οὕνεκά μιν σὺν παιδὶ περισχόμεθ’ ἠδὲ γυναικὶἁζόμενοι· ᾤκει γὰρ ἐν ἄλσεϊ δενδρήεντιΦοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος.
οὕνεκά μιν σὺν παιδὶ περισχόμεθ’ ἠδὲ γυναικὶἁζόμενοι· ᾤκει γὰρ ἐν ἄλσεϊ δενδρήεντιΦοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος.
οὕνεκά μιν σὺν παιδὶ περισχόμεθ’ ἠδὲ γυναικὶἁζόμενοι· ᾤκει γὰρ ἐν ἄλσεϊ δενδρήεντιΦοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος.
οὕνεκά μιν σὺν παιδὶ περισχόμεθ’ ἠδὲ γυναικὶ
ἁζόμενοι· ᾤκει γὰρ ἐν ἄλσεϊ δενδρήεντι
Φοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος.
But it does not appear that theμάντις, though he was endowed with a particular gift, bore, in respect of it, such a character, as would suffice to separate him from ordinary civil duties, and to make him, like the priest, a clearly privileged person.
Upon the other hand, we should not omit to notice that we are told in the case of Theano, though she was of high birth and the wife of Antenor, that she was made priestess by the Trojan people. The same fact is probably indicated in the case of Dolopion, who, we are told, had been made or appointedἀρητὴρto Scamander (ἀρητὴρ ἐτέτυκτοIl. v. 77). And the appearance of the sons of priests in the field appears to show, that there was nothing like hereditary succession in the order; which was replenished, we may probably conclude, by selections having the authority or the assent of the public voice. Thus the body was popularly constituted, and was in thorough harmony with the national character. It does not, on that account, constitute a less important element in the community, but rather the reverse.
Now, whatever might be the other moral and social consequences of having in the community an order of men set apart to maintain the solemn worship of the gods, it must evidently have exercised a very powerful influence in the maintenance of abundance and punctuality in ritual observances. There can be no doubt, that the priest lived by the altar which he served, and lived the better in proportion as it was better supplied. Besides animals, cakes of flour too, and wine, were necessary for the due performance of his office[391]; and in the case of Maron this wine was so good, that the priest kept it secret from his servants, and that it has drawn forth the Poet’s most genial praise[392]:
ἡδὺν, ἀκηράσιον, θεῖον ποτόν·
ἡδὺν, ἀκηράσιον, θεῖον ποτόν·
ἡδὺν, ἀκηράσιον, θεῖον ποτόν·
ἡδὺν, ἀκηράσιον, θεῖον ποτόν·
He was rich too; for he had men and women servants in his house. So was Dares, the priest of Vulcan[393]. So probably was Dolopion, priest of Scamander; at any rate his station was a high one; as we see from the kind of respect paid to him (θεὸς δ’ ὡς τίετο δήμῳ); and we have another sign in both these cases of the station of the parents, from the position of the sons in the army, which is not among the common soldiery (πληθὺς), but among the notables. The sons of Dares fight in a chariot; and the name of Hypsenor, son of Dolopion, by its etymology indicates high birth.
Comparative observance of Sacrifice.
In point of fact the Homeric poems exhibit to us, together with the existence and influence of a priestly order, a very marked distinction in respect to sacrifice between the Trojans and the Greeks: a state of things in entire conformity with what we might thus expect.
In no single instance do we hear of a Trojan chief, who had been niggardly in his banquets to the gods. Hector[394]is expressly praised for his liberality in this respect by Jupiter, and Æneas by Neptune[395]. The commendation, however, extends to the whole community. In the Olympian Assembly of the Fourth Book, Jupiter says that, of all the cities inhabited by men, Troy is to him the dearest; for there his altar never lacked the sacrifice, the libation and the savoury reek, which are the portion of the gods[396]:
οὐ γάρ μοί ποτε βωμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης,λοιβῆς τε κνίσης τε· τὸ γὰρ λάχομεν γέρας ἡμεῖς.
οὐ γάρ μοί ποτε βωμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης,λοιβῆς τε κνίσης τε· τὸ γὰρ λάχομεν γέρας ἡμεῖς.
οὐ γάρ μοί ποτε βωμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης,λοιβῆς τε κνίσης τε· τὸ γὰρ λάχομεν γέρας ἡμεῖς.
οὐ γάρ μοί ποτε βωμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης,
λοιβῆς τε κνίσης τε· τὸ γὰρ λάχομεν γέρας ἡμεῖς.
