Ἀτρείδης; ἢ οὐχ Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’ ἠϋκόμοιο[1000];
Was she a vicious woman and a seductress, or was she more nearly a victim and a penitent? Do the laws of poetical verisimilitude and beauty, as they were understood by Homer, allow us to suppose that he intended to represent his countrymen, of whom he has presented to us so lofty a conception, as agitating the world, forsaking home, pouring forth their blood, and throwing their country into certain confusion, for the sake of a vile and worthless character? Certainly there were periods, when in the Greek mind the worship of beauty was so thoroughly dissociated from all which beauty ought to typify, that an Iliad so constructed might have been approved. But these were periods long after Homer’s flesh had mouldered in the grave.
The present inquiry has nothing to do with the opinion that Helen was, or that she was not, an historical personage. For my own part, I know of no reason except discrepancies of mere traditional chronology for disbelieving her existence. These seem to arise entirely from the practice of putting on a par with Homer tales of very inferior authority to his. But even apart from this, considering what, under ordinary circumstances, the chronology of pre-historic times is likely to be, and how many more chances there are for the preservation of great events in outline, than for a careful adjustment of their relative times, I cannot but think that difficulties arising from other legends as to Helen, and bearing simply upon time, form a very insufficient reason for the wholesale rejection of belief in her existence. Even if, however, she never existed at all, it still is not one whit the less reasonably to be presumed, that Homer in fictions concerning her would be governed here and elsewhere by all the laws, including the moral laws, of his art.
Neither is it now the question, whether Helen was the model of an heroic character. That is probably inconsistent, for the earliest times of Greece, with her adulterous relation to Paris and afterwards to Deiphobus. But there is a vast space between a faultless and a worthless woman. The idea of Helen represented by the later tradition, from the Greek tragedians downwards, is strictly the latter idea: and this representation has naturally occupied the popular mind, which is deprived of the power of access to the remote Homeric picture. Now it seems to be plain that, if this representation be substantially true, it is a great reproach to the bard of the Iliad as a bard, and stamps him as one, who has done his best to poison morality at its fountain-head. For there can be no question, that he has made his Helen highly attractive, and that he intends her to possess our sympathies. Is it then true, or is it false? Let us proceed to examine the evidence.
In the Iliad we meet more than once with the line,
τίσασθαι δ’ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε[1001]·
and expositors, in order to avoid ascribing to Helen any personal wrongs, or the representation of her as rather a sufferer than an offender, have resorted to a forced construction of the passage, and have interpreted the words as referring to the expedition undertaken, and the griefs suffered, on account of Helen[1002].
Homer’s intention with respect to it.
Unless this forced construction be the one intended by Homer, the popular conception of her must at once explode. According to the direct and natural construction, the Greeks made war to avenge the wrong she had suffered, and the groans which that wrong had drawn from her. And it is to be observed that this line[1003] is put into the mouth of Menelaus, whom it is very natural to represent as most eager to avenge the wrongs of his wife, but somewhat far-fetched to represent as thinking of revenge for the trouble of the expedition he had so keenly promoted. The line, in fact, unless justifiably strained by these expositors, is conclusive in support of the belief that the only evil which can justly be imputed to the Homeric Helen simply amounts to this, that she was not a woman of perfect virtue backed by absolute and indomitable heroism. Pope has rather rudely approximated towards rectifying the prevalent impression in a note[1004], where he observes that in all she says of herself ‘there is scarce a word that is not big with repentance and good nature.’