Delphi Complete Works of Dio Chrysostom

by Dio Chrysostom

  [28] Or at what point of the story might Homer have more properly begun than with Paris’ wanton crime itself, which caused the war, since all the readers of his poem would then have joined in indignation and would have been eager for the outcome, and no one would have pitied the sufferings of the Trojans? For by so doing Homer would have been assured of a more sympathetic and interested audience. [29] If, on the other hand, he wished to describe the greatest and most terrible things, all forms of suffering and calamity, and, further, to tell what everybody was yearning above all things to hear, what greater or more awe-inspiring subject could he have chosen than the capture of the city? He could not have found an event in which a greater number of people met their death or where with greater pathos men fled to the altars of their gods or fought to save their children and wives, where royal matrons and maidens were dragged away to slavery and disgrace in foreign parts, some torn from their husbands, some from their fathers, others from their brothers, and some even from the holy images, while they beheld their beloved husbands weltering in their blood and yet were unable to embrace them or to close their eyes, and beheld their helpless babes dashed cruelly to earth. [30] Think, too, of the desecration of the sanctuaries of the gods, the plundering of stores of wealth, the whole city burnt to the very ground by the flames, the mighty cries of men, the clash of bronze, the roar of the flames as some were perishing in them and others were being hurled upon them. These things Homer makes Priam speak of as soon to come to pass, though he could perhaps have related them as actual events in any way that pleased him and with all that horror with which he was accustomed to describe other slaughters, thrilling the listener and magnifying the smallest details.

  [31] If it was his wish to tell of the death of illustrious men, how is it that he omitted the slaying of Achilles, Memnon, Antilochus, Ajax, and of Paris himself? Why did he not mention the expedition of the Amazons and that battle between Achilles and the Amazon, which is said to have been so splendid and so strange? [32] Yet he represented the river as fighting with Achilles just for the sake of telling a marvellous tale, and also the battle between Hephaestus and the Scamander, and the mutual discomfitures, defeats, and woundings of the other gods, desiring something great and wonderful to say because he was at a loss for facts, though so many important facts were still left untouched. [33] So from what has been said it must be acknowledged that Homer was either unintelligent and a bad judge of the facts, so that he selected the more unimportant and trivial things and left to others the greatest and most impressive, or else that he was unable, as I have said, to bolster up his falsehoods and show his poetic genius in handling those incidents whose actual nature it was his purpose to conceal.

  [34] We find this in the Odyssey also. For he tells of events in Ithaca and of the death of the suitors in his own person, but has not ventured to mention the greatest of his falsehoods — the story of Scylla, of the Cyclops, the magic charms of Circe, and further, the descent of Odysseus into the lower world. These he makes Odysseus narrate to Alcinous and his court, and there too he had Demodocus recount the story of the horse and the capture of Troy in a song of only a few lines. [35] As it seems to me, he had made no provision for these incidents at all inasmuch as they never occurred; but as his poem grew, and he saw that men would readily believe anything, he showed his contempt for them and his desire withal to humour the Greeks and the Atreidae, by throwing everything into confusion and reversing the outcome. At the beginning he says,

  “O Goddess! sing the wrath of Peleus’ son,

  Achilles; sing the deadly wrath that brought

  Woes numberless upon the Greeks, and swept

  To Hades many a valiant soul, and gave

  Their limbs a prey to dogs and birds of air,

  For so had Jove appointed.”

  [36] In these verses he says that he will sing of the wrath of Achilles alone, and the hardships and destruction of the Achaeans, that their sufferings were many and terrible, that many perished and remained unburied, as though these were the chief incidents and worthy of poetic treatment, and that therein the purpose of Zeus was accomplished; all of which did indeed come to pass. But the subsequent shift of events, including the death of Hector, which was likely to please his hearers, he did not have in his original plan, nor the final capture of Ilium. For perhaps he had not yet planned to turn everything upside down, [37] but later, when he wishes to state the cause of the sufferings, he drops Paris and Helen, and babbles about Chryses and that man’s daughter.

  I, therefore, shall give the account as I learned it from a certain very aged priest in Onuphis, who often made merry over the Greeks as a people, claiming that they really knew nothing about most things, and using as his chief illustration of this, the fact that they believed that Troy was taken by Agamemnon and that Helen fell in love with Paris while she was living with Menelaus; and they were so thoroughly convinced of this, he said, being completely deceived by one man, that everybody actually swore to its truth.

  [38] My informant told me that all the history of earlier times was recorded in Egypt, in part in the temples, in part upon certain columns, and that some things were remembered by a few only as the columns had been destroyed, while much that had been inscribed on the columns was disbelieved on account of the ignorance and indifference of later generations. He added that these stories about Troy were included in their more recent records, since Menelaus had come to visit them and described everything just as it had occurred.

