Homicide in the heroic age.With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose; while we have no evidence of a similar readiness for bloodshedding among the Trojans: and enough is told us of Trojan life and manners to have probably brought out this characteristic, had it existed.Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of a misfortune, or at most a prudential error, anἄτη πυκινὴ[822], when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not (which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to thewounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever[823].The ordinary practice, we learn from the blunt speech of Ajax to Achilles[824], was to accept the established fine upon the loss even of a brother or a son, if offered, and then to let the slayer remain unharmed. If he would not pay, or if the relations would not accept the payment, the alternative was flight: but it does not appear that this entailed any loss of character, perhaps rather otherwise. It was, however, the most common issue of such an affair, and, as such, it furnishes Homer with a simile. Priam, appearing before Achilles by surprise, is compared to a man who, having had the misfortune to kill somebody, appears unexpectedly in a strange place[825].Eight instances in the poems.We will proceed to examine the cases of homicide recorded in the poems, which are alike numerous and remarkable.I. Medon[826], the illegitimate brother of Oilean Ajax, migrates from Locris to Phylace, having, in the usual phrase, killed a man,ἄνδρα κατακτάς. This man was a kinsman, not improbably a brother, (forγνωτὸςmay mean brother, as in Il. iii. 174, and xxii. 234), of his ‘stepmother,’ as she is called; that is, of Eriopis, the lawful wife of his father. And yet he retains or improves his position in Phylace, and appears, in the Thirteenth Iliad, as the commander of all the Phthians except the Myrmidons.II. Theoclymenus[827], of the prophetic family of Melampus, suddenly makes his appearance before Telemachus, when he is about to embark from the Peloponnesus for Ithaca. He inquires of Telemachus who he is[828]; and, on finding that the youth is not in his own country, but a stranger, he says, ‘So am I: I have killed a man, and am flying from the vengeance of his family: they are powerful, and I am in fear lest they should take my life.’ Telemachus immediately promises to take him on board, and entertain him hospitably. He does not seem at all shocked at the intimation he has received. He does not think it worth while to ask the fugitive, whether he killed the man wantonly, or under provocation. But he forthwith assigns to him the place of honour[829]:πὰρ δὲ οἷ αὐτῷεἷσε Θεοκλύμενον.III. The next is an instance not less remarkable than the one last named. Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules and Astyoche, kills Licymnius the maternal uncle of his father, and his own grand-uncle. The sufferer is, moreover, in his old age, or he could hardly be the grand-uncle of an adult person; and no plea or palliation is mentioned for the act. The children and grandchildren of Hercules prepare to levy war upon him: but so far is he from having suffered in character for what hardly can have been other than a barbarous and brutal action, that he is enabled to raise a large body of emigrants, who accompany him to Rhodes. When distributed there in three settlements, they are blessed by the peculiar favour of Jupiter; and Tlepolemus appears before Troy as the commander of the Rhodian contingent[830].IV. Again, the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus had its origin in the circumstance that Menœtiusdelivered over his son into the protection of Peleus, because, being a youth, he had quarrelled with another youth, the son of Amphidamas, over a game of dice, and had slain him,νήπιος, οὐκ ἐθέλων, as the Poet says; that is, of course, without malice prepense[831]. This is the more worthy of notice, because it is evident that the character of Patroclus, partly perhaps for the sake of contrast with that of Achilles, and therefore of relief to it, is meant to be represented as one of peculiar gentleness[832]; a quality in which no one of the great Greek chieftains, except Menelaus, can compete with him.V. In the Fifteenth Iliad, Hector slays Lycophron, son of Mastor, when he is aiming at Ajax. This was an inhabitant of Cythera who had quitted his country for homicide, ‘but whom,’ says Ajax to Teucer, ‘we honoured as if he had been a beloved parent[833].’VI. Again, the case of Epeigeus is remarkable; for he had been lord of Budeum:ὅς ῥ’ ἐν Βουδείῳ εὐναιομένῳ ἤνασσεντὸ πρίν·But having slain a cousin, apparently also of the higher order, he had to fly to Peleus and Thetis for protection[834].VII. In the Thirteenth Odyssey, Ulysses, after being deposited in Ithaca, gives a fabulous account of himself to the disguised Minerva, in which we may be sure that he includes nothing which was deemed essentially dishonourable. In this account he represents himself as a fugitive from Crete on account of homicide. Orsilochus, the son of Idomeneus, had endeavoured, as he says, to deprive him of his share of the Trojanbooty: for this cause he waylaid him by night, took away his life without being perceived by any one as he was returning from the country, and then embarked, to avoid the consequences, in a Phœnician ship[835].VIII. An anonymous Ætolian, having slain a man, fled to Ithaca, visited Eumæus, and as a matter of course was entertained, nay petted, by him;ἐγὼ δέ μιν ἀμφαγάπαζον(Od. xiv. 379–81).Even this great number of instances do not so fully illustrate the familiarity of the practice, and its thorough disconnection from the idea of moral turpitude, as the mode in which it furnishes the material of general illustration or remark. When Homer desires to represent on the shield of Achilles the ordinary form of public business in an assembly, he chooses a trial for homicide[836]. And so Ulysses, when explaining to Telemachus the formidable difficulties with which, after the slaughter of the Suitors, he has to contend, observes that those whom he has slain were the very flower of the community; whereas, in ordinary cases, a man flies his country after having put but a single person to death, and this even though he be one who has few to take up his quarrel[837].Now if we knew these facts concerning the Greeks of the heroic age, and knew nothing else, we should at once conclude that they were an inhuman and savage people, who did not appreciate the value of human life. But this is not so. They are not a cruel people. There is no wanton infliction of pain throughout the whole operations of the Iliad, no delight in the sufferings of others. The only needless wounds are wounds given to the dead[838]; a mode of action whichimputed nothing brutal or degrading, in times when mankind had not yet learned from the Christian Revelation the honour due to the human body.It is not then mere savageness, and the low estimate put upon life, which determines the view of the heroic age with respect to homicide. And if not, then it can only be an unbalanced appreciation of some other quality, such as courage, which was commonly implied and exhibited in such cases.Why viewed with little disfavour.It seems as though the display of force and spirit of daring, which accompany crimes of violence in a rude age, had such a value in the estimation of the early Greeks, as to excuse proceedings which would otherwise have been visited with the severest censure. We shall find reason to believe that Paris may have had a certain credit in their eyes for carrying off Helen by the strong hand, which went to redeem or mitigate his adultery, and breach of hospitable rights. This idea, which is undoubtedly startling, is supported by the strange narrative of Hercules and Iphitus. Iphitus was the possessor of certain fine mares. Hercules, determined to possess them, visited him, received his hospitality, slew him, and carried off the animals. Now it may indeed be the mixed character of Hercules, which places hisεἴδωλονin the Shades, while he is himself among the Immortals; but still the scale is cast on the whole in his favour. Yet surely the story of Iphitus exhibits a crime of the blackest dye; and the only palliation of it that is conceivable seems to lie in this, that he probably did not use stratagem, but proceeded by main force. The crime of Ægisthus, the blackest in the poems, appears to derive its highest intensity from the fact, that he slew Agamemnon like an ox at the stall, in the friendly feast itself, withoutnotice or the opportunity of defence, and by a plot deliberately laid. Such is the effect of all the three passages in which this outrage is described[839]. The most favourable supposition which the case of Hercules admits is, that he came for plunder, and put the possessor of the horses to death, without premeditation, upon his refusal to yield them up; and that such an act, though a proper object