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

And, lastly, illegitimate (νόθοι),

Isos, Il. xi. 101.

Doryclos, xi. 489.

Democoon, iv. 499.

Medesicaste, xiii. 173.

The most important conclusion derivable from the comparison of the names thus collected is, that the children of Priam, and consequently their mothers, fell into three ranks:

1. The children of Hecuba.

2. The children of his other wives.

3. The children of concubines, or of chance attachments, who were, νόθοι, bastards.

The name νόθος with Homer, at least among the Greeks, ordinarily marks inferiority of condition. The mothers of the four νόθοι are never named. This may, however, be due to accident. At any rate Lycaon appears to have the full rank of a prince: he was once ransomed with the value of a hundred oxen, and, when again taken, he promises thrice as much; again, in describing himself as the half-brother of Hector, he avows nothing like spurious birth. The reference to him by Priam explains his position more clearly, and places it beyond doubt that Laothoe was recognised as a wife, for she brought Priam a large dowry[445 - Il. xxii. 51, 3.]; and if her sons be dead, says the aged king, ‘it will be an affliction to me and to their mother.’ The language used in another passage about Polydorus is also conclusive[446 - Il. xx. 407. xxi. 79, 95.]. He is described as the youngest and dearest of the sons of Priam, which evidently implies his being in the fullest sense a member of the family. Again, in the palace of Priam there were separate apartments, not for the nineteen only, but for the fifty. Thus they seem to have included all the three classes. So that it is probable enough that the state of illegitimacy did not draw the same clear line as to rank in Troy, which it drew in Greece.

Laothoe, mother of Lycaon and Polydorus, was a woman of princely rank: and when Lycaon says that Priam had many more besides her[447 - Il. xxi. 88.],

τοῦ δ’ ἔχε θυγατέρα Πρίαμος, πολλὰς δὲ καὶ ἄλλας,

he probably means many more of the same condition, wives and other well-born women, who formed part of his family.

So that Homer, in all likelihood, means to describe to us the threefold order,

1. Hecuba, as the principal queen.

2. Other wives, inferior but distinctly acknowledged.

3. Either concubines recognised as in a position wholly subordinate, or women who were in no permanent relation of any kind with Priam.

Beyond the case of Priam, we have slender means of ascertaining the usages and ideas of marriage among the Trojans. We have Andromache, wife of Hector; Helen, a sort of wife to Paris; Theano, wife to Antenor, and priestess of Minerva; who also took charge of and brought up his illegitimate son Pedæus[448 - Il. v. 71.]. The manner in which this is mentioned, as a favour to her husband, certainly shows that the mark of bastardy was not wholly overlooked, even in Troy. But, besides this Pedæus, we meet in different places of the Iliad no less than ten other sons of Antenor, all, I think, within the fighting age. This is not demonstrative, but it raises a presumption that some of them were probably the sons of other wives than Theano; who is twice described as Theano of the blooming cheeks, and can hardly therefore be supposed to have reached a very advanced period of life[449 - Il. vii. 298. xi. 224.].

But it is clear from the important case of Priam, even if it stands alone, that among the Trojans no shame attaches to the plurality of wives, or to having many illegitimate children, the birth of various mothers. It is possible that the manners of Troy, with regard to polygamy, were at this time the same (unless as to the reason given,) with those which Tacitus ascribes to the Germans of his own day: Singulis uxoribus contenti sunt; exceptis admodum paucis, qui, non libidine, sed ob nobilitatem, plurimis nuptiis ambiuntur[450 - Tac. Germ. c. 18.]. We must add to this, that Paris, in detaining as his wife the spouse of another man still living, does an act of which we have no example, to which we find no approximation, in the Greek manners of the time. Its significance is increased, when we find that after his death she is given to Deiphobus: for this further union alters the individual trait into one which is national. Her Greek longings, as well as her remorse for the surrender of her honour to Paris, afford the strongest presumption that the arrangement could hardly have been adopted to meet her own inclination; and that it must have been made for her without her choice, as a matter of supposed family or political convenience.

We seem therefore to be justified in concluding that, as singleness did not enter essentially into the Trojan idea of marriage, so neither did the bond with them either possess or even approximate to the character of indissolubility. The difference is very remarkable between the horror which attaches to the first crime of Ægisthus in Greece, the corruption of Clytemnestra, though it was analogous to the act of Paris, and the indifference of the Trojans to the offence committed by their own prince. We have no means indeed of knowing directly how Ægisthus was regarded by the Greeks around him, during the period which preceded the return and murder of Agamemnon. But we find that Jupiter, in the Olympian Court, distinctly describes his adultery as a substantive part of his sin[451 - Od. i. 35.];

ὡς καὶ νῦν Αἴγισθος ὑπέρμορον Ἀτρείδαο
γῆμ’ ἄλοχον μνηστὴν, τὸν δ’ ἔκτανε νοστήσαντα.

And I think we may rest assured, that Jupiter never would give utterance on Olympus to any rule of matrimonial morality, higher than that which was observed among the Greeks on earth.

So again, it was a specific part of the offence of the Suitors in the Odyssey, that they sought to wed Penelope while her husband was alive[452 - Od. xxii. 37.]; that is to say, before his death was ascertained, though it was really not extravagant to presume that it had occurred.

Stricter ideas among the Greeks.

From both these instances, and more especially from the last, we must, I think, reasonably conclude that the moral code of Greece was far more adverse to the act of Paris, considered as an offence against matrimonial laws, than the corresponding rule in Troy.

In connection with this topic, we may notice, how Homer has overspread the Dardanid family, at the epoch of the war as well as in former times, with redundance of personal beauty. Of Paris we are prepared to hear it as a matter of course; but Hector has also the εἶδος ἀγητόν[453 - Il. xxii. 370.]; and, even in his old age, the ὄψις ἀγαθὴ of Priam was admired by Achilles[454 - Il. xxiv. 632.]. Deiphobus again is called θεοείκελος and θεοειδὴς[455 - Il. xii. 94. and Od. iv. 276. See also the case of Euphorbus, Il. xvii. 51.], and on two of Priam’s daughters severally does Homer bestow the praise of being each the most beautiful[456 - The sense of ἄριστος in Homer, though emphatic, is not absolute.] among them all. With this was apparently connected, in many of them, effeminacy, as well as insolence and falseness of character; for we must suppose a groundwork of truth in the wrathful invective of their father, who describes his remaining sons as (Il. xxiv. 261.)

ψευσταί τ’ ὀρχησταί τε, χοροιτυπίῃσιν ἄριστοι,
ἀρνῶν ἠδ’ ἐρίφων ἐπιδήμιοι ἁρπακτῆρες.

An invective, which completely corresponds with the Greek belief concerning their general character in the Third Book[457 - Il. iii. 106.]. The great Greek heroes are also beautiful; but their mere beauty, particularly in the Iliad, is for the most part kept carefully in the shade.

Trojan polity less highly organized.

We will turn now to the political institutions of Troy. Less advanced towards organization, and of a less firm tone than in Greece, they will help to explain how it could happen that a people should bear prolonged calamity and constant defeat, and could pass on to final ruin, for the wicked and wanton wrong of an individual prince.

It has been noticed, that the idea of hereditary succession was definite, as well as familiar, in Greece. In Troy it appears to have been less so. And this is certainly what we might expect from the recognition in any form, however qualified, of polygamy. It tends to confound the position of any one wife, although supposed supreme, with that of others; and in confounding the order of succession, as among the issue of different wives, it altogether breaks up the simplicity of the rule of primogeniture.

And again, if, as we shall presently see, the Trojan race had a less developed capacity for political organization, they would be less likely to establish a clear rule and practice of succession, which is a primary element of political order in well-governed countries.

The evidence as to the Asiatic rule of inheritance is, I admit, indirect and scanty: nor do I attempt to place what I have now to offer in a rank higher than that of probable conjecture.

1. Sarpedon was clearly leader of the Lycians, with some kind of precedence over Glaucus.

The general tenour of the poem clearly gives this impression. He speaks and acts as the person principally responsible[458 - See Il. v. 482.]. But by birth he was inferior to Glaucus; for he was the grandson of Bellerophon only in the female line through Laodamia, while Glaucus stood alone in the male line through Hippolochus. I do not venture to rely much on the mere order of the names; and therefore I do not press the fact, which indeed is not needed for the argument, that it makes Laodamia junior to Hippolochus. It will be said that Sarpedon was in chief command, because he was of superior merit. But among the Greeks we have no instance in which superior merit gives preeminence as against birth. And the reputation of divine origin clearly could not put aside the prior right of succession.

Again, both Sarpedon and Glaucus are both expressly called βασιλῆες[459 - Il. xii. 319.], kings. Now, they were first cousins, and they belonged to the same kingdom. Hippolochus was perhaps still alive[460 - Il. vi. 207.]; for he gave Glaucus a parting charge, and his death is not mentioned. In Greece we find the heir apparent called king, namely, Achilles: but the title is never given to more than one person standing in the line of succession. A possible explanation, I think, is, that the Lycian kingdom had been divided[461 - Il. vi. 193.]: but if this be not so, then the use of the term seems to prove that in Asia all the children of the common ancestor stood, or might stand, upon the same footing by birth: and as if it was left to other causes, instead of to a definite and single rule, to determine who should succeed to the throne.

2. In a former part of this work[462 - On the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, see Achæis, sect. ix.], I have stated reasons for supposing that Æneas represented the elder branch of the house of Dardanus. But, whether he did so or not, it is sufficiently clear from the Iliad that he was not without pretensions to the succession. The dignity of his father Anchises is marked by his remaining at Dardania, and not appearing in the court of Priam. Æneas habitually abstains from attending the meetings or assemblies for consultation, in which Priam, where they are civil, and Hector, where they are military, takes the lead. Achilles taunts him expressly with looking forward to the succession after the death of Priam, and with the anticipation of public lands which he was to get from the Trojans forthwith, if he could but slay the great Greek warrior. The particular succession, to which the taunt refers, is marked out; it is the dominion, not over the mere Dardanians, but over the Τρῶες ἱππόδαμοι[463 - xx. 180.]. In following down the genealogy, Æneas does not adhere to either of the two lines (from Ilus and Assaracus respectively) throughout, as senior, and therefore supreme; but, after putting the line of Ilus first in the earlier part of the chain, he places his own birth from Anchises before that of Hector from Priam.

Apart from the question which was the older line, the effect of all these particulars, taken together, is to show an indeterminateness in the rule of succession, of which we have no indication among the Greeks. Even the incidental notice of the right of Priam to give it to Æneas, if he pleased, is as much without example in anything Homer tells us of the Greek manners, as the corresponding power conferred by the Parliament on the Crown in the Tudor period was at variance with the general analogies of English history and institutions.

Succession to the Throne of Priam.

3. The third case before us is one in the family of Priam itself. It appears extremely doubtful whether we can, upon the authority of the poems, confidently mark out one of his sons as having been the eldest, or as standing on that account in the line of succession to the throne of Priam. The evidence, so far as it goes, seems rather to point to Paris; while the question lies between him and Hector.

Theocritus[464 - Idyll. xv. 139.] indeed calls Hector the eldest of the twenty children of Hecuba. But this is an opinion, not an authority; and the number named shows it to be unlikely that he was thinking of historic accuracy, for Homer says, Hecuba had nineteen sons, while she had also several daughters[465 - Il. xxiv. 496. vi. 252.].

There can be no doubt whatever, that Hector was the most conspicuous person, the most considerable champion of the city. He was charged exclusively with the direction of the war, and with the regulation of the supplies necessary to feed the force of Trojans and of allies. Polydamas, who so often takes a different view of affairs, and Sarpedon, when having a complaint to make, alike apply to him. Æneas is the only person who appears upon the field in the same rank with him, and he stands in a position wholly distinct from the family of Priam. As among the members of that family, there can be no doubt of the preeminence of Hector. He was, indeed, in actual exercise of the heaviest part of the duties of sovereignty. Æneas, in the genealogy, finishes the line of Assaracus with himself; and, to all appearance, as not less a matter of course, the line of Ilus with Hector[466 - Il. xx. 240.]. Again, the name Astuanax, conferred by the people on his son, appears to show that the crown was to come to him. But all this in no degree answers the question, whether Hector held his position as probable king-designate by birth, or whether it was rather due to his personal qualities, and his great and unshared responsibilities and exertions. There are several circumstances, which may lead us to incline towards the latter alternative.

(1.) When his parents and widow bewail his loss, it is the loss of their great defender and chief glory[467 - Il. xxii. 56, 433, 507. xxiv. 29.], not of one who by death had vacated the place of known successor to the sovereignty.

(2.) Had Hector been by birth assured of the seat of Priam, his right would have been sufficient cause for giving to his son at once the name of Astuanax. But this we are told the people did for the express reason, that Hector was the only real bulwark of Troy. It seems unlikely that in such a case his character as heir by birth would have been wholly passed by. The name, therefore, appears to suggest, that it was by proving himself the bulwark of the throne that Hector had become as it were the presumptive heir to it[468 - Il. vi. 402, and xxii. 506.].

When Hector takes his child in his arms, he prays, on the infant’s behalf, that he may become, like himself[469 - Il. vi. 477.],

ἀριπρεπέα Τρώεσσιν,
ὧδε βίην τ’ ἀγαθὸν, καὶ Ἰλίου ἶφι ἀνάσσειν·

that is, that he may become distinguished and valiant, and may mightily rule over the Trojans. This seems to point to succession by virtue of personal qualities rather than of birth.

Paris most probably the eldest-born.

There are also signs that Paris, and not Hector, may have been the eldest son of Priam, and may have had that feebler inchoate title to succession, which, in the day of necessity, his brother’s superior courage and character was to set aside.