Next to Hector to his handsome but effeminate brother Paris. in valour stands Æneas, son of Anchises and Aphrodité (Venus). Even the gods take part in the contest, encouraging their favourite heroes, and sometimes fighting by their side or in their stead. It is not till the tenth year of the war that Ilium yields to the inevitable decree of fate, and it is this year which forms the subject of the Iliad. Achilles, offended by Agamemnon, abstains from the war, and even entreats his mother Thetis to obtain from Jove victory for the Trojans. In his absence the Greeks are no match for Hector. The Trojans drive them back into their camp, and are already setting fire to their ships, when Achilles gives his armour to his friend Patroclus, and allows him to charge at the head of the Myrmidons. Patroclus repulses the Trojans from the ships, but the god Apollo is against him, and he falls under the spear of Hector. Desire to avenge the death of his friend proves more powerful in the breast of Achilles than anger against Agamemnon. He appears again in the field in new and gorgeous armour, forged for him by the god Hephaestus (Vulcan) at the prayer of Thetis. The Trojans fly before him, and although Achilles is aware that his own death must speedily follow that of the Trojan hero, he slays him in single combat. § 8. The Iliad closes with the burial of Hector. The death of Achilles and the capture of Troy were related in later poems, as well as his victories over Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, and Memnon, king of Ethiopia. The hero of so many achievements perishes by an arrow shot by the unwarlike Paris, but directed by the hand of Apollo. The noblest combatants had now fallen on either side, and force of arms had proved unable to accomplish what stratagem at length effects. It is Ulysses who now steps into the foreground and becomes the real conqueror of Troy. By his advice a wooden horse is built, in whose inside he and other heroes conceal themselves. The infatuated Trojans admit the horse within their walls. In the dead of night the Greeks rush out and open the gates to their comrades. Ilium is delivered over to the sword, and its glory sinks in ashes. § 9. The return of the Grecian leaders from Troy forms another series of poetical legends. Several meet with tragical ends. Agamemnon is murdered, on his arrival at Mycenæ, by his wife Clytemnestra, and her paramour Ægisthus. Diomedes, who also finds his house defiled, is driven from Argos and settles in Italy. But of these wanderings the most celebrated and interesting are those of Ulysses, which form the subject of the Odyssey. After twenty years' absence he arrives at length in Ithaca, where he slays the numerous suitors who devoured his substance and contended for the hand of his wife Penelope. § 10 It has been already stated that the Trojan war closes the Heroic age, and the poet Hesiod relates that the divine race of heroes was exhausted before the walls of Thebes and on the plain of Illium. As the Trojan war was thus supposed to mark an epoch in Grecian history, great pains were taken in the later periods of antiquity to fix its date. That of Eratosthenes, a grammarian at Alexandria, enjoyed most credit, which placed the fall of the city 407 years before the first Olympiad, and consequently in the year 1184 B.C. 11. In relating the legends of the Heroic age we have made no attempt to examine their origin, or to deduce from them any historical facts. All such attempts are in our opinion vain and fruitless. Whether there were real persons of the name of Hercules, Theseus, and Minos can neither be affirmed nor denied. Our only reason for believing in their existence is the tradition of the Greeks respecting them; and knowing how worthless is tradition, especially when handed down by a rude and unlettered people, we cannot accept the Grecian heroes as real personages upon such evidence. It has been supposed by many modern writers that the wonderful story of the Argonauts took its rise from the adventurous voyages of early Greek mariners to the coasts of the Euxine; that the expeditions of the "Seven against Thebes" and their descendants, represented in a legendary form an actual contest between Argos and Thebes; and that the Homeric tale of the Trojan war was based upon historical facts. But for such statements we have no authority. They are at the best only probable conjectures. While therefore we do not deny the possibility of an historical Trojan war, we cannot accept it as a fact supported by trustworthy evidence, since Hcmer is our sole authority for it. § 12. Although the Homeric poems cannot be received as a record of historical persons and events, yet they present a valuable picture of the institutions and manners of a real state of society. Homer lived in an age in which antiquarian research was unknown; his poems were addressed to unlettered hearers, and any description of life and manners which did not correspond to the state of things around them would have been unintelligible and uninteresting to his contemporaries. In addition to this, there is an artless simplicity in his descriptions which forces upon every reader the conviction that the poet drew his pictures from real life, and not from an antiquated past or from imaginary ideas of his own. The description which he gives of the government, manners, society, and customs of his age demands our attentive consideration, since with it our knowledge of the Greek people commences. § 1. Political condition of Greece-the Kings. § 2. The Boulé, or Coun, cil of Chiefs. § 3. The Agora, or general assembly of freemen. §4. The condition of common freemen and slaves. 5. State of social and moral feeling. § 6. Simplicity of manners. § 7. Advances made in civilization. 