The poem, as we have seen, ends somewhat abruptly22. We learn nothing from it of the fate of Troy, except so far as we have been taught throughout the tale that the fortunes of the city and people depended wholly upon Hector. “Achilles’ wrath” was the theme of the song, and now that this has been appeased23, we wait for no further catastrophe24. Yet, if Achilles has been the hero, it is remarkable that the poet’s parting sympathies appear to rest, as those of the reader almost certainly will, with Hector. It would seem that Homer himself felt something of what he makes Jupiter express with regard to the Trojans—“They interest me, though they must needs perish.” The Trojan hero must fall, or the glory of the Greek could not be consummated25; but the last words of the poem, as they record his funeral honours, so they express the poet’s regretful eulogy:—
Virgil, in his ?neid, naturally exalts27 the glory of Hector, because it was his purpose to trace the origin{v.i-142} of the Romans from Troy; but we need not wonder that in later days, when the Homeric legends were worked up into tales of Christian28 chivalry29, Hector, and not Achilles, became the model of a Christian knight. When the great Italian poet drew his character of Orlando, as a type of chivalry, he had the Trojan hero in his mind.
One of the earliest and most curious travesties30 of the Iliad—for it is hardly more, though made in all good faith, according to the taste of the times—was the work of an English troubadour, Benedict de St Maur, of the time of Henry II. It was reproduced, as a prose romance, in Latin, by Guido de Colonna, a Sicilian; but is better known—so far as it can be said to be known at all—as the ‘History of the Warres of the Greeks and Trojans,’ by John Lydgate, monk31 of Bury St Edmunds, first printed in 1513. The writer professedly takes Colonna as his original. The heroes of the Iliad reappear as the knights32 of modern chivalry; they fight on horseback, observe all the rules of medieval courtesy, and “fewtre their speres” at each other exactly in the style of the Companions of the Round Table. Agamemnon is very like Arthur, and Achilles Sir Lancelot, under other names. But Hector is here also plainly the favourite hero. Thersites figures as a dwarf33, with all the malice34 and mischief35 peculiar36, and in some degree permitted, to those imaginary types of humanity. The closing lines of Lydgate’s third book will give some idea of the strange transformation37 which Homer’s story undergoes in the hands of our medieval poet, and is a curious instance of the way in which the zealous38 churchman “improves” his pagan subject. He is describing the funeral rites39 of Hector:{v.i-143}—
Performed hath as ye have heard devyse,
A certain nombre of priestes for to dwell
In the temple in their devotions,
For the soule of Hector for to pray.
******
To which priestes the kyng gave mansyons,
The which he hath to them mortysed
Perpetually, as ye have heard devysed,
And while they kneel, pray, and wake,
Finally of this my thirde booke
On my rude manner as I undertooke.”
The way in which the Homeric characters are modernised in Chaucer and Dryden, and even in Shakspeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ is a deviation46 from their originals hardly more excusable, though less absurd, than this of Lydgate’s. They copied, in fact, not from the original at all, but from the medieval corruptions47 of it. Racine’s tragedies are in a higher vein48, and his Iphigenia, though not Homer’s story, does more justice to some of Homer’s characters: but after all, as has been well observed, “they are dressed in the Parisian fashions, with speech and action accordingly.”[25]
The Iliad, as has been already remarked, closes more abruptly than its modern title would seem to justify49, for the Tale of Troy is left half untold50. Imitators of the great bard followed him, and though their works are lost to us, the legends upon which they worked have been reproduced by later writers. The poems once known as the ‘Little Iliad’ and the ‘Sacking of Troy’ have left little more than their names, and some few frag{v.i-144}ments which, do not raise much regret for the loss of the remainder; but the leading events of which they treated are preserved in the works of the Greek dramatists and of Virgil. It may not be out of place here to sketch briefly51 the sequel to Homer’s story.
Troy fell in that tenth year of the siege, though new and remarkable allies came to the aid of Priam. From the far north of Thrace came a band of Amazons—women-warriors who, in spite of their weaker sex, proved more than a match in battle for the men of Greece. Their queen Penthesilea was said to be the daughter of the War-god; and under her leading, once more the Trojans tried their fortune in the open field, not unsuccessfully, until she too fell by the spear of Achilles. Proceeding52 to possess himself of her helmet, as the conqueror’s spoil, he was struck with her remarkable beauty, and stood entranced for some moments in sorrow and admiration. It is the scene from which Tasso borrows his story of Clorinda, and which Spenser had in his mind when he makes Sir Artegal, after having unhelmed the fair Britomart in combat, let fall his sword at the sight of her “angel-face”—
“His powerless hand, benumbed with secret fear,
From his revengefull purpose shronke abacke,
And cruel sword out of his fingers slacke
Fell down to ground, as if the steel had sence
And felt some ruth, or sence his hand did lacke,
To doe to so divine a Beautie’s excellence54.”
—B. IV. c. vi. st. 21.
