Chapter XIV: Part 14

Such is the deadly wrong, that lights up the wrath of Achilles. And, as he broods over his injuries, according to the law of an honourable but therefore susceptible, and likewise a fierce and haughty nature, the flame waxes hotter and hotter, and requires more and more to quench it. Thus there is a terrible progression and expansion in his revenge: and by degrees he arrives at a height of fierce vindictiveness, that minutely calculates the modes in which the suffering of its object can be carried to a _maximum_, yet so as to leave his own renown untouched, and open the widest field for the exercise of his valour. It is not vice, nor is it virtue, which Homer is describing in his Achilles; it is that strange and wayward mixture of regard for right and justice with self-love on the one side, and wrath on the other, which are so common among us men of meaner scale. The difference is, that in Achilles all the parts of the compound are at once deepened to a superhuman intensity, and raised to a scale of magnificence which almost transcends our powers of vision. We must, indeed, no more look for a didactic and pedantic consistency in the movement of his mind, than in shocks from an earthquake, or bursts of flame from a volcano. But a real consistency there is; and doubtless it could be measured by the rules of every day, if only every day produced an Achilles.

Let us now follow his course with close attention.

~_Restitution not the object of Achilles._~

It can hardly fail to draw remark, that the spirit of Achilles never from the first moment fastens on mere restitution, or on restitution at all, as its object. With his knowledge of his own might, which was enough to prompt him, had he not been restrained from heaven, to assail and slay Agamemnon on the spot, he nevertheless does not so much as entertain the thought of fighting to keep Briseis. His thought is far other than this: ‘I will not lift a finger against one of you for the girl, since you choose to take from me what you gave (298, 9). I will not hold what you think fit to grudge.’ While he adds, that they shall not touch an article of what is properly his own[699]. Not that he cares for mere possession or dispossession. Were that his thought, he would have lifted up the invincible arm for the retention of Briseis. But his thought is this, ‘One outrage you have done to justice and to me, and, encouraged as well as commanded by great deities, I bear it; but not even under their promises and injunctions will I endure that you shall sin again.’ The loss he had suffered now became quite a subordinate image in his mind; punishment of the offenders, and not restitution, was ever before his view. His first threat is that of withdrawal (Il. i. 169): which, he conceives, will put a stop to Agamemnon’s rapacious accumulations. Next (233) he swears the mighty oath that every Greek shall rue the day of his wrong, and look in vain to Agamemnon for protection against the sword of Hector. Again, in his prayer to Thetis, he intreats that she will induce Jupiter to drive the Greeks in rout and slaughter back upon the ships and the sea. He never dreams of the mere reparation of his wrong: when he refers to Briseis in the great oration of the Ninth Book, it is for the purpose of a slaying sarcasm against the Atreidæ; his soul utterly refuses to treat the affair in the manner of an action at law for damages; he looks for nothing less than the prostration of the Grecian host and its being brought to the very door of utter and final ruin, with the compound view of avenging wrong, glorifying justice, enhancing the sufferings of his foe, and magnifying the occasion and achievements of his own might, to be put forth when the proper time shall come.

[699] The ἄλλα, v. 300, must mean what he had not acquired by gift of the army; since in Il. 9. 335, as well as in i. 167, 356, he apparently speaks of Briseis as the only prize he had received.

~_The offer radically defective._~

The hero withdraws, and remains aloof. The Greeks, after a panic and a recovery, determine to carry on the war without him. But the hostile deities, less under restraint than the friendly ones, give active encouragement to the Trojan chiefs and army in the fight. They are discerned by the Greeks, who accordingly recede[700]. Finding that, instead of driving the Trojans to the city, on the contrary, even before the single fight of Hector and Ajax, they themselves had suffered loss, they supply their camp with the defences, which it had never needed while the name of Achilles and his prowess kept the enemy either within their walls, or in the immediate vicinity of the city. This happens in the Seventh Book, and it is the first note of the consequences of the Wrath. In the Eighth, they are more decidedly worsted under a divine influence, and are driven back upon their works, while the Trojans bivouac on the place of battle. The army had suffered no heavy loss: yet the infirm will of Agamemnon gives way: and, portending greater evils, he a second time counsels flight[701]. The advice is warmly repudiated by Diomed and the other chiefs. Still the course of their affairs is now by undeniable signs altered for the worse. Hereupon, Nestor advises an attempt to conciliate Achilles by offers of restitution and of gifts, with close union and incorporation into the family of Agamemnon. Now it is most important that we should observe, that gifts and kind words were the beginning and the end of this mission. There was no confession of wrong authorized by Agamemnon, or made by the Envoys, to Achilles. The woes of the Greeks are described: Achilles is exhorted to lay aside his Wrath: he is told of all the fine things he will receive upon his compliance: but not one word in the speech of Ulysses conveys the admission at length gained from Agamemnon in the Nineteenth Book, that he has offended. Therefore Achilles is not appeased: but, I must add, neither is justice satisfied, nor right re-established.

[700] Il. v. 605, 702.

[701] Il. ix. 26.

~_Apology needed also._~

Presents and promises were not what Achilles wanted. On the contrary, to his inflamed and inexorable spirit, being less than and different from the thing he sought, the very offer of them was matter of new exasperation. The very offer of them thus made seemed, and in some degree rightly seemed, to imply that they who tendered it must take him for a man, whose mind was cast in the same sordid mould as that of the king, who had given the offence. Gifts indeed Achilles must have, and abundance of them, when he is at last to be appeased: but it is not in order to swell an inventory of possessions: it is that the memory of them may dwell in his mind, and stand upon the record of his life, like the golden ornaments that he wore upon his manly person, namely, to exhibit and to make felt his glory.

