We Greeks (says Nestor) were lingering over there at Troy, and many a task did we fulfil. But he—Ægisthus—at his ease in the quiet valleys of Argos, where the horses feed, tried to beguile the wife of Agamemnon with soft words. At first, of course, fair Clytemnestra refused to do the shameful thing, for she was a woman of honest heart. Moreover, there was with her a minstrel, whom Agamemnon, when he went to Troy, had bidden to protect his wife. But soon the fate of heaven encompassed the minstrel, and brought him to his death, for Ægisthus took him to a desert island and left him there, a prey for the birds to tear asunder. As for the queen—he willing and she willing—he led her to his house. And many a sacrifice did he offer to the gods when he had done that great deed, which never in his heart had he expected to accomplish.
Such is the passage, and the last two sentences are a literal translation of the lines which appear thus in Pope’s version:
Then virtue was no more: her guard away,
She fell, to lust a voluntary prey.
Even to the temple stalked the adulterous spouse
With impious thanks and mockery of vows.
For these are the dangers of poetical translation.
But more important than any single character or episode is the general impression given by the whole poem, and it may fairly be said that the entire framework of the Odyssey presupposes a condition of society in which women are regarded as not in the least, quâ women, inferior to men.
In the Iliad things are different, and the poem, as we have it now, gives us three distinct pictures of women’s position in life. The original epic, the ‘Wrath of Achilles’ has hardly any place for women at all. It is true that Achilles’ anger has for its cause the woman Briseis; but Achilles is angry, not at the loss of a woman whom he loves, but at the loss of a piece of property which he knows by experience to be of considerable value and service. Briseis is a slave—a thing, not a person. In the whole Iliad she is only mentioned ten times, and nine times out of those ten she is merely catalogued as an article of value, with the slave-dealer’s epithet, ‘fair-cheeked,’ attached.
But this is hardly surprising. All the earlier portions of the Iliad are primarily lays of battle. They are anti-social, and woman has no part or lot in them.