Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/46

36 temper as a husband, we must remember the mediæval legends of Arthur and Guinevere, to whom Helen bears, in many points of character, a strong resemblance. The readiness which Arthur shows to have accepted at any time the repentance of his queen is almost repulsive to modern feeling, but was evidently not so to the taste of the age in which those legends were popular; nor is it at all clear that such forgiveness is less consonant with the purest code of morality than the stern implacability towards such offences which the laws of modern society would enjoin. Menelaus has forgiven Helen, even as Arthur—though not Mr Tennyson's Arthur—would have forgiven Guinevere. But she has not forgiven herself, and this is a strong redeeming point in her character; "shameless" is still the uncompromising epithet which she applies to herself, as in the Iliad, even in the presence of her husband and his guests.

They, too, have been wanderers since the fall of Troy, like the lost Ulysses. The king tells his own story before he interrogates his guest:—

He has grown rich in his travels, and would be happy, but for the thought of his brother Agamemnon's miserable end. Another grief, too, lies very close to his