Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable

Ch. 21: Fall of Troy, Return of Greeks, Orestes and Electra

The story of the Iliad ends with the death of Hector, and it is

from the Odyssey and later poems that we learn the fate of the

other heroes. After the death of Hector, Troy did not

immediately fall, but receiving aid from new allies still

continued its resistance. One of these allies was Memnon, the

AETHIOPIAN prince, whose story we have already told. Another was

Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, who came with a band of female

warriors. All the authorities attest their valor and the fearful

effect of their war-cry. Penthesilea slew many of the bravest

warriors, but was at last slain by Achilles. But when the hero

bent over his fallen foe, and contemplated her beauty, youth and

valor, he bitterly regretted his victory. Thersites, an insolent

brawler and demagogue, ridiculed his grief, and was in

consequence slain by the hero.

Achilles by chance had seen Polyxena, daughter of King Priam,

perhaps on occasion of the truce which was allowed the Trojans

for the burial of Hector. He was captivated with her charms, and

to win her in marriage agreed to use his influence with the

Greeks to grant peace to Troy. While in the temple of Apollo,

negotiating the marriage, Paris discharged at him a poisoned

arrow, which guided by Apollo, wounded Achilles in the heel, the

only vulnerable part about him. For Thetis, his mother, had

dipped him when an infant in the river Styx, which made every

part of him invulnerable except the heel by which she held him.

(The story of the invulnerability of Achilles is not found in

Homer, and is inconsistent with his account. For how could

Achilles require the aid of celestial armor if he were

invulnerable?)

The body of Achilles, so treacherously slain, was rescued by Ajax

and Ulysses. Thetis directed the Greeks to bestow her son's

armor on the hero who, of all survivors, should be judged most

deserving of it. Ajax and Ulysses were the only claimants; a

select number of the other chiefs were appointed to award the

prize. It was awarded to Ulysses, thus placing wisdom before

valor; whereupon Ajax slew himself. On the spot where his blood

sank into the earth a flower sprang up, called the hyacinth,

bearing on its leaves the first two letters of the name of Ajax,

Ai, the Greek for "woe." Thus Ajax is a claimant with the boy

Hyacinthus for the honor of giving birth to this flower. There

is a species of Larkspur which represents the hyacinth of the

poets in preserving the memory of this event, the Delphinium

Ajacis Ajax's Larkspur.

It was now discovered that Troy could not be taken but by the

arrows of Hercules. They were in possession of Philoctetes, the

friend who had been with Hercules at the last, and lighted his

funeral pyre. Philoctetes had joined the Grecian expedition

against Troy, but had accidentally wounded his foot with one of

the poisoned arrows, and the smell from his wound proved so

offensive that his companions carried him to the Isle of Lemnos

and left him there. Diomedes was now sent to induce him to

rejoin the army. He succeeded. Philoctetes was cured of his

wound by Machaon, and Paris was the first victim of the fatal

arrows. In his distress Paris bethought him of one whom in his

prosperity he had forgotten. This was the nymph OEnone, whom he

had married when a youth, and had abandoned for the fatal beauty

Helen. OEnone, remembering the wrongs she had suffered, refused

to heal the wound, and Paris went back to Troy and died. OEnone

quickly repented, and hastened after him with remedies, but came

too late, and in her grief hung herself.

Tennyson has chosen OEnone as the subject of a short poem; but he

has omitted the concluding part of the story, the return of Paris

wounded, her cruelty and subsequent repentance.

"__________Hither came at noon

Mournful OENONE, wandering forlorn

Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.

Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck

Floated her hair, or seemed to float in rest.

She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine,

Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade

Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

"'O Mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,

Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.

I waited underneath the dawning hills,

Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark,

And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine:

Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,

Leading a jet-black goat, white-horned, white-hooved,

Come up from reedy Simois, all alone.

"'O Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.

Far off the torrent called me from the cliff:

Far up the solitary morning smote

The streaks of virgin snow. With downdropt eyes

I sat alone: white-breasted like a star

Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard-skin

Drooped from his shoulder, but his sunny hair

Clustered about his temples like a God's,

And his cheek brightened as the foambow brightens

When the wind blows the foam, and all my heart

Went forth to embrace him coming, ere he came.

"'Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.

He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm

Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,

That smelt ambrosially, and while I looked

And listened, the full-flowing river of speech

Came down upon my heart.

"My own OENONE,

Beautiful-browed OENONE, my own soul,

Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingraven

'For the most fair,' would seem award it thine

As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt

The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace

Of movement, and the charm of married brows."

"'Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.

