SECTION VI.
Some principal Homeric characters in Troy.
Hector: Helen: Paris.
To one only among the countless millions of human beings has it been given to draw characters, by the strength of his own individual hand, in lines of such force and vigour, that they have become, from his day to our own, the common inheritance of civilized man. That one is Homer. Ever since his time, besides finding his way into the usually impenetrable East, he has provided literary capital and available stock in trade for reciters and hearers, for authors and readers of all times and of all places within the limits of the Western world;
Like the sun, which furnishes with its light the close courts and alleys of London, while himself unseen by their inhabitants, Homer has supplied with the illumination of his ideas millions of minds that were never brought into direct contact with his works, and even millions more, that have hardly been aware of his existence. As the full flow of his genius has opened itself out into ten thousand irrigating channels by successive subdivision, there can be no cause for wonder, if some of them have not preserved the pellucid clearness of the stream. Like blood from the great artery of the heart of man, as it returns through innumerable veins, it is gradually darkened in its flow. The very universality of the tradition has multiplied the causes of corruption. That which, as to documents, is a guarantee, because their errors correct one another, as to ideas is a new source of danger, because every thing depends upon constant reference to the finer touches of an original, which has escaped from view. And this universality is his alone. An Englishman may pardonably think that his great rival in the portraiture of character is Shakespeare—a Briton may even go further, and challenge, on behalf of Sir Walter Scott, a place in this princely choir, second to no other person but these. Yet the fame of Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth, or Falstaff, and much more that of Varney, or Ravenswood, or Caleb Balderston, or Meg Merrilies, has not yet come, and may never come, to be a world-wide fame. On the other hand, that distinction has long been inalienably secured to every character of the first class, who appears in the Homeric poems. He has conferred upon them a deathless inheritance.
But, through waywardness and infirmity, mankind corrupts that with which it sympathizes, and undermines what it obeys. The same law of waste and decomposition, which from day to day corrodes the works of nature, operates also in divers manners and degrees upon the creations of mind. As the portraitures of individual character, to be found in the works of the great masters of the imaginative faculty, are among the very highest of these creations, so, because they are the greatest, they are the most difficult to render into other forms, and to transfuse through new media. Among the ancient sculptures it is easier to find a good Faun than a good Venus, while again those works, which embody the very highest ideals, are not only rare, but are in most instances unique. In like manner the Punch and the Harlequin, the broad characters of primitive spectacle and farce, readily become national, and are transmitted, spontaneously as it were, through ages without substantial change; but the finer and nobler representations of man, requiring greater effort, and a different order of mind to comprehend, as well as to project them, rapidly degenerate in the very points on which their peculiar excellence depends.
Other causes, besides mental impotence in the recipient, contribute towards this result. One main agent is, the inability or the disinclination of mankind to go back to originals. For the mass, a modernizing process is commonly in demand, is readily furnished, and is itself again and again varied from age to age. It is always easier to derive from what is itself derivative, than to go up to the fountain-head. Into the business of every profession, including (now more than ever) that of letters, necessity drives her adamantine clamps: and the βάναυσον and the φορτικὸν, or slang and the clap-trap, maintain a too successful struggle to depress its higher and more genial aims.
It is not difficult to point out reasons why the characters of Homer should have been peculiarly exposed to injury from the lapse of time. Most of all from two causes; because they were of such extraordinary and refined merit, and because of the form in which they were conveyed. Not only did they bear the stamp that the highest genius alone could affix, but nothing less than care, sympathy, and manly effort, could enable men to comprehend them. For they were not exhibited in the set forms of descriptive passages, which might be learnt by rote, but they were wrought out in the fine, as well as deep and strong lines of life and action; and none of them could be defined in terms, until they had first been profoundly felt within. We were to become acquainted with them as friends, by living with them through their varied fortunes; not as strangers, by some letter of introduction, that sets forth their birth, parentage, calling, and qualifications. For earnest and hearty attention they provided the richest possible reward; by the careless they were to be enjoyed indeed, but scarcely to be apprehended. To the eyes of such men there is little or nothing to discriminate, as between Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomed, Menelaus, and Patroclus; and if Nestor is a good deal older, Ulysses a good deal more cunning, and Achilles even more valiant than the rest, a single touch disposes of these differences, and enables us to reduce all the eight nearly to a common type. A prior examination of particular instances will best prepare us for weighing the force of those other causes, besides the weakness of human nature, and the excellence of the works in the general sense of the words, that contributed to depress and deface the Homeric characters.
