Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/198

 132 HISTORY OF GREECE. Briseis; while both Nestor and Patroclus, with all tluir wish to induce him to take arms, never take notice of the offered atone- ment ard restitution, but view him as one whose ground for bas brought about the consummation. The subsequent and much more destructive defeats which they undergo are thus causeless : yet Zeus is repre- sented as inflicting them reluctantly, and only because they are necessary to honor Achilles (xiii. 350 ; xv. 75, 235, 598 ; compare also viii. 372 and 475). If we reflect upon the constitution of the poem, we shall see that the fun- damental sequence of ideas in it is, a series of misfortunes to the Greeks, brought on by Zeus for the special purpose of procuring atonement to Achilles and bringing humiliation on Agamemnon : the introduction of Pa- troclus superadds new motives of the utmost interest, but it is most harmo- niously worked into the fundamental sequence. Now the intrusion of the ninth book breaks up the scheme of the poem by disuniting the sequence : Agamemnon is on his knees before Achilles, entreating pardon and proffering reparation, yet the calamities of the Greeks become more and more dreadful. The atonement of the ninth book comes at the wrong time and in the wrong manner. There are four passages (and only four, so far as I am aware) in which the embassy of the ninth book is alluded to in the subsequent books : one in xviii. 444-456, which was expunged as spurious by Aristarchus (see the Scholia and Knight's commentary, ad loc.) ; and three others in the following book, wherein the gifts previously tendered by Odysseus as the envoy of Agamemnon are noticed as identical with the gifts actually given in the nineteenth book. I feel persuaded that these passages (vv. 140-141, 192- 195, and 243) are specially inserted for the purpose of establishing a connec- tion between the ninth book and the nineteenth. The four lines (192-195) are decidedly better away: the first two lines (140-141) are noway neces- sary; while the word x& l &t (which occurs in both passages) is only rendered admissible by being stretched to mean nudius tertius (Heyne, ad loc.). I will only farther remark with respect to the ninth book, that the speech of Agamemnon ("17-28), the theme for the rebuke of Diomedes and the ob- scure commonplace of Nestor, is taken verbatim from his speech in the second book, in which place the proposition, of leaving the place and flying, is made, not seriously, but as a stratagem (ii. 110, 118, 140). The length of this note can only be excused by its direct bearing upon the structure of the Iliud. To show that the books from the eleventh downwards are composed by a poet who has no knowledge of the ninth book, is, in my judgment, a very important point of evidence in aiding us to understand what the original Achilleis was. The books from the second to the seventh inclusive are insertions into the Achilleis, and lie apart from its plot, but do not violently contradict it, except in regard to the agora of the gods at the beginning of the fourth book, and the almost mortal wounci of Sarpedon in his battle with Tlepolemus. But the ninth book overthrows to* fundamental scheme of the poem.