our hearts in the
Iliad; nevertheless, there is about her the infinite sadness that is
natural to one who has lost all that life holds dear. Yet Euripides
falls so infinitely below the master that the picture which will abide
longest in the memory is the parting scene in the Iliad.

Homer endows his minor characters with an interest that is no less real
to us than that given to Helen and Andromache. Of these lesser
characters, a few stand out insistent of our notice. At the threshold of
the story, Chryseis and Briseis appear as the innocent causes of the
quarrel of the chieftains. Chryseis is still a maiden, as far as can be
inferred, and had not lost kindred and friends when taken captive; for
her father, the priest of sacred Chryse, comes to beg her release, with
boundless ransoms. Hence her day of captivity is brief, and the aged
father joyously welcomes his beloved daughter. She must have been
beautiful and clever, for Agamemnon prized her far above Clytemnestra.

The story of Briseis is a much sadder one, and graphically illustrates
the fate of a gentlewoman who fell into the hands of the foe. She was a
captive widow, husband and kindred having been slain by Achilles. But
her captor loved her devotedly, and to him she was a wife in all but in
name; and Patroclus had promised her that she should in time become the
wedded wife of Achilles. The young warrior weeps bitterly when she is
taken from him, but at the close of the Iliad we see them happily
reunited. She is remembered because of the great passions that gathered
about her.

Homer presents two pictures of heroic motherhood in sorrow,--Hecuba and
Thetis; for the latter, though a goddess, is perfectly human in her
devotion to her fated son, Achilles. To her he goes for comfort, and she
is ever resourceful in responding to his wants. She weeps over his
destiny, but, since he has chosen the better part, she nobly supports
him in every struggle. Hecuba is truly the companion of her husband,
King Priam, associated with him in his projects, and sharing his
counsels. She has borne him nineteen children, and these she has seen
slain, one after another, by the hand of the foe. Hector is her favorite
son, in whose courage she recognizes the bulwark of Ilium. When she sees
him exposed to certain death, her anxiety overcomes her pride and she
beseeches him to come within the walls; and when at last her son has
succumbed, we find in her the same mingling of grief and of p