Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 79

Obviously even individual preference was not a strong ingredient in the "love" of these "heroes," and we may well share the significant surprise of Ajax (638) that Achilles should persist in his wrath when seven girls were offered him for one. Evidently the tent of Achilles, like that of Agamemnon, was full of women (in line 366 he especially refers to his a.s.sortment of "fair-girdled women" whom he expects to take home when the war is over); yet Gladstone had the audacity to write that though concubinage prevailed in the camp before Troy, it was "only single concubinage." In his larger treatise he goes so far as to apologize for these ruffians--who captured and traded off women as they would horses or cows--on the ground that they were away from their wives and were indulging in the "mildest and least licentious"

of all forms of adultery! Yet Gladstone was personally one of the purest and n.o.blest of men. Strange what somersaults a hobby ridden too hard may induce a man to make in his ethical att.i.tude!

ODYSSEUS, LIBERTINE AND RUFFIAN

If we now turn from the hero of the _Iliad_ to the hero of the _Odyssey_, we find the same Gladstone declaring (II., 502) that "while admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is pining every day for Penelope;"

and in the shorter treatise he goes so far as to say (131), that

"the subject of the Odyssey gives Homer the opportunity of setting forth the domestic character of Odysseus, in his profound attachment to wife, child, and home, in such a way as to adorn not only the hero, but his age and race."

The "profound attachment" of Odysseus to his wife may be gauged in the first place by the fact that he voluntarily remained away from her ten years, fighting to recover, for another king, a worthless, adulterous wench. Before leaving on this expedition, from which he feared he might never return, he spoke to his wife, as she herself relates (XVIII., 269), begging her to be mindful of his father and mother, "and when you see our son a bearded man, then marry whom you will, and leave the house now yours"--namely for the benefit of the son, for whose welfare he was thus more concerned than for a monopoly of his wife's love.

After the Trojan war was ended he embarked for home, but suffered a series of shipwrecks and misfortunes. On the island of Aeaea he spent a whole year sharing the hospitality and bed of the beautiful sorceress Circe, with no pangs of conscience for such conduct, nor thought of home, till his comrades, in spite of the "abundant meat and pleasant wine," longed to depart and admonished him in these words: "Unhappy man, it is time to think of your native land, if you are destined ever to be saved and to reach your home in the land of your fathers." Thus they spoke and "persuaded his manly heart." In view of the ease with which he thus abandoned himself for a whole year to a life of indulgence, till his comrades prodded his conscience, we may infer that he was not so very unwilling a prisoner afterward, of the beautiful nymph Calypso, who held him eight years by force on her island. We read, indeed, that, at the expiration of these years, Odysseus was always weeping, and his sweet life ebbed away in longing for his home. But all the sentiment is taken out of this by the words which follow: [Greek: epei ouketi aendane numphae] "_because the nymph pleased him no more_!" Even so Tannhauser tired of the pleasures in the grotto of Venus, and begged to be allowed to leave.

While thus permitting himself the unrestrained indulgence of his pa.s.sions, without a thought of his wife, Odysseus has the barbarian's stern notions regarding the duties of women who belong to him. There are fifty young women in his palace at home who ply their hard tasks and bear the servant's lot. Twelve of these, having no one to marry, yield to the temptations of the rich princes who sue for the hand of Penelope in the absence of her husband.

Ulysses, on his return, hears of this, and forthwith takes measures to ascertain who the guilty ones are. Then he tells his son Telemachus and the swineherd and neatherd to

"go and lead forth these serving-maids out of the stately hall to a spot between the roundhouse and the neat courtyard wall, and smite them with your long swords till you take life from all, so that they may forget their secret amours with the suitors."

The "discreet" Telemachus carried out these orders, leading the maids to a place whence there was no escape and exclaiming:

"'By no honorable death would I take away the lives of those who poured reproaches on my head and on my mother, and lay beside the suitors.'"

