Gods and Heroes; or, The Kingdom of Jupiter

by R. E. Francillon

Paris looked from one to the other, wondering to which he should award the golden apple, the prize of beauty. He did not care for power: he would be quite content to rule his sheep, and even that was not always easy. Nor did he care for wisdom or knowledge: he had enough for all his needs. Nor ought he to have desired any love but Œnone’s. But then Venus was really the most beautiful of all the goddesses—the very goddess of beauty; no mortal could refuse anything she asked him, so great was her charm. So he took the apple and placed it in the hands of Venus without a word, while Juno and Minerva departed in a state of wrath with Paris, Venus, and each other, which made Ate laugh to herself more than ever.

Now the most beautiful woman in the whole world was Helen, step-daughter of King Tyndarus of Sparta, and sister of Castor and Pollux: neither before her nor after her has there been any to compare with her for beauty. Thirty-one of the noblest princes in Greece came to her father’s Court at the same time to seek her in marriage, so that Tyndarus knew not what to do, seeing that, whomsoever he chose for his son-in-law, he would make thirty powerful enemies. The most famous among them were Ulysses, King of the Island of Ithaca; Diomed, King of Ætolia; Ajax, King of Salamis, the bravest and strongest man in Greece; his brother Teucer; Philoctetes, the friend of Hercules; and Menelaus, King of Sparta. At last, as there was no other way of deciding among them, an entirely new idea occurred to Ulysses—namely, that Helen should be allowed to choose her own husband herself, and that, before she chose, all the rival suitors should make a great and solemn oath to approve her choice, and to defend her and her husband against all enemies thenceforth and forever. This oath they all took loyally and with one accord, and Helen chose Menelaus, King of Sparta, who married her with great rejoicing, and took her away to his kingdom.

And all would have gone well but for that wretched apple. For Venus was faithful to her promise that the most beautiful of all women should be the wife of Paris: and so Menelaus, returning from a journey, found that a Trojan prince had visited his Court during his absence, and had gone away, taking Helen with him to Troy. This Trojan prince was Paris, who, seeing Helen, had forgotten Œnone, and could think of nothing but her whom Venus had given him.

Then, through all Greece and all the islands, went forth the summons of King Menelaus, reminding the thirty princes of their great oath: and each and all of them, and many more, came to the gathering-place with all their ships and all their men, to help Menelaus and to bring back Helen. Such a host as gathered together at Aulis had never been seen since the world began; there were nearly twelve hundred ships and more than a hundred thousand men: it was the first time that all the Greeks joined together in one cause. There, besides those who had come for their oath’s sake, were Nestor, the old King of Pylos—so old that he remembered Jason and the Golden Fleece, but, at ninety years old, as ready for battle as the youngest there; and Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, scarcely more than a boy, but fated to outdo the deeds of the bravest of them all. The kings and princes elected Agamemnon, King of Mycenæ and Argos, and brother of Menelaus, to be their general-in-chief; and he forthwith sent a herald to Troy to demand the surrender of Helen.

But King Priam was indignant that these chiefs of petty kingdoms should dare to threaten the sacred city of Troy: and he replied to the demand by a scornful challenge, and by sending out his summons also to his friends and allies. And it was as well answered as that of Menelaus had been. There came to his standard Rhesus, with a great army from Thrace; and Sarpedon, the greatest king in all Asia; and Memnon, king of Æthiopia, with twenty thousand men—the hundred thousand Greeks were not so many as the army of Priam. Then Agamemnon gave the order to sail for Troy: and Ate laughed aloud, for her apple had brought upon mankind the First Great War.

And now I seem to be waking from a dream which is fading away. The gods are becoming shadows, vanishing farther and farther away from man. I could tell you, if I would, the story of how Troy was taken and burned after ten years of fighting, and how Priam and his sons were slain; of the wonderful adventures of Ulysses by sea and land before he returned home; of the deeds of Achilles and Hector; of how the few Trojans who escaped the slaughter followed Prince Æneas into Italy, where he made a kingdom, and was the forefather of Romulus, who built the city of Rome; which brings us from Mythology—the stories of gods and heroes—into History—the stories of men. All these things came from Ate’s apple: yes, even the history of Rome, and of England, and of all the world.

You will read in the great poems of Homer the story of the siege of Troy and the wanderings of Ulysses; and in the “Æneid” of Virgil—to my mind the very greatest of all poems—the whole story of Æneas. But my stories end where the great poets begin theirs. I seem, as I have said, to have been dreaming a long dream: and before I quite wake I see the gods growing fainter and fainter, year by year and century by century, while men and women believed in them less and less, until—when they were well-nigh forgotten, or thought of only as poets’ fables—there came a great loud cry which made the whole world sigh and tremble:—

“Pan is Dead!”

men heard all Nature cry; and they knew it to mean that the last of the gods was no more; that a new time had come for the world. And that same night a star rose into sight at Bethlehem, and stood over the manger where a young Child lay.

And yet, gone and lost though the gods be, you will be very blind indeed if you never catch a glimpse of a Dryad in the woods or of an Oread on the hill; if you never think of Hercules when things seem against you and hard to understand; if you do not see in Perseus the true knight that a true man should strive to be. What more shall I say before I lay down my pen? Only that these stories are not nonsense—no, not one of them; that the more one thinks of them the wiser he is; and that I love them so much, and think so much of what made me begin them, that I cannot believe that I have come to the end.