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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτῄματα πολλὰ
μὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ.

Thus it is plain, that Menelaus resents not only a privation and an

act of piracy, but a base and black breach of faith. It is quite plain,
on the other hand, that in this respect he stands alone among his
countrymen. They, regarding the matter more crudely, and from a
distance, appear to see in it little beyond a violent abduction, which
it is perfectly right, for those who can, to resent and retrieve, but
which implies no extraordinary and damning guilt in the perpetrator.
Hence probably that singular appearance of apathy on the part of
the Greeks, which might at first sight seem to entail on them a moral
reproach, in some degree allied to that which justly attaches itself to
the Trojan community. It is not possible, indeed, to take a full
measure of their state of mind in regard to the crime of Paris,
without condemning the views and propensities to which it was due.
But the causes were various: and the blame they may deserve is
both very different from that which must fall upon the Trojans, and
is also different in a mode, which may help to illustrate some main
distinctions in the two national characters.
I speak here, as everywhere, of the adjustment of acts and motives
in the poem as poetical facts, that is to say, as placed relatively to
one another with care and accuracy in order to certain effects; and
as liable to be tried under the law of effect, just as, in a simple
history, all particulars alleged are liable to be tried under the law of
fact. The assumption of truth or fable in the poem does not
materially widen or narrow the field of poetical discussion. The critic
looks for consistency as between motive and action, causes and
effects, in the voyage to Lilliput or Laputa, as well as in Thucydides
or Clarendon. The difference is that, in the one case, our discussion
terminates with the genius of the inventor; in the other we are
verifying the life and condition of mankind.
If then we admit the abduction, and inquire for what probable cause
it is that the wrong, being so obvious and gross, was not more
prominent in the mind of the people who had endured it, a part at
least of the answer is this. We do not require to go back three
thousand years in the history of the world in order to learn how
often it happens that, when a conflict has arisen between nations,
the original causes of quarrel tend irresistibly to become absorbed
and lost in its incidents. As long as honour and security are held to
depend more on strength than on right, relative strength must often
prevail over relative right in the decision of questions, where the
arbitrement of battle has been invoked. Both the willingness of the
Trojans to restore, and the willingness of the Greeks to accept the
atonement, may be expedients of the Poet to give a certain moral
harmony to his work; of which it is a marked feature that it artfully
divides our sympathies throughout, so far at least as is needed for
the interest of the poem. On the one side, the ambition and rapacity
of Agamemnon may have induced him not only not to seek, but
even to decline or discourage accommodation; which, we may
observe, he never promotes in the Iliad. Having got a fair cause of
war, he may have been bent on making the most of it, and
confident, as Thucydides believes he was, in his power to turn it to
account. While, on the other hand, Troy was not so far from or so
strange to Greece, as to be exempt from the fear of appearing
afraid; and, until it had become too late, she may have thought her
safety would be compromised by the surrender of Helen.
Here may be reasons why restitution was neither given on the one
side, nor steadily kept in view on the other: especially as it was of
course included in the idea of the capture of the city. But it is not
clear that this was enough to account for the apathy of the Greeks in
general with respect to the crime of Paris, which we might have
expected to find a favourite and familiar topic with his enemies at
large, instead of being confined, as it is, to the immediate sufferer
by the wrong.
Now, the answer to this question must after
Its relation to prevailing
views of marriage.
all be sought partly in the prevalent ideas of
the heroic age; and partly in those which
were peculiar more or less to the Greek people.
According to Christian morality, the abduction and appropriation of a
married woman is not simply a crime when committed, but it is a
crime that is aggravated by every day, during which her relation with
her seducer or ravisher is continued. This was not so in the heroic
age.
We have examples in the poems of what Homer considers to be a
continued course of crime. Such is the conduct of the Suitors in the
Odyssey, who for years together waste the substance of Ulysses,
woo his wife, oppress his son, and cohabit with the servants. This
was habitual crime, crime voluntarily and deliberately persevered in,
when it might at any time have been renounced.
This vicious course of the Suitors is never called by Homer an ἄτη; it
is described by the names of ἀτασθαλίαι and ὑπερβασίη[422]. So
likewise the series of enormities committed by Ægisthus, the
corruption of Clytemnestra, the murder of her husband, the
expulsion of Orestes and prolonged usurpation of the throne; these
are never called by the name of ἄτη; but ἄτη, and not one of the
severer names quoted above, is the appellation always given by
Homer to the crime of Paris.
The ἄτη of a man is a crime so far partaking of the nature of error,
that it is done under the influence of passion or weakness; perhaps
excluding premeditation, perhaps such that its consequences follow
spontaneously in its train, without a new act of will to draw them, so
that the act, when once committed, is practically irretrievable.
Something, according to Homer, was evidently wanting in the crime
of Paris, to sink it to the lower depths of blackness. Perhaps we may
find it partly in the nature of marriage, as it was viewed by his age.
Having taken Helen to Troy, he made her his wife, and his wife she
continued until the end of the siege. We should of course say he did
not make her his wife, for she was the wife of another man. But the
distinction between marriage de facto and marriage de jure, clear to
us in the light of Divine Revelation, was less clear to the age of
Homer. Helen was to Paris the mistress of his household; the
possessor of his affections, such as they were; the sole sharer,
apparently, of his dignities and of his bed. To the mind of that period
there was nothing dishonourable in the connection itself, apart from
its origin; while, to our mind, every day of its continuance was a
fresh accumulation of its guilt. The higher wrong of wounded and
defrauded affections was personal to Menelaus. In the aspect it
presented to the general understanding, the act of Paris, once
committed, and sealed by the establishment of the de facto conjugal
relation, remained an act of plunder and nothing else.
To comprehend these notions, so widely
And to Greek views of
homicide.
differing from our own, we may seek their
further illustration by a reference to the
established view of homicide. He, who had taken the life of a fellow
creature, was bound to make atonement by the payment of a fine. If
he offered that atonement, it was not only the custom, but the duty,
of the relations of the slain man to accept it. So much so, that the
blunt mind of Ajax takes this ground as the simplest and surest for
argument with Achilles, whom he urges not to refuse reparation
offered by Agamemnon, in consideration that reparation (ποίνη)
covers the slaughter of a brother or a son. Beforehand, the Greek
would have scorned to accept a price for life. But, the deed being
done, it came into the category of exchangeable values. Even so the
