There is, however, a striking resemblance between the relation in which the Trojan war stood to Greece, and that of the Crusades to Western Europe. The political unity and collective existence of Greece was greatly due to the first, that of Christendom to the second. The combination of races and of chiefs, the arduous character and extraordinary prolongation of the effort, the chivalry displayed, the disorganizing effects upon the countries which supplied the invading army, the representation in each of Europe against Asia, of Western mankind meeting Eastern mankind in arms, and the proof of superior prowess in the former, establish many broad and deep analogies between the subjects of these poems. In both struggles, too, the object purported to be the recovery of that which the East had unrighteously acquired: and into both what is called sentiment far more largely entered, than is common in the history of the wars which have laid desolate our earth.
Exaggeration as used by Homer and by Tasso.
As Godfrey is Tasso’s version of Agamemnon, so the Rinaldo of Tasso occupies a place in the Jerusalem, similar to that of Achilles in the Iliad. Now the whole character of Achilles, mental and corporeal, which ranks at least among the most wonderful of all the works of Homer, is colossal and vast, but is not unduly exaggerated. Although the son of Peleus evidently was of great bodily size, yet Homer never calls him by the epithets μέγας and πελώριος, but reserves them for Ajax, because they suggest a predominance of the animal over the incorporeal element, which, in the case of Achilles, the Poet utterly eschews. The character of Rinaldo as a warrior (and in no other respect does he present any salient point) is, as will be shown, exaggerated unduly, but yet does not leave the impression of the vast or colossal, because the excess beyond common nature is not in harmony with the rest of the delineation.
Thus the strength of Achilles is the very highest; none can use his spear. But Rinaldo, in the assault of the Tower, does the work of a battering-ram. He takes up and carries a beam, of which we are told,
Nè così alte mai, nè così grosse
Spiega l’ antenne sue ligura nave[954].
With this he breaks the bars, and beats down the gates; and the stanza proceeds:
Non l’ ariète di far più si vanti,
Non la bombarda, fulmine di morte[955].