or to tone down the roughness
romantically; because he is writing, or reciting, for people of much
the same way of thinking as his heroes, who are fierce chiefs
quarrelling over captured women; and the whole plot is developed by
sheer pressure of circumstance and character. Then on the Trojan side
we have the figure of Hector, the true patriotic hero, who is
naturally displeased with Paris for the abduction of Helen, which has
brought a disastrous war upon Troy; yet what is done cannot be undone,
and his clear duty is to fight for his own people. To Helen herself he
is gentle and kind; and the religious men only irritate him when they
interfere in military matters. But although he is far the noblest
character in the whole poem, he is eventually slain by Achilles, for
the plain reason that Achilles is the most terrible warrior of both
armies. It was Hector's fate, which is the poet's way of saying that
the inexorable logic of facts, as he knows them, must always prevail.

With regard to the position of women in Homeric poetry. They are
mainly irresponsible creatures: how could they be otherwise, when
everything depends on the sword, and a woman cannot wield it? As the
equality of sexes implies a high state of civilisation and security,
so in the old fighting times a woman had to stand aside; yet though
she could not take part in a battle, there were incessant battles
about her: the fatal woman, who is the ruin of her country, is
well-known in all legend and romance, from Helen of Troy to La Cava,
whose seduction by King Roderick brought the Moors into Spain.[18] In
the _Iliad_ King Priam treats Helen with delicate consideration, as is
seen in the beautiful passage that describes her sitting by him on the
walls of Troy, and pointing out to him the leaders of the Greek army
marshalled in the plain before them. Nor is any more perfect female
character to be found in poetry than Andromache, Hector's wife,
high-spirited, virtuous, and passionately affectionate. Yet Helen,
the erring woman, is brought home eventually by Menelaus, and appears
again in the _Odyssey_ as a highly respected matron, who has had an
adventure in early life; while Andromache, having seen her husband
slain and dragged round the walls of Troy behind the chariot of
Achilles, is carried off a childless widow into dolorous servitude.

Here one may feel the tragic power of an artist who draws life from
the sombre verities, not as it is seen through the roma