Bulfinch's Mythology: the Age of Fable

by Thomas Bulfinch

  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 They pretended to be making preparations to abandon the siege, and a portion of the ships were withdrawn, and lay hid behind a neighboring island.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,
r />   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.

  Chapter XXII

  Adventures of Ulysses. The Lotus-Eaters. Cyclopes. Circe.

  Sirens. Scylla and Charybdis. Calypso

  The romantic poem of the Odyssey is now to engage our attention. It narrates the wanderings of Ulysses (Odysseus in the Greek language) in his return from Troy to his own kingdom of Ithaca.

  >From Troy the vessels first made land at Ismarus, a city of the Ciconians, where, in a skirmish with the inhabitants, Ulysses lost six men from each ship. Sailing thence they were overtaken by a storm which drove them for nine days along the sea till they reached the country of the Lotus-eaters. Here, after watering, Ulysses sent three of his men to discover who the inhabitants were. These men on coming among the Lotus-eaters were kindly entertained by them, and were given some of their own food, the lotus-plant to eat. The effect of this food was such that those who partook of it lost all thoughts of home and wished to remain in that country. It was by main force that Ulysses dragged these men away, and he was even obliged to tie them under the benches of his ship. (Tennyson in the Lotus-eaters has charmingly expressed the dreamy languid feeling which the lotus-food is said to have produced: