Superwomen Part 7

CHAPTER FOUR

HELEN OF TROY

MODEL FOR ALL THE SIRENS OF THE CENTURIES

Some wise folk say she never existed. But, for that matter, some wise folk also say that her press agent, Homer, never existed, and that his "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were compilations of lesser men's writings. As well say that Napoleon was a "compilation" of his marshals.

Some aver that she indeed walked the earth, a Wonder Woman, and that her charm perhaps stirred up strife among nations, but that her fame kept on growing after she was dead, until--even as hundreds of jokes were attributed to Joe Miller that Joe never perpetrated or even heard--people got to making her the heroine of a myriad impossible deeds and adventures that no one woman or no ten women could have achieved.

Still others declare that she and her story were allegorical, standing for feminine charm and for its fatal power; that she embodied the Greek idea of superwoman perfection. The same sort of people gravely tell us that Hercules and Croesus and William Tell were "solar myths"--whatever that may mean--and their descendants will put the myth brand, ten thousand years hence, on Napoleon, Roosevelt, John L.

Sullivan, and Lydia Pinkham.

While common sense may balk at the tale of Helen of Troy, common sense would as readily balk at a narrative of the high cost of living or of the All-Europe War. And what is common sense among friends? I am going to tell Helen's story as if it were gospel truth. For all I know, it may be. I am not going to draw on a dull imagination for any of it, but to take it entirely from a dozen of the olden authorities, from Homer down. After all, since we believe in Santa Claus, why not in Helen of Troy?

(I cannot help feeling a little thrill of pride in this preamble. In spots, it is almost scholarly. And so to the story.)

She was the daughter of Tyndareus of Argos, one of the horde of kinglets who split up the Greek archipelago among them. She lived three thousand years ago. And so adorable was she that some one started a rumor that she was not the daughter of Tyndareus, but of great Jove himself. This kind of talk pa.s.sed as complimentary in those benighted days. Wherefore, Helen's parents did not start a suit for criminal libel against the flatterer, but heaped honors on him.

By the time Helen reached young womanhood, she was the wonder of all Greece. She was tall, slender, and red-haired. In a day of almost universal dowdiness, she knew how to wear her clothes--although she did not use that knowledge to any prodigal extent; clothes, in balmy prehistoric Greece, being used for adornment rather than as coverings.

Her wit and her subtle magnetism vied with her good looks. Suitors came from one end of the archipelago to the other to visit the palace of Tyndareus and to pay court to the Wonder Girl. They were a goodly throng, these suitors; kings one and all, even though most of their kingdoms were smaller than Delaware. Here are a few names culled from the endless list:

Ulysses, craftiest of Greeks, a short-legged man, with the upper body of a giant; Agamemnon, overlord of all Greece, t.i.tular King of Mycenae, a hot-tempered, long-winded potentate; Menelaus of Sparta, Agamemnon's brother, an honest, not overbright, kind-hearted chap, who loved sport better than statesmanship; Nestor, the wisest of men, (yet old enough to have known better than to come a-courting, for already his hair and beard were white); the two Ajaxes, thickheads both, one of whom was later to crown a silly life by defying Jove's lightning to mortal combat; Diomed, champion heavyweight battler of his century; Achilles, fiery demiG.o.d and prehistoric matinee hero; these and many another.

Now, in that benighted age, kings had a way of gratifying personal grudges by declaring war on their fellow sovereigns. Tyndareus was a shrewd old fellow. Also, he was fond of his glorious daughter, and he wanted to save her and her future husband from possible misfortune.

So, before he allowed Helen to make her choice he bound each and all of the suitors to the following solemn oath: That they would not only abide peacefully by Helen's decision, but would pledge themselves to fight to the death in behalf of the contest's winner if, at any future time, his domestic peace should be threatened, or his wife stolen from him.

This pledge was not as fanciful as it may seem. For, cave-man tactics of "wooing by capture" were still more or less in vogue. A man who fell in love with another's wife was wont to kidnap her and to defy her bereft spouse to get her back.

Thus, Tyndareus was not only preventing civil war in Greece, but he was making it prohibitively perilous for any outsider to try to win Helen. Such a wooer would find himself at odds with practically every country in the whole archipelago. Yes, decidedly Tyndareus knew what he was about. He was a.s.suring his daughter--as far as was humanly possible--a safe married life.

All the royal suitors--being very much in love--were in a condition to promise anything. They bound themselves, right willingly, to the oath Tyndareus exacted; even Nestor, who, as I think I said, was old and wise enough to have known better. It is a supreme tribute to Helen's glory that the wisest man alive should have behaved just as foolishly over her as did the osseous-brained Ajax Telemon.

The oath being taken, Helen's choice was made known. And, out of the ruck of greater and richer and handsomer men, she chose the plodding Menelaus, King of Sparta.

There were black looks, there were highly unstoical gusts of anger--but the disappointed suitors made the best of their bad luck.

