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Hermione, princess of
Sparta, was left behind
when her mother Helen
sailed to Troy with the
seducer Paris. Later, she
was promised as wife to both
Orestes 2 and
Neoptolemus which
caused a deadly row between the two.
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The orphan
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Those who have just become lovers often feel
that the presence of children add nothing to their
overwhelming passion while ruining the intimacy
their infatuation demands. So when
Helen and
Paris left Hellas as
lovers, they, not wishing to renounce gold, put
most of the Spartan property on board before they
sailed away to Troy. But
Hermione—the nine years old daughter of
Helen and
Menelaus —, they
left behind [Apd.Ep.3.3].
Some time later, also her father sailed to
Troy though his trip was no
love cruise, but a bellicose enterprise engaging
many kingdoms of Hellas, which, having gathered a
huge fleet, were determined to obtain by any means
the restoration of both
Helen and the property.
Thus Hermione remained in
Sparta, deprived of both
her parents and being raised by her aunt
Clytaemnestra, for
the time the Trojan
War lasted, that is, ten years. And for that,
she laments
"In my
childhood I had no mother; my father was ever in
the wars—though the two were not dead, I was
reft of both." [Ovid,
Heroides
8.89]
and reproaches her mother
"I went out to
meet you when you came back home—and the face
of my mother was unknown to me! That you were
Helen I none the less knew, because you
were most beautiful; but you—you had to ask
who your daughter was!" [Ovid,
Heroides
8.97]
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Contradictory promises
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It is told [Apd.Ep.6.14] that
Menelaus made
contradictory promises concerning the marriage of
his daughter: that he first promised her to her
cousin Orestes 2, but
later, on the battlefields of
Troy, he promised her to
Neoptolemus. That is
why Orestes 2, after
the war, speaks in this manner to Hermione:
"For you were
mine to begin with, and you are married to
Neoptolemus only by the baseness of your
father. Before he attacked
Troy, he gave you to me to be my wife,
but later he promised you to your present husband
as a reward if he sacked
Troy." [Euripides,
Andromache
969]
But others affirm that there were no double
promises, and represent Hermione saying to
Orestes 2:
"I was given
to you by
Tyndareus ... but my father ... had promised
me to Aeacus' son [i.e.,
Neoptolemus], not knowing this ... "
[Ovid,
Heroides
8.31]
In any case it has been remarked [Pau.1.33.7]
that Neoptolemus
indeed was Hermione's first husband, but that she
stayed by Orestes 2's
side in all his plights. That is why she also tells
Orestes 2:
"... yet my
grandsire, as being first in order, has rank above
my father." [Ovid,
Heroides
8.34]
thereby showing her agreement with
Tyndareus' decision,
and regarding herself as the wife of
Orestes 2.
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Married to
Neoptolemus
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Nevertheless, when the
Trojan War was over,
Neoptolemus fetched
Hermione and took her to his home in Epirus (the
Adriatic coastal region of Greece between the
Ambracian Gulf and Illyria, today called Albania).
Violently, she says:
"... he
[Neoptolemus] dragged me with hair all
disarrayed into his palace ..." [Hermione to
Orestes 2. Ovid,
Heroides
8.10]
Some affirm that this was possible because
Orestes 2, being at
that time maddened by the
ERINYES for having
murdered his mother
Clytaemnestra,
could not offer any resistance.
It is said [Hom.Od.4.1ff] that
Menelaus had a marriage
feast and was sending forth Hermione with horses
and chariots to
Neoptolemus at the
time when Telemachus
arrived at Menelaus'
court looking for his father.
Neoptolemus had
already begotten sons, Amphialus 1 and Molossus, by
his captive concubine
Andromache, former
wife of Hector 1. But it
is also told [Hyg.Fab.123] that
Neoptolemus came to
Sparta to claim Hermione
from Menelaus, once he
had heard that his betrothed had been given to
Orestes 2 in marriage.
