Homer and The Iliad - Sri Aurobindo and Ilion - Instructive Insights into some Principal Characters Gods and Goddesses related to the Trojan War

 Instructive Insights into some Principal Characters, Gods and Goddesses related to the Trojan War

Extracts from Sri Aurobindo's Ilion

 
On Achilles

 One in his singleness greater than kings and multitudes sends me.
(Sri Aurobindo, Ilion, in Collected Poems, Centenary Edition, Vol.5, p.397)

On Paris

Happy of light like a lustrous star when it welcomes the morning,
Brilliant, beautiful, glamoured with gold and a fillet of gem-fire,
Paris, plucked from the song and the lyre by the Grecian challenge,
Came with the joy in his face and his eyes that Fate could not alter.
Ever a child of the dawn at play near a turn of the sun-roads,
Facing destiny's look with the careless laugh of a comrade,
He with his vision of delight and beauty brightening the earth-field
Passed through its peril and grief on his way to the ambiguous Shadow.

                                                                                                        (ibid, p.400)

On Panthesilea

Noble and tall and erect in a nimbus of youth and of glory,

Claiming the world and life as a fief of her strength and her courage,
Dawned through a doorway that opened to distant murmurs and laughter,
Capturing the eye like a smile or a sunbeam, Penthesilea.

(ibid, p.400)

On Achilles

... Proud is his soul as his fortunes,
Swift as his sword and his spear are the speech and the wrath from his bosom.

(ibid,p.401)

On Priam

Then from his seat like a tower arising Priam the monarch
Slowly erect in his vast tranquility silenced the people:
Lonely, august he stood like one whom death has forgotten, 
Reared like a column of might and of silence over the assembly.
So Olympus rises alone with his snows into 'heaven.
Crowned were his heights by the locks that slept like the mass of the snow-swathe
Clothing his giant shoulders; his eyes of deep meditation,
Eyes that beheld now the end and accepted it like the beginning
Gazed on the throng of the people as on a pomp that is painted:

 (ibid,p.413)

On Deiphobus

Rising Deiphobus spoke, in stature less than his father,
Less in his build, yet the mightiest man and tallest whom coursers

Bore or his feet to the fight since Ajax fell by the Xanthus.

 (ibid, p.413)

On Antenor, the Troian Statesman

Calm from his seat Antenor arose as a wrestler arises,
Tamer of beasts in the cage of the lions, eyeing the monsters
Brilliant, tawny of mane, and he knows if his courage waver,
Falter his eye or his nerve be surprised by the gods that are hostile,
Death will leap on him there in the crowded helpless arena.
Fearless Antenor arose, ...

(ibid,p.415)

On Laocoon, a Troian Prince

Up in the silence deep Laocoon rose up, far-heard, —
Heard by the gods in their clam and heard by men in their passion —
Cloud-haired, clad in mystic red, flamboyant, sombre,
Priam's son Laocoon, fate-darkened seer of Apollo.
As when the soul of the Ocean arises rapt in the dawning
And mid the rocks and the foam uplifting the voice of its musings
Opens the chant of its turbulent harmonies, so rose the far-borne
.Voice of Laocoon soaring mid columns of Ilion's glories,
Claiming the earth and the heavens for the field of its confident rumour.

(ibid, p.424)

On Penthesilea

Heaven has sent us replacing a continent Penthesilia!

Low has the heart of Achaia sunk since it shook at her war-cry.

(ibid, p.427)

Who is the fighter in Ilion thrills not rejoicing to hearken
Even her name on unwarlike lips, much more in the mellay
Shout of the daughter of battles, armipotent  Pemhesilea?

(ibid, p.427)

On Paris

... But now in the Ilian forum
Bright, of the sun-god a ray, and even before he had spoken
Sending the joy of his brilliance into the hearts of his hearers, Paris arose....

(ibid, p.432)

Sweet was his voice like a harp's, when it chants of war, and its cadence
Softened with touches of music thoughts that were hard to be suffered,
Sweet like a string that is lightly struck, but it penetrates wholly.

( ibid, p.432)

On Paris in regard to Helen

Paris keeps what he seized from Time and Fate while unconquered
Life speeds warm through his veins and his heart is assured of the sunlight.

(ibid,p.433)

Paris in regard to Ilion

Ilion in flames I choose, not fallen from the heights of her spirit.
Great and free has she lived since they raised her twixt billow and mountain,
Great let her end; let her offer her freedom to fire, not the Hellene.