After consoling themselves by getting gloriously drunk at the marriage feast, they called it a day, and went home; not one of them realizing how fearfully his lovelorn oath was one day to bind him. And the golden Helen departed for the prim little, grim little kingdom of Sparta with her liege lord, Menelaus.

The years drifted on, lazily, happily, in humdrum fashion. If Menelaus were not inspiring as a husband, he was at least pleasanter to live with than a cleverer man might have been. He and Helen had one child, a daughter, Hermione.

Placid years make sweet living, but poor telling. So let us get along to the day when heralds from the port of Pylos brought news of a strange prince's arrival on the Spartan sh.o.r.es. The messengers knew not who the stranger might be, nor whence he came. But, from his retinue and dress and bearing, they judged him worthy to be a guest of honor. So a gorgeous guard was sent to escort him to the palace, and great preparations were made there to receive him.

The event seems to warrant a more Homeric wealth of language than I can compa.s.s, but it would be hard not to drop into semi-stately--not to say semi-Homeric and wholly plagiaristic--diction over it. So bear with me. It won't last long.

Adown the dry white road that ran to Pylos through the plain, a dust cloud was advancing; shields of bronze and weapons gleaming through it, here and there, with glimpses of purple robes. In the palace, tables were set out, with fair linen on them. Meats were brought forth, with rare wine from the Ismarian vineyards to the north. A votive heifer was driven in, lowing, from the fields, for the guest sacrifice. Her horns were soon sheathed with gold; then the ax-man felled and killed her with a single blow. She was quartered, and her fat was laid on the fire, along with barley grain. And the savor of the sacrifice rose, grateful, to high Olympus.

Now, through the yellow dust cloud, chariots were to be seen. A hardy band of mariners plodded beside the wheels and behind. They were bronzed and clear-eyed, these sea rovers, beguiling the journey with gay speech and with deep, mighty laughs. And they shouted, instead of speaking as do landfolk.

In the foremost chariot rode two men. One was King Diocles of Pherae.

The other was the goodliest man mortal eye ever looked upon. A mane of fine-spun golden hair fell over the shoulders of his Sidonian robe; his face was like the sunshine, and his eyes were filled with the gladness of living. He was Paris, son of King Priam, and a prince of Troy. And his right hand gripped a shadow-casting spear.

In the banquet hall, when the visitors and their host were seated, appeared Helen, the wife of Menelaus, with her little daughter, Hermione. When the cries of hunger and of thirst had died down, Helen addressed the strangers, asking no direct question--since to question a guest were discourteous--but saying that mayhap they would deign to explain who they were, and why they had come hither.

Then arose Paris, standing by the board, facing the golden Helen. And he spoke winged words:

It was prophesied at his birth, he began, that he would one day be the ruin of Troy. To prevent his living to fulfill his ordained fate, his father, King Priam--weeping at the deed's black necessity--had him borne to the lonely top of Mount Ida, there to die of exposure, or at the fangs of wild beasts. But a great she-bear, roaming the mountain crest, found the babe and brought him down to her cave, and there laid him among her own soft-coated young. Here he was found one day by herdsmen, among whom he grew up.

In time he owned a herd. The best-loved of his cattle was a white bull, called The Star. Now it came to pa.s.s that King Priam, urged on by a dream, sent his slaves to Mount Ida's slopes to secure the finest bull that grazed there, for a sacrifice to Neptune. The slaves came upon The Star and drove him away with them. Paris gave chase, but in vain. Then he hastened to the city of Troy to beg redress from the king. And as he entered the outer gates of Priam's palace, his own sister, Ca.s.sandra, recognized him.

Ca.s.sandra was a prophetess. Apollo had loved her, and, as a love gift, had endowed her with a gift of foretelling all things. But when she rejected his suit, he willed that while she might still retain the gift of prophecy, her forecasts should never be believed. So now her words were laughed to scorn.

But Priam questioned the mountaineer. And, by the resemblance the youth bore to his father, and the ring that he still wore around his neck, where it had been placed when he had been taken up into the mountain as an infant, the king at last knew him. Great was his joy.

And so, elevated to his rightful princely station, Paris pa.s.sed the next few years, no longer in the harsh toil and on the poor fare of a herder, but as a king's son; wholly forgetting OEnone, the forest girl of Mount Ida whom he had wooed and won and deserted, and whom he to-day mentioned merely in the pride of a past conquest.

Now, breaking in upon Paris' somewhat long-winded story of his life, let us come to the real reason of his presence in Sparta. The G.o.ddess of Strife had tried to enliven things in peaceful Olympus by tossing down in front of Venus and Juno and Minerva a golden apple. On the apple's rind was graven the inscription:

"~For the most beautiful.~"

Straightway, the three G.o.ddesses, who had been tolerably good friends, fell to quarreling as to which should have the apple of gold. And they compromised by leaving the decision to Paris. Every member of the trio tried secretly to bribe him; Juno offering him power, Minerva offering him wisdom, Venus promising him love--the love of the fairest woman on earth. Being very young and very human, Paris chose Love; casting aside all hope of power and of wisdom to gain it. And Venus bade him sail forth in search of the Wonder Woman she had promised him. He had departed on this Quest of the Golden Girl, and fate had led him to Helen.

I am not going to touch on the mythological part of Helen's career, more than I can help. But I protest most solemnly that the foregoing tale of Paris and the three G.o.ddesses is not mythology, but absolute truth. It may never have happened; indeed, it could not have happened, but it is truth, none the less. If you doubt that a silly apple could cause such strife among three erstwhile friendly deities and stir up unending enmity and discord and hatred, just remember that the apple was of ~gold~. Wait until the family estate is divided among the heirs--the heirs who have hitherto been such good friends--and watch what the Golden Apple of Discord can do to breed hate and dissensions.

Those old Greeks were wise, even in their myths. They knew human nature. And human nature's sole change since their day is the subst.i.tution of conventionality for simplicity. At heart, there is no difference.

Take, too, Paris' choice of love, rather than of wisdom or of power.

When we read about that, as children, we said smugly: "What a fool Paris was!" Then, as we grew older--Well, if Paris was a fool, just note in what goodly company he stands. His compeers in the same divine idiocy are such immortals as Mark Antony, Marie Stuart, Francis I., almost the whole Bourbon dynasty, Sappho, Cleopatra, Solomon, and a sheaf of other shimmeringly splendid sinners. They were monomaniacs, all of them, and they sold their birthright of decency for a mess of ambrosia; too blinded to know or care how much they were losing, and for how barren a price. Wherein, their particular brand of insanity gives them full right and privilege to claim, kinship with the Gadarene swine of Holy Writ.

Well, then, Paris had quested forth to find and win the most beautiful of women. And he found her--at the banquet board of her spouse, Menelaus, King of Sparta.

Long he abode, an honored and trusted guest in his host's palace. And Menelaus suspected nothing, not even that a man of G.o.dlike beauty and comfortable dearth of morals was a dangerous visitor in the home of a plodding, middle-aged husband.

One night--while Menelaus snored peacefully in preparation for a boar hunt he had planned for the next day--Paris and Helen stole forth together in the darkness and sped, hand in hand, to Pylos, where the lover's ship was in waiting. In his own arms, Paris bore his inamorata from sh.o.r.e to deck. Away across the wine-hued aegean fled the lovers, to Troy. There they were wed; regardless of the fact that Helen had left a perfectly good husband alive in Greece. The laws against bigamy--if there were any at that day--do not seem to have been very rigidly enforced; nor do those laws' fracturers appear to have lost caste thereby.

Mind you, Helen was no love-sick girl to be swept off her feet by an impetuous wooer with spun-gold hair and a Romeo manner. When Paris stole her from Menelaus and married her, she was forty years old. But, like Ninon de Lenclos and Diane de Poictiers and other of the world's true super-women, age had no power to mar her. Father Time could not pa.s.s a face like hers without pausing to kiss it; but the kiss was very tender and loving, and it left in its wake no wrinkles or telltale lines. Helen was ageless.

Ilium worshipped beauty, even as did Greece. And the Trojans, from old Priam down, hailed their new princess with rapture; all save Ca.s.sandra, that daughter of Priam who was blest by the gift of prophecy and cursed by the incredulity of all who heard her. At sight of Helen, Ca.s.sandra shrieked aloud:

"Trojans, you nurse to your hearts a snake that shall sting you to death! You cherish a firebrand that shall burn our city to the dust!"

And she fell, writhing and foaming, at Helen's feet. But folk laughed at the forecast, and the cheers of welcome drowned the wail of the seeress.

So did Argive Helen come to her husband's people. And thus did her beauty win all hearts. Paris adored her wildly, uncontrollably, to the hour of his death. Her pa.s.sing infatuation for him soon cooled into contemptuous toleration. And for the second time in her life she learned that a husband is merely what is left of a lover after the nerve has been extracted.

Meantime, Greece was humming like a kicked hornet's nest. Menelaus learned of his wife's flight, and with whom she had fled. He went, heart-broken, to his brother Agamemnon for help in avenging his wrongs. Agamemnon not only reminded him of the other suitors' promise to defend the honor of the man whom Helen should marry, but volunteered, as overlord of Greece, to force them to keep their vows.

Now, this offer was none too easy to carry out. It is one thing to make the maddest pledge, under the drunkenness of love. It is quite another thing to fulfill that pledge when love is dead. The swain who at twenty declares to a girl: "If ever you want me, say the word, and I swear I will come to you, from the ends of the earth!" would be horribly embarra.s.sed if, as a sedate husband and father at forty, that same half-forgotten sweetheart should hold him to his calf-love oath.