No More Learning

Ulysses — Chilian, I am afraid
Chilian — Afraid of what, my lord ?
Ulysses —Afraid that Dido is in love with me.
Chilian — Are you sure ?
Ulysses — Luckless me ! Chilian, if it is so, we are booked
to stay here.
Chilian — My lord, don't be offended, but how old were you
when you left home ?
Ulysses — In the prime of life ; not more than forty.
Chilian — All right. Forty years for a starter, ten for the
siege makes fifty, and twenty on this voyage home is seventy. The royal Dido must love fossils immensely, if she neglects the crowd of youths she could pick from, and falls in love with a hoary old man.
Ulysses — Stop, Chilian, I don't wish to hear such argu
A FANTASIA ON THE ODYSSEY.
317
ments ; you must have gone wrong in your calculations. What you see with your own eyes you must not doubt. If you see snow in summer, you ought not to say, "This can't be snow, for it is summer ; " it is enough to see the snow yourself.
Chilian — I see, your lordship :
what happens to us in this journey.
to reason out a way to get clear of this scrape.
I will try
Ulysses — How can we escape this imminent catastro phe?
Chilian — No way, my lord, except by quietly putting out to sea.
Ulysses — You are right, Chilian. I will go at once and discuss the matter with my faithful companions. Stay here till
I return.
Chilian [to himself] — I wish I had a pinch of snuff, so as
I must not use reason on
I won't, then ;
[Exit.
to shake myself up ; for my head is going crazy. I know quite well that when my master returns he will say it is ten years since he spoke to me last. We shall be several thousand years old before we get home to our own country again ; for we don't keep up with time — it runs away from us even when we stand still. I have a piece of cheese with me that I brought from Ithaca thirty years ago, and it is fresh yet. And the earth runs away from us as much as time ; often enough we are in the eastern part of the world when I light my pipe, and in the western before I have smoked it out.
Ulysses returns.
Ulysses — Great Zeus I can such things be ? Chilian — What's the matter now, my lord ?
Ulysses — Chilian, I couldn't have believed such a thing pos sible if I had not seen it with my own eyes.
Chilian — What is it, your honor ?
Ulysses — Dido, Dido, what harm have I done you that you practice your sorceries on my faithful companions ?
Chilian — Are they bewitched ?
Ulysses — Chilian, listen to a wonderful story, such as never has happened before since Deucalion's flood. During the four weeks since I talked with you last
Chilian — Only four weeks? I supposed it must be at least four years.
318 A FANTASIA ON THE ODYSSEY.
Ulysses — During those four weeks I have been making plans with my faithful companions to leave here on the quiet. We were all ready to embark when Dido got wind of it and to block it turned all my companions, by magic, into swine.
Chilian — Why, my good master, that is impossible ! [aside] for they were that before.
into one too. Here they come now :
Ulysses' Companions enter, crawling on all fours and grunting.
Chilian — Ha, ha, ha, ha! ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, the devil take me if I ever saw such a thing in my life before !
The Swine — Ouf, ouf, ouf, ouf, ouf !
Chilian — Say, you chaps, what devil is riding you ?
The Swine — We are swine, good master. Ouf, ouf, ouf,
Ulysses — Chilian, it is only too true. I thought my eyes must have deceived me, and spoke to them. But their voices were transformed along with their bodies, and they only grunted at me in reply. Then I fled in fear of being turned
more than you ever were.
The Swine — Ouf, ouf, ouf, ouf, ouf !
Chilian [going down on all fours and grunting like the
rest] — Ouf, ouf, ouf ! Look here, you chaps, are you sure you
Eat this garbage here.
The Swine —We are not hungry, good master. Ouf, ouf,
ouf, ouf !
— Chilian [lashing them with a birch rod] — Go ahead, I say
eat it up, or I'll cut your pigskin backs into strips. Go on, go on — if you are hogs it is just the right kind of feed for you.
[Beats them with the rod. They get up and are men once more.
The Companions — D you, we'll make you pay for this thrashing, Mr. Wegner [the actor who played Chilian] . What
are hogs ? — The Swine
Ouf, ouf, ouf !
Chilian — All right, if you are hogs you must eat hog feed.
do you mean by spoiling the story in this way ?
[Run off.
I dare not stay.
[Exit, weeping.
ouf,ouf! —
Chilian May the devil fly away with me if you are
—
any
A FANTASIA ON THE ODYSSEY. 319
Chilian [to the audience] — I didn't spoil the story — I only turned them into two-legged swine, as they were before. But here comes my master again.
Ulysses — Oh, Chilian, have they gone ?
Chilian — Yes, all gone, your honor — on two legs, as they did before.
Ulysses — What, then they are no longer swine ?
Chilian — Oh, I don't say that; not by any means; but my magical skill has enabled me to make them go on two legs
again. — Ulysses
O mighty son of . /Esculapius ! You should have temples and altars erected in your honor ! What god or goddess taught you such divine arts ?
Chilian — I went and lay down in a field and wept bitterly over the calamity that had befallen our men. During this I fell asleep, and Persephone (I believe that's her name), the goddess of medicine, came to me in a vision and said : " Chilian, thy tears and thy prayers have reached me. Rise and cut a wand from the first birch tree at thy left. It is a sacred tree, as yet untouched by man. The instant you touch your compatriots with it, they will rise and walk on two legs as before. " It was just as she said. I won't say whether they are still hogs or not; but I know they look just as they used, and walk on two legs, and talk — in fact, they gave me bad tongue because I struck them too hard with the holy birch. —
Ulysses
Chilian, you have saved me ! Let me embrace
you! Chilian — Your servant. I should be pleased if my lord would turn hog, too, so I could have the pleasure of trans forming him.
Ulysses — Chilian, there is no time to spare. The ship is
all ready ; let us go and get the men together, so we may escape quickly and silently. There comes Dido ! run !
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
(From the " Odyssey " ; translated by Philip S. Worsley. )
Soon as Persephone the female host
Dispersed, came pacing from the shadowy train,
Silent in sorrow, Agamemnon's ghost,
With souls all round him by JSgisthus slain. Soon having quaffed the blood he knew me plain,
Wailed, and with feeble arms, shorn of their force, Yearned to embrace me. Then I, touched with pain,
Wept when I marked him, and with kind remorse Of pity the cold shade addressed in winged discourse :
" O glorious Agamemnon, king of men, What destiny too cruel dashed thy joy,
And hurled thee realmless to this darksome den ? Did then Poseidon his fierce gales employ Unenviable, and all thy ships destroy ?
Or thee from earth did rude barbarians sweep,
While thou wast plundering, on thy road from Troy,
Beeves, and their beauteous flocks of fruitful sheep, " Or for their wives and walls red battle wast waging deep ?
Thus I inquired. He answering spake in turn : " Zeus-born Laertiades, Odysseus brave,
Neither through storms unenviable did stern Poseidon whelm me in the rolling wave,
Nor rude barbarian hands my death blow gave ;
But dark JSgisthus working doom and death,
Leagued with my cursed wife, hurled me to the grave,
While feasting in his house, without one breath Of warning, as some churl a stalled ox murdereth.
" So by the worst of dooms I died, and all
My friends like white-toothed swine around me bled,
Which in a wealthy noble's banquet hall
Die for some revel, or when their lord is wed. Thou of a truth hast witnessed thousands dead,
Whether in secret slain or the strong flood Of onset, yet were this compassioned
More than all else, couldst thou have seen where stood
Full tables, foaming bowls, while the floor smoked with blood
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
" There did I hear Cassandra's piercing shriek, Daughter of Priam, as she fell down slain
By crafty Clytaemnestra, fierce to wreak
Her murderous bale. I, falling, in wild pain Clutched the wet steel with dying hands in vain.
That shameless cursed woman where I lay
Tare out my life, and scorned with fell disdain
Eyelids of one then passing on his way
Toward Hades to seal down, and press the lips' cold clay ;
" Since naught exists more horrible and bold Than evil in the breast of womankind,
When she to her own lust herself hath sold ; Even as this fell monster in her mind Against the husband of her youth designed
Black murder. I, the while, poor dreamer, thought Good words from children and from slaves to find ;
But she, by the foul sin she planned and wrought,
On the mere name of woman eternal shame hath brought. "
Grieving he ceased, and I made answer then :
"Too oft, by Heaven, dread suffering and disgrace
Far-seeing Zeus, the King of gods and men,
Hurls in his anger on the Atrean race
From the beginning, and through all their days
Hath, for the plots of women, piled a cloud Of ruin o'er their house ! In a far place
For Helena died many a hero proud —
Next against thee dark murder Clytaemnestra vowed. "
" Never for this, hereafter in thy life,"
He answered, " make parade of tenderness,
Nor the whole matter even to thy wife
Show forth, but part reveal and part suppress ; Albeit I ween she is no murderess,
Icarius' daughter, sage Penelope —
One rather whom the gods with forethought bless,
Apt for good counsels, wise exceedingly,
And not from hands like hers shall ruin alight on thee.
" Her a new bride we left, when at my hest Soldiers of Argos crossed the rolling sea.
Her only child an infant at the breast,
Helpless and void of power, who now, maybe, Sits with the noble chieftains. Happy he ! VOL. II. — 21
322
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
Whom on the dear hearth his returning sire Shall gaze on, when the old calamity
Is ended, while with equal fond desire
Both, twined in mutual arms, their mutual respire !
"She did the sight of mine own son deny,
So quick she slew me. But remember thou
On mine own coast to land in privacy ;
No more are women to be trusted now.
But of my child whate'er thou knowest, avow 1
Whether in famed Orchomenus he bide,
Or sandy Pylos — some true word allow —
Or if with Menelatls, in Sparta wide —
Since on the earth not yet hath brave Orestes died. "
Iknow not His life or death. We talk but idle air. "
I answered : " Why this question ?
So we in converse rooted to the spot
Stood weeping ; and Achilleus' shade came near, Antilochus, Patrocleus, Aias fair
Beyond all Danaans after Peleus' son ;
And, while I looked, that spirit knew me there,
Swift-foot Aiacides, and spake anon,
Mixing with winged words full many a bitter moan :
" Zeus-born Ladrtiades, Odysseus brave,
Where in thy desperate councils wilt thou cease ?
How durst thou seek these kingdoms of the grave, Wherein the dead, mere phantoms, reasonless, Inhabit ? " Whom I answering there address :
" O Lord Achilleus, name invincible, First of Achaians, I Tiresias
Came to consult, if he some word might tell Whereby this long return I might accomplish welL
"Not yet Achaia's realm have I come nigh, Nor on my native earth one footprint set;
Still am I held in sore adversity.
But than thyself, Achilleus, no man yet Was happier, nor shall one hereafter get
Such glory as the gods on thee bestow, Who like a deity didst reap our debt —
Of praise above, and now art lord below
Wherefore, though dead, take heart, nor vex thyself with woe. "
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
" Scoff not at death," he answered, " noble chief ! Rather would I in the sun's warmth divine
Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief, Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine. But came my brave son to your wars, to shine
First in the front of arms ? This also tell : If to the blameless Peleus men assign Due reference in the land, or if he dwell
Spurned in his weak old age, and not regarded welL
" Since to his help I can no longer wield Under the sun that valor famed of yore,
Such as men knew me in the Trojan field, Smiter of heroes, bulwark of the war. Could I but once unto my father's door,
*******
Such as I was, return a little space,
Soon would I make those caitiffs to abhor
My hands inviolable, who now disgrace
Rights nobler than their own, and scorn his kingly place. "
Thus the dim shades pressed forward, one by one, Still in my ears rehearsing sad lament ;
But never Aias, child of Telamon,
Came near me, but with gloomy brows and bent Stood far aloof, in sternness eminent,
Eating his heart for that old victory Against him given by clear arbitrament,
Concerning brave Achilleus' arm, which she, Thetis, his reverend mother, set for rivalry.
O that Athene and the sons of Troy
Had never by the ships their rede unrolled,
Sentence divulging that cut off from joy
That brave one ; since for this the earth doth hold Aias, the fairest in corporeal mold,
And first in exploit after Peleus' son !
Then I in words the darkling shadow cold
Bespake : ' O Aias, child of Telamon,
Wilt thou not even here thine anger leave forgone,
" Nor ever those pernicious arms forget,
By gods put forth to work the Argives woe ? For else hadst thou, our tower, been living yet.
Now equal tears among the Achaians flow For thee and lost Achilleus. Well I know
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
None other was the cause, but Zeus in hate Willed to afflict the Danaan swordsmen so,
And forced upon thy life this evil fate. " O hear me, noble chief, and thy proud soul abate !
He nothing answered but severely stern Toward Erebus involved in darkness dim
And to the other shades his feet did turn,
Where none the less this sullen ghost and grim Even yet should have addressed me, or I him,
*******
But that within my breast more strong desire Impelled me, passing from the pool's dark brim
Into the deeper regions to retire,
And view the other souls, and of their state inquire.
There also Tantalus in anguish stood,
Plunged in the stream of a translucent lake ;
And to his chin welled ever the cold flood.
But when he rushed, in fierce desire to break His torment, not one drop could he partake.
For as the old man stooping seems to meet That water with his fiery lips, and slake The frenzy of wild thirst, around his feet,
Leaving the dark earth dry, the shuddering waves retreat.
Also the thick-leaved arches overhead Fruit of all savor in profusion flung,
And in his clasp rich clusters seemed to shed.
There citrons waved, with shining fruitage hung, Pears and pomegranates, olive ever young,
And the sweet-mellowing fig ; but whensoe'er The old man, fain to cool his burning tongue,
Clutched with his fingers at the branches fair,
Came a strong wind and whirled them skyward through the air.
And I saw Sisyphus in travail strong
Shove with both hands a mighty sphere of stone.
With feet and sinewy wrists he laboring long
Just pushed the vast globe up, with many a groan ; But when he thought the huge mass to have thrown
Clean o'er the summit, the enormous weight
Back to the nether plain rolled tumbling down. He, straining, the great toil resumed, while sweat
Bathed each laborious limb, and the brows smoked with heat.
ODYSSEUS IN HADES.
And after him the strength of Heracles
I gazed on, a mere shadowy counterfeit
(He, the true form, among the gods of ease,
Wed to fair-ankled Hebe, still doth sit,
Feasting). While round him the dead phantoms flit,
Like of bewildered birds a clang there came.
He, dark as Night, with bent bow, seems to fit
Shaft to the naked nerve, and eyes his game, Dreadfully crouching down, as one in act to aim
Also a wondrous sword belt, all of gold, Gleamed like a fire athwart his ample breast,
Whereon were shapes of creatures manifold, Boar, bear, and lion sparkling-eyed, expressed, With many a bloody deed and warlike gest.
Whoso by art that wondrous zone achieved, Let him forever from art's labors rest !
Soon as the shade my nearing form perceived,
He knew me, and thus spake in winged words, sore-grieved :
"Zeus-born Lae"rtiades, Odysseus wise,
Is thy life sad like mine beneath the sun ?
I was the child of Zeus, but miseries
Bore without number, the bondslave of one
Far meaner, who much task work, hardly done,
Laid on me, and to these realms of the dead
Sent me to fetch the dog (for task seemed none
Heavier than this), whom yet to the air I led From Hades, save by Hermes and Athene sped. "
This spoken, he within the portals went
Of Hades, but I lingering stood my ground
To watch if any other his dark steps bent Thither — some hero of the names renowned Who died in the old time. Then had I found
Whomso I wished, Pirithous, Theseus dread, Children of gods ; but with portentous sound
Ev'n then the thousand thousands of the dead
Flocked thickening, and pale fear possessed me, and I fled.
326 THE WOMEN OF HOMER.
THE WOMEN OF HOMER. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
[John Addington Stmonds, English man of letters,"was born October 5, 1840; graduated at Balliol College, Oxford. He wrote Introduction to the Study of Dante" (1872), "Studies of the Greek"Poets" (1873-1876), "The Renaissance in Italy" (six volumes, 1875-1886), Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama" (1884), "Life of Michelangelo" (1892), several vol umes of poetry, translated Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, etc. He died April 18, 1893, at Borne. ]
Helen of Troy is one of those ideal creatures of the fancy over which time, space, and circumstance, and moral probabil ity exert no sway. It would be impossible to conceive of her except as inviolably beautiful and young, in spite of all her wanderings and all she suffered at the hands of Aphrodite and of men. She moves through Greek heroic legend as the de sired of all men and the possessed of many. Theseus bore her away while yet a girl from Sparta. Her brethren, Castor and Polydeukes, recovered her from Athens by force, and gave to her jEthra, the mother of Theseus, for bondwoman. Then all the youths of Hellas wooed her in the young world's prime. She was at last assigned in wedlock to Menelaus, by whom she conceived her only earthly child, Hermione. Paris, by aid of Aphrodite, won her love and fled with her to Egypt and to Troy. In Troy she abode more than twenty years, and was the mate of Deiphobus after the death of Paris. When the strife raised for her sake was ended, Menelaus restored her with honor to his home in Lacedaemon. There she received
Telemachus and saw her daughter mated to Neoptolemus. But even after death she rested not from the service of love. The great Achilles, who in life had loved her by hearsay, but had never seen her, clasped her among the shades upon the island Leuke, and begat Euphorion. Through all these adven tures Helen maintains an ideal freshness, a mysterious virginity of soul. She is not touched by the passion she inspires, or by the wreck of empires ruined in her cause. Fate deflours her not, nor do years impair the magic of her charm. Like beauty, she belongs alike to all and none. She is not judged as wives or mothers are, though she is both ; to her belong soul-wound ing blossoms of inexorable love, as well as pain-healing poppy
The Abduction of Helen
From the painting by Rudolph von Deutsch
THE WOMEN OF HOMER. 327
heads of oblivion ; all eyes are blinded by the adorable, incom parable grace which Aphrodite sheds around her form.
Whether Helen was the slave or the beloved of Aphrodite, or whether, as Herodotus hinted, she was herself a kind of Aphrodite, we are hardly told. At one time she appears the willing servant of the goddess ; at another she groans beneath her bondage. But always and on all occasions she owes every thing to the Cyprian queen. Her very body gear preserved the powerful charm with which she was invested at her birth. When the Phocians robbed the Delphian treasure house, the wife of one of their captains took and wore Helen's necklace, whereupon she doted on a young Epirot soldier and eloped with him.
She is always god-begotten and divinely fair. Was it possible that anything so exquisite should have endured rough ravishment and borne the travail of the siege of Troy ?
This doubt possessed the later poets of the legendary age. They spun a myth according to which Helen reached the shore of Egypt on the ship of Paris ; but Paris had to leave her there in cedar-scented chambers by the stream of Nile, when he went forth to plow the foam, uncomforted save by her phantom. And for a phantom the Greeks strove with the Trojans on the windy plains of Ilium. For a phantom's sake brave Hector died, and the leonine swiftness of Achilles was tamed, and Zeus bewailed Sarpedon, and Priam's towers were leveled with the
Helen, meanwhile, — the beautiful, the inviolable, — sat all day long among the palm groves, twining lotus flowers for her hair, and learning how to weave rare Eastern patterns in the loom.
ground.
This legend hides a delicate satire upon human strife. For what do men disquiet themselves in warfare to the death, and tossing on sea waves ? Even for a phantom — for the shadow of their desire, the which remains secluded in some unapproach able, far, sacred land. A wide application may thus be given to Augustine's passionate outcry: "Why is it yours to go here and there over hard and toilsome ways ? Rest is not where you seek it. Seek what you seek ; but there is naught where you seek. You seek a life of bliss in the land of death : it is not there. " Those who spake ill of Helen suffered. Stesicho- rus had ventured to lay upon her shoulders all the guilt and suffering of Hellas and of Troy. Whereupon he was smitten with blindness, nor could he recover his sight till he had
328 THE WOMEN OF HOMER.
written the palinode which begins, " Not true is that tale ; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, or come to towers of Troy. " Even Homer, as Plato hints, knew not that blindness had fallen on him for like reason. To assail Helen with re proach was not less dangerous than to touch the Ark of the Covenant, for with the Greeks beauty was a holy thing. How perfectly beautiful she was we know from the legend of the cups modeled upon her breasts suspended in the shrine of Aphrodite. When Troy was taken, and the hungry soldiers of Odysseus roamed through the burning palaces of Priam and his sons, their swords fell beneath the vision of her loveliness. She had wrought all the ruin, yet Menelaus could not touch her, when she sailed forth, swanlike, fluttering white raiment, with the imperturbable sweet smile of a goddess on her lips. Between the Helen of the Iliad, reverenced by the elders in the Scaean gate, and the Helen of the Odyssey, queenlike among her Spartan maidens, there has passed no agony of fear. The shame which she has truly felt has been tempered to a silent sorrow, and she has poured her grief forth beside Andromache over the corpse of Hector.
She first appears when Iris summons her to watch the duel of Paris and Menelaus. Husband and lover are to fight be neath the walls of Troy. Priam accosts her tenderly ; not hers the blame that the gods scourge him in his old age with war. Then he bids her sit beside him and name the Greek heroes as they march beneath. She obeys, and points out Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Ajax, describing each, as she knew them of old. But for her twin brothers she looks in vain ; and the thought of them touches her with the sorrow of her isolation and her shame.
In the same book, after Paris has been withdrawn, not with out dishonor, from the duel by Aphrodite, Helen is summoned by her liege mistress to his bed. Helen was standing on the walls, and the goddess, disguised as an old spinning woman, took her by the skirt, bidding her hie back to her lover, whom she would find in his bedchamber, not as one arrayed for war, but as a fair youth resting haply from the dance. Homer gives no hint that Aphrodite is here the personified wish of Helen's own heart going forth to Paris. On the contrary, the Cyprian queen appears in the interests of the Phrygian youth, whom she would fain see comforted. Under her disguise Helen recognized Aphrodite, the terrible queen, whose bond
THE WOMEN OF HOMER. 829
woman she was forced to be. For a moment she struggled against her fate. " Art thou come again," she cried, " to bear me to some son of earth beloved of thee, that I may serve his pleasure to my own shame ? Nay, rather, put off divinity and be thyself his odalisque. " But go she must. Aphrodite is a hard taskmistress, and the mysterious bond of beauty which chains Helen to her cannot be broken.
It is in the chamber of Paris that Hector finds her. She has vainly striven to send Paris forth to battle ; and the sense of her own degradation, condemned to love a man love-worthy only for the beauty of his limbs, overcomes her when she sees the noble Hector clothed in panoply for war. Her passionate outbreak of self-pity and self-reproach is, perhaps, the strong est indication given in the Iliad of a moral estimate of Helen's crime. The most consummate art is shown by the poet in thus quickening the conscience of Helen by contact with the nobil ity of Hector. Like Guinevere, she for a moment seems to say, " Thou art the highest, and most human too ! " casting from her as worthless the allurements of the baser love for whose sake she had left her home. In like manner, it was not without the most exquisite artistic intention that Homer made the parting scene between Andromache and Hector follow im mediately upon this meeting. For Andromache in the future there remained only sorrow and servitude. Helen was destined to be tossed from man to man, always desirable and always delicate, like the sea foam that floats upon the crests of waves. But there is no woman who, reading the Iliad, would not choose to weep with Andromache in Hector's arms, rather than
to smile like Helen in the laps of lovers for whom she little cared.
Helen and Andromache meet together before Hector's corpse, and it is here that we learn to love best what is womanly in Leda's daughter. The mother and the wife have bewailed him in high thrilling threni. Then Helen advances to the bier and cries : —
" Hector, of brethren dearest to my heart,
For I in sooth am Alexander's bride,
Who brought me hither : would I first had died !
For 'tis the twentieth year of doom deferred
Since Troy ward from my fatherland I hied ;
Yet never in those years mine ear hath heard
From thy most gracious lips one sharp accusing word ;
330
THE WOMEN OF HOMER.
Nay, if by other I haply were reviled,
Brother, or sister fair, or brother's bride,
Or mother (for the king was alway mild),
Thou with kind words the same hast pacified
With gentle words, and mien like summer tide.
Wherefore I mourn for thee and mine own ill,
Grieving at heart ; for in Troy town so wide
Friend have I none, nor harborer of good will,
But from my touch all shrink with deadly shuddering chill. "
It would have been impossible to enhance more worthily than thus the spirit of courtesy and knightly kindness which was in Hector — qualities, in truth, which, together with his loyalty to Andromache, endeared the champion of the Trojans to chivalry, and placed Hector upon the list of worthies beside King Arthur and Godfrey of Bouillon.
The character of Helen loses much of its charm and becomes more conventional in the Odyssey. It is difficult to believe that the poet who put into her lips the last lines of that threnos could have ventured to display the same woman calm and in nocent and queenlike in the home of Menelaus. Helen shows her prudence and insight by at once declaring the stranger guest to be Telemachus ; busy with housewifely kindness, she prepares for him a comfortable couch at night ; nor does she shrink from telling again the tales of Troy, and the craft which helped Odysseus in the Wooden Horse. The blame of her elopement with Paris she throws on Aphrodite, who had carried her across the sea, —
Leaving my child an orphan far away,
And couch, and husband who had known no peer, First in all grace of soul and beauty shining clear.
Such words, no doubt, fell with honey-sweet flattery from the lips of Helen on the ears of Menelaus. Yet how could he forget the grief of his bereavement, the taunts of Achilles and Thersites, and the ten years' toil at Troy endured for her? Perhaps he remembered the promise of Proteus, who had said, "Thee will the immortals send to the Elysian plains and farthest verge of earth ; where dwells yellow-haired Rhada- manthus, and where the ways of life are easiest for men ; snow falls not there, nor storm, nor any rain, but Ocean ever breathes forth delicate zephyr breezes to gladden men ; since thou hast Helen for thine own, and art the son-in-law of Zeus. " Such future was full recompense for sorrow in the past.
THE WOMEN OF HOMER. 331
The charm of Helen in the Homeric poems is due in a great measure to the ndivetS of the poet's art. The situations in which she appears are never strained, nor is the ethical feeling, though indicated, suffered to disturb the calm influence of her beauty.
[Mr. Symonds here gives the sternly ethical view taken by the ration alizing ages, especially by iEschylus and Euripides. ]
It is probable that the later artists, in their illustrations of the romance of Helen, used the poems of Lesches and Arctinus, now lost, but of which the " Posthomerica "of Quintus Smyrnaeus preserve to us a feeble reflection. This poet of the fourth cen tury after Christ does all in his power to rehabilitate the char acter of Helen by laying the fault of her crime on Paris, and by describing at length the charm which Venus shed around her sacred person. It was only by thus insisting upon the daemonic influence which controlled the fate of Helen that the conclusions reached by the rationalizing process of the dramatists could be avoided. The Cyclic poems thus preserved the heroic character of Helen and her husband at" the expense of Aphrodite, while Euripides had said plainly : What you call Aphrodite is your own lust. " "
Menelaus, in the
palace of Deiphobus ; astonishment takes possession of his soul before the shining of her beauty, so that he stands immovable, like a dead tree, which neither north nor south wind shakes. When the Greek heroes leave Troy town, Agamemnon leads Cassandra captive, Neoptolemus is followed by Andromache, and Hecuba weeps torrents of tears in the strong grasp of Odysseus. A crowd of Trojan women fill the air with shrill laments, tearing their tresses and strewing dust upon their heads. Meanwhile, Helen is delayed by no desire to wail or weep ; but a comely shame sits on her black eyes and glowing cheeks. Her heart leaps, and her whole form is as lovely as Aphrodite was when the gods discovered her with Ares in the net of Hephaestus. Down to the ships she comes with Menelaus hand in hand ; and the people, " gazing on the glory and the winning grace of the faultless woman, were astonished ; nor could they dare by whispers or aloud to humble her with in sults; but gladly they saw in her a goddess, for she seemed to all what each desired. "
This is the apotheosis of Helen ; and this reading of her
Posthomerica," finds Helen hidden in the
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romance is far more true to the general current of Greek feel ing than that suggested by Euripides. Theocritus, in his exquisite marriage song of Helen, has not a word to say by hint or innuendo that she will bring a curse upon her husband. Like dawn is the beauty of her face; like the moon in the heaven of night, or the spring when winter is ended, or like a cypress in the meadow, so is Helen among Spartan maids. When Apollonius of Tyana, the most famous medium of an tiquity, evoked the spirit of Achilles by the pillar on his bar row in the Troad, the great ghost consented to answer five questions. One of these concerned Helen : Did she really go to Troy? Achilles indignantly repudiated the notion. She re mained " in Egypt ; and this the heroes of Achaia soon knew well ; but we fought for fame and Priam's wealth. "
The romance of Helen of Troy, after lying dormant during the Middle Ages, shone forth again in the pregnant myth of Faustus. The final achievement of Faust's magic was to evoke Helen from the dead and hold her as his paramour. To the beauty of Greek art the mediaeval spirit stretched forth with yearning and begot the modern world. Marlowe, than whom no poet of the North throbbed more mightily with the passion of the Renaissance, contented himself with an external handling of the Faust legend. Goethe allegorized the whole, and turned the episode of Helen into a parable of modern poetry. The new light that rose upon the Middle Ages came not from the East, but from the South ; no longer from Galilee, but from Greece.
Thus, after living her long life in Hellas as the ideal of beauty, unqualified by moral attributes, Helen passed into modern mythology as the ideal of the beauty of the pagan world. True to her old character, she arrives to us across the waters of oblivion with the cestus of the goddess round her waist, and the divine smile upon her lips. Age has not im paired her charm, nor has she learned the lesson of the Fall. Ever virginal and ever fair, she is still the slave of Aphrodite. In Helen we welcome the indestructible Hellenic spirit.
Penelope is the exact opposite to Helen. The central point in her character is intense love of her home, an almost catlike attachment to the house where she first enjoyed her husband's love, and which is still full of all the things that make her life worth having. Therefore, when at last she thinks that she will have to yield to the suitors and leave it, these words are always on her lips, " The home of my wedded years, exceeding fair,
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filled with all the goods of life, which even in dreams methinks I shall remember. " We can scarcely think of Penelope except in the palace of Ithaca, so firmly has this home-loving instinct been embedded in her by her maker. Were it not that the passion for her home is controlled and determined by a higher and more sacred feeling, this Haushalterischness of Penelope would be prosaic. Not only, however, has Homer made it evi dent in the Odyssey that the love of Ithaca is subordinate in her soul to the love of Odysseus, but a beautiful Greek legend teaches how in girlhood she sacrificed the dearest ties that can bind a woman to her love for the hero who had wooed and
won her. Pausanias says that when Odysseus was carrying her upon his chariot forth to his own land, her father, Icarius, followed in their path and besought her to stay with him. The young man was ready busked for the long journey. The old man pointed to the hearth she had known from childhood. Penelope between them answered not a word, but covered her face with her veil. This action Odysseus interpreted rightly, and led his bride away, willing to go where he would go, yet unwilling to abandon what she dearly loved. No second Odys seus could cross the woman's path. Among the suitors there was not one like him. Therefore she clung to her house tree in Ithaca, the olive around which Odysseus had built the nuptial chamber ; and none, till he appeared, by force or guile might win her thence.
It is precisely this tenacity in the character of Penelope which distinguishes her from Helen, the daughter of adventure and the child of change, to whom migration was no less natural than to the swan that gave her life. Another characteristic of Penelope is her prudence. Having to deal with the uproarious suitors camped in her son's halls, she deceives them with fair
words, and promises to choose a husband from their number when she has woven a winding sheet for Laertes. Three years pass and the work is still not finished. At last a maiden tells the suitors that every night Penelope undoes by lamplight what she had woven in the daytime. This ruse of the defense less woman has passed into a proverb ; and has become so familiar that we forget, perhaps, how true a parable it is of those who, in their weakness, do and undo daily what they would fain never do at all, trifling and procrastinating with tyrannous passions which they are unable to expel from the palace of their souls.
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The prudence of Penelope sometimes assumes a form which reminds us of the heroines of Hebrew story; as when, for example, she spoils the suitors of rich gifts by subtle promises and engagements carefully guarded. Odysseus, seated in dis guise near the hall door, watches her success and secretly approves. The same quality of mind makes her cautious in the reception of the husband she has waited for in widowhood through twenty years. The dog Argus has no doubt. He sees his master through the beggar's rags, and dies of joy. The handmaid Eurycleia is convinced as soon as she has touched the wound upon the hero's foot and felt the well-remembered scar. Not so Penelope. Though the great bow has been bent and the suitors have been slain, and though Eurycleia comes to tell her the whole truth, the queen has yet the heart to seat herself opposite Odysseus by the fire, and to prove him with cunningly devised tests. There is something provocative of anger against Penelope in this cross-questioning. But our anger is dissolved in tears, when at last, feeling sure that her husband and none other is there verily before her eyes, she flings her arms around him in that long and close embrace.
Homer, even in this supreme moment, has sustained her character by a trait which, however delicate, can hardly escape notice. Her lord is weary and would fain seek the solace of his couch. But he has dropped a hint that still more labors are in store for him. Then Penelope replies that his couch is ready at all times and whensoever he may need; no hurry about that. Meanwhile, she would like to hear the prophecy of Teiresias. Helen, the bondwoman of dame Aphrodite, would not have waited thus upon the edge of love's delight,
long looked for with strained widow's eyes. Yet it would be unfair to Penelope to dwell only on this prudent and somewhat frigid aspect of her character. She is perhaps most amiable when she descends among the suitors, and prays Phemius to cease from singing of the heroes who returned from Troy. It is more than she can bear to sit weaving in the silent chamber mid her damsels, listening to the shrill sound of the lyre and hearing how other men have reached their homes, while on the waves Odysseus still wanders, and none knows whether he be alive or dead.
It may be noticed that just as Helen is a mate meet for easily persuaded Menelaus and luxurious Paris, so Penelope matches the temper of theastute, enduring, persevering Odys
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seus. As a creature of the fancy, she is far less fascinating than Helen ; and this the poet seems to have felt, for side by side with Penelope in the Odyssey he has placed the attractive forms of Circe, Calypso, and Nausicaa. The gain is double. Not only are the hearers of the romance gladdened by the con trast of these graceful women with the somewhat elegiac figure of Penelope, but the character of Odysseus for constancy is greatly enhanced. How fervent must the love of home have been in the man who could quit Calypso, after seven years' sojourn, for the sake of a wife grown gray with twenty widowed years ! Odysseus tells Calypso to her face that she is far fairer than his wife, " I know well that Penelope is inferior to thee in form and stature, to the eyes of men. " But what Odysseus leaves unsaid — the grace of the first woman who possessed his soul — constrains him with a deeper, tenderer power than any of Calypso's charms. Penelope, meanwhile, is pleading that her beauty in the absence of her lord has perished, "Of a truth my goodliness and beauty of person the gods destroyed what time the Argives went up into Troy town. "
These two meet at last together, he after his long wander ings, and she having suffered the insistence of the suitors in her palace ; and this is the pathos of the Odyssey. The woman, in spite of her withered youth and tearful years of widowhood, is still expectant of her lord. He, unconquered by the pleas ures cast across his path, unterrified by all the dangers he en dures, clings in thought to the bride whom he led forth, a blushing maiden, from her father's halls. O just, subtle, and mighty Homer ! There is nothing of Greek here more than of Hebrew, or of Latin, or of German. It is pure humanity.
Calypso is not a woman, but a goddess. She feeds upon ambrosia and nectar, while her maidens spread before Odysseus the food of mortals. Between her and Hermes there is recog nition at first sight ; for god knows god, however far apart their paths may lie. Yet the love that Calypso bears Odysseus brings this daughter of Atlas down to earth ; and we may reckon her among the women of Homer. How mysterious, as the Greek genius apprehended mystery, is her cavern, hidden far away in the isle Ogygia, with the grove of forest trees before it and the thick vine flourishing around its mouth. Meadows of snowflake and close-flowering selinus gird it
round ; and on the branches brood all kinds of birds. Under those trees, gazing across the ocean, in the still light of the
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evening star, Odysseus wept for his far-distant home. Then, heavy at heart, he gathered up his raiment, and climbed into Calypso's bed at night. "For the nymph pleased him no longer. Nathless, as need was, he slept the night in hollow caverns, beside her loving him who loved her not. "
To him the message of Hermes recalling him to labor on the waves was joy ; but to the nymph herself it brought mere bitterness : " Hard are ye, gods, and envious above all, who grudge that goddesses should couch thus openly with mortal men, if one should make a dear bedfellow for herself. For so the rosy-fingered morning chose Orion, till ye gods that lead an easy life grew jealous, and in Ogygia him the golden-throned maid Artemis slew with her kind arrows. " This wail of the immortal nymph Calypso for her roving spouse of seven short years has a strange pathos in it. It seems to pass across the sea like a sigh of winds awakened, none knows how, in summer midnight, that swells and dies far off upon moon-silvered waves. The clear human activity of Odysseus cuts the everlasting calm of Calypso like a knife, shredding the veil that hides her from the eyes of mortals. Then he fares onward to resume the toils of real existence in a land whereof she nothing knows. There is a fragment of his last speech to Penelope, which sounds like an echo of Calypso's lamentation. " Death," he says, " shall some day rise for me, tranquil from the tranquil deep, and I shall die in delicate old age. " We seem to feel that in his last trance Odysseus might have heard the far-off divine sweet voice of Calypso calling him, and have hastened to her cry.
Circe is by no means so mysterious as Calypso. Yet she belongs to one of the most interesting families in Greek ro mance. Her mother was Perse, daughter of Oceanus; her father was Helios; she is own sister, therefore, to the Colchian iEetes, and aunt of the redoubtable Medea. She lives in the isle of Jiaea, not, like Calypso, deep embowered in groves, but in a fair open valley sweeping downward to the sea, whence her hearth smoke may be clearly descried. Nor is her home an ivy-curtained cavern of the rocks, but a house well built of polished stone, protected from the sea winds by oak woods. Here she dwells in grand style, with nymphs of the streams and forests to attend upon her, and herds of wild beasts, human-hearted, roaming through her park. Odysseus always speaks of her with respect. Like Calypso, she has a fair shrill
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voice that goes across the waters, and as her fingers ply the shuttle, she keeps singing through the summer air. By virtue of her birthright, as a daughter of the sun, she understands the properties of plant and drug. Poppy and henbane and man- dragora — all herbs of subtle juice that draw soul-quelling poison from the fat earth and the burning sun — are hers to use as she thinks fit. And the use she makes of them is mali cious; for, fairylike and wanton, she will have the men who visit her across the seas submit their reason to her lure. There fore she turns them to swine; and the lions and wolves of the mountain she tames in like manner, so that they fawn and curl their long tails and have no heart to ravin any more.
Circe is not made out particularly wicked or malignant. She is acting only after her kind, like some beautiful but bale ful plant — a wreath, for instance, of red briony berries, whereof if children eat, they perish. The world has lived long and suffered much and grown greatly since the age of Homer. We cannot be so naif and childlike any longer. Yet the true charm of Circe in the Odyssey, the spirit that distinguishes her from Tannhaiiser's Venus and Orlando's Fata Morgana and Rug- giero's Alcina and Tancred's Armida, lies just in this, that the poet has passed so lightly over all the dark and perilous places of his subject. This delicacy of touch can never be regained by art. It belonged to the conditions of the first Hellenic bloom of fancy, to suggest without insistence and to realize without emphasis. Impatient readers may complain of want of depth and character. They would fain see the Circe of the Odyssey as strongly moralized as the Medea of Euripides. But in Homer only what is human attains to real intensity. The marvelous falls off and shades away into soft air tints and delightful dreams. Still, it requires the interposition of the gods to save Odysseus from the charms of the malicious maid. Odysseus's sword and strong will must do the rest.