The World of Homer
"a second-rate subject." It does not appear to me that his wrath about
"a personal slight"--the loss of Briseis, is a fit of the sulks; that
Achilles, as was said of Byron in one of his portraits, looks like "a
great sulky schoolboy whom somebody has deprived of a plum-cake."
Consider what Achilles is; the son of a goddess: himself, in extreme
youth, the recognised hero and _nonpareil_ of the whole Achaean array.
His one over-mastering passion is desire of renown:
"One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
He might live long, happy, and honoured at home with the father whom
he so tenderly loves and pities, but he sets forth to Ilios, knowing
surely that there he must inevitably perish in the flower of his youth.
He chooses to pay with his life for immortal renown. In Hades he says
that he would liefer be on earth the hind of a landless man, than king
over the Dead, so fast is the hold of this earth upon his heart. But he
could not love his life so much
"Loved he not honour more."
Now, in the opening of the _Iliad_ he is to lose life and the sunlight,
and also to lose honour. This is no mere personal slight; loss of the
honour which he is buying with his life is no unworthy cause of anger
in such a hero. He complains, again and again, that Agamemnon has, _on
every occasion_, dishonoured him. The seizure of Briseis, his special
"mead of honour," is only the last straw, the culminating insult. "In
like honour," he says, "are held both the coward and the brave." He
has toiled most hardly of all. "Even as a bird bringeth her unfledged
chickens each morsel as she winneth it, and with herself it goeth
hard, even so was I wont to watch out many a sleepless night, and
pass through many days of battle, warring with folk for their women's
sake." There is here, in Book ix., that tenderness of reference to the
devotion of the maternal instinct which characterises Achilles in his
relations with his own mother, a goddess of many sorrows, for the sake
of him who has chosen his doom. To her, in the first Book, as on the
death of Patroclus, he cries, in the spirit of the little child of whom
he speaks so touchingly in Book xvi.: "a fond little maid that runs by
her mother's side, and bids her mother take her up, snatching at her
skirts, and tearfully looks at her." Homer puts such words in the mouth
of none but the slayer of men, Achilles.
"Mother," he cries by the grey sea, in Book i., "seeing thou didst of
a truth bear me to so brief a span of life, _honour at least ought the
Olympian to have granted me._"
Is it not plain that "the personal slight" to Achilles--being what he
is, saying, like the great Montrose in a note scribbled on his pocket
Bible, "_Honour is my life,_" is it not plain that the insult is deadly
both to life and honour?
In this sense Homer understands the wrath of Achilles. He had _fond_
of tenderness,--he ransomed his captives, while Agamemnon slew the
prisoners to whom Menelaus was giving quarter. Again, as we shall see
("The Supposed Expurgation of Homer"), it was far from unusual, in
Homeric warfare, for the slayer to mutilate the slain, cutting off his
head, putting it on a stake, or even carrying it home as a trophy.
But Achilles did not even, as usual, despoil Eetion of his armour,
"for his soul had shame of that; but he buried him in his inlaid
armour, and raised a barrow over him." In contrast with his natural
clemency, the wrath of Achilles for Patroclus's sake is all the more
monstrous; he far transcends the customary ferocities of dishonour to
the dead. Achilles says (xxi. pp. 100-105): "Until Patroclus met his
day of destiny, dearer was it to my heart to spare the Trojans; and
many I took alive and sold over sea." But when once his honour, his
life-price, is taken from him, his wrath will be sated by nothing--not
by prayers or gifts of atonement, but by the slaughter of his comrades
among their ships--_then_, indeed, they will know his worth. It is this
moral tragedy, _corruptio optimi_, that inspires Homer in the _Iliad_.
Achilles is, of all the men in Homer, the most passionately
affectionate. His love of Patroclus, like that of Jonathan for David,
"passeth the love of women"; an affection for his elder, the playmate
of his childhood, so pure and so strong that poets of historic Greece
could not understand it. But when he is smitten to the heart by the
loss of Patroclus his wrath again breaks, as in the ninth Book of the
_Iliad_, through all measure; and he does cruel and evil deeds, his
revenge is hateful to Gods and men. This is the moral tragedy of the
_Iliad_; and that which wrecks the heart and soul of Hamlet, or that
which brings to shame the honour and courage of Macbeth, does not go
deeper.
Having fashioned such a character as Achilles, no poet equal to the
task could leave him in the course of cruelty and shame which is his
in the opening of the last Book of the _Iliad_. No hand but that which
created the Achilles of the first Book could so restore him to himself
that the Achaeans might again "see the great Achilles whom they knew."
Only that one genius could conceive and achieve the immortal scene
wherein Priam kisses "the hands of Achilles, terrible, manslaying, that
slew so many of his sons."
"Fear thou the gods, Achilles, and have compassion on me, even me,
bethinking thee of thy father. Lo, I am more piteous yet than he, and
have braved what none other man on earth hath braved before, to stretch
forth my hand toward the face of the slayer of my sons." There follows
the lament of Achilles, for the father whom he, in search of honour,
"may not tend as he groweth old, since very far from my own country I
am dwelling in Troyland, to vex thee and thy children."
Even here, Achilles feels that he dares hardly trust himself, so
strong is the wild beast of passion within him. So consistent, so
delicate, so strong a delineation of character, I cannot conceive to be
the work of more hands than one, it is the work of the hand of Homer.