(ibid, p.434)

Paris on Helen, Ilion and war

Justly your voices approve me, armipotent children of Ilus;
Straight from Zeus is our race and the Thunderer lives in our nature.
Long I have suffered this- taunt that Paris was Ilion's ruin
Born on a night of the gods and of Ate, clothed in a body.
Scornful I strode on my path secure of the light in my bosom,
Turned from the muttering voices of envy, their hates who are fallen,

Meeting of Paris and Helen
(Attic red figure cup - 440 BC )

Voices of hate that cling round the wheels of the triumphing victor;
Now if I speak, 'tis the strength in me answers, not to belittle,
That excusing which most I rejoice in and glory for ever,
Tyndaris' rape whom I seized by the will of divine Aphrodite.
Mortal this error that Greece would have slumbered apart in her mountains,
Sunk, by the trumpets of Fate unaroused and the morning within her,
Only were Paris unborn and the world had not gazed upon Helen.
Fools, who say that a spark was the cause of this giant destruction!
War would have stridden on Troy though Helen were still in her Sparta
Tending an Argive loom, not the glorious prize of the Trojans,
Greece would have banded her nations though Paris had drunk not Eurotas,
Coast against coast I set not, nor Ilion opposite Argos.
Phryx accuse who upreared Troy's domes by the azure Aegean,
Curse Poseidon who fringed with Greece the blue of his waters:
Then was this war first decreed and then Agamemnon was fashioned;
Armed he strode forth in the secret Thought that is womb of the future. 

(ibid, p.434)

Paris on strength and subtlety

 No, when the wrestlers meet and embrace in the mighty arena,

Not at their sins and their virtues the high gods look in that trial;
Which is the strongest, which is the subtlest, this they consider.
Nay, there is none in the world to befriend save ourselves and our courage;
Prowess alone in the battle is virtue, skill in the fighting
Only helps, the gods aid only the strong and the valiant.

 (ibid, p.436)

Paris on War

... Not all the valour of Troya
Perished with Hector, nor with Polydamas vision has left her;
Troy is not eager to slay her soul in a pyre of dishonour.
Still she has children left who remember the mood of their mother.
Helen none shall take from me living, gold not a drachma
Travels from coffers of Priam to Greece. Let another and older
Pay down his wealth if he will and his daughters serve Menelaus.
Rather from Ilion I will go forth with my brothers and kinsmen;
Troy I will leave and her shame and live with my heart and my honour
Refuged with lions in Ida or build in the highlands a city
Or in an isle of the seas or by dark-driven Pontic waters.
Dear are the halls of our childhood, dear are the fields of our fathers,
Yet to the soul that is free no spot on the earth is an exile.
Rather wherever sunlight is bright, flowers bloom and the rivers
Flow in their lucid streams to the Ocean, there is our country.

So will I live in my soul's wide freedom, never in Troya
Shorn of my will and disgraced in my strength and the mock of my rivals.
First had you yielded, shame at least had not stained your surrender.
Strength indulges the weak! But what Hector has fallen refusing,
Men! what through ten loud years we denied with the  spear for our answer,
That what Trojan will ever renounce, though his city  should perish?
Once having fought we will fight to the end nor that end shall be evil.

(ibid, p.439)

On Helen and Pans

      Near him moved Helen, a whiteness divine and intent on her labour

Guards on the remparts of Troy
( Sandstone frieze c. 400 BC )

Fastened his cuirass, bound the greaves and settled the hauberk,
Thrilling his limbs with her touch that was heaven to the yearning of mortals,
She with her hands of delight caressing the senseless metal
Pressed her lips to his brilliant armour; she bowed down, she whispered:
"Cuirass, allowed by the gods, protect the beauty of Paris:
Keep for me that for which country was lost and my child and my brothers."
Yearning she bent to his feet, to the sandal-strings of her lover;
Then as she gazed up, changed grew her mood; for the Daemon within her
Rose that had banded Greece and was burning Troy into ashes.
Slowly a smile that was perfect and perilous over her beauty
Dawned like the sunlight on Paradise; strangely she looked on her lover.
So might a goddess have gazed as she played with the love of a mortal
Passing an hour on the earth ere she rose up white to Olympus.
"So art thou winner, Paris, yet and thy spirit ascendant
Leads this Troy where thou wilt, O thou mighty one veiled in thy beauty
First in the dance and the revel, first in the joy of the mellay;
Who would not leave for thy sake and repent it not country and homestead?
Winning thou reignest still over Troy, over Fate, over Helen."

(ibid, p.448)

Helen to Paris

        "Never can Death undo what life has done for us, Paris.

Nor, whatever betide, can the hour be unlived of our rapture.
This too is good that nations should meet in the shock of the battle,
Heroes be slain and a theme be made for the songs of the poets,
Songs that shall thrill with the name of Helen, the beauty of Paris."

(ibid, pp.449-50)

"Thou who art kin to the masters of heaven, unconstrained like thy kindred
High on this ancient stage of the Troad with gods for spectators,
, Play till the end thy part, 0 thou wondrous and beautiful actor:
Fight and slay the Greeks, my countrymen; victor returning
Take for reward of the play, thy delight of Argive Helen.
Force from my bosom a hint of the joy denied to the death-claimed,
Rob in the kiss of my lips a pang from the raptures of heaven."

 (ibid, p.450)

Helen to Priam

Then to the aged father of Paris Helen the Argive
Bright and immortal and sad like a star that grows near to the dawning
And on its pale companions looks who now fade from it vision:
"Me too pardon and love, my parents, even Helen,
Cause of all bane and all death; but I came from the gods for this ruin
Born as a torch for the burning of empires, cursed with this beauty.

Nor have I known a father's embrace, a mother's caresses,
But to the distant gods I was born and nursed as an alien
Here by earth from fear, not affection, compelled by the thunders.
Two are her monstrous births, from the Furies and from the immortals;
Either touching mortality suffers and bears not the contact.
I have been both, a monster of doom and a portent of beauty."

(ibid, p.453)

Priam to Helen

Slowly Priam the monarch answered to Argive Helen:
"That which thou art the gods have made thee; thou couldst not be other:
That which you didst, the god have done; thou couldst not prevent them
Who here shall blame or whom shall he pardon? Should not my people
Rail at me murmuring, 'Priam has lost what his fathers had gathered;
Cursed is this king by heaven and cursed who are born as his subjects'?
Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working.
Each of us bears his punishment, fruit of a seed that's forgotten;
Each of us curses his neighbour protecting his heart with illusions:
Therefore like children we blame each other and hate and are angry.
Take, my child, the joy of the sunshine won by thy beauty.
I who lodge on this earth as an alien bound by the body,
Wearing my sorrow even as I wear the imperial purple,
Praise  yet the gods for my days that have seen thee at last in my ending.

 Fitly Troy may cease having gazed on thy beauty, O Helen."

ibid, p.453

Polyxena to Paris

 "So is it come, the hour that I feared, and thou goest, O Paris,
Armed with the strength of Fate to strike at my heart in the battle;
For his is doomed and thou and I, a victim to Hades.
This thou preferrest and neither thy father could move nor thy mother
Burning with Troy in their palace, nor could thy country persuade thee,
Nor dost thou care for thy sister's happiness pierced by thy arrows.
Will she remember it all, my sister Helen, in Argos
Passing tranquil days with her husband, bright Menelaus,
Holding her child on her knees? But we shall lie joyless in Hades."

(ibid,p.455)

 "Evilly deal with thy days the immortals happy in heaven;
Yes, I accuse the gods and I curse them who heed not our sorrow.
This they have done with me, forcing my heart to the love of a foeman,
One whose terrible hands have been stained with the blood of my brothers,
This now they do, they have taken the two whom I love beyond heaven,
Brother and husband, and drive to the fight to be slain by each other.
Nay, go thou forth; for thou canst not help it, nor I, nor can Helen.

Since I must die as a pageant to satisfy Zeus and his daughter,
Since now my heart must be borne as a victim bleeding to please them,
So let it be, let me deck myself and be bright for the altar."

(ibid, p.455)

Agamemnon

But from their midst uprearing a brow that no crown could ennoble,
Male and kingly of front like a lion conscious of puissance

Two warriors in man-to-man combat ( Sandstone frieze c.400 BC )

Rose a form august, the monarch great Agamemnon.

(ibid, p.472)

"Free is the peasant to smite in the pastures the mouth that has wronged him,
Chained in his soul is Atrides. Bound by their debt to the fathers,
Curbed by the god in them painfully move the lives of the noble,
Forced to obey the eye that watches within in their bosoms.
Ever since Zeus Cronion turned in our will towards the waters,
Scourged by the heavens in my dearest, wronged by men and their clamours
Griefs untold I have borne in Argos and Aulis and Troas,
Yoked to the sacred toil of the Greeks for their children and country,
Bound by the gods to a task that is heavy, a load that is bitter."

(ibid, p.472)

"Be not as common souls, O you who are Greece and her fortunes,
Nor of your spirits of wrath take counsel but of Athene. 
Merit the burden laid by Zeus, his demand from your natures
Suffer, O hearts of his seed, O souls who are chosen and mighty,
All forgetting but Greece and her good; resolve what is  noble

 (ibid, p.473)

Menelaus

But Menelaus arose, the Spartan, the husband of Helen,

Atreus' younger son from a lesser womb, in his brilliance
Dwarfed by the other's port, yet tall was he, gracile and splendid,
As if a panther might hunt by a lion's side in the forest.

(ibid, p.473)
 

Odysseus

Last Laertes' son, the Ithacan, war-wise Odysseus,
Rose up wide-acclaimed; like an oak was he stunted in stature,
Broad-shouldered, firm-necked, lone and sufficient, as on some island
Regnant one peak whose genial streams flow down to the valley,
Dark on its slopes are the olives, the storms butt in vain at its shoulders, —
Such he stood and pressed the earth with his feet like one vanquished,
Striving, but held to his will. So Atlas might seem were he mortal,
Atlas whose vastness free from impatience suffers the heavens,
Suffering spares the earth, the thought-haunted motionless Titan,
Bearer of worlds. In those jarring tribes no man was his hater;
For as the Master of all guides humanity, so this Odysseus
Dealt with men and helped and guided them, careful and selfless,
Crafty, tender and wise, — like the Master who bends o'er his creatures,
Suffers their sins and their errors and guides them screening his guidance;
Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom.

(ibid,p.481)

Odysseus on Achilles

... "Happier music
Never has beat on my grief-vexed ears than the steps of Achilles
Turning back to this Greece and the cry of his strength . in its rising.
Zeus is awake in this man who his dreadful and world slaying puissance
Gave in a hour of portentous birth to the single Achilles.
Taken today are Ilion's towers, a dead man is Priam.
Cross not the hero's will in his hour, Agamemnon Atrides,
Cross not the man whom the gods have chosen to work out their purpose
Then when he rises; his hour is his, though thine be all morrows.

 (p.483)

Zeus

But from his luminous deep domain, from his estate of  azure
Zeus looked forth; he beheld the earth in its flowering greenness
Spread like an emerald dream that the eyes have enthroned in the sunlight,
Heard the symphonies old of the ocean recalling the ages
Lost and dead from its marches salt and unharvested furrows,
Felt in the pregnant hour the unborn hearts of the future.

(P.492)

All things he pierced in us gazing down with his eyelids immortal,
Lids on which sleep dare not settle, the Father of men  on his creatures;

Nor by the cloud and the mist was obscured which baffles our eyeballs,
But he distinguished our source and saw to the end of our labour.
He in the animal racked knew the god that is slowly delivered;
Therefore his heart rejoiced. Not alone the mind in its trouble
God beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture.
Might not our human gaze on the smoke of a furnace, the burning
Red, intolerable, anguish of ore that is fused in the hell heat,
Shrink and yearn for coolness and peace and condemn all the labour?
Rather look to the purity coming, the steel in its beauty,
Rather rejoice with the master who stands in his gladness accepting
Heat of the glorious god and the fruitful pain of the iron.

(ibid, p.493)

Yet as a father his children, who sits in the peace of his study
Hearing the noise of his brood and pleased with their play and their quarrels,
So he beheld our mortal race. Then, turned from the armies,
Into his mind he gazed where Time is reflected and. conscient,
Knew the iron knot of our human fates in their warfare.
Calm he arose and left our earth for his limitless kingdoms.

(ibid, p.493)

Far from this lower blue and high in the death-scorning spaces
Lifted above mortal mind where Time and Space are but figures
Lightly imagined by Thought divine in her luminous stillness,
Zeus has his palace high and there he has stabled his war car.
Thence he descends to our mortal realms; where the heights of our mountain
Meet with the divine air, he touches and enters our regions.
Now he ascended back to his natural realms and their rapture,
There where all life is bliss and each feeling an ecstasy mastered.

The heroes Achilles and Ajax Concentration on a game of Knucklebones (black-figure amphora circa BC )

Thence his eagle Thought with its flashing pinions extended
Winged through the world to the gods, and they came at the call, they ascended
Up from their play and their calm and their works through the infinite azure.