  [39] When I asked him to give this account, he hesitated at first, remarking that the Greeks are vainglorious, and that in spite of their dense ignorance they think they know everything. He maintained that no affliction more serious could befall either individual or community than when an ignoramus held himself to be most wise, since such men could never be freed from their ignorance. [40] “And so ludicrous an effect have these men had upon you,” he continued, “that you say of another poet — Stesichorus, I believe it is — who followed Homer’s account and repeated these same stories about Helen, that he was struck blind by her as a liar and recovered his sight upon recanting. And though you tell this tale, you none the less believe that Homer’s account is true. [41] You say, too, that Stesichorus in his palinode declared that Helen never sailed off to any place whatsoever, while certain others say that Helen was carried off by Paris but came to us here in Egypt. Yet with all this uncertainty and ignorance surrounding the matter you cannot even thus see through the deception.” [42] This, he claimed, was due to Greek love of pleasure. Whatever they delight to hear from anyone’s lips they at once consider to be true. They give their poets full licence to tell any untruth they wish, and they declare that this is the poets’ privilege. Yet they trust them in everything they say and even quote them at times as witnesses in matters of dispute. Among the Egyptians, however, it is illegal to say anything in verse. Indeed they have no poetry at all, since they know this is but the charm with which pleasure lures the ear. “Therefore,” said he, “just as the thirsty have no need of wine, but a drink of water suffices them, so too seekers after truth have no need of verse, but it is quite enough for them to hear the unadorned truth. [43] Poetry, however, tempts them to listen to falsehood just as wine leads to over-drinking.”

  Now I shall endeavour to repeat what he told me, adding my reasons for thinking his words to be true. According to his account, Tyndareus, a wise man and a very great king, was born in Sparta. Then Leda and he had two daughters named just as we name them, Clytemnestra and Helen, and two large handsome twin sons, by far the best among the Greeks. [44] Helen was famed for her beauty, and while yet but a little girl had many suitors and was carried off by Theseus, who was king of Athens. Whereupon her brothers straightway invaded Theseus’ country, sacked the city, and recovered their sister. They freed all the women they had captured except the mother of Theseus, whom they carried off a prisoner in retaliation; for they were a match for all Greece and could have subjugated it easily had they so wished.

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p; [45] I remarked that this was our account also and that, moreover, I had myself seen at Olympia in the rear chamber of the temple of Hera a memorial of that abduction upon the wooden chest dedicated by Cypselus. It represents the Dioscuri holding Helen, who is standing upon Aethra’s head pulling her hair, and there is also an inscription in ancient characters.

  [46] “Thereupon,” so he continued, “Agamemnon, who feared the sons of Tyndareus — because he knew that, though he ruled the Argives, he was a stranger and a new-comer — sought to win them over by a marriage alliance and for that reason married Clytemnestra. Helen’s hand he sought for his brother, but the Greeks to a man declared that they would not permit it, since each one of them held that she was more closely akin to himself in blood than to Menelaus, who was a descendant of Pelops. Many suitors came from outside Greece also because of Helen’s reputation for beauty and the power of her brothers and father.”

  [47] Now I thought that this last statement also was true, since the story goes that the daughter of Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, was wooed by a man from Italy, and that Pelops, who married Hippodameia, the daughter of Oenomaüs, came from Asia, and that Theseus married one of the Amazons from the banks of the Thermodon [48] and, as that priest maintained, Io came to Egypt as a betrothed bride and not as a heifer maddened by the gadfly.

  “And,” he added, “since the great houses were accustomed, as we have seen, to make distance no barrier in forming marriage alliances with one another, it came to pass that Paris came as a suitor, trusting in the power of his father, who was the ruler of practically all Asia. Besides, Troy was not far distant, and what was especially important, the descendants of Pelops were already in power in Greece and much intercourse between the two peoples had developed. [49] So when he arrived with a great show of wealth and a great equipage for a mere wooing — and he was strikingly handsome too — he had an interview the Tyndareus and Helen’s brothers, in which he dwelt upon Priam’s empire, the extent of his resources, and his power in general, and added that he was next in succession. Menelaus, he declared, was but a private individual, since the royal prerogative descended to the children of Agamemnon, not to him. He urged that he himself enjoyed the favour of the gods and that Aphrodite had promised him the most brilliant marriage in the world. Accordingly, he had chosen Tyndareüs’ daughter, though he might have taken someone from Asia had he desired, whether an Egyptian or an Indian princess. [50] As for himself, he said that he was king of all other peoples from Troy to Ethiopia, for the Ethiopians were under the sway of his cousin, Memnon, who was the son of Tithonus, Priam’s brother. Many other enticements did he mention and he offered to Leda and the rest of the family gifts such as all the Greeks together could not have matched.

  “He urged also that he himself was of the same stock as Helen, since Priam was descended from Zeus and he had been told that she and her brothers were also his offspring; that it did not lie with Agamemnon and Menelaus to taunt him on his origin, for they themselves were Phrygians from Mount Sipylus; Tyndareus might much better ally his family with the ruling kings of Asia than with immigrants from that country. For Laomedon too had given his daughter, Hesione, to Telamon, who came with Heracles to Troy to sue for her hand, bringing the latter along also because he was the friend and ally of Laomedon. [51] And so Tyndareus consulted with his sons regarding these matters, and after due consideration they decided that it was not such a bad policy to ally themselves with the kings of Asia. For they saw that the house of Pelops had Clytemnestra, who was the wife of Agamemnon, and besides, if they became allied by marriage with Priam’s house, they would have control of affairs there too and nobody would stand in the way of their governing all Asia and Europe.”

  Agamemnon opposed all this, but the weight of the argument was too strong for him. [52] For Tyndareus assured him that it was quite enough for him to have become his son-in-law and warned him that it was not at all advisable for his brother to have power equal to his own, since he might thus the more easily undermine him. Thyestes, for example, had not been loyal to Atreus. He dissuaded him most effectively, however, by urging that the other suitors from Greece would not tolerate their own rejection in his interest, neither Diomede nor Antilochus nor Achilles, but would take up arms, and so he would be in danger of making the strongest men among the Greeks his foes. [53] It would, therefore, be better not to leave any cause for war and dissension among the Greeks. This, however, so the priest said, angered Agamemnon, but he was unable successfully to oppose Tyndareus, who was master of his own daughter; and at the same time he stood in awe of Tyndareus’ sons. Thus it was that Paris took Helen as his lawful wife after gaining the consent of her parents and brothers, and took her home with him amid great enthusiasm and rejoicing. And Priam, Hector, and all the others were delighted with the union and welcomed Helen with sacrifices and prayers.

  [54] “Then see,” continued the priest, “how foolish the opposite story is. Can you imagine it possible for anyone to have become enamoured of a woman whom he had never seen, and then, that she could have let herself be persuaded to leave husband, fatherland, and all her relatives — and that too, I believe, when she was the mother of a little daughter — and follow a man of another race? It is because this is so improbable that they got up that cock-and-bull story about Aphrodite, which is still more preposterous. [55] And if Paris had any thought of carrying Helen away, why was the thing permitted to happen by his father, who was no fool, but had the reputation of having great intelligence, and by his mother? What likelihood is there that Hector tolerated such a deed at the outset and then afterwards heaped abuse and reproach upon him for abducting her as Homer declares he did? Here are his words:

  ‘O luckless Paris, nobly formed,

  Yet woman-follower and seducer! Thou

  Shouldst never have been born, or else at best

  Have died unwedded. Thy harp will not avail,

  Nor all the gifts of Venus, nor thy locks,

  Nor thy fair form, when thou art laid in dust.’

  [56] How comes it that neither Helenus, seer though he was, nor Cassandra, the divinely inspired, nor even Antenor, reputed for his wisdom, gave a word of warning but afterwards were indignant and censured what had been done, when they could have kept Helen from their doors?

  “But that you may understand the excess of absurdity and see how the lies contradict one another, I cite what is told of Heracles sacking the city a few years previously on a slight pretext, angered because Laomedon had proved himself false in not giving him the horses which he had promised.” [57] And I recalled the verses in which Homer makes this statement:

  “Hercules

  The lion-hearted, who once came to Troy

  To claim the coursers of Laomedon,

  With but six ships, and warriors but a few,

  He laid the city waste and made its streets

  A desolation.”

  “This is another popular misstatement,” said my friend, “for how could a city that had been thus taken and reduced to a wilderness have made such a wondrous recovery in so short a time so as to become the greatest of all in Asia? And how was it that Heracles, coming with only six ships, captured it when it had long been inviolate, while the Achaeans, who came with twelve hundred ships, could not capture it? Or how did Heracles, who slew Priam’s father, his mortal enemy, suffer Priam to become king instead of appointing someone else as ruler of the country? [58] But if it was as they say, how is that Priam and the Trojans did not dread a feud with the Greeks when they were aware that once before, and for a crime not so great, their people had lost their lives or been driven into exile? And though many recalled the capture, how is it that not one of them thought of any of these things,” cried the Egyptian, “and that not one of them stopped Paris?”

  “And how in the world after coming to Greece did he become intimate with Helen, and talk to her, and finally persuade her to elope, without thinking of parents, country, husband, or daughter, or of her repute among the Greeks, nay,
without fearing even her brothers, who were still living and had once before recovered her from Theseus and had not brooked her abduction? [59] For if Menelaus was at home, how did he fail to notice what was going on, but if, on the other hand, he was away from home, how is it probable that his wife could meet and converse with a strange man and none of the others be alive to the plot, or that they should have concealed it if they knew of it; and further, that Aethra, the mother of Theseus, and she a captive, should have sailed away with her — For it was not enough that she, the daughter of Pittheus, should be a slave in Sparta, but she must deliberately follow along to Troy, [60] and Paris conducted the affair so boldly and with such licence that it was not enough for him to abduct the wife, but he took the treasure too! — and that not a single soul should have put out after him, none of the people of Menelaus or of Tyndareus, nor Helen’s brothers, though there were ships in Laconia and, what is more, though the pair had first to get down on foot from Sparta to the coast, and the news of her abduction was probably published at once? It would have been impossible for her to go with Paris in any such way, but possible if she was given in marriage with the full consent of her kinsfolk. [61] Thus only was it reasonable that Aethra arrived with her and that the treasures were taken along. None of these facts points to an abduction, but much rather to a marriage.