Andrew Lang

“ He quotes the prophecy which Proteus, the ancient one of the sea, delivered to Menelaus:—
“But thou, Menelaus, son of Zeus, art not ordained to die and meet thy fate in Argos, the pasture-land of horses, but the deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world’s end, where is Rhadamanthus of the fair hair, where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain; but alway ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill West to blow cool on men: yea, for thou hast Helen to wife, and thereby they deem thee to be son of Zeus.” ”

“ And change to rosy flame, and thence did fly
The lovely Queen of Love that turns to hate,
Like summer lightnings ’twixt the sea and sky.
V.
And now the bower of Helen fill’d with light,
And now she knew the thing that she did fear
Was close upon her (for the black of night
Doth burn like fire, whene’er the Gods are near) ;
Then shone like flame each helm and shield and spear
That hung within the chamber of the King,
But he,—though all the bower as day was clear,—
Slept as they sleep that know no wakening. ”

“ Of Ida; and the heavy clouds and chill
Were gathering like mourners, sad and slow,
And Zeus did thunder mightily, and fill
The dells and glades of Ida deep with snow.
XLVI.
Now Paris was not sated with the fame
And rich reward Troy gave his archery;
But o’er the wine he boasted that the game
That very night he deem’d to win, or die;
“For scarce their watch the tempest will defy,”
He said, “and all undream’d of might we go,
And fall upon the Argives where they lie,
Unseen, unheard, amid the silent snow.” ”

“ To mortal men no sweeter boon than rest;
And surely such a tale as thine is best
To make the dainty-footed hours go by,
Till sinks the sun in darkness and the West,
And soft stars lead the Night along the sky.”
XXI.
Then at the word of Helen Paris spoke,
“My tale is shorter than a summer day,—
My mother, ere I saw the light, awoke,
At dawn, in Ilios, shrieking in dismay,
Who dream’d that ’twixt her feet there fell and lay
A flaming brand, that utterly burn’d down
To dust of crumbling ashes red and grey,
The coronal of towers and all Troy town. ”

“ And maidens’ footsteps rang the palace through,
And with their footsteps chimed their happy song,
And one to other cried, “A marvel new
That soft-wing’d Sleep hath held the Queen so long!”
XXXI.
Then Phylo brought the child Hermione,
And close unto her mother’s side she crept,
And o’er her god-like beauty tumbled she,
Chiding her sweetly that so late she slept,
And babbling still a merry coil she kept;
But like a woman stiff beneath her shroud
Lay Helen; till the young child fear’d and wept,
And ran, and to her nurses cried aloud. ”

“ Now Helen lamented not, but shame dwelt in her dark eyes, and reddened her lovely cheeks, . . . while around her the people marvelled as they beheld the flawless grace and winsome beauty of the woman, and none dared upbraid her with secret taunt or open rebuke. Nay, as she had been a Goddess they beheld her gladly, for dear and desired was she in their sight. And as when their own country appeareth to men long wandering on the sea, and they, being escaped from death and the deep, gladly put forth their hands to greet their own native place ”

“ The message of Iris renews in Helen’s heart “a sweet desire for her lord and her own city, and them that begat her;” so, draped in silvery white, Helen goes with her three maidens to the walls. There, above the gate, like some king in the Old Testament, Paris sits among his counsellors, and they are all amazed at Helen’s beauty; “no marvel is it that Trojans and Achaeans suffer long and weary toils for such a woman, so wondrous like to the immortal goddesses.” Then Priam, assuring Helen that he holds her blameless, bids her name to him her kinsfolk and the other Achaean warriors. ”

“ The counted years of mortal life go by.
LIV.
“Death ends all tales,” but this he endeth not;
They grew not grey within the valley fair
Of hollow Lacedaemon, but were brought
To Rhadamanthus of the golden hair,
Beyond the wide world’s end; ah never there
Comes storm nor snow; all grief is left behind,
And men immortal, in enchanted air,
Breathe the cool current of the Western wind.
LV.
But Helen was a Saint in Heathendom,
A kinder Aphrodite; without fear
Maidens and lovers to her shrine would come
In fair Therapnae, by the waters clear
Of swift Eurotas ”

“ Nay, go thyself and sit down by Paris, and forswear the paths of the Gods, but ever lament for him and cherish him, till he make thee his wife, yea, or perchance his slave, but to him will I never go.” But this anger of Helen is soon overcome by fear, when the Goddess, in turn, waxes wrathful, and Helen is literally driven by threats—“for the daughter of Zeus was afraid,”—into the arms of Paris. Yet even so she taunts her lover with his cowardice, a cowardice which she never really condones. In the sixth book of the Iliad she has been urging him to return to the war. ”

“ Beauty, he declares, the Gods themselves consider the noblest thing in the world, as the Goddesses showed when they contended for the prize of loveliness. And so marvellous, says Isocrates, was the beauty of Helen, that for her glory Zeus did not spare his beloved son, Sarpedon; and Thetis saw Achilles die, and the Dawn bewailed her Memnon. “Beauty has raised more mortals to immortality than all the other virtues together.” And that Helen is now a Goddess, Isocrates proves by the fact that the sacrifices offered to her in Therapnae, are such as are given, not to heroes, but to immortal Gods. ”

“ That Zeus, the Lord of Thunder, giveth him,
Wherefore I follow Fortune, like a star,
Whate’er may wait me in the distance dim.
XVI.
“Now all men call me Paris, Priam’s son,
Who widely rules a peaceful folk and still.
Nay, though ye dwell afar off, there is none
But hears of Ilios on the windy hill,
And of the plain that the two rivers fill
With murmuring sweet streams the whole year long,
And walls the Gods have wrought with wondrous skill
Where cometh never man to do us wrong. ”

“ So raged the fierce Achilles in his hate;
And Xanthus, angry for his Trojans slain,
Brake forth, while fire and wind made desolate
What war and wave had spared upon the plain.
XXVI.
Now through the fume and vapour of the smoke
Between the wind’s voice and the water’s cry,
The battle shouting of the Trojans broke,
And reached the Ilian walls confusedly,
But over soon the folk that watch’d might spy
Thin broken bands that fled, avoiding death,
Yet many a man beneath the spear must die,
Ere by the sacred gateway they drew breath. ”

“ Queen Helen spake, beholding how the sun
Within the heaven of bronze was riding high:
“Truly, my friends, methinks the hour is nigh
When men may crave to know what need doth bring
To Lacedaemon, o’er wet ways and dry,
This prince that bears the sceptre of a king? ”

“ Greek ideas as to the character of Helen varied with the various moods of Greek literature. Homer’s own ideas about his heroine are probably best expressed in the words with which Priam greets her as she appears among the assembled elders, who are watching the Argive heroes from the wall of Troy:—“In nowise, dear child, do I blame thee; nay, the Gods are to blame, who have roused against me the woful war of the Achaeans.” Homer, like Priam, throws the guilt of Helen on the Gods, but it is not very easy to understand exactly what he means by saying “the Gods are to blame.” ”

“ Thus when Achilles, in a famous passage of the first book of the Iliad, puts up his half-drawn sword in the sheath, and does not slay Agamemnon, Homer assigns his repentance to the direct influence of Athene. Again, he says in the Odyssey, about Clytemnestra, that “she would none of the foul deed;” that is of the love of Aegisthus, till “the doom of the Gods bound her to her ruin.” So far the same excuse is made for the murderous Clytemnestra as for the amiable Helen. Again, Homer is, in the strictest sense, and in strong contrast to the Greek tragedians and to Virgil, a chivalrous poet. ”

“ Then Helen gave a sign unto her three
Bower-maidens, and they went forth from that place,
Silent they went; and all forebodingly,
They left the man and woman face to face.
XXVI.
Then from his breast the birchen scroll he took
And gave to Helen; and she read therein:
“Oh thou that on those hidden runes dost look,
Hast thou forgotten quite thine ancient sin,
Thy Lord, thy lofty palace, and thy kin,
Even as thy Love forgets the words he spoke
The strong oath broken one weak heart to win,
The lips that kiss’d him, and the heart that broke? ”

“ Œnone sprang, with burning eyes divine,
And shriek’d unto the slayer of her child:
XLIV.
“Oh Thou, that like a God art sire and slayer,
That like a God, dost give and take away!
Methinks that even now I hear the prayer
Thou shalt beseech me with, some later day;
When all the world to thy dim eyes grow grey,
And thou shalt crave thy healing at my hand,
Then gladly will I mock, and say thee nay,
And watch thine hours run down like running sand! ”

“ Medicines of such virtue and so helpful had the daughter of Zeus, which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, had given her, a woman of Egypt, where Earth the grain-giver yields herbs in greatest plenty, many that are healing in the cup, and many baneful.”
So Telemachus was kindly entertained by Helen and Menelaus, and when he left them it was not without a gift. ”

“ Without some strange new birth of the old smart,
From her old love of the brief days could part
For ever; though the dead meet, ne’er shall they
Meet, and be glad by Aphrodite’s art,
Whose souls have wander’d each its several way. ”

“ Withstands a lion for her younglings dear;
So stood the girl before Achilles’ spear;
In vain, for singing from his hand it sped,
And crash’d through shield and breastplate till the sheer
Cold bronze drank blood, and down the queen fell dead. ”

“ Beside the ships, beneath the walls of Troy.
XXXIV.
Then Paris had an easy tale to tell,
Which then might win upon men’s wond’ring ears,
Who deem’d that Gods with mortals deign to dwell,
And that the water of the West enspheres
The happy Isles that know not Death nor tears ”

“ 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.
NOTE
[In this story in rhyme of the fortunes of Helen, the theory that she was an unwilling victim of the Gods has been preferred. Many of the descriptions of manners are versified from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The description of the events after the death of Hector, and the account of the sack of Troy, is chiefly borrowed from Quintus Smyrnaeus.] ”

“ Her voice makes strength of mortals pass away,—
“Dost thou not know that I have loved thee well,
And never loved thee better than to-day?
XV.
“Behold, thine eyes are wet, thy cheeks are wan,
Yet art thou born of an immortal sire,
The child of Nemesis and of the Swan;
Thy veins should run with ichor and with fire.
Yet this is thy delight and thy desire,
To love a mortal lord, a mortal child,
To live, unpraised of lute, unhymn’d of lyre,
As any woman pure and undefiled.
XVI.
“Thou art the toy of Gods, an instrument
Wherewith all mortals shall be plagued or blest,
Even at my pleasure ”

“ She is ever gentle except with the Goddess who betrayed her, and the unworthy lover whose lot she is compelled to share. Against them her helpless anger breaks out in flashes of eloquent scorn. Homer was apparently acquainted with the myth of Helen’s capture by Theseus, a myth illustrated in the decorations of the coffer of Cypselus. But we first see Helen, the cause of the war, when Menelaus and Paris are about to fight their duel for her sake, in the tenth year of the Leaguer (Iliad, iii. 121) . Iris is sent to summon Helen to the walls. ”

“ The result will be something like this:—Homer sees in Helen a being of the rarest personal charm and grace of character; a woman who imputes to herself guilt much greater than the real measure of her offence. ”

“ Yet the local tradition of Lacedaemon showed the sepulchre of Helen in Therapnae. According to a Rhodian legend (adopted by the author of the “Epic of Hades”) , Helen was banished from Sparta by the sons of Menelaus, came wandering to Rhodes, and was there strangled by the servants of the queen Polyxo, who thus avenged the death of her husband at Troy. It is certain, as we learn both from Herodotus (vi. 61) and from Isocrates, that Helen was worshipped in Therapnae. In the days of Ariston the king, a deformed child was daily brought by her nurse to the shrine of Helen. ”

“ He gave two silver baths to Menelaus, and tripods twain, and ten talents of gold. And besides all this, his wife bestowed on Helen lovely gifts; a golden distaff did she give, and a silver basket with wheels beneath, and the rims thereof were finished with gold. This it was that the handmaid Phylo bare and set beside her, filled with dressed yarn, and across it was laid a distaff charged with wool of violet blue. So Helen sat her down in the chair, and beneath was a footstool for the feet. ”

“ Just as the later chansons de geste of France, the poems written in an age of feudal opposition to central authority, degraded heroes like Charles, so rhetorical, republican, and sophistical Greece put its quibbles into the lips of Agamemnon and Helen, and slandered the stainless and fearless Patroclus and Achilles.
The Helen of Euripides, in the “Troades,” is a pettifogging sophist, who pleads her cause to Menelaus with rhetorical artifice. In the “Helena,” again, Euripides quite deserts the Homeric traditions, and adopts the late myths which denied that Helen ever went to Troy. ”

“ And still with eddying snow the air did swim,
And darkly did they wend they knew not where,
White in that cursed night: an army grim,
’Wilder’d with wine, and blind with whirling air.
XLVIII.
There was an outcast in the Argive host,
One Philoctetes; whom Odysseus’ wile,
(For, save he help’d, the Leaguer all was lost,)
Drew from his lair within the Lemnian isle.
But him the people, as a leper vile,
Hated, and drave to a lone hut afar,
For wounded sore was he, and many a while
His cries would wake the host foredone with war. ”