The World of Homer
later interpolation.
It follows that the great poet of Book ix., who so consistently
maintains the attitude taken by Achilles in Book i. 408-410, where the
hero demands the slaughter of the Achaeans among their ships,[21] now
unscrupulously throws over and destroys the work of his still greater
predecessor. Here is indeed a matchless discrepancy in human nature!
As I understand the words of Achilles (xi. 608, 610), he is joyously
anticipating the moment when "need no longer endurable" will come on
the host. In Book ix. their necessity, as we have demonstrated, had not
reached the point which, in Books i. and ix., he had demanded. Hector
has not yet reached the ships, not yet do the Achaeans know fully
"what manner of king they have" in his enemy, Agamemnon. Doubtless
they will again beseech Achilles: they have done that already, but
they have not yet suffered as he will have them suffer. There is here
extreme consistency, not impossible inconsistency. Achilles retains the
position which he took up in Book i.
Grote pursues his theory to Book xvi., where Patroclus comes with news
that the Trojans are slaying _around the ships_, and that Agamemnon,
Diomedes, Odysseus, and Eurypylus are wounded and out of action. As
Achilles (Book ix.) has vowed not to fight till Hector attacks his own
ships, Patroclus asks to be permitted to lead the Myrmidons into fight.
Achilles replies by rehearsing all his wrongs, and then says, "But let
bygones be bygones ... verily I said that my wrath would not slacken
one whit till the battle and the cry came to my own ships; but do
_thou_ put on my armour and lead the Myrmidons."[22]
He thus recalls his vow in Book ix., or rather, while keeping to the
letter of it, he makes a concession in the spirit: he is sated: what
he asked for in Book i. he has received in Book xvi. So the poet of
Book xvi. had Book ix. before him. The Achaeans are dying around the
ships, but till Hector approaches his own ships he will not fight
in person. So he had vowed in Book ix. There is stern consistency,
not discrepancy; but Grote finds inconsistency by agreeing with the
Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting "_ἔφην γε_" (in its primary sense,
"I said") "as equivalent to 'I thought' (διενοήθην), not as referring
to any express antecedent declaration."[23] Mr. Leaf agrees, and
thinks that the declaration of Achilles in Book ix. 650 "may well have
been suggested by this very phrase." This very phrase may therefore,
confessedly, mean that Achilles _did_ make an express declaration;
and we have every right so to understand it. If we do, the supposed
discrepancy vanishes. If we do not, we must suppose the poet of Book
ix. to have been at once most scrupulously attentive to the words of
his predecessor,--the author of Book i., of Book viii., and of the
opening of Book xvi.--and at the same time absolutely regardless of
that minstrel in the most important point. We only shift the insane
error from one great poet to another.
Meanwhile Grote says that the poet of Book xi. _et seqq_. "could not
have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth Book, the
embassy, and its offers of atonement."[24]
Next, in xvi. lines 72, 73, Achilles says that the Achaeans would
not be in such straits "if Agamemnon had been but kindly disposed to
me." But, in Book ix., says Grote, Agamemnon was more than kindly,
he offered to pay any price for reconciliation. So Achilles himself
admitted in Book ix. Agamemnon would pay any price, but Achilles
regarded this as mere hypocrisy: he would not believe that Agamemnon
was "favourably disposed" in his heart. "He shall not deceive me, shall
not persuade me." The poet has anticipated Grote's objection, but Grote
does not understand.
Achilles is not really in heart reconciled to Agamemnon, even after he
consents to take the gifts; is not reconciled till after the funeral
games for Patroclus. At _this_ moment (xvi. 77) Achilles speaks of
Agamemnon as "hateful."
In xvi. 83-86, to copy Grote's paraphrase, Achilles says to Patroclus,
"Obey my words, so that you may procure for me honour and glory _from
the body of the Greeks_, and that they may send back to me the damsel,
giving me ample presents besides...."
Grote has oddly misunderstood the whole story. He says, "The ninth Book
_has actually_ tendered to Achilles everything he demands and even
more." Now Achilles had demanded only the massacre of the Greeks at the
ships, and then recognition of what kind of king they have. In what
passage does Achilles demand anything else? In none till, in Book xvi.
84, 85, he bids Patroclus fight, when he himself will receive Briseis
and fair gifts: his revenge he has already enjoyed, but Phoenix had
warned him that he would be dishonoured if he fought without receiving
atonement.
Grote, in the spirit of his school, rejects later allusions to the
offered atonement of Book ix. as interpolations thrust in for the
sake of restoring harmony. Yet the cunning interpolators allowed the
Great Discrepancy to stand! If we may reject whatever lines destroy
our theory, criticism is an idle game of contradictory conjectures,
each inquirer discerning interpolations in all passages that ruin his
favourite hypothesis. After all Grote concludes, "The poem consists of
a part original and other parts superadded; yet it is certainly not
impossible that the author of the former may himself have composed the
latter." If so, "the poet ... has not thought fit to recast the parts
and events in such manner as to impart to the whole a pervading thread
of _consensus_ and organisation such as we see in the _Odyssey_."[25]
Thus the poet did not mind a ghastly discrepancy.
I trust that all who have not invincible prepossessions will see that
Book ix. is not only consistent with Books xi. and xvi., but is the
very _clou_ of the _Iliad_, without which Achilles is not himself, and
the _Achilleid_ would have been a purposeless tragedy. This opinion is
not based on aesthetic and literary criticism alone, but on the actual
ideas about allegiance, the wrongs done by the Over Lord, the rights of
the injured vassal, and the rules concerning atonement which pervade
the _Iliad_. As in all such early societies, a man was dishonoured if
he forgave a wrong without receiving atonement; and was blamed if, like
Achilles, he refused atonement when it was offered with due ceremonial.
Even if students, under the suggestion of Grote, fail to accept my view
that Book ix. is no discrepancy, but contains the central moment, and,
as Phoenix's words in that Book prove, the _motif_ of the tragedy of
Achilles--"he who refuses the prayers of the penitent may fall and
pay the price" (ix. 512), I trust that, at least, I have proved that
the discrepancy is not "flagrant" and "crying," and an infallible proof
of late interpolation.
It is not necessary for me to repeat my unanswered criticisms, in
_Homer and the Epic_, of many alleged discrepancies. If I have
succeeded in showing that the three most flagrant inconsistencies are
not inconsistent, it is easy to imagine how innocent are most of the
other inculpated passages.
One may be noted. In _Iliad_, xviii. 446-452, Thetis, who has gone to
ask Hephaestus to make armour for her son, explains the causes of his
mutiny. "And the princes (_γέροντες_) of the Argives entreated him, and
told over many noble gifts. Then albeit he refused to ward destruction
from them, he put his armour on Patroclus and sent him to the war." The
gifts were offered "while Achilles in grief wasted his heart, while the
men of Troy were driving the Achaeans on their ships, nor suffered them
to come forth."
The gifts were offered, in fact, when the Greeks had found it necessary
to fortify their camp, purposing to act on the defensive; and Achilles
did not send out Patroclus in consequence of the offer of gifts.
Absorbed in her own grief for her son, whom she will never welcome
home ("excited," as Miss Stawell says), Thetis has avoided the point
of the question of Hephaestus, "Why hast thou come hither?" and poured
forth her own lament (430-441). "Homer," says the Scholiast, "renders
the nature of woman, she does not answer the question put to her, but
dilates on her own sorrow." Then she hurriedly and confusedly describes
the past events, hastening to her request that the god will make arms
for her Achilles. As Mr. Leaf writes, "Though the reference (450, 451)
does not give the whole course of events, it is near enough--there is
only omission, not misstatement." To myself the speech of Thetis seems
exactly what a distraught mother in a hurry would be apt to make.
But Mr. Verrall takes it as proof positive that "a new hand" is at
work, the new hand who invented "The Making of the Armour." _He_--the
new hand--is in even a greater hurry, and is much more distraught than
poor Thetis, it seems to me; but then Mr. Verrall observes he did
not mean his story of the armour "for a continuation of the other's,
otherwise he would have told the previous incident as he found it."
Finally, some one, some time, for some reason--person, time, and reason
being all equally unknown--"takes the "Sending of Patroclus" from one
version and the "Making of the Armour" from another, and combines
without reconciling them."[26]
Here Mr. Verrall differs from Mr. Leaf, while we take it that
Homer makes a grief-distraught mother in a hurry speak like a
grief-distraught and hurried mother.
But Homer, where there is a doubt, never gets the benefit of the doubt.
[1] July 1908, pp. 75, 76.
[2] _Homer and his Age_, p. 250.
[3] Mr. Leaf's version, Lang, Leaf, and Myers.
[4] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 256.
[5] See chapter on "Homeric Religion."
[6] _Iliad_, vi. 123-129.
[7] _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 153.
[8] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 370.
[9] Grote, _History of Greece_, vol. ii., 1869, pp. 179-183.
[10] _Iliad_, i. 409, 410.
[11] i. 240 ff.
[12] _Iliad_, viii. 473-475.
[13] xviii. 73-80.
[14] _Iliad_, ix. 380-387.
[15] The words of Zeus in Book viii. will be explained as a late
insertion, to harmonise old and new. If so, why did the harmoniser
leave the flagrant discrepancy uncorrected?
[16] _Iliad_, ix. 315-343.
[17] ix. 434 ff.
[18] ix. 345, 375. 376.
[19] ix. 6502.
[20] _Iliad_, ix. 323.
[21] Cf. Book ix. 650-655.
[22] Book xvi. 60-65.
[23] Grote, vol. ii. p. 179, note I on p. 180.
[24] Grote, vol. ii. pp. 179, 180.
[25] Grote, vol. ii. p. 202.
[26] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, pp. 64-66.
CHAPTER XX
CONCLUSIONS
As much of this treatise is occupied with criticism of the views of
the most modern representatives of the Wolfian school, I ought, in
fairness, to state my own general conclusions. I am led to suppose that
the _Iliad_ is a work of one brief period, because, as has been shown,
it bears all the notes of one age; and is absolutely free from the
most marked traits of religion, rites, society, and superstition that
characterise the preceding Aegean, and the later "Dipylon," Ionian,
Archaic, and historic periods in Greek life and art.
Again, I believe that the _Iliad_ is, in the main, the work of a
single poet. To that conclusion I am led partly by the unity of the
thought, temper, character, and _ethos_ of both epics; partly by the
perfect consistency in the drawing, throughout, of multitudes of
characters, all conceived with as much delicacy as firmness. It is to
me inconceivable that a number of poets should have developed, with
such perfect consistency and with such fine _nuances_, the character,
for example, of Achilles, who has been called "a splendid savage!"
If our critics studied him as Shakespearian students examine Hamlet or
Macbeth, it is improbable that they could think the wrath of Achilles