‘Il buon Foresto, dell’ Italia Ettorre[975].’
And further. Beyond the Alps, Orlando was the prime warrior or protagonist, as well as the finest character, of the mediæval romance, until it was modified by Ariosto, whose courtly object it was to elevate Ruggiero above him. But with the poets who followed Ariosto, Ruggiero seems to have been put by as an interpolation, and Orlando to have resumed his paramount place. Now the character of Orlando is plainly modelled upon the traditional idea of Hector, with the Christian element attached to and pervading it. That Hector was thus chosen, in preference to Achilles or any Greek hero, may be owing, among other causes, to these. First, that the Roman poets, Virgil especially, had taught Italians to look to Troy as the cradle of their grandeur. Secondly, that the character of Hector, from the large infusion into it of moral and of passive ingredients, was better fitted for coalescing with the Christian ideas. And thirdly, that, as the part assigned to Italian patriotism in the middle ages was commonly defensive, in this point also Hector offered a more appropriate model. There is more, however, to observe; for it may be thought that, among the Trojans, Æneas would have offered a better groundwork for Italian poets. But here we may remark how the genuine and masculine birth outlives the spurious. The natural Hector of Homer thrust aside the pale and sickly automaton of the Æneid, even in Italy, its adopted country. The latter was so artificial and effete, that it would not even bear copying: the former had a foundation in truth, upon which the structure of exaggeration could be reared. Thus Hector became, after two thousand years, the central power of a new and splendid literature.
But when we turn back to the verse of Homer, and put together the evidence in the case piece by piece, surprise is excited by the contrast between the pretensions of Hector, having its basis in general descriptions and in the later tradition, on the one side, and on the other the actual performances, in the Iliad itself, of the Trojan champion. First, there is Achilles, his known superior; of whom, as a warrior, he comes within no measurable distance. But besides this, he suffers virtual defeat at the hands, once of Diomed, and twice of Ajax; glaringly as to the former, and not doubtfully as to the latter: for though the first battle is interrupted, and is taken for a drawn one, yet Ajax has had the best of it at every point, and, while the Trojans are too happy upon the mere escape of his opponent without bodily harm, Homer carries him to the tent of Agamemnon rejoicing in his victory (κεχαρηότα νίκῃ[976]). It is yet more worthy of note, that Hector is never permitted in actual fight to overcome any one considerable Greek. In the case of Patroclus, the Poet has even laid this fact much too barely open; for he makes Hector little, if anything, more than the mere executioner of death upon an unarmed man. Menelaus, who stood in what we may call the third rank of Grecian heroes, is indeed, on one occasion, withdrawn from conflict with him, as being too greatly inferior to risk the fight; but the conflict for the body of Patroclus[977] is so contrived as to show even this prince holding the field with success in despite of the Trojan chief; and, during the absence of Achilles and Patroclus from the contest, no less than nine other Greek warriors offer themselves to meet him in single combat[978].
The greatest exploit of Hector, in the whole Iliad, is the bursting open of the gates of the Greek rampart[979]. But if we compare this with the feat of Sarpedon, who had just before opened a breach by tearing down the battlement[980], we must give a decided preference to the Lycian hero; for he performs his achievement in the teeth of Ajax and Teucer, who are on the spot; while there is not a single Greek commander present when Hector breaks through the gates. The comparative feebleness of Hector’s military character is, however, most pointedly shown in the Eleventh Book, when Jupiter determines to give effect to the decision that honour shall be done to him[981]. In the first place, he receives a friendly warning to keep out of the way as long as Agamemnon remains on the field. He accordingly enters the battle only when Agamemnon has retired; but he is forthwith driven out of it by Diomed[982]. When he again returns to it, the Greeks under Machaon baffle all his efforts, until that very secondary chieftain has been disabled by an arrow from the bow of Paris[983]. And according to all human appearances, the Trojans must have been defeated and shut up in the city by the Greeks even without Achilles, such was the superiority of Achæan arms, had not Homer called in the inferior agency of stones and arrows to wound three of the four chief remaining Grecian warriors, namely Diomed, Agamemnon, and Ulysses; besides Eurypylus and Machaon[984].
The only occasion when Hector comes out as a really great and gallant warrior is that one when he is certain to be, and is accordingly, worsted by the overpowering might and divine arms of Achilles. For here Homer could safely give him ample scope without endangering or obscuring the fame of that hero, to whom, with art never surpassed, he has given an immeasurable, but yet not a forced or unnatural, preeminence.
Hector second-rate as a hero.
The place of Hector, then, as a fighting hero, is certainly no more than second-rate; but so far, I venture to think, is Homer from having almost equally weighted in his character the scales of good and evil respectively, that, with the exception of his boastfulness, it is hard to fasten on him so much as a single fault. This boastfulness, and the disproportion between pretension and performance, is not altogether confined to him, but extends in some measure to the other Trojan warriors, except Sarpedon; for example, to Polydamas, Æneas, and Paris. Some of the best Greeks too, particularly Diomed, are touched with it[985]. And perhaps, in our more elaborated and artificial condition of society, we are not quite fair judges how far this practice, which may seem to stand in sharp contrast with the prevailing modesty of the Homeric heroes, may have been with them not a substitute for, but a kind of embellishment and auxiliary to, their strength of soul and hand. With us it is justly suspected of implying a tendency to fall short in performance: with them it may have appertained to that straightforwardness in the expression of inward emotions, which made them (for example) weep so freely whenever the chord of sorrow was touched within them.
So conspicuous is this quality, says Mure, that the name of the Trojan chief is to this day synonymous in our own tongue with ‘bluster’ or ‘swagger[986].’ But it is remarkable that the very same thing has happened in the case of the word ‘rodomontade,’ which is derived from Rodomonte, the most powerful, next to Ruggiero, of all the heroes of the Furioso. This circumstance seems to make probable, what, without it, would be only possible, namely, that we misconstrue the phrases; and that, according to the true meaning, a rodomontader is a man passing himself off for a Rodomonte: and one who hectors is a man falsely pretending to be a Hector.
Another very high authority, Lord Grenville, intimately acquainted with the poems of Homer, supplies a marked example of the blinding force of literary traditions. For in his ‘Nugæ Metricæ[987],’ he says: ‘A hectoring fellow is ... strangely distorted in its use to express a meaning almost the opposite of its original.’ And he adds in a note: ‘The Hector of Homer unites, we know,