In the present Section, then, I propose to invite attention to a few Homeric characters, as they stand in the poems, which, as far as I am able to judge, stand in need as yet of further elucidation.
Perhaps there is no one particular in which Colonel Mure has rendered such important service to the modern Homeridæ, as in his account of the Homeric characters. In general, I shall best discharge my duty by simply referring the reader to his pages. I venture, however, to think, that while the paramount subject of the great Grecian characters is incomparably handled by him throughout, some exception may be taken to his representation of a part of the Trojan personages; of Hector, for example, and more particularly (if she may be placed in this class) of Helen. At least, I presume to regard some of them as fairly capable of being presented in another light, and I shall proceed at once to make the attempt with Hector.
I. ‘In the character of this hero,’ says Mure, ‘good and evil are so curiously blended that it is hard to say which element predominates[974].’ Is there not a different view of the composition of qualities, which Mure has thus placed in equipoise?
It is indeed eminently true, as in the same place he proceeds to observe, that in order to maintain what may be called the conventional balance, or stage-equality, which was necessary in order to give interest to his poem, Homer has magnified the prowess of Hector, in general terms, as of the highest transcendental order: but that in actual achievement he is greatly surpassed by the leading Greek heroes. Indeed, in many places of the Iliad it even seems questionable, whether Hector is a hero at all.
How successful Homer’s art has been in thus paying off the Trojan champion with generalities, while he nevertheless reserved the true palm of military virtue to his own countrymen, we may, perhaps, best judge from considering the effect which the picture has had upon the poets of Italy, and upon European opinion at large, in more recent times. With the former, the name of Hector seems to be the prime type of the heroic character. Thus Tasso celebrates—
And further. Beyond the Alps, Orlando was the prime warrior or protagonist, as well as the finest character, of the mediæval romance, until it was modified by Ariosto, whose courtly object it was to elevate Ruggiero above him. But with the poets who followed Ariosto, Ruggiero seems to have been put by as an interpolation, and Orlando to have resumed his paramount place. Now the character of Orlando is plainly modelled upon the traditional idea of Hector, with the Christian element attached to and pervading it. That Hector was thus chosen, in preference to Achilles or any Greek hero, may be owing, among other causes, to these. First, that the Roman poets, Virgil especially, had taught Italians to look to Troy as the cradle of their grandeur. Secondly, that the character of Hector, from the large infusion into it of moral and of passive ingredients, was better fitted for coalescing with the Christian ideas. And thirdly, that, as the part assigned to Italian patriotism in the middle ages was commonly defensive, in this point also Hector offered a more appropriate model. There is more, however, to observe; for it may be thought that, among the Trojans, Æneas would have offered a better groundwork for Italian poets. But here we may remark how the genuine and masculine birth outlives the spurious. The natural Hector of Homer thrust aside the pale and sickly automaton of the Æneid, even in Italy, its adopted country. The latter was so artificial and effete, that it would not even bear copying: the former had a foundation in truth, upon which the structure of exaggeration could be reared. Thus Hector became, after two thousand years, the central power of a new and splendid literature.
