Homer: The Iliad; The Odyssey. W. Lucas Collins
In words though few, yet clear; though young in years,
No wordy babbler, wasteful of his speech:
But when the skilled Ulysses rose to speak,
With downcast visage would he stand, his eyes
Bent on the ground; the staff he bore, nor back
He waved, nor forward, but like one untaught,
He held it motionless; who only saw,
Would say that he was mad, or void of sense:
But when his chest its deep-toned voice sent forth,
With words that fell like flakes of wintry snow,
No mortal with Ulysses could compare;
Then, little recked we of his outward show.” (D.)
A third hero catches the eye of the Trojan king, as{58} well he may—a leader like Saul, “taller by the head and shoulders than the rest of the people”—and he asks Helen to name him also. This is Ajax of Crete, son of Telamon, a giant chieftain, “the bulwark of the Greeks,” represented here in the Iliad as easy-tempered and somewhat heavy, as it is the wont of giants to be, degraded by medieval and modern poets into a mere bulk without brains. “Mars’ idiot,” Shakespeare calls him, “who has not so much wit as would stop the eye of Helen’s needle.” Shirley, in his ‘Ajax and Ulysses,’ carries out the same popular notion:—
“And now I look on Ajax Telamon,
I may compare him to some spacious building;
His body holds vast rooms of entertainment,
And lower parts maintain the offices;
Only the garret, his exalted head,
Useless for wise receipt, is filled with lumber.”
By the side of Ajax Helen also marks King Idomeneus of Crete, a frequent guest in the palace of Menelaus in happier times; for the court of Sparta, as will be seen hereafter in the Odyssey, was in these heroic days a centre of civilisation and refinement. Two chiefs Helen’s anxious eyes vainly try to discern amongst the crowd of her countrymen—
“My own two brethren, and my mother’s sons,
Castor and Pollux; Castor, horseman bold,
Pollux, unmatched in pugilistic skill;
In Lacedæmon have they stayed behind?
Or can it be, in ocean-going ships
That they have come indeed, but shame to join
The fight of warriors, fearful of the shame
And deep disgrace that on my name attend?” (D.)
Helen’s self-reproachful surmises have not reached the truth. The “Great Twin Brethren,” who had once already (so the ancient legend said) rescued their beautiful sister in her girlhood from the hands of Theseus, who had been amongst the mighty hunters of the Calydonian boar, and had formed part of the adventurous crew of the Argo, had finished their mortal warfare years before in a raid in Messenia; but to reappear as demigods in Greek and Roman legend—the spirit horsemen who rallied the Roman line in the great fight with the Latins at the Lake Regillus, the “shining stars” who lighted the sailors on the stormy Adriatic, and gave their names to the ship in which St. Paul was cast away.
“Back comes the chief in triumph,
Who, in the hour of fight,
Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren
In harness on his right.
Safe comes the ship to harbour,
Through billows and through gales,
If once the Great Twin Brethren
Sit shining on the sails.”[15]
This picturesque dialogue between Priam and his fascinating guest is interrupted far too soon for the reader’s complete enjoyment—somewhat too abruptly, indeed, for its perfection. One would like to have heard Helen’s estimate of the other leaders of the Greeks; of Diomed, of the lesser Ajax, of Nestor, of Mnestheus the Athenian; and it is hardly possible not to fancy that the scene has been left by the poet incomplete, or that some portion has been lost past recovery. The tragedian Æschylus, who was full of the true Homeric spirit, carried out the idea to what seems its natural completion in a remarkable scene of ‘The Seven Chiefs against Thebes,’ to which we may hope to introduce our readers more fully hereafter. Euripides, in his ‘Phœnissæ,’ adopts the very same machinery; and Tasso has also imitated the scene in his ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’[16] where he brings Erminia on the walls, pointing out to King Aladine the persons of the most renowned of the besieging knights.
The interruption is as little satisfactory to Priam as to the reader. A herald summons the king of Troy to a conference in the mid-space between the city walls and the enemy’s leaguer, in order to ratify the armistice, while Paris and Menelaus decide their quarrel in single combat. The old man mounts his chariot, “shuddering,” as foreboding the defeat and death of his son. Agamemnon and Ulysses on the one side, Priam and Antenor on the other, duly slay the sacrificial lambs, and make joint appeal to Jupiter, the Avenger of oaths, pouring the red wine upon the earth with solemn imprecation, that so may flow forth the heart’s blood of him who on either part shall break the truce. And the god listens as before, but does not accept the appeal. Priam withdraws, for he cannot bear to be a spectator of his son’s peril. Hector and Ulysses, precisely in the fashion of the marshals in the tournaments of chivalry, measure out the lists; the rest of the Greeks lie down on the ground beside their horses and chariots, while the lots are cast which shall first throw the spear. The chance falls to Paris. He throws, and strikes full and fair in the centre of Menelaus’ round shield. But the seasoned bull’s hide turns the point, and it does not penetrate. Next comes the turn of Menelaus. Paris has ventured no appeal to heaven; but the Greek king lifts his voice in prayer to Jupiter for vengeance on the traitor who has so abused his hospitality, before he poises his long lance carefully and hurls it at his enemy. Right through shield, breastplate, and linen vest goes the good Greek weapon; but Paris leans back to avoid it, and it only grazes him. Menelaus rushes forward, sword in hand, and smites a downright blow on Paris’ crest. But the Trojan helmet proves of better quality than the shield, and the Greek blade flies in shivers. Maddened by his double failure, he rushes on his enemy, and seizing him by the horse-hair crest, drags him off by main strength towards the ranks of the Greeks. But in this extremity the goddess of love comes to the rescue of her favourite. At her touch the tough bullhide strap of Paris’ head-piece, which was all but choking him, breaks, and leaves the empty helmet in the hands of Menelaus. He hurls it amongst his comrades in disappointment and disgust, and rushes once more in pursuit of Paris. But Venus has wrapt him in a mist, and carried him off; and while the son of Atreus rushes like a baffled lion up and down the lists in quest of him, while even the Trojans are aiding in the search, and no man among them would have hidden him—for “they all hated him like black death”—he is safely laid by the goddess in Helen’s chamber. The scene in which she receives him is, like all the rest of her story, a beautiful contradiction. Her first greeting is bitter enough. Either her heart has been indeed with Menelaus in the fight—or at least she would have had her present husband come back from the field, dead or alive, in some more honourable fashion—
“Back from the battle? Would thou there hadst died
Beneath a warrior’s arm whom once I called
My husband! Vainly didst thou boast erewhile
Thine arm, thy dauntless courage, and thy spear,
The warlike Menelaus should subdue!
Go now again, and challenge to the fight
The warlike Menelaus.—Be thou ware!
I warn thee, pause, ere madly thou presume
With fair-haired Menelaus to contend!” (D.)
Brave words! but still, as of old, the fatal spells of Venus are upon her, and Paris’ misadventure in the lists is all too soon condoned.