Homer: The Iliad; The Odyssey - W. Lucas Collins

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kings or chiefs on the one side, and of the Trojans and their allies on the other, which in our introduction has already been partly anticipated.[14] The long list of chiefs, with their genealogies and birthplaces, and the strength of their several contingents, was evidently composed with a view to recitation: and whatever may be its value as an authentic record, we can understand the interest with which a Greek audience would listen to a muster-roll which was to them what the Roll of Battle Abbey was to the descendants of the Normans in England. If here and there, upon occasion, the wandering minstrel inserted in the text the name and lineage of some provincial hero on his own responsibility, the popular applause would assuredly be none the less.

       THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELAUS.

       Table of Contents

      The battle is set in array, “army against army.” But there is a difference in the bearing of the opposed forces which is very significant, and is probably a note of real character, not a mere stroke of the poet’s art. The Trojan host, after the fashion of Asiatic warfare, modern as well as ancient, move forward to the combat with loud shouts and clashing of weapons. The poet compares their confused clamour to the noise of a flock of cranes on their annual migration. The Greeks, on the other hand, march in silence, with closed ranks, uttering no sound, but “breathing determination.” So, when afterwards they actually close for action, not a sound is heard in their ranks but the voice of the leaders giving the word of command. “You would not think,” says the poet, “that all that mighty host had tongues;” while, in the mixed battalions of the enemy, whose allies are men of many lands and languages, there arises a noisy discordant clamour—“like as of bleating ewes that hear the cries of their lambs.”

      But while the hostile forces yet await the signal for the battle, Paris springs forth alone from the Trojan ranks. “Godlike” he is in his beauty, and with the leve of personal adornment which befits his character, he wears a spotted leopard’s hide upon his shoulders. Tennyson’s portrait of him, though in a different scene, is thoroughly Homeric—

      “White-breasted like a star,

       Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard’s skin

       Drooped from his shoulder, but his sunny hair

       Clustered about his temples like a god’s.”

      Advancing with long strides in the space between the armies, he challenges the leaders of the Greeks, one and all, to meet him singly in mortal combat. Menelaus hears the boast. “Like a hungry lion springing on his prey,” he leaps full-armed from his chariot, exulting in the thought that now at last his personal vengeance shall be gratified. But conscience makes a coward of Paris. He starts back—“as a man that sees a serpent in his path”—the godlike visage grows pale, the knees tremble, and the Trojan champion draws back under the shelter of his friends from the gallant hero whom he has so bitterly wronged. The Roman historian Livy—a poet in prose—had surely this passage in his mind when he described Sextus Tarquinius, the dishonourer of Lucretia, quailing, as no Roman of his blood and rank would otherwise have quailed, when young Valerius dashes out from the Roman lines to engage him. The moral teaching of the heathen poet on such points is far higher than that of the medieval romancers with whom he has so many points in common. Sir Tristram of Lyonnois has no such scruples of conscience in meeting King Mark. Lancelot, indeed, will not fight with Arthur; but the very nobility of character with which the unknown author of that striking impersonation has endowed him is in itself the highest of all wrongs against morality, in that it steals the reader’s sympathies for the wrong-doer instead of for the injured husband. Shakespeare, as is his wont, strikes the higher key. It is the consciousness of guilt which makes Macbeth half quail before Macduff—

      “Of all men else have I avoided thee:

       But get thee back—my soul is too much charged

       With blood of thine already.

       … I will not fight with thee.”

      Paris withdraws into the Trojan ranks, and there encounters Hector. As has been already said, the poet assumes at the outset, on the part of his audience, at least such knowledge of his dramatis personæ as to make a formal introduction unnecessary. Hector is the noblest of all the sons of Priam, the shield and bulwark of his countrymen throughout the long years of the war. Achilles is the hero of the Iliad, and to him Homer assigns the palm of strength and valour; but, as is not seldom the case in fiction, the author has painted the rival hero so well that our sympathies are at least as frequently found on his side. We almost share Juno’s feelings against the Trojans when they are represented by Paris; but when Hector comes into the field, our hearts half go over to the enemy. His character will be touched upon more fully hereafter: for the present, it must discover itself in the course of the story. He throws himself in the way of Paris in his cowardly retreat; and in spite of the fraternal feeling which is so remarkably strong amongst Homer’s heroes—in Hector and his brothers almost as much as in Agamemnon and Menelaus—shame and disgust at his present poltroonery now mingle themselves with a righteous hatred of the selfish lust which has plunged his country into a bloody war—

      “Was it for this, or with such heart as now,

       O’er the wide billows with a chosen band

       Thou sailedst, and with violated vow

       Didst bring thy fair wife from the Apian strand,

       Torn from the house of men of warlike hand,

       And a great sorrow for thy father’s head,

       Troy town, and all the people of the land,

       By thine inhospitable offence hast bred,

       Thus for the enemy’s sport, thine own confusion dread?

      “Lo, now thou cowerest, and wilt not abide

       Fierce Menelaus—thou hadst known, I ween,

       Soon of what man thou hast the blooming bride!

       Poor had the profit of thy harp then been,

       Vain Aphrodite’s gifts, thy hair, thy mien,

       He mangling in the dust thy fallen brow.

       But there is no wrong to the Trojans keen,

       And they are lambs in Spirit; or else hadst thou

       Worn, for thine evil works, a cloke of stone ere now.” W.

      Paris has the grace to admit the justice of his brother’s rebuke. Hector, he confesses, is far the better soldier; only he pleads, with a self-complacency which he never loses, that grace of person, and a smooth tongue, and a taste for music, are nothing less than the gifts of the gods—that, in fact, it is not his fault that he is so irresistible. He ends, however, with an offer which is far more to Hector’s mind. Let open lists be pitched in sight of both armies, and he will engage Menelaus in single combat; Helen and her wealth shall be the prize of victory.

      It is a proposal at which Hector’s heart rejoices. He checks at once the advancing line of the Trojans, and steps out himself to the front. The Greeks bend their bows at him, but Agamemnon understands his motions, and bids them hold their hands. It is a fair challenge which the Trojan prince comes to make on behalf of Paris. Menelaus accepts it, in a few plain and gallant words—he is no orator:—

      “Hear now my answer; in this quarrel I

       May claim the chiefest share; and now I hope

       Trojans and Greeks may see the final close

       Of all the labours ye so long have borne,

       T’ avenge my wrong at Paris’ hand sustained.

       And of us two whiche’er is doomed to death,

       So let him die! the rest depart in peace.” (D.)

      A truce is agreed upon, to abide the result of this appeal of battle. A messenger from Olympus—Iris, goddess of the Rainbow—comes to warn Helen of the impending duel. And this introduces

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