But the Greeks, thus destitute of priests, often fail, as we might expect, in the regularity of their religious rites. Ulysses[397], indeed, is in this, as in all the points of excellence, unimpeachable. But his was not the ruleof all. Œneus, two generations before theTroica, while sacrificing to the other deities, either forgot or did not think fit (ἢ λάθετ’ ἢ οὐκ ἐνόησεν) to sacrifice to Diana[398]; hence the devastations of the Calydonian boar. Nor is his the only case in point.
The account given by Nestor to Telemachus in the Third Odyssey is somewhat obscure in this particular. He says that, after the Greeks embarked, the deity dispersed them; and that then Jupiter ordained the misfortunes of their return, since they were not all intelligent and righteous[399]. It appears to be here intimated, that the Greeks in the first flush of victory forgot the influence of heaven; and that an omission of the proper sacrifices was the cause of the first dispersion.
After they collect again in Troas, the Atreid brothers differ, as Menelaus proposes to start again, and Agamemnon to remain, and offer sacrifices in order to appease Minerva; but, as Nestor adds, the deities are not so soon appeased. Agamemnon, therefore, seems to have been too late with his celebration; and Menelaus, again, to have omitted it altogether.
The party who side with Menelaus offer sacrifices on their arrival at Tenedos, seemingly to repair the former error: but Jupiter is incensed, and causes them to fall out anew among themselves. A portion of them return once more to Agamemnon[400].
Menelaus finds his way to Lesbos, and then sails as far as Malea. Here he encounters a storm, and with part of his ships he gets to Egypt: where he is again detained by the deities, because he did not offer up the proper hecatombs[401]. Such remissness is the more remarkable, because Menelaus certainly appears to be one of the most virtuous characters in the Greek host.
The course, however, of the siege itself affords a very marked instance, in which the whole body of the Greeks was guilty of omitting the regular sacrifices proper to be used in the inauguration of a great undertaking. In the hasty construction of the trench and rampart, they apparently forgot the hecatombs[402]. Neptune immediately points out the error in the Olympian Court; and uses it in aid of his displeasure at a work, which he thinks will eclipse the wall of Troy, executed for Laomedon by himself in conjunction with Apollo. Jupiter forthwith agrees[403], that after the siege he shall destroy it. And the Poet, returning to the subject at the commencement of the Twelfth Book, observes that the work could not last, because it was constructed without enlisting in its favour the good will of the Immortals[404]. This omission of the Greeks is the more characteristic and remarkable, because the moment when they erected the rampart was a moment of apprehension, almost of distress.
Thus, then, it appears that, as a nation, the Trojans were much more given to religious observances of a positive kind, than the Greeks. They were, like the Athenians[405]at a later epoch,δεισιδαιμονέστεροι. And, again, as between one Greek and another, there is no doubt that the good are generally, though not invariably, scrupulous in this respect, and the bad commonly careless. Thus much is implied particularly in Od. iii. 131, as well as conclusively shown in the general order of the Odyssey. But, as between the two nations, we cannot conceive that the Poet had any correspondingintention. Although a more scrupulous formality in religion marks the Trojans than the Greeks, and although in itself, andcæteris paribus, this may be the appropriate sign of piety, yet it is a sign only; as a sign it may be made a substitute, and, as a substitute, it becomes the characteristic of Ægisthus and Autolycus, no less than it is of Eumæus and Ulysses. As between the two nations, the difference is evidently associated with other differences in national character and morality. We must look therefore for broader grounds, upon which to form an estimate of the comparative virtue of the two nations, than either the populousness of Olympus on the one side, or the array of priests and temples on the other.
Nowhere do the signs of historic aim in Homer seem to me more evident, than in his very distinct delineations of national character on the Greek and the Trojan part respectively. But this is a general proposition; and it must be understood with a certain reservation as to details.
Two modes of handling for Greece and Troy.
It does not appear to me that Homer has studied the more minute points of consistency in motive and action among the Trojans of the poem, in the same degree as among the Greeks. He has (so to speak) manœuvred them as subsidiary figures, with a view to enhancing and setting off those in whom he has intended and caused the principal interest to centre; not so as to destroy or diminish effects of individual character, but so as to give to the collective or joint action on the Trojan side a subordinate and ministerial function in the machinery of the poem. As Homer sung to Greeks, and Greeks were his judges and patrons as well as his theme, nay rather as his heart and soul were Greek, so on the Greek side the chain of events is closely knit; if itsdirection changes, there is an adequate cause, as in the vehemence of Achilles, or the vacillation of Agamemnon. But he did not sing to Trojans; and so, among the Trojans of the Iliad, there are as it were stitches dropped in the web, and the connection is much less carefully elaborated. Thus they acquiesce in the breach of covenant after the single combat of the Third Book, although the evident wish among them, independent of obligation, was for its fulfilment[406]. Then in the Fourth Book, after the treachery of Pandarus, the Trojans not only do not resent it, but they recommence the fight while the Greek chiefs are tending the wounded Menelaus[407]; which conduct exhibits, if the phrase may be permitted, an extravagance of disregard to the obligations of truth and honour. Hector, in the Sixth Book, quits the battle field upon an errand, to which it is hardly possible to assign a poetical sufficiency of cause, unless we refer it to the readiness which he not unfrequently shows to keep himself out of the fight. Again, there is something awkward and out of keeping in his manner of dealing with the Fabian recommendations of Polydamas when the crisis approaches. Some of these he accepts, and some he rejects, without adequate reason for the difference, except that he is preparing himself as an illustrious victim for Achilles, and that he must act foolishly in order that the superior hero, and with him the poem itself, may not be baulked of their purpose.
Thus, again, Homer has given us a pretty clear idea even of the respective ages of the Greek chiefs. It can hardly be doubted that Nestor stands first, Idomeneus second, Ulysses third: while Diomed and Antilochus are the youngest; Ajax and Achilles probably the next. But as to Paris, Helenus, Æneas, Sarpedon, Polydamas, we find no conclusion as to their respective ages derivable from the poem.
Yet though Homer may use a greater degree of liberty in one case, and a lesser in another, as to the mode of setting his jewels, he always adheres to the general laws of truth and nature as they address themselves to his poetical purpose. Thus there may be reason to doubt, whether he observed the same rigid topographical accuracy in dealing with the plain of Troy, as he has evinced in the Greek Catalogue: but he has used materials, all of which the region supplied; and he has arranged them clearly, as a poetic whole, before the mental eye of those with whom he had to do. Even so we may be prepared to find that he deals with the moral as with the material Troas, allowing himself somewhat more of license, burdening himself with somewhat less of care. And then we need not be surprised at secondary or inferential inconsistencies in the action, as respects the Trojan people, because it has not been worth his while to work the delineation of them, in its details, up to his highest standard; yet we may rely upon his general representations, and we are probably on secure ground in contemplating all the main features of Trojan life and character as not less deliberately drawn, than those of the Greeks. For, in truth, it was requisite, in order to give full effect among his countrymen to the Greek portrait, that they should be able, at least up to a certain point, to compare it with the Trojan.
Moral superiority of his Greeks.
Regarding the subject from this point of view, I should say that Homer has, upon the whole, assigned to the Greeks a moral superiority over the Trojans, not less real, though less broad and more chequered, than that which he has given them in the spheres ofintellectual and of military excellence. But, in all cases alike, he has pursued the same method of casting the balance. He eschews the vulgar and commonplace expedient of a formal award: he decides this and every other question through the medium of action. The first thing, therefore, to be done is, to inquire into the morality of his contemporaries, as it is exhibited through the main action of the poems.
It is admitted on all hands that, in the ethical picture of the Odyssey, the distinctions of right and wrong are broad, clear, and conspicuous. But the case of the Iliad is not so simple. The conduct of Paris, which leads to the war, is so flagrant and vile, and the conduct of the Greeks in demanding the restoration of Helen before they resort to force, so just and reasonable, that it is not unnaturally made matter of surprise that any war could ever have arisen upon such a subject, except the war of a wronged and justly incensed people against mere ruffians, traitors, and pirates. The Trojans appear at first sight simply as assertors of a wrong the most gross and aggravated, even in its original form; their iniquity is further darkened by obstinacy, and their cause is the cause of enmity to every law, human and divine. Yet the Greeks do not assume to themselves, in connection with the cause of the war, to stand upon a different level of morality: and the amiable affections, with the sense of humanity, if not the principles of honour and justice, are exhibited in the detail of the Iliad as prevailing among the Trojans, little less than among the Greeks.
Now, let us first endeavour to clear away some misapprehensions that simply darken the case: and after this let us inquire what exhibition Homer has really given us of the moral sense of the Greeks and theTrojans respectively, in connection with the crime of Paris.
In the first place, something is due to the falsification by later poets of the Homeric tradition: and to the reflex affiliation upon Homer of those traits which, through the influence first of the Cyclic poets, probably exaggerating the case in order to conceal their relative want of strength, and then of the tragedians and Virgil, have come to be taken for granted as genuine parts of the original portraiture.
According to the Argument of theΚύπρια Ἔπη, as it has been handed down to us, Paris, having been received in hospitality by Menelaus, was left by him under the friendly care of his wife, on his setting out for Crete. He then corrupted Helen; and induced her, after being corrupted, to elope with him, and with the greater part of the moveable goods of Menelaus.
Upon this tale our ideas have been formed, and, this being so, we marvel why Homer does not make the Greeks feel more indignation at a proceeding which simply combined treachery, robbery, and adultery. As he prizes so highly the rights of guests, and pitches their gratitude accordingly, we cannot understand how he should be so insensible to the grossest imaginable breach of their obligations.
Homer’s account of the abduction.
Homer is here made responsible for that which, in part, he does not tell us, and which is positively, as well as inferentially, at variance with what he does tell us. He tells us absolutely, that Helen was not inveigled into leaving Sparta, but carried off by force: and that the crime of adultery was committed after, and not before, her abduction.
This difference alters the character of the deed of Paris, in a manner by no means so insignificant according to the heroic standard of morality, as according to ours. As it seems plain from Homer’s expression,ἁρπάξας[408], that Paris carried off Helen in the first instance by an act of violence, so also it is probable that, when the first adultery was committed in the island of Cranae, he was her ravisher much more than her corrupter. Her offence appears to have consisted mainly in the mere acceptance, at what precise date we know not, of the relation thus brought into existence between them, and in compliances that with the lapse of time naturally followed, such as the visit to the Trojan horse. It would have been, however, under all the circumstances, an act of superhuman rather than of human virtue, if she had refused, through the long years of her residence abroad, to recognise Paris as a husband: and accordingly the light, in which she is presented to us by the Poet, is that of a sufferer infinitely more than of an offender[409].
When we regard Helen from this point of view, we perceive that Homer’s narrative is at least in perfect keeping with itself. The Greeks have made war to avenge the wrongs of Helen not less than those of Menelaus: nay, Menelaus himself, the keenest of them all, is keen on her behalf even more than on his own[410]. He regards her as a person stolen from him: and the Greeks regard Paris only as the robber.
We have no reason to suppose the Cyprian Epic to be a trustworthy supplement to the narrative of Homer. We have seen some important points of discrepancy from the Iliad. And there are others. For instance, this poem makes Pollux immortal and Castor only mortal, while Homer acquaints us in the Iliad with the interment of both, and in the Odyssey with their restorationon equal terms to an alternate life. It gives Agamemnon four daughters, the Iliad but three. It brings Briseis from Pedasus, the Iliad brings her from Lyrnessus. And there is other matter in the plot, that does not appear to correspond at all with the modes of Homeric conception[411]. Had Homer told us the same story as the Cyprian Epic, he would perhaps have made his countrymen express all the indignation we could desire.
And now let us consider what is the view taken of the abduction in the Iliad by the various persons whose sentiments are made known to us: and how far that view can be accounted for by the general tone of the age, or by what was peculiar to the character and institutions of each people respectively.
Helen herself nowhere utters a word of attachment or of respect to Paris. Even of his passions she appears to have been the reluctant, rather than the willing instrument. She thinks alike meanly of his understanding[412]and of his courage[413]: and he shares[414]in the rebukes which she everywhere heaps upon herself; though, with the delicacy and high refinement of her irresolute but gentle character, she never reproaches him in the presence of his parents, by whom he continued to be loved.
To the Trojan people he was unequivocally hateful[415]. They would have pointed him out to Agamemnon, if they could: for they detested him like black Death. It was by a mixture of bribery and the daring assertion of authority, that he checked those movements in the Assembly, which had it for their object to enforce the restoration of Helen to Menelaus[416]. Of all his countrymen,Hector appears to have been most alive to his guilt, and is alone in reproaching him with it[417]. It is under the influence of a sharp rebuke from Hector, that he proposes to undertake a single combat with Menelaus[418].
The Greek estimate of Paris.
The only persons on the Greek side, who utter any strong sentiment in respect to Paris, are Diomed and Menelaus. This is singular; for when we consider what was the cause of war, we might have expected, perhaps, that recurrence to it would be popular and constant among the Greeks. Nor is this all that may excite surprise. Diomed is unmeasured in vituperating Paris, but it is for his cowardice and effeminacy. The only word, which comes at all near the subject of his crime, isπαρθενοπῖπα: and by mocking him as a dangler after virgins, the brave son of Tydeus shows how small a place the original treachery of Paris occupied in his mind.
Menelaus, indeed, has a keen sense of the specific nature and malignity of the outrage. He beseeches Jupiter to strengthen his hand against the man who has done such deadly wrong, not to him only, but to all the laws which unite mankind:
ὄφρα τις ἐρρίγῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπωνξεινοδόκον κακὰ ῥέξαι, ὅ κεν φιλότητα παράσχῃ[419].