He prest the blossom of his lips to mine,

And added, "This was cast upon the board,

When all the full-faced presence of the gods

Hanged in the halls of Peleus; whereupon

Rose feud, with question unto whom 'twas due;

But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve

Delivering, that to me, by common voice

Elected umpire, Her comes to-day,

Pallas and Aphrodite, claiming each

This meed of fairest. Thou within the cave

Beyond yon whispering tuft of oldest pine,

May'st well behold them unbeheld, unheard

Hear all, and see thy Paris judge of gods."'"

There was in Troy a celebrated statue of Minerva called the

Palladium. It was said to have fallen from heaven, and the

belief was that the city could not be taken so long as this

statue remained within it. Ulysses and Diomedes entered the city

in disguise, and succeeded in obtaining the Palladium, which they

carried off to the Grecian camp.

But Troy still held out, and the Greeks began to despair of ever

subduing it by force, and by advice of Ulysses resolved to resort

to stratagem. They pretended to be making preparations to

abandon the siege, and a portion of the ships were withdrawn, and

lay hid behind a neighboring island. The Greeks then constructed

an immense WOODEN HORSE, which they gave out was intended as a

propitiatory offering to Minerva, but in fact was filled with

armed men. The remaining Greeks then betook themselves to their

ships and sailed away, as if for a final departure. The Trojans,

seeing the encampment broken up and the fleet gone, concluded the

enemy to have abandoned the siege. The gates were thrown open,

and the whole population issued forth rejoicing at the long-

prohibited liberty of passing freely over the scene of the late

encampment. The great horse was the chief object of curiosity.

All wondered what it could be for. Some recommended to take it

into the city as a trophy; others felt afraid of it.

While they hesitate, Laocoon, the priest of Neptune, exclaims,

"What madness, citizens, is this! Have you not learned enough of

Grecian fraud to be on your guard against it? For my part I fear

the Greeks even when they offer gifts." So saying he threw his

lance at the horse's side. It struck, and a hollow sound

reverberated like a groan. Then perhaps the people might have

taken his advice and destroyed the fatal horse and all its

contents; but just at that moment a group of people appeared

dragging forward one who seemed a prisoner and a Greek.

Stupefied with terror he was brought before the chiefs, who

reassured him, promising that his life should be spared on

condition of his returning true answers to the questions asked

him. He informed them that he was a Greek, Sinon by name, and

that in consequence of the malice of Ulysses he had been left

behind by his countrymen at their departure. With regard to the

wooden horse, he told them that it was a propitiatory offering to

Minerva, and made so huge for the express purpose of preventing

its being carried within the city; for Calchas the prophet had

told them that if the Trojans took possession of it, they would

assuredly triumph over the Greeks. This language turned the tide

of the people's feelings, and they began to think how they might

best secure the monstrous horse and the favorable auguries

connected with it, when suddenly a prodigy occurred which left no

room to doubt. There appeared advancing over the sea two immense

serpents. They came upon the land, and the crowd fled in all

directions. The serpents advanced directly to the spot where

Laocoon stood with his two sons. They first attacked the

children, winding round their bodies and breathing their

pestilential breath in their faces. The father, attempting to

rescue them, is next seized and involved in the serpents' coils.

He struggles to tear them away, but they overpower all his

efforts and strangle him and the children in their poisonous

folds. This event was regarded as a clear indication of the

displeasure of the gods at Laocoon's irreverent treatment of the

wooden horse, which they no longer hesitated to regard as a

sacred object and prepared to introduce with due solemnity into

the city. This was done with songs and triumphal acclamations,

and the day closed with festivity. In the night the armed men

who were enclosed in the body of the horse, being led out by the

traitor Sinon, opened the gates of the city to their friends who

had returned under cover of the night. The city was set on fire;

the people, overcome with feasting and sleep, put to the sword,

and Troy completely subdued.

One of the most celebrated groups of statuary in existence is

that of Laocoon and his children in the embrace of the serpents.

"There is a cast of it in the Boston Athenaeum; the original is

in the Vatican at Rome. The following lines are from the Childe

Harold of Byron:

"Now turning to the Vatican go see

Laocoon's torture dignifying pain;

A father's love and mortal's agony

With as immortal's patience blending; vain

The struggle! Vain against the coiling strain

And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp

The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain

Rivets the living links; the enormous asp

Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp."

The comic poets will also occasionally borrow a classical

allusion. The following is from Swift's description of a City

Shower:

"Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,

While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits,

And over and anon with frightful din

The leather sounds; he trembles from within.

So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed

Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,

(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,

Instead of paying chairmen, run them through;)

Laocoon struck the outside with a spear,

And each imprisoned champion quaked with fear."

King Priam lived to see the downfall of his kingdom, and was

slain at last on the fatal night when the Greeks took the city.

He had armed himself and was about to mingle with the combatants,

but was prevailed on by Hecuba, his aged queen, to take refuge

with herself and his daughters as a suppliant at the altar of

Jupiter. While there, his youngest son Polites, pursued by

Pyrrhus (Pyrrhus's exclamation, "Not such aid nor such defenders

does the time require," has become proverbial.), the son of

Achilles, rushed in wounded, and expired at the feet of his

father; whereupon Priam, overcome with indignation, hurled his

spear with feeble hand against Pyrrhus, and was forthwith slain

by him.

Queen Hecuba and her daughter Cassandra were carried captives to

Greece. Cassandra had been loved by Apollo, and he gave her the

gift of prophecy; but afterwards offended with her, he rendered

the gift unavailing by ordaining that her predictions should

never be believed. Polyxena, another daughter, who had been

loved by Achilles, was demanded by the ghost of this warrior, and

was sacrificed by the Greeks upon his tomb.

>From Schiller's poem "Cassandra":

"And men my prophet wail deride!

The solemn sorrow dies in scorn;

And lonely in the waste, I hide

The tortured heart that would forewarn.

Amid the happy, unregarded,

Mock'd by their fearful joy, I trod;

Oh, dark to me the lot awarded,

Thou evil Pythian God!

"Thine oracle, in vain to be,

Oh, wherefore am I thus consigned,

With eyes that every truth must see,

Lone in the city of the blind?

Cursed with the anguish of a power

To view the fates I may not thrall,

The hovering tempest still must lower,

The horror must befall!

Boots it th veil to lift, and give

To sight the frowning fates beneath?

For error is the life we live,

And, oh, our knowledge is but death!

Take back the clear and awful mirror,

Shut from my eyes the blood-red glare;

Thy truth is but the gift of terror,

When mortal lips declare.

"My blindness give to me once more,

They gay dim senses that rejoice;

The past's delighted songs are o'er

For lips that speak a prophet's voice.

To me the future thou hast granted;

I miss the moment from the chain

The happy present hour enchanted!

Take back thy gift again!"

Sir Edw. L. Bulwer's translation

MENELAUS AND HELEN

Our readers will be anxious to know the fate of Helen, the fair

but guilty occasion of so much slaughter. On the fall of Troy

Menelaus recovered possession of his wife, who had not ceased to

love him, though she had yielded to the might of Venus and

deserted him for another. After the death of Paris she aided the

Greeks secretly on several occasions, and in particular when

Ulysses and Diomedes entered the city in disguise to carry off

the Palladium. She saw and recognized Ulysses, but kept the

secret, and even assisted them in obtaining the image. Thus she

became reconciled to her husband, and they were among the first

to leave the shores of Troy for their native land. But having

incurred the displeasure of the gods they were driven by storms

from shore to shore of the Mediterranean, visiting Cyprus,

Phoenicia and Egypt. In Egypt they were kindly treated and

presented with rich gifts, of which Helen's share was a golden

spindle and a basket on wheels. The basket was to hold the wool

and spools for the queen's work.

Dyer, in his poem of The Fleece, thus alludes to the incident:

"_________many yet adhere

To the ancient distaff at the bosom fixed.

Casting the whirling spindle as they walk.

. . . . . . . . . .

This was of old, in no inglorious days,

The mode of spinning, when the Egyptian prince

A golden distaff gave that beauteous nymph,

Too beauteous Helen; no uncourtly gift."

Milton also alludes to a famous recipe for an invigorating

draught, called Nepenthe, which the Egyptian queen gave to Helen:

"Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone

In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,

Is of such power to stir up joy as this,

To life so friendly or so cool to thirst."

Comus

Menelaus and Helen at length arrived in safety at Sparta, resumed

their royal dignity, and lived and reigned in splendor; and when

Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, in search of his father, arrived

at Sparta, he found Menelaus and Helen celebrating the marriage

of their daughter Hermione to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles.

In "the Victory Feast," Schiller thus reviews the return of the

Greek heroes.

"The son of Atreus, king of men,

The muster of the hosts surveyed,

How dwindled from the thousands, when

Along Scamander first arrayed!

With sorrow and the cloudy thought,

The great king's stately look grew dim,

Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,

How few to Greece return with him!

Still let the song to gladness call,

For those who yet their home shall greet!

For them the blooming life is sweet;

Return is not for all!

"Nor all who reach their native land

May long the joy of welcome feel;

Beside the household gods may stand

Grim Murder, with awaiting steel

And they who 'scape the foe, may die

Beneath the foul, familiar glaive.

Thus he to whom prophetic eye

Her light the wise Minerva gave;

'Ah! Bless'd, whose hearth, to memory true

The goddess keeps unstained and pure;

For woman's guile is deep and sure,

And falsehood loves the new!'

"The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,

By the best blood of Greece recaptured;

Round that fair form his glowing arms

(A second bridal) wreath, enraptured.

Woe waits the work of evil birth,

Revenge to deeds unblessed is given!

For watchful o'er the things of earth,

The eternal council-halls of heaven.

Yes, ill shall never ill repay;

Jove to the impious hands that stain

The altar of man's heart,

Again the doomer's doom shall weigh!"

Sir Edw. L. Bulwer's translation

AGAMEMNON, ORESTES, AND ELECTRA

Agamemnon, the general-in-chief of the Greeks, the brother of

Menelaus, who had been drawn into the quarrel to avenge another's

wrongs, was not so fortunate in the issue as his brother. During

his absence his wife Clytemnestra had been false to him, and when

his return was expected, she, with her paramour, AEgisthus, laid

a plan for his destruction, and at the banquet given to celebrate

his return, murdered him.

The conspirators intended also to slay his son Orestes, a lad not

yet old enough to be an object of apprehension, but from whom, if

he should be suffered to grow up, there might be danger.

Electra, the sister of Orestes, saved her brother's life by

sending him secretly away to his uncle Strophius, king of Phocis.

In the palace of Strophius, Orestes grew up with the king's son,

Pylades, and formed with him that ardent friendship which has

become proverbial. Electra frequently reminded her brother hy

messengers of the duty of avenging his father's death, and when

grown up he consulted the oracle of Delphi, which confirmed him

in his design. He therefore repaired in disguise to Argos,

pretending to he a messenger from Strophius, who had come to

announce the death of Orestes, and brought the ashes of the

deceased in a funeral urn. After visiting his father's tomb and

sacrificing upon it, according to the rites of the ancients, he

made himself known to his sister Electra, and soon after slew

both AEgisthus and Clytemnestra.

This revolting act, the slaughter of a mother by her son, though

alleviated by the guilt of the victim and the express command of

the gods, did not fail to awaken in the breasts of the ancients

the same abhorrence that it does in ours. The Eumenides,

avenging deities, seized upon Orestes, and drove him frantic from

land to land. Pylades accompanied him in his wanderings, and

watched over him. At length in answer to a second appeal to the

oracle, he was directed to go to Tauris in Scythia, and to bring

thence a statue of Diana which was believed to have fallen from

heaven. Accordingly Orestes and Pylades went to Tauris, where

the barbarous people were accustomed to sacrifice to the goddess

all strangers who fell into their hands. The two friends were

seized and carried bound to the temple to be made victims. But

the priestess of Diana was no other than Iphigenia, the sister of

Orestes, who, our readers will remember, was snatched away by

Diana, at the moment when she was about to be sacrificed.

Ascertaining from the prisoners who they were, Iphigenia

disclosed herself to them, and the three made their escape with

the statue of the goddess, and returned to Mycenae.

But Orestes was not yet relieved from the vengeance of the

Erinnyes. At length he took refuge with Minerva at Athens. The

goddess afforded him protection, and appointed the court of

Areopagus to decide his fate. The Erinnyes brought forward their

accusation, and Orestes made the command of the Delphic oracle

his excuse. When the court voted and the voices were equally

divided, Orestes was acquitted by the command of Minerva.

Byron, in Childe Harold, Canto IV, alludes to the story of

Orestes:

"O thou who never yet of human wrong

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!

Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,

And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss,

For that unnatural retribution, just,

Had it but been from hands less near, in this,

Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!"

One of the most pathetic scenes in the ancient drama is that in

which Sophocles represents the meeting of Orestes and Electra, on

his return from Phocis. Orestes, mistaking Electra for one of

the domestics, and desirous of keeping his arrival a secret till

the hour of vengeance should arrive, produces the urn in which

his ashes are supposed to rest. Electra, believing him to be

really dead, takes the urn, and embracing it, pours forth her

grief in language full of tenderness and despair.

Milton, in one of his sonnets, says:

"The repeated air

Of sad Electra's poet had the power

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."

This alludes to the story that when, on one occasion, the city of

Athens was at the mercy of her Spartan foes, and it was proposed

to destroy it, the thought was rejected upon the accidental

quotation, by some one, of a chorus of Euripides.

TROY

After hearing so much about the city of Troy and its heroes, the

reader will perhaps be surprised to learn that the exact site of

that famous city is still a matter of dispute. There are some

vestiges of tombs on the plain which most nearly answers to the

description given by Homer and the ancient geographers, but no

other evidence of the former existence of a great city. Byron

thus describes the present appearance of the scene:

"The winds are high, and Helle's tide

Rolls darkly heaving to the main;

And night's descending shadows hide

That field with blood bedewed in vain,

The desert of old Priam's pride,

The tombs, sole relics of his reign,

All save immortal dreams that could beguile

The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle."

Bride of Abydos.