Bowman! ribald! well-frizzled girl-hunter[1041]!

Again, the Poet tells us, as if by accident, that when, after the battle with Menelaus, he could not be found, it was not because the Trojans were unwilling to give him up, for they hated him with the hatred, which they felt to dark Death[1042]. And again we learn, how he uses bribery to keep his ground in the Assembly; how he refuses to recognise even his own military inferiority, but lamely accounts for the success of Menelaus by saying that all men have their turn[1043]; and how he causes shame to his own countrymen and exultation to the Greeks, when they contrast the pretensions of his splendid appearance with his miserable performances in the field[1044].

Homer, full as he is of the harmonies of nature, differs in this as in so many points from most among later writers, that he does not set at nought the due proportion between the moral and the intellectual man, nor combine high gifts of mind with a mean and bad heart. He never varies from this rule; and he has been careful to pay it a marked observance in the case of Paris. No set of speeches in the Iliad are marked by greater poverty of ideas. If he cleans his arms and builds his house, which are honourable employments, they are employments immediately connected with the ostentation to which he was so much given. More than this, the Poet informs us, through the medium of Helen, that he was but ill supplied with sense, and that he was too old to mend:

τούτῳ δ’ οὔτ’ ἂρ νῦν φρένες ἔμπεδοι, οὔτ ἄρ’ ὀπίσσω

ἔσσονται[1045].

The immediate transition, in the Third Book, from the field of battle, where he was disgraced, to the bed of luxury, is admirably suited to impress upon the mind, by the strong contrast, the real character of Paris. Nor let it be thought, that Homer has gratuitously forced upon us the scene between him and his reluctant wife. It was just that he should mark as a bad man him who had sinned grossly, selfishly, and fatally, alike against Greece and his own family and country. This impression would not have been consistent and thorough in all its parts, if we had been even allowed to suppose that, as a refined, affectionate, and tender husband, he made such amends to Helen as the case permitted for the wrong done her in his hot and heady youth. Such a supposition might excusably have been entertained, and it would have been supported by the very feebleness of the character of Paris and by his part in the war, had Homer been silent upon the subject. He, therefore, though with cautious hand, lifts the veil so far as to show us that in our variously compounded nature animal desire can use up and absorb the strength which ought to nerve our higher faculties, and that, as none are more cruel than the timid, so none are more brutal than the effeminate.

One hold, and one only, Paris seems to retain on human affection in any sort or form. The paternal instinct of Priam makes him shudder and retire, when he is told that Paris is about to meet Menelaus in single combat. This trait would have been of extraordinary and universal beauty, had the object of the affection been even moderately worthy: it is a remarkable proof of the debasement of Paris, and of the strong sense which Homer gives us of that debasement, that the tender father seems in a measure tainted by the very warmth and strength of his love.

SECT. VII.
The declension of the great Homeric Characters in the later Tradition[1046].

Physical conditions of the Greek Theatre.