Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/201

 ENLARGEMENT OF ACHILLEIS LTfO ILIAD. 186 day's battle, chiefly through the heroism of Diomedes. Instead of arming the Greeks forthwith, Agamemnon convokes first a council of chiefs, and next an agora of the host. And though himself in a temper of mind highly elate with the deceitful as. surances of Oneirus, he deliberately assumes the language of despair in addressing the troops, having previously prepared Nes- tor and Odysseus for his doing so, merely in order to try the courage of the men, and with formal instructions, given to these two other chiefs, that they are to speak in opposition to him. Now this intervention of Zeus and Oneirus, eminently unsatisfac- tory when coupled with tha incidents which now follow it, and making Zeus appear, but only appear, to realize his promise of honoring Achilles as well as of hurting the Greeks, forms ex- actly the point of junction between the Achilleis and the Iliad. 1 The freak which Agamemnon plays off upon the temper of his army, though in itself childish, serves a sufficient purpose, not only because it provides a special matter of interest to be sub- mitted to the Greeks, but also because it calls forth the splendid description, so teeming with vivacious detail, of the sudden breaking up of the assembly after Agamemnon's harangue, and of the decisive interference of Odysseus to bring the men back, as well as to put down Thersites. This picture of the Greeks in agora, bringing out the two chief speaking and counselling heroes, was so important a part of the general Trojan war, that the poet has permitted himself to introduce it by assuming an inexplicable folly on the part of Agamemnon ; just as he has ushered in another fine scene in the third book, the Teicho- skopy, or conversation, between Priam and Helen on the walls of Troy, by admitting the supposition that the old king, in the tenth year of the war, did not know the persons of Aga- memnon and the other Grecian chiefs. This may serve as an explanation of the delusion practised by Agamemnon towards his assembled host ; but it does not at all explain the tame and empty intervention of Oneirus. 2 1 The intervention of Oneirus ought rather to come as an immediate pre- liminary to book viii. than to book iL The first forty-seven lines of book ii would fit on and read consistently &t the beginning of book viii, the events of which book form a proper sequel to the mission of Oneirus. 3 0. MQller, (History of Greek Literature, ch. v. 8,) doubts whether the