The Washington herald., 1911-12-24

the warp and woof of human destiny Is
that in all battles, either on field or
glory or Cabinet of diplomacy which have
decided the fate of the world, wrong
ed woman has been the handspring OF
the action.
Strangely enough, the fiippancy Of his
ItoricaI writer's regards the women OF his
| tory as marplots and causes of the down.
fall of kings and dynasties. The re-
verse is true. What history actua,!y
teaches is that the so-called de
cisive battles" OF the world would have
been decided otherwise but for the
treachery of man to woman.
| This golden thread is so apparent IN
medieval and latter day history that one
is tempted to accept as much as II they
were holy writ the beautiful LEGENDS OF
Greece. Rome and the NOrsemen. The
| first to point this moral is found in
those wonder tales of Greece. Tales that
are the beginnings of both poetry and
history-the history OF human affection
and its gravest consequences
False to His Wife.
| All remember how Paris, the son Of
PTiam, loved the beautiful Enone in the
groves and by the streams of Mount Ida.
II Is a story Of the simple life, Of the
family virtues, of right living; but Paris,
alas. was false to Enone. His treachery
TO woman destroyed the dynasty of King
Priam and passed the scepter over to the
Greek chiefs. At the critical moment
when the three goddesseS promised him
another mans wife, the immortal Helen,
he divorced. as we would now say, his
] coy wife Enone, eloped with Helen,
and destroyed his own and his fathers
empire.
This was the first great change in the
political history of the world, and the
leading motives were the good woman
and the false man. Better had it been,
had Paris continued to prefer Enone's
love to setting the world in arms ana
pointing a moral which is as true to-day
as it was three thousand years ago,
when the real changer of destiny and
the woman behind the battle was the
fair Idalian maiden and the false son
of the DaTdian King.
Soon appears another true woman
whose loyal love was spurned. Her story
IS the motive cf the Golden Fleece leg
end The witch maiden Medea abandon
ed father, brother, even committed muir
der in her great love for Jason, the
leader of the ArgOnauts. BY her as
sistance he stole the Golden Fleece and
he took this fair maid of Colchis, made
her his wife and enthrOned her in his
palace at Corinth.
Broke Faith with a Woman.
But Jason was ambitious. Like the
Who since the morning star
Nor god has fallen so far
he found II necessary to divorce Medea
and marry the daughter of a hostile
King. Medea was abandoned. divorced.
For few years Jason, like Napoleon,
enjoyed his new alliance with a nSw
King and A new bride Yet the kingdom
Of Jason fell and he with it. And this
because of broken faith with a woman.
That change I'm the dynasty of Corinth
upturned the history of Greece, at that
tim,a tn" history of the world We can
we'll imagine that Jason in the moments
of his downfall could sigh for that
which Shelley so beautifully says Medea
could use Ito make the winters boughs
eXhale fresh WeTnal blossoms"
The most dramatic and eventfuI of his
tOr!cal examples of how bad men have
thrown the world away by failing To re-
spond TO the impulses of good women
is that Of the time in which the Prince
of Peace was born. II was prophesied
that the world would be at peace when
the Saviour of Mankind appeared on
earth and this is how it was brought
about
Marc Antony was given by his friend
Augustus, a noble woman, Octavia, for
his wife. She was the sister of Augustus,
who afterward became the Caesar in
whose reign Christ was born. The wife
" letters of Octavia to Antony in Egypt,
close in the arms Of Cleopatra, are his
toriCal Antony disregarded those let
ters and by divorcing Octavia made
mortal enemy of Augustus. who was will
ing to divide the whole world with him.
a.,
Historians do not say so, but it is
none the less true, that Octavia's spirit
ruled the storm at Actium and thus the
falthlessness of Antony to the Caesars
sister made the greatest change in the
worlds history, viewed from the Biblical
and religious points of critical observa-
ton
The instance" Of Octavia, as the his
torians put it, made possible that world
wide era of peace at which, and at only
which time, the Prince of Peace could
descend into this world. Antony was
eliminated and the whole Roman world
fell to the brother of the ilI-treated and
divorced Octavia, who. to the end, was
true to Antony.
Undoubtedly ;he next vital step In his
tory is to be found in the prosecutions OF
the Christians by the infamous Nero. 1t
is almost trite to say that had Nero
favored the Christian cult he would not
have been the last of the original Cae-
sars 1t is equally trite to say that had
this monster been true to Acte, his
Christian wife. his own empire would
have been saved. and the seed of the
church would not have been the blood
of the martyrs.
But Nero found it necessary Ito d.
vorce Acte' for the blue-eyed Pop
pea Not long, and all that remained
of Nero and his empire was the life
long devotion of the discarded Acte.
Who can say whether there would have
been one spot in both hemispheres which
would not now be a Christian land had
Poppea not supplanted Acte and Paul
and Peter been crucified in the gardens
of Nero to make n Roman holiday! This
is perhaps the most vivid and yet the
most painful of the historical examples
of how the world went awry because OF
the fearful truth exempljfied in the cases
of Medea, Octavia, and Enone.