of divine resentment, was yet not black enough to destroy his title to honour and a celestial abode[840].We will now pass on to a kindred subject.Piracy in the heroic age.Thucydides has stated that in the earlier ages of Greece the practice of piracy was alike widespread and honourable:οὐκ ἔχοντός πω αἰσχύνην τούτου τοῦ ἔργου, φέροντος δέ τι καὶ δόξης μᾶλλον[841]. In support of this opinion he refers to the questions then usually addressed to strangers on their arrival in a country; such as that by Nestor to the pseudo-Mentor and Telemachus, in order to learn what their business was, or whether they were pirates[842];ἢ μαψιδίως ἀλάλησθε,οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ’ ἀλόωνταιψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν ἀλλοδαποῖσι φέροντες;Now I think that the last line seems to explain the favourable view which was taken by the Greeks of the practice of piracy. For it combined with the hazards of navigation, then so much more serious than at present, the chance of desperate encounters. It appealed, in the very highest degree, to the spirit of adventure; a spirit congenial especially to the earliest youth of a people full of unsatisfied and, so to speak, hungry energies. The mischief inflicted was inflicted onἀλλόδαποι, on those with whom there was no close tie, either as compatriots or asξεῖνοι. Now we must bear in mind that the law which, even in the time of Thucydides, governed the relations of the Greek tribes among themselves, during the period of their high civilization, was a permanent or ordinary state of hostility suspended from time to time by conventions for so many or so many years[843]. The same principle, applied to a period when political organization was less mature, and when men lived rather in knots and companies than in states, involves the Homeric view of piracy. And that view, entertained in such times, should occasion far less surprise, than our finding Thucydides inform us that the same system continued throughout whole divisions of Greece in his day;καὶ μέχρι τοῦδε πολλὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τῷ παλαιῷ τρόπῳ νέμεται, περί τε Λοκροὺς τοὺς Ὀζόλας, καὶ Αἰτώλους, καὶ Ἀκαρνᾶνας, καὶ τὴν ταύτῃ ἤπειρον[844]. The gains of the pirate’s life were in some sense fairly balanced by its dangers. The piracy of that age was not like piracy in ours, the strong and well-armed waiting for the feeble and defenceless; it was a game of more even chances, and the real resemblance for it is to be found, not among the Algerine corsairs, not even in the Highland clans sweeping down from the mountains upon the Lowland Scots, but most properly in the more even-handed forays of the border warfare between England and Scotland.There is indeed yet a higher authority for this kind of piracy, than that to which Thucydides has referred. Ulysses, when he has destroyed the Suitors, considers,in conversation with his wife, not only how he is to preserve his remaining property in live stock, but how he is to replace what his enemies have destroyed. Part he thinks his subjects will make up to him by presents, but great part he will himself obtain by freebooting[845];πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ληΐσσομαι.We can hardly, I think, restrain the meaning of the word to the booty of legitimate and successful war. Sometimes, as in the case of the Cicones, piracy is scarcely distinguishable from war; but Ulysses fairly relates of himself a piratical attack upon Egypt, which can leave us no room for scruple in supposing, that he might without hesitation think of doing again what he thought it worth while to pretend that he had done before. Both these last-named instances may serve, however, to show that, in times when preparedness for war was habitual, the pirate took no great advantage in such attacks as these. For with the Cicones Ulysses had the worst of it at last[846]; and in the case of Egypt, according to his fable, the whole party were taken prisoners or slain. Kidnapping, however, such as that of Eumæus stolen in his childhood, is not, I presume, to be regarded as equal in honour to freebooting with the strong hand, thus apparently stamped with the sanction of Ulysses.And yet this model-man had been stung to the very quick by Euryalus in Phæacia, who said to him, ‘You do not look like a man to compete in athletic games; but rather like one of the captains of merchant vessels, who looks after the cargo and makes rapacious profits[847]!’Nor, after all, is this so strange as at first sight itmight appear; for the Phœnicians, the merchants of those days, were also kidnappers and slave-dealers: and if their transactions were not, like those of the pirates, uniformly bad, they were, when exceptionable, double-dyed in guilt, because they involved fraud as well as robbery.Mixed view of it in the poems.Again, as to piracy, it by no means appears that it was attended with respect, nor is the language of the poems quite uniform regarding it. In theνεκυίαof the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, and also in that of the Eleventh, the shade of Agamemnon calls freebooters of this descriptionἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες[848]. The Cretan piracy of the pseudo-Ulysses in Egypt is mentioned as an act ofὕβρις, an outrage deservedly punished by Jupiter[849]. On the other hand, Greek trade, like Phœnician, embraced kidnapping. At least the Taphians carried away from her country the Phœnician nurse, who in her turn carried off the young Eumæus.Upon the whole, after allowing liberally for the masculine character and redundant energies of the Hellenic people, we shall best explain their favourable view of piracy by remembering the near relation it then bore both to war, which we know may be just and honourable, as well as to trade, which we regard as in itself both innocent and beneficial. Since Homer’s time the character of war has been softened, and that of trade has been elevated, almost immeasurably; while that of piracy has been lowered; hence there is now a wide gulf, where there was then scarcely even a seam discernible; and Homer might have sung the expressive words of Goëthe in Faust,Krieg, Handel, und PiraterieDreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.We may also, I think, find among the Greeks a tendency to family feuds, beyond certain limits, of which the poems do not afford any instance on the Trojan side.Of these, two have already been noticed among the homicides. Medon kills his father’s wife’s kinsman. Tlepolemus kills his grand-uncle. But also Phœnix for a quarrel flies from his father’s home and settles in Dolopia. Phyleus, the father of Meges, for a similar reason migrates to Dulichium[850]. Eurystheus, as the great grandson of Jupiter, is of reputed kin to Hercules his son; but persecutes him through life with the imposition of cruel and endless toils. Meleager has a fierce feud with his family, which is recited by Phœnix as a warning to Achilles. Bellerophon is expelled from Greece by a family quarrel. Ægisthus himself is the cousin of Agamemnon.As with families, so with communities. The pre-Troic legends are almost invariably legends of the internal raids and wars of Greece. They were a people of the strong and the red hand, marvellously combined with high refinement, true love of art and song, and an unexampled political genius.But although the Homeric age had not ceased to be as yet an age of violence, it was as far as possible from being one marked by a general sway either of unbridled appetite, or of ungovernable passion; and if it is sometimes mistakenly supposed to have borne this character, the appearances which produce the illusion are due only to the fact, that vice of all kinds then went straight forward to its work, and had not yet learned, in the school of the wisdom of this world, how much it might gain from method, order, and reserve.Temperance in the heroic age.We have ample signs of that regard for temperance,bodily as well as mental, which Homer united with his thoroughly convivial spirit. By the mouth of Ulysses, he reprehends even that mild form of excess in wine which does no more than promote garrulity (Od. xiv. 463–6). When the Greeks were about to suffer great calamities on their return, he makes them proceed in a state of drunkenness to the Assembly[851]. When Elpenor dies by an accidental fall, he assigns drunkenness as the cause, and takes care to inform us that he was young, and neither valiant nor sensible[852]. Ulysses encourages the brutal Polyphemus to drink, with a view to his own liberation. And the proceedings of the monster, when intoxicated, are certainly more revolting than those of Stephano, if not than those of Caliban, in the Tempest. Again, though it is certainly true, that the most vivid denunciation of excess in liquor to be found throughout the poems is put into the mouth of the Suitor Antinous[853], yet I think it was plainly meant to be accepted as spoken in earnest, and