Homer: Andromache

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Andromache was the young wife of Hector, Priam’s warrior son and defender of Troy. Over against the figure of Helen in the Iliad her gentle integrity stands in mute reproach. It is as though Homer, whose chivalry to Helen will not permit him to censure her, yet feels the claim of a larger chivalry—to womanhood itself. So he seems impelled to create this type of gracious purity, vindicating wifely honour and motherly tenderness; and proving at the same time that if his race had a high ideal of beauty, it had also a profound regard for domestic ties.

Helen and Andromache, therefore, stand side by side in the action of the poem. Their destinies are linked: their lives are passed within the same walls: they own the same relationship to king Priam and to Hecuba the queen; and they are united in suffering. But always they are as far apart in spirit as conscious guilt on the one hand and indignant rectitude on the other ever held two daughters of Eve. Andromache, like all the men and women of heroic poetry, was very human. And we have the feeling that she could not rise to Hector’s generosity toward the Spartan woman for whose sake Paris had brought the war on Ilios. Perhaps the reason was that she had suffered more deeply on Helen’s account. And if she had joined in those reproaches which Helen wailed about in her threnos over Hector’s body, it was from bitter cause.

Andromache had been happy, and a princess, in her girlhood days, before Paris brought a Greek bride from Sparta. Her father was EËtion, king of Thebes, in ‘wooded Plakos’; and in those times she had a gentle mother and seven strong brothers. But the Greeks came, and in the long years when the Leaguer lay beneath Troy, their terrible hero Achilles had ravaged the countries around, and had taken the city of Thebes. He had slain EËtion her father and the seven fine youths who were her brothers. Her mother, too, though ransomed from the Greeks for a great price, had died of grief; and Andromache, utterly forlorn, had found refuge in the halls of Priam. She found a mate there too; and in the love of Hector, her father and mother and brothers were all given back to her.

Homer makes the tender devotion of this noble pair stand out in gracious contrast to the stormy passion of Paris and Helen. Yet he does not tell us much about Andromache. He does not describe her—indeed, he very rarely draws a picture of his women—but we know that she is beautiful. In some subtle way there is left on our mind an impression of blended grace and dignity, of sweetness and tenderness and fidelity; but we are not directly told that she possesses these qualities. We do not even see her till, in the Sixth Book of the Iliad, the time has come for her to part from her husband.

The Greeks were at the very gates of Troy, and the last phase had come for the sacred city. Diomedes had driven their god Ares from the field, bellowing with the pain of a wound; and Hector, who saw the end was coming, hurried into the palace to rouse his followers and beg the queen to pray for the cause of Troy in the Temple of Athena. Then, before returning to the fight, he snatched the opportunity to see his wife and child once more. At first he could not find them. Andromache was not in the palace, nor in the Temple of Athena where the matrons of the city were propitiating the goddess. She had heard that the Trojans were hard pressed, and in fear for her husband she had gone down to the tower to watch the battle from the walls.

“Hector hastened from his house back by the same way down the well-builded streets. When he had passed through the great city and was come to the Skaian gates, whereby he was minded to issue upon the plain, there came his dear-won wife running to meet him.... So she met him now, and with her went the handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, the little child, Hector’s loved son, like unto a beautiful star.... So now he smiled and gazed at his boy silently, and Andromache stood by his side weeping, and clasped her hand in his, and spake and called upon his name. ‘Dear my lord, this thy hardihood will undo thee, neither hast thou any pity for thine infant boy, nor for me forlorn that soon shall be thy widow; for soon will the Achaeans all set upon thee and slay thee. But it were better for me to go down to the grave if I lose thee; for never more will any comfort be mine, when once thou, even thou, hast met thy fate, but only sorrow’.”[4]

So she weeps to him, forgetting the heroic, as heroes often do in overwhelming human sorrow. Hector is human too; and as she pours out all the pleas that touch him most nearly—her love for him, his love for her, and their mutual love for their child—he cannot utter the reply of the soldier and defender of his people. Andromache thinks she sees an instant of wavering in his eyes; she catches at it wildly, and rushes on to tell of a place where he and his men may screen themselves from the enemy. But that word has lost her cause. Hector’s great refusal is brave and gentle: “Surely ... I have very sore shame ... if like a coward I shrink away from battle. Moreover mine own soul forbiddeth me.... Yea of a surety I know ... the day shall come for holy Ilios to be laid low.... Yet doth the anguish of the Trojans hereafter not so much trouble me, neither Hekabe’s own, neither king Priam’s, neither my brethren’s ... as doth thine anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaian shall ... rob thee of the light of freedom.... But me in death may the heaped-up earth be covering, ere I hear thy crying and thy carrying into captivity.”[4]

Andromache can find no answer, and there is silence between them as Hector turns to caress his boy. But the child shrinks to his nurse in fear of the shining helmet and nodding crest; and the parents laugh through their tears.

