The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-08-12
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ing and the dead. Four times IN one
day, we are told, this plain was won
and lost by each in turn; the very river
ran red with the stain of the strife; yet
on the morrow foe faced foe, while
courage mounted higher. Here fought
Achilles and Hector and Ajax, and
Patroclus and Paris and host of
warriors brave and true. Here was
waged one of the most fierce and re-
lentless wars of ancient days. For ten
long years they struggled across it's
plain for victory, victory that must,
of certainty, have been a glorious
one, when the impulse given by it to
the human mind has reached down the
ages to the present day brought in
literature that has no superior in any
age or by any hand.
The 1liad of Homer, devoted to this
great siege, or rather to the depicting
of the character of Achilles, its great
est warrior, no grander epic exists.
Every line and measure is filled with
the soul-stirring measures of martial
strife, like the fierce reslstless sweep of
a mountain torrent beating against
tempestuOus ocean, lashed to fury by
the elements. So flows the HOmeric
measures of war and conflict no cessa-
tion is seen but that which forbodes
fiercer strife; ceaselessly, resistlessly,
grandly it flows; now leaping and toss
ing, anon lashed to foam and fury, on.
ward it rushes to a climax; spends its
fury and dies as quickly as it arose.
Only fifty eight days of the great
conflict are set forth by Homer, but
Oh, with what a master hand! Every
sword, every spear strikes fire; every
bit of metal is tempered to the nature
of the conflict; every animal seems to
partake of the fierce longings of the
human combatants; no f1inching there;
no cowardice; naught but eager, active,
bloody conflict, sung by a master of
rhyme and meter; such is the Iliad, the
greatest of five great epics as written
5000 years ago.
Troy fell in the tenth year of the
siege, not from the victorious conflict
but by ruse. And the city that had
withstoOd the fierce onslaught of all
her enemies combined, fell by her own
hand, on the eve of her own certain
victory.
Here let us leave them, buried in the
charitable shadows which time has
kindly thrown around their dying
throes. Priam fell by the son of
Achilles, slain on the altar of Zeus.
Achilles fell from an arrow, sped by
Paris, before the gates of Troy. Paris
fell by the hand of Philoctetes
Thessalian prince. Hector was slain by
Achilles after terrific, personal CON-
bat. Of Hector, Helen spoke in these
words: 80 Hector, thou vert dearest
to my heart of all my husbands
brothers the wife am 1 of godlike
Paris, him whose fleet brought me to
Troy, would l had sooner died, and
now the twentieth year is past since
first 1 came stranger from my native
shore. Yet have l never heard from
thee a word of anger or reproach.
And when the sons of Priam and his
daughters, and the wives of Priam's
sons in all their fair array, taunted me
grievously, or Hecuba, herself, for
Priam ever was to me gracious father
thou didst take my part with kindly
admonitions, and restrained their
tongues with soft address and gentle
words. Therefore my heart is grieved,
and 1 bewail thee and myself at once
unhappy me! For now 1 have no
friend in all wide Troy-none to be
kind to me,-they hate me all" And
so she who could in the end, have saved
Troy, gave not the warning word, and
so Troy fell. LEONARD.
There is 0iOnitV in labor IT. does