Читать книгу Greek Women - Mitchell 1870-1925 Carroll - Страница 13

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The reader of the Iliad and the Odyssey finds himself in an atmosphere altogether human. As he peruses these pages, so rich in pictures of the life and manners of heroic times, it matters little to him whether the men and women of epic song had merely a mythical existence, or were, in fact, historical figures. The contemporaries of Homer and later Greeks had an unshaken belief in the reality of those men and women; and the poet has breathed into them the breath of genius, which gives life and immortality.

We have in these poems the most ancient expression of the national sentiment of the Greeks, and from them we can form a correct idea of the relations of men and women in prehistoric times, and of the character and status of woman in the childhood of the Greek world.

It is a noteworthy fact that the plots of both the Iliad and the Odyssey--as well as the most interesting episodes they contain--turn upon love for women; and a clear idea of the importance of woman in the Heroic Age could not be given better than by briefly reviewing the brilliant panorama of warlike and domestic scenes in which woman figures.

We are first introduced to a Greek camp in Troy land. During ten long years the hosts of the Achæans have been gathered before the walls of Ilium. What is the cause of this long struggle? A woman! Paris, son of King Priam, had carried off to his native city Queen Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. Aided by the wiles of Aphrodite, to whom he had awarded the golden apple as the fairest in the contest of the three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, Paris succeeded in winning the heart of this fairest of Greek women and in persuading her to desert husband and daughter to follow the fortunes of a handsome stranger. On the isle of Cranaë their nuptial rites were celebrated, and after much voyaging they reached their new home in Troy, where King Priam, fascinated with the beauty and grace of this new daughter, in spite of his dread of the consequences, graciously received the errant pair. The Greek chieftains bound themselves by an inviolable oath to assist the forsaken husband to recover his spouse, and, marshalling their forces, they entered upon the long and tedious war. Thus, a woman was the cause of the first great struggle between Orient and Occident, of the assembling of the mighty hosts of the Achæans under King Agamemnon, of ten years of siege and struggle and innumerable wars, of the hurling of many valiant souls to Hades, of the fall of Troy, and of the varied wanderings and dire fortunes of the surviving heroes and heroines of the epic story.

The Iliad does not tell the whole story of the Trojan War; Homer invites the muse to sing of but one episode thereof--the dire wrath of Achilles. The cause of that violent outburst is also a woman. The Greek chieftains are gathered in the place of assembly, along the banks of the Scamander. In their midst is an aged priest of the town of Chryse, bearing in his hand the fillets of Apollo, the Far-darter, upon a golden staff. He beseeches the Greeks to restore to him his dear child, the maiden Chryseis, their captive, and to accept in return the proffered ransom, reverencing the god. There is a sympathetic murmur among the chieftains, who urge the granting of the petition; but the thing pleases not the heart of Agamemnon, king of men, who had received the beautiful captive as his own share of the booty, and for love of her will not give her up. So he roughly sends the old man away, and lays stern charge upon him not to be seen again near the ships of the Achæans. Outraged in his dignity as a priest and in his tenderness as a father, the aged sire prays to Apollo, who at once sends dire pestilence upon the Greeks; and the pyres of the dead burn continually in multitude. Nine days speed the god's shafts throughout the host, and on the tenth the valiant warrior Achilles summons the folk to assembly, and bids Calchas, "most excellent of augurs," declare the cause of the pestilence. Calchas, after much hesitation, responds that the Far-darter has brought war upon the Greeks because Agamemnon has done despite to the priest, and has not set his daughter free and accepted the ransom.

Agamemnon is violently enraged at the seer; his dark heart within him is greatly filled with anger, and his eyes are like flashing fire. He charges the seer with never saying anything that is pleasant for him to hear. And as for Chryseis, he would fain keep her himself in his household; for he prefers her even before Clytemnestra, his wedded wife, to whom she is nowise inferior, neither in favor nor stature nor wit nor skill. Yet if she be taken away from him for the good of the people, he demands another prize forthwith, that alone of the Greeks he may not be without reward. Then is the valiant Achilles enraged at the covetousness of his chief, and a violent quarrel ensues. At last, Agamemnon asserts that he will send back Chryseis, but he will come and take in return Achilles's meed of honor, Briseis of the fair cheeks, that Achilles may know how far the mightier is he and that no other may hereafter dare to rival him to his face.