Throughout the whole poem every person is drawn with equal firmness,
delicacy, and consistency. The study of Agamemnon is the most complex
(see _Homer and his Age,_ pp. 50-81). The foil to Agamemnon, the good
Menelaus, the kindest and most chivalrously honourable of men, always
conscious of his debt to the Achaeans, always eager to dare beyond his
strength, is a worthy pendant. Odysseus throughout the poem is the
poet's most admired hero; the wisest and most steadfast, here as in
the _Odyssey_. It is so with the rest, with all of them; and this with
the unity of _ethos_, of temper, of thought on human destinies, is the
great argument for the unity and single authorship of the _Iliad_ in
the main. To others, probably, as to Wolf, this consistency is apparent
when they read the _Iliad_, as alone it was meant to be read or heard,
"for human pleasure," without constantly dwelling on "oppositions of
science falsely so called," and hunting for discrepancies which often
are not discrepant.
It is not an article of my faith that there is no non-original matter
in the _Iliad_. In another book, _Homer and the Epic_, I mentioned the
passages which, to me, seem probably alien, for one reason or another.
About the authorship of the Catalogue I do not know enough to be able
to form an opinion. In the dream of Agamemnon and what follows, in Book
ii., I might guess that two or three lines have been omitted, though
on the whole the waverings of Agamemnon are thoroughly consistent with
his character, and are meant to throw into light the steadfastness of
Odysseus. I think that Phoenix is not properly introduced in Book ix.,
but there he is a necessary character; his warning to Achilles, not to
fight before receiving atonement, has an influence throughout, backed
as it is later by the counsels of Odysseus. The battles between Troy
and the Ships, in Books xii.-xv., might be more lucid; but so might
Napier's account of the battle of Salamanca, and Lord Roberts's of the
Siege of Delhi. I understand Homer better than I do either of these
military historians; but I have taken more pains to understand him. I
would rather believe the _Aristeia_ of Idomeneus to be by another hand;
it is perfunctory; and the proceedings of Poseidon are perplexing,
like the doings of Ares and Athene in the first fifty lines of Book v.
The Gods always, by the infinite inconsistencies of mythology, cause
confusion, but the text itself has an air of dislocation. The arming of
Agamemnon in the opening of Book xi., seems to me non-authentic, as far
as our knowledge of Homeric armature goes. The whole passage about the
destruction of the Achaean wall by the Gods, in the after time, reads
to me like a pedantic later explanation of the absence of traces of the
works.
The meeting of Aeneas and Achilles in Book xx. would seem more
suspicious than, to me, it does, if Aeneas were not, throughout, a
special sort of person, the son of a goddess, and not a good Trojan,
because of Priam's suspicion of "the Orleans branch." I am inclined
to think that the poet knows, all through, a "saga" of Aeneas as
preserving the seed of the Royal House of Troy. In Book v., and
elsewhere, he is always under divine protection, that of Apollo or of
Aphrodite, "only Zeus shielded thee, and other gods," says Achilles.
"It is appointed for him to escape that the race of Dardanus perish
not," says Poseidon in Book xx.; and were the passage solitary, I
should think it all an interpolation. But the poet always, probably for
traditional reasons, takes very good care of Aeneas. The last bouts in
the Funeral Games seem unlike Homer.
In the _Odyssey_, the passages about the concealing of the arms (xvi.,
xix.) are dislocated, to say the least; and all the close of the
poem, especially the second Nekyia, has always lain under suspicion in
critical times. Sainte-Beuve would not abandon, but admired it; I only
feel that, if all this be later, it has taken the place of lost earlier
material, for the poem could not conceivably close till the blood feud
of Odysseus and the kin of the Wooers was appeased. An Achaean like
a Scandinavian audience understood the rules, and insisted that the
settlement of the blood-feud must be explained.
These are the main points at which, as far as I can judge, something
has gone wrong. There are others: the interchange of shields between
Nestor and Thrasymedes in the opening of Book xiv. had probably some
lines of explanation given to it, though, as Mr. She wan was the
first to perceive, the exchange was the necessary consequence of the
manoeuvres in Book x. Here Thrasymedes lent his shield to Diomede for
his night _reconnaissance_, Thrasymedes would then send for and use
Nestor's shield, while Nestor would obtain the shield of Thrasymedes
next morning from Diomede.[1]
Nothing can be more simple and natural; but the thing was so obvious as
to escape attention till Mr. She wan read Homer in a Homeric spirit. No
doubt there are other passages with which I am dissatisfied, but the
curious may refer for them to my earlier book, _Homer and the Epic_.
It is not so strange that there are dislocations ill patched up, as
that far more of extraneous matter, especially of Ionian matter, has
not found an entry into the Epics. How the text has been so well
guarded I cannot explain; Mr. Murray's theory of expurgation of certain
beliefs, ways and manners, is examined in Appendix B.
As to how the Epic was evolved, I am unable to say anything precise for
want of evidence. Analogy from other early national epic poetry fails
us here, because nowhere is there any early national poetry of the same
scope and the same consistency. Again, in such epics as the _Chanson
de Roland_, and even in _Beowulf_, mythical as it is, there are actual