Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/192

 176 HISTORY OF GREECE. from an Achilleis into an Iliad. 1 The primitive frontispiece, inscribed with the anger of Achilles, and its direct consequences, yet remains, after it has ceased to be coextensive with the poem. The parts added, however, are not necessarily inferior in merit to the original poem : so far is this from being the case, that amongst them are comprehended some of the noblest efforts of the Grecian epic. Nor are they more recent in date than the original ; strictly speaking, they must be a little more recent, but they belong to the same generation and state of society as the primitive Achilleis. These qualifications are necessary to keep apart different ques- tions, which, in discussions of Homeric criticism, are but too often confounded. If we take those portions of the poem which I imagine to have constituted the original Achilleis, it will be found that the sequence of events contained in them is more rapid, more unbroken, and more intimately knit together in the way of cause and effect, than in the other books. Heyne and Lachmann, indeed, with other objecting critics, complains of the action in them as being too much crowded and hurried, since one day lasts from the beginning of the eleventh book to the middle of the eighteenth, without any sensible halt in the march throughout so large a portion of the journey. Lachmann, likewise, admits that those separate songs, into which he imagines that the whole Iliad may be dissected, cannot be severed with the same sharpness, in the books subse- quent to the eleventh, as in those before it. 2 There is only one 1 In reference to the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, I agree with the observations of William Miiller, Homerische Vorschulc, Ab- sclmit. viii. pp. 116-118. Acad. 1841, p. 4. After having pointed out certain discrepancies which he maintains to prove different composing hands, he adds : " Nevertheless, we must be careful not tc regard the single constituent songs in this part of the poem as being distinct and separable in a degree equal to those in the first half; for they all with one accord harmonize in one particular circumstance, which, with reference to the story of the Iliad, is not less important even than the anger of Achilles, viz. that the three most distinguished heroes, Agamemnon, Odys- seus, and Diomedes, all becc Be disabled throughout the whole duration of the battles." Important for the story of the Atiilltis, I should sny, not for that of th*
 * Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen iiber die Ilias, Abhandlungen Berlin.