ὄφρα τις ἐρρίγῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπωνξεινοδόκον κακὰ ῥέξαι, ὅ κεν φιλότητα παράσχῃ[419].
ὄφρα τις ἐρρίγῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπωνξεινοδόκον κακὰ ῥέξαι, ὅ κεν φιλότητα παράσχῃ[419].
ὄφρα τις ἐρρίγῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπων
ξεινοδόκον κακὰ ῥέξαι, ὅ κεν φιλότητα παράσχῃ[419].
But then Homer has already, in the Catalogue, introduced Menelaus to us as distinguished from the rest of his countrymen, by his greater keenness to revenge the wrongs and groans of Helen[420]. Accordingly, the injured husband returns on other occasions to the topic: calls the Trojansκακαὶ κύνες, and invokes upon them the anger ofΖεὺς ξείνιος, the Jupiter of hospitality[421];
οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτῄματα πολλὰμὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ.
οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτῄματα πολλὰμὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ.
οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτῄματα πολλὰμὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ.
οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτῄματα πολλὰ
μὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ.
Thus it is plain, that Menelaus resents not only a privation and an act of piracy, but a base and black breach of faith. It is quite plain, on the other hand, that in this respect he stands alone among his countrymen. They, regarding the matter more crudely, and from a distance, appear to see in it little beyond a violent abduction, which it is perfectly right, for those who can, to resent and retrieve, but which implies no extraordinary and damning guilt in the perpetrator.
Hence probably that singular appearance of apathy on the part of the Greeks, which might at first sight seem to entail on them a moral reproach, in some degree allied to that which justly attaches itself to the Trojan community. It is not possible, indeed, to take a full measure of their state of mind in regard to the crime of Paris, without condemning the views and propensities to which it was due. But the causes were various: and the blame they may deserve is both very different from that which must fall upon the Trojans, and is also different in a mode, which may help to illustrate some main distinctions in the two national characters.
I speak here, as everywhere, of the adjustment of acts and motives in the poem as poetical facts, that is to say, as placed relatively to one another with care and accuracy in order to certain effects; and as liable to be tried under the law of effect, just as, in a simple history, all particulars alleged are liable to be tried under the law of fact. The assumption of truth or fable in the poem does not materially widen or narrow the field of poetical discussion. The critic looks for consistency as between motive and action, causes and effects, in thevoyage to Lilliput or Laputa, as well as in Thucydides or Clarendon. The difference is that, in the one case, our discussion terminates with the genius of the inventor; in the other we are verifying the life and condition of mankind.
If then we admit the abduction, and inquire for what probable cause it is that the wrong, being so obvious and gross, was not more prominent in the mind of the people who had endured it, a part at least of the answer is this. We do not require to go back three thousand years in the history of the world in order to learn how often it happens that, when a conflict has arisen between nations, the original causes of quarrel tend irresistibly to become absorbed and lost in its incidents. As long as honour and security are held to depend more on strength than on right, relative strength must often prevail over relative right in the decision of questions, where the arbitrement of battle has been invoked. Both the willingness of the Trojans to restore, and the willingness of the Greeks to accept the atonement, may be expedients of the Poet to give a certain moral harmony to his work; of which it is a marked feature that it artfully divides our sympathies throughout, so far at least as is needed for the interest of the poem. On the one side, the ambition and rapacity of Agamemnon may have induced him not only not to seek, but even to decline or discourage accommodation; which, we may observe, he never promotes in the Iliad. Having got a fair cause of war, he may have been bent on making the most of it, and confident, as Thucydides believes he was, in his power to turn it to account. While, on the other hand, Troy was not so far from or so strange to Greece, as to be exempt from the fear of appearing afraid; and,until it had become too late, she may have thought her safety would be compromised by the surrender of Helen.
Here may be reasons why restitution was neither given on the one side, nor steadily kept in view on the other: especially as it was of course included in the idea of the capture of the city. But it is not clear that this was enough to account for the apathy of the Greeks in general with respect to the crime of Paris, which we might have expected to find a favourite and familiar topic with his enemies at large, instead of being confined, as it is, to the immediate sufferer by the wrong.
Its relation to prevailing views of marriage.
Now, the answer to this question must after all be sought partly in the prevalent ideas of the heroic age; and partly in those which were peculiar more or less to the Greek people.
According to Christian morality, the abduction and appropriation of a married woman is not simply a crime when committed, but it is a crime that is aggravated by every day, during which her relation with her seducer or ravisher is continued. This was not so in the heroic age.