"He spoke and tied the cable of a dark-bowed ship to a great pillar, then lashed it to the roundhouse, stretching it high across, too high for one to touch the feet upon the ground. And as the wide-winged thrushes or the doves strike on a net set in the bushes; and when they think to go to roost a cruel bed receives them; even so the women held their heads in line, and around every neck a noose was laid that they might die most vilely. They twitched their feet a little, but not long."

A more dastardly, cowardly, unmanly deed is not on record in all human literature, yet the instigator of it, Odysseus, is always the "wise,"

"royal," "princely," "good," and "G.o.dlike," and there is not the slightest hint that the great poet views his a.s.sa.s.sination of the poor maidens as the act of a ruffian, an act the more monstrous and unpardonable because Homer (XXII., 37) makes Odysseus himself say to the suitors that they outraged his maids by force ([Greek: biaios]).

What world-wide difference in this respect between the greatest poet of antiquity and Jesus of Nazareth who, when the Scribes and Pharisees brought before him a woman who had erred like the maids of Odysseus, and asked if she should be stoned as the law of Moses commanded, said unto them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her;" whereupon, being convicted by their own consciences, they went out one by one. And Jesus said, "Where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?" She said, "No man, Lord." And Jesus said unto her, "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more."

He is lenient to the sinner because of his sense of justice and mercy; yet at the same time his ethical ideal is infinitely higher than Homer's. He preaches that "whosoever looketh on a woman to l.u.s.t after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart;" whereas Homer's ideas of s.e.xual morality are, in the last a.n.a.lysis, hardly above those of a savage. The dalliance of Odysseus with the nymphs, and the licentious treatment of women captives by all the "heroes," do not, any more than the cowardly murder of the twelve maids, evoke a word of censure, disgust, or disapproval from his lips.

His G.o.ds are on the same low level as his heroes, if not lower. When the spouse of Zeus, king of the G.o.ds, wishes to beguile him, she knows no other way than borrowing the girdle of Aphrodite. But this scene (_Iliad_, XIV., 153 _seq_.) is innocuous compared with the shameless description of the adulterous amours of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey (VIII., 266-365), in presence of the G.o.ds, who treat the matter as a great joke. For a parallel to this pa.s.sage we would have to descend to the Botocudos or the most degraded Australians. All of which proves that the severity of the punishment inflicted on the twelve maids of Odysseus does not indicate a high regard for chast.i.ty, but is simply another ill.u.s.tration of typical barbarous fury against women for presuming to do anything without the consent of the man whose private property they are.

WAS PENELOPE A MODEL WIFE?

If the real Odysseus, unprincipled, unchivalrous, and cruel, is anything but a hero who "adorns his age and race," must it not be conceded, at any rate, that "the unwearied fidelity of Penelope, awaiting through the long revolving years the return of her storm-tossed husband," presents, as Lecky declares (II., 279), and as is commonly supposed, a picture of perennial beauty "which Rome and Christendom, chivalry and modern civilization, have neither eclipsed nor transcended?"

We have seen that the fine words of Achilles regarding his "love" of Briseis are, when confronted with his actions, reduced to empty verbiage. The same result is reached in the case of Penelope, if we subject her actions and motives to a searching critical a.n.a.lysis.

Ostensibly, indeed, she is set up as a model of that feminine constancy which men at all times have insisted on while they themselves preferred to be models of inconstancy. As usual in such cases, the feminine model is painted with touches of almost grotesque exaggeration. After the return of Odysseus Penelope informed her nurse (XXIII., 18) that she has not slept soundly all this time--twenty years! Such phrases, too, are used as "longing for Odysseus, I waste my heart away," or "May I go to my dread grave seeing Odysseus still, and never gladden heart of meaner husband." But they are mere phrases.

The truth about her att.i.tude and her-feelings is told frankly in several places by three different persons--the G.o.ddess of wisdom, Telemachus, and Penelope herself. Athene urges Telemachus to make haste that he may find his blameless mother still at home instead of the bride of one of the suitors.

"But let her not against your will take treasure from your home. You know a woman's way; she strives to enrich his house who marries her, while of her former children and the husband of her youth, when he is dead she thinks not, and she talks of him no more" (XV., 15-23).

In the next book (73-77) Telemachus says to the swineherd:

"Moreover my mother's feeling wavers, whether to bide beside me here and keep the house, and thus revere her husband's bed and _heed the public voice_, or finally to follow some chief of the Achaians who woos her in the hall with largest gifts."

And a little later (126) he exclaims, "She neither declines the hated suit nor has she power to end it, while they with feasting impoverish my home."

These words of Telcinachus are endorsed in full by Penelope herself, whose remarks (XIX., 524-35) to the disguised Odysseus give us the key to the whole situation and explain why she lies abed so much weeping and not knowing what to do.

" ... so does my doubtful heart toss to and fro whether to bide beside my son and keep all here in safety--my goods, my maids, and my great high-roofed house--and thus revere my husband and _heed the public voice_, or finally to follow some chief of the Achaiians who woos me in my hall with countless gifts. My son, while but a child and slack of understanding, _did not permit my marrying_ and departing from my husband's home; but now that he is grown and come to man's estate, he prays me to go home again and leave the hall, so troubled is he for that substance which the Achaiians waste."

If these words mean anything, they mean that what kept Penelope from marrying again was not affection for her husband but the desire to live up to the demands of "the public voice" and the fact that her son--who, according to Greek usage, was her master--would not permit her to do so. This, then, was the cause of that proverbial constancy!

But a darker shadow still is cast on her much-vaunted affection by her cold and suspicious reception of her husband on his return. While the dog recognized him at once and the swineherd was overjoyed, she, the wife, held him aloof, fearing that he might be some man who had come to cheat her! At first Odysseus thought she scorned him because he "was foul and dressed in sorry clothes;" but even after he had bathed and put on his princely attire she refused to embrace him, because she wished to "prove her husband!" No wonder that her son declared that her "heart is always harder than a stone," and that Odysseus himself thus accosts her:

"Lady, a heart impenetrable beyond the s.e.x of women the dwellers on Olympus gave you. There is no other woman of such stubborn spirit to stand off from the husband who, after many grievous toils, came in the twentieth year home to his native land. Come then, good nurse, and make my bed, that I may lie alone. For certainly of iron is the heart within her breast."

HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE

A much closer approximation to the modern ideal of conjugal love than the attachment between Odysseus and Penelope with the "heart of iron,"

may be found in the scene describing Hector's leave-taking of Andromache before he goes out to fight the Greeks, fearing he may never return. The serving-women inform him that his wife, hearing that the Trojans were hard pressed, had gone in haste to the wall, like unto one frenzied. He goes to find her and when he arrives at the Skaian gates, she comes running to meet him, together with the nurse, who holds his infant boy on her bosom. Andromache weeps, recalls to his mind that she had lost her father, mother, and seven brothers, wherefore he is to her a father, mother, brothers, as well as a husband. "Have pity and abide here upon the tower, lest thou make thy child an orphan and thy wife a widow." Though Hector cannot think of shrinking from battle like a coward, he declared that her fate, should the city fall and he be slain, troubles him more than that of his father, mother, and brothers--the fate of being led into captivity and slavery by a Greek, doomed to carry water and to be pointed at as the former wife of the brave Hector. He expresses the wish that his boy--who at first is frightened by the horse-hair crest on his helmet--may become greater than his father, bringing with him blood-stained spoils from the enemy he has slain, and gladdening his mother's heart; then caressing his wife with his hand, he begs her not to sorrow overmuch, but to go to her house and see to her own tasks, the loom and the distaff. Thus he spake, and she departed for her home, oft looking back and letting fall big tears.

This scene, which takes up four pages of the _Iliad_ (VI., 370-502), is the most touching, the most inspired, the most sentimental and modern pa.s.sage not only in the Homeric poems, but in all Greek literature. Benecke has aptly remarked (10) that the relation between Hector and Andromache is unparalleled in that literature; and he adds:

"At the same time, how little really sympathetic to the Greek of the period was this wonderful and unique pa.s.sage is sufficiently shown by this very fact, that no attempt was ever made to imitate or develop it. It may sound strange to say so, but in all probability we to-day understand Andromache better than did the Greeks, for whom she was created; better, too, perhaps than did her creator himself."

Benecke should have written Hector in place of Andromache. There was no difficulty, even for a Greek, in understanding Andromache. She had every reason, even from a purely selfish point of view, to dread Hector's battling with the savage Greeks; for while he lived she was a princess, with all the comforts of life, whereas his fall and the fall of Troy meant her enslavement and a life of misery. What makes the scene in question so modern is the att.i.tude of Hector--his dividing his caresses equally between his wife and his son, and a.s.suring her that he is more troubled about her fate and anguish than about what may befall his father, mother, and brothers. That is an utterly un-Greek sentiment, and that is the reason why the pa.s.sage was not imitated. It was not a realistic scene from life, but a mere product of Homer's imagination and glowing genius--like the pathetic scene in which Odysseus wipes away a tear on noting that his faithful dog Argos recognized him and wagged his tail. It is extremely improbable that a man who could behave so cruelly toward women as Odysseus did could have thus sympathized with a dog.

Certainly no one else did, not even his "faithful" Penelope. As long as Argos was useful in the chase, the poet tells us, he was well taken care of; but now that he was old, he "lay neglected upon a pile of dung," doomed to starve, for he had not strength to move. Homer alone, with the prophetic insight of a genius, could have conceived such a touch of modern sentiment toward animals, so utterly foreign to ancient ideas; and he alone could have put such a sentiment of wife-love into the mouth of the Trojan Hector--a barbarian whose ideal of manliness and greatness consisted in "bringing home blood-stained spoils of the enemy."

BARBAROUS TREATMENT OF GREEK WOMEN

It seems like a touch of sarcasm that Homer incarnates his isolated and un-Greek ideal of devotion to a wife in a _Trojan_, as if to indicate that it must not be accepted as a touch of _Greek_ life. From our point of view it is a stroke of genius. On the other hand it is obvious that attributing such a sentiment to a Trojan likewise cannot be anything but a poetic license; for these Trojans were quite as piratical, coa.r.s.e, licentious, and polygamous as the Greeks, Hector's own father having had fifty children, nineteen of whom were borne by his wife, thirty-one by various concubines. Many pages of the _Iliad_ bear witness to the savage ferocity of Greeks and Trojans alike--a ferocity utterly incompatible with such tender emotions as Homer himself was able to conceive in his imagination. The ferocity of Achilles is typical of the feelings of these heroes. Not content with slaughtering an enemy who meets him in honorable battle, defending his wife and home, he thrust thongs of ox-hide through the prostrate Hector's feet, bound him to his chariot, lashed his horses to speed, and dragged him about in sight of the wailing wife and parents of his victim. This he repeated several times, aggravating the atrocity a hundredfold by his intention--in spite of the piteous entreaties of the dying Hector--to throw his corpse to be eaten by the dogs, thus depriving even his spirit of rest, and his family of religious consolation. Nay, Achilles expresses the savage wish that his rage might lead him so far as to carve and eat raw Hector's flesh. The Homeric "hero," in short, is almost on a level in cruelty with the red Indian.

But it is in their treatment of women--which Gladstone commends so highly--that the barbarous nature of the Greek "heroes" is revealed in all its hideous nakedness. The king of their G.o.ds set them the example when he punished his wife and queen by hanging her up amid the clouds with two anvils suspended from her feet; clutching and throwing to the earth any G.o.ds that came to her rescue. (_Iliad,_ XV., 15-24.) Rank does not exempt the women of the heroic age from slavish toil.

Nausicaa, though a princess, does the work of a washerwoman and drives her own chariot to the laundry on the banks of the river, her only advantage over her maids being that they have to walk.[296] Her mother, too, queen of the Phoeaceans, spends her time sitting among the waiting maids spinning yarn, while her husband sits idle and "sips his wine like an immortal." The women have to do all the work to make the men comfortable, even washing their feet, giving them their bath, anointing them, and putting their clothes on them again (_Odyssey,_ XIX., 317; VIII., 454; XVII., 88, etc.),[297] even a princess like Polycaste, daughter of the divine Nestor, being called upon to perform such menial service (III., 464-67). As for the serving-maids, they grind corn, fetch water, and do other work, just like red squaws; and in the house of Odysseus we read of a poor girl, who, while the others were sleeping, was still toiling at her corn because her weakness had prevented her from finishing her task (XX., 110).

Penelope was a queen, but was very far from being treated like one.

Gladstone found "the strongest evidence of the respect in which women were held" in the fact that the suitors stopped short of violence to her person! They did everything but that, making themselves at home in her house, unbidden and hated guests, debauching her maidservants, and consuming her provisions by wholesale. But her own son's att.i.tude is hardly less disrespectful and insulting than that of the ungallant, impertinent suitors. He repeatedly tells his mother to mind her own business--the loom and the distaff--leaving words for men; and each time the poet recommends this rude, unfilial speech as a "wise saying"

which the queen humbly "lays to heart." His love of property far exceeds his love of his mother, for as soon as he is grown up he begs her to go home and get married again, "so troubled is he for the substance which the suitors waste." He urges her at last to "marry whom she will," offering as an extra inducement "countless gifts" if she will only go.

To us it seems topsy-turvy that a mother should have to ask her son's consent to marry again, but to the Greeks that was a matter of course.

There are many references to this custom in the Homeric poems. Girls, too, though they be princesses, are disposed of without the least regard to their wishes, as when Agamemnon offers Achilles the choice of one of his three daughters (IX., 145). Big sums are sometimes paid for a girl--by Iphidamas, for instance, who fell in battle, "far from his bride, of whom he had known no joy, and much had he given for her; first a hundred kine he gave, and thereafter promised a thousand, goats and sheep together." The idea, too, occurs over and over again that among the suitors the one who has the richest gifts to offer should take the bride. How much this mercenary, unceremonious, and often cruel treatment of women was a matter of course among these Greeks is indicated by Homer's nave epithet for brides, [Greek: parthenoi alphesiboiai], "virgins who bring in oxen." And this is the state of affairs which Gladstone sums up by saying "there is a certain authority of the man over the woman; but it does not destroy freedom"!

The early Greeks were always fighting, and the object of their wars, as among the Australian savages, was usually woman, as Achilles frankly informs us when he speaks of having laid waste twelve cities and pa.s.sed through many b.l.o.o.d.y days of battle, "_warring with folk for their women's sake_." (_Iliad,_ IX., 327.) Nestor admonishes the Greeks to "let no man hasten to depart home till each have lain by some Trojan's wife" (354-55). The leader of the Greek forces issues this command regarding the Trojans:

"Of them let not one escape sheer estruction at our hands, not even the man-child that the mother beareth in her womb; let not even him escape, but all perish together out of Ilios, uncared for and unknown" (VI., 57);

while Homer, with consummate art, paints for us the terrors of a captured city, showing how the women--of all cla.s.ses--were maltreated:

"As a woman wails and clings to her dear husband, who falls for town and people, seeking to shield his home and children from the ruthless day; seeing him dying, gasping, she flings herself on him with a piercing cry; while men behind, smiting her with the spears on back and shoulder, force her along to bondage to suffer toil and trouble; with pain most pitiful her cheeks are thin...." (_Odyssey,_ VIII., 523-30.)[298]

LOVE IN SAPPHO'S POEMS