HELEN AND THE GOLDEN APPLE.

265: under the penalty that her predictions should not be be-lieved, told them who the victor was. Paris, however, refused to stay with those who had treated him so cruelly in his infancy, and in the dells of Ida he won as his bride Oinônê (none), the beautiful daughter of the stream Kebren. With her he remained, until he departed for Sparta with Menelaos, an event brought about by incidents. far away in the West, which were to lead to mighty issues.

At the marriage feast of Peleus and Thetis, Eris (strife),. who had not been invited with the other deities, cast on the table a golden apple, which was to be given The judgment to the fairest of all the guests. It was claimed of Paris. by Hêrê, Athênê and Aphroditê, and Zeus made Paris the umpire. By him, as we have seen, it was given to Aphro-ditê, who in return promised him Helen, the fairest of all women, as his wife. Some time after this there fell on Sparta a sore famine, from which the Delphian oracle said. that they could be delivered only by bringing back the bones of the children of Prometheus. For this purpose: Menelaos, the king, came to Ilion, and returned with Paris, who saw the beautiful Helen at Sparta, and car-ried her away with her treasures to Troy. Resolving to

rescue her from Paris, Menelaos invited Agamemnon, king of Mykenai (Mycena), and other great chieftains to take part in the expedition which was to avenge his wrongs and to recover the wealth of which he had been despoiled. Among these chiefs were the aged Nestor, the wise ruler of Pylos; Aias (Ajax), the son of Telamon; Askalaphos and Ialmenos, sons of Arês; Diomedes, son of Tydeus; and Admetos of Pherai, the husband of Alkestis. But the greatest of all were Achilles, the son of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, and Odysseus, the son of Laertes, chieftain of Ithaca..

The forces thus gathered went to Troy by sea; but the fleet was becalmed in Aulis, and Kalchas, the seer, affirming that this was caused by the anger of Artemis Agamemnon for the slaughter of a stag in her sacred grove, neia. declared that she could be appeased only by the sacrifice:

and Iphige

of Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon.

According to the story in the Iliad the sacrifice was made; but there was another version which said that Artemis herself rescued Iphigeneia, while others again said that Artemis and Iphigeneia were one and the same. If, however, her blood was shed, the penalty must be paid; and so in the terrible drama of Æschylus we find the Atê, whose office it is to exact this penalty to the last farthing, brooding on the house of Agamemnon, until she had brought about the death of the king by the hands of his wife Klytaimnestra (Clytemnestra), and the death of Klytaimnestra and her paramour Aigisthos by the hands of her son Orestes.

Sarpêdôn and Memnon.

The hindrance to the eastward course of the Achaians was now removed, but the achievement of their task was still far distant. Nine years must pass in seemingly hopeless struggle; in the tenth, Ilion would be taken. So mighty was to be the defence of the city, maintained chiefly by Hektor, the son of Priam and brother of Paris, aided by the chiefs of the neighbouring cities, among whom were Aineias (Æneas), son of Anchises and Aphroditê; Pandaros, son of Lykaon, and bearer of the bow of Apollo; and Sarpêdôn, who with his friend Glaukos led the Lykians from the banks of the eddying Xanthos.2 The legend of this brilliant hero is, as we have seen, one of the many independent myths which have been introduced into the framework of our Iliad. He is distinctly a being of the same order with Saranyû, Erinys, Iason, Helen, and many more; and the process which made him an ally of Paris is that which separated Odysseus from the eye of the Cyclops, whom he blinded.3 Another episode of a like kind is that of Memnon, who, like Sarpêdôn, comes from a bright and glistering land; but instead of Lykia it is in this instance Ethiopia. The meaning of the name Sarpêdôn had been so far forgotten that the chief was regarded as a ruler of mortal Lykians, and we are told that his cairn was 3 See pp. 107, 179.

1 See p. 159.

2 See p. 133.

ACHILLES AND MELEAGROS.

267

raised high to keep alive his name amongst his people, although there were versions of the myth which brought him back again to life. But Eôs, the mother of Memnon, is so transparently the morning, that her child must rise again as surely as the sun reappears to run his daily course across the heaven. Like Sarpêdôn, he is doomed to an early death; and when he is smitten by the hand of Achilles, the tears of Eôs are said to fall as morning dew from the sky. To comfort her Zeus makes two flocks of birds meet in the air and fight over his funeral sacrifice, until some of them fall as victims on the altar. But Eôs is not yet satisfied, and she not only demands but wins the return of her child from Hades. The thought of a later age becomes manifest in the tale that when Memnon fell in atonement for the slaughter of Antilochos, his comrades were so plunged in grief that they were changed into birds which yearly visited his tomb to water the ground with their tears.

Achilles.

The story of Achilles himself has many points of marked likeness to the myths of these two heroes; but his guardian Phenix actually recites to him the career The wrath of of Meleagros as the very counterpart of his own. What the career of Meleagros really signifies we have already seen; and we need only mark what the Iliad tells us, if we would trace the unconscious fidelity of the poet to the types of character sketched out for him in the old mythical phrases. Achilles is pre-eminently the irresistible hero who fights in a quarrel which is not his own. Herakles served the mean Eurystheus, so Achilles is practically the servant of one on whom he looks down with deserved contempt. But he has his consolation in the love of Briseis, and when he is called upon to surrender the maiden, he breaks out into the passion of wrath which in the opening lines of the Iliad is said to be the subject of the poem. Although the fury of his rage is subdued by

1 See p. 68,

As

the touch of the dawn-goddess Athênê, he yet vows a solemn vow that henceforth in the war the Achaians shall look in vain for his aid. But inasmuch as in many of the books which follow the first the Achaian heroes get on perfectly well without him, winning great victories over the Trojans,' and as no reference is made in them to his wrath or to its consequences, the conclusion seems to be forced upon us that these books belong to an independent poem which really was an Iliad, or a history of the struggle of the Achaians for the possession of Ilion or Troy; and that this Iliad, which begins with the second book, has been pieced together with the other poem, which relates to the wrath of Achilles and its results, and is therefore an Achillêis. Thus the poem which we call the Iliad would consist of two poems, into which materials from other poems. may or may not also have been worked in. It is, of course,. quite possible that these two poems, the Iliad and the Achillêis, may both be the work of one and the same poet,. who chose thus to arrange his own compositions; and this. is the opinion of some whose judgment on such points is worthy of respect. But although the question is one on which an absolute decision may be unattainable, the balance of likelihood seems to be in favour of the conclusion that these great epic poems grew up in the course of a long series of ages. We have already seen how the germs of a story full of human passion and feeling might be found in epithets, in words, or in phrases, which the forefathers of the Aryan tribes, while yet in their original home, applied consciously to the sights and sounds of the outward world,. these sights and sounds being regarded as the work of beings who could feel, and suffer, and toil, and rejoice like ourselves. This language was, strictly, the language of poetry, literally revelling in its boundless powers of creation and development. In almost every word lay the material

1

Myth. of Ar. Nat. i. 240. Mure, Critical History of Greck Literature,. i. 256. Grote, History of Greece, Part I. ch. xxi.

THE ILIAD AND THE ACHILLEIS.

269 of some epical incident; and it is the less wonderful, therefore, if each incident was embodied in a separate legend, or even reproduced in the independent tales of separate tribes. A hundred Homers may well have lit their torch from this living fire.1

In the ninth book we return to the subject of the wrath of Achilles. The victorious career of the Achaian chieftains is interrupted, and they are made to feel Achilles and their need of the great hero, who keeps away Patroklos. from the strife. But the embassy which they send to him goes to no purpose, although Phenix holds up to him as a warning the doom of the Kalydonian Meleagros. There must be humble submission, and Briseis must be restored. But Agamemnon cannot yet bring himself to this abasement, and the struggle goes on with varying success and disaster, until their misfortunes so multiply as to excite the compassion of Patroklos, the friend who reflects the character of Achilles without possessing his strength, and who thus belongs to the class of Secondaries.2 Melted by the tears of this friend, Achilles gave him his own armour, and bade him go forth to aid the Argives, adding a strict caution, which cannot fail to remind us of the story of Phaethon. As Phaethon is charged not to touch the horses of Helios with his whip, so Patroklos must not drive the chariot of Achilles, which is borne by the same undying steeds, on any other path than that which has been pointed out to him. But we are especially told that although Patroklos could wear his friend's armour, he could not wield his spear. The sword and lance of the sun-god may be used by no other hands than his own. in the story of Phaethon, so here the command was disobeyed; and thus Patroklos, after slaying Sarpêdôn, was himself overpowered and killed by Hektor, who stripped off

As

1 For a more full examination of the question of the composition of the Homeric poems, see Myth. of Ar. Nat. Book I. ch. ix. -xi. and the works there referred to.

2 See p. 93.