The thoughts of mine own heart—I craved no more—
Spake with me, and I was happy. Constantly
I brought fair silence and a tranquil eye
For Hector’s greeting, and watched well the way
Of living,where to guide and where obey….
O my Hector, best beloved,
That being mine,wast all in all to me,
My prince,my wise one, O my majesty
Of valiance! No man’s touch had ever come
Near me,when thou from out my father’s home
Didst lead me and make me thine….And thou art dead,
And I war-flung to slavery and the bread
Of shame in Hellas, over bitter seas!
Hecuba reproves her, and suggests the hope that Hector’s child, Astyanax, may some day restore his fallen city. But at that moment Talthybius returns to say that the Council of the Greeks, for the security of Hellas, has decided that Astyanax must be flung to his death from the walls of Troy. Andromache, holding the child in her arms, bids it farewelclass="underline"
Thou little thing
That curlest in my arms,what sweet scents cling
Around thy neck! Beloved, can it be
All nothing, that this bosom cradled thee
And fostered, all the weary nights wherethrough
I watched upon thy sickness, till I grew
Wasted with watching? Kiss me. This one time;
Not ever again. Put up thine arms, and climb
About my neck; now kiss me, lips to lips …
Oh, ye have found an anguish that outstrips
All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks!
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.
Menelaus enters, looking for Helen, and vowing to kill her on sight; but when she appears, proud and unafraid, still dia gunaikon (goddess among women), he is drunk at once with her beauty, forgets to murder her, and bids his slaves place her “in some chamber’d galley, where she may sail the seas.” Then Talthybius returns, bearing the dead body of Hector’s child. Hecuba swathes the mangled baby in burial robes, and speaks to it in lines realistic even in their sentiment:
Ah,what a death has found thee, little one!…
Ye tender arms, the same dear mould have ye
As his….And dear proud lips, so full of hope
And closed forever! What false words ye said
At day-break,when ye crept into my bed,
Called me kind names, and promised,
“Grandmother,When thou art dead, I will cut close my hair
And lead out all the captains to ride by
Thy tomb.” Why didst thou cheat me so? ’Tis I,
Old, homeless, childless, that for thee must shed
Cold tears, so young, so miserably dead.
Dear God! the pattering welcomes of thy feet,
The nursing in my lap, and oh, the sweet
Falling asleep together! All is gone.
How should a poet carve the funeral stone
To tell thy story true? “There lieth here
A babe whom the Greeks feared, and in their fear Slew him.” Aye,Greece will bless the tale it tells! …
O vain is man,
Who glorieth in his joy and hath no fears;
While to and fro the chances of the years
Dance like an idiot in the wind!
(She wraps the child in the burial garments.)
Glory of Phrygian raiment,which my thought
Kept for thy bridal day with some far-sought
Queen of the East, folds thee for evermore….
And over the scene of desolation the tones of the Chorus float in melancholy song:
Beat, beat thine head;
Beat with the wailing chime
Of hands lifted in time;
Beat and bleed for the dead,Woe is me for the dead!
Here is all the power of Shakespeare, without his range and subtlety, but with a social passion that moves us as nothing in all modern drama can, except the dying Lear. This is a man strong enough to speak out, brave enough—in the very fever of war—to show its futile bestiality; brave enough to show the Greeks, to the Greeks, as barbarians in victory, and their enemies as heroes in defeat. “Euripides the human,” denouncer of slavery, critic and understanding defender of women, doubter of all certainties and lover of all men: no wonder the youth of Greece declaimed his lines in the streets, and captive Athenians won their freedom by reciting his plays from memory. “If I were certain that the dead have consciousness,” said the dramatist Philemon, “I would hang myself to see Euripides.” He had not the classic calm and objectivity of Sophocles, nor the stern sublimity of Aeschylus; he bore the same relation to these as the emotional Dostoievski to the impeccable Turgenev and the titanic Tolstoi. But it is in Dos-toievski that we find our secret hearts revealed, and our secret longing understood, and it is in Euripides that Greek drama, tired of Olympus, came down to earth and dealt revealingly with the affairs of men. “Have all the nations of the world since his time,” asked Goethe, “produced one dramatist worthy to hand him his slippers?” Just one.
4. LUCRETIUS Four centuries pass.We are in an old Italian villa, built by a rich nonentity named Memmius, far from the noise of Rome. Back of the house is a quiet court, walled in from the world and shaded against the burning sun. Here is a pretty picture: two lads sitting on a marble bench beside the pool, and between them their teacher, all animation and affection, reading to them some majestic and sonorous poem. Let us recline on the lawn and listen, for this is Lucretius, the greatest poet as well as the greatest philosopher of Rome, and what he reads is (says Professor Shotwell) “the most marvelous performance in all antique literature”—the De Rerum Natura, a poetical essay “On the Nature of Things.” He is reciting an apostrophe to Love as the source of all life and all creation:
Thou,OVenus, art sole mistress of the nature of things, and without thee nothing rises up into the divine realms of life, nothing grows to be lovely or glad….Through all the mountains and the seas, and the rushing rivers, and the leafy nests of the birds, and the plains of the bending grass, thou strikest all breasts with fond love, and drivest each after its kind to continue its race through hot desire…. For so soon as the spring shines upon the day, the wild herd bound over the happy pastures, and swim the rapid streams, each imprisoned by thy charms, and following thee with desire.