This offering of live horses is peculiar, and unlike anything else represented to us in the Homeric poems. Not only the youths, but even the dogs, whom Achilles offers to the Shade of Patroclus, are slain before they are cast into the fire. The same thing is not mentioned with respect to the four horses, who are also among the victims; but it is probably, even from the physical necessities of the case, to be presumed.
It may, perhaps, be argued, that this speech of Achilles partakes of the nature of a sarcasm. The fine Trojan horses were reared and pastured on the river banks; taunts often pass between the warriors of the two sides: the δὴ δηθὰ may have had the force of forsooth. Some doubt may attach to the evidence, which the passage gives, on this ground; and also from the singularity of the practice that is imputed. It is, on the whole, however, safest to assume that it is trustworthy.
The case will then stand thus; that we have apparently one single case in Troy of a pure local impersonation of a power belonging to external nature. Now this might happen under peculiar circumstances, and yet a very broad distinction might subsist between the religion of the two nations as to imaginative development.
Scamander was indeed a great power for the Trojans; it was the great river of the country, the μέγας ποταμὸς βαθυδίνης. The child of the great Hector was named by him Scamandrius, while Simoeisius[313] was the son of a very insignificant person. Another Scamandrius was a distinguished huntsman, taught by Diana, in a country where the accomplishment was rare[314]. His floods, however useful in time of war, would in time of peace do fearful damage. It is possibly the true explanation of the last among the lines quoted from the speech of Achilles, that he carried away, in sudden spates, many of the horses that were pastured on his banks. The Trojans, then, may have had strong motives for deifying Scamander, and particularly for providing him with a priest, who might beseech him to keep down his waters. And it will be remembered, from the case of Gaia, that the Trojan religion was, without doubt, favourable to the idea of purely elemental deities: what lacked was the vivid force of fancy, that revelled in profuse multiplication.
Different view of Rivers in Troas.
For we cannot fail to perceive, that the idea of a river-god did not enter into the Trojan as it did into the Greek life. Ulysses, when in difficulty, at once invokes the aid of the Scherian river[315], at whose mouth he lands. Now the Trojans are driven in masses into the Scamander by the terrible pursuit of Achilles, and they hide and sculk, or come forth and fight, about its banks and waters. Yet no one of them invokes the River, although that River was a deity contending on their side. So entirely was he without place in their consciousness as a power able to help, even though he may have been publicly worshipped in deprecation of a calamity, which he was known to be able to inflict.
With this remarkable silence we may compare, besides the prayer and thanksgiving of Ulysses, the invocation of Achilles to Spercheius[316]. On his leaving home, his father Peleus had dedicated his hair as an offering to be made to the River on his return, and to be accompanied by a hecatomb. This would have been a thank-offering; and as such, in accordance with the prayer of Ulysses, it implies the power of the River deity to confer benefits. Nor is that power rendered doubtful by the fact, that in the particular case the prayer is not fulfilled, and that the hair is therefore devoted to the remains of Patroclus. We may remark, again, the sacrifice offered, apparently almost as matter of course, by the Pylian army to Alpheus, on their merely reaching his banks[317]. And, as a whole, the multitudinous impersonations of natural objects in the Greek mythology are, both with Homer and in the later writers, of a benign and genial character. This bright and sunny aspect is in contrast with the formidable character of Scamander, and of the worship offered to him.
There is, perhaps, enough of resemblance between the Scamander of the Trojan mythology, and the Spercheus or Alpheus of the Greek, to suggest the question, whether the deification of this river may possibly have been due to the Hellic influences, which resided in the royal houses of the country. There are not wanting signs, that the family of Priam was closely connected with the river and its banks. The name given to Hector’s child is one such token; and we know that the mares of Erichthonius were fed upon the marshes near Scamander[318]. It is also worth observation that the Priest of Scamander was called Dolopion, while Dolops was the name of a son of Lampus, a Trojan of the highest rank, brother to Priam, and one of the δημογέροντες of Troy[319].