The great majority of illegitimate births in Homer are those ascribed to the paternity of deities. It is probable that this extraction may be pleaded to cover sometimes marriages which were conceived to be beneath the station of the woman; sometimes instances like that of Astyoche[940], when war had both excited passion, and provided opportunities and victims for its gratification[941]. Setting these cases aside, the cases of illegitimacy in heroic Greece appear to be rare.
At the same time, instances are found[942] in which a spurious child (only, however, I think in the case of a son) is brought up in a manner approaching to that of the legitimate offspring: and a certain relationship is acknowledged to exist, for the wife is said to be μητρυίη, or step-mother, to the illegitimate son. In the case of Pedæus, it was Theano, Antenor’s wife, who herself educated the bastard: but it is plain that in Troas concubinage was far more fully recognised, than in Greece.
Agamemnon in the First Iliad, as we have seen, when announcing his attention to make Chryseis a partner of his bed, by no means treats this concubinage as being what it would have been with Priam, a matter of course and requiring no apology, but founds it upon his preferring her to his wife Clytemnestra[943].
In the camp before the walls of Troy it certainly appears as if by the use of the word γέρας, prize, Homer might, as it is commonly assumed, mean to indicate, for most of the principal chiefs, that they had captives taken in war for concubines. But the point is far from clear; and at any rate Menelaus, as is observed by Athenæus, forms an exception[944]. This circumstance affords rather a marked proof of Greek ideas with respect to the durability of the marriage tie; for that author is probably right in ascribing it to his being, as it were, in the presence of his wife Helen. This concubinage, however, appears to have been single in each case where it prevailed; or, if it was otherwise, Homer has at least deemed the circumstance unfit to be recorded. There is no sign that the seven Lesbian damsels of Il. ix. 128 were concubines.
Achilles, after the removal of Briseis, had Diomede[945] for the companion of his couch. But Briseis appears to have had his attachment in a peculiar degree. He calls her his ἄλοχον θυμάρεα[946]. It is said that the word ἄλοχος may mean a concubine[947]. I do not find any passage in Homer, except this of Il. ix., where it may not with the most obvious propriety be translated ‘wife.’ It has its highest force, no doubt, in such expressions as μνηστὴ ἄλοχος and κουριδίη ἄλοχος: even as we say intensively ‘wedded wife.’ But the term is the standing phrase for wife, as much as τέκνα for children; and it is impossible, consistently with what we see of the usages of marriage among the Greeks, to suppose that the same term was alike applicable to wives and concubines. Nor is it necessary to draw such a conclusion from this passage. We might be tempted to suppose, that Achilles here puts a strain as it were upon the use of the word, and for the moment calls Briseis his wife, in order to prepare the way for the tremendous and piercing sarcasm which immediately follows[948]:
ἦ μοῦνοι φιλέουσ’ ἀλόχους μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
Ἀτρεῖδαι;
But we may, I think, more justly, and without any resort to figure, observe, that the whole argument of this passage turns upon and requires us to suppose his having treated Briseis as he would have treated a wife. So likewise his declaration, that every good man loves and cares for his wife, becomes insipid, and the whole comparison with the case of Menelaus senseless, unless we are to give the force of wife to the name ἄλοχος.
Probably the explanation may be, that she was designated for marriage with him; for in the Nineteenth Book, where she utters a lamentation over Patroclus, she declares how that chief kindly encouraged her to bear up in her widowhood and captivity, promising that she should be the wife of Achilles, and that the banquets, which, with their attendant sacrifices, seem to have constituted for the Homeric Greeks the ceremonial of marriage, should be celebrated on their return to Phthia[949]. I should therefore suppose that we might with strict justice render ἄλοχος, in Il. ix. 336, ‘my bride;’ always remembering that we are dealing with a relation that was not governed by rules, and that might virtually inure by usage only.
The subsequent passage[950], in which the hero speaks of marrying some damsel of Hellas or Phthia, is quite consistent with this construction, for, as it is plain that no actual marriage had been concluded between them, his relation to Briseis terminated with her removal de facto. The same passage, as well as the custom of Greece, makes it reasonable to understand that the mother of Neoptolemus, whoever she may have been, was now dead.