is fall and the fall
of Troy meant her enslavement and a life of misery. What makes the
scene in question so modern is the attitude of Hector--his dividing
his caresses equally between his wife and his son, and assuring her
that he is more troubled about her fate and anguish than about what
may befall his father, mother, and brothers. That is an utterly
un-Greek sentiment, and that is the reason why the passage was not
imitated. It was not a realistic scene from life, but a mere product
of Homer's imagination and glowing genius--like the pathetic scene in
which Odysseus wipes away a tear on noting that his faithful dog Argos
recognized him and wagged his tail. It is extremely improbable that a
man who could behave so cruelly toward women as Odysseus did could
have thus sympathized with a dog.

Certainly no one else did, not even his "faithful" Penelope. As long
as Argos was useful in the chase, the poet tells us, he was well taken
care of; but now that he was old, he "lay neglected upon a pile of
dung," doomed to starve, for he had not strength to move. Homer alone,
with the prophetic insight of a genius, could have conceived such a
touch of modern sentiment toward animals, so utterly foreign to
ancient ideas; and he alone could have put such a sentiment of
wife-love into the mouth of the Trojan Hector--a barbarian whose ideal
of manliness and greatness consisted in "bringing home blood-stained
spoils of the enemy."

BARBAROUS TREATMENT OF GREEK WOMEN

It seems like a touch of sarcasm that Homer incarnates his isolated
and un-Greek ideal of devotion to a wife in a _Trojan_, as if to
indicate that it must not be accepted as a touch of _Greek_ life. From
our point of view it is a stroke of genius. On the other hand it is
obvious that attributing such a sentiment to a Trojan likewise cannot
be anything but a poetic license; for these Trojans were quite as
piratical, coarse, licentious, and polygamous as the Greeks, Hector's
own father having had fifty children, nineteen of whom were borne by
his wife, thirty-one by various concubines. Many pages of the _Iliad_
bear witness to the savage ferocity of Greeks and Trojans alike--a
ferocity utterly incompatible with such tender emotions as Homer
himself was able to conceive in his imagination. The ferocity of
Achilles is typical of the feelings of these heroes. Not content with
slaughtering an enemy who meets him in honorable battle, defending his
wife and home, he thrust