Character guide

Empedocles

major

Also known as Pausanias

Empedocles walks the high glens of Etna with his pupil Pausanias, who presses him to recount Pantheia's history while the harp of the boy Callicles drifts up from below. He insists that mind is the spell governing earth and heaven, yet his own words—that man's wit is never clear—return to haunt the argument. His restless teaching and the pull of the mountain's bare slopes set the poem's central meditation on knowledge, fear, and self-trust in motion.

Balder

major

Also known as Balder Dead, Baldur the Good

Balder sits crowned at Hela's side in the abode of death, honored among the dead even as the gods above seek his return. When Hermod greets him, he refuses consolation—'gild me not my death'—preferring even a captive's life to this pale honor. His gentle refusal and the terms of his releasement make him the still center of the poem's mourning, the loss against which all other griefs are measured.

Hermod

supporting

Also known as Niord

Hermod the nimble descends into the underworld as Asgard's messenger, pressing Hela for the conditions of Balder's return and daring to ask whether he may greet the dead. Hela grants him speech with Balder, and he delivers the gods' plea—that all things weep—only to hear Balder's quiet rebuke against gilding death. His journey binds the living gods to the realm below and turns the poem's grief into a negotiation with fate itself.

Tristram

major

Also known as Sir Tristram

Tristram moves through the poem as a figure of storied love and knightly renown, invoked among the great names whose passing leaves nature itself diminished. His legend of passion and betrayal haunts the verse's reflections on whether art can restore the bloom of a beloved or echo the moan of the seas. He matters as the type of the famous dead whose loss the poem weighs against the steadfast, unflinching soul.

Sohrab

major

Also known as The young Sohrab

Sohrab alone lies wakeful in the Tartar camp by the Oxus, rising before the grey fog lifts to walk through the black tents toward Peran-Wisa. He is young, lion-hearted, and hungry for a fame that might reveal his hidden birth, and he challenges the Persian host to send their bravest against him. His restless ambition and concealed parentage drive the episode's mounting dread as the two armies stand at gaze.

Rostam

major

Also known as The mighty Rostam, the great Rostam

Rostam answers Gudurz's challenge with a smile that turns to wrath, refusing at first to risk his name against a youth, then vowing to fight unknown and unmarked. He longs for a son like Sohrab to carry his fame, lamenting the slight helpless girl he has, and dreams of hanging up his armour to guard old Zal. His pride, his weariness, and his choice of plain arms set the tragedy's slow fuse.

Aepytus

major

Also known as Merope Aepytus

Aepytus arrives in Messenia as a stranger claiming to bear news of the dead son Merope has mourned for years, and is welcomed into the usurper's house as a guest. Arnold's chorus lingers on his strange composure — a soul that has 'foreknown the vanity of hope' yet proceeds to live, drugging pain by patience. His secret identity and his mother's ignorance of him create the central pressure of the early drama: every kindness exchanged at Polyphontes' hearth is a step toward the vengeance he has sworn.

Merope

major

Also known as Merope Peace, Merope O Aepytus

Merope is the widow of Cresphontes, living under the roof of the man who killed him, her grief so absolute that Arnold's chorus names her 'the Mateless, the One' whom no bard can read. Her longing and sadness ferment in her breast while she waits for a son she believes dead, and her suspicion of strangers runs hot enough to turn violent. She matters because her unrecognizing love is the engine of the play's central agony: the mother who would avenge her child is the last person able to see him.

Arcas

supporting

Also known as Arcas Faithful

Arcas is the channel through whom Merope and her hidden son communicate, an old man whose loyalty has outlasted two kings and one murder. His devotion is also his flaw: he has spent years watching Merope's grief and his own hope wear thin, and the poem's lyric voice — waiting, weeping, foreseeing that love must cool — belongs to a heart like his. He matters because he alone can recognize Aepytus at the crisis, and the recognition he withholds or reveals will decide whether the queen's axe falls on her own blood.

Iseult

major

Also known as The young surviving Iseult

Iseult of Ireland is bound to Tristram by a passion older and stronger than the political marriage that delivers her to King Marc, and Arnold's narrator circles her as the figure whose image no artist can restore — 'the ineffable smile of her eyes.' Her tragedy is that she is loved and loving in a world where love cools: the poem's speaker watches Tristram's eye grow cold to mere beauty and knows the drift toward fatigue and dejection is coming. She matters because her constancy is the counterweight to Tristram's restlessness, the still point around which the Tristram poems' grief turns.

Polyphontes

supporting

Also known as Cresphontes, king Polyphontes

Polyphontes holds Messenia by force of a crime — the killing of Cresphontes and his sons — and has spent years hunting the one survivor, the infant Aepytus, without success. His reign is defined by that missing heir: he rejoices at any rumor of the boy's death, and his hospitality to strangers is shadowed by the fear of who they might be. He matters because his guilt is the fixed point of the play's moral world, and the sacrifice he celebrates in supposed safety becomes the occasion of his own undoing.

Odin

supporting

Also known as Lidskialf Odin

Odin is the grieving father at the head of a heaven that has lost its brightest god, and his response is not lamentation but action: he loans Sleipner and sends Hermod down the nine-night ride to Hela's realm. His grief is the poem's engine, and the poem's tension is that even the All-Father cannot command death to give back what it holds — Hela's reply is a cold reminder that the gods have taken more from her race than they have given. He matters because his mourning sets the whole descent in motion and gives the Norse poem its human center.

Hoder

supporting

Also known as the blind Hoder

Hoder moves among the gods as the one who cannot see, yet his blindness is less a flaw than a fate: he is the instrument through which the bright, beloved Balder is lost. The tragedy is not malice but the terrible gap between intention and consequence, and the gods' helplessness to shield themselves from their own doom. His act sets the poem's mourning in motion, making him the quiet hinge on which the Norse myth's sorrow turns.

Hela

supporting

Hela rules the cheerless realm where Hermod must ride to plead for Balder's return, and she receives him with the cold dignity of one who has long been cast out. Her refusal is not mere cruelty: she remembers how the gods cast her serpent brother into the sea and how her race has gained small bliss from heaven. She matters because she turns the poem's mourning into a negotiation, forcing the gods to reckon with the price of their own privileges.

Nanna

minor

Also known as O Nanna

Balder's wife who dies of grief and joins him in the underworld.

Frea

minor

A Norse goddess who mourns Balder's death.

Lok

supporting

Also known as Loki

Lok moves through the divine world as its most dangerous intelligence, a being whose malice is matched only by his intimate knowledge of every weakness. He is not a distant villain but a familiar presence whose schemes exploit the gods' trust and Hoder's sightless hand. His role in Balder's death makes him the poem's engine of catastrophe, the figure whose cleverness forces the gods to confront the fragility of their ordered world.

Callicles

supporting

Also known as young Callicles

Callicles is the youthful singer whom Pausanias brings along in secret, instructed to play from a distance and hope the strains might soothe Empedocles' man-hating mood. He is skeptical of miracles and quick to see that the philosopher's bitterness has roots deeper than the times or the sophists. His presence matters because he embodies the possibility of beauty and companionship against Empedocles' isolation, a voice that may or may not reach the man who has laid music by.

Vivian

minor

Also known as the fay Vivian

A fairy enchantress who imprisons Merlin.

Merlin

minor

The wizard who is trapped by the fay Vivian.

Obermann

minor

A melancholic figure from Senancour's novel, revisited in verse.

Hercules

minor

Also known as Great Hercules

The Greek hero, referenced in several poems.

Laias

minor

Also known as Aepytus Laias, O Aepytus

A friend or ally of Aepytus in the Merope drama.

Peisianax

minor

A friend of Empedocles who appears in the poem.

Pausanias

minor

A physician who converses with Empedocles on Etna.

Marguerite

minor

Also known as the Duchess Marguerite

A noblewoman who appears in a poem of love and loss.

Goethe

minor

The German poet referenced in several poems.

Heine

minor

Also known as Henri Heine

The German poet whose grave is visited in a poem.

Wordsworth

minor

The English poet referenced in a memorial poem.

Thyrsis

minor

A shepherd poet mourning the death of his friend Corydon.

Geist

minor

A beloved dog whose death is mourned in a poem.

Matthias

minor

Also known as Poor Matthias

A pet bird whose death is lamented in verse.

Kaiser

minor

Also known as Kaiser Dead

A pet dog whose death is commemorated in a poem.

Saint Brandan

minor

Also known as Brandan

A saint who voyages to find the earthly paradise.

Rachel

minor

Also known as The dying Rachel

A tragic figure from the Bible, mourned in a poem.

Monica

minor

Saint Augustine's mother, depicted in her last prayer.

Arthur Hugh Clough

minor

Also known as Arthur

A poet and friend of Arnold, mourned in Thyrsis.

Senancour

minor

The author of Obermann, referenced in Arnold's poem.

Byron

minor

The Romantic poet, referenced in a poem about Newstead.

Shelley

minor

The Romantic poet, alluded to in a poem.

Dante

minor

The Italian poet, referenced in a poem.

Marc

minor

Also known as King Marc, Marcus

The king of Cornwall who marries Iseult.

Rakhsh

minor

Rostam's faithful and mighty horse.

Gudurz

minor

Also known as the anxious Persians Gudurz

A Persian chief who advises Rostam.

Afrasiab

minor

Also known as King Afrasiab

The king of Turan and enemy of the Persians.

Zal

minor

Rostam's father, a legendary Persian hero.

Zeus

minor

The king of the Greek gods, mentioned in poems.

Apollo

minor

Also known as Young Apollo

The Greek god of music and poetry, invoked in verse.

Callisto

minor

Also known as Transform'd Callisto

A nymph transformed into a bear, then a constellation.

Pan

minor

Also known as Pan with Marsyas, Marsyas

The Greek god of the wild, associated with music.

Chiron

minor

The wise centaur who taught heroes.

Tiresias

minor

The blind prophet of Thebes, referenced in a poem.

Prometheus

minor

The Titan who gave fire to humanity, referenced in verse.

Ulysses

minor

The Greek hero of the Odyssey, mentioned in a poem.

Philoctetes

minor

The Greek archer with the bow of Heracles.

Orestes

minor

The son of Agamemnon who avenged his father's murder.

Agamemnon

minor

The king of Mycenae and leader of the Greek forces at Troy.

Pylades

minor

Also known as Ah Pylades

The loyal friend of Orestes in Greek myth.

Electra

minor

The sister of Orestes who helped him avenge their father.

Deianeira

minor

The wife of Heracles who unwittingly caused his death.

Hyllus

minor

The son of Heracles and Deianeira.

Macaria

minor

The daughter of Heracles who sacrificed herself for Athens.

Eurystheus

minor

The king who imposed the twelve labors on Heracles.

The Heracleidae

minor

The descendants of Heracles who sought refuge in Athens.

Temenus

minor

A son of Aristomachus and a Heraclid king.

Cresphontes

minor

The murdered husband of Merope and king of Messenia.

Aristodemus

minor

A Heraclid leader in the conquest of the Peloponnese.

Aristomachus

minor

A Heraclid king and father of Temenus and Cresphontes.

Aegimius

minor

A Dorian king who allied with the Heracleidae.

Echemus

minor

A king of Tegea who fought the Heracleidae.

Tisamenus

minor

A son of Orestes and king of Argos.

Eurysthenes

minor

A son of Aristodemus and a king of Sparta.

Procles

minor

A son of Aristodemus and a king of Sparta.

Neleus

minor

A son of Codrus and founder of Miletus.

Melanthus

minor

A king of Athens who fought the Boeotians.

Cypselus

minor

A tyrant of Corinth mentioned in the historical introduction.