The marked contrast, which these groups of incidents present, is perhaps somewhat heightened by the enthusiastic observation of the Trojan Elders on the Wall in the Third Iliad[438]. Though susceptible of a good sense, yet, when the old age of the persons is taken into view, the passage seems to be in harmony with the Trojan character at large, rather than the Greek: and perhaps it may bear some analogy to the licentious glances of the Suitors[439]. If so, it is very significant that Homer should assign to the most venerable elders of Troy, what in Greece he does not think of imputing except to libertines, who are about to fall within the sweep of the divine vengeance.
The difference between the races in this respect seems to have been deeply rooted, for there is evidently some corresponding difference between their views and usages in respect to marriage.
Trojan ideas and usages of marriage.
The character of Priam, which has been so happily conceived by Mure[440], undoubtedly bears on its very surface the fault of over indulgence, along with the virtues of gentleness and great warmth and keenness of the affections. But it may be doubted, whether the poems warrant our treating him as individually dissolute. His life was a domestic life: but the family was one constructed according to Oriental manners. According to those manners, polygamy and wholesale concubinage were in some sense the privilege, in another view almost the duty, of his station; confined, as these abuses must necessarily be from their nature (and as they even now are in Turkey), to the highest ranks wherever they prevail. The household of Priam, notwithstanding his diversified relations to women, is as regularly organized as that of Ulysses: and when he speaks of his vast family, constituted as it was, he makes it known to Achilles, in a moment of agonizing sorrow, and evidently by way of lodging a claim for sympathy[441], though the effect upon modern ears may be somewhat ludicrous. ‘I had,’ he says, ‘fifty sons: nineteen from a single womb: the rest from various mothers in my palace.’ He might have added that he had also twelve daughters[442], whom he probably does not need to mention on the occasion, as in this department he was not a bereaved parent.
Hecuba, the mother of the nineteen, was evidently possessed of rights and a position peculiar to herself. The very passage last quoted distinguishes her from the γυναῖκες, and throughout the poem she moves alone[443].
The family of Priam.
Of the children of Priam we meet with a great number in various places of the poem.
There are, I think, five expressly mentioned as children of Hecuba.
Hector, Il. vi. 87.
Helenus, ibid.
Laodice, vi. 252.
Deiphobus, Il. xxii. 333.
Paris, (because Hecuba was ἑκυρὴ to Helen,) Il. xxiv.
Next, we have two children of Laothoe, daughter of Altes, lord of the Lelegians of Pedasus.