A.C. 1184.
The next siege we meet with is the most celebrated in history or fiction, not so much on its own account, as from its good fortune in having the greatest poet the world has produced as its chronicler. If Homer had not placed this great siege in the regions of fable by his introduction of immortals into the action, it would still be a myth, as is all we know of Greece at the period at which it took place. Hypercritics have, indeed, endeavoured to make over the whole of it to the muses who preside over fiction; but we cannot accede to their decision. There is a vital reality in the characters of Homer, which proves that they did exist and act; a blind old bard might sing the deeds of heroes, and perhaps clothe those deeds with some of the splendour of his genius; but we have no faith in his having created the men, any more than he did the immortals, who belonged to the mythology of his country long before he was born. There is nothing in the “song of Troy divine” that is dissonant with the character of the age; so far to the contrary, we believe the poet has given a more faithful picture of the heroes, and the events connected with them, than any historian has done. Achilles is as perfect from the hands of Homer, as Alexander from the pen of Quintus Curtius or Arian. If we disperse the mist of diablerie which surrounds Macbeth, we shall find him a human character, acted upon by human passions, independently of the witches; and so with Homer’s heroes: they are all most essentially real men, notwithstanding the gorgeous mythology that attends them, and act as they would have done without immortal intervention. We have as perfect faith in the history of the siege of Troy, as in most of the pages of what has been termed the “great lie.” Independently of the work of genius for ever associated with it, the siege of Troy is a memorable epoch in human annals. Tyndarus, the ninth king of LacedÆmon, had, by Leda, Castor and Pollux, who were twins, besides Helena, and Clytemnestra the wife of Agamemnon, king of MycenÆ. Having survived his two sons, the twins, he became anxious for a successor, and sought for a suitable husband for his daughter Helena. All the suitors bound themselves by oath to abide by the decision of the lady, who chose Menelaus, king of Sparta. She had not, however, lived above three years with her husband before she was carried off by Alexander or Paris, son of Priam, king of the Trojans. In consequence of this elopement, Menelaus called upon the rulers of the European states of Greece, and more particularly upon those who had been candidates for her hand, to avenge this Asiatic outrage. All answered to the summons, though some, like Ulysses, unwillingly. As every one knows, the siege lasted ten years; which only goes to prove the discordant parts of which the besieging army was composed: had there been union beneath a completely acknowledged head, the city could not have held out so long by many years. But Agamemnon was like Godfrey of Bouillon in the Crusades—he was only a nominal chief, without a particle of real power over the fiery and rude leaders of the troops of adventurers composing the army. This necessity for union is the principal lesson derived by posterity from the siege of Troy; but to the Asiatics of the period it must have been a premonitory warning of what they had to dread from the growing power of the Greeks. Divested of fable, and as many of the contradictions removed as possible, we believe the above to be the most trustworthy account of this celebrated affair—no one would think of going into the details after Homer. According to Bishop Ussher, the most safe chronological guide, the siege of Troy took place 1184 years before the birth of Christ, about the time that Jephtha ruled over the Jews. This last circumstance cannot fail to bring to the minds of our readers the extraordinary fact that the involuntary parental sacrifices of Iphigenia and the “daughter of Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” were contemporary. The period of the war of Troy, standing on the verge between fable and history, is a very useful one to be retained in the memory.
