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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Women of the
Classics
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: Women of the Classics

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF THE

CLASSICS ***
 WOMEN OF
THE CLASSICS

PHÆDRA

Gertrude Demain Hammond, R.I.

 WOMEN OF
THE CLASSICS

BY MARY C. STURGEON
WITH SIXTEEN PHOTOGRAVURES
PRESENTING STUDIES OF THE
HEROINES OF THE BOOK

LONDON
GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY
2 & 3 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C.
MCMXIV
 PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON ENGLAND
Contents

PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9

WOMEN OF HOMER
HELEN 15
ANDROMACHE 29
PENELOPE 39
CIRCE 60
CALYPSO 73
NAUSICAA 85

WOMEN OF ATTIC TRAGEDY

I. ÆSCHYLUS
CLYTEMNESTRA 99
ELECTRA 117
CASSANDRA 135
IO 148

II. SOPHOCLES
JOCASTA 163
ANTIGONE 185
 III. EURIPIDES
ALCESTIS 209
MEDEA 227
PHÆDRA 243
IPHIGENIA 256

A WOMAN OF VIRGIL
DIDO 273
Illustrations

PHÆDRA Gertrude Demain Hammond, R.I. Frontispiece

Facing page
HELEN Lord Leighton 20
ANDROMACHE Lord Leighton 34
PENELOPE Patten Wilson 50
CIRCE Patten Wilson 66
CALYPSO Patten Wilson 82
NAUSICAA Patten Wilson 94
CLYTÆMNESTRA Hon. John Collier 114
ELECTRA Gertrude Demain Hammond, R.I. 128
CASSANDRA Solomon J. Solomon, R.A. 140
JOCASTA Gertrude Demain Hammond, R.I. 172
ANTIGONE From the Statue by Hugues 192
ALCESTIS Lord Leighton 224
MEDEA Herbert Draper 238
IPHIGENIA M. Nonnenbruch 260
DIDO Gianbattista Tiepolo 284
Introduction

T he women in this book are the heroines of Homer, of Attic

Tragedy, and of the Æneid of Virgil. Their stories are taken out of
the best modern translations of the old poems; and they are retold
from the human standpoint, with the minimum of critical comment.
It is curious, when we reflect a moment, how little we really know
about the women of the classics. Their names have been familiar to
us as long as we can remember. We have always been vaguely
conscious of a glory clothing them—sometimes sombre and troubled,
often gracious and serene, occasionally enchanting. About the
greatest of them some floating hints of identity ripple on the surface
of the mind. But we can by no means fit these little fragments into
any clear outline of the sublime beauty of their originals. And when
we light upon a reference to them in our reading, or stand before
one of the innumerable works of art which they have inspired,
memory is baffled. We have no clue to the spell that they have cast
upon the centuries: the spell itself has no power over us; and we
grope in vain for the key which would admit us to a world of delight.
There were reasons for this state of affairs when translations were
few and costly: when scholars were merely pedants and when the
classics were sealed to women. But nous avons changé tout cela.
Fine translations can be bought for a few shillings. Women are
themselves engaging in the study of the old languages and of the
sciences which are akin to them. Scholarship is growing more
human; and the awakened spirit of womanhood, having become
conscious of itself, cannot fail to be profoundly interested in that
earlier awakening which, twenty-five centuries ago, evoked creatures
so splendid. Of the women of Attic Tragedy Professor Gilbert Murray
has said, in his Rise of the Greek Epic: “Consider for a moment the
whole magnificent file of heroines in Greek Tragedy, both for good
and evil.... I doubt if there has ever in the history of the world been
a period, not even excepting the Elizabethan Age and the Nineteenth
Century, when such a gallery of heroic women has been represented
in Drama.”
By bringing these women together into a single volume, it is hoped
to make their stories easily accessible; and by quoting some of the
most beautiful passages from the poems in which they live, it is
hoped to send the reader back to the poets themselves. It has not
been possible to include all the heroines in the available space; and
several of those who are missing have only been omitted under the
direst necessity. But all the greatest are here; and an effort has been
made to choose each group so that it shall represent as far as may
be the characteristics of its own poet. The source of the story is
indicated in each case, and has been closely followed.
A word may be necessary on one or two points, to those who are
coming to these stories from the classics with an unfamiliar eye. It
will be found that there is a singular reticence here on that aspect of
love which engrosses modern literature. It is occasionally treated by
Euripides; but even he handles the theme delicately and with
reserve. Nowhere in these stories—with the exception of Dido, who
of course belongs to a later civilization than the Greek women—is
the love which leads to marriage dealt with explicitly. It is implicit
sometimes, and we who have been born into a heritage of
romanticism, may delightedly trace it out and make the most of it.
But the old poet never does: indeed, he hardly seems to realize that
he has put it there. He belongs to a time when women were not
wooed and won, but literally bought ‘with great store of presents,’ or
acquired in other prosaic ways, which vary according to the several
epochs and their customs. The love of men and women is treated
from the point of view of husband and wife, of sister and brother, of
daughter and father, rather than from the standpoint of the feverish
hopes and fears of romantic passion. Marriage is not so much the
culmination as the starting-point of an eventful story; and the heroic
devotion of sister and daughter is crowned, no less than wifely
fidelity, with everlasting honour. We must therefore be prepared for
a change from the warmth and glow of romance to the tonic air of a
more austere idealism.
Again, these women are not the complex creatures of modern
civilization. The earliest of them, Homer’s women, are drawn in
outline only. They are great and splendid; and because they were
created for an aristocratic audience, they are noble, dignified, and
placed high above the small things of common life. There is hardly
any comedy in Homer, and reality is far away. When we come to the
dramatists we find, as we should expect, a great advance in
characterization. The women are stronger, more real, more
complete. But they are still very far from the psychological subtlety
of modern drama.
There is, too, a singular reticence about the personal appearance of
the heroines. We are rarely told what manner of women they were
to look at. Virgil comes one step nearer to our modern love of
description when he portrays Dido as she rides out on the fatal
morning of the hunt; and when he paints the glowing figure of
Camilla as she rushes into battle. But it would be very hard to
discover what was the colour of Helen’s eyes, although the old
German Faustbuch of the Middle Age has dared to assert that they
were ‘black as coals.’ Homer has a more excellent way. Instead of
enumerating the charms of his heroine, as it were in a catalogue of
perfections, he brings her into the presence of hostile folk, who on
all counts have reason to hate her, and in a few vivid phrases shows
the potent effect of her beauty upon them.
We shall find that the heroines have a system of ethics which is
different from that of our own day; and strange moral contradictions
may present themselves to our astonished eyes. Electra, with the
tenderest love for her dead father, will not rest until the death of her
guilty mother has been compassed. Antigone, infinitely gentle to the
blind Œdipus, is capable of resolute opposition to the law as it is
embodied in Creon. But though the lines of moral demarcation are
differently placed, they are not blurred. Revenge is a duty in this
primitive saga upon which the poets drew for their material; and in
which there is much that is savage and terrible.
Greek drama was a religious ritual closely bound to ancient myth
and heroic legend, from which the poets could not escape. Hence, if
these stories are approached in an analytical mood, they will be
found barbarous and wildly improbable. If we give the rein to
humour, we shall be overcome by frequent absurdities. The best way
is to come to them quite simply, leaving the comic and the critical
spirits a little way behind.

Grateful thanks are due to the translators and publishers who have
kindly given permission to quote the passages used herein; and the
author wishes humbly to acknowledge the debt she owes to critical
work in this field. She is especially conscious of help from Professor
Gilbert Murray in interpreting some of the Women of Tragedy. A note
of the sources of the quotations will be found at the end of each
chapter.
Homer: Helen

I n the twilight of early Greek history, one event and one name
blaze like beacons. They are the siege of Troy and the name of
Helen. They have not come down to us as cold fact, but burning
through a mist of legend and poetry. The historian cannot name the
date of the Trojan war; and the archæologist, whose labours have
been so fruitful at Mycenæ and in Crete, can only point doubtfully to
the ancient site of Troy.
Yet that event, and its cause, fair Helen of Sparta, may be said to
mark the beginning of national life for the Greeks. Perhaps it was
more than two thousand years before Christ when all the little
peoples of Greece first joined themselves against barbarian Asia.
Troy fell; and although the victory brought little material reward to
the Greeks; though they sailed back to their island homes poorer
and sadder than when they left, they had in fact achieved
momentous gains. For the struggle had first taught them the
strength of unity: it had launched them on their long and triumphant
feud against barbarism; and it had laid the base from which they
might go on to build, through the long, slow centuries, the
civilization that we inherit.
There was no historian to record the event. But it lived on, in
memory and in legend; and as the people became more settled,
wandering bards made songs about it. The rich Mycenæn Age
flourished and died; and the Homeric civilization took its place.
Probably it was then that the floating fragments of the Tale of Troy
first were woven together, providing material for the Homeric epics
that we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Probably they were not
written down at first. They were composed, and recited, in separate
parts, in the halls of the great lords, who loved to look back on this
glorious event of their national life, and to hear the names of their
remote and half-mythical ancestors brought into the story. Thus
Homer, no matter who he or his school may have been, comes to
represent a high stage of civilization. His poems have a lofty tone, a
chivalrous spirit, a sweet cleanliness of thought and of word, which
do not belong to a primitive, uncivilized people. They do not, as a
fact, belong naturally to the early period of which he sings. In the
time of that grim struggle before the dawn of history, there must
have been much that was ugly, dark and barbarous. This is proved
to us by the survival of some of the older legends upon which
Homer worked. They tell of unnatural crime and of deeds of horror
such as he never mentions; and they give us, too, a very different
interpretation of the story of Helen. Homer puts aside all these
vestiges of a primitive past. He is composing lays for a people who
have a keen sense of honour, a supreme ideal of beauty and a love
of home; who have a religious feeling strong enough to reverence
the gods, despite their many hieratic quarrels, and who hold
womanhood in high esteem. So when we come to him to hear about
Helen, we find a very sweet and gracious figure, quite unlike the
Helen of the later poets. With them she was degraded from her rank
of demi-god. She was regarded as a real figure, brought down to the
level of ordinary existence, and judged by the common standard.
The romantic charm of the Homeric conception faded; and her name
had for centuries an evil sound. It has passed through many
vicissitudes since. In late Greek literature, one or two poets tried to
return to the reverent attitude of Homer: but in the Middle Ages she
became again a byword and a reproach. At the Renaissance,
something of her early worship as an ideal of beauty was revived,
and our own Marlowe has passionately expressed the thought of
that age about her:
 Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss....
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

It is this vision of Helen, as the supreme ideal of beauty, that

modern poets and scholars have tried to recapture. They have put
aside the varied allegorical and ethical and realistic conceptions of
her, as the efforts of a more sophisticated age; and they have tried
to return directly to the fine simplicity of Homer himself. Only thus,
they believe, can we stand at the right point of view with regard to
Helen; and only thus can we see her as she was to the Greeks, a
symbol of beauty incorruptible. We, who have to make our own
choice in the matter, cannot do better than try to stand at the point
where the moderns have placed us.
We come then at once to the Iliad, where, in the Third Book, Helen
makes her first appearance in the world’s literature. War has been
raging round the walls of Troy for nearly ten years. Now a truce is
called; and in the palace of the old king Priam, word goes round that
Paris, the author of the long feud, is to fight in single combat with
Menelaus, whom he has wronged. For Paris had brought the bane of
war upon Ilios. At his birth, the oracles of the gods had demanded
that he should die; and Priam, his father, sorrowfully handed over
the wailing baby to the priest, to be exposed upon Mount Ida. But
first he tied an old ring about his neck; and when Paris was
strangely saved from death, and grew up to be the fairest and
strongest of all the shepherd youths on Ida, he came one day by
accident to Ilios. There, by means of the jewel hanging from his
neck, he was made known as the son of the king. Thenceforward
the poor shepherd was the best beloved of all the princes. Life went
gaily; and for a while he was utterly content. But he had left behind,
amidst the groves of Mount Ida, a sweet wood-nymph who loved
him well, Enone. And when after a time he began to tire of life in the
palace, he remembered her and thought longingly of the freshness
and beauty of the mountain. So one day in summer he went to seek
Enone. All day long he searched the forest, but could not find her;
and coming tired at evening to a fragrant glade, he fell asleep. When
he awoke, night was hushed all around, and stars peeped through
the slender branches overhead. It was midnight and there was no
moon; but it was not dark. The glade was filled with a soft radiance
such as he had never seen before, and when he raised his
wondering eyes, he saw the majestical figures of goddesses shining
upon him: Hera, queen of Olympus, Athena, the wise maid of Zeus,
and Aphrodite, the laughing goddess of love. Sweetly they smiled on
him; and as he stood in wondering awe, the deep, rich tones of Hera
sank upon his spirit, promising him greatness and power, and the
lordship over many lands. Then Athena, resting her starlike gaze
upon him, promised him wisdom and courage; and Aphrodite, with a
little mocking laugh at power and at wisdom, promised him the
fairest woman in the world. Only, and this was to be the price of the
gift, he was to be the arbiter between them: he was to declare
which was most beautiful.
There was only one answer possible to Paris. Ambition had no lure
for him. Why fight and strive and spend the happy days in effort
merely to be called great? And wisdom had no appeal for him either;
she seemed austere and cold. What had she to do with the joy and
grace and sweetness that his soul loved? To the sublimity of Hera he
bent in awe. The shining purity of Athena smote his glance to the
earth. But the voice of Aphrodite wooed him, and her winsome smile
set him trembling with delight. He reached out to her the golden
prize of beauty.
So Paris was to gain the fairest woman in the world. It seemed an
honest promise, full of the happiest portent; and the young prince
soon set out upon his search for a bride over the western seas. But
Aphrodite was no better than a cheat, and had invoked on Paris,
though he did not know it then, the curse of guilty love. For the
exquisite child who was to be the world’s queen of beauty had
grown up in the home of Tyndareus, king of Sparta; and even while
the goddess gave her word to Paris, was happily married to
Menelaus there. To her and to her husband Paris came in his
wanderings, led unwittingly by the laughter-loving goddess, and
clothed by her in beauty like a god. They feasted him and did him
honour; and sitting at the banquet which they made to him, he told
the strange tale of his life and his quest.
Helen listened to his story with a sudden prescience of what was to
come; and rising softly, left the banqueting hall and went away to
implore the goddess to avert the doom. But she was no match for
Aphrodite. Anger and entreaty could not move the wanton Olympian,
but she would grant one boon—Helen should be oblivious of all her
past. Under the spell, the love of husband and child faded out; and
even the memory of them vanished when on that spring morning in
the garden of the palace, Paris met her beside the stream, ‘’twixt the
lily and the rose.’
Then either looked on other with amaze
As each had seen a god; for no long while
They marvell’d, but as in the first of days,
The first of men and maids did meet and smile,
And Aphrodite did their hearts beguile,
So hands met hands, lips lips, with no word said
Were they enchanted ‘neath the leafy aisle,
And silently were wooed, betroth’d and wed.[1]

Together they fled in the dewy morning, Paris urging his horses with
guilty haste to the ships. And there, with Menelaus thundering along
the road after them, they set sail for Troy, fulfilling the old prophecy,
and lighting a brand by their deed which should burn the sacred city
to the ground. For Tyndareus, when he chose a husband for Helen
amongst her many suitors, had won a promise that they would all
defend the one who gained her. Agamemnon, brother to Menelaus,
and the great overlord of the Hellenic princes, now summoned the
allies to avenge his brother, and for ten years they toiled at fitting
out a fleet. Then they ‘launched a thousand ships,’ and sailed to
punish Ilios for the sin of Paris.
 HELEN OF TROY

Lord Leighton

By permission of Henry Graves &

Co Ltd

Meantime, Helen had wakened sadly from the spell of Aphrodite.

Little by little memory of her home came back, and with it came
remorse. She was lonely too, and disillusion crept upon her. The
Trojans, who at first had welcomed her as a goddess, soon began to
look askance at her when rumours came of the great siege that was
preparing. Mothers and wives of the Trojan princes held aloof; and
soon the only friends left to her were the kind old king and Hector,
the noble defender of the city. But there was worse behind. Little by
little the truth dawned that Paris, for whom she had lost so much,
and who had seemed so godlike in his strength and beauty, was very
poor humanity indeed. The story of Enone was told to her; and that
showed him unfaithful. And when the Leaguer actually lay beneath
the walls, she soon found that Paris was a coward too.
Now, in this Third Iliad, we find that the cruel siege had wasted Troy
for nearly ten years. The armies, reduced by death and pestilence
and famine, were beginning to murmur against the worthless cause
of all their misery; and Paris, for very shame, could no longer shelter
himself within the city. At this eleventh hour he issued out to meet
Menelaus in single combat. Helen was sitting in her inner hall,
weaving a purple web and embroidering upon it the battle scenes
which ebbed and flowed around the walls. Time and sorrow had only
given her beauty an added charm. She was still young, fresh, and
exquisitely fair, as on that spring morning in Lacedaemon when
Aphrodite graced her for the meeting with Paris. To her, as her sweet
face bent over the web, the goddess Iris brought the news of the
impending combat: “They that erst waged tearful war upon each
other in the plain, eager for deadly battle, even they sit now in
silence, and the battle is stayed, and they lean upon their shields,
and the tall spears are planted by their sides. But Paris and
Menelaus dear to Ares will fight with their tall spears for thee; and
thou wilt be declared the dear wife of him that conquereth.”
At the name of Menelaus a wave of homesickness filled Helen’s
heart. Great tears flooded her eyes, and drawing on a shining veil,
she left her embroideries and hastened out to the Skaian gates to
watch the duel. But there, sitting upon the tower, were Priam and
his counsellors; and Helen and her maids hesitated at sight of them.
They were feeble old men. The fire and strength of youth had gone,
leaving in their place the cold wisdom of age. They and their people
had suffered deeply because of Helen; and they had every cause to
hate her. Yet as she approached, veiled and slackening her pace
from fear when she saw them, all their wrongs were forgotten in
wonderment at her beauty. They who had potent reasons to revile
her were saying softly among themselves, almost in awe, as those
who had seen a vision: “’Small blame is it that Trojans and well-
greaved Achaians should for such a woman long time suffer
hardships; marvellously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look
upon.’ ... So said they; and Priam lifted up his voice and called to
Helen: ‘Come hither, dear child, and sit before me, that thou mayst
see thy former husband and thy kinsfolk and thy friends. I hold thee
not to blame; nay, I hold the gods to blame who brought on me the
dolorous war of the Achaians’.” “And Helen, fair among women,
spake, and answered him: ‘Reverend art thou to me and dread, dear
father of my lord. Would that sore death had been my pleasure
when I followed thy son hither, and left my home and my kinsfolk
and my daughter in her girlhood and the lovely company of mine
age-fellows. But that was not so, wherefore I pine with weeping’.”[2]
Then Helen pointed out to the king and the elders the great heroes
of the Greek line: “This is wide-ruling Agamemnon, one that is both
a goodly king and mighty spearman. And he was husband’s brother
to me, ah shameless me; if ever such an one there was.” Odysseus,
too, and Ajax and Idomeneus, she can see; but two whom her eyes
seek longingly are not there, her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux.
“Either they came not in the company from lovely Lacedaemon; or
they came hither indeed in their seafaring ships, but now will not
enter into the battle of the warriors, for fear of the many scornings
and revilings that are mine.”[2]
Presently, Paris and Menelaus are engaged in fight below the walls,
with Helen looking on from above in fearful expectancy. It was an
unequal fight. Aphrodite had joined the side of Paris; and when,
despite her tricks, Menelaus was gaining on his opponent, the
goddess enveloped Paris in a cloud and carried him off. In plain
words, he ran away; and Helen, shamed and indignant, received a
summons from Aphrodite to go to her cowardly lover. She turned in
wrath upon the goddess: “Strange queen, why art thou desirous
now to beguile me? Go and sit thou by his side, and depart from the
way of the gods; neither let thy feet ever bear thee back to
Olympus, but still be vexed for his sake and guard him till he make
thee his wife or perchance his slave. But thither will I not go—that
were a sinful thing—to array the bed of him; all the women of Troy
will blame me hereafter; and I have griefs untold within my soul.”[2]
Aphrodite triumphs, however, menacing Helen with terrible threats;
and leads her back to the house of Paris. Meanwhile, the gods ‘on
golden pavement round the board of Zeus’ had decreed that Troy
should fall: Hera and Athena were to wreak their vengeance upon it,
for the insult of Paris. The truce broken, the armies rushed into
conflict again, and two of the gods who were warring for Troy, were
driven back to Olympus. Then Hector came into the palace to rouse
his brother, and found him sitting in Helen’s room, polishing his
armour. To the scornful reproaches of Hector, Paris gave only puerile
answers, and Helen turned from him to Hector in passionate scorn.
“Dear brother mine, would that on the day that my mother bare me,
a billow of the loud-sounding sea might have swept me away before
all these things came to pass. Howbeit, seeing that the gods devised
all these ills in this wise, would that then I had been mated with a
better man, that felt dishonour and the multitude of men’s
reproachings. But as for him, neither has he now sound heart, nor
ever will have; therefore deem I moreover that he will reap the
fruit.”[2]
Hector answered her with a gentle word, and went out, bearing on
his shoulders the doom of Troy. In his chivalrous kindness to Helen,
he is a worthy son of Priam; and when he was slain at last, fighting
for his beloved city alone with the terrible Achilles, Helen joined her
lament to those of his mother and his wife, in perhaps the most
noble tribute to his memory: “Hector, of all my brethren of Troy, far
dearest to my heart. Truly my lord is godlike Paris who brought me
to Troy-land; would that I had died ere then. For this is now the
twentieth year since I went thence and am gone from my own
native land, but never yet heard I evil or despiteful word from thee;
nay, if any other haply upbraided me in the palace halls, whether
brother or sister of thine or brother’s fair-robed wife, or thy mother,
then wouldst thou soothe such with words and refrain them, by the
gentleness of thy spirit and by thy gentle words. Therefore bewail I
thee with pain at heart, and my hapless self with thee, for no more
is any left in wide Troy-land to be my friend and kind to me, but all
men shudder at me.”[2]
Almost with these words the poem closes, telling us nothing of the
dreadful sack of Troy by the Achaians, after they had entered the
city through the device of the wooden horse. Our last glimpse of
Helen in the Iliad is as she wails her mournful threnos over the body
of Hector.
And Helen’s sorrow brake into lament
As bursts a lake the barriers of a hill,
For lost, lost, lost was that one friend who still
Stood by her with kind speech and gentle heart.[1]

We hear no word of the Greek calamity in the fall of Achilles, or how

Paris was slain by the arrow of the outcast Philoctetes, with perfect
poetical justice. Nothing is told of the massacre of Priam and his
sons; of the burning of the city; of the carrying off of its wealth and
of its fair women when the Greeks, sated with revenge at last, set
sail for Argos. And we hear no word of the most amazing fact of all
—the reconciliation of Helen and Menelaus. We know from the
Odyssey that they were reconciled, but how, Homer does not say.
Legend and song have been busy with the theme, however, and the
most beautiful story has been woven by Andrew Lang into his Helen
of Troy. There we see how Aphrodite in the midst of the slaughter
and outrage, led Helen in safety to the ships, while Menelaus raged
through the city seeking her, grimly determined to give her over to
the vengeance of the army.
 But Helen found he never where the flame
Sprang to the roofs, and Helen ne’er he found
Where flocked the wretched women in their shame
The helpless altars of the gods around....

So wounded to his hut and wearily

Came Menelaus; and he bowed his head
Beneath the lintel neither fair nor high;
And lo, queen Helen lay upon his bed,
Flush’d like a child asleep, and rosy-red,
And at his footstep did she wake and smile,
And spake: “My lord, how hath thy hunting sped?
Methinks that I have slept a weary while.”[1]

Lulled again by the arts of Aphrodite, Helen has completely forgotten

all that has happened in the dreadful interval of the years since she
last fell asleep at Lacedaemon. But Menelaus feels the fierce anger
rise in his heart against her. He seizes and binds her, and carries her
off to deliver her to the vengeance of the people. He reminds them
of all they have endured and suffered, and calls upon them to mete
to her the just death for such an one as she. But when the soldiers
in their rage would have stoned her; when Menelaus rushed upon
her with uplifted spear, Aphrodite drew the veil from before her
matchless face.
And as in far-off days that were to be,
The sense of their own sin did men constrain,
That they must leave the sinful woman free
Who, by their law, had verily been slain,
So Helen’s beauty made their anger vain,
And one by one their gathered flints let fall;
And like men shamed they stole across the plain,
Back to the swift ships and their festival.[1]

So Helen went home to Lacedaemon again, the dear wife of

Menelaus. And when we take up the second great Homeric epic, the
Odyssey, we find her the serene and gracious hostess of young
Telemachus. All the hateful past is purged away, and chaste as the
moon-goddess,
Forth of her high-roofed, odorous chamber came
Helen, like golden-shafted Artemis.[3]

She still remembers the horror of those days; and when Menelaus is
wondering who the stranger prince is who has sought their
hospitality, Helen’s quick wit perceives how like he is to Odysseus. Is
not this, she asks, the son whom Odysseus left in his house as a
new-born child when the war began?
“And for the sake of me who knew not shame
Under Troy town your host Achaean came.”[3]

It is indeed the son of Odysseus; and by the irony of fate he has

come to inquire from the very author of his sorrows, news of the
father who, for aught Helen knows, has long ago been driven by
Poseidon to the House of Hades.
Wept Argive Helen, child of Zeus, and wept
Telemachus, and with him at the word
Wept Menelaus.[3]

But the ready tears of heroes are soon dried. They cheer
Telemachus so far as they may by tales of his father’s craft and
courage before Troy; and Helen mixes for him the cup of Nepenthe,
which steeps memory in a mist and banishes care and calls a smile
to the lips. She does not herself taste of the magic drink, however;
she has no wish to forget. Secure now in the peace of home and
enfolded by generous forgiveness, she will always remember, until
she comes to pass through Lethe on her way to the Elysian fields.
And there, when the time came, she was translated ‘where falls not
rain, or hail, or any snow.’ A shrine was built to her, and Greek men
and maidens worshipped her as one of the immortal gods
themselves.
 O’er Helen’s shrine the grass is growing green,
In desolate Therapnae; none the less
Her sweet face now unworshipped and unseen
Abides the symbol of all loveliness,
Of Beauty ever stainless in the stress
Of warring lusts and fears; and still divine,
Still ready with immortal peace to bless
Them that with pure hearts worship at her shrine.[1]

1. From Mr Andrew Lang’s Helen of Troy (G. Bell and Sons Ltd.).

2. From Messrs Lang, Leaf, and Myers’s translation of the Iliad

(Macmillan and Co. Ltd.).

3. From Professor J. W. Mackail’s translation of the Odyssey (John

Murray).
Homer: Andromache

A ndromache was the young wife of Hector, Priam’s warrior son

and defender of Troy. Over against the figure of Helen in the
Iliad her gentle integrity stands in mute reproach. It is as though
Homer, whose chivalry to Helen will not permit him to censure her,
yet feels the claim of a larger chivalry—to womanhood itself. So he
seems impelled to create this type of gracious purity, vindicating
wifely honour and motherly tenderness; and proving at the same
time that if his race had a high ideal of beauty, it had also a
profound regard for domestic ties.
Helen and Andromache, therefore, stand side by side in the action of
the poem. Their destinies are linked: their lives are passed within the
same walls: they own the same relationship to king Priam and to
Hecuba the queen; and they are united in suffering. But always they
are as far apart in spirit as conscious guilt on the one hand and
indignant rectitude on the other ever held two daughters of Eve.
Andromache, like all the men and women of heroic poetry, was very
human. And we have the feeling that she could not rise to Hector’s
generosity toward the Spartan woman for whose sake Paris had
brought the war on Ilios. Perhaps the reason was that she had
suffered more deeply on Helen’s account. And if she had joined in
those reproaches which Helen wailed about in her threnos over
Hector’s body, it was from bitter cause.
Andromache had been happy, and a princess, in her girlhood days,
before Paris brought a Greek bride from Sparta. Her father was
Eëtion, king of Thebes, in ‘wooded Plakos’; and in those times she
had a gentle mother and seven strong brothers. But the Greeks
came, and in the long years when the Leaguer lay beneath Troy,
their terrible hero Achilles had ravaged the countries around, and
had taken the city of Thebes. He had slain Eëtion her father and the
seven fine youths who were her brothers. Her mother, too, though
ransomed from the Greeks for a great price, had died of grief; and
Andromache, utterly forlorn, had found refuge in the halls of Priam.
She found a mate there too; and in the love of Hector, her father
and mother and brothers were all given back to her.
Homer makes the tender devotion of this noble pair stand out in
gracious contrast to the stormy passion of Paris and Helen. Yet he
does not tell us much about Andromache. He does not describe her
—indeed, he very rarely draws a picture of his women—but we know
that she is beautiful. In some subtle way there is left on our mind an
impression of blended grace and dignity, of sweetness and
tenderness and fidelity; but we are not directly told that she
possesses these qualities. We do not even see her till, in the Sixth
Book of the Iliad, the time has come for her to part from her
husband.
The Greeks were at the very gates of Troy, and the last phase had
come for the sacred city. Diomedes had driven their god Ares from
the field, bellowing with the pain of a wound; and Hector, who saw
the end was coming, hurried into the palace to rouse his followers
and beg the queen to pray for the cause of Troy in the Temple of
Athena. Then, before returning to the fight, he snatched the
opportunity to see his wife and child once more. At first he could not
find them. Andromache was not in the palace, nor in the Temple of
Athena where the matrons of the city were propitiating the goddess.
She had heard that the Trojans were hard pressed, and in fear for
her husband she had gone down to the tower to watch the battle
from the walls.
“Hector hastened from his house back by the same way down the
well-builded streets. When he had passed through the great city and
was come to the Skaian gates, whereby he was minded to issue
upon the plain, there came his dear-won wife running to meet
him.... So she met him now, and with her went the handmaid
bearing in her bosom the tender boy, the little child, Hector’s loved
son, like unto a beautiful star.... So now he smiled and gazed at his
boy silently, and Andromache stood by his side weeping, and clasped
her hand in his, and spake and called upon his name. ‘Dear my lord,
this thy hardihood will undo thee, neither hast thou any pity for
thine infant boy, nor for me forlorn that soon shall be thy widow; for
soon will the Achaeans all set upon thee and slay thee. But it were
better for me to go down to the grave if I lose thee; for never more
will any comfort be mine, when once thou, even thou, hast met thy
fate, but only sorrow’.”[4]
So she weeps to him, forgetting the heroic, as heroes often do in
overwhelming human sorrow. Hector is human too; and as she
pours out all the pleas that touch him most nearly—her love for him,
his love for her, and their mutual love for their child—he cannot utter
the reply of the soldier and defender of his people. Andromache
thinks she sees an instant of wavering in his eyes; she catches at it
wildly, and rushes on to tell of a place where he and his men may
screen themselves from the enemy. But that word has lost her
cause. Hector’s great refusal is brave and gentle: “Surely ... I have
very sore shame ... if like a coward I shrink away from battle.
Moreover mine own soul forbiddeth me.... Yea of a surety I know ...
the day shall come for holy Ilios to be laid low.... Yet doth the
anguish of the Trojans hereafter not so much trouble me, neither
Hekabe’s own, neither king Priam’s, neither my brethren’s ... as doth
thine anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaian shall ... rob
thee of the light of freedom.... But me in death may the heaped-up
earth be covering, ere I hear thy crying and thy carrying into
captivity.”[4]
Andromache can find no answer, and there is silence between them
as Hector turns to caress his boy. But the child shrinks to his nurse
in fear of the shining helmet and nodding crest; and the parents
laugh through their tears.
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