Thersites—who had by this time forgotten the chastisement55 inflicted56 on him by Ulysses for his scurrilous57 tongue—ventured a jest upon Achilles’ sensibility, and{v.i-145} was struck dead by a blow from the hero’s unarmed hand. Next came upon the scene the tall Ethiopian Memnon, son of the Dawn, a warrior8 of more than mortal beauty, sent either from Egypt or from the king of Assyria (for the legends vary), with a contingent58 of fierce negro warriors, who carried slaughter59 into the Greek ranks, until Memnon too fell by the hand of the same irresistible60 antagonist. These were only brief respites61 for the doomed62 city. But it was not to fall by the hand of Achilles. Before its day of destruction came, the Greek hero had met with the fate which he himself foresaw—which had been prophesied63 for him alike by his mother the sea-goddess, by the wondrous64 utterance65 of his horse Xanthus, and by the dying words of Hector. An arrow from Paris found the single vulnerable spot in his right heel, and stretched him where he had slain66 his Trojan enemy—before the Sc?an gate. But his death, according to the legends, was no more like that of common mortals than his life had been. He does not go down into those gloomy regions where the ghosts of his friend Patroclus and his enemy Hector wander. It was not death, but a translation. The Greeks had prepared for him a magnificent funeral pile, but the body of the hero suddenly disappeared. His mother Thetis conveyed it away to the island of Leukè in the Euxine Sea, to enjoy in that seclusion67 a new and perpetual life. So early is the legend which the romance of Christendom adopted for so many of its favourites—notably for the English Arthur, borne by the three mysterious queens to
“The island valley of Avilion,”
{v.i-146}
where, it was long said and believed, he lay either in a charmed sleep or a passionless immortality68. One legend ran that the Greek hero, in his happy island, was favoured with the society of Helen, whose matchless beauty he had much desired to see.
His wondrous shield and armour69—the masterpieces of Vulcan—were left by Thetis as a prize for “the bravest of the Greeks,” and became almost as fatal a source of discord70 as the golden apple which had been labelled for “the fairest.” Ulysses and Ajax were the most distinguished71 claimants, and when, as before, counsel was preferred to strength, Ajax went mad with vexation, and fell upon his own sword. Ulysses handed on the coveted72 armour to its rightful inheritor, the young Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who, in accordance with an oracle73, had been sent for to take Troy. Still the city held out, secure so long as the sacred image of Minerva, the “Palladium,” a gift from Jupiter himself, remained in the citadel74: until Ulysses broke the spell by entering within the walls in disguise, and carrying it off. One quick eye discovered the venturous Greek, through his rags and self-inflicted wounds: Helen recognised him; but she was weary of her guilty life, and became an excusable traitress in favour of her lawful75 husband. It was again the fertile brain of Ulysses which conceived the stratagem76 of the wooden horse; and when the curiosity of the Trojans (against all ordinary probabilities, it must be confessed) dragged it inside the walls, the armed warriors whom it contained issued forth77 in the night, and opened the gates to their comrades.
The details of the sack of the city are neither more{v.i-147} nor less horrible than similar scenes which are unhappily too historical. Priam is slain at the altar of his house; his family either share his fate, or are carried into captivity78. Of the contradictory79 legends as to the fate of “Hector’s Andromache”—as in Virgil’s great poem she pathetically calls herself—the reader will gladly choose, with that poet, the least painful version, which leaves her settled at Buthrotus in Epirus, in a peaceful retirement80 full of gentle regrets, as the wife of Hector’s brother Helenus.
Of Helen and Menelaus we shall hear more in Homer’s tale of the Wanderings of Ulysses. He says nothing of the scene which the later dramatists give us, by no means inconsistent with his own portrait of the pair, when at the taking of the city the outraged81 husband rushes upon the adulteress with uplifted sword, and drops his weapon at the sight of her well-remembered and matchless beauty. For the miserable82 sequel of Agamemnon’s story we may refer also to the Odyssey83. Few of the Greek heroes returned home in peace. They had insulted the gods of Troy, and they were cursed with toilsome wanderings and long banishment84 like Ulysses, or met with a worse fate still. Diomed did not indeed leave his wife ?giale a heart-broken widow, as Dione in her anger had predicted, but found on his return that she had consoled herself with another lover in his absence, and narrowly escaped assassination85 by her hand. Teucer was refused a home by his father, because he did not bring his brother Ajax back with him to the old man. The lesser86 Ajax was wrecked87 and drowned on his homeward voyage. Fate spared Nestor, old as he was, to return to his stronghold at{v.i-148} Pylos; but his son Antilochus had fallen in the flower of his age on the plains of Troy. The names of many of the wanderers were preserved in the colonies which they founded along the coasts of Greece and Italy, and the heroes of the great Siege of Troy spread its fame over all the then known world.
END OF THE ILIAD.