abstraction of Helen, once committed, assumed for the common
mind the character of an act of plunder, differing from the case of
homicide, inasmuch as the thing taken could be given back, but not
differing from it as to the essence of its moral nature, however
aggravated might have been the circumstances with which it was
originally attended.
Now, wherever the moral judgment against plunder has been greatly
relaxed, that of fraud in connection with it is sure to undergo a
similar process; because, in the same degree in which acts of
plunder are acquitted as lawful acquisition, fraud is sure to come
into credit by assuming the character of stratagem. We may, I think,
find an example of this rule in the Thirteenth Odyssey; where, with
an entire freedom from any consciousness of wrong, Ulysses feigns
to have slaughtered Orsilochus at night by ambush, in consequence
of a quarrel that had previously occurred about booty[423].
Here then we reach the point, at which we must take into view the
peculiar ideas and tendencies of the Greek mind in the heroic age,
as they bear necessarily upon its appreciation of an act like that of
Paris. The Greeks, of whom we may fairly take Diomed as the type,
detest and despise him for affectation, irresolution, and poltroonery:
these are the ideas uppermost in their mind: we are not to doubt
that, besides seeking reparation for Menelaus, they condemned
morally the act which made it needful; what we have to account for
is, that they did not condemn it in such a manner as to make this
moral judgment the ruling idea in their minds with regard to him.
We have seen that, according to Homer, instead of Helen’s having
been originally the willing partner of the guilt of Paris, he was, under
her husband’s roof, her kidnapper and not her corrupter. Her offence
seems to have consisted in this, that she gave a half-willing assent
to the consequences of the abduction. Though never escaping from
the sense of shame, always retaining along with a wounded
conscience her original refinement of character, and apparently
fluctuating from time to time in an alternate strength and weakness
of homeward longings[424], the specific form of her offence,
according to the ideas of the age, was rather the preterite one of
unresisting acquiescence, than the fact of continuing to recognise
Paris as a husband during the lifetime of Menelaus. It was the
having changed her husband, not the living with a man who was not
her husband; and hence we find that she was most kindly treated in
Troy by that member of the royal house, namely Hector, who was
himself of the highest moral tone.
The offence of Paris, though also (except as to the mere restitution
of plundered goods) a preterite offence, was more complex. He
violated the laws of hospitality, as we find distinctly charged upon
him by Menelaus[425]. He assumed the power of a husband over
another man’s wife. This he gained by violence. Now, paradoxical as
it may appear, yet perhaps this very ingredient of violence, which we
look upon as even aggravating the case, and which in the view of
the Greeks was the proper cause of the war, (for their anxiety was to
avenge the forced journey and the groans of Helen,) may
nevertheless have been also the very ingredient, which morally
redeemed the character of the proceeding in the eyes of Greece.
This it might do by lifting it out of the region of mere shame and
baseness, into that class of manful wrongs, which they habitually
regarded as matters to be redressed indeed by the strong hand, but
never as merely infamous. Hence, when we find the Greeks full of
disgust and of contempt towards Paris, it is only for the effeminacy
and poltroonery of character which he showed in the war. His
original crime was probably palliated to them by its seeming to
involve something of manhood and of the spirit of adventure. So
that we may thus have to seek the key to the inadequate sense
among the Greeks of the guilt of Paris in that which, as we have
seen, was the capital weakness of their morality; namely, its light
estimation of crimes of violence, and its tendency to recognise their
enterprise and daring as an actual set-off against whatever moral
wrong they might involve.
The chance legend of Hercules and Iphitus, in the Odyssey, affords
the most valuable and pointed illustration of the great moral
question[426] between Paris and Menelaus, which lies at the very
foundation of the great structure of the Iliad. For in that case also,
we seem to find an instance of abominable crime, which
notwithstanding did not destroy the character of its perpetrator, nor
prevent his attaining to Olympus; apparently for no other reason,
than that it was a crime such as had probably required for its
commission the exercise of masculine strength and daring.
There remained, however, even according to contemporary ideas,
quite enough of guilt on the part of Paris. The abduction and
corruption of a prince’s wife, combined with his personal cowardice,
his constant levity and vacillation, and his reckless indifference to his
country’s danger and affliction, amply suffice to warrant and account
for Homer’s having represented him as a personage hated, hateful,
and contemptible. But while the foregoing considerations may
explain the feelings and language of the Greeks, otherwise
inexplicable, there still remains enough of what at first sight is
puzzling in the conduct, if not in the sentiments, of the Trojans.
We ask ourselves, how could the Trojans
The Trojan estimate of
Paris.
endure, or how could Homer rationally
represent them as enduring, to see the
glorious wealth and state of Priam, with their own lives, families, and
fortunes, put upon the die, rather than surrender Helen, or support
Paris in withholding her? The people hate him: the wise Antenor
opens in public assembly the proposal to restore Helen to the
Greeks: Hector, the prince of greatest influence, almost the actual
governor of Troy, knew his brother’s guilt, and reproached him with
it[427]. How is it that, of all these elements and materials, none ever
become effective?
We must, I think, seek the answer to the questions partly in the
difference of the moral tone, and the moral code, among Greeks and
Trojans; partly in the difference of their political institutions.
We shall find it probable that, although the ostensible privileges of
the people were not less, yet the same spirit of freedom did not
pervade Trojan institutions; that their kings were followed with a
more servile reverence by the people; that authority was of more
avail, apart from rational persuasion; that amidst equally strong
sentiments of connection in the family and the tribe, there was much
less of moral firmness and decision than among the Greeks, and
perhaps also a far less close adherence to the great laws of conjugal
union, which had been violated by the act of Paris. Indeed it would
appear from the allusion of Hector to a tunic of stone[428], that Paris
was probably by law subject to stoning for the crime of adultery: a
curious remnant, if the interpretation be a correct one, of the stern
traits of pristine justice and severity, still remembered amidst a
prevalent dissolution of the stricter moral ties.
Although it results from our previous inquiries that the plebeian
substratum, so to speak, of society, was perhaps nearly the same in
both countries, yet the opinions of the masses would not then have
the same substantiveness of character, nor so much independence of
origin, as in times of Christianity, and of a more elaborate
development of freedom and its main conditions. Then, much more
than now, the first propelling power in the formation of public
opinion would be from the high places of society: and in the higher
sphere of the community, if not in the lower, Greece and Troy were,
while ethnically allied, yet materially different as to moral tone. It is
remarkable, that there is no Τὶς in Troy.
If we may trust the general effect of Homer’s
The Trojans more sensual
and false.
representations, we shall conclude that the
Trojans were more given to the vices of
sensuality and falsehood, the Greeks, on the other hand, more
inclined to crimes of violence: in fact, the latter bear the
characteristics of a more masculine, and the former of a feebler,
people. In the words of Mure, the contrast shadows forth ‘certain
fundamental features of distinction, which have always been more or
less observable, between the European and Asiatic races[429].’
On looking back to the previous history of Troy, we find that
Laomedon defrauded Neptune and Apollo of their stipulated hire:
and Anchises surreptitiously obtained a breed of horses from the
sires belonging to Laomedon, who was his relative[430]. The
conditions of the bargain, under which Paris fought with Menelaus,
are shamelessly and grossly violated. Pandarus, in the interval of
truce, treacherously aims at and wounds Menelaus with an arrow;
but no Trojan disapproves the deed. Euphorbus comes behind the
disarmed Patroclus, and wounds him in the back; and even princely
Hector, seeing him in this condition, then only comes up and
dispatches him. That these were not isolated acts, we may judge
from the circumstance that Menelaus, ever mild and fair in his
sentiments, when he accepts the challenge of Paris, requires that
Priam shall be sent for to conclude the arrangement, because his
sons—and he makes no exceptions—are saucy and faithless,
ὑπερφίαλοι καὶ ἄπιστοι[431]. This must, I think, be taken as
characteristic of Troy; though he mildly proceeds to take off the
edge of his reproach by a γνώμη about youth and age. But the most
scandalous of all the Trojan proceedings seems to have been the
effort made, though unsuccessfully, to have Menelaus put to death,
when he came on a peaceful mission to demand the restoration of
his wife[432].
Nothing of this admiration for fraud apart from force appears either
in the conduct of the Greeks during the war, or in their prior history:
and the passage respecting Autolycus, which, more than any other,
appears to give countenance to knavery, takes his case out of the
category of ordinary human action by placing it in immediate relation
to a deity; so that it illustrates, not the national character as it was,
but rather the form to which the growing corruptions of religion
tended to bring it. Yet, while Homer gives to the Trojans alone the
character of faithlessness, he everywhere, as we must see,
vindicates the intellectual superiority of the Greeks in the stratagems
of the war. And if, as I think is the case, I have succeeded in proving
above that the doctrine of a future state was less lively and
operative among the Trojans than among the Greeks, it is certainly
instructive to view that deficiency in connection with the national
want of all regard for truth. This difference teaches us, that the
imprecations against perjurers, and the prospects of future
punishment, were probably no contemptible auxiliaries in
overcoming the temptations to present falseness, with which human
life is everywhere beset.
As respects sensuality, the chief points of distinction are, that we
find a particular relation to this subject running down the royal line
of Troy; and that, whereas in Greece we are told occasionally of
some beautiful woman who is seduced or ravished by a deity, in
Troas we find the princes of the line are those to whose names the
legends are attached. The inference is, that in the former case a veil
was thrown over such subjects, but that in the latter no sense of
shame required them to be kept secret. The cases that come before
us are those of Tithonus, who is said to become the husband of
Aurora; of Anchises, for whom Venus conceives a passion; and of
Paris, on whom the same deity confers the evil gift of desire[433],
and to whom she promises the most beautiful of women, the wife of
Menelaus. All these are stories, which seem to have tended to the
fame of the parties concerned on earth, and by no means to their
discredit with the Immortals. And again, if, as some may take to be
the case, we are to interpret the three νύμφαι[434] of Troas as local
deities, how remarkable is the fact that Homer should thus describe
them as tainted with passions, which nowhere appear among the
corresponding order within the Greek circle! There, male deities
alone are licentious. Juno, Minerva, Diana, and Persephone, whom
alone we can call properly Greek goddesses of the period, have no
such impure connection with mortals, as the goddesses both of the
Trojan and of the Phœnician traditions.
We hear indeed of Orion[435], who was also the choice of Aurora:
but we cannot tell whether he belonged more to the Trojan than to
the Greek branch of the common stem. To the Greek race he cannot
have been alien, as he is among Greek company in the Eleventh
Odyssey: but then he is not there as an object of honour; he
appears in a state of modified suffering, engaged in an endless
chase[436]. We also find Iasion, probably in Crete, who is reported to
have been loved by Ceres[437]: but he was immediately consumed
for it by the thunderbolt of Jupiter. And so the detention of Ulysses
by the beautiful and immortal Calypso is not in Homer a glory, but a
calamity; and it allays none of the passionate longings of that hero
for his wife and home.
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.
 The character of Priam, which has been so
Trojan ideas and usages of
marriage. 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].
Of the children of Priam we meet with a
The family of Priam.
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.
Lycaon, Il. xxi. 84.
Polydorus, ibid. 91.
Next Gorgythion, son of Kastianeira, who came from Aisume, (Il. viii.
302).
Then we have, without mention of the mother,
Agathon
Pammon
Antiphonos Il. xxiv. 249-51.
Hippothoos
Dios
Cassandra, xxiv. 699.
Mestor, xxiv. 257.
Troilos, Il. xxiv. 257.
Echemmon[444], v. 159.
Chromios[444], ibid.
Antiphos, iv. 490. xi. 101.
Cebriones, viii. 318.
Polites, ii. 791.
And, lastly, illegitimate (νόθοι),
Isos, Il. xi. 101.
Doryclos, xi. 489.
Democoon, iv. 499.
Medesicaste, xiii. 173.
The most important conclusion derivable from the comparison of the
names thus collected is, that the children of Priam, and consequently
their mothers, fell into three ranks:
1. The children of Hecuba.
2. The children of his other wives.
3. The children of concubines, or of chance attachments, who were,
νόθοι, bastards.
The name νόθος with Homer, at least among the Greeks, ordinarily
marks inferiority of condition. The mothers of the four νόθοι are
never named. This may, however, be due to accident. At any rate
Lycaon appears to have the full rank of a prince: he was once
ransomed with the value of a hundred oxen, and, when again taken,
he promises thrice as much; again, in describing himself as the half-
brother of Hector, he avows nothing like spurious birth. The
reference to him by Priam explains his position more clearly, and
places it beyond doubt that Laothoe was recognised as a wife, for
she brought Priam a large dowry[445]; and if her sons be dead, says
the aged king, ‘it will be an affliction to me and to their mother.’ The
language used in another passage about Polydorus is also
conclusive[446]. He is described as the youngest and dearest of the
sons of Priam, which evidently implies his being in the fullest sense a
member of the family. Again, in the palace of Priam there were
separate apartments, not for the nineteen only, but for the fifty.
Thus they seem to have included all the three classes. So that it is
probable enough that the state of illegitimacy did not draw the same
clear line as to rank in Troy, which it drew in Greece.
Laothoe, mother of Lycaon and Polydorus, was a woman of princely
rank: and when Lycaon says that Priam had many more besides
her[447],

