Chapter XVIII: Part 18

When we see Briseis, the widow of a prince, sharing the bed of Achilles, and delivered over as a slave into the hands of Agamemnon, when we find Hector anticipating that Andromache might be required to perform menial offices for a Greek mistress, and Nestor encouraging the army not to quit Troy until they had forced the Trojan matrons into their embraces, we are struck with pity and horror. But we must separate between the danger and suffering which uniformly dogs the weak in times of violence, most of all, too, after the sack of a city, and what belongs to the age of Homer in particular. After this separation has been effected, there remains nothing which ought to depress our views of the position of woman in the heroic age. The sons of Priam, princes of Troy, were sold into captivity by Achilles as he took them[958]: of course the purchasers put them to menial employments. Not only so, but Eumæus, the faithful swineherd and slave of Ulysses, was by birth royal: his father Ctesios was king of two wealthy and happy cities[959]. From the name Εὐρυμέδουσα, it would appear probable that she also, the chamber-woman of the palace of Alcinous, though a captive, was of noble birth[960].

[958] Il. xxi. 40.

[959] Od. xv. 413.

[960] Od. vii. 8.

There is not in the whole of the poems an instance of rude or abusive manners towards woman as such, or of liberties taken with them in the course of daily life. If Melantho gets hard words, it is not as a woman, but for her vice and insolence. The conduct of the Ithacan Suitors to Penelope, as it is represented in the Odyssey, affords the strongest evidence of the respect in which women were held. Her son had been a child: there was no strong party of adherents to the family; yet the highflown insolence of the Suitors, demanding that she should marry again, is kept at bay for years, and never proceeds to violence.

~_Force of conjugal attachments._~

We find throughout the poems those signs of the overpowering force of conjugal attachments which, from all that has preceded, we might expect. While admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an Immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is pining every day for Penelope[961]. It is the highest honour of a hero to die fighting on behalf of his wife and children. The continuance of domestic happiness, and the concord of man and wife, is a blessing so great, that it excites the envy of the gods, and they interrupt it by some adverse dispensation[962]. And no wonder; for nothing has earth to offer better, than when man and wife dwell together in unity of spirit: their friends rejoice, their foes repine: the human heart has nothing more to desire[963]. There is here apparently involved that great and characteristic idea of the conjugal relation, that it includes and concentrates in itself all other loves. And this very idea is expressed by Andromache, where, after relating the slaughter of her family by Achilles, she tells Hector, ‘Hector, nay but thou art for me a father, and a mother, and a brother, as well as the husband of my youth[964].’ To which he in the same spirit of enlarged attachment replies, by saying that neither the fate of Troy, which he sees approaching, nor of Hecuba, nor of Priam, nor of his brothers, can move his soul like the thought, that Andromache will as a captive weave the web, and bear the pitcher, for some dame of Messe or of Hypereia[965].

[961] Od. v. 215.

[962] Od. xxiii. 210.

[963] Od. vi. 180-5.

[964] Il. vi. 429, 30. Compare the following: _Domino suo, imò Patri; conjugi suo, imò Fratri; ancilla sua, imò filia: ipsius uxor, imò soror; Abælardo, Heloissa_. Abæl. Opp.

[965] Il. vi. 450-7.

~_Woman-characters of Homer._~

With the pictures which we thus find largely scattered over the poems, of the relations of woman to others, the characters which Homer has given us of woman herself are in thorough harmony. Among his living characters we do not find the viragos, the termagants, the incarnate fiends, of the later legends. Nay, the woman of Homer never dreams of using violence, even as a protection against wrong. It must be admitted, that he does not even present to us the heroine in any more pronounced form, than that of the moral endurance of Penelope. The heroine proper, the Joan of Arc, is certainly a noble creation: but yet one perhaps implying a state of things more abnormal, than that which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric age. The pictures of women, which Homer presents to us, are perfect pictures; but they are pictures simply of mothers, matrons, sisters, daughters, maidens, wives. The description which the Poet has given us of the violence and depravity of Clytemnestra, is the genuine counterpart of his high conception of the nature of woman[966]:

[966] Od. xi. 427.

ὣς οὐκ αἰνότερον καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο γυναικὸς,
ἥτις δὴ τοιαῦτα μετὰ φρεσὶν ἔργα βάληται.

For, in proportion as that nature is elevated and pure, does it become more shameful and degraded when, by a total suppression of its better instincts, it has been given over to wickedness.

Of the minor infirmities of our nature, as well as of its grosser faults, the women of Homer betray much less than the men. Nowhere has he introduced into a prominent position the character of a vicious woman. The only instance of the kind is among a portion of the female attendants in the palace of Ulysses, where, out of fifty, no more than twelve were at last the willing tools, having at first[967] been the reluctant victims, of the lust of the proud and rapacious band of Suitors. Clytemnestra, indeed, appears as a lofty criminal in the perspective of the poem, but her wickedness, too, is wholly derivative. Ægisthus corrupts her by a long course of effort, for, as Homer informs us, she had been a right-minded person; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσι[968]. On the one side we have only to place her and the saucy slut Melantho; on the other, we have Andromache, Hecuba, and Briseis in the Iliad; in the Odyssey, Penelope and Euryclea, Arete and Nausicaa; the slightly drawn figures, such as that of the mother of Ulysses in the Eleventh Odyssey, are in the same spirit as the more full delineations. There is not a single case in the poems to qualify the observation, first, that the woman of Homer is profoundly feminine: secondly, that she is commonly the prop of virtue, rarely the instrument, and (in this reversing the order of the first temptation) never the source, of corruption.