So Menelaus took
Hermione from Orestes 2
and gave her to
Neoptolemus. Some
add [Eur.And.960ff.] that
Orestes 2 at the time
was insane and weakened on account of his mental
disorders, his exile, and his family troubles.
Being so, he did not wish at the time to blame
Menelaus, and instead
begged Neoptolemus
to renounce his claim to marry Hermione. When he
was insolently rebuked by
Neoptolemus, who
abused him as a matricide and as a victim of folly,
Orestes 2, though
robbed of his marriage, chose to take a humble tone
and wait.
Thus the conflict between
Achilles and
Agamemnon for the sake
of a woman (Briseis)
experienced a revival through their sons.
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Her husband's concubine
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In Neoptolemus'
home in Epirus or in Phthia (or else in
Scyros—the island in the Aegean Sea northeast
of Euboea [Pau.3.25.1]), there arose a conflict
between Hermione and
Andromache, the
concubine he had obtained as a prize after the sack
of Troy.
For as time went by and Hermione remained
childless, she grew jealous of
Andromache, saying
that by secret spells the concubine made her
barren. Thus, seeing her own position threatened,
Hermione plotted against
Andromache's life.
And while
Neoptolemus was at
Delphi, wishing to make
amends to Apollo for
having demanded reparation for his father's death,
Menelaus came to
Neoptolemus' palace
and decided, on behalf of his daughter, to kill
Andromache and put
the life of
Andromache's child
Molossus in Hermione's hands.
Andromache then
sought protection in the sanctuary of Thetis, but
Menelaus captured
little Molossus and threatened to cut the child's
throat if she refused to abandon the shrine. It
seemed inconceivable to
Andromache that such
a famous man as
Menelaus could act so
cowardly, and that is why she exclaims:
"Oh
Fame! How many thousands nobodies there
are whom Fame blows up to importance and
authority ... Did a coward like you lead the
warriors of Hellas against Priam to conquer
Troy?"
[Andromache to
Menelaus. Euripides,
Andromache
325]
She chose her own death, but when she had left
the shrine,
Neoptolemus'
grandfather Peleus
arrived, and with the protection, as he said, of
both gods and troops, prevented
Menelaus to kill
Andromache, or do any
harm to her child.
Menelaus then left
the palace declaring that as a stranger he did not
intend to commit violence, but he promised to
return, for he would not submit to it either. Her
father having returned to
Sparta, Hermione started
fearing Neoptolemus,
thinking that he would kill her at his return for
having plotted against
Andromache and the
child, or perhaps make her a concubine in the house
where she was queen.
But while
Neoptolemus was
still away, Orestes 2
came to recover Hermione. For, as he saw it,
Hermione was living with
Neoptolemus only
because of Menelaus'
broken promise. And when they met, Hermione herself
asked him to taker her away, and she became the
wife of Orestes 2.
Later Orestes 2,
having assembled troops, came to
Delphi in order to end
the life of the man who had insulted him and robbed
his wife. He first stirred up the Delphians against
the suppliant, saying that
Neoptolemus had come
in order to rob Apollo's
temple, and not as he declared, on a pious
pilgrimage to win the favour of the god. The
Delphians then joined the troops of
Orestes 2, and screened
by the foliage of the laurel-trees, they all waited
outside the temple with drawn swords. And when
Neoptolemus came
out, he was killed in the battle that took place,
and many, they say, were those who came with their
weapons and stones to strike and hack at him,
destroying his body with countless wounds.
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Hermione as hostage
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But it is also told [Euripides,
Orestes]
that Menelaus, Hermione
and Orestes 2 had
already have a dreadful meeting before the above
related events:
One week after the murder of
Clytaemnestra by
Orestes 2,
Menelaus arrived from
Troy at the harbour of
Nauplia. His wife Helen he
sent on ahead to join Hermione, who, during the
war, had been brought up in the palace by
Clytaemnestra (her
aunt ). When Menelaus
arrived, he met Orestes
2, who had not eaten or washed, destroyed by
grief, and the victim of insane fits, during which
he seemed to see the
ERINYES, persecuting and
lashing him.
And besides grief and remorse there was another
torment: the Argives were considering to punish the
matricide, and after voting, to stone
Orestes 2 and his
sister Electra 2 to
death. It was to avert this threat that
Orestes 2 asked
Menelaus for help,
reminding him of the assistance that he had
received from
Agamemnon when
Helen was abducted.
But Menelaus was not
ready to give him assistance, and just promised to
beg the citizens and
Tyndareus, who grieved
his daughter
Clytaemnestra, for
mercy. For he deemed resistance impossible, as the
whole city was a trap, and armed men were
everywhere. Besides, opposing
Tyndareus, his wife's
father and the man from whom he expected to inherit
the Spartan throne, was not, as
Menelaus deemed, his
wisest choice. Orestes
2 did not appreciate his uncle's reluctance to
assist him:
"You coward!
Did you once command an army? Yes, to win a woman;
not to help your friends...Traitor! Have you
forgotten
Agamemnon?
[Orestes 2 to
Menelaus. Euripides,
Orestes
720]
That was Orestes 2's
plight: mad, abandoned (except for his sister and
Pylades), and threatened by a death sentence.
But the resourceful Pylades, for whom life was
not worth if he lost his friend, conceived the
following plan: to kill
Helen, who was in the
house making a list of all the valuables, and
thereby send Menelaus
raving mad.
Orestes 2 found this
idea so brilliant that he declared to be ready to
die twice if they could bring this deed off. So
they started immediately to plan how they would
attack the Trojan body-guard that protected her, a
group of chaps, who, used to polish her mirrors and
set out her scents, were not supposed to cause them
any serious trouble; these they intended to shut up
in various rooms.
This murder, they thought, would be a popular
one. For Helen was hated
in the whole of Hellas by all those who had lost a
relative or friend in the
Trojan War. And by
killing her, Pylades reasoned,
Orestes 2's name of
'matricide' would be forgotten, giving place to the
title 'Killer of the killer of thousands,
Helen'. In the midst of
the enthusiasm that this plan aroused in them, they
even started hoping to escape after the murder and
avoid death. And Electra
2 came with her own contribution to the plan:
to take Hermione as a hostage, and threat to kill
her if Menelaus would
dare to make any move after
Helen's death.
All this was attempted. But during the confusion
that ensued when Hermione was to be captured and
the body-guard avoided,
Helen escaped. So when
Menelaus arrived, he
had already heard that
Helen was not dead, but
instead he found his daughter Hermione with a
sword's edge at her throat. Escape was no longer
possible, so Orestes 2
threatened to kill Hermione and set fire to the
palace unless Menelaus
went to the assembly and persuaded the citizens to
spare their lives.
The taking of hostages is a dire deed, difficult
to solve for all parties involved. So difficult,
that sometimes neither authorities, nor armed
forces, and not even poets are able to find a way
out. That is why Apollo
had to come down from heaven and put things aright.
The god, it is said, took
Helen with him to heaven,
telling Menelaus to get
a new wife, to reign in
Sparta, yield to
Orestes 2 the throne of
Argos and
Mycenae, and marry him
to Hermione.
So it was done (though not immediately). In time
Orestes 2 ruled over a
realm vaster than his father's, and having married
Hermione, had by her a son Tisamenus 2, who,
however, was overthrown by the
HERACLIDES. The
children of Tisamenus 2 emigrated to Ionia in Asia
Minor where they founded cities.
Orestes 2 was killed
in Arcadia by the bite of a snake, but the death of
Hermione has never been reported.
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City
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The name of the coastal city Hermione (near
Troezen, and facing the
island of Hydra in eastern Argolis) comes from its
founder Hermion, son of Europs 2, son of
Phoroneus
[Pau.2.34.4].
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