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

We have examples in the poems of what Homer considers to be a continued course of crime. Such is the conduct of the Suitors in the Odyssey, who for years together waste the substance of Ulysses, woo his wife, oppress his son, and cohabit with the servants. This was habitual crime, crime voluntarily and deliberately persevered in, when it might at any time have been renounced.

This vicious course of the Suitors is never called by Homer an ἄτη; it is described by the names of ἀτασθαλίαι and ὑπερβασίη[422 - Od. xxi. 146. xxiii. 67. xiii. 193. xxii. 64. See Olympus, sect. ii. p. 162.]. So likewise the series of enormities committed by Ægisthus, the corruption of Clytemnestra, the murder of her husband, the expulsion of Orestes and prolonged usurpation of the throne; these are never called by the name of ἄτη; but ἄτη, and not one of the severer names quoted above, is the appellation always given by Homer to the crime of Paris.

The ἄτη of a man is a crime so far partaking of the nature of error, that it is done under the influence of passion or weakness; perhaps excluding premeditation, perhaps such that its consequences follow spontaneously in its train, without a new act of will to draw them, so that the act, when once committed, is practically irretrievable. Something, according to Homer, was evidently wanting in the crime of Paris, to sink it to the lower depths of blackness. Perhaps we may find it partly in the nature of marriage, as it was viewed by his age.

Having taken Helen to Troy, he made her his wife, and his wife she continued until the end of the siege. We should of course say he did not make her his wife, for she was the wife of another man. But the distinction between marriage de facto and marriage de jure, clear to us in the light of Divine Revelation, was less clear to the age of Homer. Helen was to Paris the mistress of his household; the possessor of his affections, such as they were; the sole sharer, apparently, of his dignities and of his bed. To the mind of that period there was nothing dishonourable in the connection itself, apart from its origin; while, to our mind, every day of its continuance was a fresh accumulation of its guilt. The higher wrong of wounded and defrauded affections was personal to Menelaus. In the aspect it presented to the general understanding, the act of Paris, once committed, and sealed by the establishment of the de facto conjugal relation, remained an act of plunder and nothing else.

And to Greek views of homicide.

To comprehend these notions, so widely differing from our own, we may seek their further illustration by a reference to the established view of homicide. He, who had taken the life of a fellow creature, was bound to make atonement by the payment of a fine. If he offered that atonement, it was not only the custom, but the duty, of the relations of the slain man to accept it. So much so, that the blunt mind of Ajax takes this ground as the simplest and surest for argument with Achilles, whom he urges not to refuse reparation offered by Agamemnon, in consideration that reparation (ποίνη) covers the slaughter of a brother or a son. Beforehand, the Greek would have scorned to accept a price for life. But, the deed being done, it came into the category of exchangeable values. Even so the abstraction of Helen, once committed, assumed for the common mind the character of an act of plunder, differing from the case of homicide, inasmuch as the thing taken could be given back, but not differing from it as to the essence of its moral nature, however aggravated might have been the circumstances with which it was originally attended.

Now, wherever the moral judgment against plunder has been greatly relaxed, that of fraud in connection with it is sure to undergo a similar process; because, in the same degree in which acts of plunder are acquitted as lawful acquisition, fraud is sure to come into credit by assuming the character of stratagem. We may, I think, find an example of this rule in the Thirteenth Odyssey; where, with an entire freedom from any consciousness of wrong, Ulysses feigns to have slaughtered Orsilochus at night by ambush, in consequence of a quarrel that had previously occurred about booty[423 - Od. xiii. 258 et seqq.].

Here then we reach the point, at which we must take into view the peculiar ideas and tendencies of the Greek mind in the heroic age, as they bear necessarily upon its appreciation of an act like that of Paris. The Greeks, of whom we may fairly take Diomed as the type, detest and despise him for affectation, irresolution, and poltroonery: these are the ideas uppermost in their mind: we are not to doubt that, besides seeking reparation for Menelaus, they condemned morally the act which made it needful; what we have to account for is, that they did not condemn it in such a manner as to make this moral judgment the ruling idea in their minds with regard to him.

We have seen that, according to Homer, instead of Helen’s having been originally the willing partner of the guilt of Paris, he was, under her husband’s roof, her kidnapper and not her corrupter. Her offence seems to have consisted in this, that she gave a half-willing assent to the consequences of the abduction. Though never escaping from the sense of shame, always retaining along with a wounded conscience her original refinement of character, and apparently fluctuating from time to time in an alternate strength and weakness of homeward longings[424 - See Il. iii. 139. Od. iv. 259-61.], the specific form of her offence, according to the ideas of the age, was rather the preterite one of unresisting acquiescence, than the fact of continuing to recognise Paris as a husband during the lifetime of Menelaus. It was the having changed her husband, not the living with a man who was not her husband; and hence we find that she was most kindly treated in Troy by that member of the royal house, namely Hector, who was himself of the highest moral tone.

The offence of Paris, though also (except as to the mere restitution of plundered goods) a preterite offence, was more complex. He violated the laws of hospitality, as we find distinctly charged upon him by Menelaus[425 - Il. iii. 354.]. He assumed the power of a husband over another man’s wife. This he gained by violence. Now, paradoxical as it may appear, yet perhaps this very ingredient of violence, which we look upon as even aggravating the case, and which in the view of the Greeks was the proper cause of the war, (for their anxiety was to avenge the forced journey and the groans of Helen,) may nevertheless have been also the very ingredient, which morally redeemed the character of the proceeding in the eyes of Greece. This it might do by lifting it out of the region of mere shame and baseness, into that class of manful wrongs, which they habitually regarded as matters to be redressed indeed by the strong hand, but never as merely infamous. Hence, when we find the Greeks full of disgust and of contempt towards Paris, it is only for the effeminacy and poltroonery of character which he showed in the war. His original crime was probably palliated to them by its seeming to involve something of manhood and of the spirit of adventure. So that we may thus have to seek the key to the inadequate sense among the Greeks of the guilt of Paris in that which, as we have seen, was the capital weakness of their morality; namely, its light estimation of crimes of violence, and its tendency to recognise their enterprise and daring as an actual set-off against whatever moral wrong they might involve.

The chance legend of Hercules and Iphitus, in the Odyssey, affords the most valuable and pointed illustration of the great moral question[426 - Vid. Od. xxi. 22-30.] between Paris and Menelaus, which lies at the very foundation of the great structure of the Iliad. For in that case also, we seem to find an instance of abominable crime, which notwithstanding did not destroy the character of its perpetrator, nor prevent his attaining to Olympus; apparently for no other reason, than that it was a crime such as had probably required for its commission the exercise of masculine strength and daring.

There remained, however, even according to contemporary ideas, quite enough of guilt on the part of Paris. The abduction and corruption of a prince’s wife, combined with his personal cowardice, his constant levity and vacillation, and his reckless indifference to his country’s danger and affliction, amply suffice to warrant and account for Homer’s having represented him as a personage hated, hateful, and contemptible. But while the foregoing considerations may explain the feelings and language of the Greeks, otherwise inexplicable, there still remains enough of what at first sight is puzzling in the conduct, if not in the sentiments, of the Trojans.

The Trojan estimate of Paris.

We ask ourselves, how could the Trojans endure, or how could Homer rationally represent them as enduring, to see the glorious wealth and state of Priam, with their own lives, families, and fortunes, put upon the die, rather than surrender Helen, or support Paris in withholding her? The people hate him: the wise Antenor opens in public assembly the proposal to restore Helen to the Greeks: Hector, the prince of greatest influence, almost the actual governor of Troy, knew his brother’s guilt, and reproached him with it[427 - Il. iii. 46-57.]. How is it that, of all these elements and materials, none ever become effective?

We must, I think, seek the answer to the questions partly in the difference of the moral tone, and the moral code, among Greeks and Trojans; partly in the difference of their political institutions.

We shall find it probable that, although the ostensible privileges of the people were not less, yet the same spirit of freedom did not pervade Trojan institutions; that their kings were followed with a more servile reverence by the people; that authority was of more avail, apart from rational persuasion; that amidst equally strong sentiments of connection in the family and the tribe, there was much less of moral firmness and decision than among the Greeks, and perhaps also a far less close adherence to the great laws of conjugal union, which had been violated by the act of Paris. Indeed it would appear from the allusion of Hector to a tunic of stone[428 - Il. iii. 57.], that Paris was probably by law subject to stoning for the crime of adultery: a curious remnant, if the interpretation be a correct one, of the stern traits of pristine justice and severity, still remembered amidst a prevalent dissolution of the stricter moral ties.

Although it results from our previous inquiries that the plebeian substratum, so to speak, of society, was perhaps nearly the same in both countries, yet the opinions of the masses would not then have the same substantiveness of character, nor so much independence of origin, as in times of Christianity, and of a more elaborate development of freedom and its main conditions. Then, much more than now, the first propelling power in the formation of public opinion would be from the high places of society: and in the higher sphere of the community, if not in the lower, Greece and Troy were, while ethnically allied, yet materially different as to moral tone. It is remarkable, that there is no Τὶς in Troy.

The Trojans more sensual and false.

If we may trust the general effect of Homer’s representations, we shall conclude that the Trojans were more given to the vices of sensuality and falsehood, the Greeks, on the other hand, more inclined to crimes of violence: in fact, the latter bear the characteristics of a more masculine, and the former of a feebler, people. In the words of Mure, the contrast shadows forth ‘certain fundamental features of distinction, which have always been more or less observable, between the European and Asiatic races[429 - Greek Lit. vol. i. p. 339.].’

On looking back to the previous history of Troy, we find that Laomedon defrauded Neptune and Apollo of their stipulated hire: and Anchises surreptitiously obtained a breed of horses from the sires belonging to Laomedon, who was his relative[430 - Il. v. 269.]. The conditions of the bargain, under which Paris fought with Menelaus, are shamelessly and grossly violated. Pandarus, in the interval of truce, treacherously aims at and wounds Menelaus with an arrow; but no Trojan disapproves the deed. Euphorbus comes behind the disarmed Patroclus, and wounds him in the back; and even princely Hector, seeing him in this condition, then only comes up and dispatches him. That these were not isolated acts, we may judge from the circumstance that Menelaus, ever mild and fair in his sentiments, when he accepts the challenge of Paris, requires that Priam shall be sent for to conclude the arrangement, because his sons – and he makes no exceptions – are saucy and faithless, ὑπερφίαλοι καὶ ἄπιστοι[431 - Il. iii. 105.]. This must, I think, be taken as characteristic of Troy; though he mildly proceeds to take off the edge of his reproach by a γνώμη about youth and age. But the most scandalous of all the Trojan proceedings seems to have been the effort made, though unsuccessfully, to have Menelaus put to death, when he came on a peaceful mission to demand the restoration of his wife[432 - Il. xi. 139.].

Nothing of this admiration for fraud apart from force appears either in the conduct of the Greeks during the war, or in their prior history: and the passage respecting Autolycus, which, more than any other, appears to give countenance to knavery, takes his case out of the category of ordinary human action by placing it in immediate relation to a deity; so that it illustrates, not the national character as it was, but rather the form to which the growing corruptions of religion tended to bring it. Yet, while Homer gives to the Trojans alone the character of faithlessness, he everywhere, as we must see, vindicates the intellectual superiority of the Greeks in the stratagems of the war. And if, as I think is the case, I have succeeded in proving above that the doctrine of a future state was less lively and operative among the Trojans than among the Greeks, it is certainly instructive to view that deficiency in connection with the national want of all regard for truth. This difference teaches us, that the imprecations against perjurers, and the prospects of future punishment, were probably no contemptible auxiliaries in overcoming the temptations to present falseness, with which human life is everywhere beset.

As respects sensuality, the chief points of distinction are, that we find a particular relation to this subject running down the royal line of Troy; and that, whereas in Greece we are told occasionally of some beautiful woman who is seduced or ravished by a deity, in Troas we find the princes of the line are those to whose names the legends are attached. The inference is, that in the former case a veil was thrown over such subjects, but that in the latter no sense of shame required them to be kept secret. The cases that come before us are those of Tithonus, who is said to become the husband of Aurora; of Anchises, for whom Venus conceives a passion; and of Paris, on whom the same deity confers the evil gift of desire[433 - Il. xxiv. 30.], and to whom she promises the most beautiful of women, the wife of Menelaus. All these are stories, which seem to have tended to the fame of the parties concerned on earth, and by no means to their discredit with the Immortals. And again, if, as some may take to be the case, we are to interpret the three νύμφαι[434 - Sup. p. 162 (#x_15_i70).] of Troas as local deities, how remarkable is the fact that Homer should thus describe them as tainted with passions, which nowhere appear among the corresponding order within the Greek circle! There, male deities alone are licentious. Juno, Minerva, Diana, and Persephone, whom alone we can call properly Greek goddesses of the period, have no such impure connection with mortals, as the goddesses both of the Trojan and of the Phœnician traditions.

We hear indeed of Orion[435 - Od. v. 121.], who was also the choice of Aurora: but we cannot tell whether he belonged more to the Trojan than to the Greek branch of the common stem. To the Greek race he cannot have been alien, as he is among Greek company in the Eleventh Odyssey: but then he is not there as an object of honour; he appears in a state of modified suffering, engaged in an endless chase[436 - Od. xi. 572.]. We also find Iasion, probably in Crete, who is reported to have been loved by Ceres[437 - Od. v. 128.]: but he was immediately consumed for it by the thunderbolt of Jupiter. And so the detention of Ulysses by the beautiful and immortal Calypso is not in Homer a glory, but a calamity; and it allays none of the passionate longings of that hero for his wife and home.

The marked contrast, which these groups of incidents present, is perhaps somewhat heightened by the enthusiastic observation of the Trojan Elders on the Wall in the Third Iliad[438 - Il. iii. 154-60.]. Though susceptible of a good sense, yet, when the old age of the persons is taken into view, the passage seems to be in harmony with the Trojan character at large, rather than the Greek: and perhaps it may bear some analogy to the licentious glances of the Suitors[439 - Od. xviii. 160-212.]. If so, it is very significant that Homer should assign to the most venerable elders of Troy, what in Greece he does not think of imputing except to libertines, who are about to fall within the sweep of the divine vengeance.

The difference between the races in this respect seems to have been deeply rooted, for there is evidently some corresponding difference between their views and usages in respect to marriage.

Trojan ideas and usages of marriage.

The character of Priam, which has been so happily conceived by Mure[440 - Lit. Greece, vol. i. p. 341 and seqq.], undoubtedly bears on its very surface the fault of over indulgence, along with the virtues of gentleness and great warmth and keenness of the affections. But it may be doubted, whether the poems warrant our treating him as individually dissolute. His life was a domestic life: but the family was one constructed according to Oriental manners. According to those manners, polygamy and wholesale concubinage were in some sense the privilege, in another view almost the duty, of his station; confined, as these abuses must necessarily be from their nature (and as they even now are in Turkey), to the highest ranks wherever they prevail. The household of Priam, notwithstanding his diversified relations to women, is as regularly organized as that of Ulysses: and when he speaks of his vast family, constituted as it was, he makes it known to Achilles, in a moment of agonizing sorrow, and evidently by way of lodging a claim for sympathy[441 - Il. xxiv. 493-7.], though the effect upon modern ears may be somewhat ludicrous. ‘I had,’ he says, ‘fifty sons: nineteen from a single womb: the rest from various mothers in my palace.’ He might have added that he had also twelve daughters[442 - Il. vi. 248.], whom he probably does not need to mention on the occasion, as in this department he was not a bereaved parent.

Hecuba, the mother of the nineteen, was evidently possessed of rights and a position peculiar to herself. The very passage last quoted distinguishes her from the γυναῖκες, and throughout the poem she moves alone[443 - See particularly vi. 87 and seqq. 364 and seqq.].

The family of Priam.

Of the children of Priam we meet with a great number in various places of the poem.

There are, I think, five expressly mentioned as children of Hecuba.

Hector, Il. vi. 87.

Helenus, ibid.

Laodice, vi. 252.

Deiphobus, Il. xxii. 333.

Paris, (because Hecuba was ἑκυρὴ to Helen,) Il. xxiv.

Next, we have two children of Laothoe, daughter of Altes, lord of the Lelegians of Pedasus.

Lycaon, Il. xxi. 84.

Polydorus, ibid. 91.

Next Gorgythion, son of Kastianeira, who came from Aisume, (Il. viii. 302).

Then we have, without mention of the mother,

Cassandra, xxiv. 699.

Mestor, xxiv. 257.

Troilos, Il. xxiv. 257.

Echemmon[444 - Possibly one of these is νόθος, illegitimate: for they are together in the same chariot, as Antiphus and Isus were. One of the two would be the charioteer; who was commonly, though not always, an inferior.], v. 159.

Chromios

, ibid.

Antiphos, iv. 490. xi. 101.

Cebriones, viii. 318.

Polites, ii. 791.