But when we turn back to the verse of Homer, and put together the evidence in the case piece by piece, surprise is excited by the contrast between the pretensions of Hector, having its basis in general descriptions and in the later tradition, on the one side, and on the other the actual performances, in the Iliad itself, of the Trojan champion. First, there is Achilles, his known superior; of whom, as a warrior, he comes within no measurable distance. But besides this, he suffers virtual defeat at the hands, once of Diomed, and twice of Ajax; glaringly as to the former, and not doubtfully as to the latter: for though the first battle is interrupted, and is taken for a drawn one, yet Ajax has had the best of it at every point, and, while the Trojans are too happy upon the mere escape of his opponent without bodily harm, Homer carries him to the tent of Agamemnon rejoicing in his victory (κεχαρηότα νίκῃ[976]). It is yet more worthy of note, that Hector is never permitted in actual fight to overcome any one considerable Greek. In the case of Patroclus, the Poet has even laid this fact much too barely open; for he makes Hector little, if anything, more than the mere executioner of death upon an unarmed man. Menelaus, who stood in what we may call the third rank of Grecian heroes, is indeed, on one occasion, withdrawn from conflict with him, as being too greatly inferior to risk the fight; but the conflict for the body of Patroclus[977] is so contrived as to show even this prince holding the field with success in despite of the Trojan chief; and, during the absence of Achilles and Patroclus from the contest, no less than nine other Greek warriors offer themselves to meet him in single combat[978].
The greatest exploit of Hector, in the whole Iliad, is the bursting open of the gates of the Greek rampart[979]. But if we compare this with the feat of Sarpedon, who had just before opened a breach by tearing down the battlement[980], we must give a decided preference to the Lycian hero; for he performs his achievement in the teeth of Ajax and Teucer, who are on the spot; while there is not a single Greek commander present when Hector breaks through the gates. The comparative feebleness of Hector’s military character is, however, most pointedly shown in the Eleventh Book, when Jupiter determines to give effect to the decision that honour shall be done to him[981]. In the first place, he receives a friendly warning to keep out of the way as long as Agamemnon remains on the field. He accordingly enters the battle only when Agamemnon has retired; but he is forthwith driven out of it by Diomed[982]. When he again returns to it, the Greeks under Machaon baffle all his efforts, until that very secondary chieftain has been disabled by an arrow from the bow of Paris[983]. And according to all human appearances, the Trojans must have been defeated and shut up in the city by the Greeks even without Achilles, such was the superiority of Achæan arms, had not Homer called in the inferior agency of stones and arrows to wound three of the four chief remaining Grecian warriors, namely Diomed, Agamemnon, and Ulysses; besides Eurypylus and Machaon[984].
The only occasion when Hector comes out as a really great and gallant warrior is that one when he is certain to be, and is accordingly, worsted by the overpowering might and divine arms of Achilles. For here Homer could safely give him ample scope without endangering or obscuring the fame of that hero, to whom, with art never surpassed, he has given an immeasurable, but yet not a forced or unnatural, preeminence.
The place of Hector, then, as a fighting hero, is certainly no more than second-rate; but so far, I venture to think, is Homer from having almost equally weighted in his character the scales of good and evil respectively, that, with the exception of his boastfulness, it is hard to fasten on him so much as a single fault. This boastfulness, and the disproportion between pretension and performance, is not altogether confined to him, but extends in some measure to the other Trojan warriors, except Sarpedon; for example, to Polydamas, Æneas, and Paris. Some of the best Greeks too, particularly Diomed, are touched with it[985]. And perhaps, in our more elaborated and artificial condition of society, we are not quite fair judges how far this practice, which may seem to stand in sharp contrast with the prevailing modesty of the Homeric heroes, may have been with them not a substitute for, but a kind of embellishment and auxiliary to, their strength of soul and hand. With us it is justly suspected of implying a tendency to fall short in performance: with them it may have appertained to that straightforwardness in the expression of inward emotions, which made them (for example) weep so freely whenever the chord of sorrow was touched within them.
So conspicuous is this quality, says Mure, that the name of the Trojan chief is to this day synonymous in our own tongue with ‘bluster’ or ‘swagger[986].’ But it is remarkable that the very same thing has happened in the case of the word ‘rodomontade,’ which is derived from Rodomonte, the most powerful, next to Ruggiero, of all the heroes of the Furioso. This circumstance seems to make probable, what, without it, would be only possible, namely, that we misconstrue the phrases; and that, according to the true meaning, a rodomontader is a man passing himself off for a Rodomonte: and one who hectors is a man falsely pretending to be a Hector.
Another very high authority, Lord Grenville, intimately acquainted with the poems of Homer, supplies a marked example of the blinding force of literary traditions. For in his ‘Nugæ Metricæ[987],’ he says: ‘A hectoring fellow is ... strangely distorted in its use to express a meaning almost the opposite of its original.’ And he adds in a note: ‘The Hector of Homer unites, we know,
The disposition of the Trojan chief to brag is, however, the more offensive, because it vents itself so much in the first person singular; because in the case of Patroclus it seems to be associated with an act at least unmanly; and because upon many occasions Hector shows even more than a prudential regard to his personal safety.
What is more strange is, that his ordinary strain of boasting is chequered with passages of more genuine modesty and humility than are to be found in the speech of any other chieftain on either side. As for example, when he acknowledges his marked inferiority to Achilles;
But above all, in the incomparable verse of his prayer over his infant son;
Homer is of all poets the most free from any thing that can be called trick; but perhaps it may be that the same necessity of his position, which obliged him to magnify Trojan prowess in words, while it falls so short in deeds, has found its way from the narrative into the dramatic part of the poem. If so, then in Hector’s boasts we may recognise Homer working out his own general purpose rather than conforming with perfect fidelity to tradition, or finishing an ideally perfect portrait with the power and exactitude, which he has applied to his greater Grecian heroes. Yet, be the cause what it may that has led Homer to exhibit in Hector the disagreeable gift of a bragging disposition, Mure appears to show less than his usual precision when he ascribes to Hector in one place a partial[990], and in another a total, indifference to the moral guilt of his brother Paris.
Whatever may be the reason, the fact undoubtedly is, that neither on the Trojan, nor even on the Greek side, do we find displayed such a sense of the shameful crime of Paris as we might have anticipated from a first view of the manners and feelings of the age. As far as regards the Poet himself, we may read his indignant sense of it in the portraiture he has been careful to give of Paris himself, and of his ill fame among his countrymen; but, undoubtedly, although his act is everywhere described as the cause of war, it is nowhere spoken of, among those who had suffered by it, with the passion and indignation which we might suppose it would have aroused. Of all the Greeks, only Menelaus alludes to it as an act of guilt. Various causes may be assigned for this with more or less confidence. A probable one is, as we have seen[991], that the act partook of the character of an abduction or rape, in which enterprise and force gild or hide the ugly features of crime. An unpopular form of criminality might then, as now, come off the more easily from being covered by another which is popular. It also without doubt appears, that another reason may be the length of time which, in any view of the case, must have elapsed since the act had taken place. But perhaps the solution of the question is to be mainly found in this consideration, common to modern with ancient times, that the causes of war are apt to be swallowed up in its circumstances. In entering upon the arbitrement of the sword, men do not choose a fixed position, but they embark upon a stream, always powerful and often ungovernable. When once the armament was on the shores of the Hellespont, there would be on both sides the motive of military honour, and, besides this, with the Trojans, the defence of their families and homes, with the Greeks the hope of plunder and of license. Hence, even after the Greeks are weakened and discouraged by the secession of Achilles, it is not from them, but from the Trojans, that a proposal proceeds for deciding the case of Helen by single combat. Hence, upon the shameful escape of Paris from fulfilling this engagement, after his defeat by Menelaus, we find little expression of indignation on one side, and no confession of wrong on the other. But the criticism of Mure seems to amount to this; that it was a capital fault on the part of Hector, not to have his mind constantly full of a question, which was rarely thought of at all by any one on either side, except Paris and Menelaus, the persons most directly interested.
It is plain, however, that Homer has represented Hector as keenly feeling and resenting, not only his brother’s cowardice, but his sensuality. Twice does he address him as mad with lust, and as a deceiver of women[992]: out of his five speeches addressed to Paris, only one is not reproachful; and in the only one which extends beyond a few lines he barbs his reproaches on the score of cowardice by fully setting forth his guilt, both morally and as towards his country, in that, being a coward, he was also a ravisher[993]. The charge, however, also takes a more specific form. We see that Hector was greatly delighted, ἐχάρη μέγα when his rebuke[994] had stirred up Paris to offer to stake the whole issue on a single combat with Menelaus. But it is said, why, when the battle had been lost, did not Hector enforce the terms of the bargain? The answer seems to be this. We stand here at a juncture in the poem, where its theurgy supersedes its human mechanism. It is presumable that this very thing was about to be done, when the order of events was interrupted by the counsel of the gods. Agamemnon had at the close of the Third Book in due course demanded Helen. Jupiter immediately apprehended the consequences; he saw that if faith were kept, Achilles would neither be avenged nor glorified; and he accordingly invited the assembly on Olympus to determine, whether Helen should be rendered back or not. When this had been settled in the negative, the question was how to prevent it; and it was done, on the suggestion of Juno, by causing Pandarus to renew the war without the privity of Hector. This shows pretty clearly that the restoration of Helen was about to take place, had not the gods interfered; and therefore amply suffices to relieve Hector from reproach, who, it may be observed, takes no part until, when the armies have been long in conflict, he has been stung by the reproaches of Sarpedon (v. 493). If censure be due to the arrangement, it must be lodged against the Poet, and not against one of his personages, who simply does not appear because there is no part for him to play.
Let us now proceed to a somewhat more general view of the character of Hector.
He occupies in the Homeric tradition a place altogether peculiar, as, at the time of the poem, the sole eminently warlike member of an unwarlike family; as the general of a divided and incongruous army; and as singly responsible in chief for the safety of his country, while he has not been invested with the dignity and power of king. As to the first of these points, we have the direct testimony of Homer:
Of his brothers, Deiphobus alone is represented as in any degree deserving or sharing his confidence. Of his relatives, Polydamas appears to have been a rival in the council, Æneas in the succession to political supremacy: and these were the two most considerable persons of the class. It has, I conceive, been shown to be probable, that Paris was his senior[996]; and that he held his place in Troy by merit against age. His uneasy relations with his allies might be inferred from their constituting the great bulk of his force, even were they not more distinctly betokened by the reproach of Sarpedon, and by the speech in which he himself enters on the subject. Together with his power over the army, he had the virtual charge of the safety of the state, and we see signs of his influence there; but yet he did not direct the policy of Troy: for the only important measure, which is recorded as having been taken by the Trojans, namely the rejection of the proposals of Antenor to give back Helen to the Greeks, was taken in his absence and without his knowledge. Thus we see in Hector’s case, abundantly accumulated, the elements of a false position. And, in a word, in order to estimate his character aright, we must keep in full view that inferiority of the Trojans, subjects not less than princes, as respects political genius and organization, to which the Iliad, when carefully examined, bears ample testimony.
Under the weight of public charge, as Agamemnon in the Greek camp, so, and yet more, Hector on the Trojan side, appears to reel; so, and yet more; for, in Hector’s case, political power is crippled by his not being in actual possession of the supreme station, while responsibility is edged and enhanced by his being not only the head to devise, but also the right hand to execute. In neither of the two, however, do we find strong will, definiteness, and constancy of purpose, or unfailing courage. But Agamemnon has the advantage of both wiser counsels around him, and stronger arms than his own near his side. Hector has little aid. Sarpedon alone of the Trojan commanders (for Æneas really does nothing) can be called a warrior of note; and his inferiority to Patroclus, notwithstanding his thorough gallantry, is decorated rather than hidden by the stage machinery of divine consultations on the subject of his death. But as Sarpedon in the field plays a part much inferior to the corresponding one of Diomed or Ajax, so Polydamas, the Nestor of the Trojans, is not equal to his kindly and genial counterpart. Four times he gives his counsel in the field. Twice he prefaces it with personal imputations (xii. 211, and xiii. 726); and when, in the Twelfth Book (211), he recommends the abandonment of the assault on the ships in deference to an omen, feeling and judgment are alike on the side of Hector’s reply, who overturns his augury by the known (though, as they proved, deceitful) counsels of Jupiter, and emphatically pleads against doubtful signs the indubitable dictates of patriotism.
The prophetic gift, for whatever reason, is assigned pretty largely by Homer to the Trojans. Without entering into the case of Cassandra, it attaches to Helenus, and also (xii. 238) apparently to Polydamas, who undertakes to interpret a sign. Hector himself had the weight of prescience on his breast, for he tells Andromache[997] that he well knows the day of ruin is at hand; and, when he is at the point of death, he prognosticates the coming fate of Achilles. The concentrated strain of his duties and his previsions is too much for the strength of a character which, from the intellectual or dramatic point of view, is impulsive, fluctuating, and unequal, and which must therefore undoubtedly be set down as so far secondary. But when we pass from intellect to moral tone, from διάνοια to ἦθος, we certainly find in Hector one among the most touching, the most human, of all the delineations of masculine character in the Iliad. In him alone has Homer presented to us that most commanding and most moving combination, of a woman’s gentleness and deep affection with warlike and heroic strength. If the hand of Hector was far weaker than that of the son of Peleus, the tempestuous griefs of Achilles do not open to us a character nearly so attractive as the depth of the gentle affections of Hector, and the mildness warmed into such brilliancy by his martial fame. ‘Thy love to me was wonderful; passing the love of women[998].’ The constancy and tenacity of the attachments of Ulysses come out in his relations to Penelope and Telemachus: but, dwelling harmoniously in a character of far broader scope and more varied sensibilities, the peculiar element of a tenderness matching that of woman is the only one they do not contain. Hector is neither a warrior nor a statesman after the primary, that is the Achæan, type: but for a model of intensity and softness in the love of a father and a husband, it is to him that we must repair, in the incomparable scene by the Scæan gate; incomparable, unless we may compare it with that other scene, so near at hand, where the sight of young Polydorus slain, piercing him to the heart, raised him in his last hour to the heights of heroism; and where the interest and sympathy, that he has attracted all along, are absorbed into admiration of the real sublimity of that closing hour, when he resolved to be for ever famous at least in his too certain death.
Probably a main reason why Hector has become the groundwork of the modern Orlando is, that no one of the Homeric heroes exhibits a combination of qualities supplying so appropriate a basis for the character of a Christian hero; a tone so sensibly approximating to that of the gospel. Partly because of those acts of piety towards the Immortals, which can hardly receive in the case of Hector any but a favourable construction, and which drew down the all but unanimous compassion of the Olympian assembly on his remains; but partly also, and yet more, in that mild, just, and tender estimate of character, which not only secured his constant gentleness of demeanour towards Helen, but made him her protector against the acrimony of others, and rendered him considerate and kind even to Paris[999], so soon as he saw him disposed at length to be personally active in the mortal struggle he had brought upon his country. There is, perhaps, no virtue more especially Christian, than the temper which thus equitably and gently makes allowances for human weakness, particularly if it be weakness by the effects of which we ourselves have suffered.
The employment, however, of Hector for the purposes of Christian poetry has certainly had the effect of perverting for us the true Homeric tradition. But, in order to understand this, we must throw aside the Hector of our proverbs or our plays, travel back to the Iliad, and set out anew from the starting-point of its great author. We must there be content to take him not as a pure effort of imagination aimed at the production of an ideal man, but as a part of the poem of Homer, subordinated like every other part of it to its main purpose, as well as to the general laws of historical consistency. In modelling the several heroes, he made the exigencies of his Hector yield to the exigencies of his Achilles, who could have no real competitor. Nor, with the fine characteristic sense he has everywhere shown of the national differences between Greek and Trojan, could he build up his Hector on the same foundations with his Greek heroes, or give him that strength and tenacity of tissue which belongs to the European and Achæan character. He could not equip him with either the dauntless chivalry in battle, or the profound unswerving sagacity in council, which were reserved for the kings of his own race, and for those most nearly allied to them. He has imparted to the character of the chief Trojan hero, no less than to that of the Trojan people at large, a decided Asiatic tinge, which modifies their community of colour with the properly European races. In such characters, instinct and sentiment take oftentimes the place of inquiry and reflection, and impulse does the work of conviction: the ideas of right, order, consistency, moral dignity and self-respect, are less clearly, less symmetrically, conceived. Though in particular cases, such as that of Hector, the deficiency may be made up by a liberal and full development of the most affectionate emotions, we feel, in comparing it with the Greeks, that we are dealing with a more contracted type of manhood: as if morally, no less than locally, we had gone back with Homer one full stage nearer to the cradle of our race, and had arrested and fixed the human character at the very point where it is neither child nor man.
The character of Hector, as it has been here interpreted, does not give that satisfaction to the mind, which thorough clearness and oneness would impart. His intellectual qualities and his affections are not on the same scale; his martial character jars even with itself. Yet perhaps in these very circumstances we may upon consideration find but fresh reason to admire the skill of Homer, and that rarely erring instinct which forbade him to forget his whole in running after his details.
His first object seems to have been to give the fullest and boldest prominence to the colossal shape, moral as well as physical, of Achilles, and therefore to tone down whatever could diminish its effect. And here the point of danger evidently lay in Agamemnon; the chief of the army was too likely to be the chief of the poem. Accordingly he has broken the unity of that character, and has chequered it with weakness in various forms. But this was not all: he had to keep the Greeks before the Trojans, as well as Achilles before the Greeks; not only that he might consult his popularity, but that he might indulge the genial vein of his poesy, and follow the impulses of his patriotism, in maintaining high above all question their intellectual and martial superiority. Had this, however, been all, his task would have been easy; he would then have had only to depress their opponents in all the properties that attract admiration. But if he had simply done this, if he had cut off the interest and sympathies of his readers from the Trojans by general disparagement, he would have deprived Greek valour of its choicest crown. It is a noble necessity of war that, even in the interest of countrymen, we cannot do injustice to adversaries, without feeling the offence recoil on our own heads.
Thus it was impossible for Homer to make his Trojan hero at once great and consistent; and if he has made Hector unequal, it was to avoid making him mean. By chequering his martial daring with boastfulness, and with occasional weakness of purpose, he has effectually provided against any interference, from this quarter, to the prejudice of those chieftains whose praises he was to sing in the courts and throngs of Greece. Thus he has left the field quite clear for expatiating on their military virtues; and if, for sufficient reasons, he has departed from his rule in the case of Agamemnon, who receives his compensation in superiority of rank and power, all his other Greek characters, bearing forward parts in the poem, are constructed in faultless conformity to the idea, or modification of an idea, which he had selected for the basis of each. There is not a flaw in the picture of Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Not that all these are of a type equally elevated, or alike wonderful; but that there is no one thing in any of them which does not manifestly conform to its type, and no one thing consequently which jars with any other. Having thus given to his countrymen a clear and marked ascendancy in what then at least were the only great and governing elements of human society, the strong mind, and the strong hand, he does his best for the Trojans with what remained, that is to say, with the softer affections of domestic life, adding only so much of the martial element as was needful to make them no discreditable adversaries for his countrymen. Thus, consistently with all his poetic objects, he has been enabled to present us, to say nothing of the highly respectable character of Hecuba, with the three unsurpassed pictures of Priam, of Andromache, and perhaps even most, of Hector.
