Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/144

 public opinion, i.e. to the opinion formed by the collective sayings of Tis; as, on the other hand, the listening to an inner voice, the obedience to what we call a moral sense, is Homerically called nemesis. And just as Tis is sometimes merely the voice of smug respectability, so aidos is sometimes conventional in a low way. When Diomedes is going by night to spy out the Trojan camp, several heroes offer to go with him, but only one can be chosen. Agamemnon tells him that he must not yield to aidos, and take the man of highest station rather than the man of highest merit: where aidos appears as in direct conflict with nemesis. But more often these two principles are found acting in harmony,—recommending the same course of conduct from two different points of view. There is a signal example of this in the Odyssey, which is also noteworthy on another ground, viz., as the only episode in the Homeric poems which involves a direct and formal appeal from established right of might to the corrective agency of public opinion. The suitors of Penelope have intruded themselves into the house of her absent lord, and are wasting his substance by riotous living. Her son Telemachus convenes the men of Ithaca in public assembly, and calls on them to stop this cruel wrong. He appeals to nemesis, to aidos, and to fear of the gods. "Resent it in your own hearts; and have regard to others, neighbouring folk who dwell around,—and tremble ye at the wrath of the gods." The appeal fails. The public opinion exists, but it has not the power, or the courage, to act.