when the force of Hellas seemed to be exhausted.

Nearly all the historians of Greece have failed to insist upon the fact that fraternity in arms played for the Greek race the same part as the idealization of women for the knighthood of feudal Europe. Greek mythology and history are full of tales of friendship, which can only be paralleled by the story of David andJonathan in our Bible. The legends of Herakles and Hylas, of Theseus and Peirithous, of Apollo and Hyacinth, of Orestes and Pylades, occur immediately to the mind. Among the noblest patriots, tyrannicides, law-givers, and self-devoted heroes in the early times of Greece, we always find the names of friends and comrades recorded with peculiar honor. Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who slew the despot Hipparchus at Athens; Diocles and Philolaus, who gave laws to Thebes; Chariton and Melanippus, who resisted the sway of Phalaris in Sicily; Cratinus and Aristodemus, who devoted their lives to propitiate offended deities when a plague had fallen upon Athens—these comrades, stanch to each other in their love, and elevated by friendship to the pitch of noblest enthusiasm, were among the favorite saints of Greek legendary history. In a word, the chivalry of Hellas found its motive force in friendship rather than in the love of women; and the motive force of all chivalry is a generous, soul-exalting, unselfish passion. The fruit which friendship bore among the Greeks was courage in the face of danger, indifference to life when honor was at stake, patriotic ardor, the love of liberty, and lion-hearted rivalry in battle. "Tyrants," said Plato, "stand in awe of friends."

It may seem at first sight paradoxical to speak at all of Greek chivalry, since this word, by its very etymology, is appropriated to a mediæval institution. Yet when we inquire what chivalry means, we find that it implies a permanent state of personal emotion, which raises human life above the realities of every-day experience, and inspires men with unselfish impulses. Furthermore, this passionate condition of the soul in chivalry is connected with a powerful military enthusiasm, severing the knight from all vile things, impelling him to the achievement of great deeds, and breeding in his soul a self-regardless temper. Both the ancient and the mediæval forms of chivalry included love and arms. The heroes and the knights alike were lovers and warriors. The passion which Plato called madness in thePhædrus, and which the Provençal troubadours knew by the name ofJoie, was excited in the heroes by their friends, and in the knights by their ladies. But the emotion was substantially the same; nor, with the tale of Patroclus and with the whole of Greek history before us, can we allow our modern inaptitude for devoted friendship to blind us to the seriousness of this passion among the Greeks. Besides war and love, chivalry implies a third enthusiasm. In the case of the Greek heroes this was patriotic; in the case of the mediæval knights it was religious. Thus, antique chivalry may be described as a compound of military, amatory, and patriotic passions meeting in one enthusiastic habit of the soul; mediæval chivalry as a compound of military, amatory, and religious passions meeting in a similar enthusiastic habit of soul. It is hardly necessary to point out the differences between Hellenic heroism and Teutonic knighthood, or to show how far the former failed to influence society as favorably as the latter. The Christian chivalry of mercy, forgiveness, gentleness, and long-suffering, which claims the title of charity in armor, was a post-Hellenic ideal. Greeks could not have comprehended the oath which Arthur imposed upon his knights, and which ran in the following words: "He charged them never to do outrage nor murder, and alway to flee treason; also by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, and alway to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succor upon pain of death." The murder of Lycaon by Achilles, the butchery of Dolon by Diomedes, and the treachery practised upon Philoctetes by Odysseus are sufficiently at variance with the spirit of this oath; nor do any of the heroic legends tell a tale of courtesy towards women. Thus much about the unchivalrous aspects of Greek heroism I have thought it right to say, before returning to the view which I first stated, that military friendship among the Greeks played for Hellenic civilization a part notwholly dissimilar to that of chivalrous love among the nations of mediæval Europe. Regarded as an institution, with ethics of its own, and with peculiar social and political regulations, this Greek chivalry was specially Dorian.[13]Yet it spread through all the states of Hellas. In Athens it allied itself with philosophy, as afterwards at Florence did the chivalry of knighthood; and in Thebes, during the last struggle for Hellenic freedom, it blazed forth in the heroism of the three hundred, who fell together face-forward to the Macedonian lances at Chæronea.[14]Meanwhile, Achilles remained for all Greece the eponym of passionate friendship; and even in the later periods of Greek poetry the most appropriate title for a pair of noble comrades was "Achilleian." Concerning the abuse and debasement of such passion among the historic Greeks, this is not the place to speak. Achilles and Patroclus cannot be charged with having sanctioned by example any vice, however much posterity may have read its own moods of thought and feeling into Homer.