I do not indeed presume to say we have evidence to show that Achilles would have relented at the period of the mission, if a frank confession of wrong, and apology for insult, had been made together with the proffer of the gifts. On the contrary, with his higher sentiments there mingled a towering passion of a vindictive order. It was as it were the corruption or abuse, not the basis, of the mood of the estranged Achilles: but it was there, and there, like everything Achillean, in colossal proportions. Still I think it has not been sufficiently observed that, as matter of fact, the proceeding of the Ninth Book was radically defective, because it treated the affair as (so to call it) one of mere merchandize, to be disposed of like the balance of an account.

When Achilles finds that the desire to avenge the death of Patroclus has become paramount within him, and in consequence renounces the Wrath[702], it is true that he does not stipulate for an apology. But neither does he stipulate for the gifts. Both however are given, and the apology comes first in the faltering speech of Agamemnon[703], who distinguishes between two kinds of atonement;

[702] Il. xix. 67.

[703] Ibid. 134-8.

ἂψ ἐθέλω ἀρέσαι, δόμεναί τ’ ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα.

Were there any doubt about the reality of this distinction, it might be removed by evidence which the Odyssey supplies. Eurualus, who appears to have been one of the secondary kings in Scheria, had not yet atoned for his insult to Ulysses, when Alcinous recommended that all the twelve, who belonged to that order, should make a present to the departing stranger. But from Eurualus, he observes, something more is requisite; he must offer an apology as well as a gift[704];

[704] Od. viii. 390-415.

Εὐρύαλος δέ ἑ αὐτὸν ἀρεσσάσθω ἐπέεσσιν
καὶ δώρῳ· ἐπεὶ οὔτι ἔπος κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπεν.

And this is done accordingly, in the amplest and frankest manner.

All this should be borne in mind, when we estimate the consistency of the Poet through the medium of the conduct of Achilles.

It was not a moment’s light apprehension, suffered by Agamemnon and the army, that could avail to obliterate his resentment. They had scarcely tasted of the cup of bitterness; he required that they should drain it to the dregs. He will not hear of the return of Briseis: τῇ παριαύων τερπέσθω[705]. With a mixture of close argument, terrible denunciation, and withering sarcasm, he overpowers and silences the Envoys. Only Phœnix can address him, and that after a long pause and in tears.

[705] Il. ix. 336.

Yet the mighty spirit of Achilles sways to and fro in the tempest of its own emotions. Again he has threatened to depart: bidding them, with a bitterness that mounts far away into the region of the sublime, come the next day and see, if they think such a sight can be worth their seeing, his fleet speeding homeward across the broad Hellespont; or north Ægean. But this course of action would have balked his appetite for glory; which, as he knew[706], he could only buy, and that with his life, at Troy. Perhaps, too, he was softened by the respect of the Envoys, who were personally agreeable to him; perhaps grimly pleased with the awe that his Titanic passion had inspired; perhaps affected with a sympathetic feeling of regard by the straightforward bluntness of Ajax. At any rate it is plain that there followed upon the speech of the Telamoniad chief[707] a greater sign of yielding, than any which the paternal exhortations of Phœnix, or those most artfully drawn pictures by Ulysses[708] of the rage and fury of Hector, had sufficed to produce. In answer to Ulysses, to the bottom of whose astuteness his clear eye had pierced, he says, ‘I shall go[709].’ In answer to Phœnix[710], ‘To-morrow we will decide, whether to go or stay.’ In answer to Ajax, he makes a more sensible advance. He now so far relents as to tell them, he will bethink himself of battle; yet it shall only be when the hand of Hector, dealing death to Greeks, and flame to their vessels, shall have reached the tents and ships of the Myrmidons. Then it will be time enough: for then, at _his_ encampment and by _his_ dark ship, he trows that he will stay the course of Hector, however keen for fight[711].

[706] Il. i. 352-4.

[707] Il. ix. 624-42. Sup. Agorè, p. 111.

[708] Ibid. 237-43, and 304-6.

[709] Ibid. 357.

[710] Ibid. 617.

[711] Il. ix. 649-55.

~_Consistency maintained in and after Il._ ix.~

Thus far, then, we surely have no pretext for saying that Homer has departed from the purpose of his poem, of which the man Achilles is the centre and animating principle, and his Wrath with its terrible effects the theme. These effects are now developed up to a certain point: not such a point as really to endanger the army, or excite strong sympathy or apprehension on its behalf, but yet such a point as entirely to tame the irresolute egotism of Agamemnon, and drive his but half-masculine character into efforts again to lay hold upon the prop, which he had so rashly and lightly, as well as selfishly and unjustly, put away.

If we were to consider Achilles as engaged in a mere personal quarrel, we must condemn him, without any qualification whatever, for not accepting the reparation now tendered by Agamemnon. But if we bear in mind that the wrong done was a public wrong, that no confession of this wrong was made, that the other kings and leaders, and the whole army, became in some degree parties to it by their acquiescence, and that he was thus as much or more the vindicator of great public rights than the mere avenger of a personal offence, it is not so clear that the conduct of Achilles after the mission of the Ninth Book is incapable in principle of justification, according to the moral code of Greece. It must, however, undoubtedly remain amenable to severe censure on the score of excess: a culpability, for the penal notice of which Homer has made abundant provision in the sequel of the poem.

