William Lucas Collins

“ Dismayed at the fall of their great leader, the Trojans give ground; the trench is recrossed, and the Greeks breathe again.
Jupiter awakes from sleep just in time to see the mischief that has been done; the Trojans in flight, the Greeks with Neptune at their head pursuing; Hector lying senseless by the side of his chariot, still breathing heavily, and vomiting blood from his bruised chest, and surrounded by his anxious comrades. He turns wrathfully upon Juno—it is her work, he knows. ”

“ Though in personal strength and speed of foot he excels all the other heroes of the expedition, yet he is not a mere fighter, like his comrade Ajax, but has all the finer tastes and accomplishments of an age which, however fierce and barbarous in many respects, shows yet a high degree of civilisation. Music and song beguile for him the intervals of battle, and, whether indignant, sarcastic, or pathetic, he is always an admirable speaker. There is something of a melancholy interest about him, too, not inappropriate to a hero of romance, which the poet never allows us to forget. ”

“ He will die at least as a hero should. He draws his sword, and rushes on Achilles. The wary Greek eyes him carefully as he comes on, and spies the joint in his harness where the breastplate meets the throat. Through that fatal spot he drives his spear, and the Trojan falls to the ground mortally wounded, but yet preserving the power of speech. As his conqueror stands over him cruelly vaunting, and vowing to give his body to the dogs and to the vultures, he makes a last appeal to his mercy. ”

“ The mortal champion is more successful: his spear strikes Mars in the flank, piercing the flesh, and drawing from him, as from Venus, the heavenly "ichor." And the wounded god cries out with a shout like that of ten thousand men, so that both hosts listen to the sound with awe and trembling. He too, like Venus, flies to Olympus, and there makes piteous complaint of the impious deeds which, at the instigation of Minerva, this headstrong mortal is permitted to do. ”

“ At first the hero affects to chide his follower for such girlish sorrow—what cares he for the Greeks? It is plain, however, that he does care; and when Patroclus, in very outspoken terms, upbraids him for his obduracy, and asks that, even if the dark doom that hangs over him makes his chief unwilling to take the field in person, he will at least send him with the Myrmidons to the rescue, Achilles at once consents. Patroclus shall go, clad in his armour, that so perchance the Trojans may be deceived, and think that they see the well-known crest of Achilles himself once more leading the fight. ”

“ The Trojans waver; even Hector gives ground; the Greeks cheer, and some carry off the bodies, while the rest press forward. It is going hard with Troy, when Apollo, who sits watching the battle from the citadel, calls loudly to their troops to remember that "there is no Achilles in the field to-day." So the fight is renewed, Minerva cheering on the Greeks, as Apollo does the Trojans.
Diomed, the gallant son of Tydeus, now becomes the hero of the day. ”

“ At this day, the attempt to separate the fabulous from the real, to reduce the rich colouring of romance into the severe outlines of history, is a task which even in the ablest hands seems hopeless. The legends themselves are various, and contradictory in their details. The leading characters in the story—Priam, Helen, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses, Paris, Hector and Andromache—appear in as many different aspects and relations as the fancy of each poet chose. In this respect they are like the heroes of our own “Round Table” romances ”

“ The poet who recites—as we must suppose Homer to have done—must above
everything else excite and interest his audience: his lay must be rich in incident; and to an audience who were all more or less warlike, no incidents could be so exciting as the details of battle. There is much savageness in Homer's combats; but savageness is to the taste of men whose only means of excitement is through their grosser senses, and a love of the horrible in fact or fiction is by no means extinct even in our own day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Diomed excuses himself by reference to her own charge to him—to fight with none of the immortals save Venus only. But now the goddess withdraws the prohibition, and herself—putting on the "helmet of darkness," to hide herself from Mars—takes her place beside him in the chariot, instead of Sthenelus, his henchman and charioteer; and the chariot-axle groans beneath the more than mortal load. They drive in full career against the War-god: in vain he hurls his spear against Diomed, for the hand of the goddess turns it safely aside. ”

“ In each course he tries to reach the gates, that his comrades may either open to him, or at least cover him by launching their missiles from the walls against his enemy. But still Achilles turns him back towards the plain, signing to the Greeks to hurl no spear, nor to interfere in any way with his single vengeance. The gods look down from Olympus with divided interest. Jupiter longs to save him; but Minerva sternly reminds him of the dread destiny—the Eternal Law—which even the Ruler of Olympus is bound to reverence. ”

“ Love between unmarried persons, in the sense in which we commonly use the word, seems very much the product of modern civilisation. There is indeed a passion which we name by the same English word—the mere animal passion, which Homer, to do him justice, deals with but as a matter of fact, and never paints in attractive colours. There is again a love of another kind—the love of the husband for his wife and of the wife for her husband—which the old poet also well understood, and which furnishes him with scenes of the highest pathos and beauty. ”

“ Jupiter, as the lord of nature, is well pleased with the war of the gods—that is, of earth, sea, air, &c.—because the harmony of all beings arises from that discord. Thus heat and cold, moist and dry, are in a continual war, yet upon this depends the fertility of the earth and the beauty of the creation. So that Jupiter, who, according to the Greeks, is the soul of all, may well be said to smile at this contention. ”

“ Achilles weeps—but not for Briseis. He is touched in a point where he is far more sensitive—his honour. He has been robbed of the guerdon of valour, bestowed on him in full conclave of the chiefs of the army. He has been robbed of it by Agamemnon—the man for whose especial sake, to avenge whose family wrongs, he has come on this long expedition from his home. ”

“ And no diplomatic enterprise could be complete without the addition of Ulysses, the man of many devices and of persuasive tongue. The chiefs set forth, and take their way along the shore to the camp of the Myrmidons. They find Achilles sitting in his tent, solacing his perturbed spirit with playing on the lyre, to the music of which he sings the deeds of heroes done in the days of old—the exact prototype of those knightly troubadours of later times, who combined the accomplishments of the minstrel with the prowess of the soldier. ”

“ Panic seizes the whole host of Troy, and while they give ground in dismay, the dead Patroclus is borne off to the tent of Achilles.
Night falls on the plain, and separates the combatants. The Trojans, before their evening meal, hold an anxious council, in which Polydamas, as great in debate as Hector is in the field, advises that they should now retire within their walls. Achilles, it is evident, will head the Greeks in the morning, and who shall stand before him? But the wise counsel of Polydamas meets the same fate as that of Ahithophel; Heaven will not suffer men to listen to it. ”

“ As eager now to do honour to Achilles as he was before to insult him, Agamemnon has despatched a strong force at early dawn to cut down wood for a huge funeral pile. The burial rites are grandly savage. In long procession and in full panoply the Myrmidons bear the dead hero to the pile, and the corpse is covered with the long locks of hair which every warrior in turn, Achilles first, cuts off as an offering to the gods below. ”

“ The Queen of Heaven can no longer endure to be a mere spectatress of the peril of her favourites. She obtains permission from Jupiter to send Minerva against Mars: and the two goddesses, seated in Juno's chariot of state, glide down from Olympus—
"Midway between the earth and starry heaven"—
and alight upon the plain of Troy. There Juno, taking human shape, taunts the Greek troops with cowardice—
"In form of Stentor of the brazen voice,
Whose shout was as the shout of fifty men"—
and whose name has made a familiar place for itself in our English vocabulary. ”

“ So the sea-god, in sulky acquiescence, leaves the scene of battle, and plunges down into the depths of his own dominion, Phœbus Apollo, on the other hand, receives Jupiter's permission to aid the Trojans. He sweeps down from Olympus to the spot where Hector lies, now slowly reviving. The hero recognises his celestial visitor, and feels at once his strength restored, and his ardour for the battle reawakened. To the consternation of the Greeks, he reappears in the field, fierce and vigorous as before. But he no longer comes alone ”

“ In Homer's sight, as in Priam's, she is the victim of Venus. She is "the victim of passion," only in a more literal and personal sense than we use the expression. Love, lawful or unlawful, was a divine—that is, a supernatural—force, to the mind of the poet. The spells of Venus are irresistible: that fatal gift of beauty is the right by which the goddess takes possession of her, and leads her captive at her evil will. Helen herself feels her own degradation far more deeply, in fact, than any one else seems to feel it ”

“ Minerva, on her part, comes to the aid of her favourite Achilles with a stratagem, as little worthy of his renown (to our view) as the sudden panic of Hector. She appears by the side of the Trojan hero in the likeness of his brother Deiphobus, and bids him stand and fight; they two, together, must surely be a match for Achilles. Hector turns and challenges his adversary. One compact he tries to make, in a few hurried words, before they encounter; let each promise, since one must fall, to restore the dead body of his enemy in all honour to his kindred. ”

“ In the husband’s absence, Paris succeeds—not without some degree of violence, according to some of the legends—in carrying off the wife, loading his ships at the same time (to give emphatic baseness to the exploit) with a rich freight of gold and treasures, the spoils of his absent host. So Venus’s promise is made good, and Priam weakly receives into his palace the fatal beauty who is to prove the ruin of the Trojan fortunes.
The outrage rouses all Greece to arms. Menelaus appeals to his brother Agamemnon, king of Argos and Mycenae, who held some sort of suzerainty over the whole of Greece. ”

“ He has seen the result of the combat, and taunts Juno with the double patronage extended to the Greeks by herself and Minerva—which, after all, has failed—while Venus, more active and energetic, has rescued her favourite. However, he awards the victory to Menelaus; and suggests, as a solution to all disputes and difficulties, that now Helen should be given up, the Greeks go home, and so the fate of Troy be averted. At the thought of her enemy thus escaping, the queen of the gods cannot contain her rage. Jupiter gives way. He loves Troy much, but domestic peace and quietness more. ”

“ They who bring with them, to the pages of classical fiction, a taste which has been built up by modern song and romance, must be warned at once that there is no love-story in either Iliad or Odyssey. Indeed, one remarkable point of difference between the imaginative writers of antiquity and those of our own days, lies in the absence of that which is the motive and the key-note of five-sixths of our modern tales in prose and verse. ”

“ Achilles draws near. The courage which has never failed Hector before, wholly deserts him now; he turns and flies, "like a dove from the falcon." Judged by any theory of modern heroism, his conduct is simply indefensible. Critics tell us that the poet, in order to enhance the glory of his chief hero, makes even the champion of Troy fear to face him. But it is no compliment, in our modern eyes, to a victorious warrior, to have it explained that his crowning victory was won over a coward. ”

“ Achilles schools himself into patience while the rest act upon this prosaic but prudent counsel; but for himself, he will neither eat nor drink, nor wash his blood-stained hands, till he has avenged the death of his comrade. So he sits apart in his grief, while the rest are at the banquet: Minerva, by Jupiter's command, infusing into his body ambrosia and nectar, to sustain his strength. Another true mourner is Briseis. The first sight which meets the captive princess on her return to the Myrmidon camp is the bloody corpse of Patroclus. She throws herself upon it in an agony of tears. ”

“ Some heroes, on the other hand, went resolutely to the war, though the fates foretold that they should never return from it alive. Euchenor of Corinth, though rich like Echepolus, could not be persuaded to remain at home, even when his aged father, who was a seer himself, forewarned him of his doom; he boldly dared his fate, and fell at the close of the siege by the hand of Paris.
Under somewhat similar auguries the great hero of Homer’s tale left his home for Troy. Achilles, said the legends, was the son of the ocean-goddess Thetis by a mortal lover, Peleus son of Æacus. ”

“ The old men break off their talk as the beautiful stranger draws near. They had seen her often enough before; the fatal face and form must have been well known in the streets and palaces of Troy, however retired a life Helen might well have thought it becoming in her unhappy position to lead. But the fair vision comes upon their eyes with a new and ever-increasing enchantment. ”

“ Stung by the taunt, nine chiefs spring to their feet at once, and offer themselves for the combat. Conspicuous amongst them are Diomed, the giant Ajax, and King Agamemnon himself; and when the choice of a champion is referred to lot, the hopes and wishes of the whole army are audibly expressed, that on one of these three the lot may fall. It falls on Ajax; and amidst the congratulations and prayers of his comrades, the tall chieftain dons his armour, and strides forth to meet his adversary. The combat is maintained with vigour on both sides, till dusk comes on ”

“ Gentle and daughterlike to the aged Priam, humble and tearful in the presence of her noble and generous brother-in-law Hector, as disdainful as she dares to be to her ignoble lord and lover,—tender, respectful, regretful, towards the gallant husband she has deserted. ”