8. Commerce and the arts. § 9. The physical sciences. § 10. The art of war. § 1. In the Heroic age Greece was already divided into a number of independent states, each governed by its own king. The authority of the king was not limited by any laws; his power resembled that of the patriarchs in the Old Testament; and for the exercise of it he was responsible only to Jove, and not to his people. It was from the Olympian god that his ancestors had received the supremacy, and he transmitted it, as a divine inheritance, to his son. He had the sole command of his people in war, he administered to them justice in peace, and he offered up on their behalf prayers and sacrifices to the gods. He was the general, judge, and priest of his people. They looked up to him with reverence as a being of divine descent and divine appointment; but at the same time he was obliged to possess personal superiority, both of body and mind, to keep alive this feeling in his subjects. It was necessary that he should be brave C in war, wise in counsel, and eloquent in debate. If a king became weak in body or feeble in mind, he could not easily retain his position; but as long as his personal qualities commanded the respect of his subjects, they quietly submitted to acts of violence and caprice. An ample domain was assigned to him for his support, and he received frequent presents to avert his enmity and gain his favor. Although the king was not restrained in the exercise of his power by any positive laws, there were, even in the Heroic age, two bodies which must practically have limited his authority, and which became in republican Greece the sole depositaries of political power. These were the Boulé, or council of chiefs, and the Agora, or general assembly of freemen. § 2. The king was surrounded by a limited number of nobles or chiefs, to whom the title of Basileus was given, as well as to the monarch himself. Like the king they traced their descent from the gods, and formed his Boulé, or Council, to which he announced the resolutions he had already formed and from which he asked advice. The Boulé possessed no veto upon the measures of the king, and far less could it originate any measure itself. This is strikingly shown by the submissive manner in which Nestor tenders his advice to Agamemnon, to be adopted or rejected, as the "king of men might choose, and by the description which Homer frequently gives of the meetings of the gods in Olympus, which are evidently taken from similar meetings of men upon earth. In heaven, Jove, like the Homeric king, presides in the council of the gods and listens to their advice, but forms his own resolutions, which he then communicates to them. § 3. When the king had announced his determination to the Council, he proceeded with his nobles to the Agora. The king occupied the most important seat in the assembly with the nobles by his side, while the people sat in a circle around them. The king opened the meeting by announcing his intentions, and the nobles were then allowed to address the people. But no one else had the right to speak; no vote was taken; the people simply listened to the debate between the chiefs; and the assembly served only as a means for promulgating the intentions of the king. It is true that this assembly formed a germ, out of which the sovereignty of the people subsequently sprang; but in the Heroic age the king was the only person who possessed any political power, and Homer expresses the general feeling of his time in the memorable lines" The rule of many is not a good thing: let us have only one ruler, one king—him *Iliad, ix. 95-101. to whom Jove has given the sceptre and the authority."* There was another important purpose for which the Agora was summoned. It was in the Agora that justice was administered by the king, sometimes alone and sometimes with the assistance of his nobles. It may be remarked in passing that this public administration of justice must have had a powerful tendency to check corruption and secure righteous judgments. § 4. The Greeks in the Heroic age were divided into the three classes of nobles, common freemen,† and slaves. The nobles were raised far above the rest of the community in honour, power, and wealth. They were distinguished by their warlike prowess, their large estates, and their numerous slaves. The condition of the general mass of freemen is rarely mentioned. They possessed portions of land as their own property, which they cultivated themselves: but there was another class of poor freemen, called Thētes, who had no land of their own, and who worked for hire on the estates of others. Among the freemen we find certain professional persons, whose acquirements and knowledge raised them above their class, and procured for them the respect of the nobles. Such were the seer, the bard, the herald, and likewise the smith and the carpenter, since in that age a knowledge of the mechanical arts was confined to a few. Slavery was not so prevalent in the Heroic age as in republican Greece, and it appears in a less odious aspect. The nobles alone possessed slaves, and they treated them with a degree of kindness, which frequently secured for the masters their affectionate attachment. § 5. The state of social and moral feeling in the Heroic age presents both bright and dark features. Among the Greeks, as among every people which has just emerged from barbarism, the family relations are the grand sources of lasting union and devoted attachment. The paternal authority was highly reverenced, and nothing was so much dreaded as the curse of an offended father. All the members of a family or a clan were connected by the closest ties, and were bound to revenge with their united strength an injury offered to any individual of the race. The women were allowed greater liberty than they possessed in republican Greece; and to Penelope, Andromache, and other women of the Heroic age there is an interest attaching, which we never feel in the women of the historical period. The wife occupied a station of great dignity and influence in the family, but was purchased by her husband from her parents by valuable presents, § a custom which *Iliad, ii. 203-206. † ὁμῶες. δῆμος, λαοί. |