by her skill and by her charm; it is but as an afterthought that the poet adds—
ἐν δὲ θέμεν κύνεόν τε νόον καὶ ἐπίκλοπον ἦθος
Ἑρμείαν ἤνωγε διάκτορον ἀργειφόντην. (l. 67)
And, lastly, it is through a woman that trouble comes into the world; but it is this same woman’s doing that Hope at least is left. It was Pandora herself that shut down the lid of the casket before Hope had flown; it was she that preserved this “dream of waking hours” for mankind.[5]
But if we pass from the general condition of women, as depicted in Homer or Hesiod, and come to our own more immediate subject, it must be admitted that neither in the prehistoric legends, nor in their subsequent development, is there any trace whatever of a romantic sentiment existing between men and women to be found. Considering the important position occupied by women in these poems, the absence of the love element is most remarkable.
The insignificant part played by Briseis has always struck those who have wished to regard the Iliad as an Achilleis, of which she is the heroine; nor can Agamemnon’s love for the daughter of Chryses be said to go very deep. He is distressed at losing her, no doubt, but the loss is far from irremediable. He evidently agrees with Antigone, πόσις ἄν μοι κατθανόντος ἄλλος ἦν.
Paris again had originally been a celebrated warrior, and it was to this that he owed his position and his name. But his love for Helen, instead of inspiring him, seems to have had the very opposite effect. One exception there is, no doubt, to all this—the relation between Hector and Andromache. But the relation between Hector and Andromache (as illustrated by Iliad vi. 392, seqq.) is unparalleled in all Greek literature, and it is not, perhaps, without significance that they are Trojans and not Greeks. How great was the impression that they made is visible in the way in which the later literature cites Andromache rather than any Greek woman as the ideal of a wife. At the same time, how little really sympathetic to the Greek of the period was this wonderful and unique passage is sufficiently shown by this very fact, that no attempt was ever made to imitate or develop it. It may sound strange to say so, but in all probability we to-day understand Andromache better than did the Greeks for whom she was created; better, too, perhaps than did her creator himself.
In the Odyssey, well nigh the entire action is in the hands of women. What with Athene and Leucothea, Circe and Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope, Odysseus himself hardly comes to the fore at all; and yet it cannot be said that anywhere from beginning to end is there so much as a suggestion of a love-motive.
Nausicaa is always regarded as a charming type of woman, but, after all, how one naturally thinks of her is as a charming type of washerwoman. Penelope again is merely the ideal housekeeper: she longs for the return of her husband, no doubt, but what really grieves her about the suitors is not their suggestions as to his death, but the quantity of pork they eat.
As for any idea that her devotion requires similar constancy on the part of Odysseus, it is not so much as suggested. The Odyssey opens, it is true, with its hero longing to see even the smoke of his home rising in the air; but it must be remembered that he has been spending seven years alone with Calypso on a desert island, which for a man of his tastes was doubtless exceedingly tedious. There is no reason to suppose that he did not enjoy the first year or so of his stay quite as much as his visit to Circe or Aeolus.