But this question is by the way: the main issue raised is as to the poetical consistency and effect of the structure, which Homer has chosen for his work. Upon this there is surely little room for doubt.

From the Ninth Book we commence afresh: Achilles in his moody seclusion, the Greeks in a manful determination to do their best; even Agamemnon is now roused to feel what he has brought upon the army, thrown back from his moral irresolution as a chief upon his personal courage as a soldier, and resolved to appear in the field, that he too may earn his laurels there.

And these intentions are gallantly fulfilled. The night foray of Diomed and Ulysses stands well, as one of the minor but safe measures, by which a skilful generalship often makes its first efforts to raise the spirits of a downcast army. Agamemnon then appears, and shows himself to be a warrior of a high, nay of the highest order of strength and valour. The other kings exert themselves with their wonted chivalry. But the decree of Jove, working through the accidents of war, drives three of the four great champions from the field, and leaves only Ajax; who, invincible wherever he is found, yet cannot be everywhere, nor, single handed, govern the result of battle along the whole extent of the line. And now come the great exertions and successes of the Trojans, especially Sarpedon and his Lycian contingent, Hector playing rather a conventional than a real part. Now it goes hard indeed with the Greeks; the fire touches the ships; Patroclus must go forth and die; and the Wrath is at an end, for it is drowned in the bitterness of the tears of Achilles.

With reference, then, to the main purpose of the poem, it proceeds regularly to its climax, and there is no limb of the Iliad separable from the body without destroying the symmetrical, masculine, and broad development of its general plan. I speak now of the principal fabric of the poem. Few who are not prepared to pull that in pieces will, I apprehend, accede to the proposal to shear it of the two last Books, which therefore hardly require a separate defence.

~_Skilful adjustment of conflicting aims._~

To me it appears well worthy of remark, with what extraordinary skill Homer has contrived to adjust his poem to the several aims which he had to keep in view. The grand one doubtless was the glory of his country in the person of Achilles[712]. Still he was bound not to sacrifice poetically the martial fame of the rest of Greece even to the first among them, whatever calamities he might make the army suffer on his account. To avoid this sacrifice, he was obliged to uphold the military character and power of the Greeks in their struggle with the Trojans, even when deprived of the prowess of their great champion Achilles. And yet he could not degrade Hector and the Trojans, or he would have reached the lame conclusion of adorning his own country’s heroes with a poor and unworthy triumph. Thus his course was to be steered among a variety of difficulties, all pressing upon him from opposite quarters.

[712] On the character of Achilles, I recommend reference to Colonel Mure, Lit. Greece, i. 273-91, and 304-14. In no part of his treatment of the poems has that excellent Homerist (if I may presume to say so) done better service. See likewise Professor Wilson’s Essays, Critique iv: and the Prælections of the Rev. J. Keble, i. 90-104. This refined work, which criticizes the poems in the spirit of a Bard, set an early example, at least to England, of elevating the tone of Homeric study.

We see at once how steadily he kept in view his pole-star; how he handled the events and characters of his poem so as to give the most powerful, or rather it may be said the most overpowering, impression of the greatness of his hero, which is lifted higher and higher by the whole movement of the work as it proceeds. Let us now examine whether, in giving full scope to his main purpose, he has been obliged to sacrifice others which were also important, nay, if the highest excellence was his aim, even indispensable.

The paramount glory of Achilles is established by this: first, that in the Ninth Book the whole army, as it were, lies at his feet, and is spurned from thence: secondly, that when he finally comes forth, it is not in deference to those who have insulted him, but it is under the burning impulses of his own heart. Let us now proceed to inquire whether the Poet has or has not satisfied two other great demands. Has he, as a Greek, done all that was required to glorify Greece, and is Achilles its crown only, or is he its substitute? Has he, as a man, vindicated the principles of the moral order, and of that retributive justice which, even in this world, visibly maintains at least a partial balance between human action and its consequences to the agent?

~_Glory given to Greece._~

We should look in vain, I think, for a finer and subtler exercise of poetic art, than in the mode in which Homer has contrived to convey to us, both the general, and in particular the military inferiority of the Trojans, as compared with the Greeks. Hardly any reader can be so superficial in his observation of the poem, as not to rise from it with this inferiority sufficiently impressed upon his mind. Yet there is not a passage or a word throughout, in which it is asserted. And why? Because every direct assertion that the Trojans were less valiant or less strong than their antagonists, would have been so much detracted from the glory of overcoming them. It was essential to the work of the Poet, that he should represent the contest as an arduous one. He might have done this in the coarse method, for which his theurgy would have afforded the materials: that is, by converting his Trojans into mere puppets, whose arm, at every turn of the narrative, merely represented the impelling force of some deity or other, and, independently of such extraneous aid, was powerless. But this would have destroyed the full-flushed humanity of Homer’s poem.

As it is, he has availed himself of the divine element to make up by its assistance for the comparative weakness of the Trojan chiefs: but it is only a subdued and occasional assistance, so that there is no glaring difference in point of free agency between the two parties. Nor can it be without a purpose, that the two deities, who appear in the field on behalf of the Trojans, namely, Venus and Mars, are sent off it both wounded, the one whining, and the other howling, by the prowess of Diomed. If the Greeks are to suffer by the gods, he takes care that it shall not be by those gods who are the mere national partisans of Troy, but by a higher agency; by the decree of Jupiter, now temporarily indeed, but effectively, set against them.

