Then fell the ruthless sword that never fell When spear bit harness in the battle din, For Aphrodi'te spake, and like a spell Wrought her sweet voice persuasive, till within His heart there lived no memory of sin; No thirst for vengeance more, but all grew plain, And wrath was molten in desire to win The golden heart of Helen once again. It is said that after the death of Menelaus Helen was driven from the Peloponnesus by the indignant Spartans. * * * * * IV. ARTS AND CIVILIZATION IN THE HEROIC AGE. Although but little confidence can be placed in the reality of the persons and events mentioned in the poems of Homer, yet there is one kind of truth from which the poet can hardly have deviated, or his writings would not have been so acceptable as they evidently were to his contemporaries--and that is, a faithful portraiture of the government, usages, institutions, manners, and general condition of the Greeks during the age in which he lived, and which undoubtedly differed little from the manners and customs of the Heroic Age. The pictures of life and character that he had drawn must have had a reality of existence, and they unquestionably give us, to a considerable extent, a true insight into the condition of Grecian society at that early period of the world's history. And yet we must bear in mind that epics such as those of Homer, describing the manners and customs of a half-barbarous age, and intended to honor chieftains by extolling the deeds and lives of their ancestors, and to be recited in the courts of kings and princes, would, very naturally, be accommodated to the wishes, partialities, and prejudices of their noble hearers. And this leads us to consider how far even the great epic of Homer is to be relied on for a faithful picture of the political life of the Greeks during the Heroic Age. We quote the following suggestive remarks on this subject from a recent writer and able Greek critic: THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE GREEKS, AS REPRESENTED IN THEIR GREAT EPICS. "Although, in the Greek epics, the rank and file of the army are to be marshaled by the kings, and to raise the shout of battle, they actually disappear from the action, and leave the field perfectly clear for the chiefs to perform their deeds of valor. There is not, perhaps, an example in all the Iliad of a chief falling, or even being wounded, by an ignoble hand. Amid the cloud of missiles that were flying on the plains of Troy, amid the crowd of chiefs and kings that were marshaled on either side, we never hear how a 'certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote a king between the joints of the harness.' Yet this must necessarily have occurred in any prolonged combats such as those about the walls of Troy.