Homer is here made responsible for that which, in part, he does not tell us, and which is positively, as well as inferentially, at variance with what he does tell us. He tells us absolutely, that Helen was not inveigled into leaving Sparta, but carried off by force: and that the crime of adultery was committed after, and not before, her abduction. This difference alters the character of the deed of Paris, in a manner by no means so insignificant according to the heroic standard of morality, as according to ours. As it seems plain from Homer’s expression, ἁρπάξας[408], that Paris carried off Helen in the first instance by an act of violence, so also it is probable that, when the first adultery was committed in the island of Cranae, he was her ravisher much more than her corrupter. Her offence appears to have consisted mainly in the mere acceptance, at what precise date we know not, of the relation thus brought into existence between them, and in compliances that with the lapse of time naturally followed, such as the visit to the Trojan horse. It would have been, however, under all the circumstances, an act of superhuman rather than of human virtue, if she had refused, through the long years of her residence abroad, to recognise Paris as a husband: and accordingly the light, in which she is presented to us by the Poet, is that of a sufferer infinitely more than of an offender[409]. [408] Il. iii. 444. [409] See inf. Aoidos, sect. vi. When we regard Helen from this point of view, we perceive that Homer’s narrative is at least in perfect keeping with itself. The Greeks have made war to avenge the wrongs of Helen not less than those of Menelaus: nay, Menelaus himself, the keenest of them all, is keen on her behalf even more than on his own[410]. He regards her as a person stolen from him: and the Greeks regard Paris only as the robber. [410] Il. ii. 589. We have no reason to suppose the Cyprian Epic to be a trustworthy supplement to the narrative of Homer. We have seen some important points of discrepancy from the Iliad. And there are others. For instance, this poem makes Pollux immortal and Castor only mortal, while Homer acquaints us in the Iliad with the interment of both, and in the Odyssey with their restoration on equal terms to an alternate life. It gives Agamemnon four daughters, the Iliad but three. It brings Briseis from Pedasus, the Iliad brings her from Lyrnessus. And there is other matter in the plot, that does not appear to correspond at all with the modes of Homeric conception[411]. Had Homer told us the same story as the Cyprian Epic, he would perhaps have made his countrymen express all the indignation we could desire. [411] Düntzer, pp. 9-16. Fragm. iv. xi. xv.