as expressing the sense of Homer. Wine, we thus learn, caused the Centaur Eurytion to lose his ears and nose. In no single case does the Poet permit liquor to act in the slightest degree upon the self-possession of his heroes, or of any character whom he esteems; or represent them as either doing, or leaving undone, any act through excess in drink[854]. The only allusion to its influence, in connection with a practical result, is one very faint, and perfectly innocent. It is when, dissatisfaction having prevailed among the Grecian kings and army, as we seefrom the speech of Diomed, Nestor recommends Agamemnon to treat his Council to a supper, before proceeding to obtain their advice; and observes to him, that he can readily do it, for he has wine and all other provision in abundance. The intention apparently is to lay the ground for concord, not in excess, nor even here in hilarity, but at least in amicable humour[855]. To the Immortals, indeed, it is conceded to abide at the banquet for the livelong day, but not to men; for the pseudo-Mentor observes to Nestor in the Third Odyssey, that it is not seemly to sit long at the sacred (that is, regular and public) feast[856].It is much to be regretted that Horace, who in many cases has shown himself an accurate reader of Homer, has in this point grossly mistaken him:Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus[857].And this summary character, unfortunately false, has saved men the trouble of collecting the true one from the works of the Poet himself.Self-control in the heroic age.When we turn to another form of temperance or self-government, namely, that which we call self-control, we find it eminently exemplified among Greeks. It appears as a pervading and national quality in that silence on the field of battle, which they combined with such an inward energy of determination. In Ulysses it is carried up to its perfection. Perhaps the only occasions on which he even seems to relax it are those of the answer to Euryalus in the Eighth Odyssey, and the reply to Agamemnon in the Fourth Iliad.So much, however, of emotion as he suffers to escape him in those passages, only serves to heighten the effectof his words, not to make him deflect by one jot or tittle, though in undoubted warmth, from the true rule of reason. But we find this quality not only developed powerfully in a pattern-man like Ulysses; it is also strongly infused into such a warrior as Diomed. This is proved by the manner in which he bears[858]the chiding of Agamemnon on his rounds, and rebukes Sthenelus for having been provoked into a petulant answer. At the same time it is highly illustrative of the national character, that this young and ardent warrior, who could thus bear a reprimand on the field, stored up the recollection of it within his breast: and when, at the beginning of the Ninth Book, Agamemnon showed his own faint-heartedness by advising the abandonment of the enterprise, then Diomed, having watched his opportunity, recalled the circumstances, and quietly but effectively replied upon Agamemnon[859]. Nay more, perhaps the most striking proof of the abundance of this high quality among the Greeks is in the very case where it is on the whole outmatched by the passion that it ought to master, namely, in the case of Achilles. There is something indeed sublime in the manner in which, many times over, when he feels the tide of wrath rising within him, he eyes his own passion, even as a tiger is eyed by its keeper, and puts a spell upon it, so that it dare not spring. Thus it is, when he parleys with himself on the question, whether he shall end the strife with Agamemnon by slaying him, in the Assembly of the First Book. And thus again, when he feels that the words which Priam has incautiously let drop are kindling a flame which, if further fed, would consume the aged and sorrowing suppliant, he is conscious of the rising tempest, and before it has swollen to such force as to disturb his self-command, he sternly, but yet not unkindly, bids him to desist. It is by trying them in mental conflicts like these, that Homer shows us of what mettle his Greek kings were made. It would be curious to draw out a list of the multitude of words in which he describes, under every possible aspect, the power and habit of self-control. But perhaps one of his slightest is also one of his most effective touches. The applause of the Greeks in their Assembly is always described by a word different from that employed to describe the very same indication of feeling by the Trojans. He usually saysἐπὶ δ’ ἴαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶνfor the Greeks: for the Trojans it isἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν. The Greeks shout forth their energetic approval: the Trojans clatter, as if their tongues could not bear restraint.Yet we must not suppose, either on account of the self-command of the Greeks that they were apathetic, or on account of their frequent homicides that they were inhuman, and savagely indifferent to the infliction of pain on their fellow-creatures.Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans appear to have been ferocious in the treatment of enemies. The extreme point to which they go is that of giving no quarter: but they never, even in the exasperation of battle, inflict torture with their weapons. The immolation of twelve Trojan youths over the dead Patroclus is doubtless cruel: but it falls far short of what the passions of war have produced in other times and countries. With the manner of inflicting death, passion never has to do.Savage ideas occasionally expressed.An inquiry, however, which seems to be most curious,is suggested by the passages in which Hecuba wishes that she could eat Achilles[860], Achilles that he could find it in his heart to devour Hector[861]; and again in which Jupiter[862]suggests to Juno, that nothing could satiate her spite against Troy so well as if she were to eat up Priam and his whole family. For the question arises, how is it that we find these remains of the wildest savagery in company with a refinement of manners and feeling, which the poems very frequently exhibit, and which even reaches in some important points to a degree never exceeded in any country or any period of the world?The answer I presume to be this: that the civilization of the Greeks in the heroic age, though as to the mind it was really a very high, was yet also a very young civilisation. Its path was marked and decided, but it had not had time to travel far from barbarism. It was not safe by distance, nor defended by the ramparts of long tradition, nor strengthened by the force of continuing bent, and consolidated immemorial habit. The Homeric gentleman, with his civilization, stood, in respect to barbarism, like him who voyages by sea,digitis a morte remotusQuatuor aut septem;only the thickness of the plank is between him and the wilderness which he has left: and if passion makes a breach, the mood of the wild beast reappears. We may account for the cannibalish observation of Jupiter by the fact that he has no self-control in Homer: but that of Hecuba is to be accounted for on the principle I have endeavoured to describe. So it is with Achilles: and so, too, when the wise Ulysses, slaughtering the wretched women of his household who had erred,seems tinged for once with a flush of barbarism. Whenwelet loose the tiger within us, his range is limited not by any force springing from our own will or choice, but by the strong dikes and barriers of social wont, and by habits of thought as well as action, which have been accumulated by the long labours of many successive generations of mankind.We have already[863]noticed something that will well bear comparison with this state of things in the reports which are made to us respecting modern Persia, the cradle in all likelihood of the family of Achilles.At the same time it is to be borne in mind that this cannibalism, of which we have glimpses in Homer, in the first place was limited, even in speculation, to enemies; and in the second place, existed in speculation only. Of this we have pretty strong proof from the case of the crew of Ulysses in the Twelfth Odyssey. They did not touch the oxen of the Sun, until death from hunger stared them in the face. Then Eurylochus made a manful speech on the subject of the option before them, between dying on the one side, and the slaughter of some of the animals on the other. But those circumstances of the last extremity, to which they were reduced, were the very circumstances in which the fortitude even of Christians[864]has given way, and with respect to which no prudent man dares to pronounce a judgment upon persons that so succumb.Yet there is not in the case before us the slightest hint at a resort to this most horrible remedy.Not unfamiliar to later Greece.Besides the circumstance, that in Homer the cannibaldicta, abstractedly so shocking, are the mere words of phrensied passion, and that