Achilles himself is once said to have appeared to a trader who frequently visited the island.  They talked of Troy, and then the hero gave him wine, and bade him sail away and fetch him a certain Trojan maiden who was the slave of a citizen of Ilium.  The trader was surprised at the request, and ventured to ask why he wanted a Trojan slave.  Achilles replied that it was because she was of the same race as Hector and his ancestors, and of the blood of the sons of Priam and Dardanus.  The trader thought that Achilles was in love with the girl, whom he duly brought with him on his next visit to the island.  Achilles thanked him, and bade him keep her on board the ship, doubtless because women were not allowed to land.  In the evening he was entertained by Achilles and Helen, and his host gave him a large sum of money, promising to make him his guest-friend and to bring luck to his ship and his business.  At daybreak Achilles dismissed him, telling him to leave the girl on the shore.  When they had gone about a furlong from the island, a horrible cry from the maiden reached their ears, and they saw Achilles tearing her to pieces, rending her limb from limb.

In this brutal savage it is impossible to recognize Homer’s chivalrous hero, who sacrificed the success of a ten years’ war, fought originally for the recovery of one woman, to his grief at the loss of another, and has thus made it possible to describe the Iliad as the greatest love-poem ever written.  One cannot help feeling that Pindar’s Isle of the Blest, whither he was brought by Thetis, whose mother’s prayer had moved the Heart of Zeus, to dwell with Cadmus and Peleus, is Achilles’ true home; or the isle of the heroes of all time, described by Carducci, where King Lear sits telling OEdipus of his sufferings, and Cordelia calls to Antigone, “Come, my Greek sister!  We will sing of peace to our fathers.”  Helen and Iseult, silent and thoughtful, roam under the shade of the myrtles, while the setting sun kisses their golden hair with its reddening rays.  Helen gazes across the sea, but King Mark opens his arms to Iseult, and the fair head sinks on the mighty beard.  Clytemnestra stands by the shore with the Queen of Scots.  They bathe their white arms in the waves, but the waves recoil swollen with red blood, while the wailing of the hapless women echoes along the rocky strand.  Among these heroic souls Shelley alone of modern poets—­that Titan spirit in a maiden’s form—­may find a place, according to Carducci, caught up by Sophocles from the living embrace of Thetis.[43]

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 30:  Ep., vii. 27.]

[Footnote 31:  Burton’s The Book-Hunter:  Robert Wodrow.]

[Footnote 32:  Cimon, i.]

[Footnote 33:  II. 5. 67.]

[Footnote 34:  Hist., v. 13.]

[Footnote 35:  Damascius, Vita Isidori, 63.]

[Footnote 36:  I. 32. 4.]