Women of the Classics

by Mary Sturgeon

Yet that event, and its cause, fair Helen of Sparta, may be said to mark the beginning of national life for the Greeks. Perhaps it was more than two thousand years before Christ when all the little peoples of Greece first joined themselves against barbarian Asia. Troy fell; and although the victory brought little material reward to the Greeks; though they sailed back to their island homes poorer and sadder than when they left, they had in fact achieved momentous gains. For the struggle had first taught them the strength of unity: it had launched them on their long and triumphant feud against barbarism; and it had laid the base from which they might go on to build, through the long, slow centuries, the civilization that we inherit.

There was no historian to record the event. But it lived on, in memory and in legend; and as the people became more settled, wandering bards made songs about it. The rich Mycenæn Age flourished and died; and the Homeric civilization took its place. Probably it was then that the floating fragments of the Tale of Troy first were woven together, providing material for the Homeric epics that we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Probably they were not written down at first. They were composed, and recited, in separate parts, in the halls of the great lords, who loved to look back on this glorious event of their national life, and to hear the names of their remote and half-mythical ancestors brought into the story. Thus Homer, no matter who he or his school may have been, comes to represent a high stage of civilization. His poems have a lofty tone, a chivalrous spirit, a sweet cleanliness of thought and of word, which do not belong to a primitive, uncivilized people. They do not, as a fact, belong naturally to the early period of which he sings. In the time of that grim struggle before the dawn of history, there must have been much that was ugly, dark and barbarous. This is proved to us by the survival of some of the older legends upon which Homer worked. They tell of unnatural crime and of deeds of horror such as he never mentions; and they give us, too, a very different interpretation of the story of Helen. Homer puts aside all these vestiges of a primitive past. He is composing lays for a people who have a keen sense of honour, a supreme ideal of beauty and a love of home; who have a religious feeling strong enough to reverence the gods, despite their many hieratic quarrels, and who hold womanhood in high esteem. So when we come to him to hear about Helen, we find a very sweet and gracious figure, quite unlike the Helen of the later poets. With them she was degraded from her rank of demi-god. She was regarded as a real figure, brought down to the level of ordinary existence, and judged by the common standard. The romantic charm of the Homeric conception faded; and her name had for centuries an evil sound. It has passed through many vicissitudes since. In late Greek literature, one or two poets tried to return to the reverent attitude of Homer: but in the Middle Ages she became again a byword and a reproach. At the Renaissance, something of her early worship as an ideal of beauty was revived, and our own Marlowe has passionately expressed the thought of that age about her:

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss....

Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

It is this vision of Helen, as the supreme ideal of beauty, that modern poets and scholars have tried to recapture. They have put aside the varied allegorical and ethical and realistic conceptions of her, as the efforts of a more sophisticated age; and they have tried to return directly to the fine simplicity of Homer himself. Only thus, they believe, can we stand at the right point of view with regard to Helen; and only thus can we see her as she was to the Greeks, a symbol of beauty incorruptible. We, who have to make our own choice in the matter, cannot do better than try to stand at the point where the moderns have placed us.

We come then at once to the Iliad, where, in the Third Book, Helen makes her first appearance in the world’s literature. War has been raging round the walls of Troy for nearly ten years. Now a truce is called; and in the palace of the old king Priam, word goes round that Paris, the author of the long feud, is to fight in single combat with Menelaus, whom he has wronged. For Paris had brought the bane of war upon Ilios. At his birth, the oracles of the gods had demanded that he should die; and Priam, his father, sorrowfully handed over the wailing baby to the priest, to be exposed upon Mount Ida. But first he tied an old ring about his neck; and when Paris was strangely saved from death, and grew up to be the fairest and strongest of all the shepherd youths on Ida, he came one day by accident to Ilios. There, by means of the jewel hanging from his neck, he was made known as the son of the king. Thenceforward the poor shepherd was the best beloved of all the princes. Life went gaily; and for a while he was utterly content. But he had left behind, amidst the groves of Mount Ida, a sweet wood-nymph who loved him well, Enone. And when after a time he began to tire of life in the palace, he remembered her and thought longingly of the freshness and beauty of the mountain. So one day in summer he went to seek Enone. All day long he searched the forest, but could not find her; and coming tired at evening to a fragrant glade, he fell asleep. When he awoke, night was hushed all around, and stars peeped through the slender branches overhead. It was midnight and there was no moon; but it was not dark. The glade was filled with a soft radiance such as he had never seen before, and when he raised his wondering eyes, he saw the majestical figures of goddesses shining upon him: Hera, queen of Olympus, Athena, the wise maid of Zeus, and Aphrodite, the laughing goddess of love. Sweetly they smiled on him; and as he stood in wondering awe, the deep, rich tones of Hera sank upon his spirit, promising him greatness and power, and the lordship over many lands. Then Athena, resting her starlike gaze upon him, promised him wisdom and courage; and Aphrodite, with a little mocking laugh at power and at wisdom, promised him the fairest woman in the world. Only, and this was to be the price of the gift, he was to be the arbiter between them: he was to declare which was most beautiful.

There was only one answer possible to Paris. Ambition had no lure for him. Why fight and strive and spend the happy days in effort merely to be called great? And wisdom had no appeal for him either; she seemed austere and cold. What had she to do with the joy and grace and sweetness that his soul loved? To the sublimity of Hera he bent in awe. The shining purity of Athena smote his glance to the earth. But the voice of Aphrodite wooed him, and her winsome smile set him trembling with delight. He reached out to her the golden prize of beauty.