there are no corresponding acts, we have to observe that the Poet is never found exhibiting the sentiment of joy in connection with the positive infliction of suffering upon an enemy. It was by no means so among the later Greeks. Too many instances might, indeed, be supplied of the increase of cruelty with the lapse of time.Homer, again, has nowhere made woman to be even the sorrowing minister of justice: as if he felt that there was a radical incompatibility between the proper gentleness of her nature, and the use of the sword of punishment. But in the Hecuba of Euripides, after the aged matron, exasperated by the treacherous murder of her son Polydorus, has put to death the two children of the assassin Polymestor, and has likewise put out his eyes, he addresses to her these words (v. 1233),χαίρεις ὑβρίζουσ’ εἰς ἔμ’, ὦ πανοῦργε σύ·and she, no way shrinking from the imputation, repliesοὐ γάρ με χαίρειν χρὴ, σὲ τιμωρουμένην;In one place Homer has taken an opportunity of showing us, what he thinks of the principle of exultation over fallen enemies. When Euryclea is about to shout over the fallen Suitors, Ulysses, though he has not yet ended the bloody work of retribution, gravely checks her. ‘It is wrong,’ he says, ‘to exult over the slain. These men have been overtaken by divine providence, and by their own perverse deeds: for they regarded no human being, noble or vile, with whomthey had to do: wherefore they have miserably perished in their wickedness.’ The whole tone and language of this rebuke, so grave and earnest as it is, and more sad even than it is stern, is worthy of any moral code that the world has known.Wrath in Ulysses and in Achilles.There is indeed a terrible severity in the proceedings of Ulysses against the Suitors, the women, and his rebellious subjects. But it is plain that the case, which Homer had to represent, was one that required the hero to effect something like a reconquest of the country. It is also plain that Homer felt that these stern measures would require a very strong warrant. Hence without doubt it is, that the preparations for the crisis are so elaborate; the insults offered to the disguised master of the palace so aggravated; and the direct agency of Minerva introduced to deepen his sufferings. Hence, again, when the incensed warrior is about to pursue with martial ardour the flying insurgents, his eagerness is mildly marked as excessive, and is effectually checked by the friendly but decisive intervention of Jupiter. Some critics have objected to this passage, and have argued that it could not be genuine. They surely must forget, that Homer does not seek to present us in his protagonists with a faultlessness which would have carried them out of the sphere, such as it was conceived by him and by his age, of life either divine or human. Both Ulysses and Achilles may err. But where they err, it is in measure and degree. Ulysses is the minister of public justice, and of divine retribution. But he is composed, like ourselves, of flesh and blood, and he carries his righteous office, in a natural heat, to the verge of cruelty. Then the warning voice is vouchsafed to him, and he at once dutifully obeys. And is, then, a thing like this so new and strange to us? Andhas neither our philosophy nor our experience of life taught us that there are no circumstances, in which a good and just man runs so serious a risk of becoming harsh and cruel unawares, as when he is hurried along by the torrent of an originally righteous indignation?Even so with Achilles. He is, no more than Ulysses, merely vengeful, but he resents a wrong done to justice, to decency, and to love, in his person. Upon the stream of this resentment he is carried, until it threatens to become a torrent. Then, by an admirable design, he is chastised in the yet deeper passion of his soul, his friendship for Patroclus; and so is recalled within the bounds of his duty to his suffering countrymen.But in both cases the foundation of conduct is just and sound: by neither is any sanction given to the principle which the Gospel rebukes, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ For a wrong done to principles of public morality and justice is in each case alike the thing chiefly resented, although in each case the person who resents it is also a person that had greatly suffered by it.Again, we should misunderstand Homer’s picture of the Greek character, if we conceived that he left no room in it for those accesses of emotion, with respect to which it may be difficult to say whether they contributed most to its strength or its weakness, while it seems clear that they are in near association with both.The Poet’s intention does not oblige him to place his protagonists beyond the reach of human infirmity, as we see in the stubborn wrath of Achilles, and in the awakened keenness of Ulysses for the blood of his rebellious subjects[865]. And though he never exhibits themas vicious, still, in the case of Ulysses, as well as in that of Achilles, he has introduced into his picture great quickness of temper, which is indeed nearly, though not necessarily, connected with sensitiveness of honour. On two occasions in particular is this observable: in the sharp answers namely of Ulysses, first to Agamemnon, who on his circuit accuses him of remissness in military duty[866]; and secondly to theθυμοδακὴς μῦθοςof Euryalus[867], who has taken him for aπρήκτηρor merchant, and a rogue to boot.The Domestic affections.The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.A marked indication of the power of this principle among mankind is to be found in its prevalence even among the Olympian deities. For its appearance there has no relation to divine attributes properly so called; it is strictly a part of the mythology; a sentiment copied from the human heart and life, and transferred to these inventive or idealized formations. Indeed we always find it in connection with that in which they are most human, namely, the indulgence of their sensual passions, and the results of that indulgence in their human progeny. It is not, therefore, among the higher or traditive deities that we find the sentiment; it does not exist in Apollo or Minerva, whose love is always of a different kind, and is grounded in the gifts or character of the person who is the object of it, as for instance, the great Ulysses[868], or, in a smaller sphere, the skilful Phereclus, who built the ships of Paris[869]. It is in Jupiter over Sarpedon, in Neptune for the blindness of his brutal son Polyphemus, in Mars over Ascalaphus, in Venus about Æneas; and these two last arethe two deities whose ethical and intellectual standard is the lowest of all[870].When we come down to earth, we find the sentiment strong everywhere. Among the Trojan royal family, where there is but little sense of the higher parts of morality, this feeling is intense alike with Priam and with Hecuba. The latter is not passionate, she isἠπιόδωρος[871]. Yet on the death of Hector we see her become a tigress, and wish she could devour the conqueror[872]. Ulysses chooses for the title by which he would be known that of the Father of Telemachus[873]. It is true indeed that, then as now, the imperiousness of bodily wants made itself felt; and it was then more ingenuously acknowledged. Hence Telemachus, attached to his father, when he explained the double cause of his grief and care to the Ithacan assembly, first named the death or absence of his father, but then proclaimed as the chief matter, the continuing waste and threatened destruction of his property[874]:
Homicide in the heroic age.
With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose; while we have no evidence of a similar readiness for bloodshedding among the Trojans: and enough is told us of Trojan life and manners to have probably brought out this characteristic, had it existed.
Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of a misfortune, or at most a prudential error, anἄτη πυκινὴ[822], when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not (which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to thewounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever[823].
The ordinary practice, we learn from the blunt speech of Ajax to Achilles[824], was to accept the established fine upon the loss even of a brother or a son, if offered, and then to let the slayer remain unharmed. If he would not pay, or if the relations would not accept the payment, the alternative was flight: but it does not appear that this entailed any loss of character, perhaps rather otherwise. It was, however, the most common issue of such an affair, and, as such, it furnishes Homer with a simile. Priam, appearing before Achilles by surprise, is compared to a man who, having had the misfortune to kill somebody, appears unexpectedly in a strange place[825].
Eight instances in the poems.
We will proceed to examine the cases of homicide recorded in the poems, which are alike numerous and remarkable.
