Deiphobos, Helen, Hector and Troilus in Virgil's Aeneid
Chaucer sees himself as something of a populizer of classical texts for his Middle English readers, introducing them to tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses, tales about Theseus and Thebes (in "Knight's Tale"), a guest appearance by Pluto and Persephone (in "Merchant's Tale"), and countless other off-hand references to classical characters and plots. Many of those in his audience probably only knew vaguely the general outlines of the Latin texts he referred to, and none, including Chaucer, himself, would have known the Greek "ancestor" texts of the Latin works. Homer was known to be a great poet, but his works were still lost to the English, who knew of Troy only through later Latin plot summaries known as "Dares and Dictys," after their pseudonymous authors, "Dares Phyrgensis" and "Dictys Cretensis," Dares of Troy and Dictys of Crete. Each gave a partisan account of the Troy story, the former from Troy's point of view and the latter from the Greeks' persepctive. The best-educated of Chaucer's audience members, however, would have known a great Latin epic about Troy, Virgil's Aeneid, which filled in the gaps in Homer's narratives and gave the events a profoundly pro-Trojan bias as the story of Rome's founding by Trojan refugees. Those readers would have known, as Chaucer did, that we know what happens at Deiphobos' house the night Troy fell, and what happened to Deiphobos, Helen, Hector, and Troilus. The excerpts below are from the Loeb parallel text edition, books 1 and 2.
The following excerpts occur in Book 2, when Aeneas replies to Dido, the
Carthagenian queen when she asks him what happened the night Troy fell.
It picks up after the end of the Iliad with Hector’s death at Achilles’
hands, and this passage occurs just after Sinon, a Greek left behind to deceive
the Trojans, tells them the horse is an offering to the gods that the Greeks
left to atone for their impiety in attacking the city:
[268] “It was the hour when the first rest of weary mortals begins, and by grace
of the gods steals over them most sweet. In slumbers, I dreamed that Hector,
most sorrowful and shedding floods of tears, stood before my eyes, torn by the
car, as once of old, and black with gory dust, his swollen feet pierced with
thongs. Ah me, what aspect was his! How changed he was from that Hector who
returns after donning the spoils of Achilles or hurling on Danaan ships the
Phrygian fires – with ragged beard, with hair matted with blood, and bearing
those many wounds he received around his native walls. I dreamed I wept myself,
hailing him first, and uttering words of grief: ‘O light of the Dardan land,
surest hope of the Trojans, what long delay has held you? From what shores,
Hector, the long looked for, do you come? Oh, how gladly after the many deaths
of your kin, after woes untold of citizens and city, our weary eyes behold you!
What shameful cause has marred that unclouded face? Why do I see these wounds?’
He answers not, nor heeds my idle questioning, but drawing heavy sighs from his
bosom’s depths, ‘Ah, flee, goddess-born,’ he cries, ‘and escape from these
flames. The foe holds our walls; Troy falls from her lofty height. All claims
are paid to king and country; if Troy’s towers could be saved by strength of
hand, by mine, too, had they been saved. Troy entrusts to you her holy things
and household gods; take them to share your fortunes: seek for them the mighty
city, which, when you have wandered over the deep, you shall at last establish!’
So he speaks and in his hands brings forth from the inner shrine the fillets,
great Vesta, and the undying fire.
[298] “On every side, meanwhile, the city is in a turmoil of anguish; and more
and more, though my father Anchises’ house lay far withdrawn and screened by
trees, clearer grow the sounds and war’s dread din sweeps on. I shake myself
from sleep and, climbing to the roof’s topmost height, stand with straining
ears: even as, when fire falls on a cornfield while south winds are raging, or
the rushing torrent from a mountain streams lays low the fields, lays low the
glad crops and labours of oxen and drags down forests headlong, spellbound the
bewildering shepherd hears the roar from a rock’s lofty peak. Then indeed the
truth is clear and the guile of the Danaans grows manifest.
Even now the spacious house
of Deiphobus has fallen, as the fire god towers above; even now
his neighbour Ucalegon blazes; the broad Sigean straits reflect the flames. Then
rise the cries of men and blare of clarions. Frantic I seize arms; yet little
purpose is there in arms, but my heart burns to muster a force for battle and
hasten with my comrades to the citadel. Frenzy and anger drive my soul headlong
and I think how glorious it is to die in arms!
In the passage I boldfaced, you can see Virgil’s clue that Deiphobus’
house was set afire first, because of what the Greeks sought there (Helen).
Then Virgil brings Aeneas face-to-face with Helen,
herself, and only his mother (Venus) can stop him from killing her:
Virgil knew that Helen appears in the
Odyssey (Book 4) as the queen of Menelaos’ dinner table when
Ody’s son, Telemachus visits seeking word of his lost father.
In Book 6 of the Aeneid,
A’s journey to the Underworld, he meets Deiphobos’ shade, horribly mutilated,
and the ghost tells him that Diomede and Ulysses (Odysseus) did that to him when
they surprised him asleep with Helen, to whom he had been married after Paris’
death in battle. All in all, it’s a
pretty wretched future for such a nice little gathering.