τοῦ δ’ ἔχε θυγατέρα Πρίαμος, πολλὰς δὲ καὶ ἄλλας,

he probably means many more of the same condition, wives and

other well-born women, who formed part of his family.
So that Homer, in all likelihood, means to describe to us the
threefold order,
1. Hecuba, as the principal queen.
2. Other wives, inferior but distinctly acknowledged.
3. Either concubines recognised as in a position wholly subordinate,
or women who were in no permanent relation of any kind with
Priam.
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.
From both these instances, and more
Stricter ideas among the
Greeks.
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.)

ψευσταί τ’ ὀρχησταί τε, χοροιτυπίῃσιν ἄριστοι,

ἀρνῶν ἠδ’ ἐρίφων ἐπιδήμιοι ἁρπακτῆρες.

An invective, which completely corresponds with the Greek belief

concerning their general character in the Third Book[457]. The great
Greek heroes are also beautiful; but their mere beauty, particularly in
the Iliad, is for the most part kept carefully in the shade.
We will turn now to the political institutions
Trojan polity less highly
of Troy. Less advanced towards organization,
organized.
and of a less firm tone than in Greece, they
will help to explain how it could happen that a people should bear
prolonged calamity and constant defeat, and could pass on to final
ruin, for the wicked and wanton wrong of an individual prince.
It has been noticed, that the idea of hereditary succession was
definite, as well as familiar, in Greece. In Troy it appears to have
been less so. And this is certainly what we might expect from the
recognition in any form, however qualified, of polygamy. It tends to
confound the position of any one wife, although supposed supreme,
with that of others; and in confounding the order of succession, as
among the issue of different wives, it altogether breaks up the
simplicity of the rule of primogeniture.
And again, if, as we shall presently see, the Trojan race had a less
developed capacity for political organization, they would be less
likely to establish a clear rule and practice of succession, which is a
primary element of political order in well-governed countries.
The evidence as to the Asiatic rule of inheritance is, I admit, indirect
and scanty: nor do I attempt to place what I have now to offer in a
rank higher than that of probable conjecture.
1. Sarpedon was clearly leader of the Lycians, with some kind of
precedence over Glaucus.
The general tenour of the poem clearly gives this impression. He
speaks and acts as the person principally responsible[458]. But by
birth he was inferior to Glaucus; for he was the grandson of
Bellerophon only in the female line through Laodamia, while Glaucus
stood alone in the male line through Hippolochus. I do not venture
to rely much on the mere order of the names; and therefore I do not
press the fact, which indeed is not needed for the argument, that it
makes Laodamia junior to Hippolochus. It will be said that Sarpedon
was in chief command, because he was of superior merit. But
among the Greeks we have no instance in which superior merit gives
preeminence as against birth. And the reputation of divine origin
clearly could not put aside the prior right of succession.
Again, both Sarpedon and Glaucus are both expressly called
βασιλῆες[459], kings. Now, they were first cousins, and they
belonged to the same kingdom. Hippolochus was perhaps still
alive[460]; for he gave Glaucus a parting charge, and his death is not
mentioned. In Greece we find the heir apparent called king, namely,
Achilles: but the title is never given to more than one person
standing in the line of succession. A possible explanation, I think, is,
that the Lycian kingdom had been divided[461]: but if this be not so,
then the use of the term seems to prove that in Asia all the children
of the common ancestor stood, or might stand, upon the same
footing by birth: and as if it was left to other causes, instead of to a
definite and single rule, to determine who should succeed to the
throne.
2. In a former part of this work[462], I have stated reasons for
supposing that Æneas represented the elder branch of the house of
Dardanus. But, whether he did so or not, it is sufficiently clear from
the Iliad that he was not without pretensions to the succession. The
dignity of his father Anchises is marked by his remaining at
Dardania, and not appearing in the court of Priam. Æneas habitually
abstains from attending the meetings or assemblies for consultation,
in which Priam, where they are civil, and Hector, where they are
military, takes the lead. Achilles taunts him expressly with looking
forward to the succession after the death of Priam, and with the
anticipation of public lands which he was to get from the Trojans
forthwith, if he could but slay the great Greek warrior. The particular
succession, to which the taunt refers, is marked out; it is the
dominion, not over the mere Dardanians, but over the Τρῶες
ἱππόδαμοι[463]. In following down the genealogy, Æneas does not
adhere to either of the two lines (from Ilus and Assaracus
respectively) throughout, as senior, and therefore supreme; but,
after putting the line of Ilus first in the earlier part of the chain, he
places his own birth from Anchises before that of Hector from Priam.
Apart from the question which was the older line, the effect of all
these particulars, taken together, is to show an indeterminateness in
the rule of succession, of which we have no indication among the
Greeks. Even the incidental notice of the right of Priam to give it to
Æneas, if he pleased, is as much without example in anything
Homer tells us of the Greek manners, as the corresponding power
conferred by the Parliament on the Crown in the Tudor period was at
variance with the general analogies of English history and
institutions.
3. The third case before us is one in the
Succession to the Throne
of Priam.
family of Priam itself. It appears extremely
doubtful whether we can, upon the authority
of the poems, confidently mark out one of his sons as having been
the eldest, or as standing on that account in the line of succession to
the throne of Priam. The evidence, so far as it goes, seems rather to
point to Paris; while the question lies between him and Hector.
Theocritus[464] indeed calls Hector the eldest of the twenty children
of Hecuba. But this is an opinion, not an authority; and the number
named shows it to be unlikely that he was thinking of historic
accuracy, for Homer says, Hecuba had nineteen sons, while she had