It is by an indefinitely great number of strokes and touches each indefinitely small, that Homer has gained his object. The Trojan successes are always effected with the concurrence of supernatural power; the Greeks not unfrequently without, and sometimes even against it[713].

[713] Il. xvi. 780.

He as it were sets up the Trojans, so to speak, by generalities; but he gives to the Greeks, with certain occasional exceptions, the whole detail of solid achievement. Sometimes he allows a panic of doubt and fear to seize their host, but he takes care to make the sentiment only flit like a momentary shade over the sun. Thus, when the assembled chieftains of the Greek army hesitate to accept the challenge of Hector[714],

[714] Il. vii. 93.

αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι.

But after a short interval, and a proper appeal, nine champions appear, each and all burning to meet Hector in single combat. Sometimes he contrives to direct his praises to martial appearance and exterior, but carefully avoids the real touches of heroic character; as when he bestows on Paris the noble simile of the στάτος ἵππος. Generally he pays off, as it were, the Trojans with high-sounding words, and reserves nearly all the true qualities of heroes, as well as their exploits, for the Achæans. With them are the sagacity, consistency, firmness, promptitude, enterprise, power of adapting means to ends, comprehensiveness of view, as well as main strength of hand. But by the expedients I have mentioned, the Trojans are raised to, and kept at and no more than at, the level necessary to make them worthy and creditable antagonists. One other engine for the purpose has been employed by him, namely, the real valour and manhood of the Lycian kings and forces[715], with whom he had evidently a strong and peculiar sympathy; whose chief, Sarpedon, is really a better man in war than Hector, though much less pretentious; and who, under this prince, achieve the only real, great, and independent success that is to be found on that side throughout the whole course of the poems, namely, the first forcing of the Greek entrenchments[716].

[715] Since the first portion of this work went to press, I have found from the recent and still unfinished work of Welcher, _Griechische Götterlehre_, i. 2. n., that philological evidence appears to have been recently obtained of a close relationship between the Lycians and the Greeks.

[716] Il. xii. 397-9.

The Trojan inferiority indeed lies very much more palpably in the chiefs, than in the common soldiers. Between the bulk of the army on the one side and on the other, Homer represents no great--at least no glaring difference. Sometimes the fight is carried on upon terms purely equal[717], as during the forenoon of the day in the Eleventh Book: where there is superiority, it is assigned to the Greeks[718] or to the Trojans[719], according as the exigencies of the poem may require. Still he contrives some note of difference so as to draw a line between the merit of the respective successes; thus, when the Trojans turn the Greeks to flight, there is commonly an intimation, in more or less general terms, of a divine agency stimulating them. Hostile weapons are indeed often turned aside on behalf of Greeks: but only in one instance, I think, do the Greeks derive decided advantage from a panic divinely inspired: it is when, in the Sixteenth Book, Jupiter instils into Hector the spirit of fear[720].

[717] Il. xi. 67-83.

[718] Ibid. 90.

[719] Il. viii. 336. xvi. 569. xvii. 596.

[720] Il. xvi. 656.

This absence of broad contrast between the two soldieries is in entire accordance with what we have seen reason to presume as to their composition; namely, that the rank and file on both sides was in all likelihood composed from kindred and Pelasgian races.

Yet a strong jealousy on behalf of his country is ever the predominant sentiment in the Poet’s mind; and accordingly he insinuates, with much art, suggestions which keep even the Trojan soldiery somewhat below the Greeks; while to the chieftains of the Greek army, though his laudatory epithets are nearly as high on the one side as on the other, he assigns in action an enormous superiority, both military and intellectual. Accordingly, when we come to cast up the results of the actual encounters, we are astounded at the littleness, the almost nothingness, of the Trojan achievements, and at the large havock wrought by their opponents, even during the period when Achilles was in estrangement[721].

[721] This would be best shown by a list of the considerable personages slain on the two sides respectively.

As regards the armies at large, observe the similes used in the Fourth Book[722]. The Greeks move in silence and discipline, like the swelling waves when the tempest is just beginning to gather: the Trojans, like innumerable sheep, who stand bleating in the fold while they are being milked[723]. In the Fifth Book, while it is mentioned, as if casually, that Apollo, Mars, and Eris, were stirring and keeping up the Trojans, it is subjoined, without ostensible reference to this intimation, but plainly in artful contrast with it, that the Greeks found sufficient incentives in the exhortations of the two Ajaxes, of Ulysses, and of Diomed[724]. Again, when Hector returns, after his battle with Ajax[725], to his comrades, we are told that they rejoiced in finding him restored to them in safety, contrary to their expectation, ἀέλπτοντες σόον εἶναι. On the other hand, it is added, the Greeks led Ajax to Agamemnon, exulting in his victory over Hector (κεχαρηότα νίκῃ). The Greeks feel no thankfulness, because they had, we are evidently to understand, felt no fear. And the chief rejoices in his victory, which it really was. It was, indeed, ended as a drawn battle, though Ajax had had the best of it at every stage; but not so much for the honour of Hector, as for the purposes of the poem, since Hector had to meet Achilles in the field, and he would have been degraded by encountering an antagonist that anybody else had palpably worsted. To state the paradox as Homer had to confront it, the problem was to make Ajax conqueror, without letting Hector be conquered.

