love of Aegisthus, till "the doom of the Gods bound her to her ruin."
So far the same excuse is made for the murderous Clytemnestra as for
the amiable Helen. Again, Homer is, in the strictest sense, and in
strong contrast to the Greek tragedians and to Virgil, a chivalrous
poet. It would probably be impossible to find a passage in which he
speaks harshly or censoriously of the conduct of any fair and noble
lady. The sordid treachery of Eriphyle, who sold her lord for gold,
wins for her the epithet "hateful;" and Achilles, in a moment of
strong grief, applies a term of abhorrence to Helen. But Homer is
too chivalrous to judge the life of any lady, and only shows the
other side of the chivalrous character--its cruelty to persons not of
noble birth--in describing the "foul death" of the waiting women of
Penelope. "God forbid that I should take these women's lives by a
clean death," says Telemachus (Odyssey, xxii. 462). So "about all
their necks nooses were cast that they might die by the death most
pitiful. And they writhed with their feet for a little space, but
for no long while." In trying to understand Homer's estimate of
Helen, therefore, we must make allowance for his theory of divine
intervention, and for his chivalrous judgment of ladies. But there
are two passages in the Iliad which may be taken as indicating
Homer's opinion that Helen was literally a victim, an unwilling
victim, of Aphrodite, and that she was carried away by force a
captive from Lacedaemon. These passages are in the Iliad, ii. 356,
590. In the former text Nestor says, "let none be eager to return
home ere he has couched with a Trojan's wife, and AVENGED THE
LONGINGS AND SORROWS OF HELEN"--[Greek text which cannot be
reproduced.] It is thus that Mr. Gladstone, a notable champion of
Helen's, would render this passage, and the same interpretation was
favoured by the ancient "Separatists" (Chorizontes), who wished to
prove that the Iliad and Odyssey were by different authors; but many