Æschylus wrote a tragedy entitled theMyrmidones, in commemoration of the love of Achilles; and, perhaps, few things among the lost treasures of Greek literature are so much to be regretted as this play, which would have cast clear light upon the most romantic of Greek legends. It may also be mentioned in passing that we possess fragments of a play of Sophocles which bears the name Ἀχιλλέως ἔρασται, orLovers of Achilles; but what its subject was, and whether the drama was satyric, as seems probable, or not, we do not know. The beautiful passage in which love is compared to a piece of glittering ice held in the hand of children, has been preserved from it by Stobæus.

Enough, fortunately, has survived the ruin of time to enable us to conjecture how Æschylus, in theMyrmidones, handled the materials afforded him by Homer. The play, as was frequent, took its name from the chorus who represented the contingent of Thessalian warriors led by Peleus's son against Troy. It opened, if we may trust the scholiast to theFrogsof Aristophanes, with a reproach uttered by the chorus against Achilles for his inactivity:

τάδε μὲν λεύσσεις, φαίδιμ' Ἀχιλλεῦ,δοριλυμάντους Δαναῶν μόχθουςοὓς ... εἴσω κλισίας.

"Seest thou these things, glorious Achilles—the sufferings of the Danaans beneath victorious spears? Whom thou within thy tent—" Here the fragment breaks off; but enough has been said to strike the keynote of the tragedy. The next fragment, according to Dindorf's arrangement, formed, probably, part of Achilles' defence.[15]It is written in iambics, and contains the famous simile of the eagle stricken to death by an arrow fledged with his own feather. Like that eagle, argues the hero, have we Greeks been smitten by our own ill-counsel. After the drama has thus been opened, the first great incident seems to have been the arrival of the embassy of Phœnix at Achilles' tent. One corrupt, but precious fragment, put by Aristophanes as a quotation into the mouth of Euripides in theFrogs, indicates the line of argument taken by the ambassadors:

Φθιῶτ' Ἀχιλεῦ, τί ποτ' ἀνδροδάϊκτον ἀκουὼνἰήκοπον οὐ πελάζεις ἐπ' ἀρωγάν;

Though the Greek as it stands is untranslatable, the meaning is pretty clearly this: Achilles of Phthia, how can you bear to hear of these woes nor lend a helping hand? The next fragmentmust be received with caution. It occurs in theFrogsas a quotation:

Βέβληκ' Ἀχιλλεὺς δύο κύβω καὶ τέτταρα.Achilles has cast two dice, and four.

Βέβληκ' Ἀχιλλεὺς δύο κύβω καὶ τέτταρα.

Achilles has cast two dice, and four.

On which the scholiast makes the following remark: "This is from theMyrmidones; for the poet feigned them playing dice; and it is the custom of gamesters to cry thus: two, four, three, five. Dionysus says this to show that Æschylus has won." Another scholiast puts it in doubt whether the verse be taken from theTelephusof Euripides or some other source. The foundation is, therefore, too slender to build upon securely; else we might imagine that, after the departure of the ambassadors, and perhaps after the equipment of Patroclus for the war, Achilles was represented by Æschylus as whiling away the time with his companions at a game of hazard. Then enters Antilochus, the messenger of bad news. He recites the death of Patroclus, and lifts up his voice in lamentation. Our next fragment brings the whole scene vividly before us:

Ἀντίλοχ', ἀποίμωξόν με τοῦ τεθνηκότοςτὸν ζῶντα μᾶλλον.

The words are spoken undoubtedly by Achilles: "Antilochus, wail thou for me rather than for the dead—for me who live." It is again from a comedy of Aristophanes, theEcclesiazusæ, that this exclamation comes; and in passing we may remark that such frequent citations from this single play of Æschylus by a comic poet prove its popularity at Athens. Between the narration of Antilochus and the bringing-in of the dead body of Patroclus there must have been a solemn pause in the dramatic action, which Æschylus, no doubt, filled up with one of his great choric passages. Then followed the crowning scene in the tragedy. Achilles, front to front with the corpse of his friend, uttered alamentation, which the ancients seem to have regarded as the very ecstasy of grief and love and passionate remembrance. Lucian, quoting one of the lines of this lament, introduces it with words that prove the strong impression it produced: "Achilles, when he bemoaned Patroclus's death, in his unhusbanded passion burst forth into the very truth." To quote and comment upon the three lines which have been preserved from this unique Threnos would be here impossible. To understand them at all is difficult, and to recompose from them the hero's speech is beyond our power. The value of the meagre and conflicting citations given by Plutarch, Athenæus, and Lucian lies in the impression they convey of the deep effect wrought upon Greek sympathy by the passion of the soliloquy. When we call to mind the lamentation uttered by Teucer over the corpse of Ajax in the tragedy of Sophocles, we may imagine how the genius of Æschylus rose to the height of this occasion in hisMyrmidones. In what way the drama ended is not known. We may, however, hazard a conjecture that the poet did not leave the hero without some outlook into the future, and that the solemn note of reconciliation upon which the tragedy closed responded to the first querulous interrogation of the chorus at its commencement. The situation was a grand one for working out that purification of the passions which Greek tragedy required. The sullen and selfish wrath of Achilles had brought its bitter consequence of suffering and sorrow for the hero, as well as of disaster for the host. Out of that deadly suffering of Achilles—out of the paroxysm of grief beside the body of his friend—has grown a nobler form of anger, which will bring salvation to his country at the certain loss of his own life. Can we doubt that Æschylus availed himself of this so solemn and sublime a cadence? The dead march and the funeral lamentations for Patroclus mingle with the neighing of war-horses and the braying of the trumpets that shall lead the Myrmidons towar. And over and above all sounds of the grief that is passed and of the triumph that is to follow is heard the voice of fate pronouncing the death-doom of the hero, on whose ἁμαρτία the tragic movement has depended.

Thus, in the prime of Athens, the poet-warrior of Marathon, the prophet of the highest Hellenic inspiration, handled a legend which was dear to his people, and which to them spoke more, perhaps, than it can do to us. Plato, discussing theMyrmidonesof Æschylus, remarks in theSymposiumthat the tragic poet was wrong to make Achilles the lover of Patroclus, seeing that Patroclus was the elder of the two, and that Achilles was the youngest and most beautiful of all the Greeks. The fact, however, is that Homer himself raises no question in our minds about the relations of lover and beloved. Achilles and Patroclus are comrades. Their friendship is equal. It was only the reflective activity of the Greek mind, working upon the Homeric legend by the light of subsequent custom, which introduced these distinctions. The humanity of Homer was purer, larger, and more sane than that of his posterity among the Hellenes. Still, it may be worth while suggesting that Homer, perhaps, intended in Hector and Achilles to contrast domestic love with the love of comrades. The tenderness of Hector for Andromache, side by side with the fierce passion of Achilles, seems to account, at least in some measure, for the preference felt for Hector in the Middle Ages. Achilles controlled the Greek imagination. Hector attracted the sympathies of mediæval chivalry, and took his place upon the list of knightly worthies.[16]Masculine love was Hellenic. The love of idealized womanhood was romantic. Homer, the sovereign poet, understood both passions of the human heart, delineating the one in Achilles without effeminacy, the other in Hector without sickly sentiment. At the same time, Hector's connection with thedestinies of Rome and his appearance in theÆneid, if only as a ghost, must not be forgotten when we estimate the reasons why he eclipsed Achilles in the Middle Ages.