点击收听单词发音
1 bard | |
n.吟游诗人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 immortal | |
adj.不朽的;永生的,不死的;神的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 derived | |
vi.起源;由来;衍生;导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 vainglorious | |
adj.自负的;夸大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 modesty | |
n.谦逊,虚心,端庄,稳重,羞怯,朴素 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 warrior | |
n.勇士,武士,斗士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 warriors | |
武士,勇士,战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 proneness | |
n.俯伏,倾向 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 condonation | |
n.容忍,宽恕,原谅 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 hearty | |
adj.热情友好的;衷心的;尽情的,纵情的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 antagonist | |
n.敌人,对抗者,对手 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 susceptible | |
adj.过敏的,敏感的;易动感情的,易受感动的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 frailty | |
n.脆弱;意志薄弱 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 admiration | |
n.钦佩,赞美,羡慕 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 depicts | |
描绘,描画( depict的第三人称单数 ); 描述 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 appeased | |
安抚,抚慰( appease的过去式和过去分词 ); 绥靖(满足另一国的要求以避免战争) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 catastrophe | |
n.大灾难,大祸 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 consummated | |
v.使结束( consummate的过去式和过去分词 );使完美;完婚;(婚礼后的)圆房 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 knight | |
n.骑士,武士;爵士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 exalts | |
赞扬( exalt的第三人称单数 ); 歌颂; 提升; 提拔 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 Christian | |
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 chivalry | |
n.骑士气概,侠义;(男人)对女人彬彬有礼,献殷勤 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 travesties | |
n.拙劣的模仿作品,荒谬的模仿,歪曲( travesty的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 monk | |
n.和尚,僧侣,修道士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 knights | |
骑士; (中古时代的)武士( knight的名词复数 ); 骑士; 爵士; (国际象棋中)马 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 dwarf | |
n.矮子,侏儒,矮小的动植物;vt.使…矮小 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 malice | |
n.恶意,怨恨,蓄意;[律]预谋 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 mischief | |
n.损害,伤害,危害;恶作剧,捣蛋,胡闹 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 transformation | |
n.变化;改造;转变 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 zealous | |
adj.狂热的,热心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 rites | |
仪式,典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 thrifty | |
adj.节俭的;兴旺的;健壮的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 ordained | |
v.任命(某人)为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 );授予(某人)圣职;(上帝、法律等)命令;判定 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 eke | |
v.勉强度日,节约使用 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 devout | |
adj.虔诚的,虔敬的,衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 abide | |
vi.遵守;坚持;vt.忍受 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 deviation | |
n.背离,偏离;偏差,偏向;离题 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 corruptions | |
n.堕落( corruption的名词复数 );腐化;腐败;贿赂 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 vein | |
n.血管,静脉;叶脉,纹理;情绪;vt.使成脉络 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 justify | |
vt.证明…正当(或有理),为…辩护 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 untold | |
adj.数不清的,无数的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 briefly | |
adv.简单地,简短地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 proceeding | |
n.行动,进行,(pl.)会议录,学报 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 obedience | |
n.服从,顺从 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 excellence | |
n.优秀,杰出,(pl.)优点,美德 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 chastisement | |
n.惩罚 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 inflicted | |
把…强加给,使承受,遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 scurrilous | |
adj.下流的,恶意诽谤的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 contingent | |
adj.视条件而定的;n.一组,代表团,分遣队 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 slaughter | |
n.屠杀,屠宰;vt.屠杀,宰杀 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 irresistible | |
adj.非常诱人的,无法拒绝的,无法抗拒的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 respites | |
v.延期(respite的第三人称单数形式) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 doomed | |
命定的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 prophesied | |
v.预告,预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 wondrous | |
adj.令人惊奇的,奇妙的;adv.惊人地;异乎寻常地;令人惊叹地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 utterance | |
n.用言语表达,话语,言语 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 slain | |
杀死,宰杀,杀戮( slay的过去分词 ); (slay的过去分词) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 seclusion | |
n.隐遁,隔离 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 immortality | |
n.不死,不朽 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 armour | |
(=armor)n.盔甲;装甲部队 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
70 discord | |
n.不和,意见不合,争论,(音乐)不和谐 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
71 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
72 coveted | |
adj.令人垂涎的;垂涎的,梦寐以求的v.贪求,觊觎(covet的过去分词);垂涎;贪图 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
73 oracle | |
n.神谕,神谕处,预言 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
74 citadel | |
n.城堡;堡垒;避难所 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
75 lawful | |
adj.法律许可的,守法的,合法的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
76 stratagem | |
n.诡计,计谋 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
77 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
78 captivity | |
n.囚禁;被俘;束缚 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
79 contradictory | |
adj.反驳的,反对的,抗辩的;n.正反对,矛盾对立 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
80 retirement | |
n.退休,退职 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
81 outraged | |
a.震惊的,义愤填膺的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
82 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
83 odyssey | |
n.长途冒险旅行;一连串的冒险 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
84 banishment | |
n.放逐,驱逐 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
85 assassination | |
n.暗杀;暗杀事件 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
86 lesser | |
adj.次要的,较小的;adv.较小地,较少地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
87 wrecked | |
adj.失事的,遇难的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |