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 thongs of ox-hide through the prostrate Hector’s feet, bound him to his chariot, lashed his horses to speed, and dragged him about in sight of the wailing wife and parents of his victim.  This he repeated several times, aggravating the atrocity a hundredfold by his intention—­in spite of the piteous entreaties of the dying Hector—­to throw his corpse to be eaten by the dogs, thus depriving even his spirit of rest, and his family of religious consolation.  Nay, Achilles expresses the savage wish that his rage might lead him so far as to carve and eat raw Hector’s flesh.  The Homeric “hero,” in short, is almost on a level in cruelty with the red Indian.