I. Medon[826], the illegitimate brother of Oilean Ajax, migrates from Locris to Phylace, having, in the usual phrase, killed a man,ἄνδρα κατακτάς. This man was a kinsman, not improbably a brother, (forγνωτὸςmay mean brother, as in Il. iii. 174, and xxii. 234), of his ‘stepmother,’ as she is called; that is, of Eriopis, the lawful wife of his father. And yet he retains or improves his position in Phylace, and appears, in the Thirteenth Iliad, as the commander of all the Phthians except the Myrmidons.
II. Theoclymenus[827], of the prophetic family of Melampus, suddenly makes his appearance before Telemachus, when he is about to embark from the Peloponnesus for Ithaca. He inquires of Telemachus who he is[828]; and, on finding that the youth is not in his own country, but a stranger, he says, ‘So am I: I have killed a man, and am flying from the vengeance of his family: they are powerful, and I am in fear lest they should take my life.’ Telemachus immediately promises to take him on board, and entertain him hospitably. He does not seem at all shocked at the intimation he has received. He does not think it worth while to ask the fugitive, whether he killed the man wantonly, or under provocation. But he forthwith assigns to him the place of honour[829]:
πὰρ δὲ οἷ αὐτῷεἷσε Θεοκλύμενον.
πὰρ δὲ οἷ αὐτῷεἷσε Θεοκλύμενον.
πὰρ δὲ οἷ αὐτῷεἷσε Θεοκλύμενον.
πὰρ δὲ οἷ αὐτῷ
εἷσε Θεοκλύμενον.
III. The next is an instance not less remarkable than the one last named. Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules and Astyoche, kills Licymnius the maternal uncle of his father, and his own grand-uncle. The sufferer is, moreover, in his old age, or he could hardly be the grand-uncle of an adult person; and no plea or palliation is mentioned for the act. The children and grandchildren of Hercules prepare to levy war upon him: but so far is he from having suffered in character for what hardly can have been other than a barbarous and brutal action, that he is enabled to raise a large body of emigrants, who accompany him to Rhodes. When distributed there in three settlements, they are blessed by the peculiar favour of Jupiter; and Tlepolemus appears before Troy as the commander of the Rhodian contingent[830].
IV. Again, the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus had its origin in the circumstance that Menœtiusdelivered over his son into the protection of Peleus, because, being a youth, he had quarrelled with another youth, the son of Amphidamas, over a game of dice, and had slain him,νήπιος, οὐκ ἐθέλων, as the Poet says; that is, of course, without malice prepense[831]. This is the more worthy of notice, because it is evident that the character of Patroclus, partly perhaps for the sake of contrast with that of Achilles, and therefore of relief to it, is meant to be represented as one of peculiar gentleness[832]; a quality in which no one of the great Greek chieftains, except Menelaus, can compete with him.
V. In the Fifteenth Iliad, Hector slays Lycophron, son of Mastor, when he is aiming at Ajax. This was an inhabitant of Cythera who had quitted his country for homicide, ‘but whom,’ says Ajax to Teucer, ‘we honoured as if he had been a beloved parent[833].’
VI. Again, the case of Epeigeus is remarkable; for he had been lord of Budeum:
ὅς ῥ’ ἐν Βουδείῳ εὐναιομένῳ ἤνασσεντὸ πρίν·
ὅς ῥ’ ἐν Βουδείῳ εὐναιομένῳ ἤνασσεντὸ πρίν·
ὅς ῥ’ ἐν Βουδείῳ εὐναιομένῳ ἤνασσεντὸ πρίν·
ὅς ῥ’ ἐν Βουδείῳ εὐναιομένῳ ἤνασσεν
τὸ πρίν·
But having slain a cousin, apparently also of the higher order, he had to fly to Peleus and Thetis for protection[834].
VII. In the Thirteenth Odyssey, Ulysses, after being deposited in Ithaca, gives a fabulous account of himself to the disguised Minerva, in which we may be sure that he includes nothing which was deemed essentially dishonourable. In this account he represents himself as a fugitive from Crete on account of homicide. Orsilochus, the son of Idomeneus, had endeavoured, as he says, to deprive him of his share of the Trojanbooty: for this cause he waylaid him by night, took away his life without being perceived by any one as he was returning from the country, and then embarked, to avoid the consequences, in a Phœnician ship[835].
VIII. An anonymous Ætolian, having slain a man, fled to Ithaca, visited Eumæus, and as a matter of course was entertained, nay petted, by him;ἐγὼ δέ μιν ἀμφαγάπαζον(Od. xiv. 379–81).
Even this great number of instances do not so fully illustrate the familiarity of the practice, and its thorough disconnection from the idea of moral turpitude, as the mode in which it furnishes the material of general illustration or remark. When Homer desires to represent on the shield of Achilles the ordinary form of public business in an assembly, he chooses a trial for homicide[836]. And so Ulysses, when explaining to Telemachus the formidable difficulties with which, after the slaughter of the Suitors, he has to contend, observes that those whom he has slain were the very flower of the community; whereas, in ordinary cases, a man flies his country after having put but a single person to death, and this even though he be one who has few to take up his quarrel[837].
Now if we knew these facts concerning the Greeks of the heroic age, and knew nothing else, we should at once conclude that they were an inhuman and savage people, who did not appreciate the value of human life. But this is not so. They are not a cruel people. There is no wanton infliction of pain throughout the whole operations of the Iliad, no delight in the sufferings of others. The only needless wounds are wounds given to the dead[838]; a mode of action whichimputed nothing brutal or degrading, in times when mankind had not yet learned from the Christian Revelation the honour due to the human body.
It is not then mere savageness, and the low estimate put upon life, which determines the view of the heroic age with respect to homicide. And if not, then it can only be an unbalanced appreciation of some other quality, such as courage, which was commonly implied and exhibited in such cases.
Why viewed with little disfavour.
It seems as though the display of force and spirit of daring, which accompany crimes of violence in a rude age, had such a value in the estimation of the early Greeks, as to excuse proceedings which would otherwise have been visited with the severest censure. We shall find reason to believe that Paris may have had a certain credit in their eyes for carrying off Helen by the strong hand, which went to redeem or mitigate his adultery, and breach of hospitable rights. This idea, which is undoubtedly startling, is supported by the strange narrative of Hercules and Iphitus. Iphitus was the possessor of certain fine mares. Hercules, determined to possess them, visited him, received his hospitality, slew him, and carried off the animals. Now it may indeed be the mixed character of Hercules, which places hisεἴδωλονin the Shades, while he is himself among the Immortals; but still the scale is cast on the whole in his favour. Yet surely the story of Iphitus exhibits a crime of the blackest dye; and the only palliation of it that is conceivable seems to lie in this, that he probably did not use stratagem, but proceeded by main force. The crime of Ægisthus, the blackest in the poems, appears to derive its highest intensity from the fact, that he slew Agamemnon like an ox at the stall, in the friendly feast itself, withoutnotice or the opportunity of defence, and by a plot deliberately laid. Such is the effect of all the three passages in which this outrage is described[839]. The most favourable supposition which the case of Hercules admits is, that he came for plunder, and put the possessor of the horses to death, without premeditation, upon his refusal to yield them up; and that such an act, though a proper object of divine resentment, was yet not black enough to destroy his title to honour and a celestial abode[840].
We will now pass on to a kindred subject.
Piracy in the heroic age.
