strong grief, applies a term of abhorrence to Helen. But Homer is

too chivalrous to judge the life of any lady, and only shows the

other side of the chivalrous character--its cruelty to persons not of

noble birth--in describing the "foul death" of the waiting women of

Penelope. "God forbid that I should take these women's lives by a

clean death," says Telemachus (Odyssey, xxii. 462). So "about all

their necks nooses were cast that they might die by the death most

pitiful. And they writhed with their feet for a little space, but