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 passage not only in the Homeric poems, but in all Greek literature. Benecke has aptly remarked (10) that the relation between Hector and Androm. ache 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 passage 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 attitude of Hector-his dividing his caresses equally between his wife and his son, and assuring 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 passage 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 wifelove 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, coarse, 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 hundred fold 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.

66

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 gods 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 gods 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.1 Her mother, too, queen of the Phoaceans, 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.), 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

I have already commented (115) on Nausicia's lack of feminine delicacy and coyness; yet Gladstone says (132) "it may almost be questioned whether anywhere in literature there is to be found a conception of the maiden so perfect as Nausicaa in grace, tenderness, and delicacy "!

64

2 How Gladstone reconciled his conscience with these lines when he wrote (112) that on one important and characteristic subject, the exposure of the person to view, the men of that time had a peculiar and fastidious delicacy," I

cannot conceive.

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 attitude 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 naïve epithet for brides, TaρIévoi åλþeσíßola, "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 passed through many bloody 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 destruction 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 classes-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, VÍII., 523-30.)1

LOVE IN SAPPHO'S POEMS

Having failed to find any traces of romantic love, and only one of conjugal affection, in the greatest poet of the Greeks, let us now subject their greatest poetess to a critical examination.

Sappho undoubtedly had the divine spark. She may have

It will always remain one of the strangest riddles of the nineteenth century why the statesman who so often expressed his righteous indignation over the "Bulgarian atrocities" of his time should not only have pardoned, but with insidious and glaring sophistry apologized for the similar atrocities of the heroes whom Homer fancies he is complimenting when he calls them professional 66 spoilers of towns." I wish every reader of this volume who has any doubts regarding the correctness of my views would first read Gladstone's shorter work on Homer (a charmingly written book, with all its faults), and then the epics themselves, which are now accessible to all in the admirable prose versions of the Iliad by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, and of the Odyssey by Professor George H. Palmer of Harvard-versions which are far more poetic than any translations in verse ever made and which make of these epics two of the most entertaining novels ever written. It is from these versions that I have cited, except in a few cases where I preferred a more literal rendering of certain words.