We have examples in the poems of what Homer considers to be a continued course of crime. Such is the conduct of the Suitors in the Odyssey, who for years together waste the substance of Ulysses, woo his wife, oppress his son, and cohabit with the servants. This was habitual crime, crime voluntarily and deliberately persevered in, when it might at any time have been renounced.
This vicious course of the Suitors is never called by Homer anἄτη; it is described by the names ofἀτασθαλίαιandὑπερβασίη[422]. So likewise the series of enormities committed by Ægisthus, the corruption of Clytemnestra, the murder of her husband, the expulsion of Orestes and prolonged usurpation of the throne; these are never called by the name ofἄτη; butἄτη, and not one of the severer names quoted above, is the appellation always given by Homer to the crime of Paris.
Theἄτηof a man is a crime so far partaking of the nature of error, that it is done under the influence of passion or weakness; perhaps excluding premeditation, perhaps such that its consequences follow spontaneously in its train, without a new act of will to draw them, so that the act, when once committed, is practically irretrievable. Something, according to Homer, was evidently wanting in the crime of Paris, to sink it to the lower depths of blackness. Perhaps we may find it partly in the nature of marriage, as it was viewed by his age.
Having taken Helen to Troy, he made her his wife, and his wife she continued until the end of the siege. We should of course say he did not make her his wife, for she was the wife of another man. But the distinction between marriagede factoand marriagede jure, clear to us in the light of Divine Revelation, was less clear to the age of Homer. Helen was to Paris the mistress of his household; the possessor of his affections, such as they were; the sole sharer, apparently, of his dignities and of his bed. To the mind of that period there was nothing dishonourable in the connection itself, apart from its origin; while, to our mind, every day of its continuance was a fresh accumulation of its guilt. The higher wrong of wounded and defrauded affections was personal to Menelaus. In the aspect it presented to the general understanding, the act of Paris, once committed, and sealed by the establishment of thede factoconjugal relation, remained an act of plunder and nothing else.
And to Greek views of homicide.
To comprehend these notions, so widely differing from our own, we may seek their further illustration by a reference to the established view of homicide. He, who had taken the life of a fellow creature, was bound to make atonement by the payment of a fine. If he offered that atonement, it was not only the custom, but the duty, of the relations of the slain man to accept it. So much so, that the blunt mind of Ajax takes this ground as the simplest and surest for argument with Achilles, whom he urges not to refuse reparation offered by Agamemnon, in consideration that reparation (ποίνη) covers the slaughter of a brother or a son. Beforehand, the Greek would have scorned to accept a price for life. But, the deed being done, it came into the category of exchangeable values. Even so the abstraction of Helen, once committed, assumed for the common mind the character of an act of plunder, differing from the case of homicide, inasmuch as the thing taken could be given back, but not differing from it as to the essence of its moral nature, however aggravated might have been the circumstances with which it was originally attended.
Now, wherever the moral judgment against plunder has been greatly relaxed, that of fraud in connection with it is sure to undergo a similar process; because, in the same degree in which acts of plunder are acquitted as lawful acquisition, fraud is sure to come into credit by assuming the character of stratagem. We may, I think, find an example of this rule in the Thirteenth Odyssey; where, with an entire freedom from any consciousness of wrong, Ulysses feigns to have slaughtered Orsilochus at night by ambush, in consequence of a quarrel that had previously occurred about booty[423].
Here then we reach the point, at which we musttake into view the peculiar ideas and tendencies of the Greek mind in the heroic age, as they bear necessarily upon its appreciation of an act like that of Paris. The Greeks, of whom we may fairly take Diomed as the type, detest and despise him for affectation, irresolution, and poltroonery: these are the ideas uppermost in their mind: we are not to doubt that, besides seeking reparation for Menelaus, they condemned morally the act which made it needful; what we have to account for is, that they did not condemn it in such a manner as to make this moral judgment the ruling idea in their minds with regard to him.
We have seen that, according to Homer, instead of Helen’s having been originally the willing partner of the guilt of Paris, he was, under her husband’s roof, her kidnapper and not her corrupter. Her offence seems to have consisted in this, that she gave a half-willing assent to the consequences of the abduction. Though never escaping from the sense of shame, always retaining along with a wounded conscience her original refinement of character, and apparently fluctuating from time to time in an alternate strength and weakness of homeward longings[424], the specific form of her offence, according to the ideas of the age, was rather the preterite one of unresisting acquiescence, than the fact of continuing to recognise Paris as a husband during the lifetime of Menelaus. It was the having changed her husband, not the living with a man who was not her husband; and hence we find that she was most kindly treated in Troy by that member of the royal house, namely Hector, who was himself of the highest moral tone.