Thucydides has stated that in the earlier ages of Greece the practice of piracy was alike widespread and honourable:οὐκ ἔχοντός πω αἰσχύνην τούτου τοῦ ἔργου, φέροντος δέ τι καὶ δόξης μᾶλλον[841]. In support of this opinion he refers to the questions then usually addressed to strangers on their arrival in a country; such as that by Nestor to the pseudo-Mentor and Telemachus, in order to learn what their business was, or whether they were pirates[842];
ἢ μαψιδίως ἀλάλησθε,οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ’ ἀλόωνταιψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν ἀλλοδαποῖσι φέροντες;
ἢ μαψιδίως ἀλάλησθε,οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ’ ἀλόωνταιψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν ἀλλοδαποῖσι φέροντες;
ἢ μαψιδίως ἀλάλησθε,οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ’ ἀλόωνταιψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν ἀλλοδαποῖσι φέροντες;
ἢ μαψιδίως ἀλάλησθε,
οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ’ ἀλόωνται
ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν ἀλλοδαποῖσι φέροντες;
Now I think that the last line seems to explain the favourable view which was taken by the Greeks of the practice of piracy. For it combined with the hazards of navigation, then so much more serious than at present, the chance of desperate encounters. It appealed, in the very highest degree, to the spirit of adventure; a spirit congenial especially to the earliest youth of a people full of unsatisfied and, so to speak, hungry energies. The mischief inflicted was inflicted onἀλλόδαποι, on those with whom there was no close tie, either as compatriots or asξεῖνοι. Now we must bear in mind that the law which, even in the time of Thucydides, governed the relations of the Greek tribes among themselves, during the period of their high civilization, was a permanent or ordinary state of hostility suspended from time to time by conventions for so many or so many years[843]. The same principle, applied to a period when political organization was less mature, and when men lived rather in knots and companies than in states, involves the Homeric view of piracy. And that view, entertained in such times, should occasion far less surprise, than our finding Thucydides inform us that the same system continued throughout whole divisions of Greece in his day;καὶ μέχρι τοῦδε πολλὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τῷ παλαιῷ τρόπῳ νέμεται, περί τε Λοκροὺς τοὺς Ὀζόλας, καὶ Αἰτώλους, καὶ Ἀκαρνᾶνας, καὶ τὴν ταύτῃ ἤπειρον[844]. The gains of the pirate’s life were in some sense fairly balanced by its dangers. The piracy of that age was not like piracy in ours, the strong and well-armed waiting for the feeble and defenceless; it was a game of more even chances, and the real resemblance for it is to be found, not among the Algerine corsairs, not even in the Highland clans sweeping down from the mountains upon the Lowland Scots, but most properly in the more even-handed forays of the border warfare between England and Scotland.
There is indeed yet a higher authority for this kind of piracy, than that to which Thucydides has referred. Ulysses, when he has destroyed the Suitors, considers,in conversation with his wife, not only how he is to preserve his remaining property in live stock, but how he is to replace what his enemies have destroyed. Part he thinks his subjects will make up to him by presents, but great part he will himself obtain by freebooting[845];
πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ληΐσσομαι.
πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ληΐσσομαι.
πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ληΐσσομαι.
πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ληΐσσομαι.
We can hardly, I think, restrain the meaning of the word to the booty of legitimate and successful war. Sometimes, as in the case of the Cicones, piracy is scarcely distinguishable from war; but Ulysses fairly relates of himself a piratical attack upon Egypt, which can leave us no room for scruple in supposing, that he might without hesitation think of doing again what he thought it worth while to pretend that he had done before. Both these last-named instances may serve, however, to show that, in times when preparedness for war was habitual, the pirate took no great advantage in such attacks as these. For with the Cicones Ulysses had the worst of it at last[846]; and in the case of Egypt, according to his fable, the whole party were taken prisoners or slain. Kidnapping, however, such as that of Eumæus stolen in his childhood, is not, I presume, to be regarded as equal in honour to freebooting with the strong hand, thus apparently stamped with the sanction of Ulysses.
And yet this model-man had been stung to the very quick by Euryalus in Phæacia, who said to him, ‘You do not look like a man to compete in athletic games; but rather like one of the captains of merchant vessels, who looks after the cargo and makes rapacious profits[847]!’
Nor, after all, is this so strange as at first sight itmight appear; for the Phœnicians, the merchants of those days, were also kidnappers and slave-dealers: and if their transactions were not, like those of the pirates, uniformly bad, they were, when exceptionable, double-dyed in guilt, because they involved fraud as well as robbery.
Mixed view of it in the poems.
Again, as to piracy, it by no means appears that it was attended with respect, nor is the language of the poems quite uniform regarding it. In theνεκυίαof the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, and also in that of the Eleventh, the shade of Agamemnon calls freebooters of this descriptionἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες[848]. The Cretan piracy of the pseudo-Ulysses in Egypt is mentioned as an act ofὕβρις, an outrage deservedly punished by Jupiter[849]. On the other hand, Greek trade, like Phœnician, embraced kidnapping. At least the Taphians carried away from her country the Phœnician nurse, who in her turn carried off the young Eumæus.
Upon the whole, after allowing liberally for the masculine character and redundant energies of the Hellenic people, we shall best explain their favourable view of piracy by remembering the near relation it then bore both to war, which we know may be just and honourable, as well as to trade, which we regard as in itself both innocent and beneficial. Since Homer’s time the character of war has been softened, and that of trade has been elevated, almost immeasurably; while that of piracy has been lowered; hence there is now a wide gulf, where there was then scarcely even a seam discernible; and Homer might have sung the expressive words of Goëthe in Faust,
Krieg, Handel, und PiraterieDreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.
Krieg, Handel, und PiraterieDreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.
Krieg, Handel, und PiraterieDreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.
Krieg, Handel, und Piraterie
Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.
We may also, I think, find among the Greeks a tendency to family feuds, beyond certain limits, of which the poems do not afford any instance on the Trojan side.
Of these, two have already been noticed among the homicides. Medon kills his father’s wife’s kinsman. Tlepolemus kills his grand-uncle. But also Phœnix for a quarrel flies from his father’s home and settles in Dolopia. Phyleus, the father of Meges, for a similar reason migrates to Dulichium[850]. Eurystheus, as the great grandson of Jupiter, is of reputed kin to Hercules his son; but persecutes him through life with the imposition of cruel and endless toils. Meleager has a fierce feud with his family, which is recited by Phœnix as a warning to Achilles. Bellerophon is expelled from Greece by a family quarrel. Ægisthus himself is the cousin of Agamemnon.
As with families, so with communities. The pre-Troic legends are almost invariably legends of the internal raids and wars of Greece. They were a people of the strong and the red hand, marvellously combined with high refinement, true love of art and song, and an unexampled political genius.
But although the Homeric age had not ceased to be as yet an age of violence, it was as far as possible from being one marked by a general sway either of unbridled appetite, or of ungovernable passion; and if it is sometimes mistakenly supposed to have borne this character, the appearances which produce the illusion are due only to the fact, that vice of all kinds then went straight forward to its work, and had not yet learned, in the school of the wisdom of this world, how much it might gain from method, order, and reserve.
Temperance in the heroic age.
