Chapter V: Part 5

The years passed speedily at first, untouched by care; and then more slowly, big with events. First the sailing of Paris. Then, after Helen came back with him to Troy, an interval when the Trojans waited, wondering how the Greeks would repay the insult. Finally, the arrival of the Greek fleet and the beginning of the Siege.

Priam was not unsupported in his long ordeal. Neighbouring princes joined him against the hostile Greeks, some in the hope of reward and some for the sake of friendship. There was one warrior, Othryoneus, who came because he loved Cassandra. He brought no ‘gifts of wooing,’ but made a promise to the king “of a mighty deed, namely, that he would drive perforce out of Troy-land the sons of the Achaians.” Priam consented to his suit; but we are not told what Cassandra thought of it. Probably she was not consulted. It is conceivable, so tender was her love of home and country, that to reward the hero who would save them, she would even consent to lay aside her holy office; to recall her soaring spirit to dwell beside the hearth. But the eye which saw so far knew that it need not consider the present problem. Before the end, Cassandra saw the valiant man who loved her lying pierced by the spear of Idomeneus.

That was toward the end of the war; and in the penultimate scene of it, the bringing-in of Hector’s body, Cassandra appears again. She had watched all that fearful night, when the old king went out to the Greek camp to beg of Achilles for the body of his great son. And in the cold light of dawn, straining her eyes from Pergamos and weary with her vigil, she was the first to see the mournful procession. “Then beheld she him that lay upon the bier behind the mules, and thereat she wailed and cried aloud throughout all the town.” The people wakened at her terrible cry, and coming out of their houses, they followed her down to the gate to meet the unhappy king.

Hector’s death was the beginning of the end. Troy fell. Its brave men were slaughtered, its palaces burnt, its altars dishonoured; and worst of all, its women and children were carried off as slaves. Of this the _Iliad_ does not speak; but it was an event which seized and held fast the imagination of the Attic dramatists. The glory of war, which throws a glamour over the fighting in the epic, gives place in the later poets to the pain and horror of it. Not because they were less brave: Æschylus fought at the great Greek victory of Marathon; but because an advancing civilization had brought a more reflective mind, a more humane temper, and the birth of sacred pity.

The _Troades_, to which we come next for the story of Cassandra, breathes throughout the pitiful spirit of the poet Euripides. It relates what befell the women of the royal household after the sack of the city. As grey daylight comes we see the figure of the aged queen, prostrate before the charred walls of the town. She rises feebly, moaning in a bewilderment of grief and physical weakness. To her approach, one after another, furtively, the frightened Trojan women who form the Chorus of the play. Her crying has wakened them, and they steal out to try to discover what fate is in store for them. Even while they ask, a messenger Talthybius, arrives from the Greek ships. In curt phrases he replies to the queen’s anguished inquiries about her daughters. They have been assigned to certain of the Greek chiefs, he says: Andromache to Neoptolemus, she herself to Odysseus, and Polyxena (he speaks ambiguously, to hide a grimmer fact) to serve at the tomb of Achilles. The stricken queen asks about each in turn.

HECUBA. _Say how Cassandra’s portion lies._

TALTHYBIUS. _Chosen from all for Agamemnon’s prize!_

HECUBA. _How, ...
The sainted of Apollo? And her own
Prize that God promisèd,
Out of the golden clouds, her virgin crown?_

TALTHYBIUS. _He loved her for that same strange holiness._[18]

CASSANDRA

_Solomon J. Solomon R.A._

_By permission of the Artist_
]

Hecuba is appalled at this fate that is decreed for her child. She whose pure spirit had always ranged beyond the things of time and sense, who was the consecrated priestess of Apollo and set apart for holy service, is condemned to be the slave-wife of the man who has destroyed their city. The poor mother wails in horror at the thought: it is too awful, too sacrilegious a deed even for these proud Greeks, and she cries out in protest. The herald silences her with a brutal comment on the good fortune which makes her daughter the bride of a king; and then orders an attendant to fetch Cassandra from the tents. But there is no need for the man to go. Even while they are speaking there comes a sudden flash of strange fire, and the wild figure of Cassandra appears, robed in white, garlanded with flowers and carrying a blazing torch. The fearful events of the past night have driven her to a frenzy. Arrayed as for a happy bridal, she comes singing a hymn to Hymen; but the terror in her eyes, and the poignancy of the words she utters hold her hearers dumb:

“_Hail, O Hymen red,
O Torch that makest one!
Weepest thou, Mother mine own?
Surely thy cheek is pale
With tears, tears that wail
For a land and a father dead.
But I go garlanded:
I am the bride of Desire...._

“_O mother, fill mine hair with happy flowers,
And speed me forth.... So liveth Loxias,
A bloodier bride than ever Helen was
Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high
Of Hellas!... I shall kill him, mother! I
Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire
As he laid ours. My brothers and my sire
Shall win again!..._“[18]

Her frenzy gives place now to a more meditative strain. It is as though the fiery cloud that hung about her brain was pierced for an instant by the sight of her grieving mother. She tries to find words to comfort Hecuba; and as the calmer mood deepens she rises to a perception of the dignity of high failure contrasted with low success. The Trojans dying for their homes she sees as a nobler thing than the triumph of the Greeks.

