The World of Homer
German who, in search of discrepancies, had been "nosing the body" of
Homer "with passionate attention."
Now an error cannot be blazingly flagrant, nor vociferously crying,
if it escapes a hundred generations of hearers, readers, Pisistratean
"recensors," and Alexandrian and modern Editors. Moreover, if the
Greek recensors laboured to harmonise old and new by skilfully
interwoven cross-references (and the critics tell us that they did),
"how," as Miss Stawell asks, "did it ever happen that the gross blots
were allowed to enter or remain?" That _this_ blunder was allowed to
remain, unnoted and unrebuked, till about 1840 A.D., proves beyond
contradiction that, at least, it is not "flagrant"; does not resemble
the appearance of Duncan in Act V. of _Macbeth_, when "after life's
fitful fever he sleeps well," in Act III. Mr. Leaf only shows us how
far a passion for discovering discrepancies, if not early checked, may
hurry the learned.
Again, if Homer's blunder were as glaring as the forgetfulness by the
author of _Macbeth_ that Duncan had been murdered, it is unlikely that,
by "Bergk, Hentze, Monro, and Lang," to quote Mr. Leaf, Homer would be
pronounced innocent.[8]
We have "weakened some of the chief arguments stated by Grote," that is
admitted, "yet their general force is unshaken." How this can possibly
be, if Grote's chief arguments are sensibly weakened, does not appear;
for the general force must be shaken when some of the chief arguments
which make up that force are impaired.
Grote's chief argument is that the poet who composed Books xi.-xvi.
"could not have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth
Book,--the out-pouring of profound humiliation by the Greeks, and from
Agamemnon specially, before Achilles, coupled with formal offers to
restore Briseis, and pay the amplest compensation for past wrong. The
words of Achilles (not less than those of Patroclus and Nestor), in the
eleventh and the following Books, plainly imply that the humiliation
of the Greeks before him, for which he thirsts, is as yet future and
contingent."[9]
Here Grote and his followers appear to forget that, from the very
first, in Book i., the heart of Achilles was set on _revenge_, and
on one definitely stated form of revenge, and _not_ on atonement. On
this point Grote had not Book i. present in _his_ mind: he says that
Achilles asks no more from Thetis, nor Thetis anything more from Zeus,
than that "the Greeks may be brought to know the wrong they have done,
and be humbled in the dust in expiation of it." This is an egregiously
absurd misstatement! It seems that the great historian forgot to verify
his reference, with the usual result, a misstatement of fact as the
basis of a charge of discrepancy. What Achilles bids Thetis ask from
Zeus is, "_hem the Achaeans among their ships' sterns about the bay_,
that they may make trial of their king...."[10] Achilles does desire
the humiliation of Agamemnon, but that humiliation must arise from a
massacre of the Greeks _among their ships' sterns_; and from their
prospect of annihilation.
Already, to Agamemnon, during the quarrel in Book i., Achilles had said
that his day will come "when multitudes fall dying before manslaying
Hector."[11] In the state of affairs in Book ix. no great multitudes
have fallen before Hector. Zeus again, in Book viii., promises to
fulfil the desire of Achilles to the letter. "Headlong Hector shall
not refrain from battle till that Peleus' son shall have arisen beside
the ships, on that day _when these shall fight amid the sterns in
most grievous stress around Patroclus fallen. Such is the doom of
heaven_."[12] Achilles cannot be reconciled and take arms till the doom
is fulfilled.
Not only does Homer keep the prayer of Achilles in Book i. constantly
in view till it is accomplished in Book xv., but after its
accomplishment he returns to and insists on the fulfilment by Zeus of
this rash prayer. The whole burden of the _Iliad_ rests on this prayer
of Book i., and in its disastrous consequences not only to the host,
but to Achilles. In Book xvi. 97-100, a part of the _genuine kernel_,
Homer makes the last words that Achilles ever spoke to Patroclus
express a fury of revenge which Nemesis could not pardon.
"Would, O Father Zeus, and Athene, and Apollo, would that not one of
all the Trojans might escape death, nor one of the Argives, but that
we twain might avoid destruction, that alone we might undo the sacred
coronal of Troy."
This is the very extreme of pride and passion, an extreme which Greek
thought regarded as entailing its own inevitable punishment. Achilles,
when the news of the death of Patroclus reaches him, recognises this.
Thetis says, "My child, why weepest thou?... One thing at least hath
been accomplished of Zeus according to the prayer thou madest ... that
the sons of the Achaeans should all be pent in at the ships, through
lack of thee, and should suffer hateful things."
Achilles answers, "My mother, that prayer hath the Olympian
accomplished for me. But what delight have I therein, since Patroclus
is dead?"[13] Observe that the critics, and even Miss Stawell, think
Achilles too sweet to refuse atonement in Book ix. There is not much
sweetness of soul in his furious desire for the complete destruction of
the Greeks in his very last words to his friend in Book xvi.
Thus, from first to last, Achilles asks nothing less than what Zeus,
in Book viii., just prior to the impeached Book ix., declares that
he shall receive,--the massacre of the Achaeans among the sterns of
their ships. Grote has misstated the facts of the case. He represents
that the Embassy of Book ix. offered Achilles all his heart's desire.
This they did not and could not do, they had not been slain among the
ships; they had not been put in deadly stress; and Achilles would be
inconsistent if he accepted atonement before he got revenge, before
instant ruin was upon the Achaeans. "Agamemnon," says Achilles in
Book ix., "shall not persuade me" (by gifts richer than he offers),
"_till he have paid me back all the bitter despite_."[14] A payment
in gold and lands and women Achilles disdains: he will not take it
till he has a payment in revenge. This he has insisted on in Book i.,
this Zeus has promised in Book viii., and this inexorableness is the
sin and stumbling-block of Achilles. Customary law and public opinion
acknowledged his right to apology and atonement, but condemned his
insistence, after these had been duly offered, on a bloody revenge.
All the world recognised the facts before Grote went hunting for
discrepancies, and bagged the greatest of all,--which is no discrepancy!
The whole story, including Book ix., is absolutely consistent. Grote
argued that Agamemnon, by his offers, had done all that was necessary.
He _had_, according to customary law; but Achilles had set his heart,
in Book i. as in Book ix., on much more, on "a contented revenge." In
Book ix. he had not enjoyed his revenge, and he said as much. Had he
yielded in Book ix., the prophecy of Zeus in Book viii. would have been
falsified;[15] the doom of Zeus would have been frustrated; the bitter
word of Achilles would have been broken; he would have deserved no
heart-breaking disaster. Grote sees nothing of all this, nor do his
followers.
When Agamemnon sent his embassy with apologies and offers of atonement
to Achilles, in Book ix., the Achaeans had not been punished as
Achilles, from the first, expressed his desire to see them smitten.
Diomedes had shore in the day of his valour, his _aristeia_; Hector had
the worse in his passage-of-arms with Aias; Hera and Athene had abetted
the Trojans; and though they camped in the plain, they had not smitten
the foe "by the prows of the ships"; nor were they even likely to do
so, for the Achaeans had built the wall and dug the trench around the
ships. Therefore the demand of Achilles was not yet granted; and though
Agamemnon abjectly implored forgiveness and offered the customary
atonement, _that_ was not what Achilles wanted. He spurns the gifts,
and repeats the whole long story of his wrongs.[16] Agamemnon, he says,
_has a ceaseless grudge against him_: the king's submission is merely
hypocritical, and Achilles declines to be deceived. "Let him not tempt
me, who know him too well; he will not persuade me"[17] "His gifts
are hateful to me"; not for ten times these gifts will Achilles be
reconciled, till he has glutted his revenge.
The long speech of Phoenix[18] partly mollifies him, and, in place of
persisting in his intention to sail homewards at once, he tells Aias
that he will not fight till Hector comes, slaying the Argives, even to
the ships of the Myrmidons.[19] This is an advance even on his demand
in Book i. In short, Achilles abides by his determination as announced
to his mother in the first Book of the _Iliad_, and goes further. He is
consistent.
To this resolve, and to his plighted word (for he "hated a liar as
the gates of Hades"), Achilles is as constant as the _fond_ of his
character--an unexampled tenderness--permitted him to be. This
tenderness of the fierce hero who, in grief, cries to his mother
like a child; who, in the height of his passion, compares his own
labours for the Achaeans to those of "the hen-bird that brings to her
unfledged chickens whatsoever morsel she may find, and it goes hard
with herself";[20] who likens the suppliant Patroclus to "the little
girl that, running beside her mother, and catching at her skirts, cries
to be taken up in her arms"; and who gives quarter to fallen foes,
distinguishes Achilles. The contrast between this emotion and his
pride and later ferocity makes his character; and his chivalry shines
out most clearly in his reception of Priam, which is declared to be
un-Homeric! The triumph of his fierce pride over his tenderness, when
he refuses the gifts in Book ix., is the ἁμάρτημα, the sin or blot on a
noble character, which is the keynote, or pivot, of Greek tragedy (as
in the _Oedipous Tyrannos_), and of the _Iliad_.
Remove Book ix., and Achilles is no longer himself, there is no motived
tragedy, and the supposed primal kernel, the fancied _Achilleid_
(wherein atonement is not offered or refused), is a poem without a
motive. The heart of Achilles is to be broken by the loss of Patroclus,
though, according to the ideas of the age, he has committed no wrong;
he has renounced his allegiance when he had a right to renounce it till
he had received atonement for an intolerable injustice.
Grote did not think himself back into the legal and ethical atmosphere
of Homeric life; he and his followers have failed to understand the
moral centre of the tragedy, the ἁμάρτημα, the sin of Achilles. In
place of doing that they have found the great discrepancy, exactly
where they should have found the central situation and turning point of
the epic. It has, in Aristotelian phrase, "a beginning, a middle, and
an end." Book ix. is the middle. The critics excise it!
Grote works out his discovery thus, and in answering him we answer
his contemporary followers. Achilles, in Book xi., sees the rout of
the Achaeans, and sees Nestor conveying a wounded comrade to the
rear. Achilles says to Patroclus (xi. 608), "_Now_ methinks that the
Achaeans will stand about my knees, praying to me, _for need no longer
endurable is coming upon them"_ That is, he will soon get the terms
which he has from the first demanded, revenge, and, _following perfect
revenge_, the humiliation of the Achaeans. Grote says that Heyne "not
unnaturally asks, 'had Achilles repented of his previous harshness
to the embassy,' in Book ix., 'or was he arrogant enough to expect a
second embassy'? I answer, 'Neither one nor the other: the words imply
that he had received _no embassy at all_.'" Therefore Book ix. is a