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Of
War and Poets, Part I -- An Ancient View
by Doug Talley
Arma virumque cano, wrote the Latin
poet Virgil centuries ago in opening one of the great epic poems
of all time, the Aeneid – Of weapons and man, I sing.
The history of ancient poetry is a history of the human response
to war. It is also a history of human bewilderment in ascribing
war to the will of God. It would seem the early poets could scarcely
comprehend the machinery that would put war into motion in the first
place, and so often ascribed to war a divine origin. They also
tried to reconcile the horrific slaughter supposedly brought on
by deity by glorifying the courage and skill of the individual soldier.
The Greek poet Homer raised this theme to an unparalleled height
of poetry. The first epic ascribed to him, the Iliad, told
the story of the Trojan War. The story descended through a long
period of oral poetry during the Mycenaean Age of ancient Greece
from before 1000 B.C. and is thought to have coalesced into its
present form by 750 B.C. In the opening lines of the poem Homer
carved out his theme of war with a hard-edged clarity, as though
it were etched in marble for eternity:
Sing, O muse, of the wrath of
Achilles, son of Peleus,
so accursed it brought the Achaians
immense grief
and thrust the spirits of many
valiant heroes to hell
and made their bodies a prey to
dogs and vultures,
and so the will of God was fulfilled
. . . .
(Book I, ll. 1-5)
The Anger of Achilles
The unifying element of the 16,000 lines of
the Iliad is the anger of Achilles. It is cursed, indeed.
Throughout the Iliad that anger wreaks havoc on both armies
in the conflict. It is the kind of anger that leads to war, but
it is ironic that Achilles’ anger initially is not directed toward
the Trojans at all, but toward the king of his own people, the Achaians.
Early in the first book he tells Agamemnon, the king:
I came not warring here for any ill the Trojans
had done me. I have no quarrel with them. They have not raided
my cattle, nor my horses, nor cut down my harvests on the rich
plains of Phthia; for between me and them there is a great space,
both mountain and sounding sea. We have followed you, Sir Insolence!
for your pleasure, not ours – to gain satisfaction from the Trojans
for your shameless self and for Menelaus. (Book I, ll. 152-160 – Samuel Butler’s prose
translation)
It is, in fact, the anger of Agamemnon that
launched a thousand Greek ships to war, anger for the offense suffered
when Helen, the wife of his brother Menelaus, was stolen away by
a son of the Trojan king, Priam. And yet while the war is cruel
and protracted, Homer finds occasion to glorify the valor of men
in battle. The fifth book is devoted to the heroism of the Greek
soldier Diomedes, whose courage and valor were so great, he fought
with the gods themselves, Aphrodite and Apollo and even Ares, the
god of war himself. Homer imputes his valor to the aid of another
goddess, Pallas Athena:
Then Pallas Athena
again gave Diomedes, son of Tydeus,
strength and courage that he might distinguish
himself
above
all other Argives and cover himself in great glory.
She kindled a fire that glistened from his
shield and helmet
like the
summer star Sirius as it rises most brilliantly
fresh
from its ocean bath; such a fire she blazed therefore
from his
head and shoulders it drove him into the thick
of battle
where the greatest number of men clashed.
(Book V, ll. 1-8)
The Cruelty and Horror of War
While he cited instances of courage and valor,
Homer was not ignorant of the cruelty and horror of war. His descriptions
of the injuries and death inflicted are quite graphic. In battle
the Trojan Pandarus cast a spear at Diomedes and missed. Diomedes
responded:
With this he hurled his spear, and Athene
guided it on to Pandarus’ nose near the eye. It went crashing
in among his white teeth; the bronze point cut through the root
of his tongue, coming out under his chin, and his glistening armour
rang round him as he fell heavily to the ground. The horses started
aside for fear, and he was reft of life and strength. (Book V, ll. 290-296 – Samuel Butler’s prose
translation)
War Passages in the Old Testament
The heroic tone of the Iliad, with its curiously
compelling mixture of barbarism and nobility, coincides with the
time, and the tone, of certain war passages in the Old Testament.
In the book of First Samuel, for example, we read that sometime
around the year 1095 B.C. the Lord sent the prophet Samuel to Saul,
to anoint him king of Israel and to command him to wage war (1 Samuel
15: 3,7-8, 32-33):
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy
all that they have and spare them not; but slay both man and woman,
infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
*******
And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah
until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt.
And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly
destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
When Saul spared Agag the king he incurred
the indignation of God who sent Samuel to rebuke him and to carry
out the commandment to utterly destroy all the Amalekites, including
Agag. In one of the most pathetic scenes of all literature, we
read:
Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me Agag
the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him delicately.
And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past.
And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women
childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And
Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
As Christians, we laud the example of Samuel’s
obedience to God, and yet, perhaps, cannot help but recoil somewhat
at the seeming cruelty of God’s prophet hacking another man to pieces
with a sword. It is celestial wrath, indeed, not much different
in tone than that evident in Homer’s contemporaneous account of
the Trojan War.
The Noble Warrior
The poet’s notion of the noble warrior has
continued throughout the ages. Shakespeare depicted an inspiring
scene of battle courage in the play, Henry V. As the English
prepare to meet the French, outnumbered five to one, they begin
to despair, but are then roused by King “Harry” in perhaps the greatest
battle speech ever given:
Westmoreland:
Oh, that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work today!
King Henry:
What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin.
If we are marked to die, we are enough
To do our country loss, and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
God’s will! I pray thee wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost.
It yearns me not if men my garments wear,
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honor
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. Oh, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, though my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart. His passport shall be made
And crowns for his convoy put into his purse.
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day and see old age
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s Day.”
Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother. Be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.
(Act
IV, Scene iii, ll. 17-67)
The
Weariness of War
Unquestionably,
throughout history the battlefield has served as the scene of both
the best and worst in humanity. Virgil understood this, and while
his hero Aeneas has served as one of the great examples of the noble
warrior, Aeneas also was sick of war, as evident in this passage
as he tried to rally his troops with thoughts of peace and better
times ahead:
O socii, neque
enim ignari sumus ante malorum,
O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem. . . .
Talia voce
refert, curisque ingentibus aeger
spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem.
O companions, we are not ignorant of the previous horrors,
and having suffered worse, God will bring also these to an end.
. . .
So spoke
Aeneas, and though sick with care, he feigned hope
and buried grief deep in his heart.
(Book I, ll.
198-199, 208-209)
The Psalmist
also manifested this same weariness of war when he said:
My soul hath
long dwelt with him that hateth peace.
I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.
(Psalm 120:6-7)
We live in
a day rife with war and rumors of war. Poets through the ages have
tried to help us cope with this unfortunate condition of our mortality.
Great poetry has a power in itself to “gentle our condition”
and to teach us how to beat our “swords into ploughshares”
and our “spears into pruning hooks”. It can soothe and
sanctify and grant peace to the individual soul, until that day
when Christ returns and “nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Next month
we will consider Part II of Poets and War – The Modern Temper.
Submissions and comments on the topic of war and of peace are particularly
welcome for future columns.
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