[722] Ver. 421-38.

[723] Ver. 517-20.

[724] Il. v. 517-21.

[725] Il. vii. 307-12.

~_Inferiority glaring in the Chiefs._~

When we look to the case of the chieftains as a whole, the contrast is glaring. No first rate, or even second rate, Greek chieftain is ever killed in fair field: Tlepolemus, slain by Sarpedon, comes the nearest to that rank, but is not in it. Patroclus is only slain after being disarmed by Apollo: and here it seems to me as if for once the Poet had a little overshot his mark; for the artifice is gross, and covers the pretended exploit of Hector with indelible disgrace. In fact, Hector never once achieves a considerable success in the field: though only Achilles, the first Greek warrior, is allowed completely to overcome him[726], yet he is decidedly inferior in fight to both Diomed and Ajax, who jointly occupy the two next places, but as between whom Homer has not decisively marked the claim to precedence. In general terms, he gives it to Ajax more emphatically[727], but he details more and greater acts of prowess in favour of Diomed.

[726] Compare Il. ii. 768, with Il. v. 414.

[727] Il. xi. 185-209.

Even with Agamemnon Hector is admonished, on the part of Jupiter, not to contend: and he follows the advice. Of the Trojan chiefs who really fight, a large proportion are slain; Glaucus, Æneas, Deiphobus, and Polydamas are the most considerable who survive. No eminent Trojan in fact is ever allowed to display real heroism, except under circumstances where the issue is quite hopeless: accordingly Homer has never surrounded Hector with true heroic grandeur, in deed as well as word, until his final battle against Achilles, when he is at last brought to bay, and when his doom is certain. All the considerable injuries inflicted upon great Greek chieftains are from causes not implying personal prowess in their rivals: from the arrows of Pandarus or of Paris, or by the chance hit of some insignificant, or at the least secondary, but desperate Trojan, such as Socus, or such as Coon, struck even as he is himself receiving or about to receive his own death-blow[728]. But for these ignoble wounds, which were inflicted on many chiefs, including three prime heroes, Agamemnon, Diomed, and Ulysses, the Greeks, according to the agency of the poem as it stands, never would have been driven back upon their ships at all.

[728] Il. xi. 252, 437.

~_Conflicting exigencies of the plan._~

Now Homer’s difficulty in this matter was not simply that which has been heretofore pointed out, or which has been commonly supposed. His aim, says Heyne[729], in representing the disasters of the Greeks is, _ut per eas Achillis virtus insigniatur, quippe quâ destituti Achivi succumbunt, eâdem redditâ vincunt_. But this is surely a misstatement of the case. Homer has not represented the Greeks _plus_ Achilles as superior to the Trojans, and the Greeks _minus_ Achilles as inferior to them. This was what a vulgar artist, whose mind could only hold one idea at a time, would have done; nay, what it was difficult to avoid doing, for it was vital to Homer’s purpose that the vengeance of Achilles should be completely satiated: it was not to be thought of that this transcendent character, this ideal hero, should be balked by man of woman born; the whole web of the Poet’s thought would have been rent across, had there been failure in such a point. What was needful in this view could only be accomplished by the extremest calamities of the Greeks. These calamities he had to bring about, and yet to give to the Greeks a real superiority of military virtue. We have seen already how he effected the latter: how did he manage the former? Partly by giving Achilles, in right of his mother Thetis, such an interest in the courts of heaven, as to throw a preponderating divine agency for the time on the side of the Trojans; partly by a skilful use of the chances of war, in assigning to Troy a superiority in the comparatively ignoble skill (as it was then used) of the bow. Thus he causes the Greeks to be worsted, notwithstanding their superiority: by their being worsted, he satisfies the exigencies of his plot; by exhibiting their superiority, he fulfils the conditions of his own office as a national poet. To speak of the ingenuity of Homer may sound strange, for we are accustomed to associate his name with ideas of greater nobleness; but still his ingenuity, in this adjustment of conflicting demands upon him, appears to be such as has never been surpassed.

[729] Exc. ii. ad Il. xxiv. s. iv. vol. viii. p. 801. See, however, also p. 802.

~_Greeks superior even without Achilles._~

And here I, for one, cannot but admire the way in which Homer has made purposes, which others would have found conflicting, to serve as reciprocal auxiliaries. The Embassy of the Ninth Book certainly glorifies Achilles: but let us ask, does it not help also to glorify Greece? Let us consider what had happened. The withdrawal of Achilles was at once felt as a great blow; and it acted on the whole tone of the army. This appears in various ways. We read it in the home-sick impulses of the Second Assembly (b. ii.); in the advice of Nestor to take measures for securing the responsibility of officers and men (ii. 360-8); in the slackness of various chiefs during the Circuit of Agamemnon (b. iv.); in its being recorded to the honour of that leader (iv. 223) that he did not flinch from his duty; lastly, in the momentary reluctance of the Greek heroes to encounter Hector (vii. 93). All this is thoroughly natural. Having leant upon a prop, they were not at once aware of their remaining and intrinsic strength. They, like all persons who have not learned the habit of self-reliance, required to learn it with pain. Hence, after the very first touch of comparative weakness in the field, they conceive the idea of the rampart. They had not really been worsted: but their enemies had learned to face them; their position was now no longer what it had used to be, when Hector did not venture out in front of the Dardanian Gate. But the building of the rampart produced, as was natural, an increased weakness. Besides this, Jupiter, seeing that the tendency of events was not to give a sufficiently rapid and decisive triumph to Achilles, now inhibited those deities, who were friendly to Greece, from taking part, while he himself (viii. 75) alarmed and abashed the Greeks with his thunder. They thus feel themselves thrown one full stage further into weakness. What more natural, than that they should turn to Achilles, and try his disposition towards them? This is effected in the Ninth Book. They then become acquainted practically, for the first time, with the fierceness of the seven times heated furnace of the Wrath. This experience teaches them, that they must do or die. So at last, the bridge behind them being broken, Greece is put upon her mettle. The gallant Diomed becomes the spokesman at once of chivalry and of common sense. ‘You should not have asked him. By asking, you have emboldened and hardened him. Let him alone. Rely upon yourselves. Refresh yourselves with sleep and a good meal, and then, order out the troops, and have at them: I for my part will be found in the van[730].’ Then it is that the Greeks understand their position, and, casting off hope from Achilles, place it in themselves. Hence that great development of valorous energies in the Eleventh Book, which proves that in equal fight, even though Achilles were absent, Troy had not a hope: so that the expedient of chance-wounds, disabling all the prime warriors but Ajax, is absolutely necessary in order to bring about the required amount of disaster. It appears to me, I confess, that this is a masterly adjustment, alike true in nature, and high in art.

[730] Il. ix. 697-709.

But first, after the great repulse, comes the pilot-balloon, the tentative effort, of the Doloneia.

Next to the skill and power with which the Poet has discriminated the characters of his greater Greek heroes, I am tempted to admire the circumspection and precision, with which he has assigned their relative degrees of prominence in the action. To those who complain of the Doloneia for want of a purpose, I would reply that, in the first place, besides its merits as an operation with reference to the circumstances of the moment, (for it feeds the army, as it were, with milk, when they were not yet ready for strong meat,) it remarkably varies the tenour of the action, which without it would have fallen into something of sleepy sameness, by substituting stratagem for force, and night-adventure for the conflicts of the day. Let those who doubt this strike out the Tenth Book, and then consider how the course of the military transactions of the poem would stand without it: how much more justly the first moiety of the military action of the poem would stand liable to the imputation of monotony, which even now is of necessity the besetting danger of the whole poem. But more; I contend that the Doloneia constitutes, in the main, the ἀριστεῖα of Ulysses. His distinguished part in the Second Book is political only, and has no concern with his military qualifications. His ordinary military exploits elsewhere are secondary, and also scattered. To assign to him a great share in the field operations would have been a much less fine preparation, than the Iliad now affords, for his appearance in the Odyssey; and it would also have hazarded sameness as between his achievements and the other ἀριστεῖα of the great chiefs. Besides, there was little room in the field, as the martial art was then understood, for his distinctive qualities, self-reliance, presence of mind, fertility in resource. But military distinction, even in the time of Homer, lay in two great departments, one known as the fight (μάχη), the other as ambush (λόχος). The latter was of fully equal, nay, on account of its sharper trial of moral courage[731], it was even of still greater honour. To this class the night adventure essentially belonged. Here Ulysses is thoroughly at home. In the Doloneia, Diomed is merely the sword in the hand of Ulysses; who directs the operation, and overrules his brave companion when he thinks fit, as, for example, in the matter of the slaughter of Dolon. In what other way could Homer have given us an equally characteristic illustration of the military qualities of Ulysses?

[731] See Il. i. 226-8. xviii. 509-13. and especially xiii. 275-86: and Sup. Agorè, p. 92.

~_Harmony in relative prominence of the Chiefs._~

Now this view of the Doloneia fills up, I think, what must otherwise be admitted to be a gap in the poem. It being thus filled up, let us observe the accuracy with which shares in the action of the poem are assigned to the respective chiefs. Nestor has his own place apart as universal counsellor. Ulysses also, who, as the great twin conception to Achilles, must never be allowed to appear in a light of inferiority to any one, is so managed as not to eclipse the might of Ajax or the bravery of Diomed; and yet he has all his attributes kept entire for the great part he had to play in the Odyssey, and is never beaten, never baffled, never excelled. Then Ajax, Diomed, Agamemnon, Menelaus, even elderly Idomeneus, have each the stage made clear for them at different times, and with scope proportioned to their several claims upon us. The very intervals between their several appearances are made as wide as possible: for Diomed is in the Fifth and Eleventh Books, Ajax in the Seventh, Agamemnon in the Eleventh, Idomeneus in the Thirteenth[732], Menelaus in the Seventeenth. Ajax excels in sheer might, Diomed in pure gallantry of soul, and what is called _dash_; Agamemnon’s dignity as a warrior is most skilfully maintained, yet without his being brought into rivalry with those two still greater heroes, by Hector’s being counselled to avoid him. Menelaus, secondary in mere force, though with a spirit no less brave than gentle, is carried well through by the care taken that he shall only meet with appropriate adversaries, and the same pains are employed on behalf of Idomeneus. For Patroclus, as the friend and second self of Achilles, Homer’s fertile invention has secured a kind of distinction, which does not displace that of others, and which, notwithstanding, is eclipsed by none of them. He turns the Trojan host; he slays the great Sarpedon; he is himself slain only by foul play. I cannot vindicate the clumsy intervention of Apollo, and the meanness of the part played by Hector in this cardinal passage of his career; still I find it curious and instructive to observe in all this a new instance of the intense care, with which the Poet watches over the character especially of his Achilles. He exalts him, by exalting first those secondary eminences, far above which he keeps him towering. Therefore he would have Patroclus slain indeed, but not defeated, by Hector; and to this capital object he appears to have made, perhaps unavoidably, considerable sacrifices.

[732] He bears the chief part from 206. to 488.

Upon the whole, then, it would seem that Homer had to maintain a complex regard to a variety of objects. First of all there was the relation to observe between Achilles and all the other personages of his poem on both sides of the quarrel. Then in distributing his minor Alps, the other prime or distinguished Greek warriors, about this great Alp, he had to keep in mind and provide for their relations to one another, as well as to him. Lastly, he had to carry Hector and the Trojans so high, that to overcome their chief should be his crowning exploit, and yet so low, that they should not stand inconveniently between the Greeks and the view of such national heroes as Ulysses, Diomed, Ajax, and Agamemnon. Like Jupiter on Ida[733], from none of these objects has he ever removed his bright and watchful eye; for all of them he has made a provision alike deliberate and skilful.

[733] Il. xvi. 644.

It only remains to consider the outline of the plot in reference to the Providential Government of the world, and the administration of retributive justice; a subject which has been ably handled by Mr. Granville Penn[734].

[734] In his ‘Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad.’ Dedicated to Lord Grenville. 1821.

I am not able to admit that broad distinction, which is frequently drawn between the provision made for satisfying this great poetical and moral purpose in the Iliad and in the Odyssey respectively. In each I find it not only remarkable, but even elaborate. In each poem, Homer exhibits, above all things else, one chosen human character with the amplest development. But diversity is the key-note of the development in the Odyssey, grandeur or magnitude in the Iliad. The hurricane-like forces, that abound in the character of Achilles, entail a greater amount of aberration from the path of wisdom. But there is not wanting a proportionate retributive provision. Ulysses, after a long course of severe discipline patiently endured, has awarded to him a peaceful old age, and a calm death, in his Ithaca barren but beloved, with his people prospering around him. Achilles, on the other hand, is so loaded with gorgeous gifts that, wonderful as is their harmony in all points but one, that one is the centre. He has not the same unfailing and central solidity of moral equipoise. In himself gallant, just, generous, refined, still indignity can drive him into an extremity of pride and fierceness, which call for stern correction. Hence it comes about that, while the adversity of Ulysses is the way to peace, the transcendent glory of Achilles is attended by a series of devouring agonies; the rival excitements of fierce pain and fiercer pleasure accompany him along a path, which soon and suddenly descends into the night of dismal death. Alike in the one case and in the other, the balance of the moral order is preserved; and that Erinūs, who, in so many particular passages of the poems, makes miniature appearances in order to vindicate the eternal laws, such as the heroic age apprehended them, likewise presides in full development over the general action of each of these extraordinary poems.

~_Retributive justice in the two poems._~

Retributive justice, inseparably interwoven with human destiny (for thus much the Erinūs signified) tracks and dogs Achilles at every stage. Take him, for instance, as the Ninth Book shows him, at the very summit of his pride. It is in no light or joyous mood, that he repels the Envoys. Who among readers does not seem to _see_ his spirit writhe, when he describes the hot and bursting resentment in his breast, the stinging recollection of the outrages he has undergone[735]. Even by the irrepressible curiosity, which compels him to mount upon his ship for view, and to send out Patroclus to learn the course of the battle, Homer has shown us how false was any semblance of peace, that he could even now enjoy in his giddy elevation.

[735] Il. ix. 646-8.

The rampart is pierced, the ships are reached, the firebrand is hurled, and the first Greek ship burns. Achilles must not depart from his word: but his restlessness now conceives an expedient, the sending forth of Patroclus to the fight. At the same time, he takes every precaution that sagacity can suggest: he clothes his friend in his own armour, exhorts the Myrmidons to support him, above all enjoins him to confine himself to defensive warfare, and not to follow the Trojans, when repulsed, to the city. What then happens to him? That which often befalls ourselves: that when we have turned our back upon wisdom, wisdom turns her back upon us. Achilles insisted upon the disaster of his countrymen. When it came, it constrained him to send out his friend: and the calamity he had himself invoked was death to the man that he loved better than his own soul.

And why did Patroclus die? It was not that Achilles imprudently exposed him to risks beyond his strength. He was abundantly able to encounter Hector. Hector had no care, so long as the battle was by the ships, to encounter this chief. And Achilles had enjoined him to fight by the ships only, lest, if he attempted the city, a deity should take part against him[736]. Patroclus disobeyed, and perished accordingly. As Achilles had refused to follow the laws of wisdom for himself, so, when he carefully obeyed them, they were not to avail him for the saving of his friend. Heaven fought against Patroclus; Jupiter, after deliberation, tempted him from the ships, by causing Hector to fly towards the city; and the counsel of Achilles was now baffled as he had baffled the counsels of others, the dart was launched that was to pierce his soul to the quick.

[736] Il. xvi. 93.

~_Double conquest over Achilles._~

Thus his proud will was doomed to suffer. The suffering is followed by the reconciliation, and by the climax of his glory and revenge in the death of Hector. How in these Books we see him moving in might almost preternatural, with the whole world as it were, and all its forces, in subjection to his arm! But he has only passed from one excess of feeling into another: from a vindictive excess of feeling against the Greeks, to another vindictive excess of feeling against Hector. The mutilation and dishonour of the body of his slain antagonist now become a second idol, stirring the great deep of his passions, and bewildering his mind. Thus, in paying off his old debt to the eternal laws, he has already contracted a new one. Again, then, his proud will must be taught to bow. Hence, as Mr. Penn has well shown, the necessity of the Twenty-fourth Book with its beautiful machinery[737]. Achilles must surrender the darling object of his desire, the wreaking of his vengeance on an inanimate corpse. On this occasion, as before, he is subdued: and both times it is through the medium of his tender affections. But in both cases his evil gratification is cut short: and the authority of the providential order is reestablished. The Greeks pursue their righteous war: the respect which nature enjoins is duly paid to the remains of Hector, and the poem closes with the verse which assures us that this obligation was duly and peacefully discharged.

[737] See the ‘Primary Argument of the Iliad,’ pp. 241-73.

With these views, I find in the plot of the Iliad enough of beauty, order, and structure, not merely to sustain the supposition of its own unity, but to bear an independent testimony, should it be still needed, to the existence of a personal and individual Homer as its author.

SECT. II.

_The sense of Beauty in Homer; human, animal, and inanimate._

The idea of Beauty, especially as it is connected with its most signal known manifestation in the human form, and again the φθορὰ, or corruption of that idea, have each their separate course and history in the religion and manners, as well as in the arts, of Greece. By the idea of Beauty, I mean here the conception of it in the human mind as a pure and wonderful essence, nearly akin to the Divine; derived from heaven, and both continually and spontaneously tending to revert to its source. By the corruption of that idea, I mean the conception of it either mainly or wholly with reference to animal enjoyment; sometimes within, and sometimes beyond, the laws of Nature.

In the works of Homer, we find the first of these conceptions exceedingly prominent and powerful. It approaches almost to a worship: and yet is scarcely at all tainted with the second, scarcely presents the smallest deflection from the very loftiest type. In Homer, that is to say, in the Homeric descriptions of human characters and life, we never find Beauty and Vice pleasurably associated: he seems to have felt in the sanctuary of his mind as much at least as this, if not more; that a derogation from purity involved of itself a descent from the highest to a lower form of beauty: and therefore he never associates his highest descriptions of beauty with vice: differing in this not only from so many heathen, but even from many Christian authors.

~_The Dardanid traditions._~

But yet it is most remarkable that, even in Homer’s time, the level of popular tradition on the subject of beauty had begun to descend, and though he had escaped the taint, yet it had touched his age. Let us, for example, take that most striking series of traditions in the Dardanian royal family, which are recorded in the poems of Homer. That family appears to have had personal beauty for an almost entailed inheritance. Not only Hector, Deiphobus, Æneas, as well as Paris, possessed it, but Priam, even in his old age and affliction, was divinely beautiful as he entered the apartment of Achilles; and, as they sat at meat, and he admired Achilles, Achilles returned his admiration[738].

[738] Il. xxiv. 483, 631. Sup. Ilios, p. 216.

The line of traditions in this family, to which I now refer, affords the best illustration of the idea of beauty as ever striving, by an inner law, to rise to a heavenly life. There are four of these traditions: and as we pass from the older to the more recent, at each step that we make, we lose some grain of the first ethereal purity. The earliest of them all is the translation, since coarsely and without ground called the rape, of Ganymede: consistently indeed so called, according to the idea of the fable which has prevailed in later ages, but most absurdly, if it be applied to the tradition in the shape in which it stands with Homer. With him the tale of Ganymede is the most simple and perfect assertion of the principle that beauty, heavenly in its origin, is heavenly also in its destiny; and that the heaven-born and heaven-bound should contract no taint upon its intermediate passage. There were three sons, says Homer, born to Tros; Ilus was one, Assaracus another: and the third was Ganymede, a match for gods. Ganymede, the most beauteous of men, whom, for his beauty, and seemingly before he had come to maturity for succession, the gods snatched up and made the cupbearer of Jupiter, that he might dwell for ever among the Immortals[739]:

[739] Il. xx. 233-5.

ὃς δὴ κάλλιστος γένετο θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων·
τὸν καὶ ἀνηρείψαντο θεοὶ Διὶ οἰνοχοεύειν
κάλλεος εἵνεκα οἷο, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη.

The idea of sanctity, indeed, is not to be discovered here; its traces can only be found among the inspired records; the resemblance to the deity does not reach beyond the flesh and mind; yet the sum of the tale is full of interest. The other sons grew up, and became kings; he, that he might not linger, might not suffer, might not contract taint or undergo decay on earth, was taken up to that sphere, which is the proper home of all things beautiful and good.

The thought is somewhat related to that of the following remarkable lines by Emerson:

Perchance not he, but nature ailed;
The world, and not the infant, failed.
It was not ripe yet to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own:
And pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.
_His beauty once their beauty tried;
They could not feed him, and he died,_
And wandered backward, as in scorn,
To wait an Æon to be born.

Far as the tradition of Ganymede, according to Homer, is below that of Enoch, it is set by a yet wider distance above the later version of the same tale. Thus, in Euripides, we find him the Διὸς λέκτρων τρύφημα φίλον (Iph. Aul. 1037): and what is more sad is to find, that this utterly debased and depressed idea prevailed over the original and pure one, even to its extinction, and was adopted and propagated by the highest and the lowest poets of the Italian romance[740].

[740] For example, we might quote the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto; and the very vulgar poet, Forteguerra, in the Ricciardetto, vi. 23: