Mosaics of Grecian History Part 17

But Ca'pys, and the rest of sounder mind, The fatal present to the flames designed, Or to the wat'ry deep; at least to bore The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore.

"The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide, With noise say nothing, and in parts divide.

La-oc'o-on, followed by a num'rous crowd, Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud: 'O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns?

What more than madness has possessed your brains?

Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?

And are Ulysses' arts no better known?

This hollow fabric either must enclose, Within its blind recess, our hidden foes; Or 'tis an engine raised above the town T' o'erlook the walls, and then to batter down.

Somewhat is sure designed by fraud or force-- Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.'

"Thus having said, against the steed he threw His forceful spear, which, hissing as it flew, Pierced through the yielding planks of jointed wood, And trembling in the hollow belly stood.

The sides, transpierced, return a rattling sound, And groans of Greeks enclosed came issuing through the wound; And, had not Heaven the fall of Troy designed, Or had not men been fated to be blind, Enough was said and done t' inspire a better mind.

Then had our lances pierced the treacherous wood, And Ilion's towers and Priam's empire stood."

Deceived by the treachery of Sinon, a captive Greek, who represents that the wooden horse was built and dedicated to Minerva to secure the aid that the G.o.ddess had hitherto refused the Greeks, and that, if it were admitted within the walls of Troy, the Grecian hopes would be forever lost, the infatuated Trojans break down a portion of the city's wall, and, drawing in the horse, give themselves up to festivity and rejoicing. aeneas continues the story as follows:

"With such deceits he gained their easy hearts, Too p.r.o.ne to credit his perfidious arts.

What Di'omed, nor Thetis' greater son, A thousand ships, nor ten years' siege, had done-- False tears and fawning words the city won.

"A s.p.a.cious breach is made; the town lies bare; Some hoisting levers, some the wheels prepare, And fasten to the horse's feet; the rest With cables haul along th' unwieldy beast: Each on his fellow for a.s.sistance calls.

At length the fatal fabric mounts the walls, Big with destruction. Boys with chaplets crowned, And choirs of virgins, sing and dance around.

Thus raised aloft, and then descending down, It enters o'er our heads, and threats the town.

O sacred city, built by hands divine!

O valiant heroes of the Trojan line!

Four times he struck; as oft the clashing sound Of arms was heard, and inward groans rebound.

Yet, mad with zeal, and blinded with our fate, We haul along the horse in solemn state, Then place the dire portent within the tower.

Ca.s.sandra cried and cursed th' unhappy hour, Foretold our fate; but, by the G.o.ds' decree, All heard, and none believed the prophecy.

With branches we the fane adorn, and waste In jollity the day ordained to be the last."

--The aeneid. Book II.--DRYDEN.

In the dead of night Sinon unlocked the horse, the Greeks rushed out, opened the gates of the city, and raised torches as a signal to those at Tenedos, who returned, and Troy was soon captured and given over to fire and the sword. Then followed the rejoicings of the victors, and the weeping and wailing of the Trojan women about to be carried away captive into distant lands, according to the usages of war.

The stately walls of Troy had sunken, Her towers and temples strewed the soil; The sons of h.e.l.las, victory-drunken, Richly laden with the spoil, Are on their lofty barks reclined Along the h.e.l.lespontine strand; A gleesome freight the favoring wind Shall bear to Greece's glorious land; And gleesome chant the choral strain, As toward the household altars now Each bark inclines the painted prow-- For Home shall smile again!

And there the Trojan women, weeping, Sit ranged in many a length'ning row; Their heedless locks, dishevelled, sweeping Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.

No festive sounds that peal along, Their mournful dirge can overwhelm; Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song, Commingled, wails the ruined realm.

"Farewell, beloved sh.o.r.es!" it said: "From home afar behold us torn, By foreign lords as captives borne-- Ah, happy are the dead!"

--SCHILLER.

For ten long years the Greeks at Argos had watched nightly for the beacon fires, lighted from point to point, that should announce the doom of Troy. When, in the Agamemnon of aeSCHYLUS, Clytemnes'tra declares that Troy has fallen, and the chorus, half incredulous, demands what messenger had brought the intelligence, she replies:

"A gleam--a gleam--from Ida's height By the fire-G.o.d sent, it came; From watch to watch it leaped, that light; As a rider rode the flame!

It shot through the startled sky, And the torch of that blazing glory Old Lemnos caught on high On its holy promontory, And sent it on, the jocund sign, To Athos, mount of Jove divine.

Wildly the while it rose from the isle, So that the might of the journeying light Skimmed over the back of the gleaming brine!

Farther and faster speeds it on, Till the watch that keep Macis'tus steep See it burst like a blazing sun!

Doth Macistus sleep On his tower-clad steep?

No! rapid and red doth the wildfire sweep: It flashes afar on the wayward stream Of the wild Euri'pus, the rushing beam!

It rouses the light on Messa'pion's height, And they feed its breath with the withered heath.

But it may not stay!

And away--away-- It bounds in its fresh'ning might.

"Silent and soon Like a broadened moon It pa.s.ses in sheen Aso'pus green, And bursts in Cithae'ron gray.

The warden wakes to the signal rays, And it swoops from the hills with a broader blaze: On--on the fiery glory rode-- Thy lonely lake, Gorgo'pis, glowed-- To Meg'ara's mount it came; They feed it again, And it streams amain-- A giant beard of flame!

The headland cliffs that darkly down O'er the Saron'ic waters frown, Are pa.s.sed with the swift one's lurid stride, And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide.

With mightier march and fiercer power It gained Arach'ne's neighboring tower-- Thence on our Ar'give roof its rest it won, Of Ida's fire the long-descended son!

Bright harbinger of glory and of joy!

So first and last with equal honor crowned, In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round.

And these my heralds, this my sign of Peace!

Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece Stalk, in stern tumult through the halls of Troy."

--Trans. by BULWER.

Such, in brief, is the commonly received account of the Trojan war, as we find it in Homer and other ancient writers. Concerning it the historian THIRLWALL remarks: "We consider it necessary to admit the reality of the Trojan war as a general fact, but beyond this we scarcely venture to proceed a single step. We find it impossible to adopt the poetical story of Helen, partly on account of its inherent improbability, and partly because we are convinced that Helen is a merely mythological person." GROTE says:[Footnote: "History of Greece." Chap. XV.] "In the eyes of modern inquiry the Trojan war is essentially a legend and nothing more. If we are asked if it be not a legend embodying portions of historical matter, and raised upon a basis of truth--whether there may not really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war purely human and political, without G.o.ds, without heroes, without Helen, without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of Eos, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic and expressive features of the old epic war--if we are asked if there was not really some such historical Trojan war as this, our answer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it be affirmed."

In this connection it is interesting to note that the discoveries of the German explorer, Schliemann, upon the site of ancient Troy, indicate that Homer "followed actual occurrences more closely than an over-skeptical historical criticism was once willing to allow."

FATE OF THE CHIEF ACTORS IN THE CONFLICT.

Of the fate of some of the princ.i.p.al actors in the Trojan war it may be stated that, of the prominent Trojans, aeneas alone escaped. After many years of wanderings he landed in Italy with a small company of Trojans; and the Roman writers trace to him the origin of their nation. Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, during the burning of Troy; while Achilles himself fell some time before, shot with an arrow in the heel by Paris, as Hector had prophesied would be the manner of his death. Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with Ulysses for the armor of the dead hero, but was unsuccessful, and died by his own hand. The poet EN'NIUS ascribes the following declaration to Tel'amon, the father of Ajax, when he heard of his son's death:

I knew, when I begat him, he must die, And trained him to no other destiny-- Knew, when I sent him to the Trojan sh.o.r.e, 'Twas not to halls of feast, but fields of gore.

--Trans. by PETERS.

Agamemnon, on his return to Greece, was barbarously murdered by his unfaithful queen, Clytemnestra. Diomed was driven from Greece, and barely escaped with his life. It is uncertain where or how he died. Ulysses, after almost innumerable troubles and hardships by sea and land, at last returned in safety to Ithaca. His wanderings are the subject of Homer's Odyssey.

But it may be asked, what became of Helen, the primary cause of the Trojan war, disastrous alike to victors and vanquished?

According to Virgil, [Footnote: aeneid, B. VI.] after the death of Paris she married the Trojan hero, De-iph'o-bus, and on the night after the city was taken betrayed him to Menela'us, to whom she became reconciled, and whom she accompanied, as Homer relates, [Footnote: Odyssey B. IV.] during the eight years of his wandering, on his return to Greece. LANDOR, in one of his h.e.l.len'ics, represents Menelaus, after the fall of Troy, as pursuing Helen up the steps of the palace, and threatening her with death. He thus addresses her:

"Stand, traitress, on that stair-- Thou mountest not another, by the G.o.ds!

Now take the death thou meritest, the death, Zeus, who presides over hospitality-- And every other G.o.d whom thou has left, And every other who abandons thee In this accursed city--sends at last.

Turn, vilest of vile slaves! turn, paramour Of what all other women hate, of cowards; Turn, lest this hand wrench back thy head, and toss It and its odors to the dust and flames."

Helen penitently receives his reproaches, and welcomes the threatened death; and when he speaks of their daughter, Hermi'o-ne, whom, an infant, she had so cruelly deserted, she exclaims:

"O my child!

My only one! thou livest: 'tis enough; Hate me, abhor me, curse me--these are duties-- Call me but mother in the shades of death!

She now is twelve years old, when the bud swells, And the first colors of uncertain life Begin to tinge it."

Menelaus turns aside to say,

"Can she think of home?

Hers once, mine yet, and sweet Hermione's!

Is there one spark that cheered my hearth, one left For thee, my last of love?"

When she beseeches him to delay not her merited fate, her words greatly move him, and he exclaims (aside),

"Her voice is musical As the young maids who sing to Artemis: How glossy is that yellow braid my grasp Seized and let loose! Ah, can ten years have pa.s.sed Since--but the children of the G.o.ds, like them, Suffer not age.[Footnote: Jupiter was fabled to be the father of Helen.]

(Then turning to Helen.) Helen! speak honestly, And thus escape my vengeance--was it force That bore thee off?"