also several daughters[465].
There can be no doubt whatever, that Hector was the most
conspicuous person, the most considerable champion of the city. He
was charged exclusively with the direction of the war, and with the
regulation of the supplies necessary to feed the force of Trojans and
of allies. Polydamas, who so often takes a different view of affairs,
and Sarpedon, when having a complaint to make, alike apply to him.
Æneas is the only person who appears upon the field in the same
rank with him, and he stands in a position wholly distinct from the
family of Priam. As among the members of that family, there can be
no doubt of the preeminence of Hector. He was, indeed, in actual
exercise of the heaviest part of the duties of sovereignty. Æneas, in
the genealogy, finishes the line of Assaracus with himself; and, to all
appearance, as not less a matter of course, the line of Ilus with
Hector[466]. Again, the name Astuanax, conferred by the people on
his son, appears to show that the crown was to come to him. But all
this in no degree answers the question, whether Hector held his
position as probable king-designate by birth, or whether it was
rather due to his personal qualities, and his great and unshared
responsibilities and exertions. There are several circumstances,
which may lead us to incline towards the latter alternative.
(1.) When his parents and widow bewail his loss, it is the loss of
their great defender and chief glory[467], not of one who by death
had vacated the place of known successor to the sovereignty.
(2.) Had Hector been by birth assured of the seat of Priam, his right
would have been sufficient cause for giving to his son at once the
name of Astuanax. But this we are told the people did for the
express reason, that Hector was the only real bulwark of Troy. It
seems unlikely that in such a case his character as heir by birth
would have been wholly passed by. The name, therefore, appears to
suggest, that it was by proving himself the bulwark of the throne
that Hector had become as it were the presumptive heir to it[468].
When Hector takes his child in his arms, he prays, on the infant’s
behalf, that he may become, like himself[469],

ἀριπρεπέα Τρώεσσιν,
ὧδε βίην τ’ ἀγαθὸν, καὶ Ἰλίου ἶφι ἀνάσσειν·

that is, that he may become distinguished and valiant, and may
mightily rule over the Trojans. This seems to point to succession by
virtue of personal qualities rather than of birth.
There are also signs that Paris, and not
Paris most probably the
eldest-born.
Hector, may have been the eldest son of
Priam, and may have had that feebler
inchoate title to succession, which, in the day of necessity, his
brother’s superior courage and character was to set aside.
This supposition accords better with the fact of his having had
influence sufficient to cause the refusal of the original demand for
the restitution of Helen, peacefully made by the Greek embassy; and
the endurance of so much evil by his country on his behalf.
It explains the fact of his having had a palace to himself on
Pergamus; a distinction which he shared with Hector only[470], for
the married sons as well as daughters of Priam in general slept in
apartments within the palace of their father[471]. And also it accords
with his original expedition, which was evidently an affair of great
pains and cost; and with his being plainly next in military rank to
Hector among the sons of Priam.
Further, it would explain the fact, otherwise very difficult to deal
with, that alone among the children of Priam, Paris or Alexander is
honoured with the significant title of βασιλεύς. Helenus is called
ἄναξ, and Hector ποίμην λαῶν, but neither expression is of the same
rank, or has a similar effect. This exclusive application of the term
βασιλεὺς is a very strong piece of evidence, if, as I believe to be the
case, it is nowhere else applied in the Iliad to a person thus
selected, without indicating either the possession, or the hereditary
expectancy of a throne.
And indeed, even if we could show that Homer had applied the
name βασιλεὺς to two brothers in one family, the result would be the
same, as far as the main argument is concerned, for there is no such
pronounced mark of equality found among brothers in any of the
royal families of Greece.
Again; in considering the law of succession among the Greeks, we
have found four cases in the Catalogue, where contingents were
placed under the command of two leaders seemingly co-ordinate;
they are in every instance brothers, and the four dual commands
occur in a total of twenty-nine. Or let us state the case in another
form, so as to include the cases of Bœotia and Elis. Among sixteen
Trojan contingents, there are but six where the chief authority is
plainly in a single hand; out of twenty-nine Greek contingents, there
are twenty-three, and, of the remaining six, four are the cases of
brothers. This fact is material, as tending to show a looser and less
effective military organization in the ranks of the Trojans and their
allies, than in those of the Greeks; a circumstance which does not
prove, but which harmonizes with, the hypothesis that they were
wanting also in a defined order of succession to the seat of political
power.
There are other reasons, immediately connected with Hector, for
supposing that Homer intended to represent Paris as older than his
brother[472]. Paris had been in manhood for at least twenty years,
according to the letter of the poem, which must at least represent a
long period of time. But Hector has one child only, a babe in arms,
which is in itself a presumption of his being less advanced in life.
Again, we must suppose his age probably to be not very different
from that of Andromache. But it is quite plain that she was a young
mother; since after the slaughter of Eetion, her father, Achilles
shortly took a ransom for her mother, who thereupon went back to
the house of her own father, Andromache’s maternal grandfather,
and subsequently died there[473]. If then the grandfather of
Andromache was alive when Thebe was taken, and Hector’s age was
in due proportion to her own, he must in all likelihood have been
younger than Paris. Again, it may be noticed that the term ἥβη is
nowhere ascribed to Paris, but it is assigned to Hector at his
death[474]. Notwithstanding its complimentary use for Ulysses in Od.
viii. 135, that word has a certain leaning to early life. But we have a
stronger, and indeed I think a conclusive argument in the speech of
Andromache after his death[475];

ἆνερ, ἀπ’ αἰῶνος νέος ὤλεο.

Thus he is distinctly called young. And we may consider it almost

certain, under these circumstances, that Paris was the first-born son
of Priam[476], but that his right of succession oozed away like water
from a man’s hand.
The relations of race between the Trojans and the Greeks have
already been examined, in connection with the great Homeric title of
ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν[477]; under some difficulties, which resolve themselves
into this, that Homer, on almost every subject so luminous a guide,
is in all likelihood here, as it were, retained on the side of silence;
and that we have no information, except such as he accidentally lets
fall. But he was under no such preoccupation with regard to the
institutions of Troy; so that, while he had no occasion for the same
amount of detail as he has given us with reference to the Greeks, or
the same minute accuracy as he has there observed, enough
appears to supply a tolerably clear and consistent outline.
We have been accustomed too negligently to treat the Homeric term
Troy, as if it designated only or properly a single city. But in Homer it
much more commonly means a country, with the city sometimes
called Troy for its capital, and containing many other cities beside it.
The proper name, however, of the city in the poems is Ἴλιος, not
Τροίη. Ilios is used above an hundred and twenty times in the Iliad
and Odyssey, and always strictly means the city. The word Τροίη is
used nearly ninety times, and in the great majority of cases it means
the country. Often it has the epithets εὐρεῖα, ἐρίβωλος, ἐριβώλαξ,
which speak for themselves. But more commonly it is without an
epithet; and then too it very generally means the country. When the
Greeks speak, for example, of the voyage Τροίηνδε, this is the
natural sense, rather than to suppose it means a city not on the sea
shore, and into which, till the end of the siege, they did not find
their way at all[478].
According to the genealogical tree in the
Priam and his dynasty in
Troas.
Twentieth Iliad, Dardanus built Dardania
among the mountains: his son Erichthonius
became wealthy by possessions in the plain; and Tros, the son of
Erichthonius, was the real founder of the Trojan state and
name[479].

Τρῶα δ’ Ἐριχθόνιος τέκετο Τρώεσσιν ἄνακτα.

Thus the name of Troes at that time covered the whole race. But the
town of Ilios must, from its name, have been built not earlier than
the time of Ilus, the son of Tros. And now the dynasty separates into
two lines, as Assaracus, the brother of Ilus, continues to reign in
Dardania. Thus the local existence of the Dardanian name is
prolonged; for it is plain that the Dardanian throne was associated,
at least in dignity, with a rival, and not a subordinate, sovereignty.
Still it does not extend beyond the hills. It was over these that
Æneas fled from Achilles[480]. But even the Dardanians did not
wholly cease to be known by the appellation of Trojans; for not only
does Homer frequently use the dominant name Troes for the entire
force opposed to the Greeks, which is naming the whole from the
principal part, but he also uses the word Troes to signify all that part
of the force, which was under the house of Dardanus in either
branch; and he distinguishes this portion from the rest of the force
described under the name ἐπίκουροι, at the opening of the Trojan
Catalogue:

ἔνθα τότε Τρῶές τε διέκριθεν, ἠδ’ ἐπίκουροι[481].

This line is followed by an account of the whole force opposed to the

Greeks, in sixteen divisions. Of these the eleven last bear each their
own national name, beginning with the Pelasgians of Larissa, and
ending with the Lycians; and they are under leaders, whom the
whole course of the poem marks as not being Trojan, but
independent. These eleven evidently were the ἐπίκουροι of ver. 815.
The five first contingents are introduced and commanded as follows:
1. Troes under Hector[482]:

Τρωσὶ μὲν ἡγεμόνευε μέγας κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ.

2. Dardanians, under Æneas, with two of the (ten) sons of Antenor,

Archelochus and Acamas, for his colleagues[483]:

Δαρδανίων αὖτ’ ἦρχεν ἐῢς παῖς Ἀγχίσαο.

3. Trojans of Zelea, at the extreme spur of Ida, under Pandarus[484]:

οἳ δὲ Ζέλειαν ἔναιον ὑπαὶ πόδα νείατον Ἴδης

Τρῶες.

4. People of Adresteia and other towns, under Adrestus and

Amphius, sons of Merops of Percote[485]:

οἳ δ’ Ἀδρήστειάν τ’ εἶχον, κ. τ. λ.

5. People of Percote and other towns, under Asius:

οἳ δ’ ἄρα Περκώτην, κ. τ. λ.
And then begins the enumeration of the Allies, each under their
respective national names.
It seems evident, that these five first-named contingents comprise
the whole of the subjects of the race of Dardanus. First come the
Trojans of the capital and its district, under Hector. Then, taking
precedence on account of dignity, the Dardanian division of Æneas.
In the third contingent the Poet returns to the name Troes, which, I
think, plainly enough overrides the fourth and fifth, just as in the
Greek Catalogue the name Pelasgic Argos[486] introduces and
comprehends a number of contingents that follow, besides that of
Achilles.
There are several reasons, which tend plainly to this conclusion. The
sense of διέκριθεν (815) and the reference to the diversity of
tongues spoken (804) almost require the division of the force
between Troes and allies; it is also the most natural division. The
fourth and fifth contingents are not indeed expressly called Troes,
but this name, already given to the third, may include them. We
must, I think, conclude that it does so, when we find clear proof that
they were not independent national divisions: for the troops of
Percote were in the fifth, but the sons of Percosian Merops command
the fourth, a fact inexplicable if these were the forces of
independent States, but natural enough if they were all under the
supremacy of Priam and his house.
In the great battle of the Twelfth Iliad, the Trojans are πένταχα
κοσμηθέντες (xii. 87). Sarpedon commands the allies with Glaucus
and Asteropæus (v. 101), thus accounting for eleven of the sixteen
divisions in the Catalogue. Æneas, with two sons of Antenor,
commands the Dardanians, thus disposing of a twelfth. Again,
Hector, with Polydamas and Cebriones, commands the πλεῖστοι καὶ
ἄριστοι, evidently the division standing first in the Catalogue. This
makes the number thirteen. The three remaining contingents of the
Catalogue are
1. Zelean Troes, under Pandarus, (since slain,) Il. ii. 824-7.
 2. Adresteans &c. under Adrestus and Amphius, (828-34,)
both slain, Il. v. 612. vi. 63.
3. Percotians &c. under Asius (835-9).
These three remaining divisions of the Catalogue evidently reappear
in the second and third of the five Divisions of the Twelfth Book. The
Second is under Paris, with Alcathous, son-in-law of Antenor, and
Agenor, one of his sons. In the command of the Third, Helenus and
Deiphobus, two sons of Priam, are associated with, and even placed
before, Asius. The position given in these divisions to the family of
Priam appears to prove, that the troops forming them were among
his proper subjects.
Again, the territorial juxtaposition of these districts, between
Phrygia, which lay behind the mountains of Ida, on the one side,
and the sea of Marmora with the Ægæan on the other, perfectly
agrees with the description in the Twenty-fourth Iliad[487] of the
range of country within which Priam had the preeminence in wealth,
and in the vigour and influence of his sons. Strabo quotes this
passage as direct evidence that Priam reigned over the country it
describes, which is rather more than it actually states; and he says
that Troas certainly reached to Adresteia and to Cyzicus.
Again, we have various signs in different passages of a political
connection between the towns we have named and the race of
Priam. Melanippus, his nephew, was employed before the war at
Percote[488]. Democoon[489], his illegitimate son, tended horses at
Abydus; doubtless, says Strabo[490], the horses of his father.
The partial inclusion of the Dardanians within the name of Troes is
further shown by the verse[491],

Αἰνεία, Τρώων βουληφόρε·

and by the appeal of Helenus to Æneas and Hector jointly, as the

persons chiefly responsible for the safety of the Troes and Lycians:
the name Lycians being taken here, as in some other places[492], to
denote most probably a race akin to and locally interspersed with
the Trojans.
But the Dardanians have more commonly their proper designation
separately given them. It never includes the Troes. And we never
find the two appellations, Troes and Dardans, covering the entire
force. Whenever the Dardans are named with the Troes, there is also
another word, either ἐπίκουροι, or Λύκιοι.
The word Troes, it is right to add, is sometimes confined strictly to
the inhabitants of the city: but the occasions are rare, and perhaps
always with contextual indications that such is the sense.
Another sign that Priam exercised a direct sovereignty over the
territory which yielded the five contingents may perhaps be found in
the fact, that we do not find any of his nephews in command of
them. They were led by their local officers, while the brothers of
Priam constituted a part of the community of Troy, and chiefly
influenced the Assembly: and their sons, though apparently more
considerable persons than most of those local officers in general,
simply appear as acting under Hector without special command. The
brothers of Priam are Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon. His nephews
and other relatives are Dolops the son of Lampus; Melanippus the
son of Hiketaon; Polydamas, Hyperenor, and Euphorbus, the sons of
Panthous and his wife Phrontis.
Had the senior members of the family held local sovereignties, we
should have found their sons in local commands. But we find only
two sons of Antenor in command, as either colleagues or lieutenants
of Æneas, over the Dardans, whom we have no reason to suppose
they had any share in ruling.
Strabo, indeed, contends, that there are nine separate δυναστεῖαι
immediately connected with Troy[493], besides the ἐπίκουροι. Of
these states one he thinks was Lelegian, and was ruled over by
Altes, father of Laothoe, one of Priam’s wives. Another by Munes,
husband of Briseis. Another, Thebe, by Eetion, father of
Andromache. Others he considers to be represented by Anchises and
Pandarus: but this does not well agree with the structure of the
Catalogue. He refers also to Lyrnessus and Pedasus; which are
nowhere mentioned by Homer as furnishing contingents, but they
had apparently been destroyed, as well as taken, by Achilles. He
places several of the dynasties in cities thus destroyed: and they all,
according to him, lay beyond the limits marked out in the Twenty-
fourth Iliad.
This assemblage of facts appears to point to a very great diversity of
relations subsisting between Priam, with his capital, and the states,
cities, and races, of which we hear as arrayed on his side in the war.
There are first the cities of Troas, or Troja proper, furnishing the five,
or if we except Dardania four out of the five, first contingents of the
Catalogue. Over these Priam was sovereign.
There are next the cities, so far as they can be traced, under the
δυναστεῖαι mentioned by Strabo, such as Thebe, and the cities of
Altes and Munes. These were probably in the same sort of relation
to the sceptre of Priam, as the Greek states in general to that of
Agamemnon.
Thirdly, there are the independent nations. Of these eleven named in
the Catalogue; others are added as newly arrived in the Tenth
Book[494], and further additions were subsequently made, such as
the force under Memnon, and the Keteians under Eurypylus[495].
Nothing perhaps tends so much, as the powerful assistance lent to
Priam by numerous and distant allies, to show how justly in
substance Horace has described the Trojan war as the conflict
between the Eastern and the Western world. The two confederacies,
which then came into collision, between them absorbed the whole
known world of Homer; and foreshadowed the great conflicts of
later epochs.
We may now proceed to consider the political
Political institutions of
Troy.
institutions of the kingdom of Priam, which
has thus loosely been defined.
The Βασιλεὺς of the Trojans is less clearly marked, than he is among
the Greeks: for (as we shall find) they had no Βουλὴ, and therefore
we have not the same opportunities of seeing the members of the
highest class collected for separate action in the conduct of the war.
Still, however, the name is distinctly given to the following persons
on the Trojan side, and to no others.
1. Priam, Il. v. 464, xxiv. 630.
2. Paris, iv. 96.
3. Rhesus, x. 435.
4. Sarpedon, xii. 319. xvi. 660.
5. Glaucus, xii. 319.
Among the Trojans, as among the Greeks, it was the custom for the
kings, as they descended into the vale of years, to devolve the more
active duties of kingship on their children, and to retain, perhaps
only for a time, those of a sedentary character. Hence Hector at least
shares with Priam the management of Assemblies, as it is he[496]
who dissolves that of the Second Book, and calls the military one of
the Eighth. Hence, too, he speaks of himself as the person
responsible for the burdens entailed by the war upon the Trojans. ‘I
did not,’ he says to the allies, ‘bring you from your cities to multiply
our numbers, but that you might defend for me the wives and
children of Trojans; with this object in view, I exhaust the people for
your pay and provisions[497].’ Hence we have Æneas leading the
Dardanians, while his father Anchises nowhere appears, and, as it
must be presumed, remains in his capital. Hence, while ten or twelve
sons of Antenor bear arms for Troy, and two of them are the
colleagues of Æneas in the command of the Dardanian contingent,
their father appears among the δημογέροντες, who were chief
speakers in the Assembly within the city. We do not know that
Antenor was a king; more probably he held a lordship subordinate to
Priam, in a relation somewhat more strict than that between
Agamemnon and the Greek chieftains, and rather resembling that
between Peleus and Menœtius; but the same custom of partial
retirement seems to have prevailed in the case of subaltern rulers,
as indeed it would be dictated by the same reasons of prudence and
necessity.
The βασιλήϊς τιμὴ of Troy was not, any more than those of Greece,
an absolute despotism. In Troy, as in Greece, the public affairs were
discussed and settled in the Assemblies, though with differences,
which will be noticed, from the Greek manner of procedure. It was in
the Assembly that Iris, disguised as Polites, addressed Priam and
Hector to advise a review of the army[498]. And it was again in an
Assembly that Antenor proposed, and that Paris refused, to give up
Helen: whereupon Priam proposed the mission of Idæus to ask for a
truce with a view to the burial of the dead, and the people assented
to the proposal[499];

οἱ δ’ ἄρα τοῦ μάλα μὲν κλύον ἠδ’ ἐπίθοντο.

It was in the Assembly, too, that those earlier proposals had been
made, of which the same personage procured the defeat by
corruption.
Lastly, in the Eighth Book, Hector[500], as we have seen, holds a
military ἀγορὴ of the army by the banks of the Scamander. At this he
invites them to bivouac outside the Greek rampart, and they accept
his proposal by acclamation. This Assembly on the field of battle is
an argument a fortiori to show, that ordinary affairs were referred
among the Trojans to such meetings. We have, indeed, no detail of
any Trojan Assembly except these three. But we have references to
them, which give a similar view of their nature and functions. Idæus,
on his return, announces to the Assembly that the truce is
granted[501]. It is plain that the restoration of Helen was debated
before, as well as during the war, in the Assembly of the people;
because Agamemnon slays the two sons of Antimachus on the
special ground that the father had there proposed that Menelaus, if
not Ulysses, should be murdered[502], when they came as Envoys to
Troy, for the purpose of demanding her restoration. This Antimachus
was bribed by Paris, as the Poet tells us, to oppose the
measure[503]. Again, Polydamas, in one of his speeches, charges
Hector with having used him roughly, when he had ventured to differ
from him in the Assemblies, upon the ground that he ought not, as a
stranger to the Trojan δῆμος, to promote dissension among
them[504].
Trojan institutions do not, then, present to our view a greater
elevation of the royal office. On the contrary, it is remarkable, that
the title of δημογέρων, which Homer applies to the chief speakers of
the Trojan Assembly, not being kings, is also used by him to describe
Ilus the founder of the city[505]. It is, however, possible, perhaps
even likely, that this title may be applied to Ilus as a younger son, if
his brother Assaracus was the eldest and the heir[506].
But although it thus appears that monarchy was limited in Troy, as it
was in Greece, and that public affairs were conducted in the
assemblies of the people, the method and organization of these
Assemblies was different in the two cases.
1. The guiding element in the Trojan government seems to have
been age combined with rank; while among the Greeks, wisdom and
valour were qualifications, not less available than age and rank.
2. The Greeks had the institution of a βουλὴ, which preceded and
prepared matter for their Assemblies. The Trojans had not.
3. The Greeks, as we have seen, employed oratory as a main
instrument of government; the Trojans did not.
4. The aged members of the Trojan royal family rendered their aid to
the state, not as counsellors of Priam in private meetings, but only in
the Assembly of the people.
A few words on each of these heads.
1. The old men who appear on the wall with
The greater weight of Age
in Troy.
Priam, in the Third Book, are really old, and
not merely titular or official γέροντες; they
are[507],
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