Inequality of his character. 569 Nor, with the fine characteristic sense he has everywhere shown of the national differences between Greek and Trojan, could he build up his Hector on the same foundations with his Greek heroes, or give him that strength and tenacity of tissue which belongs to the European and Achæan character. He could not equip him with either the dauntless chivalry in battle, or the profound unswerving sagacity in council, which were reserved for the kings of his own race, and for those most nearly allied to them. He has imparted to the character of the chief Trojan hero, no less than to that of the Trojan people at large, a decided Asiatic tinge, which modifies their community of colour with the properly European races. In such characters, instinct and sentiment take oftentimes the place of inquiry and reflection, and impulse does the work of conviction: the ideas of right, order, consistency, moral dignity and self-respect, are less clearly, less symmetrically, conceived. Though in particular cases, such as that of Hector, the deficiency may be made up by a liberal and full development of the most affectionate emotions, we feel, in comparing it with the Greeks, that we are dealing with a more contracted type of manhood: as if morally, no less than locally, we had gone back with Homer one full stage nearer to the cradle of our race, and had arrested and fixed the human character at the very point where it is neither child nor man. The character of Hector, as it has been here interpreted, does not give that satisfaction to the mind, which thorough clearness and oneness would impart. His intellectual qualities and his affections are not on the same scale; his martial character jars even with itself. Yet perhaps in these very circumstances we may upon consideration find but fresh reason to admire the skill of Homer, and that rarely erring instinct which forbade him to forget his whole in running after his details. His first object seems to have been to give the fullest and boldest prominence to the colossal shape, moral as well as physical, of Achilles, and therefore to tone down whatever could diminish its effect. And here the point of danger evidently lay in Agamemnon; the chief of the army was too likely to be the chief of the poem. Accordingly he has broken the unity of that character, and has chequered it with weakness in various forms. But this was not all: he had to keep the Greeks before the Trojans, as well as Achilles before the Greeks; not only that he might consult his popularity, but that he might indulge the genial vein of his poesy, and follow the impulses of his patriotism, in maintaining high above all question their intellectual and martial superiority. Had this, however, been ail, his task would have been easy; he would then have had only to depress their opponents in all the properties that attract admiration. But if he had simply done this, if he had cut off the interest and sympathies of his readers from the Trojans by general disparagement, he would have deprived Greek valour of its choicest crown. It is a noble necessity of war that, even in the interest of countrymen, we cannot do injustice to adversaries, without feeling the offence recoil on our own heads. Thus it was impossible for Homer to make his Trojan hero at once great and consistent; and if he has made Hector unequal, it was to avoid making him mean. By chequering his martial daring with boastfulness, and with occasional weakness of purpose, he has effectually provided against any interference, from this quarter, to the prejudice of those chieftains whose praises he was to sing in the courts and throngs of Greece. Thus he has left the field quite clear for expatiating on their military virtues; and if, for sufficient reasons, he has departed from his rule in the case of Agamemnon, who receives his compensation in superiority of rank and power, all his other Greek characters, bearing forward parts in the poem, are constructed in faultless conformity to the idea, or modification of an idea, which he had selected for the basis of each. There is not a flaw in the picture of Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Not that all these are of a type equally elevated, or alike wonderful; but that there is no one thing in any of them which does not manifestly conform to its type, and no one thing consequently which jars with any other. Having thus given to his countrymen a clear and marked ascendancy in what then at least were the only great and governing elements of human society, the strong The character of Helen. 571 mind, and the strong hand, he does his best for the Trojans with what remained, that is to say, with the softer affections of domestic life, adding only so much of the martial element as was needful to make them no discreditable adversaries for his countrymen. Thus, consistently with all his poetic objects, he has been enabled to present us, to say nothing of the highly respectable character of Hecuba, with the three unsurpassed pictures of Priam, of Andromache, and perhaps even most, of Hector. II. Let us now pass on to a production never surpassed by the mind or hand of man. The character of Argeian Helen occupies a large place in Grecian history, and is of extreme importance to the entire structure of the Iliad. On behalf of the first of these propositions, we call as witnesses her temple at Sparta, and the Encomium of Isocrates. As to the second, the reason is expressed in some of Homer's noblest oratory : τί δὲ δεῖ πολεμιζέμεναι Τρώεσσιν ̓Αργείους ; τί δὲ λαὸν ἀνήγαγεν ἐνθάδ' ἀγείρας Was she a vicious woman and a seductress, or was she more nearly a victim and a penitent? Do the laws of poetical verisimilitude and beauty, as they were understood by Homer, allow us to suppose that he intended to represent his countrymen, of whom he has presented to us so lofty a conception, as agitating the world, forsaking home, pouring forth their blood, and throwing their country into certain confusion, for the sake of a vile and worthless character? Certainly there were periods, when in the Greek mind the worship of beauty was so thoroughly dissociated from all which beauty ought to typify, that an Iliad so constructed might have been approved. But these were periods long after Homer's flesh had mouldered in the grave. The present inquiry has nothing to do with the opinion that Helen was, or that she was not, an historical personage. For my own part, I know of no reason except discrepancies of mere traditional chronology for disbelieving her existence. These d Il. ix. 337 seem to arise entirely from the practice of putting on a par with Homer tales of very inferior authority to his. But even apart from this, considering what, under ordinary circumstances, the chronology of pre-historic times is likely to be, and how many more chances there are for the preservation of great events in outline, than for a careful adjustment of their relative times, I cannot but think that difficulties arising from other legends as to Helen, and bearing simply upon time, form a very insufficient reason for the wholesale rejection of belief in her existence. Even if, however, she never existed at all, it still is not one whit the less reasonably to be presumed, that Homer in fictions concerning her would be governed here and elsewhere by all the laws, including the moral laws, of his art. Neither is it now the question, whether Helen was the model of an heroic character. That is probably inconsistent, for the earliest times of Greece, with her adulterous relation to Paris and afterwards to Deiphobus. But there is a vast space between a faultless and a worthless woman. The idea of Helen represented by the later tradition, from the Greek tragedians downwards, is strictly the latter idea: and this representation has naturally occupied the popular mind, which is deprived of the power of access to the remote Homeric picture. Now it seems to be plain that, if this representation be substantially true, it is a great reproach to the bard of the Iliad as a bard, and stamps him as one, who has done his best to poison morality at its fountain-head. For there can be no question, that he has made his Helen highly attractive, and that he intends her to possess our sympathies. Is it then true, or is it false? Let us proceed to examine the evidence. In the Iliad we meet more than once with the line, τίσασθαι δ ̓ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε and expositors, in order to avoid ascribing to Helen any personal wrongs, or the representation of her as rather a sufferer than an offender, have resorted to a forced construction of the passage, and have interpreted the words as referring to the expedition undertaken, and the griefs suffered, on account of Helen'. e Il. ii. 356, 590. C. Crusius (Hanover. 1845, on do.) f See Heyne on Il. ii. 356. G. Chapman translates in the same Homer's intention with respect to it. 573 Unless this forced construction be the one intended by Homer, the popular conception of her must at once explode. According to the direct and natural construction, the Greeks made war to avenge the wrong she had suffered, and the groans which that wrong had drawn from her. And it is to be observed that this lines is put into the mouth of Menelaus, whom it is very natural to represent as most eager to avenge the wrongs of his wife, but somewhat far-fetched to represent as thinking of revenge for the trouble of the expedition he had so keenly promoted. The line, in fact, unless justifiably strained by these expositors, is conclusive in support of the belief that the only evil which can justly be imputed to the Homeric Helen simply amounts to this, that she was not a woman of perfect virtue backed by absolute and indomitable heroism. Pope has rather rudely approximated towards rectifying the prevalent impression in a noteh, where he observes that in all she says of herself there is scarce a word that is not big with repentance and good nature.' Before examining the direct evidence with respect to the Homeric Helen, let us advert to some which is indirect. And in the first place it may be observed, that Menelaus never expresses the slightest resentment against her, or appears to have considered her as having in any manner injured him. Next, Priam, whose character is evidently intended to attract a good deal of our sympathy and respect, treated her as a daughter: ἑκυρὸς δὲ, πατὴρ ὡς, ἤπιος αἰε. Nor was this a mere figure; for in the Third Book he addresses her as píλov Tékosk, and makes her sit down by his side. In conformity with this picture, her sister-in-law Laodice addresses her as νύμφα φίλη! Priam goes on to acquit her of all responsibility in his eyes with regard to the war : οὔτι μοι αἰτίη ἐσσὶ, θεοί νύ μοι αἴτιοί εἰσιν. And that this was not meant to cover Paris, we may learn sense; but Voss refers the outsetting and the groans to Helen herself; so too the Scholiasts. g Il. ii. 590. h On Pope's Il. iii. 165. k Il. iii. 162. 1 Ibid. 130. |