Tradition has assigned Deiphobus to Helen, as a husband after the death of Paris. This tradition is supported, though not expressly, yet sufficiently, by the Odyssey; for, says Menelaus, when the Greeks had constructed the Horse, and when Helen was brought down to detect those who were within it, by imitating the voices of their wives respectively, it is added,
καί τοι Δηΐφοβος θεοείκελος ἕσπετ’ ἰούσῃ[1034].
And by the further passage in Od. vii. 517, which represents Ulysses as repairing straight from the Horse to the house of Deiphobus, in company with Menelaus.
Presuming therefore that this tale was well founded, it may be remarked, that the selection of Deiphobus, as the person who should take Helen to wife, was probably founded on his superior merit[1035]. It was under his image, that Minerva came upon the field to inveigle Hector into facing Achilles: and Hector then described him as the one whom he loved by far the best amidst his full brothers, the children of Priam and of Hecuba. This therefore thoroughly accords with the idea, that Helen was held in respect. Nor let it be thought strange, that she was not permitted to remain single. The idea of single life for women, outside their fathers’ home, seems to have been wholly unknown among the Greeks of Homer. When marriageable, they married; when their country was overcome, they became, as of course, the appendages of the couch of the captor. Penelope herself never dreamt of urging that, when once the return of Ulysses was out of the question, she could have any other option than to make choice among the Suitors whose wife she would become. Telemachus contemplates her immediate restoration to her father’s home when he, her son, should assume the full prerogatives of manhood.
The whole Homeric evidence, then, appears to show that, from the moment of her removal, neither the usages of society, nor the ideas of religion or the moral code, could allow Helen to remain in the single state. But it may be said this seems to prove too much on her behalf; namely, that both the abduction and the subsequent life were against her will. It is, however, entirely in keeping with the testimony of the poems, to suppose that her whole offence lay in having permitted at the first, perhaps half unconsciously, the attentions of a flatterer, who became at once a paramour and a tyrant to his victim. In order to comprehend the heroic age, it is indispensable that we should recollect that the responsibilities of women were contracted in proportion to her strength; and that the heroism of endurance, in which she has since excelled, is a Christian product.
That element of weakness and lightness in a character otherwise beautiful, which the incident of the Horse betrays, was probably at once the source and the measure of her offending in reference to the cause of war. It was a mind of relaxed fibre, and vacillated under pressure. Less than this we cannot suppose, and there is no occasion to suppose more. The respect felt, within certain limits, for women in the heroic age, and so powerfully proved by the Odyssey, may perhaps be adverse to the supposition that Paris carried her away without some degree of previous encouragement. I confine myself to ‘perhaps,’ because it is nowhere indicated in the poems, and we can at most have only a presumption to this effect. On the other hand, it seems certain that what she expiated in life-long sadness was, at any rate, no more than the first step in the ways of folly, the thoughtless error of short-sighted vanity, which the state of manners did not permit her subsequently to redeem. Repent she might: but to return was beyond her power.
On the whole, it may be said with confidence that the Helen of the Homeric poems has been conceived, by an author himself of peculiar delicacy, with great truth of nature, and with no intention to deprive her of a share in the sympathies of his hearers; that he has made her a woman, not cast in the mould of martyrs, nor elevated in moral ideas to a capacity of comprehension and of endurance above her age, but yet endowed with much tenderness of feeling, with the highest grace and refinement, and with a deep and peculiar sense of shame for having done wrong. Probably her appreciation of virtue and of honour, though beneath that of the highest matronly characters, may have been in no way inferior to that of society at large in her own time, and superior to the standard of many following epochs; nay superior also to that which has prevailed, at least locally, even at some periods of the Christian era: as, for example, when Ariosto wrote the remarkable passage—
Perche si de’ punir donna o biasmare
Che con uno, o più d’ uno, abbia commesso
Quel, che l’ uom fa con quante n’ ha appetito