It is not till we reach Alexander the Great that we find how truly Achilles was the type of the Greek people, and to what extent he had controlled their growth. Alexander expressed in real life that ideal which in Homer's poetry had been displayed by Achilles. Alexander set himself to imitate Achilles. His tutor, Lysimachus, found favor in the eyes of the royal family of Macedon, by comparing Philip to Peleus, his son to Achilles, and himself to Phœnix. On all his expeditions Alexander carried with him a copy of theIliad, calling it "a perfect portable treasure of military virtue." It was in the spirit of the Homeric age that he went forth to conquer Asia. And when he reached the plain of Troy, it was to the tomb of Achilles that he paid special homage. There he poured libations to the mighty ghost, anointed his grave, and, as Plutarch says, "ran naked about his tomb, and crowned it with garlands, declaring how happy he esteemed him in having, while he lived, so faithful a friend, and, when he was dead, so famous a poet to proclaim his actions." We have seen that the two chief passions of Achilles were his anger and his love. In both of these Alexander followed him. The passage just quoted from Plutarch hints at the envy with which Alexander regarded the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus. In his own life he entertained for Hephæstion a like passion. When Hephæstion died of fever at Ecbatana, Alexander exaggerated the fury and the anguish of the son of Peleus. He went forth and slew a whole tribe—the Cosseans—as a sacrifice to the soul of his comrade. He threw down the battlements of neighboring cities, and forbade all signs of merry-making in his camp. Meanwhile he refused food and comfort, till an oracle from Ammon ordained that divine honors should be paid Hephæstion. Then Alexanderraised a pyre, like that of Patroclus in theIliad, except that the pyre of Hephæstion cost 10,000 talents, and was adorned with all the splendor of Greek art in its prime. Here the Homeric ceremonies were performed. Games and races took place; then, like Achilles, having paid this homage to his friend, of bloodshed, costly gifts, and obsequies, Alexander at last rested from his grief. In this extravagance of love for a friend we see the direct working of theIliadon the mind of the Macedonian king. But the realities of life fall far short of the poet's dream. Neither the love nor the sorrow of Alexander for Hephæstion is so touching as the love and sorrow of Achilles for Patroclus.

In his wrath, again, Alexander imitated and went beyond his model. When he slew Clitus in a drunken brawl, there was no Athene at his side to stay his arm and put the sword back in the scabbard. Yet his remorse was some atonement for his violence. "All that night," says Plutarch, "and the next day he wept bitterly, till, being quite spent with lamenting and exclaiming, he lay, as it were, speechless, only fetching deep sighs." It is noticeable that Alexander, here also like Achilles, conqueror and hero though he was, scorned not to show his tears, and to grovel on the ground in anguish. His fiery temper added indomitable energy to all he did or felt. In a few years he swept Asia, destroying kingdoms, and founding cities that still bear his name; and though his rage betrayed him now and then into insane acts, he, like Achilles, was not wholly without the guidance of Athene. In both we have the spectacle of a gigantic nature moved by passions; yet both are controlled by reason, not so much by the reflective understanding, as by an innate sense of what is great and noble. Alexander was Aristotle's pupil. In his best moments, in his fairest and most solid actions, the spirit of Aristotle's teaching ruled him and attended him, as Achilles was ruled and attended by Pallas. Again, in generosity, Alexander recalls Achilles.His treatment of the wife and daughters of Darius reminds us of the reception of Priam by the son of Peleus. Grote, indeed, points out that good policy prompted him to spare the life of the Persian queen. That may be true; but it would have been quite consistent with the Greek standard of honor to treat her with indignity while he preserved her life. This Alexander refrained from doing. His entertainment of Stateira was not unworthy of a queen; and if he did not exhibit the refined courtesy of the Black Prince, he came as near to this ideal of modern chivalry as a Greek could do. In the last place, Alexander, like Achilles, was always young. Like Achilles, he died young, and exists for us as an immortal youth. This youthfulness is one of the peculiar attributes of a Greek hero, one of the distinguishing features of Greek sculpture—in a word, the special mark of the Greek race. "O Solon! Solon!" said the priest of Egypt, "you Greeks are always boys!" Achilles and Alexander, as Hegel has most eloquently demonstrated, are forever adolescent. Yet, after all is said, Alexander fell far below his prototype in beauty and sublimity. He was nothing more than a heroic man. Achilles was the creature of a poet's brain, of a nation's mythology. The one was the ideal in its freshness and its freedom. The other was the real, dragged in the mire of the world, and enthralled by the necessities of human life.

It is very difficult, by any process of criticism, to define the impression of greatness and of glory which the character of Achilles leaves upon the mind. There is in him a kind of magnetic fascination, something incommensurable and indescribable, a quality like that which Goethe defined as dæmonic. They are not always the most noble or the most admirable natures which exert this influence over their fellow-creatures. The Emperor Napoleon and our own Byron had each, perhaps, a portion of this Achilleian personality. Men of their stamp sway the soul by their prestige, by their personal beauty and grandeur, by the concentrated intensity of their character, and by the fatality which seems to follow them. To Achilles, to Alexander, to Napoleon, we cannot apply the rules of our morality. It is, therefore, impossible for us, who must aim first at being good citizens, careful in our generation, and subordinate to the laws of society around us, to admire them without a reservation. Yet, after all is said, a great and terrible glory does rest upon their heads; and though our sentiments of propriety may be offended by some of their actions, our sense of what is awful and sublime is satisfied by the contemplation of them. No one should delude us into thinking that true culture does not come from the impassioned study of everything, however eccentric and at variance with our own mode of life, that is truly great. Greatness, of whatever species it may be, is always elevating and spirit-stirring. When we listen to the Eroica Symphony, and remember that that master-work of music was produced by the genius of Beethoven, brooding over the thoughts of Achilles in theIliad, and of Napoleon upon the battle-fields of Lombardy, we may feel how abyss cries to abyss, and how all forms of human majesty meet and sustain each other.

FOOTNOTES:[12]That the poet of theIliadin its present form had this legend before him is clear from books xxi. 297, xxii. 355-360.[13]See Müller'sDorians, vol. ii. pp. 306-313.[14]Sections 18 and 19 of Plutarch'sLife of Pelopidascontain the best account of the sacred band, and place the Greek chivalrous sentiment in the clearest light.[15]It may be questioned whether this fragment ought not to be referred to the scene with the embassy later on in the play.[16]See Caxton's Preface to theMort d'Arthur.

[12]That the poet of theIliadin its present form had this legend before him is clear from books xxi. 297, xxii. 355-360.

[13]See Müller'sDorians, vol. ii. pp. 306-313.

[14]Sections 18 and 19 of Plutarch'sLife of Pelopidascontain the best account of the sacred band, and place the Greek chivalrous sentiment in the clearest light.

[15]It may be questioned whether this fragment ought not to be referred to the scene with the embassy later on in the play.

[16]See Caxton's Preface to theMort d'Arthur.

Helen of Troy—Her Eternal Youth.—Variety of Legends connected with her.—Stesichorus.—Helen in theIliad.—Helen in theOdyssey.—The Treatment of Helen by Æschylus.—Euripidean Handling of her Romance.—Helen in Greek Art.—Quintus Smyrnæus.—Apollonius of Tyana and the Ghost of Achilles.—Helen in the Faust Legend.—Marlowe and Goethe.—Penelope—Her Home-love.—Calypso and the Isle Ogygia.—Circe.—The Homeric and the Modern Circe.—Nausicaa—Her Perfect Girlishness.—Briseis and Andromache.—The Sense of Proportion and of Relative Distance in Homer's Pictures.—Andromache and Astyanax.—The Cult of Heroes and Heroines in Greece.—Artistic Presentation of Homeric Persons.—Philostratus.

For first of all the spherèd signs wherebyLove severs light from darkness, and most highIn the white front of January there glowsThe rose-red sign of Helen like a rose.

Prelude toTristram and Iseult, lines 91-94.

Helen of Troy is one of those ideal creatures of the fancy over which time, space, and circumstance, and moral probability exert no sway. It would be impossible to conceive of her except as inviolably beautiful and young, in spite of all her wanderings and all she suffered at the hands of Aphrodite and of men. She moves through Greek heroic legend as the desired of all men and the possessed of many. Theseus bore her away while yet a girl from Sparta. Her brethren, Castor and Polydeukes, recovered her from Athens by force, and gave to her Æthra, the mother of Theseus, for bondwoman. Then all the youths of Hellas wooedher in the young world's prime. She was at last assigned in wedlock to Menelaus, by whom she conceived her only earthly child, Hermione. Paris, by aid of Aphrodite, won her love and fled with her to Egypt and to Troy. In Troy she abode more than twenty years, and was the mate of Deiphobus after the death of Paris. When the strife raised for her sake was ended, Menelaus restored her with honor to his home in Lacedæmon. There she received Telemachus and saw her daughter mated to Neoptolemus. But even after death she rested not from the service of love. The great Achilles, who in life had loved her by hearsay, but had never seen her, clasped her among the shades upon the island Leuké, and begat Euphorion. Through all these adventures Helen maintains an ideal freshness, a mysterious virginity of soul. She is not touched by the passion she inspires, or by the wreck of empires ruined in her cause. Fate deflours her not, nor do years impair the magic of her charm. Like beauty, she belongs alike to all and none. She is not judged as wives or mothers are, though she is both; to her belong soul-wounding blossoms of inexorable love, as well as pain-healing poppy-heads of oblivion; all eyes are blinded by the adorable, incomparable grace which Aphrodite sheds around her form.[17]

Whether Helen was the slave or the beloved of Aphrodite, or whether, as Herodotus hinted, she was herself a kind of Aphrodite, we are hardly told. At one time she appears the willing servant of the goddess; at another she groans beneath her bondage. But always and on all occasions she owes everything to the Cyprian queen. Her very body-gear preserved the powerful charm with which she was invested at her birth. When the Phocians robbed the Delphian treasure-house, the wife of one of their captainstook and wore Helen's necklace, whereupon she doted on a young Epirot soldier and eloped with him.

Whose daughter was Helen? The oldest legend calls her the child of Leda and of Zeus. We have all read the tale of the Swan who was her father amid the rushes of Eurotas—the tale which Leonardo and Buonarroti and Correggio thought worthy of their loveliest illustration. Another story gives her for the offspring of Oceanus and Tethys, as though, in fact, she were an Aphrodite risen from the waves. In yet a third, Zeus is her sire and Nemesis her mother; and thus the lesson of the tale of Troy was allegorized in Helen's pedigree. She is always god-begotten and divinely fair. Was it possible that anything so exquisite should have endured rough ravishment and borne the travail of the siege of Troy? This doubt possessed the later poets of the legendary age. They spun a myth according to which Helen reached the shore of Egypt on the ship of Paris; but Paris had to leave her there in cedar-scented chambers by the stream of Nile, when he went forth to plough the foam, uncomforted save by her phantom. And for a phantom the Greeks strove with the Trojans on the windy plains of Ilium. For a phantom's sake brave Hector died, and the leonine swiftness of Achilles was tamed, and Zeus bewailed Sarpedon, and Priam's towers were levelled with the ground. Helen, meanwhile—the beautiful, the inviolable—sat all day long among the palm-groves, twining lotus-flowers for her hair, and learning how to weave rare Eastern patterns in the loom. This legend hides a delicate satire upon human strife. For what do men disquiet themselves in warfare to the death, and tossing on sea-waves? Even for a phantom—for the shadow of their desire, the which remains secluded in some unapproachable, far, sacred land. A wide application may thus be given to Augustine's passionate outcry: "Quo vobis adhuc et adhuc ambulare vias difficiles et laboriosas? Non est requies ubiquæritis eam. Quærite quod quæritis; sed ibi non est ubi quæritis. Beatam vitam quæritis in regione mortis; non est illic." Those who spake ill of Helen suffered. Stesichorus had ventured in the Ἰλίου Πέρσις to lay upon her shoulders all the guilt and suffering of Hellas and of Troy. Whereupon he was smitten with blindness, nor could he recover his sight till he had written the palinode which begins:

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