Returning to the decadent Charles of the French epics, we lay no stress on the story of his incest with his sister, Gilain, "whence sprang Roland." The House of Thyestes, whence Agamemnon sprang, is marked by even blacker legends. The scandal is mythical, like the same scandal about the King Arthur, who in romance is so much inferior to his knights, a reflection of feudal jealousies and hatreds. In places the reproaches hurled by the peers at Charles read like paraphrases of those which the Achaean princes cast at Agamemnon. Even Naismes, the Nestor of the French epics, cries: "It is for you that we have left our lands and fiefs, our fair wives and our children ... But, by the Apostle to whom they pray in Rome, were it not that we should be guilty before God we would go back to sweet France, and thin would be your host." [Footnote: _Chevalerie Ogier_, 1510-1529. _Epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. iii. pp. 156-157.] In the lines quoted we seem to hear the voice of the angered Achilles: "We came not hither in our own quarrel, thou shameless one, but to please thee! But now go I back to Phthia with my ships--the better part." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 158-169.] Agamemnon answers that Zeus is on his side, just as even the angry Naismes admits that duty to God demands obedience to Charles. There cannot be parallels more close and true than these, between poems born at a distance from each other of more than two thousand years, but born in similar historical conditions. In Guide _Bourgogne,_ a poem of the twelfth century, Ogier cries, "They say that Charlemagne is the conqueror of kingdoms: they lie, it is Roland who conquers them with Oliver, Naismes of the long beard, and myself. As to Charles, he eats." Compare Achilles to Agamemnon, "Thou, heavy with wine, with dog's eyes and heart of deer, never hast thou dared to arm thee for war with the host ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 227, 228. _Gui de Bourgogne_, pp. 37-41.] It is Achilles or Roland who stakes his life in war and captures cities; it is Agamemnon or Charles who camps by the wine. Charles, in the _Chanson de Saisnes_, abases himself before Herapois, even more abjectly than Agamemnon in his offer of atonement to Achilles. [Footnote: _Epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. iii. p. 158.] Charles is as arrogant as Agamemnon: he strikes Roland with his glove, for an uncommanded victory, and then he loses heart and weeps as copiously as the penitent Agamemnon often does when he rues his arrogance. [Footnote: _Entree en Espagne_.] The poet of the _Iliad_ is a great and sober artist. He does not make Agamemnon endure the lowest disgraces which the latest French epic poets heap on Charles. But we see how close is the parallel between Agamemnon and the Charles of the decadent type. Both characters are reflections of feudal jealousy of the Over-Lord; both reflect real antique historical conditions, and these were the conditions of the Achaeans in Europe, not of the Ionians in Asia.