Thou art the cause, thou harlot false; in darkness lie thou here.”
After Pedro had alienated his people’s hearts by his cruelty, Don Henry returned with a formidable body of French auxiliaries. At first the fortune of the rightful owner of the throne, who was supported by Edward the Black Prince, prevailed, and the invader was obliged to retire back to France: but suddenly renewing the attack, assisted by Du Guesclin, the flower of French knighthood, after the English auxiliaries had quitted Spain, he defeated and took prisoner his brother. Upon entering the chamber where he was confined, Henry exclaimed, “Where is that whoreson and Jew, who calls himself King of Castile?” Pedro, as proud and fearless as he was cruel, stepped instantly forward, and replied, “Here I stand, the lawful son and heir of Don Alphonso, and it is thou that art but a false bastard.” The rival brothers instantly grappled like lions; the French knights, and Du Guesclin himself, looking on. Henry drew his poniard, and wounded Pedro in the face, but his body was protected by a coat of mail. A violent struggle ensued. Henry fell across a bench, and his brother, being uppermost, had well nigh mastered him, when one of Henry’s followers seizing Don Pedro by the leg, turned him over, and his master thus at length gaining the upper hand, instantly stabbed the king to the heart. Menard, in his history of Du Guesclin, says that, while all around gazed like statues on the furious struggle of the brothers, Du Guesclin exclaimed to this attendant of Henry, “What! will you stand by, and see your master placed at such a pass by a false renegade? Make forward and help him, for well you may.”[24]
At Athens, the poets who contended for the tragic prize, were expected to exhibit three pieces, which, from their number, were called collectively a trilogy, together with a fourth, satirical, drama, which came last in the order of representation, like our farces now. Often they chose for the argument of these tragedies different events in the same story, so that the three formed a connected whole: of which an instance, the only instance extant, remains in the Agamemnon, Choephoroi, and Eumenides of Æschylus. The tale which has just been narrated is well fitted for this kind of representation, and would furnish materials not unworthy even of that poet’s genius. In the first play we may imagine an insulted queen and deserted wife, brooding over past injuries, rejoicing in the prospect of revenge, and urging the savage temper of her son to seek it in the blood of those who should have been dearest to him; the play terminating with the death of Leonora de Guzman, and the escape of her sons, preserved, like Orestes, to be at once the ministers of vengeance and the instruments of further crime. For the second the unsuspecting confidence of Don Fadrique, his rejection of the signs and warnings, which were offered in vain, and the successful machinations of a wicked, perhaps a rejected woman, acting upon the proud and cruel Pedro, are well suited; while the chorus would find a fitting part, at first, in dark and indistinct presages of evil, and lamentations over the blindness with which the fated victim rushed into the snare; and at the end, in indignant description of the circumstances of horror narrated in the ballad, and in joining the aged nurse to bewail the death of her foster son, and denouncing vengeance upon the murderer’s head. The third would contain the capture of Pedro, the mutual defiance and death–struggle of the brothers, and the barbarous exposure by Henry of his brother’s corpse: while at the end the impression of these horrors might be relieved by the constant love of Maria de Padilla, who, now neglected and despised, still watched over the forsaken body of her monarch and lover, with a fidelity worthy of a purer bosom.[25]
We reach at length the Trojan war, the point assumed by Thucydides for the commencement of his sketch of Grecian history: a circumstance alone sufficient to discredit the scepticism of those who believe it to be a mere fabulous legend. The universal voice of antiquity testifies to its reality, and we know not of any arguments strong enough to shake this testimony. Herodotus, on the authority of the Persians, mentions the Rape of Helen as one of a series of reprisals consequent upon the aggression of the Phœnicians, who carried off Io; the cause and commencement of hostility between the Greeks and the Asiatic nations. The former were clearly in the wrong, in the opinion of the Persians, both because the rape of Helen only balanced accounts, and because the Greeks made such injuries a ground for war. “Up to that time they confined themselves to mutual depredations; but the Greeks set the example of carrying war from one continent to the other. Now, to carry off women is the act of rogues; but to be over eager to avenge their loss is the part of fools; and wise men will take no thought for them after they are gone: for it is plain that they would not have been run away with, except with their own good will. And in truth, say the Persians, the Asiatics made no account of the carrying off their women: but the Greeks collected a mighty armament on account of a Lacedæmonian female, and then came to Asia, to pull down the empire of Priam!”[26] So thought the Persians. Herodotus confesses that he is not prepared to say how these things took place, and sets us the example of hastening to ground which he can tread with some certainty. That there is no intrinsic improbability in the story, has already been asserted by Mitford, on the ground of its close analogy to an incident in the history of the British islands.
Dermod Mac Morough (or Mac Murchad), prince of Leinster, was attached to Dervorghal, wife of Tiernan O’Ruark, another Irish chief, who held the county of Leitrim, with some adjacent districts,—a lady of great beauty, but small virtue, who took advantage of her husband’s being driven into hiding by O’Connor, who was then predominant in Ireland, to elope with her lover. “An outrage of this kind was not always regarded with abhorrence by the Irish; they considered it rather as an act of pardonable gallantry, or such an offence as a reasonable pecuniary compensation might atone for. But the sullen and haughty prince, provoked more by the insolence and treachery of his ravisher than the infidelity of his wife, conceived the most determined animosity against Dermod. He practised secretly with O’Connor, promised the most inviolable attachment to his interest, and prevailed on him, not only to reinstate him in his possessions, but to revenge the insult of Mac Morough, whom he represented, and justly, as a faithless vassal, really devoted to the service of his rival. The King of Connaught led his forces into Leinster, rescued Dervorghal from her paramour, and restored her to her friends; with whom she lived, if not in a state of reconciliation with her husband, at least in that opulence and splendour which enabled her to atone for the crime of infidelity, by the usual method of magnificent donations to the church.”[27] This domestic squabble led to more than usually important results, for the expelled Dermod applied to our Henry II. for assistance, and the conquest of Ireland followed.
The ambition of Agamemnon, however, is regarded by Thucydides as the cause of the war; the abduction of Helen served only as the pretext. “To me it seemeth that Agamemnon got together that fleet, not so much for that he had with him the suitors of Helena, bound thereto by oath to Tyndareus, as for that he exceeded the rest in power. For Atreus, after that Eurystheus was slain by the Heraclidæ, obtained the kingdom of Mycenæ, and whatever else had been under him, for himself. To which greatness Agamemnon succeeding; and also far excelling the rest in shipping, took that war in hand, as I conceive it, and assembled the said forces, not so much on favour as by fear. For it is clear, that he himself both conferred most ships to that action, and that some also he lent to the Arcadians. And this is likewise confirmed by Homer (if any think his testimony sufficient), who, at the delivery of the sceptre unto him, calleth him, ‘Of many isles, and of all Argos king.’”[28] Argos here signifies the whole peninsula, called afterwards Peloponnesus. It is plain, however, from Homer, that the sovereignty here ascribed to him was of a most uncertain and insecure tenure; that his subordinate princes were in fact independent within their own dominions, and were too high spirited and powerful to be maltreated with impunity. Altogether, without the elaborate machinery of the feudal system, the power and influence of Agamemnon seem to have resembled that possessed by the kings of France, and emperors of Germany, over those great vassals who held whole provinces, and singly or united often proved an overmatch for their sovereign.
Here ends the Mythic age. We shall pass over the next three, or according to most chronologers the next five centuries, which are but partially filled up by notices of events, such as the return of the Heraclidæ, the gradual subversion of monarchy throughout Greece, and the great emigrations which peopled the Asiatic coast with a Hellenic race. About the sixth century b.c. we begin to reap the benefit of contemporary authorities; and thenceforward history, if not free from an admixture of fiction, at least runs with a copious and uninterrupted stream.
