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

λαοὶ δ’ Ἀτρείδεω Ἀγαμέμνονος εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι,
τοῦ δὴ νῦν γε μέγιστον ὑπουράνιον κλέος ἐστίν.

Ulysses evidently conceives the fame of the great monarch, thus enhanced by success, to have been likely to supply any one who belonged to him with a defence against the formidable monster, before whom he stood.

Governing motives of the War.

The statements of Homer respecting the position of Agamemnon and the motives of the war, fall short of, but are not wholly at variance with, the opinion which has been expressed by Thucydides. Of the oath to Tyndareus Homer knows nothing: but he tells us of the oath, by which the Greek chieftains had bound themselves to prosecute the expedition. Before setting out, they had a solemn ceremonial at Aulis; they offered sacrifices, they made libations, they swore, they pledged hands[134 - Il. ii. 303-7. 339-41.], they saw a portent, and had it interpreted by Calchas[135 - Ibid. 308, 322.]. But all this only shows that the Atreidæ were conscious how formidable an enterprise they were about, and how they desired accordingly that their companion kings should, after having once embarked, be as deeply pledged as possible to go forward. It does not tell us what was the original inducement to enter into the undertaking. Again, it does not appear that the Greeks in general cared much about the abduction or even the restoration of Helen. The only passage directly touching the point is the one in which Agamemnon[136 - Il. iv. 169-72.] expresses his opinion that, if Menelaus should die of his wound, the army would probably return home. It seems as if Agamemnon thought, that without doubt they would then be in honour released from their engagement, and that they would at once avail themselves of their freedom. The hope of booty, however, would do much; and the members of a conquering race unite together with great facility for purposes of war, through a mixture of old fellow-feeling and the love of adventure, as well as through anticipation of spoil. On the other hand, it was evidently no small matter to organize the expedition: much time was consumed; a friendly embassy to Troy had been tried without success; the ablest princes, Nestor and Ulysses, were employed in obtaining cooperation. The general conclusion, I think, is, that a combination of hope, sympathy, respect, and fear, but certainly a very strong personal feeling, whatever its precise ingredients may have been, towards the Pelopid house, must have operated largely in the matter. And it is in this spirit that we should construe the various declarations of Homer respecting those who came to the war, as courting the Atreidæ, and as acting for their honour; namely these,

χάριν Ἀτρείδῃσι φέροντες. Od. v. 307.
Ἀγαμέμνονι ἦρα φέροντες. Il. xiv. 132.
τιμὴν ἀρνύμενοι Μενελάῳ σοί τε, κυνῶπα. Il. i. 159.

Before Troy, Agamemnon is always regarded by others as responsible for the expedition, and it is plain that he so regards himself. The use of his sceptre by Ulysses in the great effort to stem the torrent of the retiring multitude, is highly significant of the influence belonging to his station; and when Ulysses argues with the leaders, he rests his case on the importance of knowing the whole mind of Agamemnon, while he strongly dwells on his royal authority, and on the higher authority of heaven as its foundation.

His position, however, did not place him above the influence of jealousy and fear: for he was gratified when he saw Achilles and Ulysses, the first of his chieftains, at variance[137 - Od. vii. 77.]. And his weight and authority depended for their efficacy on reason, and on the free will of the Greeks. Agamemnon takes Briseis from Achilles by an act of force; but he nowhere seeks to move the army, or the individuals composing it, upon that principle; nor does the prolongation of the service appear to have been placed beyond the judgment of the particular chiefs and of the troops. Achilles not only declares that he will go, but says he will advise others to go with him[138 - Il. ix. 356-63, 417-20.], and asks Phœnix to remain in his tent for the purpose. The deference paid to the Head is a deference according to measure; and the measure is that of his greater responsibility, his heavier stake in the war[139 - Il. iv. 415-8.]. His functions in regard to the host are, to think for and advise it in council, and to stimulate it by exhortation and example in the field. If we may rely on Homer, it was essentially, so far as regarded the relation between the general in chief and the rest of the body, a free military organization.

Personal Character of Agamemnon.

The Agamemnon of Homer does not appear to be intended by the Poet for a man of genius. But on this very account, the dominance of political ideas in his mind is more remarkable. On political grounds he is ready to give up Chryseis[140 - Il. i. 117.]. On political grounds he quells his own avarice, and slays Trojans instead of taking ransom for them[141 - Il. vi. 45-62.]. He deeply feels the responsibilities of his station, and care banishes his sleep. The amiable trait in his character is his affection for Menelaus, and in this, as in many other respects, he recalls the Jupiter of Homer, whose selfishness is nowhere relieved, except by paternal affection.

Further, Agamemnon, though without genius, is a practitioner in finesse. In his love of this art, I fear, he resembles the tribe of later politicians. He resembles them, too, in outwitting himself by means of it: he is ‘hoist upon his own petard.’ This seems to be, in part at least, the explanation of his unhappy device in the Second Iliad, to prepare the people for an attack on Troy, by counselling them to go home forthwith. The breakdown of his scheme is, as it were, the first-fruits of retribution for his ἄτη in the First Book. —

As, upon the whole, there is no idea of selfishness involved in the prerogatives of the Homeric king, so is it clear that, except as against mere criminals, there is no general idea of coercion. The Homeric king reigns with the free assent of his subjects – an assent indeterminate, but real, and in both points alike resembling his kingly power. The relation between ruler and ruled is founded in the laws and condition of our nature. Born in a state of dependence, man, when he attains to freedom and capacity for action, finds himself the debtor both of his parents and of society at large; and is justly liable to discharge his debt by rendering service in return. Of this we have various indications in Homer, with respect to parents in particular. Those who die young, like Simoeisius by the hand of Ajax[142 - Il. iv. 473-9.], die before they have repaid to their parents the cost, that is the care, of their education (θρεπτρά). In a most remarkable and characteristic passage. Phœnix describes how, when he was young, some deity restrained his wrath against his father, and shows the infamy that would attend the taking away of that life, in a country where voluntary homicide, in general, was regarded more as a misfortune than a crime[143 - Il. ix. 459.]:

ὅς ῥ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ
δήμου θῆκε φάτιν, καὶ ὀνείδεα πόλλ’ ἀνθρώπων,
ὡς μὴ πατροφόνος μετ’ Ἀχαιοῖσιν καλεοίμην.

The reciprocal obligations of father and son are beautifully shown by Andromache in her lament over Hector, when she speaks of her child[144 - Il. xxii. 485. Od. xxiv. 434.]:

οὔτε σὺ τούτῳ
ἔσσεαι, Ἕκτορ, ὄνειαρ, ἐπεὶ θάνες, οὔτε σοὶ οὗτος.

The relation of sovereign and subject free.

As to the relation between the subject and the sovereign authority, it seems everywhere to be taken for granted. In the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, the object of those who march against Ulysses is not to put down authority, but to avenge the deaths of their sons and brothers. But there appears nowhere in Homer the idea that in this relation could be involved a difference of interest, or even of opinion, between class and class, between governors and governed. The king or chief was uplifted to set a high example, to lead the common counsels to common ends, to conduct the public and common intercourse with heaven, to decide the strifes of individuals, to defend the borders of the territory from invasion. That the community at home, or any regularly subsisting class of it, could require repression or restraint from the government, was an idea happily unknown to the Homeric times.

Those classes, indeed, were few and simple. There was, first of all, the king; and round him his family and his κήρυκες, the serjeants or heralds, who were his immediate, and apparently his only immediate, agents. They conveyed his orders; they assisted him in the Assembly, in sacrifice, and in banquets. They appear to be the only executive officers that are found in Homer. With these was the Bard, apparently also an indispensable member of royal households. Both were recognised among the established professions.

Next to the kings and other sovereigns, we must place the chief proprietors of the country. In the Odyssey, we find the members of the aristocracy having their own estates and functions, and sustaining the part of γέροντες, or leaders in the Assembly. The judicial office, as we have seen from the Shield and otherwise, was in their hands, probably by delegation. But it would appear, that the distinction between them and the sovereign family was rather a broad one; since, in almost every case, we seem to find the prince contracting a marriage beyond his own borders. Laertes brings Anticlea[145 - Od. xi. 85.] from the neighbourhood of Parnassus; Theseus marries Ariadne from Crete; Agamemnon and Menelaus, belonging to Mycenæ, are united to the daughters of the king of Sparta; of the two daughters of Icarius, Ulysses in Ithaca married Penelope, and Eumelus in Pheræ married Iphthime (Od. iv. 797); one of the two, at least, and perhaps both, must have married from a considerable distance; Menelaus sends his beautiful daughter Hermione to be the wife of Neoptolemus in Thessaly: and the only instance, even apparently in the opposite sense, seems to be that of his son Megapenthes, who married a Spartan damsel, the daughter of Alector. But then Megapenthes was not legitimate; he was born of a slave-mother, and therefore he was not a prince[146 - Od. iv. 10-12.]. All these facts seem to show us that the royal houses formed a network among themselves, spread over Greece, and keeping pretty distinct from the aristocracy: a circumstance which may, in some degree, help to explain the wonderful patience and constancy of Penelope.

Other classes of the community.

Next to the nobles, and in the third place, we may class what we should now call trades and professions: observing, however, that, in Homer’s time, both the useful arts and the fine arts had a social dignity, as compared with that of wealth and station, which the former have long ago lost, and which the later have not retained in as full manner as perhaps might be desired, not for their own advantage merely, but to secure due honour for labour, and the humanizing effect of this kind of labour in particular for society at large. I draw the proof of their estimation in the heroic age, first, from the manner in which they are combined under the common designation of δημιοεργοὶ, and arranged in a mixed order, the preference being only given by a more emphatic description to the bard[147 - Od. xvii. 383.]:

τῶν, οἳ δημιοεργοὶ ἔασιν,
μάντιν, ἢ ἰητῆρα κακῶν, ἢ τέκτονα δούρων,
ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδὸν, ὅ κεν τέρπῃσιν ἀείδων;

Here I take τέκτονα δούρων to represent the entire class of artificers, of whom many are named in Homer; in a poor country like Ithaca, depending very much on the use of boats for fishing and for its communications, the carpenters might naturally represent the whole.

And next, from the manner in which these arts were practised by princes, it seems plain that there was nothing in the pursuit of them inconsistent with high rank. The physicians, or surgeons rather, of the Greek army, Podaleirius and Machaon, were themselves princes and commanders of a contingent: and even Paris, who was not the man to demean himself by employments beneath his station, seems to have taken the chief share in the erection of his own palace[148 - Il. vi. 314.]:

τά ῥ’ αὐτὸς ἔτευξε σὺν ἀνδράσιν, οἳ τότ’ ἄριστοι
ἦσαν ἐνὶ Τροίῃ ἐριβώλακι τέκτονες ἄνδρες.

Again, the bard of Agamemnon was appointed quasi-guardian[149 - Od. iii. 267.] to Clytemnestra in her husband’s absence: and Phemius, the bard of Ulysses[150 - Od. xvii. 263. xxiv. 439.], proceeded to the Assembly of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey in order to prevent any tumult, together with Medon the herald, who addressed the people accordingly. The heralds, or serjeants, are also recognised as δημιοεργοί[151 - Od. xix. 135.]. Again, Alitherses, being the μάντις or seer of the island, and apparently the only one, takes part in the debates both of the Second and of the Twenty-fourth Books.

The professions, then, thus far are five:

1. Seers.

2. Surgeons.

3. Artificers.

4. Bards.

5. Heralds.

We may remark the absence of priests and merchants. Not that merchants were unknown: we find them mentioned by Euryalus the Phæacian, as πρηκτῆρες, but their business was esteemed sordid; it too much resembled that of the kidnapper or swindler, and it is the reproach of seeming to belong to this class that smartly stings Ulysses[152 - Od. viii. 161.]. And even the merchant Mentes, whose form was assumed by Pallas, belonged to the Taphians, a tribe of pirates[153 - Od. i. 183.]. As yet, neither the order of priests would seem to have been completely taken over from the Pelasgians, nor the class of merchants formed in imitation of the Phœnicians.

Slaves in the Homeric age.

After the classes we have named, come the great mass of the population, who till the ground and tend the live stock for themselves or their employers, if free, and for their lords if slaves. The fisherman, too, is distinctly noticed[154 - Od. xxiv.] in Ithaca. Mr. Grote classes with the free husbandmen the artisans[155 - Hist. Greece ii. p. 84.], and separates both of them from the θῆτες, or hired labourers, and the slaves. It appears to me, however, that we ought to distinguish the artisans from the mere husbandmen, as having been in a higher station. On the other hand, I see no passage in Homer which clearly gives to the husbandmen as a class a condition superior to that of the hired servants, or even, perhaps, the slaves. The evidence of the poems is not clear as to the existence or extent of a peasant proprietary. We must beware of confounding those conceptions of a slavery maintained wholesale for the purposes of commerce, which our experience supplies, with its earliest form, in which the number of slaves would seem to have been small, and their ranks to have been recruited principally by war, with slight and casual aid from kidnapping. In those times, the liability to captivity would seem to have affected all men alike, independently of all distinctions whether in rank or in blood. The sons of Priam were sold into slavery like any one else: the only difference was, that, in proportion to the wealth of the parents, there was a better chance of ransom. It would appear that the slaves of Homer were properly, even when not indoor, yet domestic. The women discharged the indoor and household offices: except that a few men performed strictly personal services about their masters, as δρηστῆρες and as carvers[156 - Od. xvi. 248, 253, also δαιτρὸς, Od. i. 141. There were likewise in Scheria nine αἰσυμνῆται, who made arrangements for the dance. These were public officers (δήμιοι) and may fairly be rendered ‘masters of the ceremonies.’ (Od. viii. 258.)] (θεράποντε δαήμονε δαιτροσυνάων). But the men-slaves were more largely employed out of doors in the care of flocks and herds, fields and vineyards. Thus, the slaves were in a different position apparently from the freemen, for they seem to have been gathered as servants and attendants round the rich. It would appear, however, from the case of Eumæus, who had a slave of his own, Mesaulios[157 - Od. xiv. 449-52.], that they might hold property for themselves. Again, not Eumæus only, but in the Twenty-fourth Odyssey Dolius and his six sons, sit down to table together with Ulysses, and fondly clasp his hands. They bear arms too; and this could not have been very strange, for Homer describes the arming of the sons without remark, while he calls both the father and Laertes, on account of their old age[158 - Od. xxiv. 498.], ἀναγκαῖοι πολεμισταί. The moral deterioration of slaves is noticed very strongly by Eumæus himself[159 - Od. xvii. 320-3.], though not with reference to himself. We have, however, no reason to suppose that their outward condition was inferior to that of the free labouring population in any thing, except that we must presume they did not take part in the assemblies or in war. When Achilles[160 - Od. xi. 489-91.] in the infernal regions compares the highest condition there with the lowest on earth, he does not choose the slave, but the labourer for hire (θητεύεμεν is his expression), as the type of a depressed condition upon earth. The state of the hired servant probably resembled that of the slave in being dependent upon others, and fell beneath it in the point of security. This is the more likely, because the point of the passage turns on the poverty of the employer,

ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βιοτὸς πολὺς εἴη,

as constituting the misery of the servant.

Indeed, if we consider the matter a little further, we shall perhaps see the greater reason to think, that the expression θητεύεμεν has been chosen otherwise than at random. What do we mean by a hired servant, at a period in the movement of society when money did not exist? We can only mean one who was paid by food, clothes, and lodging, like a slave, but who was not, like a slave, permanently attached to his master or his master’s estate. The difference between the two would thus lie in the absence of the permanent tie: a difference much more against the θὴς, than in his favour.

The position, then, of the slaves was probably analogous to that of domestic servants among ourselves, who practically forfeit the active exercise of political privileges, but are in many respects better off than the mass of those who depend on bodily labour. It doubtless grew out of the state of things in which slaves were practically servants, and servants of the rich, that masters, or ἄνακτες[161 - Od. xiii. 223.], were regarded as constituting the wealthy class of the community.

Supply of military service.

I stop for a moment to observe, that the view here taken of the comparatively restricted numbers and sphere of the slaves in heroic Greece may serve in some degree to answer the question, why do we not hear of them in the army of the Iliad? As men of equal blood with the Greeks themselves, they would perhaps be dangerous comrades in arms. As persons established in charge of the property of the lord, there would be a strong motive to leave them behind for its care. It is very difficult to judge how far the state of heroic Greece bore any resemblance to the feudal system of the later middle ages, and whether it did not present a more substantial correspondence with the allodial system of the earlier. We have before us a large number of independent proprietors, each bound by usage probably to render personal service, but we have nothing that resembles the obligation to bring so many retainers into the field with reference to the size of the estate. And accordingly, in the Iliad we do not find many merely personal retainers. The menial services in the tent of Achilles are performed by the women-captives, or by Patroclus in person. After Patroclus was dead, his tent was attended only by Automedon, his charioteer, and by one other warrior. Agamemnon had no other male attendants that we hear of, except his two herald-serjeants, Talthybius and Eurybates, who discharged a double function[162 - Il. i. 321.]:

τώ οἱ ἔσαν κήρυκε καὶ ὀτρηρὼ θεράποντε.

We may infer from the poems, that each independent family furnished one or more of its members, drawn by lot, to serve in the expedition[163 - Il. xxiv. 396-400.]. Such is the declaration of the pseudo-Myrmidon to Priam: and again, in the Odyssey we find Ægyptius[164 - Od. ii. 17.] of Ithaca had sent one son to Troy, while he kept three at home. The inference is strengthened[165 - Ibid. 474.] by the negative evidence of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey. There[166 - Od. xxiv. 387. 497.] Dolius the slave appears with no less than six sons: but no mention is made of any member of his family as having attended Ulysses to Troy, although, if there had been such a person, some reference to him here, in the presence of Ulysses just returned, would have been most appropriate. Indeed, the six are introduced as ‘the sons’ of Dolius, which of itself almost excludes the idea of his having sent any son to the war.

Again, we see that the whole mass of the soldiery attended the assemblies, and were there addressed by kings and chiefs in terms which seemed to imply a brotherhood. They are ‘friends, Danaan heroes, satellites of Mars[167 - Il. ii. 110.],’ and it is hard to suppose such words could be addressed to persons held in slavery, however mild, familiar, or favourable. The employment of these terms may suggest a comparison with our own modes of public address, according to which the word ‘Gentlemen’ would be commonly used, though the audience should be composed in great part of the humbler class. But all these words are so many proofs of that political freedom, pervading the community and the spirit of its institutions as a whole, which exacts this kind of homage from the great and wealthy on public occasions.

It was a natural and healthful sign of the state of political society, that slavery was held to be odious. But it was odious on account of its effects on the mind, and not because it entailed cruelty or oppression. There is not, I think, a single passage in the poems which in any degree conveys the impression either of hardship endured, or of resentment felt, by any slave of the period.

As to a peasant proprietary.