The offence of Paris, though also (except as to themere restitution of plundered goods) a preterite offence, was more complex. He violated the laws of hospitality, as we find distinctly charged upon him by Menelaus[425]. He assumed the power of a husband over another man’s wife. This he gained by violence. Now, paradoxical as it may appear, yet perhaps this very ingredient of violence, which we look upon as even aggravating the case, and which in the view of the Greeks was the proper cause of the war, (for their anxiety was to avenge the forced journey and the groans of Helen,) may nevertheless have been also the very ingredient, which morally redeemed the character of the proceeding in the eyes of Greece. This it might do by lifting it out of the region of mere shame and baseness, into that class of manful wrongs, which they habitually regarded as matters to be redressed indeed by the strong hand, but never as merely infamous. Hence, when we find the Greeks full of disgust and of contempt towards Paris, it is only for the effeminacy and poltroonery of character which he showed in the war. His original crime was probably palliated to them by its seeming to involve something of manhood and of the spirit of adventure. So that we may thus have to seek the key to the inadequate sense among the Greeks of the guilt of Paris in that which, as we have seen, was the capital weakness of their morality; namely, its light estimation of crimes of violence, and its tendency to recognise their enterprise and daring as an actual set-off against whatever moral wrong they might involve.
The chance legend of Hercules and Iphitus, in the Odyssey, affords the most valuable and pointed illustration of the great moral question[426]between Paris and Menelaus, which lies at the very foundation of thegreat structure of the Iliad. For in that case also, we seem to find an instance of abominable crime, which notwithstanding did not destroy the character of its perpetrator, nor prevent his attaining to Olympus; apparently for no other reason, than that it was a crime such as had probably required for its commission the exercise of masculine strength and daring.
There remained, however, even according to contemporary ideas, quite enough of guilt on the part of Paris. The abduction and corruption of a prince’s wife, combined with his personal cowardice, his constant levity and vacillation, and his reckless indifference to his country’s danger and affliction, amply suffice to warrant and account for Homer’s having represented him as a personage hated, hateful, and contemptible. But while the foregoing considerations may explain the feelings and language of the Greeks, otherwise inexplicable, there still remains enough of what at first sight is puzzling in the conduct, if not in the sentiments, of the Trojans.
The Trojan estimate of Paris.
We ask ourselves, how could the Trojans endure, or how could Homer rationally represent them as enduring, to see the glorious wealth and state of Priam, with their own lives, families, and fortunes, put upon the die, rather than surrender Helen, or support Paris in withholding her? The people hate him: the wise Antenor opens in public assembly the proposal to restore Helen to the Greeks: Hector, the prince of greatest influence, almost the actual governor of Troy, knew his brother’s guilt, and reproached him with it[427]. How is it that, of all these elements and materials, none ever become effective?
We must, I think, seek the answer to the questionspartly in the difference of the moral tone, and the moral code, among Greeks and Trojans; partly in the difference of their political institutions.
We shall find it probable that, although the ostensible privileges of the people were not less, yet the same spirit of freedom did not pervade Trojan institutions; that their kings were followed with a more servile reverence by the people; that authority was of more avail, apart from rational persuasion; that amidst equally strong sentiments of connection in the family and the tribe, there was much less of moral firmness and decision than among the Greeks, and perhaps also a far less close adherence to the great laws of conjugal union, which had been violated by the act of Paris. Indeed it would appear from the allusion of Hector to a tunic of stone[428], that Paris was probably by law subject to stoning for the crime of adultery: a curious remnant, if the interpretation be a correct one, of the stern traits of pristine justice and severity, still remembered amidst a prevalent dissolution of the stricter moral ties.
Although it results from our previous inquiries that the plebeiansubstratum, so to speak, of society, was perhaps nearly the same in both countries, yet the opinions of the masses would not then have the same substantiveness of character, nor so much independence of origin, as in times of Christianity, and of a more elaborate development of freedom and its main conditions. Then, much more than now, the first propelling power in the formation of public opinion would be from the high places of society: and in the higher sphere of the community, if not in the lower, Greece and Troy were, while ethnically allied, yet materially different as tomoral tone. It is remarkable, that there is noΤὶςin Troy.
The Trojans more sensual and false.
If we may trust the general effect of Homer’s representations, we shall conclude that the Trojans were more given to the vices of sensuality and falsehood, the Greeks, on the other hand, more inclined to crimes of violence: in fact, the latter bear the characteristics of a more masculine, and the former of a feebler, people. In the words of Mure, the contrast shadows forth ‘certain fundamental features of distinction, which have always been more or less observable, between the European and Asiatic races[429].’
On looking back to the previous history of Troy, we find that Laomedon defrauded Neptune and Apollo of their stipulated hire: and Anchises surreptitiously obtained a breed of horses from the sires belonging to Laomedon, who was his relative[430]. The conditions of the bargain, under which Paris fought with Menelaus, are shamelessly and grossly violated. Pandarus, in the interval of truce, treacherously aims at and wounds Menelaus with an arrow; but no Trojan disapproves the deed. Euphorbus comes behind the disarmed Patroclus, and wounds him in the back; and even princely Hector, seeing him in this condition, then only comes up and dispatches him. That these were not isolated acts, we may judge from the circumstance that Menelaus, ever mild and fair in his sentiments, when he accepts the challenge of Paris, requires that Priam shall be sent for to conclude the arrangement, because his sons—and he makes no exceptions—are saucy and faithless,ὑπερφίαλοι καὶ ἄπιστοι[431]. This must, I think, be taken as characteristic of Troy; though he mildly proceeds to take off the edge of his reproach byaγνώμηabout youth and age. But the most scandalous of all the Trojan proceedings seems to have been the effort made, though unsuccessfully, to have Menelaus put to death, when he came on a peaceful mission to demand the restoration of his wife[432].
Nothing of this admiration for fraud apart from force appears either in the conduct of the Greeks during the war, or in their prior history: and the passage respecting Autolycus, which, more than any other, appears to give countenance to knavery, takes his case out of the category of ordinary human action by placing it in immediate relation to a deity; so that it illustrates, not the national character as it was, but rather the form to which the growing corruptions of religion tended to bring it. Yet, while Homer gives to the Trojans alone the character of faithlessness, he everywhere, as we must see, vindicates the intellectual superiority of the Greeks in the stratagems of the war. And if, as I think is the case, I have succeeded in proving above that the doctrine of a future state was less lively and operative among the Trojans than among the Greeks, it is certainly instructive to view that deficiency in connection with the national want of all regard for truth. This difference teaches us, that the imprecations against perjurers, and the prospects of future punishment, were probably no contemptible auxiliaries in overcoming the temptations to present falseness, with which human life is everywhere beset.
As respects sensuality, the chief points of distinction are, that we find a particular relation to this subject running down the royal line of Troy; and that, whereas in Greece we are told occasionally of some beautiful woman who is seduced or ravished by a deity, in Troas we find the princes of the line are those to whosenames the legends are attached. The inference is, that in the former case a veil was thrown over such subjects, but that in the latter no sense of shame required them to be kept secret. The cases that come before us are those of Tithonus, who is said to become the husband of Aurora; of Anchises, for whom Venus conceives a passion; and of Paris, on whom the same deity confers the evil gift of desire[433], and to whom she promises the most beautiful of women, the wife of Menelaus. All these are stories, which seem to have tended to the fame of the parties concerned on earth, and by no means to their discredit with the Immortals. And again, if, as some may take to be the case, we are to interpret the threeνύμφαι[434]of Troas as local deities, how remarkable is the fact that Homer should thus describe them as tainted with passions, which nowhere appear among the corresponding order within the Greek circle! There, male deities alone are licentious. Juno, Minerva, Diana, and Persephone, whom alone we can call properly Greek goddesses of the period, have no such impure connection with mortals, as the goddesses both of the Trojan and of the Phœnician traditions.
We hear indeed of Orion[435], who was also the choice of Aurora: but we cannot tell whether he belonged more to the Trojan than to the Greek branch of the common stem. To the Greek race he cannot have been alien, as he is among Greek company in the Eleventh Odyssey: but then he is not there as an object of honour; he appears in a state of modified suffering, engaged in an endless chase[436]. We also find Iasion, probably in Crete, who is reported to have been loved by Ceres[437]: but he was immediately consumed for it bythe thunderbolt of Jupiter. And so the detention of Ulysses by the beautiful and immortal Calypso is not in Homer a glory, but a calamity; and it allays none of the passionate longings of that hero for his wife and home.
The marked contrast, which these groups of incidents present, is perhaps somewhat heightened by the enthusiastic observation of the Trojan Elders on the Wall in the Third Iliad[438]. Though susceptible of a good sense, yet, when the old age of the persons is taken into view, the passage seems to be in harmony with the Trojan character at large, rather than the Greek: and perhaps it may bear some analogy to the licentious glances of the Suitors[439]. If so, it is very significant that Homer should assign to the most venerable elders of Troy, what in Greece he does not think of imputing except to libertines, who are about to fall within the sweep of the divine vengeance.
The difference between the races in this respect seems to have been deeply rooted, for there is evidently some corresponding difference between their views and usages in respect to marriage.