# Poetry — Character guide

> Key figures in Poetry by Matthew Arnold.

- [Empedocles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/empedocles.md): 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 
- [Balder](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/balder.md): 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 l
- [Hermod](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/hermod.md): 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 delive
- [Tristram](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/tristram.md): 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 reflecti
- [Sohrab](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/sohrab.md): 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 
- [Rostam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/rostam.md): 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, lamenti
- [Aepytus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/aepytus.md): 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
- [Merope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/merope.md): 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 
- [Arcas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/arcas.md): 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 
- [Iseult](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/iseult.md): 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 
- [Polyphontes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/polyphontes.md): 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 
- [Odin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/odin.md): 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 
- [Hoder](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/hoder.md): 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 be
- [Hela](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/hela.md): 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 god
- [Nanna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/nanna.md): Balder's wife who dies of grief and joins him in the underworld.
- [Frea](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/frea.md): A Norse goddess who mourns Balder's death.
- [Lok](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/lok.md): 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 e
- [Callicles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/callicles.md): 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 
- [Vivian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/vivian.md): A fairy enchantress who imprisons Merlin.
- [Merlin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/merlin.md): The wizard who is trapped by the fay Vivian.
- [Obermann](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/obermann.md): A melancholic figure from Senancour's novel, revisited in verse.
- [Hercules](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/hercules.md): The Greek hero, referenced in several poems.
- [Laias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/laias.md): A friend or ally of Aepytus in the Merope drama.
- [Peisianax](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/peisianax.md): A friend of Empedocles who appears in the poem.
- [Pausanias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters/pausanias.md): A physician who converses with Empedocles on Etna.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_16_se/characters