II. Let us now pass on to a production never surpassed by the mind or hand of man.
The character of Argeian Helen occupies a large place in Grecian history, and is of extreme importance to the entire structure of the Iliad. On behalf of the first of these propositions, we call as witnesses her temple at Sparta, and the Encomium of Isocrates. As to the second, the reason is expressed in some of Homer’s noblest oratory:
Was she a vicious woman and a seductress, or was she more nearly a victim and a penitent? Do the laws of poetical verisimilitude and beauty, as they were understood by Homer, allow us to suppose that he intended to represent his countrymen, of whom he has presented to us so lofty a conception, as agitating the world, forsaking home, pouring forth their blood, and throwing their country into certain confusion, for the sake of a vile and worthless character? Certainly there were periods, when in the Greek mind the worship of beauty was so thoroughly dissociated from all which beauty ought to typify, that an Iliad so constructed might have been approved. But these were periods long after Homer’s flesh had mouldered in the grave.
The present inquiry has nothing to do with the opinion that Helen was, or that she was not, an historical personage. For my own part, I know of no reason except discrepancies of mere traditional chronology for disbelieving her existence. These seem to arise entirely from the practice of putting on a par with Homer tales of very inferior authority to his. But even apart from this, considering what, under ordinary circumstances, the chronology of pre-historic times is likely to be, and how many more chances there are for the preservation of great events in outline, than for a careful adjustment of their relative times, I cannot but think that difficulties arising from other legends as to Helen, and bearing simply upon time, form a very insufficient reason for the wholesale rejection of belief in her existence. Even if, however, she never existed at all, it still is not one whit the less reasonably to be presumed, that Homer in fictions concerning her would be governed here and elsewhere by all the laws, including the moral laws, of his art.
Neither is it now the question, whether Helen was the model of an heroic character. That is probably inconsistent, for the earliest times of Greece, with her adulterous relation to Paris and afterwards to Deiphobus. But there is a vast space between a faultless and a worthless woman. The idea of Helen represented by the later tradition, from the Greek tragedians downwards, is strictly the latter idea: and this representation has naturally occupied the popular mind, which is deprived of the power of access to the remote Homeric picture. Now it seems to be plain that, if this representation be substantially true, it is a great reproach to the bard of the Iliad as a bard, and stamps him as one, who has done his best to poison morality at its fountain-head. For there can be no question, that he has made his Helen highly attractive, and that he intends her to possess our sympathies. Is it then true, or is it false? Let us proceed to examine the evidence.
In the Iliad we meet more than once with the line,
and expositors, in order to avoid ascribing to Helen any personal wrongs, or the representation of her as rather a sufferer than an offender, have resorted to a forced construction of the passage, and have interpreted the words as referring to the expedition undertaken, and the griefs suffered, on account of Helen[1002].
Unless this forced construction be the one intended by Homer, the popular conception of her must at once explode. According to the direct and natural construction, the Greeks made war to avenge the wrong she had suffered, and the groans which that wrong had drawn from her. And it is to be observed that this line[1003] is put into the mouth of Menelaus, whom it is very natural to represent as most eager to avenge the wrongs of his wife, but somewhat far-fetched to represent as thinking of revenge for the trouble of the expedition he had so keenly promoted. The line, in fact, unless justifiably strained by these expositors, is conclusive in support of the belief that the only evil which can justly be imputed to the Homeric Helen simply amounts to this, that she was not a woman of perfect virtue backed by absolute and indomitable heroism. Pope has rather rudely approximated towards rectifying the prevalent impression in a note[1004], where he observes that in all she says of herself ‘there is scarce a word that is not big with repentance and good nature.’
Before examining the direct evidence with respect to the Homeric Helen, let us advert to some which is indirect. And in the first place it may be observed, that Menelaus never expresses the slightest resentment against her, or appears to have considered her as having in any manner injured him. Next, Priam, whose character is evidently intended to attract a good deal of our sympathy and respect, treated her as a daughter: