Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/199

 NINTH BOOK OF THE ILIAD. 183 quarrel stands still llie same as it did at the beginning. More- over, if ve look at the first book, the opening of the Achilleis, we shall see that this prostration of Agamemnon and the chief Grecian heroes before Achilles, would really be the termination of the whole poem ; for Achilles asks nothing more from Thetis, nor Thetis anything more from Zeus, than that Agamemnon and the Greeks may be brought to know the wrong they have done to their capital warrior, and humbled in the dust in expiation of it. We may add, that the abject terror in which Agamemnon appears in the ninth book, when he sends the supplicatory message to Achilles, as it is not adequately accounted for by the degree of calamity which the Greeks have experienced in the preceding (eighth) book, so it is inconsistent with the gallantry and high spirit with which he shines at the beginning of the eleventh. 1 The situation of the Greeks only becomes desperate when the three great chiefs, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomedes, are disabled by wounds ; 2 this is the irreparable calamity which works upon Patroclus, and through him upon Achilles. The ninth book, as it now stands, seems to me an addition, by a different hand, to the original Achilleis, framed so as both to forestall and to spoil the nineteenth book, which is the real recon- ciliation of the two inimical heroes : I will venture to add, that it carries the pride and egotism of Achilles beyond even the largest exigences of insulted honor, and is shocking to that sentiment of Nemesis which was so deeply seated in the Grecian mind. "We forgive any excess of fury against the Trojans and Hector, after the death cf Patroclus ; but that he should remain unmoved by restitution, by abject supplications, and by the richest atoning 1 Ilclbig (Sittl. Zustiinde des Hcldcnalters, p. 30} says, " The conscious- ness in the bosom of Agamemnon that he has offered atonement to Achilles strengthens his confidence and valor," &c. This is the idea of the critic, not of the poet. It does not occur in the Iliad, though the critic not unnaturally imagines that it must occur. Agamemnon never says, " I was wrong in provoking Achilles, but you see I have done everything which man could do to beg his pardon." Assuming the ninth book to be a part of the original conception, this feeling is so natural, that we could hardly fail to find it, a) the beginning of the eleventh book, numbered among the motives of Aga memnon.
 * Iliad, xi. 6.VJ ; xiv. 128: xvi. 25.