Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

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 - Il. i. 458, 462.]; 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 - Od. ix. 205.]:

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 - Il. v. 9, 78.]. 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 - Il. xxii. 170. xxiv. 168.] is expressly praised for his liberality in this respect by Jupiter, and Æneas by Neptune[395 - Il. xx. 298.]. 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 - Il. iv. 48.]:

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 - Od. i. 61.], indeed, is in this, as in all the points of excellence, unimpeachable. But his was not the rule of all. Œneus, two generations before the Troica, while sacrificing to the other deities, either forgot or did not think fit (ἢ λάθετ’ ἢ οὐκ ἐνόησεν) to sacrifice to Diana[398 - Il. ix. 523.]; 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 - Od. iii. 131.]. 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 - Ibid. 164.].

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 - Ibid. 135.]. 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 - Il. vii. 450.]. 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 - Ibid. 459.], 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 - Il. xii. 3, 9.]. 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 - Acts xvii. 22.] 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 corresponding intention. Although a more scrupulous formality in religion marks the Trojans than the Greeks, and although in itself, and cæteris 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 its direction 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 - Il. iii. 451-4.]. 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 - Il. iv. 220.]; 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 of intellectual 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 the Trojans 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 the Κύπρια 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 - Il. iii. 444.], 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 - See inf. Aoidos, sect. vi. (#pgepubid00015)].

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 - Il. ii. 589.]. 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 restoration on 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 - Düntzer, pp. 9-16. Fragm. iv. xi. xv.]. 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 - Il. vi. 352.] and of his courage[413 - Il. iii. 428-36, and vi. 351.]: and he shares[414 - Il. vi. 356.] 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 - Il. iii. 453.]. 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 - Il. vii. 354-64, and xi. 123.]. Of all his countrymen, Hector appears to have been most alive to his guilt, and is alone in reproaching him with it[417 - Il. iii. 46-53.]. It is under the influence of a sharp rebuke from Hector, that he proposes to undertake a single combat with Menelaus[418 - Ibid. 68-75.].

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, is παρθενοπῖπα: 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 ἀνθρώπων
ξεινοδόκον κακὰ ῥέξαι, ὅ κεν φιλότητα παράσχῃ[419 - Ibid. 351-4.].

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 - Il. ii. 588-90.]. Accordingly, the injured husband returns on other occasions to the topic: calls the Trojans κακαὶ κύνες, and invokes upon them the anger of Ζεὺς ξείνιος, the Jupiter of hospitality[421 - Il. xiii. 620-7.];

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 the voyage 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.