“Then his dear father laughed aloud, and his lady mother; forthwith glorious Hector took the helmet from his head, and laid it, all gleaming, upon the earth; then kissed he his dear son and dandled him in his arms, and spake in prayer to Zeus and all the gods, ... ‘Vouchsafe ye that this my son may likewise prove even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and be a great king of Ilios. May men say of him, “Far greater is he than his father,” as he returneth from battle; ... and may his mother’s heart be glad’.”[4]

In his warrior-prayer Andromache cannot join; and to us who know the fate of Hector’s son, there is appalling irony in this appeal to the gods. She takes her boy into her arms, smiling tearfully.

“And her husband had pity to see her, and caressed her with his hand and spake and called upon her name: ‘Dear one, I pray thee be not of over-sorrowful heart; no man against my fate shall hurl me to Hades.... But go thou to thine house and see to thine own tasks ... but for war shall men provide, and I in chief of all men that dwell in Ilios.’

“So spake glorious Hector, and took up his horsehair-crested helmet; and his dear wife departed to her home, oft looking back, and letting fall big tears.”[4]

But the end had not quite come for Hector and his beloved Troy. For a time the tide of battle rolled back against the Greeks, and while Achilles fumed idly in his tent, Hector pressed upon them until he had forced them back to their ships. The immortals came into the field again; and success swayed to one or the other side, as Zeus to the Trojans or Hera to the Greeks lent aid. Then Hector slew Patroclus, the dear friend of Achilles; and that event drew the Greek hero forth at last, raging in grief and anger. Furnished with new armour by his goddess-mother Thetis, Achilles went out against the Trojans like a destroying flame. He drove them into the city with terrible slaughter; and then faced Hector alone outside the Skaian gates, and slew him there.

Meanwhile Andromache had won a little hope again, from the past few days of success to the Trojan arms. She knew nothing of the duel, and her husband’s fate at the hands of Achilles; but was sitting quietly within her hall, while the maids prepared warm baths for his return.

“Then she called to her goodly-haired maids through the house to set a great tripod on the fire, that Hector might have warm washing when he came home out of the battle—fond heart, and was unaware how, far from all washings, bright-eyed Athene had slain him by the hand of Achilles. But she heard shrieks and groans from the battlements, and her limbs reeled, and the shuttle fell from her hands to the earth. Then again among her goodly haired maids she spake: ‘Come two of ye this way with me that I may see what deeds are done ... terribly I dread lest noble Achilles have cut off bold Hector from the city by himself and chased him to the plain and ere this ended his perilous pride that possessed him, for never would he tarry among the throng of men but ran out before them far, yielding place to no man in his hardihood.’

“Thus saying she sped through the chamber like one mad, with beating heart, and with her went her handmaidens. But when she came to the battlements and the throng of men, she stood still upon the wall and gazed, and beheld him dragged before the city:—swift horses dragged him recklessly toward the hollow ships of the Achaians. Then dark night came on her eyes and shrouded her, and she fell backward and gasped forth her spirit.”[4]

We must not dwell upon the grim vengeance which Achilles took upon the dead body of Hector, for the life of his friend; nor the wonderful funeral rites for Patroclus; nor the pitiful story of old Priam’s visit to Achilles at dead of night, to beg for the body of his great son:

Before the throne of great Achilles see
The broken king kissing the deadly hands
Whereby his house is left him desolate.[4]

CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE
Lord Leighton
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co. 133 New Bond St. W.

But when the poor insulted body was at last recovered, all the city went out to meet it and bring it in with lamentation. Andromache led the women, wailing in her grief: “Husband, thou art gone young from life, and leavest me a widow in thy halls. And the child is yet but a little one, child of ill-fated parents, thee and me; nor methinks shall he grow up to manhood, for ere then shall this city be utterly destroyed. For thou art verily perished who didst watch over it, who guardest it and keptest safe its noble wives and infant little ones. These soon shall be voyaging in the hollow ships, yea and I too with them, and thou, my child, shalt either go with me unto a place where thou shalt toil at unseemly tasks, labouring before the face of some harsh lord, or else some Achaian will take thee by the arm and hurl thee from the battlement, a grievous death.... And woe unspeakable and mourning hast thou left to thy parents, Hector, but with me chiefliest shall grievous pain abide. For neither didst thou stretch thy hands to me from a bed in thy death, neither didst speak to me some memorable word that I might have thought on evermore as my tears fall night and day.”[4]

Andromache’s foreboding was only too completely fulfilled, for although Homer does not tell us of it, we know that when the truce for Hector’s funeral was over, Troy fell into the hands of the Greeks. The horrors of that day are related over and over again by the poets—the ruthless massacre of Priam and his sons, the capture of the women and children and the burning of the city. Euripides tells us in his Troades what befell Andromache. This drama, written centuries after the Iliad, has been called by Professor Gilbert Murray, “the first great expression of pity for mankind in European literature.” The subject was, indeed, one to evoke profoundest pity, and the poet, reflective and humane, seems to select it purposely to reveal the dreadful underside of war. He brings the figure of Hecuba upon the stage, weighed down under innumerable woes: Cassandra, too, in a dark prophetic frenzy, foretelling her own doom and that of Agamemnon: Helen, confronted at last by Menelaus; and Andromache, borne in the chariot of her captor, with the baby Astyanax in her arms.

Leader of Chorus. O most forlorn
Of women, whither go’st thou, borne
Mid Hector’s bronzen arms, and piled
Spoils of the dead, and pageantry
Of them that hunted Ilion down?

Andromache. Forth to the Greek I go,
Driven as a beast is driven.

Hecuba. Woe! Woe!...

Andromache. Mother of him of old, whose mighty spear
Smote Greeks like chaff, see’st thou what things are here?

Hecuba. I see God’s hand, that buildeth a great crown
For littleness, and hath cast the mighty down....

Andromache. O my Hector! best beloved,
That, being mine, wast all in all to me,
My prince, my wise one, O my majesty
Of valiance!...

Thou art dead,
And I war-flung to slavery and the bread
Of shame in Hellas, over bitter seas.
[5]

But the crowning horror remains. As Andromache and the queen are taking mournful leave of each other, a hurried messenger arrives from the Greek leaders. His message is almost too dreadful to utter; but he stammers it at last—the victors have resolved that Andromache’s son must die. They will spare no slip of Priam’s stock to be a future menace; and Astyanax is to be cast down therefore from the city towers.

To Andromache it is an appalling blow, worse than all that she has yet suffered. She cannot realize it at first, and answers the herald in broken, incredulous phrases. But when the man, ruefully trying to soothe her meanwhile, at last makes it clear to her that her child must die, all her gentleness is suddenly swept away in fierce wrath against her enemies.

O, ye have found an anguish that outstrips
All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks!
Why will ye slay this innocent, that seeks
No wrong?[5]

Her own wrongs, though deep and shameful, she could bear; but the cruelty to her child is insupportable. All the graciousness and dignity of her nature break down under it; and carried beyond herself, she calls down wild curses upon her conquerors, and upon Helen, the origin of all her woes. Then, suddenly realizing the futility of her rage and her powerlessness to save Astyanax, she yields him to the Herald in a poignant outburst of grief:

Quick! take him: drag him: cast him from the wall,
If cast ye will! Tear him, ye beasts, be swift!
God hath undone me, and I cannot lift
One hand, one hand, to save my child from death![5]

So Andromache was taken alone into captivity. Of all that befell her there we do not know; but there are hints and fragments which suggest that the gods must have relented a little, at sight of her misery. For long afterward, when the Trojan prince Æneas set out to found another Troy in Latium, he anchored his fleet one day in the bay of Chaonia. And there, as he wandered upon the shore, he found Andromache. Her cruel captor was dead; and she was married to Helenus, the brother of Hector. But she had not forgotten her hero-husband, and when Æneas and his companions came upon her first, she was paying devotions at his tomb:

Within a grove Andromache that day,
Where Simois in fancy flowed again,
Her offerings chanced at Hector’s grave to pay,
A turf-built cenotaph, with altars twain,
Source of her tears and sacred to the slain—
And called his shade.[6]

4.From Messrs Lang, Leaf, and Myers’s translation of the Iliad (Macmillan and Co. Ltd.). 1909 Edition.

5.From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of the Troades (George Allen and Co. Ltd.).

6.From E. Fairfax Taylor’s translation of the Æneid (Everyman’s Library).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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