[967] Od. xxii. 37.

[968] Od. iii. 266.

In company with all that we have seen, we likewise find that the limits of the position of woman are carefully marked, and that she fully comprehends them. There is nowhere throughout the poems a single effort at self-assertion: the ground that she holds, she holds without dispute. If at any point a stumblingblock could be likely to be found, it would be between a mother just parting with her authority, and a son newly come of age. Yet Penelope and Telemachus never clash, and thoroughly understand one another. Again, the Homeric man, even the Homeric good man, is sometimes the subject of hasty, vehement, and tumultuous passions; the woman never. She finds her power in gentleness; she rules with a silken thread; she is eminent for the uniformity of her self-command, and for the observance of measure in all the relations of life. The misogynism which marked Euripides and other later writers has, and could have, no place in Homer: the moral standard of his women is higher than that of his men; their office, which they perform without fault, is to love and to minister, and their reward to lean on those whom they serve.

The lower aspect of the relation between the two sexes is in the poems wholly secondary. All that tends to sensualize it is commonly repelled or hidden, and, when brought into mention at all, is yet carefully and anxiously depressed. Even the cases of exception, which lie beyond the pale of marriage, are kept in a certain analogy with it, and are as far as possible removed from the promiscuous and brutal indulgence, which marked the later Pagan ages, including those of the greatest pride and splendour, and which still so deeply taints the societies of Christendom.

We may find, if it be needed, some further evidence of the high position of woman upon earth in the relation subsisting between the Homeric gods and goddesses respectively. For that relation approaches as nearly as may be to equality in force and intelligence, while in purity the latter are on the whole superior. After Jupiter, the deities most elevated in Homer are, Juno and Minerva, Neptune and Apollo; and of all these, I think, we must consider Minerva to have stood first in his estimation. This arrangement could not but harmonize with, while it also serves to measure, his ideas of the earthly place and character of woman.

A similar inference is suggested by the tendency of the Greeks to enshrine many ideas, sometimes great, and occasionally both great and good, in feminine impersonations.

We will, lastly, inquire into the employments of women in the heroic age; both to ascertain how nearly they could approach to the summits of society, and also what was their general share in the division of occupations.

~_Women were admitted to sovereignty._~

Among nations where war, homicide, and piracy so extensively prevailed, it is certainly deserving of peculiar consideration, that we should find any traces of the exercise of sovereignty by a woman. There are however three cases in the poems, which in a greater or less degree serve to imply that it was neither unknown nor wholly unfamiliar.

1. Andromache states, that her mother was queen in Hypoplacian Thebes. The word is βασίλευεν[969]. It implies more than being the mere wife of a king; though, as it was during the life time of her husband Eetion, we cannot justly infer from it that there was here any exercise of independent sovereign power. It is the only instance in the Iliad, where we have any word, that has βασιλεὺς for its basis, applied to a woman.

[969] Il. vi. 425.

2. The common tradition is, that Jason acquired possession of Lemnos by marriage with Hypsipyle its queen. This is so far supported by Homer that, while Jason clearly appears in the poems as a Greek, we notwithstanding find his son sovereign of Lemnos, without any indication of a conquest or regular migration, and Hypsipyle is mentioned as his mother. The simple fact that the mother, contrary to Homer’s usual practice, is in this case named as well as the father, raises a presumption that it is because she had reigned in the island[970].

[970] Il. vii. 468, 9.

In the Eleventh Odyssey we are told that Neleus, the younger of the two illegitimate sons of Tyro, came to dwell in Pylos, and that he married Chloris, the youngest daughter of Amphion an Iasid, giving large presents to obtain her hand[971]. The text proceeds,

[971] Od. xi. 254-7, 281-5.

ἡ δὲ Πύλου βασίλευε, τέκεν δέ οἱ ἀγλαὰ τέκνα.

This may mean that she became his queen when he was king of Pylos: or it may mean that he became her husband when she was already queen there.

The Odyssey discloses to us the manner in which, under circumstances like those of the Trojan war, sovereign power would naturally pass into female hands otherwise than by inheritance.

It would appear that, when Agamemnon set sail for Troy, he left Clytemnestra in charge of his affairs as well as of his young son Orestes, only taking the precaution to provide her with a trustworthy counsellor in the person of his Bard[972]. As it was by inveigling Clytemnestra that Ægisthus obtained the sovereign power, she must evidently have been its depository.

[972] Od. iii. 263-8.

In like manner it would appear, that Penelope was left in charge of Telemachus by Ulysses when he went to Troy, and that Mentor was appointed to perform for her some such friendly office, as that which the Bard undertook for Clytemnestra. The statement here is, that Ulysses committed to him authority over his whole household[973]. But it is plain that Penelope had the indoor management; since Telemachus speaks of the mode in which she regulated the reception of strangers[974], and we hear of her rule in other matters[975]. Here we see openings for the natural formation of the word βασίλισσα, which seems originally to have meant, not a king’s wife merely, but a woman in the actual exercise of royal authority; and which first appears in the Odyssey.

[973] Od. ii. 225-7.

[974] Od. xx. 129-33. comp. xix, 317. sqq.

[975] Od. xxii. 426, 7.

The ordinary occupation of women of the highest rank in the poems is undoubtedly to sit engaged, along with their maidens of the household, in spinning, weaving, or embroidery. Thus we find it with Helen, Penelope, and Andromache. But when Hector bids Andromache retire to these duties, he speaks of them in contradistinction not to all other duties, but to war, which, as he says, is the affair of men. Even this rule, however, was subject to exception. The Bellerophon of Homer fights with the Amazons[976]; and the part taken by the goddesses in the Theomachy shows, that the idea of women-soldiers was not wholly strange to his mind; as it is in fact to this day, I believe, less attractively exemplified in the African kingdom of Dahomey. But manual employments, taken alone, would not afford a just criterion. The dialogues of the speeches clearly show that then, as now, the woman was concerned in all that concerned her husband.

[976] Il. vi. 186.

~_And to the service of the gods._~

Next to political supremacy, we may naturally inquire how far women were qualified for the service of the gods.

We have various signs, more or less clear, of their sharing in it. The reference to the Nurses of Dionysus cannot be wholly without force in this direction. The abstraction of Alcyone by Apollo has probably a more positive connection with female ministry. But we are provided, as far as Troy at least is concerned, with one clear and conclusive instance. The Sixth Iliad affords us a glimpse of a female priesthood, and a worship confined to women, that subsisted among the Trojans. Helenus, alarmed at the feats of Diomed, urges Hector to desire Hecuba to collect the aged women for a procession to the temple of Athene, with a robe for a gift, and with the promise of a hecatomb (Il. vi. 75-101). Hector then acquaints the troops, that he was going to desire the old counsellors and the matrons of the city to supplicate the deities, and to promise hecatombs (iii. 15). There seems to be something of policy in the way in which he thus generalizes, for the army, his account of the design: perhaps afraid of the effect that might be produced by its peculiar character. When he finds Hecuba, he lays upon her precisely the injunction that Helenus had recommended. She sends her female servants to collect the aged women through the city (286, 7). She leads them to the temple of Athene in the citadel. They are there received by Theano, who had been appointed, apparently by the Trojan public[977], priestess to that deity. Theano takes the robe from Hecuba, and herself offers it and prays. Her prayer is for the city, and not for the men by name, but for the wives and infants: and her promise is, _we_ will sacrifice, ἱερεύσομεν, twelve, not oxen, but heifers, yearlings, untouched by the goad (Il. vi. 296-310). Thus the feminine element runs apart through the whole.

[977] Eustath. in loc.

We have no reason to conclude that this order of things was exceptional; for though the time was one of peculiar danger and emergency, the temple, the worship, and the priesthood stand before us as belonging to the regular institutions of Troy.

We have no case like that of Theano among the Greeks. It could, indeed, hardly be expected; as priesthood had not yet grown to be an Hellenic institution. Yet, while the direct force of the narrative speaks for Troy alone, we are justified in giving it a more general significance, because the Greek woman is apparently rather before than behind the Trojan one in influence, and in the substantiveness of her position.

In the Trojan genealogy[978] no notice is taken of women; nor have we any means of judging whether they were regarded as capable of succession to the throne, or what was their political and historical importance. But among the Greek races this was clearly great. The large number of women whom Homer has introduced in the realm of Aides, and the parts assigned to them, are plain indications of their important share in the movement of Greek history.

[978] Il. xx. 215-40.

~_Their household employments._~

The apportionment of the ordinary employments of women appears to have been managed in general accordance with the suppositions, towards which all the foregoing facts would lead us.

We have them indicated in a great variety of passages of the poems, from among which we may select two in particular.

The first relates to Circe and her attendant Nymphs; but we may take it as an exact copy of the arrangements of a prince’s household.

Circe has four female servants, who are called δρήστειραι. The first provides the seats with the proper coverings; the second prepares and lays the tables; the third mixes the wine and brings the goblets; the fourth carries water, and lights the fire to boil it[979].

[979] Od. x. 348-59.

The second passage exhibits to us the household of Ulysses at the break of day, when the in-door and out-door servants are setting about their morning duties.

There were fifty women servants. Of these twelve were employed as flour-grinders (ἀλετρίες); and this appears to have been the most laborious employment among all those assigned to women. Eleven of the twelve have finished their task and retired to rest; the twelfth remains till the morning at her work, and curses the Suitors who cause her such fatigue[980].

[980] Od. xx. 105. Cf. xxii. 421.

It is now dawn[981]. Part of the maid-servants are lighting the fire. The old but active Euryclea is up betimes, and has[982] the place of housekeeper. She desires a part of them to set smartly about sweeping the house, and putting the proper covers on the furniture; another part are to wipe the tables and the cups; a third bevy, no fewer than twenty in number, are dispatched for water[983].

[981] Od. xx. 122.

[982] Od. xxii. 425.

[983] Ibid. 149-56, 158.

Meantime the men-servants (δρηστῆρες or θεράποντες)[984] of the Suitors have made their appearance, and they set about preparing logs for the fire. Then come in from the country the swineherd with his swine, the goatherd with his goats; and, from over the water, the cowherd with his cow, and with more goats.

[984] Od. xvi. 248, 53. xx. 160.

Taking the general evidence of the poems, it stands thus. Of agricultural operations, we find women sharing only in the lighter labours of the vintage[985]; or perhaps acting as shepherdesses[986]. The men plough, sow, reap, tend cattle and live stock generally; they hunt and they fish; and they carry to the farm the manure that is accumulated about the house[987].

[985] Il. xviii. 567.

[986] Such seems to be the most probable meaning of Il. xxii. 126-8.

[987] Od. xvii. 299.

Within doors, the women seem to have the whole duty in their hands, except the preparation of firewood and of animal food. The men kill, cut up, dress, and carve the animals that are to be eaten. The women, on the other hand, spin, weave, wash the clothes, clean the house, grind the corn, bake the bread and serve it[988], with all the vegetable or mixed food, or what may be called made dishes[989] (εἴδατα πολλά). They also prepare the table, and hand the ewer with the basin for washing. And a portion of them act as immediate attendants to the mistress of the palace, Andromache, Penelope, or Helen.

[988] Od. iv. 623.

[989] Od. vii. 172-6, et alibi.

~_Their service about the bath._~

Thus far all is easy and becoming; but an apparent difficulty confronts us when we find, that it was the usage for women to undertake certain duties connected with the bathing of men. Sometimes this was done by servants; thus it was managed for Telemachus and Pisistratus in the palace of Menelaus, and for Ulysses in that of the Phæacian king. On the other hand, it was sometimes an office of hospitality rendered by women, and even by young damsels, of the highest rank, to distinguished strangers of their own age or otherwise. Polycaste, the young and fair daughter of Nestor, (as the text is commonly interpreted,) bathed and anointed Telemachus, and put on him a cloak and vest[990]. Helen herself, when she was living in Troy, performed the like offices for Ulysses, on the occasion of his mission thither in the disguise of a beggar[991]:

[990] Od. iii. 464-8.

[991] Od. iv. 252.

ἀλλ’ ὅτε δή μιν ἐγὼ λόεον καὶ χρῖον ἐλαίῳ,
ἀμφὶ δὲ εἵματα ἕσσα....

And lastly, the goddess Circe discharged the very same function, with some addition to the description, on behalf of Ulysses her visitor. For here it is explicitly stated, that she poured water over his head and shoulders[992]:

[992] Od. x. 361.

ἔς ῥ’ ἀσάμινθον ἕσασα λό’ ἐκ τρίποδος μεγάλοιο,
θυμῆρες κεράσασα, κατὰ κρατός τε καὶ ὤμων.

This usage has given occasion, as was perhaps to be expected, to much criticism[993] upon the immodest habits of Homer and his age. Pains have also been taken in their defence[994]. And certainly, if there be need of a defence, Eustathius does not supply one by pleading, that it was the custom of the time, and that the Pylian princess doubtless acted by the command of her father[995]. What is wanted appears to me not to be defence, but simply the clearing away of misapprehensions as to the facts.

[993] See Pope on Od. iii. 464-8.

[994] Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol. v. 34.

[995] Eustath. in loc. 1477.

It would assuredly be strange, were we to detect real immodesty among such women of the heroic age as Homer has described to us; or even among such men. At a period when the exposure, among men only, of the person of a man constituted the last extremity of shameful punishment[996], and when even in circumstances of the utmost necessity Ulysses exhibited so much care to avoid anything of the kind[997], it is almost of itself incredible that habitually, among persons of the highest rank and character, and without any necessity at all, such things should take place. And, as it is not credible, so neither, I think, is it true.

[996] Il. ii. 260-4.

[997] Od. vi. 126-8.

It may be observed, that there is no case of ablution thus performed in the Iliad. But this appears to be only for the same reason, as that which makes the meals of the camp more simple, than those which were served in the tranquillity of peace and home.

~_Explanations of the presumed difficulty._~

The words commonly employed by Homer in this matter refer to two separate parts of the operation: first, the bathing and anointing, then the dressing. They are commonly for the first λούω and χρίω: for the second βάλλω, with the names of the proper vestments added (Od. iii. 467);

ἀμφὶ δέ μιν φᾶρος[998] καλὸν βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνα.

[998] Or χλαῖναν, as in Od. x. 365.

But the whole question, in my view, really depends upon this: whether the verbs used mean the performance of a particular operation, or the giving to the person concerned the means of doing it for himself. Just as by feeding the poor, we mean giving them wherewithal to feed themselves. This is the suggestion of Wakefield[999], and I believe it to be the satisfactory and conclusive solution of the whole question. We might be prevailed upon to travel a good way in company with Heroic simplicity, and yet not quite be able to reach the point which the opposite interpretation would require.

[999] On Pope, Od. iii. 464-8.

I think that the construction, which I have indicated as the proper one, is conclusively made good, first by the general rules for the sense of the words λούω, λούομαι, and kindred words in Homer: and secondly, by the detailed evidence of facts.

When the guests at a feast wash their hands, the standard expression is in the middle voice, χερνίψαντο δ’ ἔπειτα. When Ulysses and Diomed washed in the sea, the expression is ἱδρῶ ἀπενίζοντο: when they afterwards bathed and anointed themselves, it is λούσαντο, λοεσσαμένω, ἀλειψαμένω[1000]. To smear arrows with poison is ἰοὺς χρίεσθαι χαλκήρεας[1001]. For the maidens of Nausicaa, when they bathe and are anointed, we have λοεσσάμεναι and χρισάμεναι[1002]. In fact the usage is general.

[1000] Il. x. 572-7.

[1001] Od. i. 262.

[1002] Od. vi. 96; cf. 219, 20.

The case stands rather differently with βάλλω. Here the active usage is, I believe, the common one. But there is ample authority for the converse or active use of the middle voice, which corresponds with the middle use of the active. As for instance,

αὐτίκα δ’ ἀμφ’ ὤμοισιν ἐβάλλετο κάμπυλα τόξα[1003].

[1003] Il. x. 333. Cf. Od. xi. 427.

There can therefore surely be no reason to doubt that βάλλειν in this place follows the inclination of the leading words of the passages, and signifies, that as the water and the oil, so likewise the fresh clothing to put on, were given by the damsel for the purpose, but by no means that the operations, or any of them, were actually performed by her.

If the word βάλλειν meant ‘to put on,’ there would be, as Eustathius[1004] observes, an ὑστερολογία, for the χίτων was as a matter of course put on before the φᾶρος. But if it means ‘to give for the purpose of putting on,’ then there is no solecism in the mode of expression.

[1004] On Od. iii. 467.

We must not, however, pass by the case of Circe in the Tenth Odyssey, where, as we have seen, it is stated that the water was actually poured by the Sorceress over the head and shoulders of Ulysses. It is also true that the old word λοέω, equivalent to λούω, is used there in the active voice.

Upon this I observe three things:

1. The statement that the water was poured over his head and shoulders, as he sat in the bath, evidently implies that what may be called essential decency was preserved.

2. Even if it were not so, we could not in this point argue from the manners or morals of a Phœnician goddess to those of a Greek damsel.

3. The meaning probably of λοέω is middle, in this as well as in the other cases: she gave him water to wash with, pouring it over his head and shoulders, and then leaving to him the substance of the operation, which was not completed by this mere act of affusion.

~_Case of Ulysses landed in Scheria._~

Finally, let us consider the evidence from the case of Ulysses in Scheria, which appears of itself conclusive.

1. In Od. vii. 296. Ulysses says that Nausicaa (according to the popular construction of the term) bathed him: καὶ λοῦσ’ ἐν ποταμῷ.

2. But from Od. vi. 210, we find that what she did was not to bathe him, but to give orders to her attendants that he should be bathed,--that is, should be provided with the requisites for bathing. Her words were, λούσατέ τ’ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθ’ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστ’ ἀνέμοιο.

3. Upon this they took him to a recess, gave him clothing and oil, and bid him bathe himself, ἤνωγον δ’ ἄρα μιν λοῦσθαι: upon which he requested them to stand off, as otherwise he could not proceed: ἄντην δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐγώγε λοέσσομαι (ibid. 218-22).

It would appear therefore, that the statements of Homer give no ground whatever for sinister or disparaging imputation. His pictures do not entirely correspond with modern ideas: but they may well leave on our minds the impression that, in the period he described, if the standard of appearances in this department was lower, that of positive thought and action was higher, as well as simpler, than in our own day.

We have now concluded what it seemed needful to say on the employments of women.

~_Subsequent declension of the place of woman._~

It was, however, little likely that a state of things, such as has been described, should last.

The idea of marriage was in aftertimes greatly lowered, together with the moral tone in general; and the very name of γάμος, with its kindred words, underwent a change of sense, and was made applicable to such a relation as that established between the Greek chieftains in the war of Troy and their captives in cases where they had wives already[1005].

[1005] The case of Achilles, who calls Briseis his wife, and who had no other, has been already discussed.

Thus, in the Hecuba of Euripides, as the mother of Cassandra, she intercedes with Agamemnon to avenge the murder of her son Polydorus, on the ground that the youth had become a κηδεστὴς, or relation by affinity to Agamemnon, who had a wife already[1006]:

[1006] Hecuba, 817.

τοῦτον καλῶς δρῶν ὄντα κηδεστὴν σέθεν
δράσεις.

And, in the Troades, Cassandra has with Agamemnon certain σκότια νυμφευτήρια (258); and again,

γαμεῖ βιαίως σκότιον Ἀγαμέμνων λέχος[1007].

[1007] Ibid. 44. cf. ver. 358.

Similar language is used in the case of Andromache[1008]. The ideas of the heroic age would have admitted no such depravation of marriage.

[1008] Ibid. 724.

In truth it would seem not only as if, before Christianity appeared, notwithstanding the advance of civilization, the idea and place of woman were below what they should have been, but actually as if, with respect to all that was most essential, they sank with the lapse of time.

The contrast between the views of the marriage state entertained in the heroic age, and at the period which we regard as the acmè of the Greek civilization, will, perhaps, be best conceived by referring to the passage ascribed to Demosthenes, as it is quoted by Athenæus, which explains succinctly the several uses of prostitutes, concubines, and wives, apparently as classes all alike recognised, and without any note of a moral difference in their social position and repute respectively. The first are for pleasure, the second for daily use, the last for legitimate offspring, and for good housekeeping[1009].

[1009] Athenæus xiii. 31. Döllinger Heid. u. Jud. ix. 31.

And yet it continued to be, in the time of Aristotle, a favourable distinction of Greece as compared with the barbarians, that the woman was not with them equivalent to the slave. Throughout their history they continued to be a nation of monogamists, except where they became locally tainted with oriental manners[1010].

[1010] Arist. Pol. I. ii. 4. Döllinger ix. 25.

Again, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, taking a general survey of the relation between man and wife, describes it as a government indeed, but as analogous to that natural and perfect form of government which he terms aristocracy. It is founded on merit and fitness. The man leaves to the woman all for which she is best suited, and each kind contributes its particular gifts to make up the common stock.

There was much, then, of solidity, and permanence in the ground secured for the Greek woman by the heroic age. But the philosopher, sagacious and dispassionate as he is, had still a much less elevated view of her position than Homer had exhibited.

There may[1011], he says, be in a tragedy a good or bad woman, a good or a bad slave; there is room for variety even in these; καί τοίγε ἴσως τούτων τὸ μὲν χεῖρον τὸ δὲ ὅλως φαῦλόν ἐστι. No such classification, no such comparison, could have found place in the heroic age. Yet more remarkable is the little postscript assigned to the widows of the dead in the funeral oration assigned by Thucydides to Pericles: “If I must also say a few words, for you that are now widows, concerning what constitutes the merit of a woman, I will sum up all in one short admonition. It will be much for your character not to sink beneath your own actual nature (τῆς ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γένεσθαι); and to be as little talked about as possible among men, whether for praise or for dispraise[1012].”

[1011] Aristot. Poet. c. 28.

[1012] Thuc. ii. 45.

SECT. X.

_The office of the Homeric Poems in relation to that of the early Books of Holy Scripture._

Even if they are regarded in no other light than as literary treasures, the position, both of the oldest books among the Sacred Scriptures, and, next to them, of the Homeric poems, is so remarkable, as not only to invite, but to command the attention of every inquirer into the early condition of mankind. Each of them opens to us a scene, of which we have no other literary knowledge. Each of them is, either wholly or in a great degree, isolated; and cut off from the domain of history, as it is commonly understood. Each of them was preserved with the most jealous care by the nation to which they severally belonged. By far the oldest of known compositions, and with conclusive proof upon the face of them that their respective origins were perfectly distinct and independent, they, notwithstanding, seem to be in no point contradictory, while in many they are highly confirmatory of each other’s genuineness and antiquity. Still, as historical representations, and in a purely human aspect, they are greatly different. The Holy Scriptures are like a thin stream, beginning from the very fountain-head of our race, and gradually, but continuously finding their way through an extended solitude, into times otherwise known, and into the general current of the fortunes of mankind. The Homeric poems are like a broad lake outstretched in the distance, which provides us with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full and marvellous, but which is entirely dissociated by an interval of many generations from any other records, except such as are of the most partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which they have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost profane to compare them. In this point of view, the Scriptures stand so far apart from every other production, on account of their great offices in relation to the coming of the Redeemer, and to the spiritual training of mankind, that there can be nothing either like or second to them.

But undoubtedly, after however wide an interval, the Homeric poems thus far at least stand in a certain relation to the Scriptures, that no other work of man can be compared to them. Their immediate influence has been great; but that influence which they have mediately exercised through their share in shaping the mind and nationality of Greece, and again, through Greece upon the world, cannot readily be reduced to measure: _Les vraies origines de l’esprit humain sont là; tous les nobles de l’intelligence y retrouvent la patrie de leurs pères_[1013]. Insomuch that, passing over the vast interval between those purposes which concern salvation, and every other purpose connected with man, this remains to be admitted, that there is a relative parallelism between the oldest Holy Scriptures and the works of Homer. For each of them stands at the head of the class of powers to which they respectively belong; and the minor seems to present to our view, as well as the major one, the indications of a distinct Providential aim that was to be attained through its means.

[1013] Renan, Études d’Histoire Religieuse, p. 40.

The relation, however, of the Homeric poems to the earlier portion of the Sacred Scriptures, appears to me to be capable of being represented in a more determinate form than it assumes when they are merely compared as being respectively the oldest known compositions, and as each confirming the testimony of the other by numerous coincidences of manners.

~_Providential functions of Greece and Rome._~

For the Eastern world, it is, I suppose, generally acknowledged that we ought to regard Mahometanism as having had, no less than Judaism, a place, though doubtless a very different place, in the determinate counsels of God. So in the West, we must view the extraordinary developments, which human nature received, both individually and in its social forms, among the Greeks and Romans, as having been intended to fulfil high Providential purposes. They supplied materials for the intellectual and social portions of that European civilization, which derives its spiritual substance from the Christian Faith. And they wrought out solutions apparently conclusive for the questions which absolutely required an answer, as to the capacity or incapacity of man, when without the aid of especial divine light and guidance, to work out his own happiness and peace. That Divine Word, which tells us that the Redeemer came in the fulness of time, indirectly points to the great transactions which filled the space of ages since the Fall, when time was not yet full; and the greatest of all those great transactions surely were the parts played by Greece and Rome, as the representatives of humanity at large in its most vigorous developments. They too, as well as the discipline of the Jewish people, doubtless belonged to the Divine plan. All these varied manifestations may differ much in their character and rank, but yet, like the body, soul, and spirit of a man, they are to be referred to one origin, and they are integrants to one another.

Just in the same manner with the parallel currents of historical events, it would appear that the early Scriptures and the Homeric poems combine to make up for us a sufficiently complete form of the primitive records of our race. The Scriptures of the Old Testament give us the history of the line, in which the promise of the Messiah was handed down. But the intellectual and social developments of man are there represented in the simplest and the slightest, nay, even in the narrowest forms. With the exception of Solomon, who, in spite of his wisdom, was enticed away from God by lust, and of the two illustrious specimens of uncorrupted piety in the midst of dangerous power, Joseph and Daniel, I know not whether we can, on the authority of Holy Scripture, point to any character of the Mosaic or Judaic history as great in any other sense, than as the organs of that Almighty One, with whom nothing human is either great or small. It is plain that if we bring the leading characters of that history into contrast with the Achilles or the Ulysses of Homer, and with his other marked personages, these latter undoubtedly give us a representation and development of human nature, and of man in his social relations, that Scripture from its very nature could not supply. Each has its own function to perform, so that there is no room for competition between them, and it is better to avoid comparison altogether; and to decline to consider the legislation of Moses as a work to be compared either with the heroic institutions, or with systems like those of Lycurgus or of Solon. We then obtain a clear view of it as a scheme evidently constructed not alone with human but with superhuman wisdom, if only we measure it in reference to its very peculiar end. That end was not to give political lessons to mankind, which are more aptly supplied elsewhere. It was to fence in, with the ruder materials of the ceremonial and municipal law, a home, within which the succession of true piety and enlightened faith might be preserved; a garden wherein the Lord God might, so to speak, still walk as He had walked of old, and take His delight with the sons of men. But this high calling had reference only to chosen persons, a few among the few. Over and above this interior work, there was a national vocation also. The aim of that vocation seems to have been to isolate the people, so as to stop the influences from without that might tend in the direction of change; and so far to crystallize, as it were, its institutions within, that they might preserve in untainted purity the tradition and the expectation of Him that was to come.

When the Almighty placed his seal upon Abraham by the covenant of circumcision, and when He developed that covenant in the Mosaic institutions, in setting the Jewish people apart for a purpose the most profound of all His wise designs, He removed it, for the time of its career, out of the family of nations.

~_Sacred Books not mere literary records._~

Should we, like some writers of the present day, cite the Pentateuch before the tribunal of the mere literary critic, we may strain our generosity at the cost of justice, and still only be able to accord to it a secondary place. The mistake surely is to bring it there at all, or to view its author otherwise than as the vehicle of a Divine purpose, which uses all instruments, great, insignificant, or middling, according to the end in view, but of which all the instruments are perfect, by reason not of what is intrinsic to themselves, but, simply and solely, of their exact adaptation to that end[1014].

[1014] To show with what jealousy believers in revelation may justly regard the mere literary handling of the Older Scriptures, I would refer to the remarkable work of M. Ernest Renan, ‘_Études d’Histoire Religieuse_.’ This eloquent and elastic writer treats the idea of a revealed religion as wholly inadmissible; highly extols the Bible as a literary treasure; but denies that the general reading of the Bible is a good, except in so far as _il vaut beaucoup mieux voir le peuple lire la Bible que ne rien lire_ (pp. 75, 385).

If, however, we ought to decline to try the Judaic code by its merely political merits, much more ought we to apply the same principle to the sublimity of the Prophecies, and to the deep spiritual experiences of the Psalms. In the first, we have a voice speaking from God, with the marks that it is of God so visibly imprinted upon it, that the mind utterly refuses to place the prophetical books in the scale against any production of human genius. And all that is peculiar in our conception of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, does not tend so much to make them eminent among men, as to separate them from men. Homer, on the other hand, is emphatically and above all things human: he sings by the spontaneous and the unconscious indwelling energies of nature; whereas these are as the trumpet of unearthly sounds, and cannot, more than Balaam could, depart from that which is breathed into them, to utter either less or more.

But most of all does the Book of Psalms refuse the challenge of philosophical or poetical competition. In that Book, for well nigh three thousand years, the piety of saints has found its most refined and choicest food; to such a degree indeed, that the rank and quality of the religious frame may in general be tested, at least negatively, by the height of its relish for them. There is the whole music of the human heart, when touched by the hand of the Maker, in all its tones that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear, for every joy and pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude and rest. There are developed all the innermost relations of the human soul to God, built upon the platform of a covenant of love and sonship that had its foundations in the Messiah, while in this particular and privileged Book it was permitted to anticipate His coming.

We can no more then compare Isaiah and the Psalms with Homer, than we can compare David’s heroism with Diomed’s, or the prowess of the Israelites when they drove Philistia before them with the valour of the Greeks at Marathon or Platæa, at Issus or Arbela. We shall most nearly do justice to each by observing carefully the boundary lines of their respective provinces.

~_Providential uses of the Homeric poems._~

It appears to be to a certain extent agreed that Rome has given us the most extraordinary example among all those put upon record by history, of political organization; and has bequeathed to mankind the firmest and most durable tissue of law, the bond of social man. Greece, on the other hand, has had for its share the development of the individual; and each has shown in its own kind the rarest specimen that has been known to the world, apart from Divine revelation. The seeds of both these, and of all that they involved, would appear to be contained in the Homeric poems[1015]. The condition of arts, manners, character, and institutions, which they represent, is alike in itself entire, and without any full parallel elsewhere. It is for the bodily and mental faculties of man, that which the patriarchal and early Hebrew histories are for his spiritual life.

[1015] In the Roman History of Mommsen is contained a masterly comparison between those two rival developments of human life, the collective and the individual, which are represented by Rome, and by later or historic Greece, respectively. (Mommsen Röm. Gesch. I. 2. pp. 18-21.) Both of them are open to criticism. In the one we may notice and brand the characteristic of an iron repression, in the other that of a lawless freedom. But the age which ended with the war of Troy, and cast the reflection of its dying beams upon its noble but chequered epilogue in the Odyssey, appears to make no fundamental deviation from the mean of wisdom in either direction: on the whole, it united reverence with independence, the restraint of discipline with the expansion of freedom: and it stood alike removed, in the plenitude of its natural elasticity, from those extremes which in modern religion have, on the one side, absorbed the individual, and on the other (so to speak) excommunicated him by isolation.

Of the personal and inward relations of man with God, of the kingdom of grace in the world, Homer can tell us nothing: but of the kingdom of Providence much, and of the opening powers and capabilities of human nature, apart from divine revelation, everything. The moral law, written on the tables of stone, was in one sense a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, because it demonstrated our inability to tread the way of righteousness and pardon without the Redeemer. And perhaps that ceremonial law, which indulged some things to the hardness of heart that prevailed among the Jews, was by its permissions, as some have construed a very remarkable passage in Ezekiel[1016], a schoolmaster in another sense; because it witnessed to the fact that they had greatly fallen below the high capacities of their nature. And again, in yet a third sense, we may say with reverence that these primeval records are likewise another schoolmaster, teaching us, although with another voice, the very same lesson: because they show us the total inability of our race, even when at its maximum of power, to solve for ourselves the problems of our destiny; to extract for ourselves the sting from care, from sorrow, and above all, from death; or even to retain without waste the vital heat of the knowledge of God, when we have become separate from the source that imparts it.

[1016] Ezek. xx. 25.

~_They complete the code of primitive instruction._~

It seems impossible not to be struck, at this point, with the contrast between the times preceding the Advent, and those which have followed it. Since the Advent, Christianity has marched for fifteen hundred years at the head of human civilization; and has driven, harnessed to its chariot as the horses of a triumphal car, the chief intellectual and material forces of the world. Its learning has been the learning of the world, its art the art of the world, its genius the genius of the world, its greatness, glory, grandeur, and majesty have been almost, though not absolutely, all that in these respects the world has had to boast of. That which is to come, I do not presume to portend: but of the past we may speak with confidence. He who hereafter, in even the remotest age, with the colourless impartiality of mere intelligence, may seek to know what durable results mankind has for the last fifteen hundred years achieved, what capital of the mind it has accumulated and transmitted, will find his investigations perforce concentrated upon, and almost confined to that part, that minor part, of mankind which has been Christian.

Before the Advent, it was quite otherwise. The treasure of Divine Revelation was then hidden in a napkin: it was given to a people who were almost forbidden to impart it; at least of whom it was simply required, that they should preserve it without variation. They had no world-wide vocation committed to them; they lay ensconced in a country which was narrow and obscure; obscure, not only with reference to the surpassing splendour of Greece and Rome, but in comparison with Assyria, or Persia, or Egypt. They have not supplied the Christian ages with laws and institutions, arts and sciences, with the chief models of greatness in genius or in character. The Providence of God committed this work to others; and to Homer seems to have been intrusted the first, which was perhaps, all things considered, also the most remarkable stage of it[1017].

[1017] I must frankly own that, for one, I can never read without pain the disparaging account of the Greek mind and its achievements which, in the Fourth Book of the Paradise Regained, so great a man as Milton has too boldly put into the mouth of our Blessed Lord. We there find our sympathies divided, in an indescribable and most unhappy manner, between the person of the All-wise, and the language and ideas, on the whole not less just, which are given to Satan. In particular, I lament the claim, really no better than a childish one, made on the part of the Jews, to be considered as the fountainhead of the Greek arts and letters, and the assumption for them of higher attainments in political science. This is a sacrifice of truth, reason, and history to prejudice, by which, as by all such proceedings, religion is sure to be in the end the loser.

~_Christianity supplied a centre to history._~

Without bearing fully in mind this contrast between the providential function of the Jews and that of other nations, we can hardly embrace as we ought the importance of the part assigned, before the Advent of our Lord, to nations and persons who lived beyond the immediate and narrow pale of Divine Revelation. The relation of the old dispensation to those who were not Jews, was essentially different from that of Christendom to those who are not Christians. Only the fall of man and his recovery are the universal facts with which Revelation is concerned; all others are limited and partial. The interval between the occurrence of the first, and the provision for the second, was occupied by a variety of preparations in severalty for the revelation of the kingdom of God. Until the Incarnation, the world’s history was without a centre. When the Incarnation came, it showed itself to be the centre of all that had preceded, as well as of all that was to follow: and since the withdrawal of the visible Messiah, the history of man has been grouped around His Word, and around the Church in which the effect and virtue of His Incarnation are still by His unseen power prolonged.

The picture thus offered to our view is a very remarkable one. We see the glories of the world, and that greatest marvel of God’s earthly creation, the mind of man, become like little children, and yield themselves to be led by the hand of the Good Shepherd: but it seems as though the ancient promise of His coming, while just strong enough to live in this wayward sphere, was not strong enough to make the conquest of it; as if nothing but His own actual manifestation in the strength of lowliness and of sorrow, and crowned by the extremity of contempt and shame, was sufficient to restore for the world at large that symbol of the universal duty of individual obedience and conformity, which is afforded by the establishment of the authority of the spiritual King over all the functions of our nature, and all the spheres, however manifold and remote they may seem to be, in which they find their exercise. Nor is this lesson the less striking because this, like other parts of the divine dispensations, has been marred by the perversity of man, ever striving to escape from that inward control wherein lies the true hope and safety of his race.