Then is the son of Peleus the more enraged, and, had not the goddess Athena appeared and restrained his wrath, he would have assailed Agamemnon on the spot. However, he speaks again with bitter words and declares that hereafter longing for Achilles will come upon the Achæans one and all; for no more will he fight with the Greeks against the Trojans. So the assembly breaks up, after this battle of violent words between the twain. Achilles returns to his huts and trim ships, with Patroclus and his company; and Agamemnon sends forth Odysseus and others on a fleet ship to bear back to her father the lovely Chryseis, and to offer a hecatomb to Apollo. Thus Chryseis is restored to her father's arms, and appears no more in the story.

But Atrides ceases not from the strife with which he has threatened Achilles. He summons straightway two heralds, and bids them go to the tent of Achilles and take Briseis of the fair cheeks by the hand and lead her to him. Unwillingly they go on their mission, and find the young warrior sitting sorrowfully beside his hut and black ship. He knows wherefore they come, and bids his friend Patroclus bring forth the damsel and give them her to lead away. And Patroclus hearkens to his dear companion, and leads forth from the hut Briseis of the fair cheeks, and gives her to the heralds. And the twain take their way back along the ships of the Achæans and with them goes the maiden, all unwilling.

In this moment of grief at the loss of the woman he loves, Achilles bethinks him of his dear mother, the Nereid Thetis, and, stretching forth his hand toward the sea, he prays to her to hearken to him. His lady mother hears him as she sits in the sea depths beside her aged sire, and with speed she arises from the gray sea, and sits down beside him and strokes him with her hand and inquires the cause of his sorrow. Into her sympathetic ear he tells all the story of his wrongs, and the goddess shows herself the tenderest and most loving of mothers. He bids her seek justice for him at the throne of mighty Zeus, with whom she is potent on account of favors she has done him. She bewails with her son that she has borne him to brief life and evil destiny; but she bids him continue wroth with the Achæans, and refrain utterly from battle, while she will early fare to Zeus's palace upon Mount Olympus, and she thinks to win him. True to her promise, she betakes herself to sunny Olympus and finds the father of gods and men sitting apart from all the rest upon the topmost peak. She clasps his knees with one hand as a suppliant and with the other strokes his chin, and prays him to do honor to her son and exalt him with recompense for the gross wrong he has suffered. And Zeus, though he knows that it will lead to strife with Lady Hera, his spouse, promises to heap just vengeance upon Agamemnon.

Thus, upon the very threshold of the Iliad, the chord of maternal affection is struck; and when the wild passions of early manhood have led to sorrow and humiliation, the mother appears, affording sympathy and comfort, and is ready to traverse sea and earth and heaven to intercede for her wronged and grief-stricken son.

Achilles remains away from battle, sulking beside the ships. The odds are now in favor of the Trojans in the conflict that is being waged. Both sides are weary of continual fighting, and a single combat is arranged between Menelaus and Paris, the wronged husband and the present lord of Helen. The meed of victory is to be Helen herself, with all her treasures, she now appearing for the first time in the Epos.

Helen is summoned from her palace to witness the combat. So she hastens from her chamber, attended by two handmaidens, and comes to the place of the Scæan gates, where are gathered King Priam and the elders of the city.

Homer nowhere attempts to describe Helen's beauty in detail, but impresses it upon the reader merely by showing the bewitching effect of her presence upon others. Even these sage old men fall under the spell of her divine beauty, and, when they see her coming upon the towers, softly speak winged words, one to the other:

"Small blame is it that Trojans and well-greaved Achæans should for such a woman long time suffer hardships; marvellously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look upon. Yet even so, though she be so goodly, let her go upon their ships and not stay to vex us and our children after us."

Priam, however, addresses his beautiful daughter-in-law with gentle words, laying the blame, not on her, but on the gods, for the dolorous war of the Achæans. Helen utters expressions of self-reproach, and then, at Priam's request, points out the famous warriors of the invading host.

Paris is vanquished in the single combat, and Menelaus would have slain his foe, and in that moment have regained Helen, had not the goddess Aphrodite snatched up Paris in a cloud and transported him to his chamber. Aphrodite then appears to Helen, in the form of an aged dame, and bids her return to her lord. Helen recognizes the goddess, and her scornful, bitter reply shows how the high-spirited lady rebelled at the chains with which Aphrodite bound her. The wrath and menace of Aphrodite, however, overcome her noble resolution, and she reluctantly returns. When she sees her husband, she chides him scornfully for his cowardice, and regrets that he had not perished at the hands of Menelaus. But Paris is unaffected by her reproaches. His thoughts, as ever, are not of war, but of love, and Helen, owing to the subtle power of Aphrodite, cannot long resist his caresses. Meanwhile, the injured husband rages through the host like a wild beast, if anywhere he might set his eyes on and slay the wanton Paris.

We are now approaching a series of domestic scenes, in which figure the three principal female characters of the Iliad. Owing to the abortive issue of the single combat, the truce between Greeks and Trojans is declared at an end, and the forces once more array themselves in conflict. The Trojans are being hard pressed. Hector returns to the city to command Hecuba, his mother, to assemble the aged dames of Troy, who should go to Athena's temple and supplicate the goddess to have compassion on them. At the gates the Trojans' wives and daughters gather about him, inquiring of their loved ones. As he enters the royal palace, his beautiful mother meets him and clasps him by the hand, and bids him, weary of battle, pause to take refreshments. But Hector resists her solicitous entreaties, urges her to gather the aged wives together, and, with the most beautiful robe in the palace as an offering, to go to the temple and supplicate Athena to have mercy. Hecuba does as he commands, and the solemn procession mounts the citadel and implores the goddess to have mercy on them and turn the tide of combat. The goddess, however, is inflexible: she denies their prayer.

Hector, meanwhile, stops at the palace of Paris. He finds Helen seated among her handmaidens, distributing to them their tasks, and Paris polishing his beautiful armor. Hector severely rebukes his brother; but words of scorn make but little impression on the smooth and courteous Paris. Helen now addresses Hector, for whom she has a sisterly love and admiration that contrasts painfully with her contempt for her cowardly lord; and her words reveal the bitterness of her heart, because of her evil destiny and because "even in days to come we may be a song in the ears of men that shall be hereafter." Hector responds with sympathetic regard to the sisterly confidence of Helen, and bids her rouse her husband once more to enter the combat, while in the meantime he will go to his own house to behold his dear wife and infant boy; for he knows not if he shall return home to them again, or if the gods will now overthrow him at the hands of the Achæans.

When Hector comes to his palace, he finds not his beautiful wife, white-armed Andromache, within; upon inquiry he learns that, through anxiety because of the battle, like one frenzied, she had gone in haste to the wall, and the nurse bearing the child was with her. Hector hastens to the Scæan gates, and as he approaches them there came his dear-won wife, running to meet him, and with her the handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, Hector's loved son Astyanax. Hector smiles and gazes at the boy; while Andromache stands by his side weeping and clasps his hand in hers, and urges him to take thought for himself and to have pity on her, forlorn, and on their infant boy. Hector tells her that he takes thought of all this, that his greatest grief is the thought of her anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achæan shall lead her away and rob her of the light of freedom, but it is his part to fight in the forefront of the Trojans. He lays his son in his dear wife's bosom, and, as she smiles tearfully upon the lad, her husband has pity to see her, and gently caresses her with his hand and seeks to console her. He bids her return to her own tasks, the loom and distaff, while he provides for war. So part these heroic souls. Hector sets out for the battlefield; and his dear wife departs to her home, oft looking back and letting fall big tears. When she reaches her house, she gathers her handmaidens about her, and stirs lamentations in them all. "So bewailed they Hector, while yet he lived, within his house; for they deemed that he would no more come home to them from battle nor escape the fury of the hands of the Achæans."

The closing scenes of the dramatic recital time and again present these three women--Hecuba, Helen, and Andromache. Achilles continues to sulk away from battle, in spite of Agamemnon's attempt at reconciliation. The Trojans are winning victory after victory. Achilles's comrade Patroclus finally gets permission to don the great warrior's armor, and he enters the conflict. Hector, supposing him to be Achilles, engages with him in combat and finally slays him. Achilles is overwhelmed with grief at the death of Patroclus. His lady mother, Thetis, rises from the depths of the sea to console him, and provides him a suit of armor fashioned by Hephæstus. Agamemnon and Achilles are reconciled before the assembly of the Achæans, and fair-faced Briseis is restored to her lover. She utters shrill laments over the body of Patroclus, who had been ever kind to her. Achilles enters the combat, clad in the armor of Hephæstus. Hector alone dares to face him, and he is slain, and his lifeless body is dragged behind Achilles's chariot as he drives exultantly toward the ships. Piteous wailings are heard from the walls, wailings of the aged Priam, and of the sorrowful Hecuba, whose cry is the full bitterness of maternal grief.

Within the city, in the inner chamber of her palace, a young wife is engaged in weaving a double purple web and directing the work of her handmaidens. Her thoughts are all of her warrior husband, and she has had a servant set a great tripod upon the fire that Hector might have warm washing when he comes home out of the battle--fond heart all unaware how, far from all washings, bright-eyed Athena has slain him by the hand of Achilles! But suddenly she hears shrieks and groans from the battlements, and her limbs tremble and the shuttle falls from her hands to earth. She dreads terribly lest Hector has met his fate at the hand of Achilles. Accompanied by her handmaidens, she rushes to the battlements, and beholds his lifeless body dragged by swift horses toward the hollow ships. Then dark night comes on her eyes and shrouds her, and she falls backward and gasps forth her spirit; and when at last her soul returns into her breast, she bewails her own sad lot and that of her child, deprived of such a husband and father.

The succeeding days are spent in gloom and sorrow, each side bewailing the loss of a favorite warrior. King Priam finally recovers the body of Hector from Achilles, and brings it back to Hector's palace, where the women gather about the corpse--and among them white-armed Andromache leads the lamentation, while in her hands she holds the head of Hector, slayer of men. Hecuba, too, grieves for Hector, of all her children the dearest to her heart; and, lastly, Helen joins in the sore lament, sorrowing for the loss of the dearest of her brethren in Troy, who had never spoken despiteful word to her, but had always been kind and considerate. Here the long story reaches its natural conclusion. The Iliad opens with a scene of wrath occasioned by man's passion for woman, and closes with a scene of mourning--women grieving for the loss of a slain husband and son and friend--knightly Hector.

Before we bid farewell to the martial tableaux presented to us in the Iliad, and direct our attention to the domestic scenes of the Odyssey, let us take a final glance at the heroines who have appeared in the first Homeric epos.

Worthy of note is the atmosphere of beauty and delicacy and charm with which the poet has enveloped Helen of Troy. She has committed a grievous fault, but there is in the recital nothing which offends the moral sense. This is because the poet has portrayed her with none of the seductions of vice, but with all the allurements of penitence. She has sinned, but it has been because of the mysterious and irresistible bond which united her to the goddess of love; her moral nature has not been perverted, and she is filled with shame and remorse because of the reproach that has been cast upon her name. By a long and bitter expiation, she has atoned for her fault; and memories of the days long past abide with her in all their sweetness and purity. One can but contrast the difference of attitude with which she addresses Priam and Hector on the one hand, and Aphrodite and Paris on the other. For the former she has the utmost consideration and respect, and in their presence she feels most keenly how compromised is her position; for the latter, the causes of her fall, she has nothing but the scorn and contempt of a cultivated and high-spirited queen. In portraying the regret of Helen for her first husband, and her contempt toward her second; in representing Menelaus and the Greeks as fighting to avenge "the longings and the groans of Helen"; and in subtly suggesting how inevitable are the chains with which Aphrodite has bound her, the poet wins for her our sympathy and admiration. Homer nowhere tells us of the reconciliation of Menelaus and Helen, after the fall of Troy; but in the Odyssey he presents a beautiful picture of Helen in Sparta, a queen once more, beloved of husband and attendants, and presiding over her palace with courtly grace and dignity; and in the prophecy of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, the destiny of the fair queen is suggested in that of her faithful spouse: "But thou, Menelaus, son of Zeus, art not ordained to die and meet thy fate in Argos, the pasture land of horses; for the deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plains and to the world's end, where is Rhadamanthus of the fair hair, where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain, but always ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill blast to blow cool on men; yea, for thou hast Helen to wife, and thereby they deem thee son to Zeus."

Thus, because wedded to Zeus-begotten Helen, Menelaus himself is deathless and immortal, and Homer meant, no doubt, to picture the royal couple passing together in the Isles of the Blest the æons of eternity.

Homer provided the literary types for all succeeding Greek poets, and it is but natural that so bewitching a conception as Helen should be frequently portrayed and adopted. But with the change in form of government from monarchy to oligarchy, and from oligarchy to democracy, the old epic conception of heroes and heroines frequently suffers disparagement. In later periods, men began to meditate on moral questions, and poets who sought to weigh the problems of human life and destiny saw in Helen's career the old, old story of sin and sufering, and they could not with Homeric chivalry gloze over that fatal step which caused the wreck of empires and brought infinite woes to men.

Stesichorus was the first poet to charge Helen with all the guilt and suffering of Hellas and of Troy; but for this offence against the daughter of Zeus, says tradition, he was smitten with blindness, and did not recover his sight until he had written the recantation beginning: "Not true is that tale; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, nor come to town of Troy,"--in which he adopted the theory that the real Helen remained in Egypt, while a phantom accompanied Paris to Troy.

Æschylus searches into the dire consequences of Helen's sin, and on her shoulders lays all the sufferings of Agamemnon and his descendants. "Rightly is she called Helen," says he; "a hell of ships, hell of men, hell of cities." He regards her as the very incarnation of evil, the curse of two great nations. Yet even stern Æschylus yields due reverence to her all-conquering beauty:

"Ah! silent, see she stands;

Each glowing tint, each radiant grace,

That charm th' enraptur'd eye, we trace;

And still the blooming form commands,

Still honor'd, still ador'd,

Though careless of her former loves,

Far o'er the rolling sea the wanton roves."

He also represents her forsaken husband ever dreaming of her, enraptured of her beauty:

"Oft as short slumbers close his eyes,

His sad soul sooth'd to rest,

The dream-created visions rise

With all her charms imprest:

But vain th' ideal scene that smiles

With rapt'rous love and warm delight;

Vain his fond hopes; his eager arms

The fleeting form beguiles,

On sleep's quick pinions passing light."

Æschylus is not the only one of the early dramatists to whom Helen furnished a worthy theme; the titles of four lost plays show that Sophocles wrote of the Argive queen. There is no means of knowing, however, how this master dealt with the romance. Judging from his treatment of the Antigone legend, it is probable that Sophocles treated Helen as a woman of rare beauty and power, more sinned against than sinning, and subjected her character to the most profound analysis.

While Æschylus deprived Helen of something of the delicacy and charm with which Homer had invested her, Euripides, in a number of his plays, goes even further, and brings her down to the level of common life. Upon her beautiful head were heaped the reproaches of the unfortunate maidens and matrons of Greece and Troy for the woes they had to suffer, and we must not always take the sentiments of a Hecuba or a Clytemnestra as expressing the poet's own convictions. In the Daughters of Troy, he represents her in violent debate with her mother-in-law, Hecuba, before Menelaus, leaving with the reader the impression that she is a guilty, wilful woman of ignoble traits, and in other plays he lays on her the load of guilt for all the dire consequences of her act; yet in his treatment of Helen there is always an ethereal element, hard to define, but recognizable. She causes ruin and destruction, she is roundly abused and reproached, yet she herself does not deal in invective and is proof against all physical ill, being finally deified as the daughter of Zeus, while suffering is invariably the fate of those who abuse and censure her. And, like Stesichorus, Euripides in his old age makes a recantation. In the Helen, he follows the Stesichorean version, and dramatizes the legend that, after she was promised to Paris by Aphrodite, Hera in revenge fashioned like to Queen Helen a breathing phantom out of cloud land wrought for Priam's princely son; while Hermes caught her away and transferred her to the halls of Proteus, King of Egypt, to keep her pure for Menelaus. Thus it was for a phantom Helen that Greek and Trojan fought at Troy; while the real Helen passed her days amid the palm gardens of Egypt, eagerly awaiting the return of Menelaus, and bewailing her ill name, though she was clean of sin. After the war, she is happily reunited with her lord.

It is hard, however, to besmirch a conception of ideal beauty, and later writers, casting aside the imputations of the dramatists, returned to the Homeric type. The Greek rhetoricians found in Helen a fruitful subject for panegyric, and made her synonymous with the Greek ideal of beauty and feminine perfection. Isocrates praises her as the incarnation of ideal loveliness and grace; beauty is all powerful, he says, and the Helen legend shows how beauty is the most desirable of all human gifts. Theocritus, in his exquisite Epithalamium, pays an unalloyed tribute to her beauty and goodness. She is "peerless among all Achæan women that walk the earth;--rose-red Helen, the glory of Lacedæmon;--no one is so gifted as she in goodly handiwork;--yea, and of a truth, none other smites the lyre, hymning Artemis and broad-breasted Athena, with such skill as Helen, within whose eyes dwell all the Loves."

Quintus Smyrnæus, of the fourth century of our era, who wrote a Post-Homerica, emphasizes the demonic influence that controlled the fate of Helen, and lays her frailty to the charge of Aphrodite. He gives a beautiful picture of the queen as she is being led to the ships of the Achæans: "Now, Helen lamented not, but shame dwelt in her dark eyes and reddened her lovely cheeks ... while round her the people marvelled as they beheld the flawless grace and winsome beauty of the woman, and none dared upbraid her with secret taunt or open rebuke. Nay, as she had been a goddess, they beheld her gladly, for dear and desired was she in their sight."

Thus the Helen legend became the allegory of Greek beauty, and so exquisite an ideal, uplifting the spirit and satisfying one's longing for higher things, strikes a responsive chord in the hearts of lovers of beauty in every clime. The romance of Helen, after lying dormant for centuries, came to life again in the legend of Faust. Marlowe treated merely the external phases of the Faust legend; Goethe allegorized the whole, and in the loves of Faust and Helen symbolized the passion of the Renaissance for the Greek ideal of beauty; the fruit of the union of the two is Euphorion, the genius of romantic art. Nor has Helen exerted less influence on modern English poets. Landor, in numerous poems, portrays the sweetness of her character and the omnipotence of her beauty and charm; Swinburne dwells on the innocence and joyfulness of her childhood; Tennyson speaks of her as

"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,

And most divinely fair;"

and Andrew Lang has written a lengthy poem on the Helen legend, in which he ascribes her frailty to the irresistible power of Aphrodite. Thus Homer and the Homeric Age are inextricably entwined about the name of Helen. It is significant in the study of Greek women that at the very dawn of Greek civilization we should find such an ideal conception of womanhood--one that universally captivates the fancy and has exerted an influence through all succeeding ages.

Let us now pause a moment to contemplate the most lovable of all the women of Homer, Hector's spouse, white-armed Andromache. Homer does not devote much space to her--only the famous parting scene and the two lamentations which she utters over her fallen husband. Yet, as the ideal type of the soldier's wife, the loving mother, she has taken a hold on the modern imagination and is the best known of all the female characters of Greek epos. We know that she must have been beautiful, though Homer uses only one epithet to describe her; we know that she must have been brave and devoted and domestic, for Homer has painted for us an ideal picture which portrays her with all these and many other lovable attributes. Andromache is neither Trojan nor Greek; she is universal; and wherever there are scenes of husband parted from wife, of uncertainty as to the issue of the combat and the destiny of the children, Andromache will be the great prototype. Andromache feels in her heart that sacred Ilium is doomed, and, in those cruel times when might was right, she knew but too well what was to be the fate of herself and the lad Astyanax. Euripides tells us how the forebodings of Andromache came true, and dwells on those sad days for the daughters of Troy when the mailed hand of the Achæans carried them off captive after the fall of the city and determined their destiny by lot.

Andromache was apportioned to Neoptolemus, Achilles's valiant son, and in Euripides's Daughters of Troy she reappears, with her child in her arms, haled forth to her new bondage. Sadly she bewails her lost Hector, who could have warded off from her the curse of thraldom. The Greek herald, Talthybius, demands from her the lad Astyanax, whom the Greeks have decided to hurl from the battlements of Troy. The child is ruthlessly torn from his mother's embrace, and she is led off to the hollow ships. Neoptolemus takes her over sea to his home in Thessaly, and loves her and treats her with a kindness and consideration that are sweetly perfect. To him she bears a son in her captivity; but not of her own will does she share his couch, for her heart is true to the memory of Hector. After many years, Neoptolemus weds Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, a princess of Sparta. To them no child is born, and Hermione's heart is filled with anger and jealousy toward the thrall, whom her husband still treats tenderly. With her father, Menelaus, Hermione, during Neoptolemus's absence, plots the destruction of Andromache and her boy, but the aged Peleus protects the defenceless ones. Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi, and Thetis, who appears at the close of the Andromache, thus solves the problem of fate:

"And that war-captive dame, Andromache,

In the Molossian land must find a home

In lawful wedlock joined to Helenus,

With that child who alone is left alive

Of AEacus' line. And kings Molossian

From him one after other long shall reign

In bliss."

Readers of Virgil will recall how Æneas found Andromache in the Molossian land, and how her heart yearned for the lad Ascanius, who reminded her of the lost Astyanax. Euripides has been true, in the main, to the Homeric conception of Andromache, and endows her in her captivity with the same womanliness and domestic traits that won our hearts in the Iliad; nevertheless, there is about her the infinite sadness that is natural to one who has lost all that life holds dear. Yet Euripides falls so infinitely below the master that the picture which will abide longest in the memory is the parting scene in the Iliad.

Homer endows his minor characters with an interest that is no less real to us than that given to Helen and Andromache. Of these lesser characters, a few stand out insistent of our notice. At the threshold of the story, Chryseis and Briseis appear as the innocent causes of the quarrel of the chieftains. Chryseis is still a maiden, as far as can be inferred, and had not lost kindred and friends when taken captive; for her father, the priest of sacred Chryse, comes to beg her release, with boundless ransoms. Hence her day of captivity is brief, and the aged father joyously welcomes his beloved daughter. She must have been beautiful and clever, for Agamemnon prized her far above Clytemnestra.

The story of Briseis is a much sadder one, and graphically illustrates the fate of a gentlewoman who fell into the hands of the foe. She was a captive widow, husband and kindred having been slain by Achilles. But her captor loved her devotedly, and to him she was a wife in all but in name; and Patroclus had promised her that she should in time become the wedded wife of Achilles. The young warrior weeps bitterly when she is taken from him, but at the close of the Iliad we see them happily reunited. She is remembered because of the great passions that gathered about her.

Homer presents two pictures of heroic motherhood in sorrow,--Hecuba and Thetis; for the latter, though a goddess, is perfectly human in her devotion to her fated son, Achilles. To her he goes for comfort, and she is ever resourceful in responding to his wants. She weeps over his destiny, but, since he has chosen the better part, she nobly supports him in every struggle. Hecuba is truly the companion of her husband, King Priam, associated with him in his projects, and sharing his counsels. She has borne him nineteen children, and these she has seen slain, one after another, by the hand of the foe. Hector is her favorite son, in whose courage she recognizes the bulwark of Ilium. When she sees him exposed to certain death, her anxiety overcomes her pride and she beseeches him to come within the walls; and when at last her son has succumbed, we find in her the same mingling of grief and of pride. Her wild despair seems to be assuaged by the thought that her son died gloriously. This heroic sentiment sustains her before the corpse of Hector, and even in her lamentation she voices her calm courage.