We have ample signs of that regard for temperance,bodily as well as mental, which Homer united with his thoroughly convivial spirit. By the mouth of Ulysses, he reprehends even that mild form of excess in wine which does no more than promote garrulity (Od. xiv. 463–6). When the Greeks were about to suffer great calamities on their return, he makes them proceed in a state of drunkenness to the Assembly[851]. When Elpenor dies by an accidental fall, he assigns drunkenness as the cause, and takes care to inform us that he was young, and neither valiant nor sensible[852]. Ulysses encourages the brutal Polyphemus to drink, with a view to his own liberation. And the proceedings of the monster, when intoxicated, are certainly more revolting than those of Stephano, if not than those of Caliban, in the Tempest. Again, though it is certainly true, that the most vivid denunciation of excess in liquor to be found throughout the poems is put into the mouth of the Suitor Antinous[853], yet I think it was plainly meant to be accepted as spoken in earnest, and as expressing the sense of Homer. Wine, we thus learn, caused the Centaur Eurytion to lose his ears and nose. In no single case does the Poet permit liquor to act in the slightest degree upon the self-possession of his heroes, or of any character whom he esteems; or represent them as either doing, or leaving undone, any act through excess in drink[854]. The only allusion to its influence, in connection with a practical result, is one very faint, and perfectly innocent. It is when, dissatisfaction having prevailed among the Grecian kings and army, as we seefrom the speech of Diomed, Nestor recommends Agamemnon to treat his Council to a supper, before proceeding to obtain their advice; and observes to him, that he can readily do it, for he has wine and all other provision in abundance. The intention apparently is to lay the ground for concord, not in excess, nor even here in hilarity, but at least in amicable humour[855]. To the Immortals, indeed, it is conceded to abide at the banquet for the livelong day, but not to men; for the pseudo-Mentor observes to Nestor in the Third Odyssey, that it is not seemly to sit long at the sacred (that is, regular and public) feast[856].
It is much to be regretted that Horace, who in many cases has shown himself an accurate reader of Homer, has in this point grossly mistaken him:
Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus[857].
Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus[857].
Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus[857].
Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus[857].
And this summary character, unfortunately false, has saved men the trouble of collecting the true one from the works of the Poet himself.
Self-control in the heroic age.
When we turn to another form of temperance or self-government, namely, that which we call self-control, we find it eminently exemplified among Greeks. It appears as a pervading and national quality in that silence on the field of battle, which they combined with such an inward energy of determination. In Ulysses it is carried up to its perfection. Perhaps the only occasions on which he even seems to relax it are those of the answer to Euryalus in the Eighth Odyssey, and the reply to Agamemnon in the Fourth Iliad.
So much, however, of emotion as he suffers to escape him in those passages, only serves to heighten the effectof his words, not to make him deflect by one jot or tittle, though in undoubted warmth, from the true rule of reason. But we find this quality not only developed powerfully in a pattern-man like Ulysses; it is also strongly infused into such a warrior as Diomed. This is proved by the manner in which he bears[858]the chiding of Agamemnon on his rounds, and rebukes Sthenelus for having been provoked into a petulant answer. At the same time it is highly illustrative of the national character, that this young and ardent warrior, who could thus bear a reprimand on the field, stored up the recollection of it within his breast: and when, at the beginning of the Ninth Book, Agamemnon showed his own faint-heartedness by advising the abandonment of the enterprise, then Diomed, having watched his opportunity, recalled the circumstances, and quietly but effectively replied upon Agamemnon[859]. Nay more, perhaps the most striking proof of the abundance of this high quality among the Greeks is in the very case where it is on the whole outmatched by the passion that it ought to master, namely, in the case of Achilles. There is something indeed sublime in the manner in which, many times over, when he feels the tide of wrath rising within him, he eyes his own passion, even as a tiger is eyed by its keeper, and puts a spell upon it, so that it dare not spring. Thus it is, when he parleys with himself on the question, whether he shall end the strife with Agamemnon by slaying him, in the Assembly of the First Book. And thus again, when he feels that the words which Priam has incautiously let drop are kindling a flame which, if further fed, would consume the aged and sorrowing suppliant, he is conscious of the rising tempest, and before it has swollen to such force as to disturb his self-command, he sternly, but yet not unkindly, bids him to desist. It is by trying them in mental conflicts like these, that Homer shows us of what mettle his Greek kings were made. It would be curious to draw out a list of the multitude of words in which he describes, under every possible aspect, the power and habit of self-control. But perhaps one of his slightest is also one of his most effective touches. The applause of the Greeks in their Assembly is always described by a word different from that employed to describe the very same indication of feeling by the Trojans. He usually saysἐπὶ δ’ ἴαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶνfor the Greeks: for the Trojans it isἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν. The Greeks shout forth their energetic approval: the Trojans clatter, as if their tongues could not bear restraint.
Yet we must not suppose, either on account of the self-command of the Greeks that they were apathetic, or on account of their frequent homicides that they were inhuman, and savagely indifferent to the infliction of pain on their fellow-creatures.
Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans appear to have been ferocious in the treatment of enemies. The extreme point to which they go is that of giving no quarter: but they never, even in the exasperation of battle, inflict torture with their weapons. The immolation of twelve Trojan youths over the dead Patroclus is doubtless cruel: but it falls far short of what the passions of war have produced in other times and countries. With the manner of inflicting death, passion never has to do.
Savage ideas occasionally expressed.
An inquiry, however, which seems to be most curious,is suggested by the passages in which Hecuba wishes that she could eat Achilles[860], Achilles that he could find it in his heart to devour Hector[861]; and again in which Jupiter[862]suggests to Juno, that nothing could satiate her spite against Troy so well as if she were to eat up Priam and his whole family. For the question arises, how is it that we find these remains of the wildest savagery in company with a refinement of manners and feeling, which the poems very frequently exhibit, and which even reaches in some important points to a degree never exceeded in any country or any period of the world?
The answer I presume to be this: that the civilization of the Greeks in the heroic age, though as to the mind it was really a very high, was yet also a very young civilisation. Its path was marked and decided, but it had not had time to travel far from barbarism. It was not safe by distance, nor defended by the ramparts of long tradition, nor strengthened by the force of continuing bent, and consolidated immemorial habit. The Homeric gentleman, with his civilization, stood, in respect to barbarism, like him who voyages by sea,
digitis a morte remotusQuatuor aut septem;
digitis a morte remotusQuatuor aut septem;
digitis a morte remotusQuatuor aut septem;
digitis a morte remotus
Quatuor aut septem;
only the thickness of the plank is between him and the wilderness which he has left: and if passion makes a breach, the mood of the wild beast reappears. We may account for the cannibalish observation of Jupiter by the fact that he has no self-control in Homer: but that of Hecuba is to be accounted for on the principle I have endeavoured to describe. So it is with Achilles: and so, too, when the wise Ulysses, slaughtering the wretched women of his household who had erred,seems tinged for once with a flush of barbarism. Whenwelet loose the tiger within us, his range is limited not by any force springing from our own will or choice, but by the strong dikes and barriers of social wont, and by habits of thought as well as action, which have been accumulated by the long labours of many successive generations of mankind.
We have already[863]noticed something that will well bear comparison with this state of things in the reports which are made to us respecting modern Persia, the cradle in all likelihood of the family of Achilles.
At the same time it is to be borne in mind that this cannibalism, of which we have glimpses in Homer, in the first place was limited, even in speculation, to enemies; and in the second place, existed in speculation only. Of this we have pretty strong proof from the case of the crew of Ulysses in the Twelfth Odyssey. They did not touch the oxen of the Sun, until death from hunger stared them in the face. Then Eurylochus made a manful speech on the subject of the option before them, between dying on the one side, and the slaughter of some of the animals on the other. But those circumstances of the last extremity, to which they were reduced, were the very circumstances in which the fortitude even of Christians[864]has given way, and with respect to which no prudent man dares to pronounce a judgment upon persons that so succumb.Yet there is not in the case before us the slightest hint at a resort to this most horrible remedy.
Not unfamiliar to later Greece.
Besides the circumstance, that in Homer the cannibaldicta, abstractedly so shocking, are the mere words of phrensied passion, and that there are no corresponding acts, we have to observe that the Poet is never found exhibiting the sentiment of joy in connection with the positive infliction of suffering upon an enemy. It was by no means so among the later Greeks. Too many instances might, indeed, be supplied of the increase of cruelty with the lapse of time.
Homer, again, has nowhere made woman to be even the sorrowing minister of justice: as if he felt that there was a radical incompatibility between the proper gentleness of her nature, and the use of the sword of punishment. But in the Hecuba of Euripides, after the aged matron, exasperated by the treacherous murder of her son Polydorus, has put to death the two children of the assassin Polymestor, and has likewise put out his eyes, he addresses to her these words (v. 1233),
χαίρεις ὑβρίζουσ’ εἰς ἔμ’, ὦ πανοῦργε σύ·
χαίρεις ὑβρίζουσ’ εἰς ἔμ’, ὦ πανοῦργε σύ·
χαίρεις ὑβρίζουσ’ εἰς ἔμ’, ὦ πανοῦργε σύ·
χαίρεις ὑβρίζουσ’ εἰς ἔμ’, ὦ πανοῦργε σύ·
and she, no way shrinking from the imputation, replies
οὐ γάρ με χαίρειν χρὴ, σὲ τιμωρουμένην;
οὐ γάρ με χαίρειν χρὴ, σὲ τιμωρουμένην;
οὐ γάρ με χαίρειν χρὴ, σὲ τιμωρουμένην;
οὐ γάρ με χαίρειν χρὴ, σὲ τιμωρουμένην;
In one place Homer has taken an opportunity of showing us, what he thinks of the principle of exultation over fallen enemies. When Euryclea is about to shout over the fallen Suitors, Ulysses, though he has not yet ended the bloody work of retribution, gravely checks her. ‘It is wrong,’ he says, ‘to exult over the slain. These men have been overtaken by divine providence, and by their own perverse deeds: for they regarded no human being, noble or vile, with whomthey had to do: wherefore they have miserably perished in their wickedness.’ The whole tone and language of this rebuke, so grave and earnest as it is, and more sad even than it is stern, is worthy of any moral code that the world has known.
Wrath in Ulysses and in Achilles.
There is indeed a terrible severity in the proceedings of Ulysses against the Suitors, the women, and his rebellious subjects. But it is plain that the case, which Homer had to represent, was one that required the hero to effect something like a reconquest of the country. It is also plain that Homer felt that these stern measures would require a very strong warrant. Hence without doubt it is, that the preparations for the crisis are so elaborate; the insults offered to the disguised master of the palace so aggravated; and the direct agency of Minerva introduced to deepen his sufferings. Hence, again, when the incensed warrior is about to pursue with martial ardour the flying insurgents, his eagerness is mildly marked as excessive, and is effectually checked by the friendly but decisive intervention of Jupiter. Some critics have objected to this passage, and have argued that it could not be genuine. They surely must forget, that Homer does not seek to present us in his protagonists with a faultlessness which would have carried them out of the sphere, such as it was conceived by him and by his age, of life either divine or human. Both Ulysses and Achilles may err. But where they err, it is in measure and degree. Ulysses is the minister of public justice, and of divine retribution. But he is composed, like ourselves, of flesh and blood, and he carries his righteous office, in a natural heat, to the verge of cruelty. Then the warning voice is vouchsafed to him, and he at once dutifully obeys. And is, then, a thing like this so new and strange to us? Andhas neither our philosophy nor our experience of life taught us that there are no circumstances, in which a good and just man runs so serious a risk of becoming harsh and cruel unawares, as when he is hurried along by the torrent of an originally righteous indignation?
Even so with Achilles. He is, no more than Ulysses, merely vengeful, but he resents a wrong done to justice, to decency, and to love, in his person. Upon the stream of this resentment he is carried, until it threatens to become a torrent. Then, by an admirable design, he is chastised in the yet deeper passion of his soul, his friendship for Patroclus; and so is recalled within the bounds of his duty to his suffering countrymen.
But in both cases the foundation of conduct is just and sound: by neither is any sanction given to the principle which the Gospel rebukes, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ For a wrong done to principles of public morality and justice is in each case alike the thing chiefly resented, although in each case the person who resents it is also a person that had greatly suffered by it.
Again, we should misunderstand Homer’s picture of the Greek character, if we conceived that he left no room in it for those accesses of emotion, with respect to which it may be difficult to say whether they contributed most to its strength or its weakness, while it seems clear that they are in near association with both.
The Poet’s intention does not oblige him to place his protagonists beyond the reach of human infirmity, as we see in the stubborn wrath of Achilles, and in the awakened keenness of Ulysses for the blood of his rebellious subjects[865]. And though he never exhibits themas vicious, still, in the case of Ulysses, as well as in that of Achilles, he has introduced into his picture great quickness of temper, which is indeed nearly, though not necessarily, connected with sensitiveness of honour. On two occasions in particular is this observable: in the sharp answers namely of Ulysses, first to Agamemnon, who on his circuit accuses him of remissness in military duty[866]; and secondly to theθυμοδακὴς μῦθοςof Euryalus[867], who has taken him for aπρήκτηρor merchant, and a rogue to boot.
The Domestic affections.
The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.
A marked indication of the power of this principle among mankind is to be found in its prevalence even among the Olympian deities. For its appearance there has no relation to divine attributes properly so called; it is strictly a part of the mythology; a sentiment copied from the human heart and life, and transferred to these inventive or idealized formations. Indeed we always find it in connection with that in which they are most human, namely, the indulgence of their sensual passions, and the results of that indulgence in their human progeny. It is not, therefore, among the higher or traditive deities that we find the sentiment; it does not exist in Apollo or Minerva, whose love is always of a different kind, and is grounded in the gifts or character of the person who is the object of it, as for instance, the great Ulysses[868], or, in a smaller sphere, the skilful Phereclus, who built the ships of Paris[869]. It is in Jupiter over Sarpedon, in Neptune for the blindness of his brutal son Polyphemus, in Mars over Ascalaphus, in Venus about Æneas; and these two last arethe two deities whose ethical and intellectual standard is the lowest of all[870].
When we come down to earth, we find the sentiment strong everywhere. Among the Trojan royal family, where there is but little sense of the higher parts of morality, this feeling is intense alike with Priam and with Hecuba. The latter is not passionate, she isἠπιόδωρος[871]. Yet on the death of Hector we see her become a tigress, and wish she could devour the conqueror[872]. Ulysses chooses for the title by which he would be known that of the Father of Telemachus[873]. It is true indeed that, then as now, the imperiousness of bodily wants made itself felt; and it was then more ingenuously acknowledged. Hence Telemachus, attached to his father, when he explained the double cause of his grief and care to the Ithacan assembly, first named the death or absence of his father, but then proclaimed as the chief matter, the continuing waste and threatened destruction of his property[874]: