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

His responsibilities beyond his strength.

Let us now proceed to a somewhat more general view of the character of Hector.

He occupies in the Homeric tradition a place altogether peculiar, as, at the time of the poem, the sole eminently warlike member of an unwarlike family; as the general of a divided and incongruous army; and as singly responsible in chief for the safety of his country, while he has not been invested with the dignity and power of king. As to the first of these points, we have the direct testimony of Homer:

οἶος γὰρ ἐρύετο Ἴλιον Ἕκτωρ995.

Of his brothers, Deiphobus alone is represented as in any degree deserving or sharing his confidence. Of his relatives, Polydamas appears to have been a rival in the council, Æneas in the succession to political supremacy: and these were the two most considerable persons of the class. It has, I conceive, been shown to be probable, that Paris was his senior996; and that he held his place in Troy by merit against age. His uneasy relations with his allies might be inferred from their constituting the great bulk of his force, even were they not more distinctly betokened by the reproach of Sarpedon, and by the speech in which he himself enters on the subject. Together with his power over the army, he had the virtual charge of the safety of the state, and we see signs of his influence there; but yet he did not direct the policy of Troy: for the only important measure, which is recorded as having been taken by the Trojans, namely the rejection of the proposals of Antenor to give back Helen to the Greeks, was taken in his absence and without his knowledge. Thus we see in Hector’s case, abundantly accumulated, the elements of a false position. And, in a word, in order to estimate his character aright, we must keep in full view that inferiority of the Trojans, subjects not less than princes, as respects political genius and organization, to which the Iliad, when carefully examined, bears ample testimony.

Under the weight of public charge, as Agamemnon in the Greek camp, so, and yet more, Hector on the Trojan side, appears to reel; so, and yet more; for, in Hector’s case, political power is crippled by his not being in actual possession of the supreme station, while responsibility is edged and enhanced by his being not only the head to devise, but also the right hand to execute. In neither of the two, however, do we find strong will, definiteness, and constancy of purpose, or unfailing courage. But Agamemnon has the advantage of both wiser counsels around him, and stronger arms than his own near his side. Hector has little aid. Sarpedon alone of the Trojan commanders (for Æneas really does nothing) can be called a warrior of note; and his inferiority to Patroclus, notwithstanding his thorough gallantry, is decorated rather than hidden by the stage machinery of divine consultations on the subject of his death. But as Sarpedon in the field plays a part much inferior to the corresponding one of Diomed or Ajax, so Polydamas, the Nestor of the Trojans, is not equal to his kindly and genial counterpart. Four times he gives his counsel in the field. Twice he prefaces it with personal imputations (xii. 211, and xiii. 726); and when, in the Twelfth Book (211), he recommends the abandonment of the assault on the ships in deference to an omen, feeling and judgment are alike on the side of Hector’s reply, who overturns his augury by the known (though, as they proved, deceitful) counsels of Jupiter, and emphatically pleads against doubtful signs the indubitable dictates of patriotism.

His bright side in the affections.

The prophetic gift, for whatever reason, is assigned pretty largely by Homer to the Trojans. Without entering into the case of Cassandra, it attaches to Helenus, and also (xii. 238) apparently to Polydamas, who undertakes to interpret a sign. Hector himself had the weight of prescience on his breast, for he tells Andromache997 that he well knows the day of ruin is at hand; and, when he is at the point of death, he prognosticates the coming fate of Achilles. The concentrated strain of his duties and his previsions is too much for the strength of a character which, from the intellectual or dramatic point of view, is impulsive, fluctuating, and unequal, and which must therefore undoubtedly be set down as so far secondary. But when we pass from intellect to moral tone, from διάνοια to ἦθος, we certainly find in Hector one among the most touching, the most human, of all the delineations of masculine character in the Iliad. In him alone has Homer presented to us that most commanding and most moving combination, of a woman’s gentleness and deep affection with warlike and heroic strength. If the hand of Hector was far weaker than that of the son of Peleus, the tempestuous griefs of Achilles do not open to us a character nearly so attractive as the depth of the gentle affections of Hector, and the mildness warmed into such brilliancy by his martial fame. ‘Thy love to me was wonderful; passing the love of women998.’ The constancy and tenacity of the attachments of Ulysses come out in his relations to Penelope and Telemachus: but, dwelling harmoniously in a character of far broader scope and more varied sensibilities, the peculiar element of a tenderness matching that of woman is the only one they do not contain. Hector is neither a warrior nor a statesman after the primary, that is the Achæan, type: but for a model of intensity and softness in the love of a father and a husband, it is to him that we must repair, in the incomparable scene by the Scæan gate; incomparable, unless we may compare it with that other scene, so near at hand, where the sight of young Polydorus slain, piercing him to the heart, raised him in his last hour to the heights of heroism; and where the interest and sympathy, that he has attracted all along, are absorbed into admiration of the real sublimity of that closing hour, when he resolved to be for ever famous at least in his too certain death.

Probably a main reason why Hector has become the groundwork of the modern Orlando is, that no one of the Homeric heroes exhibits a combination of qualities supplying so appropriate a basis for the character of a Christian hero; a tone so sensibly approximating to that of the gospel. Partly because of those acts of piety towards the Immortals, which can hardly receive in the case of Hector any but a favourable construction, and which drew down the all but unanimous compassion of the Olympian assembly on his remains; but partly also, and yet more, in that mild, just, and tender estimate of character, which not only secured his constant gentleness of demeanour towards Helen, but made him her protector against the acrimony of others, and rendered him considerate and kind even to Paris999, so soon as he saw him disposed at length to be personally active in the mortal struggle he had brought upon his country. There is, perhaps, no virtue more especially Christian, than the temper which thus equitably and gently makes allowances for human weakness, particularly if it be weakness by the effects of which we ourselves have suffered.

The employment, however, of Hector for the purposes of Christian poetry has certainly had the effect of perverting for us the true Homeric tradition. But, in order to understand this, we must throw aside the Hector of our proverbs or our plays, travel back to the Iliad, and set out anew from the starting-point of its great author. We must there be content to take him not as a pure effort of imagination aimed at the production of an ideal man, but as a part of the poem of Homer, subordinated like every other part of it to its main purpose, as well as to the general laws of historical consistency. In modelling the several heroes, he made the exigencies of his Hector yield to the exigencies of his Achilles, who could have no real competitor. 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.

Inequality of his character.

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 all, 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 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.

The character of Helen.

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 ΤρώεσσινἈργείους; τί δὲ λαὸν ἀνήγαγεν ἐνθάδ’ ἀγείραςἈτρείδης; ἢ οὐχ Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’ ἠϋκόμοιο1000;

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 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, 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 Helen1001.

τίσασθαι δ’ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε1002·

Homer’s intention with respect to it.

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 line1003 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 note1004, 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 ὣς, ἤπιος αἰεί1005.

Nor was this a mere figure; for in the Third Book he addresses her as φίλον τέκος1006, and makes her sit down by his side. In conformity with this picture, her sister-in-law Laodice addresses her as νύμφα φίλη1007. 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 from the many passages, which show us how the general sentiment of Troy detested him. Had Helen been of the character which is commonly imputed to her, such an absolution as this would probably not have been ascribed to Priam; while most certainly it would not have been recorded to the honour of Hector that he always restrained those, who were disposed to taunt her on account of the woes she had brought upon Troy1008.

She describes herself indeed as the object of general horror in Troy (πάντες δέ με πεφρίκασιν1009). But these words do no more than state the impression, at a moment of agony, on her own humbled and self-mistrusting mind: while, even had they given a faithful picture of the manner in which she was regarded by the Trojans, still they might well be explained with reference to the woes of which she had been at least the occasion, and the sentiment they describe might as naturally have been felt, even had she been the lawfully obtained wife of Paris.

There are two other passages, which may seem at first sight to betoken a state of mind adverse to her among the Greeks. But the explanation of them is simply this, that the cause of woe is naturally enough denounced on account of the misfortunes it has entailed, irrespective of the question whether or in what degree it may be a guilty cause1010. Thus Achilles calls Helen ῥιγεδάνη, ‘that horrible Helen;’ but it is only when her abduction has produced to him the bitter and harrowing affliction of the death of Patroclus. When he mentions her in the magnificent speech of the Ninth Book to the envoys, she is Ἑλένη ἠΰκομος, ‘the fair-haired Helen.’ Now, if she had been vile, the course of his argument must have constrained him then to state it. For he was reasoning thus: May I not resent the loss of Briseis, who was dear to me (θυμαρής1011), when the sons of Atreus have made their loss of Helen the cause of the war? Had Helen been worthless, it would have added greatly to the stringency of his argument to have drawn the contrast in that particular, between the woman whom Agamemnon had taken away, and the woman that he was seeking, by means of the convulsive struggle of a nation, to recover.

The other passage is in Od. xxiii., where Penelope, after the recognition of her husband, speaks of Helen in these words: —

τὴν δ’ ἤτοι ῥέξαι θεὸς ὤρορεν ἔργον ἀεικές1012.

But even in this only passage where the act of Helen is so described, several points are to be observed. First, it is referred to a preternatural influence, which is not the manner of this Poet in cases at least of deep and deliberate crime; secondly, no epithet of infamy is applied to her; thirdly, we must observe the drift of the speaker. Penelope is excusing herself to Ulysses, for her own extreme caution and reserve in admitting his identity. Therefore she is naturally led to enhance the dreadful nature of the occurrence where a wife gives herself over into the power of any man, other than one known to be her husband; and this, whether the act be voluntary or involuntary. Accordingly she refers to the act of Helen rather than to the agent, and treats it as horrible; but avoids charging it as wilful.

Homer’s Epithets for Helen.

On the other hand, we may observe that the general tenour of the epithets bestowed upon Helen leans on the whole towards the laudatory sense.

She is

εὐπατέρεια, the high-born; Il. vi. 292; Od. xxii. 227; most probably agreeing in sense with the next phrase.

Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα, the child of Jupiter; Il. iii. 199; et alibi.

κούρη Διὸς, the daughter of Jupiter; Il. iii. 426.

δῖα γυναικῶν, the excellent, or flower of women; Il. iii. 171, 228; and Od. iv. 305; xv. 106.

καλλιπάρῃος, of the beautiful cheeks; Od. xv. 123.

καλλίκομος; Od. xv. 58; ἠΰκομος; Il. iii. 329, et alibi, the fair-haired.

λευκώλενος, the white-armed; Il. iii. 121; Od. xxii. 227.

τανύπεπλος, the well-rounded; Il. iii. 228; et alibi.

And lastly, Ἀργείη, the Argive; Il. ii. 161; and in no less than twelve other places.

No one of these appellations carries the smallest taint or censure. The epithet δῖα in all probability applies to her personal beauty and majesty, as we find it used of Paris and of Clytemnestra. It would appear, however, that the use of the term Argive or Argeian, in many passages where it is not required for mere description, has a special force. For Homer never exhibits that which is simply Greek in any other than an honourable light; and in calling Helen Argeian, he certainly expresses something of general sympathy towards her. No other person, except only Juno, is called Argeian. Plainly the effect of his epithets for her as a whole is quite out of harmony with the ideas, which the later tradition has attached to her name. A yet more marked indication in her favour, than any of them taken singly will supply, may be derived from his likening her, in the palace of Menelaus, to Diana:

ἤλυθεν, Ἀρτέμιδι χρυσηλακάτῳ εἰκυῖα1013.

He certainly would not have associated by this comparison one, of whom he meant us to think ill, with the chaste and even severe majesty of his ever-pure Diana (Ἄρτεμις ἁγνή).

So much with regard to the designations applied to Helen in the Iliad and Odyssey. Next, with regard to her demeanour. It is admitted to be, so far as the matter of chastity is concerned, without any fault other than the inevitable one of her position. Besides other qualities that will be noticed presently, she appears in the light of a refined and feeling, a blameless and even matronly person; a character, which, as we shall see, her abduction by Paris from Menelaus did not disentitle her to bear.

We must beware of applying unconditionally, to women placed under conditions widely different, ideas so specifically Christian as those that belong to the absolute sanctity of the marriage tie. We must rather look for the moral aspect of the case in the opinions of the period, and in the particular circumstances which attended the rupture of the bond in the given instance, than assume it from the naked fact that there was a rupture.