Beyond the case of Priam, we have slender means of ascertaining the usages and ideas of marriage among the Trojans. We have Andromache, wife of Hector; Helen, a sort of wife to Paris; Theano, wife to Antenor, and priestess of Minerva; who also took charge of and brought up his illegitimate son Pedæus[448]. The manner in which this is mentioned, as a favour to her husband, certainly shows that the mark of bastardy was not wholly overlooked, even in Troy. But, besides this Pedæus, we meet in different places of the Iliad no less than ten other sons of Antenor, all, I think, within the fighting age. This is not demonstrative, but it raises a presumption that some of them were probably the sons of other wives than Theano; who is twice described as Theano of the blooming cheeks, and can hardly therefore be supposed to have reached a very advanced period of life[449].
But it is clear from the important case of Priam, even if it stands alone, that among the Trojans no shame attaches to the plurality of wives, or to having many illegitimate children, the birth of various mothers. It is possible that the manners of Troy, with regard to polygamy, were at this time the same (unless as to the reason given,) with those which Tacitus ascribes to the Germans of his own day: Singulis uxoribus contenti sunt; exceptis admodum paucis, qui, non libidine, sed ob nobilitatem, plurimis nuptiis ambiuntur[450]. We must add to this, that Paris, in detaining as his wife the spouse of another man still living, does an act of which we have no example, to which we find no approximation, in the Greek manners of the time. Its significance is increased, when we find that after his death she is given to Deiphobus: for this further union alters the individual trait into one which is national. Her Greek longings, as well as her remorse for the surrender of her honour to Paris, afford the strongest presumption that the arrangement could hardly have been adopted to meet her own inclination; and that it must have been made for her without her choice, as a matter of supposed family or political convenience.
We seem therefore to be justified in concluding that, as singleness did not enter essentially into the Trojan idea of marriage, so neither did the bond with them either possess or even approximate to the character of indissolubility. The difference is very remarkable between the horror which attaches to the first crime of Ægisthus in Greece, the corruption of Clytemnestra, though it was analogous to the act of Paris, and the indifference of the Trojans to the offence committed by their own prince. We have no means indeed of knowing directly how Ægisthus was regarded by the Greeks around him, during the period which preceded the return and murder of Agamemnon. But we find that Jupiter, in the Olympian Court, distinctly describes his adultery as a substantive part of his sin[451];
ὡς καὶ νῦν Αἴγισθος ὑπέρμορον Ἀτρείδαο
γῆμ’ ἄλοχον μνηστὴν, τὸν δ’ ἔκτανε νοστήσαντα.
And I think we may rest assured, that Jupiter never would give utterance on Olympus to any rule of matrimonial morality, higher than that which was observed among the Greeks on earth.
So again, it was a specific part of the offence of the Suitors in the Odyssey, that they sought to wed Penelope while her husband was alive[452]; that is to say, before his death was ascertained, though it was really not extravagant to presume that it had occurred.
Stricter ideas among the Greeks.
From both these instances, and more especially from the last, we must, I think, reasonably conclude that the moral code of Greece was far more adverse to the act of Paris, considered as an offence against matrimonial laws, than the corresponding rule in Troy.
In connection with this topic, we may notice, how Homer has overspread the Dardanid family, at the epoch of the war as well as in former times, with redundance of personal beauty. Of Paris we are prepared to hear it as a matter of course; but Hector has also the εἶδος ἀγητόν[453]; and, even in his old age, the ὄψις ἀγαθὴ of Priam was admired by Achilles[454]. Deiphobus again is called θεοείκελος and θεοειδὴς[455], and on two of Priam’s daughters severally does Homer bestow the praise of being each the most beautiful[456] among them all. With this was apparently connected, in many of them, effeminacy, as well as insolence and falseness of character; for we must suppose a groundwork of truth in the wrathful invective of their father, who describes his remaining sons as (Il. xxiv. 261.)