The World of Homer

the perfect wife, Andromache; the perfect maiden, frank, stainless, and kind, Nausicaa; for the woman of immortal charm, Helen; while, when he does touch on t

her own children; Ino, who hated her step-children; Althaea, who, to avenge her brothers, burned the brand that was the life-token of her son, Meleager of the golden hair. There was hateful Eriphyle, bribed by the gift that drew her lord to his doom; there was hapless Epicaste, wedded to her son, the slayer of his father; there were

y touches on their fortunes when Odysseus meets them in Hades. From the guilt and the misery of the "far-renowned brides of ancient song," Homer averts his eyes. Even to Clytemnestra, though her sin

does not, "where'er she came, bring calamity"; she is penitent, she longs for home, and her lord, and her one child, the little maid Hermione. She scorns the cowardice of her lover, and, in the third Book of the Iliad, the

turns on and is motive by love; the Iliad springs from the lawless love of Paris and Helen; the Odyssey from the wedded love of Odysseus and Penelope. The Wrath of Achilles, too,

Troilus and Cressida were, to Chaucer, the central interest of the Trojan leaguer; no such place could they hold in Homer: he has an infinitely larger and nobler topic. Yet he who listens may hear

he whole poem is dominated by the maternal love of Thetis, that magical figure of sorrow, foreboding, and affection, without which the character of Achilles would be jejune, and bereft of occasions to

rodite; the unnatural hatred of Althaea; the caprice of Anteia; the pathos of the dirges of Briseis for Patroclus, of Helen for Hector; the r

free, on earth and in Olympus, they give their counsel and even carry their point, as in the Icelandic sagas. In the Odyssey, Arete and Nausicaa

nd are not Attic, in the great majority of cases. Christian Europe at various times, in the age of the chivalrous romances, and in comedy generally, fell far below the old northern and Achaean view of the women's part. To chivalry, adultery was a duty, to our European comedy it was a jest: marriage was a bourgeois business. But even to historic Greece the sanctity of the marriage-tie was a serious matter: adulterous intrigues are not the theme

to the poet. In very rare cases in Homer, a man may receive a bride without paying a price for doing some great public service: in some circumstances the father will even give a dowry with the bride.[4] In the most notable passage where dowry (με?λ?α) is mentioned by the poet, he plainly shows his knowledge that the giving of dowry is an exception to the general rule; for he mentions the rule-the wooer pays the bride-price ?εδνα, but in his sore need of Achilles, Agamemnon offers his daughter "without price" (?ν?εδν

rice "such as is meet to go with a dear daughter." This return of the price, or of part of it, was familiar to the Laws of Hammurabi and of the Germans of Tacitus.[7] We may, with the separatist critics, suppose that the passages about returning the bride-price of Penelope when she goes to her second husband,[8] belong to a later period than the body of the Epics; or, more probably, that a variety of customs may coexist (that they may we have proved), and, in any case, Penelope's people were anxious to get her off their hands in one way or another, her situation being irksome and anomalous. Rare must be the ex

because he had forgotten the custom" (R. G. E. p. 152). But even Aeschylus knew that ?εδνα were gifts from the bridegroom (Prometheus, 559, quoted by Mr. Murray); and if the author of the passages in Odyssey, i. ii., did not know, he cannot have read the Iliad and

ge of human society. The bridal customs are not pedantically stereotyped in Homer, but variations in accordance with circumstances do not prove lateness or earliness, any more than such female names as Alphesiboea, Phere

eces as brides. The cattle-owning barbaric societies of Africa are not addicted to female infanticide, much less could Homeric society be with its wealth and its tenderness of heart. In Greek non-Homeric legend how o

nt Hebrew books. It is not to be supposed that the ancient profession was unknown, but all such things are ignored in deference to a taste more pure than that of early Ionian society and

s and

lsy fumbling

and out

ook x., but not there did he find, nowhere in Homer could he find "the

her critics, when they find mentions of such a separate chamber (δ?λαμο?) in other parts of the Epic, explain them as late interpolations. They appear once again to forget that in no civilised society is there absolute uniformity of detail in all the arrangements of domestic life. An interesting example may be found in Scott's description of the hall and house of Cedric the Saxon,-the hall floored with "earth mixed wit

mistress live in the megaron in the daytime and sleep there at night ... grown-up

ove that thalamos (chamber) and megaron (hall) are identical, we hear of no outside thalamos, like that of Telemachus, occupied by a girl, and the whole topi

mong the gods. Moreover, we never hear of lightness of behaviour in girls, except when a God is the wooer, and that is reckoned an honour, the woman is

id, but dreads the wrath of his wife, as the father of Phoenix, in a similar case, found that he had good reason to do. The bastards of whom we hear are probably sons of the captives of the spear, brought home as Agamemnon unadvisedly brought Cassandra. Theano, wife of A

long speech of Phoenix (Book ix.) we see a son, Meleager, who has a feud with his maternal uncles and is under his mother's curse. This family feud, in which the wife a

for his daughter, none the less, is happily displayed, while among men the fraternal affection of Agamemnon for Menelaus is his most agreeable trait. Parents and children, except in the woeful adventure of Phoenix, are always on the best of terms, as in the

atitude of choice to their daughters than has, in many periods, been permitted by ourselves in England, and no literature in th

11-628, 1162-1

ssey, i

ey, viii.

xxii. 51, i

, ix. 146

Burnt Njal, v

. p. 151, note 1, cit

, i. 278, i

ry and Riddell translate, "will accept gifts of wooing for

G. E.

referential female infanticide. See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp.

"The supposed Exp

sey, xxii

ssey, xv

G. E.

iad, v.

iii. 2

xxiv.

yz., 744: "Keep a male. Cast out a female child." These may have been the manners of l