The Iliad
[100] “Say first, for heav’n hides nothing from thy view.”—“Paradise
Lost,” i. 27.
“Ma di’ tu, Musa, come i primi danni
Mandassero à Cristiani, e di quai parti:
Tu ’l sai; ma di tant’ opra a noi si lunge
Debil aura di fama appena giunge.”—“Gier. Lib.” iv. 19.
[101] “The Catalogue is, perhaps, the portion of the poem in favour of
which a claim to separate authorship has been most plausibly urged.
Although the example of Homer has since rendered some such formal
enumeration of the forces engaged, a common practice in epic poems
descriptive of great warlike adventures, still so minute a statistical
detail can neither be considered as imperatively required, nor perhaps
such as would, in ordinary cases, suggest itself to the mind of a
poet. Yet there is scarcely any portion of the Iliad where both
historical and internal evidence are more clearly in favour of a
connection from the remotest period, with the remainder of the work.
The composition of the Catalogue, whensoever it may have taken place,
necessarily presumes its author’s acquaintance with a previously
existing Iliad. It were impossible otherwise to account for the
harmony observable in the recurrence of so vast a number of proper
names, most of them historically unimportant, and not a few altogether
fictitious: or of so many geographical and genealogical details as are
condensed in these few hundred lines, and incidentally scattered over
the thousands which follow: equally inexplicable were the pointed
allusions occurring in this episode to events narrated in the previous
and subsequent text, several of which could hardly be of traditional
notoriety, but through the medium of the Iliad.”—Mure, “Language and
Literature of Greece,” vol. i. p. 263.
[102] _Twice Sixty:_ “Thucydides observes that the Bœotian vessels,
which carried one hundred and twenty men each, were probably meant to
be the largest in the fleet, and those of Philoctetes, carrying fifty
each, the smallest. The average would be eighty-five, and Thucydides
supposes the troops to have rowed and navigated themselves; and that
very few, besides the chiefs, went as mere passengers or landsmen. In
short, we have in the Homeric descriptions the complete picture of an
Indian or African war canoe, many of which are considerably larger
than the largest scale assigned to those of the Greeks. If the total
number of the Greek ships be taken at twelve hundred, according to
Thucydides, although in point of fact there are only eleven hundred
and eighty-six in the Catalogue, the amount of the army, upon the
foregoing average, will be about a hundred and two thousand men. The
historian considers this a small force as representing all Greece.
Bryant, comparing it with the allied army at Platae, thinks it so
large as to prove the entire falsehood of the whole story; and his
reasonings and calculations are, for their curiosity, well worth a
careful perusal.”—Coleridge, p. 211, sq.
[103] The mention of Corinth is an anachronism, as that city was
called Ephyre before its capture by the Dorians. But Velleius, vol. i.
p. 3, well observes, that the poet would naturally speak of various
towns and cities by the names by which they were known in his own
time.
[104] “Adam, the goodliest man of men since born, His sons, the
fairest of her daughters Eve.’—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 323.
[105] _Æsetes’ tomb_. Monuments were often built on the sea-coast, and
of a considerable height, so as to serve as watch-towers or land
marks. See my notes to my prose translations of the “Odyssey,” ii. p.
21, or on Eur. “Alcest.” vol. i. p. 240.
[106] _Zeleia_, another name for Lycia. The inhabitants were greatly
devoted to the worship of Apollo. See Muller, “Dorians,” vol. i. p.
248.
[107] _Barbarous tongues_. “Various as were the dialects of the
Greeks—and these differences existed not only between the several
tribes, but even between neighbouring cities—they yet acknowledged in
their language that they formed but one nation were but branches of
the same family. Homer has ‘men of other tongues:’ and yet Homer had
no general name for the Greek nation.”—Heeren, “Ancient Greece,”
Section vii. p. 107, sq.
[108] _The cranes_.
“Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes
Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried:
And each with outstretch’d neck his rank maintains,
In marshall’d order through th’ ethereal void.”
Lorenzo de Medici, in Roscoe’s Life, Appendix.
See Cary’s Dante: “Hell,” canto v.
[109] _Silent, breathing rage._
“Thus they,
Breathing united force with fixed thought,
Moved on in silence.”
“Paradise Lost,” book i. 559.
[110] “As when some peasant in a bushy brake
Has with unwary footing press’d a snake;
He starts aside, astonish’d, when he spies
His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes”
Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 510.
[111] Dysparis, _i.e._ unlucky, ill fated, Paris. This alludes to the
evils which resulted from his having been brought up, despite the
omens which attended his birth.
[112] The following scene, in which Homer has contrived to introduce
so brilliant a sketch of the Grecian warriors, has been imitated by
Euripides, who in his “Phoenissae” represents Antigone surveying the
opposing champions from a high tower, while the paedagogus describes
their insignia and details their histories.
[113] _No wonder_, &c. Zeuxis, the celebrated artist, is said to have
appended these lines to his picture of Helen, as a motto. Valer Max.
iii. 7.
[114] The early epic was largely occupied with the exploits and
sufferings of women, or heroines, the wives and daughters of the
Grecian heroes. A nation of courageous, hardy, indefatigable women,
dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary
intercourse, for the purpose of renovating their numbers, burning out
their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow
freely; this was at once a general type, stimulating to the fancy of
the poet, and a theme eminently popular with his hearers. We find
these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and
universally accepted as past realities in the Iliad. When Priam wishes
to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever
found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phrygia,
on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the
formidable Amazons. When Bellerophon is to be employed in a deadly and
perilous undertaking, by those who prudently wished to procure his
death, he is despatched against the Amazons.—Grote, vol. i p. 289.
[115] _Antenor_, like Æneas, had always been favourable to the
restoration of Helen. Liv 1. 2.
[116]
“His lab’ring heart with sudden rapture seized
He paus’d, and on the ground in silence gazed.
Unskill’d and uninspired he seems to stand,
Nor lifts the eye, nor graceful moves the hand:
Then, while the chiefs in still attention hung,
Pours the full tide of eloquence along;
While from his lips the melting torrent flows,
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.
Now stronger notes engage the listening crowd,
Louder the accents rise, and yet more loud,
Like thunders rolling from a distant cloud.”
Merrick’s “Tryphiodorus,” 148, 99.
[117] Duport, “Gnomol. Homer,” p. 20, well observes that this
comparison may also be sarcastically applied to the _frigid_ style of
oratory. It, of course, here merely denotes the ready fluency of
Ulysses.
[118] _Her brothers’ doom_. They perished in combat with Lynceus and
Idas, whilst besieging Sparta. See Hygin. Poet Astr. 32, 22. Virgil
and others, however, make them share immortality by turns.
[119] Idreus was the arm-bearer and charioteer of king Priam, slain
during this war. Cf. Æn, vi. 487.
[120] _Scæa’s gates_, rather _Scæan gates_, _i.e._ the left-hand
gates.
[121] This was customary in all sacrifices. Hence we find Iras
descending to cut off the hair of Dido, before which she could not
expire.
[122] _Nor pierced_.
“This said, his feeble hand a jav’lin threw,
Which, flutt’ring, seemed to loiter as it flew,
Just, and but barely, to the mark it held,
And faintly tinkled on the brazen shield.”
Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 742.
[123] _Reveal’d the queen_.
“Thus having said, she turn’d and made appear
Her neck refulgent and dishevell’d hair,
Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach’d the ground,
And widely spread ambrosial scents around.
In length of train descends her sweeping gown;
And, by her graceful walk, the queen of love is known.”
Dryden’s Virgil, i. 556.
[124] _Cranae’s isle, i.e._ Athens. See the “Schol.” and Alberti’s
“Hesychius,” vol. ii. p. 338. This name was derived from one of its
early kings, Cranaus.
[125] _The martial maid_. In the original, “Minerva Alalcomeneis,”
_i.e. the defender_, so called from her temple at Alalcomene in
Bœotia.
[126] “Anything for a quiet life!”
[127] —_Argos_. The worship of Juno at Argos was very celebrated in
ancient times, and she was regarded as the patron deity of that city.
Apul. Met., vi. p. 453; Servius on Virg. Æn., i. 28.
[128] —_A wife and sister_.
“But I, who walk in awful state above
The majesty of heav’n, the sister-wife of Jove.”
Dryden’s “Virgil,” i. 70.
So Apuleius, _l. c._ speaks of her as “Jovis germana et conjux, and so
Horace, Od. iii. 3, 64, “conjuge me Jovis et sorore.”
[129]
“Thither came Uriel, gleaming through the even
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star
In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired
Impress the air, and shows the mariner
From what point of his compass to beware
Impetuous winds.”
—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 555.
[130] _Æsepus’ flood_. A river of Mysia, rising from Mount Cotyius, in
the southern part of the chain of Ida.
[131] _Zelia_, a town of Troas, at the foot of Ida.
[132] _Podaleirius_ and _Machäon_ are the leeches of the Grecian army,
highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical
renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the
Iliou Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in
surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and
appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the
glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of
Ajax.
“Galen appears uncertain whether Asklepius (as well as Dionysus)
was originally a god, or whether he was first a man and then became
afterwards a god; but Apollodorus professed to fix the exact date
of his apotheosis. Throughout all the historical ages the
descendants of Asklepius were numerous and widely diffused. The
many families or gentes, called Asklepiads, who devoted themselves
to the study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt
near the temples of Asklepius, whither sick and suffering men came
to obtain relief—all recognized the god not merely as the object of
their common worship, but also as their actual progenitor.”—Grote
vol. i. p. 248.
[133]
“The plant she bruises with a stone, and stands
Tempering the juice between her ivory hands
This o’er her breast she sheds with sovereign art
And bathes with gentle touch the wounded part
The wound such virtue from the juice derives,
At once the blood is stanch’d, the youth revives.”
“Orlando Furioso,” book 1.
[134] _Well might I wish._
“Would heav’n (said he) my strength and youth recall,
Such as I was beneath Praeneste’s wall—
Then when I made the foremost foes retire,
And set whole heaps of conquer’d shields on fire;
When Herilus in single fight I slew,
Whom with three lives Feronia did endue.”
Dryden’s Virgil, viii. 742.
[135] _Sthenelus_, a son of Capaneus, one of the Epigoni. He was one