“_Would, ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war!
Yet if war come, there is a crown in death
For her that striveth well and perisheth
Unstained: to die in evil were the stain!
Therefore, O Mother, pity not thy slain,
Nor Troy, nor me, the bride. Thy direst foe
And mine by this my wooing is brought low._”[18]

At this point the herald is suddenly roused to reply. He turns upon her furiously for her ominous forebodings and bids her be silent. If he did not know her for a mad woman, he says, she should suffer for boding thus evil to the Greeks. He orders her roughly to follow him; but at his speech the frenzy rushes over Cassandra again. She turns upon Talthybius in magnificent anger and scorn. “How fierce a slave,” she cries; and then the prophetic gift burns in her as she foretells in language of awful beauty her own doom and that of Agamemnon.

“_Thou Greek King,
Who deem’st thy fortune now so high a thing,
Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see,
In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee;
And with thee, with thee ... there, where yawneth plain
A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain,
Dead ... and outcast ... and naked.... It is I
Beside my bridegroom; and the wild beasts cry,
And ravin on God’s chosen!..._

“_Mother, farewell, and weep not! O my sweet
City, my earth-clad brethren, and thou great
Sire that begat us; but a space, ye Dead,
And I am with you; yea, with crownèd head
I come, and shining from the fires that feed
On these that slay us now, and all their seed._“[18]

Cassandra is led away to the Greek ships, no blessing to the toiling mariners. For even their own gods are wrath at the crime against her; and many a heart-breaking struggle is in store for them: many a noble ship will be lost, and many a hero’s life will pay the penalty, before their homes are reached. Perhaps to Agamemnon more than most, the Deities of the Elements were kind. But then they knew the fate awaiting him, and in ironic pleasure sped him to it. There is no need to recall the details of his arrival at Mycenæ, or of his welcome by Clytemnestra, almost distraught by conflicting hope and fear. Agamemnon was weary of his voyage; weary, too, of the long steep chariot-drive up from the sea. Yielding to his wife’s entreaty to walk on costly crimson to the palace, he turns for an instant to Cassandra’s chariot.

“_Receive, I pray thee
This stranger-woman kindly. Heaven still smiles,
When power is used with gentleness. No mortal
Is willingly a captive, but this maid,
Of countless spoils the flower and crown, was given
To me by the army, and attends me home._”[19]

The moment is crowded with emotion. For the briefest space—merely long enough, in fact, to make the Trojan woman formally known to Clytemnestra—these three strong spirits face each other. Cassandra, wide-eyed and rigid, looks beyond the king and queen, beyond the crowding people, at _something_ that her vision warns her is beyond the palace doors. To Clytemnestra, her presence is an insult, and her purity an intolerable reproach. There is one glance of bitterness and hatred from the queen which Cassandra does not see; and then the insolent king enters the palace, Clytemnestra following him. She returns immediately, however, lashed to a fury in which her dignity goes to shreds.

CLY. _In with thee too, Cassandra! Get thee in!
Since Heaven in mercy hath consigned thee here
To share our household lustral waters, one
Of many slaves that stand around our hearth.
Come from that carriage. Be not proud. Descend!_

The speech is cruel; and it has, moreover, an inner meaning which the poor captive perceives only too well. She does not answer. She listens in silence, too, when the Chorus address her; and when Clytemnestra, with that crucial moment imminent, grows wild with impatience. “Sure she is mad,” ejaculates the angry queen; “I’ll not demean myself by throwing more words away.” Only when she has gone does Cassandra break silence; and then by a wail which the sympathetic Elders cannot understand.

“_Ai, Ai! O Apollo! Apollo!...
Builder! Destroyer!
Builder of Troy! Destroyer of me!_“[19]

The old men pity her, and try to calm her frenzy. She looks round on them, as if awakening from a dream, and asks what house is this. They reply that it is the Atridæ’s palace, and the word calls up to Cassandra the long black record of the house of Atreus.

CASS. _Ah! a hideous den, abhorred of Heaven,
Guilt-stained with strangled lives.... Ah! faugh!_

CHO. _Her scent is keen, this stranger’s! Like a hound
She snuffs for blood. And she will find, I doubt me._[19]

In a long recital, Cassandra recounts the ancient crimes of the Atridæ; and in dark oracular language moans that there is worse behind. The old men are perplexed. They cannot follow her meaning, though over and over again she struggles to make clear the doom that is even now about to fall.

CASS. _Ah! what is this? Oh me!
What strange new grief is risen?
A deed of might ..._
_An act
Of hate for love; and succour bides aloof,
Far, far away._

CHO. _This prophecy is dark to me...._

CASS. ... _’Twill come,
‘Tis here! She lifts her hand; she launches at him
Blow following blow!_

CHO. _Thy speech appals me._

CASS. _Woe! For my hapless doom!
To fill the cup, I tell my own sad tale!
Why hast thou brought me to this place? Oh misery!
To die with thee? What else? To die!... To die!...
Paris, thy wedding hath destroyed thy house,
Yea, and thy sister!—O Scamander stream!
Our fathers drank of thee and by thy shore
I grew, I flourished. Oh unhappy I!
But now by dark Cocytus and the banks
Of Acheron, my prophecies shall sound._[19]

The Elders begin to understand; but still the drift of her message is only partly clear to them. They realize that she is distraught, fearing some dreadful fate for herself; they have, too, a glimmering fear of danger to the king. But they cannot comprehend what it may be; and the thought of succour never dawns upon their dull old wits. They speak gently to Cassandra; but again her message seems to tear her with its force and urgency.

“_No longer, like a newly married girl,
My word shall peep behind a veil, but, flashing
With panted vehemence to meet the day,
‘Twill dash, against the shores of Light, a sorrow
Of mightier volume._“[19]

Then, point by point, she goes with studied clarity over all the “trail of long-past crime.” So long as this is her theme, the Elders understand and confirm her words. But when, rising again on the wings of prophecy and therefore to a rapt and obscure utterance, she foretells the fall of Agamemnon and her own death, they are again at sea. She pauses for an instant, baffled; she knows that her end is imminent, and in her despair she casts stinging words at them for their stupidity and inaction. Never has Apollo’s ban wrought so bitterly; and in the extremity of her anguish she declares that she will call upon the god no longer. She strips herself of the sacred emblems and flings them from her.

“_Why wear I still these mockeries of my soul,
This wand, these fillets round my neck? I tear ye
Thus! Go to your destruction ere I die!
To pieces with you! Lead the way! I follow!
Enrich some other life with misery....
I will go forward! I will dare to die!
Hail, then, thou gate of Hell!_“[19]

She takes a few steps toward the palace; but her courage fails for a moment. The reek of blood in her nostrils stifles her, and she recoils. In her last words passion and strength alike fade out, giving place to a pathetic human appeal:

“_O strangers! friends!
I shrink not idly, like some timorous bird
Before a bush! Bear record in that day
When I am dead...._“[19]

And the old men, as she passes slowly out of sight, wail over her what is perhaps her most fitting epitaph:

_Ah! what is mortal life? When prosperous,
A shadow can o’erturn it; and, when fallen,
A throw o’ the wet sponge blurs the picture out._
THIS IS MORE PITEOUS THAN THE RUIN OF PRIDE.[19]

-----

Footnote 17:

From Mr Andrew Lang’s _Helen of Troy_ (G. Bell & Sons).

Footnote 18:

From Professor G. Murray’s translation of the _Troades_ (George Allen
& Co. Ltd.).

Footnote 19:

From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Agamemnon_
(Clarendon Press).

_Æschylus: Io_

We turn now from the Trojan legend to that of Thebes. We are still in the realm of Tragedy; and in some respects the Theban story is more barbarous than that of Troy. But by some means the tension is slightly relieved, and the atmosphere is lightened by one degree. Perhaps that is because, in the dramas which treat of this subject, the poets seem to have gone back further into the remote past and to have steeped themselves in the spirit of those early times. Perhaps, too, it is on account of something wilder and more primitive inherent in the Theban story itself. Such elements, and such a treatment by the poets, would tend to remove the persons of the drama a step further from probability, and would make them to that extent greater or less than human. Thus their appeal to the emotions would not be so direct, nor so intimate. On the other hand, the figures so presented gain in sublimity. Their mythical origin surrounds them with a halo, through which they loom vast, mysterious, and inaccessible.

Such a being is Io. In the _Prometheus Bound_, the drama in which her story is given, Æschylus has gone back for his subject literally to the beginning of things; to the time when Zeus was young and the reign of Chaos was not long overpast. We must be prepared then for a tale which in its details is marvellous and incredible: for a naïve account of the love of the supreme god for a mortal woman: of the anger of Hera, his jealous queen: of the metamorphosis and long wanderings of the innocent maid: and of her reward at last, when she becomes the ancestress of the founder of Thebes, and ancestress too, in a remote generation, of Heracles, the deliverer of Prometheus.

It is here that we touch Io’s connexion with the Theban legend, into which as a fact she does not otherwise enter. For her son Epaphus, wondrously born at the touch of the finger of Zeus, had two grandsons, Cadmus and Cilix; and a granddaughter, Europa. The well-known legend tells how Zeus, in the shape of a bull, carried off Europa. Whereupon her two brothers went in search of their sister and wandered many a long day. They did not recover her, however, and at length gave up the search. Cilix settled down in a country which was called Cilicia after him; and Cadmus, instructed by the oracle at Delphi, followed a straying cow into Bœotia. On the spot where the animal should happen to lie down he was commanded to found his city. But his task proved to be no light one. For there was a dragon to be overcome; and a weird army, sprung from the earth where the dragon’s teeth were sown, had to be vanquished in battle before Cadmus could begin his work of founding the city of Thebes.

This event, as we see, is only remotely connected with Io, although the connexion is precise and clear. In point of time, if chronology is the least use in such a case, it is several generations nearer to us than she is. Yet we have only to cast one glance at the story of Cadmus to see at once its youthful element of marvel. Its wonders are so crude as almost to raise a smile—the half amused, half tender smile with which we turn over in our hand some grotesque plaything of our childhood. It is indeed only the humorous aspect of these old stories which seizes us when we look back at them from a detached standpoint, and with minds bent to the critical attitude. But that was not the poet’s attitude; not, at least, when he was making poetry. Doubtless there must have been moments when the Comic Spirit rebelled, since even poets do not live alone by the emotions. But when tragedy first entered life’s deep waters its captains bound the mischievous laughing spirit securely under hatches. It could be of no service in such a stern battle with the elements.

So we find that the tragic poets (except perhaps Euripides occasionally) treat these strange old stories in what is called ‘the grand manner.’ Do not be disturbed by something stiff and formal in the expression. Like all definitions, it is smaller and harder than the thing it tries to define. For the poet has not the least intention of being ‘grand,’ and is as far as possible removed from any conscious ‘manner.’ On the contrary, it is true as a rule that the greater he is, the simpler his thought and expression are. He comes to these old themes with the eye and the heart of a child as well as the brain of a great genius; and the spirit of poetry, with all the knowledge of all the ages, utters its message through his lips in limpid song. Matters of probability and questions of logic, which seem so important to the mere intellect, bow their chastened heads before him. The whole scheme of values is changed, and that which appeared to the arrogant intellect as wild and ludicrous is perceived by the poet full of strange beauty and significance.

In this way Sophocles approached the Theban legend, as we shall see when we come to Jocasta and Antigone, presently. In this way, too, Æschylus gave us the story of Io in his _Prometheus Bound_. Just when Io is supposed to have lived we do not know. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus; and she was a priestess of Hera in Argos. But Æchylus has made her coeval with the Titans. In this poem, therefore, she is a denizen of that early world which saw the overthrow of Cronos from the throne of heaven, and the rise of his son Zeus. All the Titans save one had opposed the new god when he rose in rebellion against the primeval powers. But Prometheus, far-seeing from the first, and knowing that Zeus must conquer, lent him aid. It was a long and bitter struggle in the youth of the world. But at last Cronos and the Titans who had opposed him were hurled by Zeus into Tartarus—“under the misty darkness ... in a dank place, at the verge of the earth.” Typhon was buried under Etna; and Atlas, far in the West, was bowed beneath the pillar of the heavens, “where night and day meet and greet one another, as they pass the great threshold of bronze.”

All now seemed calm and fair for the establishment of the new Hierarchy. Too calm and fair; for Zeus, with all his enemies subdued and possessing absolute power, soon grew tyrannical. With leisure now from Olympian warfare, he looked down upon the earth and the feeble race of men. It seemed to him a contemptible thing, struggling weakly against pitiless forces and groping its way, by minute degrees that were imperceptible from his lofty height, toward a larger and a better state. It was a mean and futile and impotent race, he pondered. Surely it would be better to wipe it out of existence altogether, than let it continue to blot the face of the fair world.

So concluded the youthful ruler of Olympus, in his haughty strength. But Prometheus knew mankind better than Zeus. The hills and valleys of earth were his kin, dear and familiar to him; and he had come to love the imperfect human soul that had just managed to get itself born in those rude cave-men. He saw the violent act that the Lord of Olympus was planning in his mind; and resolved to save humanity. So, as the old poet Hesiod says in his _Works and Days_, “he stole fire for men from Zeus the Counsellor in a hollow fennel stalk, what time the Hurler of the Thunder knew not.” But the boon to man meant sheer disaster to himself, as he knew when he filched it from Olympus. The purpose of Zeus could not be thwarted with impunity. Prometheus was condemned to age-long punishment, chained to a rock on an icy mountain top until such time as a deliverer should come, and an immortal being could be found willing to give up life for him. The punishment of Prometheus is the subject of the present drama. It is believed to have been the middle play of a trilogy, of which the last was the _Prometheus Unbound_, and the first probably related the bringing of fire to earth. The _Prometheus Bound_ is not dramatic in the sense that the _Agamemnon_ and the _Choephorœ_ are. There is hardly any action in it, for the suffering Titan continues chained to his rock throughout the poem. From the nature of the theme, too, the characters are too colossal and remote to make an intimate appeal to us. Yet the drama is charged with the deepest emotion, transcending the pity or fear of common experience. If it does not start into life before our eyes as an actual conflict, that is because it is rooted in a deeper and more crucial struggle between cosmic forces. And if the persons of the drama are unapproachable and unfamiliar, it is from the very reason of their sublimity. We see the protagonist first as he is being riveted to the rocky wall by the god Hephæstus. The Fire-god reluctantly performs the task, bidden to it roughly by Force, who is invested for the moment with the strength of Zeus, but without his dignity. Hephæstus is indignant at the sentence on his kinsman, the titan, and declares that he has no heart to chain him in this stormy mountain region, merely because of his beneficent help to man. But Force is inexorable: he urges on the work until every limb of the titan is secured, and an adamantine wedge is driven through his breast. When all is accomplished, Prometheus is left alone; and then for the first time he breaks silence. He invokes the elements that are his kindred: the sky, the winds, the rivers, the smiling sea, the sun, the great earth-mother.

“_See me tormented by the gods, a god!
Behold me, what agony
Through the measureless course of the ages
Racked, I shall suffer;
I by the upstart Ruler in heaven
To captivity doomed and outrage.
Woe, woe is me!...
... Blessings, that on man
I lavished, have involved me in this fate,
And for that in a hollow fennel stalk
I sought and stored and stole the fount of flame,
Whence men all arts have learned, a potent help._“[1]

While Prometheus is speaking, there gather softly round him the gentle sea-nymphs who are to be the chorus of the drama. They question him tenderly, in words that fall like balm, and elicit all his story. It is pitiable, they say, and they marvel at the penalty which Zeus imposes on so kind a creature.

Presently Oceanus himself, god of the dreadful river that circles the world, approaches in his chariot. He is old and grave and prudent. The action of Prometheus seems to him rash and daring: his opposition to Zeus mere pride. He advises the titan to yield, since it is expedient to bow to the superior power. But Prometheus fiercely rejects such timid counsel. Nothing shall shake his resistance to the tyrant, and Oceanus may spare his breath. Let him go save himself: as for Prometheus, he will endure until it shall please Zeus to relent.

Hot words pass. Oceanus tries in vain to teach prudence to the high heart of the titan, and departs angrily. Then the sea-nymphs sing a sweet song of pity; and Prometheus, touched to a softer mood, begs them not to think him hard and proud. Only, the thought of his wrongs is intolerable, received at the hand of one whom he himself had helped to place upon the throne of Olympus. And what had been his crime? None. His hands are clean: his integrity absolute. His sufferings are an amazing injustice: the price of beneficent deeds to humanity that he tells over to the wondering maids.

“_I will recount you, how, mere babes before,
With reason I endowed them and with mind ...
Who, firstly, seeing, knew not what they saw,
And hearing did not hear; confusedly passed
Their life-days, lingeringly, like shapes in dreams,
Without an aim; and neither sunward homes,
Brick-woven, nor skill of carpentry, they knew;
But lived, like small ants shaken with a breath,
In sunless caves a burrowing buried life:
... The hidden lore
Of rising stars and setting I unveiled.
I taught them Number, first of sciences;
I framed the written symbols into speech,
Art all-recording, mother of the Muse:
I first put harness on dumb patient beasts ...
That they might lighten men of heavy toil,
I taught to draw the car and love the rein
Horses, crown of the luxury of wealth.
And who but I invented the white-winged
Sea-roving chariot of the mariner?_

“_For mortals such contrivances I found,
But for myself alas no wit have I,
Whereby to rid me of my present pain._”[20]

So he continues to narrate all that he had achieved for the welfare of man: how he had taught him Medicine, Prophecy and Augury; and had brought to light the treasure of precious metals that lay hidden within the earth. Indeed, as the long recital falls from his lips, we know that the poet has symbolized in him all the great civilizing influences on mankind.

But the sea-nymphs, though they sympathize with his sorrow, cannot rise to the height of his thought. To them mankind is a “fleeting, dream-like race,” unworthy of the sacrifice that he has made. They chide him gently. Why has he dared the wrath of Zeus, and why will he bear the weary ages of torture for such a people? The beauty of the lyric casts a spell upon us. The thought of the long-drawn agony, endured from century to century, makes us waver. Might he not have been misguided? Was Zeus right, perhaps? And would not the titan be wise to make peace with so powerful a ruler?

Thus the softer mood of the sea-maidens wins upon us. Viewed through it, the resistance of Prometheus begins to look like stubborn self-will; and the decree of Zeus a righteous chastisement. But just as the feeling is gathering strength an episode occurs which reverses the current of emotion. For there rushes suddenly on the desolate scene a strange wild creature, half woman and half beast. Under the curling heifer’s horns there is a fair white brow; and below the brow sweet human eyes, distraught with fear and pain. This is Io, the maid beloved by Zeus. Cast out of her home by the god’s command, she has been chased from the society of her kind, and her fair woman form has been partly changed to bestial shape. For many a weary league she has been goaded onward by the gadfly of Hera; and even now she is haunted by the wraith of Argus, the huntsman of the hundred eyes whom the angry goddess had set to watch her. Good and beautiful she had been, her serene life gladly given to the service of Hera in an Argive temple. Yet now she is doomed to wander restlessly over sea and land, through sun and storm, and by many an unknown lonely path, without apparent aim and for no apparent cause. As her feet stumble up the mountain side and she stands before Prometheus, innocent and mercilessly persecuted, we feel that the moment is crowded with all the elements of tragedy. If we had wavered before, standing on that ridge of neutral ground where the cool airs of reason calm the passions; if the poet meant that we should waver for a moment, giving us in his unifying purpose some perception of the higher power as it would ultimately justify itself; he plunges us now into the arena again, with every emotion clamant to defend these victims of tyranny.

As they confront each other, Io speaks, forgetting her own griefs for the moment in contemplation of the suffering titan.

“_What land, what people is here?
Whom shall I say that I see,
Rock-pinioned yonder,
Storm-buffeted?
To penance of a living death
What crime hath doomed thee?
Tell me, thou luckless one,
Where have I wandered?_

“_Ah me, alas, unhappy!
Frenzied again as by the gadfly’s sting,
The fatal herdsman with the myriad eyes,
The giant Argus, I behold ...
Me he pursues, the unhappy,
Over sandy leagues of the waste seashore....
Whither alas, ah woe is me
When shall my wandering end?_

“_What, O what was the sin in me,
O son of Cronos, that thou didst find?
Why hast thou doomed me thus to suffer
By the gadfly’s goad still onward driven,
Weary of fleeing, distraught with dread?...
Enough I have wandered—
Wandered afar till my strength is spent;
And still from my doom escape is none.
Dost thou mark my speech?
The hornèd maiden hearest thou?_“[20]

Prometheus does indeed hear and know her, he says, the poor frenzied daughter of Inachus, whom Zeus loves. As he speaks her father’s name, Io catches at it eagerly. Perhaps this may be a friend.

IO. _Who told thee of my sire?
Tell me, the sufferer—who art thou,
That thou hast named aright
One wretched as thyself?..._

PROM. _This is Prometheus, who gave fire to men._

IO. _Of all our human kind, proved helper thou,
Ill-starred Prometheus—what hath earned thee this?_[20]

In rapid interchange of question and answer, the cause of the quarrel, and its consequence, are related to Io; and then, because she knows that Prometheus can foresee the future, she begs him to tell her what is in store for herself. The titan warns her that the knowledge can only bring fresh pain; and for awhile the prophecy is delayed, as Io, at the petition of the nymphs, tells her own strange story.

IO. _Your will is law to me; I must obey.
... Albeit I blush to tell.
Haunting my virgin chamber, night by night,
Came visions to beguile me while I slept
With fair smooth words: “O maiden highly blest,
Be maiden now no more; to whom ‘tis given
To mate thee with the Highest; thy beauty’s shaft
Glows in the heart of Zeus, and for his bride
He claims thee.”_[20]

Her father Inachus sent anxious messages to the oracles at Delphi and Dodona to inquire what this persistent vision might mean. At first ambiguous answers came.

_But at the last to Inachus there came
A peremptory word, with mandate clear,
To cast me from my country and my home,
At the world’s end a wanderer far from men;
And, if he would not, swift from Zeus should come
A fiery bolt that should consume his race._[20]

With sorrowful heart, Inachus obeyed the oracular command, constrained thereto by Zeus. Io was driven out to the pastures of her father’s herds.

_Then was my feature changed, my reason fled:
Wearing these horns ye see, with frenzied hounds,
Pricked and tormented by the gadfly’s sting,
To fair Kerchneia’s stream and Lerna’s shore
I hasted. And upon my traces still,
Of rage unslaked, with myriad eyes agaze,
The earth-born huntsman Argus followed hard.
Him unawares a sudden death o’ertook,
And reft him of his life. From land to land,
Heaven’s scourge, the unsleeping gadfly, drives me still.
My tale is told. What time has yet in store
For me to suffer, tell me if thou canst:
Not pitying think with lies to comfort me:
False words I count of maladies the worst._[20]

Io is asking more than she knows, and the prophecy that Prometheus will make to her is more wonderful than she could ever dream. In careful detail, and so impressively that she must remember every word, he indicates the first part of her wanderings. She must turn her face eastward, and faring through Scythia, pass along the sea-coast, avoiding the fierce Chalybes. Then on wearily to the range of the Caucasus, which she must ascend to the very summit; and following afterward a southward road, she will come to the land of the Amazons and down to the sea which separates the continents. Here she must boldly ford the strait, which in later times will be called Bosphorus because she, the cow-maiden, crossed it; and leaving Europe behind, she will tread on Asian soil.

PROM. _... Deem ye not
That this proud lord of heaven on great and small
Tramples alike? For this poor mortal maid,
Enamoured of her love, his godhead dooms
To wander thus. Thy most imperious wooer,
Maiden, thou well mayst rue. What I have told,
Deem that the prelude hardly hast thou heard._

IO. _Woe’s me, alas, alas!...
What boots it then to live? Were it not better
From this hard rock to fling myself outright,
That dashed to earth I might of all my toil
Have riddance? Better surely once to die.
Than all my days to be afflicted thus._[20]

But Prometheus, looking further still into the future, sees some hope for her, as he contrasts her fate with his. However great her affliction, it must end some day; he can even foretell just what the issue will be, and when. But for him, suffering must continue until Zeus is hurled from his throne.

IO. _Shall Zeus indeed be downcast from his throne?_

PROM. _To see that day methinks thou wouldst rejoice._

IO. _How could I but rejoice, whom he has wronged?_[20]

She begs for a revelation of the fate of Zeus; and the titan tells briefly of a certain marriage that the god is contemplating, which must bring him ruin if Prometheus will not interpose.

IO. _Who then shall loose thee in despite of Zeus?_

PROM. _One of thine own descendants he shall be._

IO. _How? shall a child of mine deliver thee?_

PROM. _Ten generations hence, and three beside._

IO. _Now hard to read the prophecy becomes._[20]

Io’s mind cannot take so great a leap forward; and Prometheus, resuming the course of her wanderings in Asia, gradually leads up to the climax of her story. Having crossed the strait, she is again to bend her steps eastward. Through the land of the Gorgons she must go, and of the Griffins, and of Phorcy’s daughters, the three hags with one eye and one tooth between them. On the golden shores of Pluto she will see an army of one-eyed horsemen, whom she must carefully avoid; and toiling onward still, she must follow the course of the river Ethiopia far up to its very source. Then, at Canopus, a town upon the shores of distant Nile, she will find rest.

So is completed the tale of Io’s wanderings. And now, before Prometheus reveals the strangest thing of all, he would convince her that he is speaking truth indeed. So he recalls to her mind a marvel that had happened on her way thither, but which she had not spoken when she related her story.

PROM. _To the Molossian plains when thou hadst come,...
And to Dodona’s rock-ridge, to the seat
And sacred oracle of Thesprotian Zeus,
Famed for its marvel of the talking oaks,
That with clear voice and nowise doubtfully
Hailed thee (sounds this familiar to thine ears?)
The glorious bride of Zeus in days to come._[20]

The weird music of the oaks came back to her as the titan spoke, phrased intelligibly now. It had haunted all her journey, but confusedly, hinting at something she could not clearly understand, and dared not name. But in the words of Prometheus its meaning pealed. Becoming in that far Eastern country the bride of the ruler of Olympus, she would found a splendid race. From her the Danaans would spring, one root of that Hellenic people which should civilize the Western world. She would give a line of kings to the Argive throne. But greater and more blessed than all, from her should come the supreme Greek hero Heracles, destined to release this suffering titan from his misery.

As she muses on the wonder of it, Prometheus takes up again the thread of his prophecy. In that rich land which borders on the Nile she may at last stay her weary feet.

“_There shall the hand of Zeus, with soft caress
Upon thee laid, restore thee to thy mind:
And thou shalt bear, named of his fruitful touch,
A son, swart Epaphus, whom all that land,
By the broad Nile-stream watered, shall enrich...._“[20]

From Io’s son Epaphus should descend, generations afterward, a princess.

“_’The royal line of Argos springs from her.
Time fails to tell the story to its close:
But of her strain one valiant shall be born,
And famous with the bow; he from these ills
Shall loose me.’ Thus the titaness, my mother,
Primeval Themis, prophesied to me,
But of the ways and means too long it were
To tell thee, and it profits not to know._“[20]

To immortal eyes, seeing the end in the beginning, it was a glorious destiny; one to compensate perhaps, if not to justify, all that she had endured. But Io is only a mortal maid. The vision of the future opens before her in one radiant moment, and then all is dark again, and nothing remains but her inexplicable pain. Even before Prometheus has finished speaking the cloud had fallen upon her mind again.

“_Alas! Woe worth the day!
Again a thrill, a spasm of frenzy
Shoots through me, soul-distracting:
The unforged goad of the gadfly
Stings me afresh; and my seated heart
Knocks at my ribs for fear,
My sight swims, and my senses reel;
And a frantic gust of madness sweeps me
Wide of the course...._”[20]

Tormented and distracted, she rushes from the scene as wildly as she had come; but as the titan and the sea-nymphs sadly watch her go, they see that her face is set now toward the East.

-----

Footnote 20:

From Mr Robert Whitelaw’s translation of the _Prometheus_ (Clarendon
Press, 1s. net).

_Sophocles: Jocasta_

Jocasta, in _Œdipus the King_ of Sophocles, is a very real woman. Moreover, though she is a splendidly dramatic figure, she is not heroic in anything save her death. True, she is a queen, deriving royalty through several generations from Cadmus himself; and possessing the throne of Thebes so surely that when the king her husband died she had perforce to marry with his successor in order to establish him in the kingship. But despite her special royalty, which makes her, as Professor Murray has pointed out, like one of the consecrated queens of early times: despite the extreme deference which is paid to her, the weight that attaches to her counsel, and the sense of brooding fate that clings about her, she is before all an appealing and convincing human creature.

This vivid reality is a new fact in our study of Greek heroines, and the reason for it is that we have come now to the Drama of Sophocles. We have seen, so far, the women of Homer and those of Æschylus; and we have observed one or two characteristics which distinguish them.

The Homeric women are gracious and beautiful, glowing as it were with romantic charm. With one notable exception, Penelope, they appear rarely in the movement of the epic; and then only to form the central figure in a picturesque group. Reality has never touched them. Generous as their emotions are, the extremes of passion have not for an instant distorted their loveliness. When they are called upon to act, they seem always to move with grace and gentleness; and even in their sorrow they are serene. If they share in the great stern things of life, its aspiration and its struggle, they give no sign of the penalty exacted. They are always young, fresh and fair; except again Penelope, and she has only gained from age, not lost. A wise maturity has been added to her early charms. And thus these Homeric women, with their delicate infrangible bloom, seem to belong to a region just over the boundary-line of our common humanity.

The women of Æschylus are much greater figures. Clytemnestra is colossal: Cassandra, Electra and Io are all conceived majestically. Unlike the Epic women, they are capable of strenuous action: strong passions sway them, and they are much concerned with the great issues of life. We know little or nothing about their appearance, and it does not seem to matter. They do not live in our mental vision pictorially, in soft, warm tints; but remotely grand, they appeal to a more austere sense of wonder, awe and reverence. Surrounded by an atmosphere of myth, and sharing in the elevation of the poet’s spirit, they seem to be creatures of an older and a bigger world.

There is indeed one woman in the Æschylean Drama, Orestes’ nurse, who is of ordinary stature and might belong to any age. But she is of minor importance in the story, and does not move on the heroic plane. She is therefore beyond the range of that sublimating power of the poetic spirit which magnified the heroes and heroines to immense proportions. And as she stands in the clear daylight outside the enchanted circle she is just an old grey woman taken straight out of common life. But for that very reason there is a hearty, homely breath about her which is very refreshing. She is but a nurse: she is quaint and querulous in her talk, inept, wordy and reminiscent; and peevishly loyal. Yet in her very weakness and foolishness she is precious, for is she not a flash from the eyes of the Comic Spirit, naïvely unconscious of its august surroundings? We feel that we can actually see and hear her, as she gabbles about Orestes’ babyhood and how she tended him; being nurse, cook, foster-mother and washerwoman all combined. But she is unique among Æschylean women, and when we turn to look again on the figures of his heroines, a thought is suggested by the extreme contrast. Here is creative genius so strong that it has evoked on the one hand the grandeur of a Clytemnestra; and on the other, the biting reality of this old slave. But there does not seem to have been an equivalent artistic power which, controlling the fervid idealism and combining it with his keen insight, would have produced types more fully and completely human.

Such types we find first when we come to the Drama of Sophocles. With Æschylus the ruling passion had been spiritual fervour. In Sophocles the artist reigned paramount. All the advance which his drama made, in plot, incident and character-building, was in the direction of a more perfect art. And although there was some inevitable loss—as for instance the curtailment of the lyrics by modifying the part of the Chorus; and their lower poetic flight—on the whole the gain is very great. In the matter of characterization, with which we are chiefly concerned, the change is one which brings us out of the region of demi-gods into the world of men and women.

When we say that the persons of Sophocles’s drama are real people, that is not to say that they are ‘realistic’ in the narrow sense of the word which conveys only what is average and actual. But it does mean that with all their splendour and dignity and fine achievement they are subject to our common humanity. They are not immune from the defects of their virtues. The passions which have led them to great deeds are potent agents of their downfall. It is the flaw within which helps to betray them.

For this reason, and also because the poet shows his characters moving in intimate human relationships, the women of Sophocles are intensely living creatures. Electra in her conflict with Chrysothomis, and Antigone with Ismene, are of the stuff of life; and the situations thus created are pure drama. Here two great natures clash. Closely bound by the ties of blood and affection, but at the opposite poles of temperament, the struggle between them is all the more bitter from the intimacy of their relationship. Both claim our esteem and both are sincerely confident in the purity of their intentions. But each mistrusts the other, believing her to be fatally misguided or wilfully blind. It is by this faculty of seeing all sides of an issue, or, as Matthew Arnold expressed it, “to see life steadily and see it whole,” that Sophocles has heightened and deepened the dramatic values of a story. Out of that, too, he has made Jocasta, with all her state and despite the unnatural horror with which she is touched, a pitiable figure.

Here again two noble natures, near and very dear to each other, are brought into conflict. In this case, however, there is an added element of tragic irony which increases the dramatic power threefold. For we know, as we watch the tender comradeship of Œdipus and Jocasta, that there is this sinister thing in the background, ready to flame out at any instant and make them loathsome in each other’s eyes. And the moment when the shameful truth is revealed, literally dragged to light by Œdipus to his own undoing, is perhaps the most awful in Greek tragedy.

The story belongs to the Theban cycle, of which we have already heard. It is older than Homer, who calls Jocasta _Epicasta_; and it had many variants. In the Eleventh Book of the _Odyssey_ there is the quaint epitome of it which the hero gives when he is describing his visit to the World of the Dead. Among the shades which throng there he sees Jocasta.

“_And then beheld I Epicasta fair,
Oedipus’ mother, her who unaware
Did a strange deed through ignorance of mind,
To intermarry with the son she bare._

“_And he his mother wedded, having slain
His father: and these things the Gods made plain
To all men suddenly; then he among
The folk Cadmean held a troublous reign,_

“_In lovely Thebes, according to the fate
By purpose of the Gods predestinate
For evil: but she went her way alone
To the strong Warder of the darkling gate._“[21]

This version agrees in the main with that of Sophocles, and points to the antiquity of the story. Even in those early times the fate of Jocasta and Œdipus was part of an ancient myth. Like the story of Io, remote ancestress of the founder of their city, it is a tale of wrong wrought upon mortals by a god. Perhaps it is not so primitive as the Io legend. There is nothing in it quite so naïve as the idea of the heifer-maiden loved by the supreme god and mercilessly hunted by his jealous queen. The Olympian hierarchy is now established, with its system of greater and lesser gods, and Zeus at their head has grown, in accordance with the theory of Æschylus, wiser with age. Apollo is now the persecutor. And with the development in the divine order goes a corresponding complexity in the human elements of the story. The actors in it are the instruments of their own suffering. The inimical power is not now frank tyranny. Its victims even believe it to be friendly, or at least placable; and it is by their own deeds that the decree against them is brought to pass. Yet this apparent advance still leaves the story in a dark past, far behind the poets. And there are some aspects of it—the curse fulfilled by Œdipus of parricide and incest; and the stark unreason with which it was regarded—which make us feel that the primitive age has only just given place to one of gross superstition.

The essence of the tragedy lies in the double fact of Apollo’s hostility to Œdipus and Jocasta and their ignorance of it. When Laius and Jocasta were young upon the throne of Thebes they prayed to Apollo to give them a son. The oracle at Delphi replied to Laius, “I will give thee a son, but it is doomed that thou leave the sunlight by the hands of thy child.” Thus the decree was launched.

Laius and Jocasta trembled at the doom, and considered how it might be averted. When their son was born, they took a cruel and desperate means to save its father’s life. Three days after his birth they handed over the babe to a herdsman, to be exposed on Mt. Kithairon. And first they pierced his heels, to ensure his death. So Jocasta, out of love for her husband and fear of the oracle, brought herself to a deed which poisoned all her life. Yet it was of no avail against fate. For the man who took her babe had pity on it; and meeting a friendly herdsman who was in the service of Polybus, king of Corinth, he gave the child to him. Polybus and his queen Merope were childless; and the herdsman believed that they would welcome the little foundling. He was not mistaken: calling him Œdipus from his swelled feet, they brought him up as their son.

All went well until the boy had grown into manhood. Then one day a young companion, heated with wine, flung out a taunt about his birth. Œdipus, fully believing himself to be the son of Polybus and Merope, went to them with the story. They chastised the offender, but their replies to Œdipus’ questions left a doubt of his parentage rankling in his mind. He determined to satisfy himself once for all by an appeal to Apollo; and he travelled to Delphi to inquire of the oracle in person. The reply was terrible, and, unlike most oracular utterances, seemed only too clear. He was doomed, it said, to slay his father and marry with his mother. But the most vital point, the names of his parents, was not revealed; and Œdipus, still believing them to be Polybus and Merope, vowed never again to set foot in Corinth while they were living. So he hoped to avoid his doom; and he set out alone, along the road to Bœotia, and Thebes.