(ibid, pp.493-94)

Grandiose, calm in her gait, imperious, awing the regions,
Hera came in her pride, the spouse of Zeus and his sister.
As at her birth from the foam of the spaces white Aphrodite
Rose in the cloud of her golden hair like the moon in its halo.
Aegis-bearing Athene, shielded and helmeted, answered Rushing the
call and the heavens thrilled with the joy of her  footsteps
Dumbly repeating her name, as insulted and trampled by beauty
Thrill might the soul of a lover and cry out the name of its tyrant.
Others there were as mighty; for Artemis, archeress ancient,
Came on her sandals lightning-tasselled. Up the vast incline
Shaking the world with the force of his advent thundered Poseidon;
Space grew full of his stride and his cry. Immortal Apollo
Shone and his silver clang was heard with alarm in our  kingdom.
Ares' impetuous eyes looked forth from a cloud-drift of splendour;
Themis' steps appeared and Ananke, the mystic Erinnys;

Nor was Hephaestus' flaming strength from his father divided.
Even the ancient Dis to arrive dim-featured, eternal,
Seemed; but his rays are the shades and his voice is the call of the silence.
Into the courts divine they crowded, radiant, burning,
Perfect in utter grace and light. The joy of their spirits
Calls to eternal Time and the glories of Space are his answer:
Thence were these bright worlds born and persist by the throb of their heart-beats.

 (ibid, pp.494-95)

Zeus to Gods

."Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,
Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.
For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,
Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destined
Long already beyond by the Will of which Time is the courser.
Therefore death cannot alter our lives nor pain our enjoyment.
But in the world of mortals twilight is lord of its creatures
Nothing they perfectly see, but all things seek and imagine,
Out of the clod who have come and would climb from their mire to our heavens
Blindly mistaking the throb of their mortal desires for our guidance.
Yet are the heavenly seats not easy even for the chosen:
Rough and remote is that path; that ascent is too hard for the death-bound.
Hard are God's terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal.

Mind resists; their breath is a clog; by their tools they are hampered.
How shall they win in their earth to our skies who are clay and a life-wind,
But that their hearts we invade? Our shocks on their lives come incessant,
Ease discourage and penetrate coarseness; sternness celestial
Forces their souls towards the skies and their bodies by anguish are sifted.
We in the mortal wake an immortal strength by our tortures
And by the flame of our lightnings choose out the vessels of godhead.
This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings
Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure.
Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking
Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.
But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter
She would go glad and the goal would be missed and the aeons be wasted.
But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings
Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;
Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud; .
This by pain we prevent; we compel his feet to the journey'

     (ibid, 496-97)

 Aphrodite ( Known as the "Venue de  Milo", c. 400 BC )

Hera to Zeus and Zeus to Hera
Then to her brother divine the  white-armed passionless

Hera:

" Zeus, we remember, thy sons forget, Apollo and Ares"
"Hera, queen of the heavens, they forget not, but choose to be mindless.
This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put  the knowledge; 
Doing the work they have chosen  they turn not for fruit  nor for failure.
Grief less they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.  
Light that they have they can lose with a smile, not as  souls in the darkness
Clutch at every beam and mistake their one ray for all splendour.
All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us.
And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning.
There an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and too labour,"

(ibid,p.498)

Aphrodite

         Then with her starry eyes and bosom of bliss from the Immortals

         Glowing and rosy-limbed cried the wonderful white

         Aphrodite,

         Drawing her fingers like flowers through the flowing gold of her tresses,
               Calm, discontented, her perfect mouth a rose of resistance
               Chidingly budded 'gainst Fate, a charm to their senses enamoured

                                                                                         (ibid,p.499)

Aphrodite, the Goddess who helps Paris

 Pleased and blushing with bliss of her praise and the thought of her empire
Answered, as cries a harp in heaven, the gold Aphrodite:
"Father, I know and I spoke but to hear from another my praises. 
I am the womb of the world and the cause of this teeming of creatures, 
And if discouraged I ceased, God's world would lose heart and perish.  
How will you do then without me your works of wisdom and greatness, 
Hera, queen of heaven, and thou, O my sister Athene? 
Yes, I shall reign and endure though-the pride of my workings be conquered. 
What though not second Helen find a second Paris,
Lost though the glories of form to the earth, though their confident gladness 
Pass from a race misled and forgetting the sap that it sprang from 
They are eternal in man in the worship of beauty and rapture."

 (ibid,p.501)

"I am the sweetness of living, I am the touch of the Master.
Love shall die bound to my stake like a victim adorned as for bridal,
Life shall be bathed in my flames and be purified gold or be ashes.
I, Aphrodite, shall move the world for ever and ever.
Yet now since most to me, Father of all, the ages arriving,
Hostile, rebuke my heart and turn from my joy and my sweetness,
I will resist and not yield, nor care what I do, so I conquer."

(ibid, p.502)

A Greek warrrior (bronze )